Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/05/secret-nypd-files-show-hundred.html
…
6 Likes
You know, back in the 1800s, when a bad cop lied and broke the law and killed innocent people, a mob would form and they’d tar and feather him, and run him out of town.
That seems like the good old days now. When mob justice actually executed retribution against corrupt cops, instead of letting them continue to abuse the public.
6 Likes
There is little point to continuing to employ officers that have committed perjury. No attorney will bring a case to trial where they were a witness.
5 Likes
I’m more surprised they didn’t destroy any record of these actions than the actions themselves.
7 Likes
That’s why I never get to sit on a jury either!
12 Likes
I’ve only ever been summoned once, for jury duty in a civil trial. They asked if I ever been involved in a trial before, and I told them about a civil case regarding a traffic accident where I felt a police officer lied under oath. And that’s all she wrote.
Too bad, because I would make an excellent juror. I can determine a person’s guilt just by looking at them.
10 Likes
You don’t say! I’m shocked and appalled.
2 Likes
That’s a shame. If you make it do that everyone who is willing to be sceptical of all evidence and all testimony is filtered out of the jury pool, then the whole system of jury trial becomes a rubber stamp.
5 Likes
When I got called I was never asked whether I would have trouble believing police testimony. So I sat a trial and when the arresting officer contradicted himself during his testimony, I was able to swing the rest of the jurors from a rubber-stamp conviction to enough reasonable doubt to acquit.
It was one of those bullshit “disorderly conduct/resisting arrest” cases where the defendant was arrested ostensibly for refusing to show ID while drinking alcohol, and then charged not with anything she’d done wrong before the arrest but rather for resisting it.
16 Likes
Thank you for doing your civic duty. I wish more people would!
6 Likes
And that’s how Mark caused the downfall of western civilization folks! *KISS* G’night everybody!
5 Likes
But every single jury (grand or otherwise) says the cops are telling the truth when they fire 25-50 rounds into an unarmed black man or black child. Yep, every single time the black guy was ‘resisting arrest’, fleeing, or ‘making’ the cop “afraid for his life”. SMH
3 Likes
Cops have to be protected b/c of who they really protect – the owners. Owners need to maintain that loyalty so that the cops will stop the peasants from storming and burning their houses.
2 Likes
This is what amazes me about how tolerant police forces are of corrupt cops - they don’t seem to care that they’re undermining their cases. All they seem to care about is arrests, not that they got the right guy and not that they’ve helped build a solid, prosecutable case.
5 Likes
If you want to make a statement while getting excluded from a jury, just bring up any thoughts on jury nullification and watch how fast you get kicked out.
But I have the opposite problem; I want to serve on a jury but always get disqualified, presumably because I’ve got decent judgement. Maybe I need to start acting like Trump if I want to get on a jury.
2 Likes
By this logic, you do not believe anyone because some people have lied. The vast majority of cops do not lie under oath. Take any subset of the population and you will find it’s the same" we’re mostly honest, especially when asked to testify in a court of law. With technology and 24/7 news media, it may be more apparent that some of us have previously managed to get away with lying but cops are not more inclined to lie under oath than any other group of people. Who here hasn’t lied?
1 Like
No, I have a hard time trusting a group of people for whom there is no penalty for lying under oath or committing other crimes.
You are comparing lying in general, which is not a crime, with lying under oath which is a felony. You might as well have asked, “who here hasn’t robbed a liquor store at gunpoint?”
How would you feel about flying if incompetent, drunk or otherwise impaired air traffic controllers regularly caused crashes, destroyed evidence, lied to place the blame with the pilots, yet still were able to keep their jobs and avoid any legal consequences? What if, after each crash, some spokesperson went on TV to tell us that most air traffic controllers are good at their jobs and trustworthy, it’s just a few bad apples that are the problem, and that, sure the guy was having sex with an under-age prostitute in the bathroom when the crash happened, but losing the possibility of being promoted for the next year is punishment enough? What if this happened over and over again? Wouldn’t it be reasonable to doubt the air traffic controller’s side of the story the next time there is an incident? And wouldn’t it be reasonable to choose to stay the hell off of airplanes?
3 Likes
Cops aren’t regular citizens. Their job is so important we hold them to a higher standard of conduct. Or at least it’d be insane and suicidal not to.
Discriminating against an entire group, because of the actions of (proportionately) very few… yeah, nothing wrong with that, humanity-wise.
Yes, cops should be held to a higher standard, but that’s not the point.
