Making police terrified of prosecution will paradoxically lead to MORE death

How making police terrified of prosecution could paradoxically lead to MORE deaths

In recent times (and mostly due to a push by the news media) there has been an effort to try to reduce deaths when police take suspects into custody. There have been several high-profile cases of officers who were involved in deaths being prosecuted, in situations they might not have been before, with very long prison sentences to try to send a message to all the others, punishing them exactly the same as someone who committed ordinary murder.
Supposedly people think this will help reduce the deaths of suspects being taken into custody.

Police across the country are terrified of prosecution. They are afraid they might make one small mistake and could find themselves being prosecuted for murder. In some of these situations, it can be easy to make a mistake when struggling with a resisting suspect. There is not always a "perfect way" to take a suspect into custody who is fighting, especially suspects on drugs who may not be thinking rationally.

Despite what some people think, it's NOT so simple as just "If you don't want to go to prison, don't make a mistake".
Nor is it always true that "only people who are guilty can be prosecuted and sent to prison." Officers often have to use physical force that could result in a small risk of the suspect being hurt of killed. Sometimes officers have to shoot a suspect when they believe their lives could be in danger. It's a decision that has to be made very fast in the moment, sometimes after the officer is physically and mentally tired out from a struggle, so sometimes the officer might not always have been correct in his assessment or decision.

Because of this many cities are having difficulty attracting police officers. Potential applicants do not want to work there; they do not want to work in a situation where they fear the possibility of being sent to prison for over twenty years because they make a mistake on the job.

What this is going to result in is cities having to hire lower quality applicants. People who might not have been their first choice, but the city could not get anyone better. People who might not be cut out for the job. I read at least one city is considering hiring officers with a former criminal record. This could lead to more deaths.

I read in Russia, out in the rural hospitals, there are many nurses who show up to work obviously intoxicated with alcohol and this has led to many patient deaths. There is such a shortage of nurses, due to the low pay, that hospitals have little choice. Nurses showing up to work half drunk has almost become normalized, and alcoholism is very prevalent. If these underfunded hospital automatically fired everyone who showed up to work drunk, there would not be enough nurses, and more patients would die, so they are in a bit of a bind.
You can see the analogy here.

Look, I'm definitely not one of those people who automatically take the side of police in every situation. I do not believe police should be given blanket immunity because "they were just doing their job". (Nor am I a fan of giving police officers special privileges other normal people do not have) But the current situation has reached almost ridiculous levels. If someone makes a small mistake that was not difficult to make, and they weren't setting out into the situation with the intent to commit murder, they should not be punished as if they committed an ordinary murder. Police officers can find themselves faced with difficult situations every day. There is really no magical way to take somebody into custody who is fighting without hurting that person. In a few rarer instances, there is a chance that could result in death.

Imagine, as part of a job, being forced to buy a lottery ticket where if you "won" you would be sent to prison for twenty-five years. What type of publicity would that create? How popular do you think that job would be?
You would only get people who were more desperate. Maybe people who do not fear prison as much in the first place. You're going to get lower quality applicants.

It's true that some cities pay high salaries but these tend to be the same progressive cities where police know they would be most in danger of prosecution if anything went wrong. That the city wouldn't hesitate to throw them under the bus. Just to try to avert negative media coverage, so some mayor or politicians could get reelected.

There already exist several cities in the US where corrupt cops are plentiful, so it is definitely possible for police forces to get bad people on them. If police feel they have to lie to cover up for each other, because they do not trust the justice system, that is also not going to create a good working environment and could lead to higher rates of corruption. It might prevent an officer from getting fired who should get fired. Good honest people are not going to want to apply in that work environment.

 

When Soros bought DA’s take over in the big cities and the DA is a bigger enemy to the police than the top criminal defense law firm, crime skyrockets in such places

 

Killing somebody is not a "small mistake". And if cops are "terrified", imagine the people they interact with if we just let them kill whoever they want.

How popular would police officers who do their job carefully and meticulously be if cops weren't held responsible for killing suspects by acting irresponsibly?

 

A small mistake can lead to someone dying, being killed, or being shot, in cases where the suspect is physically struggling, fighting, or doing something that could be seen as possibly threatening.

This is the type of thing a normal reasonable average police officer, who does not intend to murder anyone, could have a very small chance of doing.

It's not always so easy as you imagine not to kill the suspect in these situations, when police have to use force and the suspect is not cooperating.

If you look at kidnapping crimes, there are plenty of those situations that go wrong and then the kidnappers accidentally end up killing the victim even though that is not what they intended to do from the start.

 

To make this theory work, you have to show us that juries are not actually applying the standard of proof (reasonable doubt) for each of the elements needed for a charge of homocide against cops as they should - that somehow, the same jurors that have historically been so reticent to see a man in uniform as committing a crime while on duty , are now suddenly so besotted with the idea of putting cops away, that they are not insisting that prosecutors prove their cases any more before they unanimously return a verdict of guilt.

I don't buy that for a second. When a cop gets convicted of homicide for his behavior on duty, you can rest assured that the evidence must have been pretty damn persuasive that he did something outrageous and inexcusable, if you get 12 citizens to vote to convict. It's a whole lot easier accept a plea deal to a lesser charge in order to get the cop to negotiate a resignation.

I like it when I see DAs finally willing to take these cases to a jury, and willing to do extra work that it takes, to break down that blue wall of unity. This is actually a good thing.

 

Juries can be biased and come to wrong conclusions for a variety of reasons.
Sometimes the wording of the law itself is not fair, when applied to certain specific situations.

I actually have posted many stories in this forum where I explained exactly that, why the jury may likely have come to what I believe was the wrong decision.

 

I actually agree with you. The majority of society has now done a 180 turn from what beliefs were before. That still does not make it right. It is still equally wrong, it is just wrong in the opposite direction. Maybe a lot of people are just simple-minded and have trouble being able to see situations that are not simple.

The "benefit of the doubt" should neither be on police, nor suspects. But that involves thinking that is not "black and white".

 

See that is the problem I see over and over and over again. We tend to judge the verdict based on what we know, what we read, and what we saw, and what we believe outside the courtroom and outside the hearing of the jury. The jury's experience is, by design, a very different one. They hear testimony and judicial instructions that we do not, and they do not read the stories, or see the interviews etc that we do. Its not supposed to be a 'fair' system by any layman's standards.

 

And sometimes you have idiots like Maxine Waters threatening riots if an officer is found not guilty and conjunction with a mob calling for the officer's head outside of the courthouse

 

Lol…it’s really time to defund the police then.
Between their rogue disregard for the lives of suspects they kill instead of arrest, and their abject cowardice in the face of real evil, these idiots have become a corrupt drain on society.
Maybe you’re too young to remember when the cops were there to protect and serve, but today’s cops are trigger happy thugs when it comes to murdering unarmed suspects and abject cowards when faced with an actual threat.

 

The overwhelming majority of people killed by police are indeed idiotic thugs who fight the police to begin with.

It's pretty simple really if you did something stupid enough to find yourself under arrest take your medicine like a grown ass man and go to jail where you can live to see another day.

Don't try to run the police over don't reach for a knife don't reach for their gun don't reach for their taser don't try to punch the police don't try to kick the police don't try to bite the police....

 

Oh yes, defunding them and reducing police officer salaries will really help attract the best and most competent people to do the job.

I don't think you considered the message in my opening post at all.

 

On the other hand, wouldn't lack of prosecution also attract bottom barrel people? I would imagine being a police officer would be a fantastic job for people who have a propensity to harass, intimidate and beat citizens with zero accountability.

 

if they break the law, they should be prosecuted, same as any other criminal

 

There are over 40-50 million interactions by police with people every year. The vast majority of which never end up in a physical altercation. Pretty sure most people are not "terrified" by police.

And NO ONE has ever said that we should just let them kill whoever they want. That is nothing more than hyperbolic propaganda.

 

How about you go and show em a what for? Become a cop. Do it "the right way". Be sure to do it in a crime ridden area where you can do the most good.

 

like putting their knee on the neck of a handcuffed suspect for almost 10 minutes?

 

What nonsense! Average reasonable police officers are trained better than that. They don't KILL a somebody because of a "small mistake". They might kill somebody because of BIG mistake, but not a small one. And this is proven by the fact that this happens very rarely. But, when it happens, that police officer needs to be held accountable. And if you are not confident in your ability to act responsibly, you should pursue a different line of work.

 

And trained professional police are not terrified of themselves. So you have proven how misguided the OP is.

Thanks for you help

 

Don't you think it's incumbent on you to prove your premise, that they are terrified?

 

I hope that helps them remember that deadly force is for last resort only. In US the cops are quick to draw guns and its probably because in US you can assume that anyone could be carrying a gun, while in other nations its very unlikely.

 

You have just demonstrated your ignorance. AGAIN.

Most of the confrontations with the police which end in tragedy take place in seconds, the decision made in miliseconds. They do not have time to "do their job carefully and meticulously". While they are doing their job "carefully and meticulously", the bad guys are shooting.

I am not sure what you are trying to say.

Two relatives who have left the police force because of the reasons in the OP. One mistake of reacting too slow can get them killed. One mistake of reacting too fast can result in them being sent to prison.

I can't help of being reminded by a display put on by our illustrious media. They showed a gun and a cell phone laying out on a white background. Their comment was "How can these two items possibly be mistaken for each other". What they don't mention is that the cell phone is frequently hidden by the person's hand and it is being moved rapidly into what can be mistaken for a firing position. The police does not see that cell phone laid out on a white background with minutes to examine.

 

If they are not capable of making the right decision in milliseconds, they should not be cops.

That's very responsible of them. And any cop who feels they can't do the job should do the same.

Fear of being prosecuted not only saves lives, but it saves people's careers if they are smart enough to change paths.

 

When any of us in the work force make a mistake and it is found out, we face the consequences. But thanks to the Blue Wall of Silence, that hasn't been the case for police. I think breaking down that wall and reporting incidents of brutality or corruption of any kind will weed out the good from bad. Good guys who report a fellow officer need to feel safe to do so - they need to know that they won't face retribution from the force or fellow officers. Its a long held tradition and it won't be easy to change, but it must change. We aren't talking about someone fudging numbers on a report or stealing a stapler - we are talking about the people who pay their salaries being abused.

 

If you look at the greatest receivers the NFL has ever known, every once in a while, they drop a ball that is right in their hands. Sometimes Tom Brady throws a ball right to a defensive back because in the fog of war he did not see them until the ball has already left his hand. Mistakes happen to the best among us, especially with decisions that happen in a millisecond.

This is a major reason why it is not wise to resist arrest. Mistakes happen, and if one happens as a result of someone resisting arrest or not heeding lawful commands, that is ultimately the resister's fault. To pretend like if a person can make a mistake then they should not be a cop is simply not a realistic standard. Not for anyone. Every person on this earth is capable of making a mistake.