Who should investigate police abuse?
I don’t usually agree with The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin, but this is a fairly good article:
When local district attorneys investigate local police officers, there is an inherent conflict of interest. In virtually all usual circumstances, police and prosecutors are partners, working together to build cases against defendants. This is especially true in a place like Staten Island, where the elected district attorney, Dan Donovan, both works closely with the police and answers to many of them as his constituents. As Schneinderman noted, on the rare occasions when prosecutors investigate the police, even when all parties act with the best of intentions, “the question is whether there is public confidence that justice has been served*, especially in cases where homicide or other serious charges against the accused officer are not pursued or are dismissed prior to a jury trial.”
Schneinderman, the AG of the state of New York, has proposed a solution: appoint the AG! But even the Democratic DA of Brooklyn, Kenneth Thompson, has rejected that idea in no uncertain terms:
Thompson pointed to potential practical problems””saying that it would stretch the attorney general too thin, particularly if it came to include all accusations of police brutality, not just those that ended in death. But Thompson’s objections were also more profound. “As the duly elected district attorney of Brooklyn, I am more than able to thoroughly and fairly investigate any fatality of an unarmed civilian by a police officer,” Thompson said. Indeed, Thompson recently brought a police-brutality case against two officers, and is investigating the recent police-shooting death of an unarmed man in a housing project.
The solutions are hard to come by.
It reminds me of a knotty problem that occurs a lot in law (and elsewhere, too): how to replace a flawed system with a system that isn’t even more flawed than the one it replaced. More often than not (although certainly not always!) in law, I’ve observed that it tends to be better to have a system that features more variation, more local control, and more people making decisions, than to streamline the process and have fewer people or one person making decisions (special prosecutor, complete federal control).
That is the inherent problem with special prosecutors. Not only are they not answerable to the people they serve, and especially the local community, but they are only one person. Toobin writes [emphasis mine]:
Still, special prosecutors are not necessarily good or bad. Like the locals they replace, they are only as good as the cases they bring, or refrain from bringing. That, ultimately, will rest on the good judgment of the individuals involved, and no one has yet figured out a way of putting the right person in place all the time.
I hope that last (emphasized) part of Toobin’s sentence was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and that he realizes such a thing would be impossible. There can be no “right person all the time.” If Toobin isn’t aware of that, it’s a flaw in his thinking.
[ * NOTE: There are a great many members of the public whose definition of “justice” appears to be ends-based rather than means-based. That is, they decide what result they want to see based on their politics and feelings rather than the evidence, and then if the process doesn’t yield that verdict they define the process itself as unjust. Such people will not be satisfied by a mere change of process unless it reliably yields the verdicts they wish to see.]
As you say, nothing is perfect. Police can reduce their interactions with blacks in poor neighborhoods. The result will be more black on black crime. Is that want these neighborhoods want? The more crime goes up, the less safe people feel. Is Obama fixing problems or creating them? I think the next election may be even more of a disaster for dems.
“Who should investigate police abuse?”
The police of course as no one eklse is qualified to make that determination. Provided… that the people at the top demand that their police force meet the highest of standards and continually verify that they do. Anything less is shutting the barn door after the horse has escaped.
Bad apples cannot be completely eliminated but anything beyond the statistically lowest incidences of police abuse (demographics considered) is a condemnation of management.
A perfect example of incompetent management is NYC Chief Bratton. He knows that de Blasio is severely biased against the police and yet, he defends de Blasio and attacks his troops. That proves that Bratton’s primary concern is self-protection.
I’d like to see protest resignations of successive Chiefs of Police, perhaps pushing the political movement toward the impeachment of diBlasio. IIRC, New York has no recall, unlike more populist Western jurisdictions. (BTW, neither does Texas)
The irony in all this is that Conservatives are defaulting to the defense of the police, when we know that what they are doing, and did in NY, is exactly the danger we have preached for decades. No! They ought NOT to have tanks or APC’s, nor a whole host of other materiel that should be used against our enemies, not our citizens. Nor ought they to have to arrest people, of any race, to collect excessive cigarette taxes. The sad death of a man in New York was not a product of raaacism, but of diBlasio’s fascism. The only good to come of this is that, if the real push comes to the real shove, it will be pretty difficult to get cops out in the street to put down peaceful protests by the citizens. Obola has made it very clear that the cops are unimportant proles like the rest of us. That is a very good thing, indeed.
One should wonder who Hussein O is counting on as his civilian security force then, if not for the military or police.
As for police investigations, currently most of it involves Internal Affairs, which is like Holder investigating Benghazi and Valerie investigating Fast and Furious.
The grand jury system tends to be the tool of the DA. It has its flaws, but all institutions have flaws. Bad cops, bad politicians, bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad whatever are a fact of life. Given the shortage of angels in police forces, we have to take any incident of possible police malfeasance on a case by case basis. Gentle Giant Brown, like the sainted Trayvon, was on a path of self destruction. Garner was stupid to resist arrest, but the law that lead to his arrest was stupid 10E6. Garner’s death rests at the feet of politicians ever eager for tax revenue.
Many years ago I served on a grand jury that “investigated” a police shooting. We did find the cop “not indictable.”
However, we did write a letter saying that we though the system needed to be changed. It made no sense for a prosecutor who was on a first name basis with many of the cops involved in the shooting to be in charge of investigating them.
Not surprisingly nothing came of that letter (not that we ever thought it would make a hill of beans difference; some on the jury just felt good writing it) and it is for the reason that you say, Neo, how to replace a flawed system with a system that isn’t even more flawed than the one it replaced?
Here’s another one of those “surprise-surprise-surprise”s:
Arrests plummet 66% with NYPD in virtual work stoppage
http://nypost.com/2014/12/29/arrests-plummet-following-execution-of-two-cops/
As yet another step in Obama’s plan for the “Fundamental Transformation” of the U.S. again we see Obama & Co. gin up and pretend to discern a “crisis” that isn’t there, in order to justify and get parts of their agenda passed to rectify these illusory problems in such an urgent, “emergency” situation.
The ominous line that Obama’s inserted in a 2008 boilerplate speech, about how he wanted to create a “Civilian National Security Force,” one that was just as large and well-funded as our military, has been hanging around like a bad smell that just won’t go away.
Now, perhaps we see the beginnings of such a force in the attempt by Obama, Holder, and their DOJ to more closely supervise/nationalize State and local police departments, under the guise of the Federal government needing to supervise these “racist,” and “unnecessarily violent,” “occupying forces” in black, high crime neighborhoods to protect the rights and lives of their citizens.
Here in WI, the investigation is done by a Different police department.
Wolla Dalbo,
Bingo.
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.-guess who
Another one from the good old days.
Does NY want to get back to their lives as usual now?
What about other Americans, do they feel comfortable now?
There is no question that police need to have accountability and strong rules of engagement for use of deadly force. That being said, the best Obama and Holder could come up with this year were two cases where there was no cloudiness or shades of gray, the police were not in the wrong.
In the light of day with all of the facts being known the Ferguson case should never have even gone to a grand jury and the New York case was a sorry sad circumstance that was not the result of a ‘choke hold’ and it occurred under the supervision of a female, black police sergeant.
Our current system of checks and balances to prevent police violence really does a good job and with the human element there will always be screw ups but we live in a Nation where most everything works well most of the time and I can accept that.
For every bad police encounter today, and there are and always will be some, there are thousands and thousands of daily encounters where cops are doing a damn good job. Not as good as TV where they solve crimes in one day but very good in a country with 320,000,000 people.
Using lies as an argument for changing the system, like the left is doing now, can not end well. That is obvious since one must understand the system very well before one fixes it. Lies do not yield that level of understanding. Of course, since the left is all about personal power and greater freedom for themselves at the expense of others, acting on the basis of lies is exactly what they want since it gives them the opportunity to fix the system to their advantage.
“Garner’s death rests at the feet of politicians ever eager for tax revenue.”
Garner broke the law. Period. and he knew what he was doing. He was a career criminal who did not want the law to get in his way.
If you want to complain about the law, fine. But don’t use Garner’s death to prove it.
The politicians had NOTHING to do with Garner’s actions. Using police actions against politicians screams of the fascism that many anti-O s condemn the current administration over.
“One should wonder who Hussein O is counting on as his civilian security force then, if not for the military or police.”
Oh, that one is simple. One of the little noticed elements of the amnesty is to encourage the illegals covered by it to join the military; apparently there’s a program that says serve 4 years and get citizenship. American citizens are being discharged to make room for them and the officer corps has been undergoing a purge for the last 2-3 years.
SDN–And we know how well it worked out for the ancient Romans, when they recruited barbarians into their military forces.
Just what we need, illegal aliens from South of the Border whose outlooks were shaped as they grew up in dysfunctional socialist societies where huge popular demonstrations and violence in the streets, and strong man/military rule are pretty commonplace.
That being said, the best Obama and Holder could come up with this year were two cases where there was no cloudiness or shades of gray, the police were not in the wrong.
You’re under the delusion that the best they can do equals the best the rest of us can do.
Somebody have eyes and see with it, others just Obey Authority.
http://neoneocon.com/2014/12/27/the-guilty-police/#comment-858928
Here’s a case where Hussein Obola and Holder wasn’t able to present.
In Texas, the Texas Rangers investigate all killings by police. They answer to the govenor whereas local police answer to the mayor.
It’s very obvious that the Federal government has been getting bigger and more powerful, its reach and level of control ever larger, especially in the decades since the beginning of WWII, and that power has largely been power and control siphoned off from the individual states.
This is, indeed, a “zero sum game,” there is only a limited and finite amount of power and control allowed by our Constitution in our Republican system of government (unless, of course, you want to change that form of government into a tyranny) and if the Federal government gets more of this limited commodity than it must be taken from the other entities that also have power, the States.
Things like this phony “violent police war on young black men” are yet another attempt at increasing Federal power and control, this time by attempting to replace State and local control of law enforcement with Federal control under the guise of protecting the Civil Rights of black citizens.
It’s time for the States to resist such Federal grabs for more power and control, and to take back their power from the Federal government in each and every area where the Constitution gave those powers and responsibilities to the States.
Thus, I think the idea proposed by Mark Levin, that of the States calling a “Convention to Propose Amendments to the Constitution” provided for in Article V of the Constitution, in order to attempt to rein in the Federal government may be a good idea.