Who Will Watch the Guardians?
This is coming out of chat this afternoon.
Myrna was bringing up police brutality blogs, and then linked this video. Warning: The video is shocking and disturbing and shows at least one murder. It is rightfully disturbing and almost an hour long. In short it highlights several cases of police brutality and misconduct which were caught on video.
For me this issue hits close to home. A local town's police department is in the middle of a massive melt-down because the thin blue line got stretched too far and snapped, and now all sorts of details are coming out of misconduct within the police department. So far two officers have been put into jail, and charges are pending on the former police chief and several others.
The linked stories show some of the history of this mess, but for those who don't care to read them - this really all seemed to start last year when an off-duty Greece police officer (Nicholas Joseph) was involved in a read-ending accident which sent a pregnant woman into premature labor. Somehow the officer disappeared from the scene of the accident, and only turned up eight hours later for a breathalyzer and drug screening. Forensic analysis of the car found traces of cocaine on the driver's wheel, and there was some reason to believe he'd been drinking as well. A public hue and cry to determine how this guy got the ten miles from the scene of the accident to his house was raised, and the police chief promised a thorough investigation. Which nonetheless went nowhere.
However, the circumstantial evidence against Joseph was sufficient to get an indictment. While this was happening, however, a local woman made a complaint against another Greece PD officer, accusing him of trying to force her to have sex, or he'd run her in for parole violations. Shortly after being indicted for those charges, several other women came forward with other stories. Then the fat hit the fire when it was found that the same officer had been 'released' from the local city's PD for sexual misconduct, I believe it was.
The police chief decided he had to make a show of investigating things, and so called for a special investigation team from the State Police. Unfortunately for him, it seems he got more of an investigation than he'd expected when he asked for it - and he was found the day before the investigators were due to show up shredding documents relating to the Joseph case.
Since then at least two other officers have been charged.
It's a mess, and I can only regret that it's taking so long to come out.
But it illustrates, I think, the difficulties in policing any police department. There are many reasons why police officers would want to close ranks and protect their own. The video linked in the beginning of this post shows several examples of just how egregious cops may get protecting each other from the consequences of their actions. And little by little, without people curbing such behavior, the normal favors between co-workers start to encompass turning a blind eye to actual infractions. A feeling of being above the law grows, and you end up with people trying to intimidate anyone who is even trying to ask about the procedure for filing a complaint about a police officer's behavior.
What I'd like to know would be what reforms do you think might be best suited towards providing the mechanisms to make sure that the police operate within the law, and don't simply become another gang that believes they control the law.
My suggestions:
Pass laws requiring complaint forms to be freely available - and not something only handed out by the police chief. If at all. I can understand the reasons for wanting an interview with the complainant before the investigation goes any further. But without that paper record of a complaint being lodged, it just seems too simple to obviate the whole process with simple intimidation tactics.
End the requirement to carry papers with you at all times. Wait? What's that? "The US doesn't require papers? That's just something those evil Soviets did?" That may have been true in the past, but in this post-9/11 age, if you don't provide ID to any law enforcement officer upon request you may be arrested. At the time that those provisions were passed I opposed them, and after seeing that video, confirming just how chilling it can be, I am even more opposed to them.
Finally while officers acting in good faith do deserve the same theoretical benefit of the doubt that a criminal might face in court, that doesn't mean that grand juries, police boards, or other bodies entrusted with the duty of regulating the police should forget that no one is above the law. All too often such boards hear only one side of the story, and refuse any contrarian evidence. This has to change. The best way I can think of that happening is to make sure that a citizens, not police, form the majority of voting members on any investigative board. Don't exclude police from such boards, but don't leave them as the sole arbiters, either.
