Note how rare this is: “If indictments against police officers are rare, convictions are almost unheard of. Numerous officials said that they could not recall a law enforcement officer ever being criminally convicted for an on-duty shooting in Travis County.”
What we really have is the fact that, as it turns out, nearly all police shootings turn out to be justified, or result in administrative suspensions, or result in the firing of the officer and an out-of-court settlement, and no criminal prosecution of the police officer by the local district attorney’s office.
If the sum and substance of what you’re trying to argue here is that these incidents don’t result in criminal convictions, so there are no murders from a sort of statistical point of view, well, that’s true. Do you think that’s really compelling under the circumstances?
I am not sure what you’re trying to imply. Can you clarify? I mean, you’re hinting at stuff without saying it. Is it that the justice system in the US is incredibly corrupt, and if it became “fair”, there would be hundreds of policemen in jail for murder?
I’m with JC here, and I don’t see the point of this whole discussion.
Everyone agrees that police are very rarely convicted for improper killings. The question is whether this is because the criminal justice system at all levels is overly deferential to police.
I don’t really go for the “overly deferential”. If cops are routinely guilty of murder and walk, that’s not deference. That’s corruption and perversion of the system.
Whether they’re guilty of murder or not is frequently subject to some degree of uncertainty, and if the system tends to be deferential to them and interpret any ambiguities in their favor they can walk without overt corruption.
In any event, that’s not necessarily my claim. But that’s the claim that’s relevant, so pointing to the lack of convictions is invalid.
I’m not trying to imply anything. I’m asking him if he thinks it’s compelling that the policemen who people are saying are going unchecked in their use of lethal force have not routinely been sent to prison for murder.
Steophan is demanding proof that police officers have been frequently been convicted of murder in America, as if the complaints that the police get away with murder are somehow dependent on judicial findings that murders occurred, which would require that those officers had not, in fact, gotten away with it, because they were convicted of god damn murder.
I suppose I’m hinting that this is stupid; I’ll go ahead and make that explicit.
I think it points to one of two things. Either the great majority of the police shootings were justified. Or the justice system in the US is incredibly corrupt. Which one do you pick?
I would have thought it was clear that the concern was over the number of actual unjustified killings by police that don’t even get charged. Saying that there is only a “small” number of actual convictions (define small), and therefore that there is no “epidemic”, is merely handwaving.
It’s a worthless distinction. I certainly fucking hope the great majority of police shootings are justified. Christ, that’s our standard? Three out of four times, there was some reason to kill 'em?
Then there’s your alternative. The US justice system? Corrupt, and particularly corrupt on the matter of racial inequality? The hell you say.
Both can be true. There can be a substantial number of unjustified police shootings even if they’re the minority, *and *they can still go uncharged as the system’s participants move to protect each other behind the Blue Line.
If anyone is accused of murder, and there’s a degree of uncertainty, they must be found not guilty. That’s not something particular to police officers.
Now, if you want to argue that not every defendant gets treated as well as they should, but police officers are more likely to get the correct treatment, well, fair enough. You might be right. But you don’t get to call someone a murderer without proof, and it’s only in exceptional cases that you can have that proof about someone who’s been acquitted. OJ being the best modern example.
Not really, no. If there was sufficient evidence that there was a crime, they’d have been charged.
Again, no. We have people in this thread - BobLibDem is the obvious example - saying outright that the police are murderers. We are trying to refute that, and frankly it looks like we’ve done that.
Now, when it comes to “unjustified” killings that aren’t prosecuted, but the police nonetheless discipline the officer and compensate the family, that suggests to me that those police forces, far from being murderous thugs, are holding their officers to a higher standard than the law does. That doesn’t seem to me to be such a bad thing, assuming they aren’t putting them at unnecessary risk.
Our definitions of “justifiable” rely heavily on the discretion of the police officer. Frankly, I don’t see how it could be otherwise. Was the suspect aggressive? Threatening? That is a judgement call, one that simply has to be the decision of the person we have licensed to carry and use lethal force on their own judgement.
In cases where the use of lethal force is questionable, then that’s pretty much all they can ever be, “questionable”. There is no criminal sanction for questionable, the alleged crime must be explicit and beyond reasonable doubt. And doubt is pretty much built into the situation.