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The Center for American Progress reports
Congress [just] passed a bill that could result in complete, national data on police shootings and other deaths in law enforcement custody.
Right now, we have nothing close to that. Police departments are not required to report information about police to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Some do, others don't, others submit it some years and not others or submit potentially incomplete numbers, making it near-impossible to know how many people police kill every year. Based on the figures that are reported to the federal government, ProPublica recently concluded that young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than whites.
Under the bill awaiting Obama's signature, states receiving federal funds would be required to report every quarter on deaths in law enforcement custody. This includes not [only] those who are killed by police during a stop, arrest, or other interaction. It also includes those who die in jail or prison. [Additionally,] it requires details about these shootings including gender, race, as well as at least some circumstances surrounding the death.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday December 17 2014, @01:47AM
Getting accurate metrics on officer-involved shootings is a good first step. It is amazing that this information is not already available since the FBI already tracks Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) among other statistics.
Numbers alone do not address the systemic conflicts of interest in the existing state-level systems in the US. Prosecutors work with police every day, often people they are friendly with and have to rely on to do their jobs. If a prosecutor goes to investigate any police abuse, his efforts be blocked by the "blue wall of silence" and feigned ignorance. If the prosecutor pushes, he will quickly find himself on the outside of the cop culture, shunned by the very people whose evidence he will need to work on any criminal prosecution. It can be trivial for a motivated cop to throw an entire investigation by intentional mistakes, such as a failure to properly document evidence. In many states the Attorney General is an elected position, and keeping a pesky, questioning prosecutor employed can run tremendous risks for the elected AG, including having the police unions endorse another candidate since the AG will be "difficult to work with" and "not hard on crime".
Nor does the current system of Internal Affairs provide sufficient safeguards. Outside of major cities, departments are small enough that everyone will know each other, and often live in the same area. We wouldn't let one coworker investigate another in the private sector, especially if they were friendly and knew each other for years, yet this is exactly what happens. The exclusive club of law enforcement is little different from the mob when it comes to rats, so there is little testimony to work with but for citizen complaints and digital evidence. Even cruiser speed is rarely checked, though it is illegal for cops to speed without sirens and valid reasons.
A solution may be to have a permanent special prosecution office that deals exclusively with doing enforcement on the enforcers. It would no doubt be politically influenced one way or another.
It may be necessary to make police employment contingent on not using the right to silence, but I'm not sure I want to see how far that concept can be taken.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17 2014, @04:26AM
If the prosecutor pushes, he will quickly find himself on the outside of the cop culture, shunned by the very people whose evidence he will need to work on any criminal prosecution
[...]
Nor does the current system of Internal Affairs provide sufficient safeguards
Bingo.
What's needed is someone outside the loop--a guy from the next county over or a fed.
Someone whose only scorecard is how many bad cops he has taken down.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17 2014, @06:04AM
I agree. And prosecutors shouldn't be getting promotions based on the number of successful convictions; this just makes them go for unjust plea bargains and trying to convict innocent people.