Police Collusion over Statements after Firearms Use

[Pjen]

Recent cases in the UK where firearms have been used by the police have called into question the veracity of Police statements which have been shown by later analysis to be not true accounts of the situation.

British police officers have been allowed to confer (collude) in order to present one coherent picture of an incident, but given human nature, the accounts given are defensive and self serving.

Juries at inquests (few police are ever prosecuted for illegal gun use- they get a massive benefit of the doubt) are usually quite sympathetic to the problems of policing violence with guns, but have been getting more suspicious of some police accounts, calling them into question in narrative verdicts if not actually finding for unlawful killing.

Armed officers are threatening a two pronged action (they did this in the Met after the Menezes case). They are saying that if they are required to give individual statements they will only give “no comment” interviews, and that if they are ordered to give statements they will resign from the Firearms unit (regular police do not carry firearms.)

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

My view is that any professional who is required to do something risky as part of their job should be willing to give account for their actions.

It is a widely held police belief that only the guilty give No Comment interviews- what does that say about their trust in the system that they are paid to uphold if they insist on non-cooperation?

[Quartz]

With police carrying personal cameras there maybe little need for statements.

[Simplicio]

@Quartz

With police carrying personal cameras there maybe little need for statements.

Cops in the UK carry personal cameras? Like, they just record all the time? That’s kinda cool.

In the US most cop cars have dashboard cams, but I don’t think personal cameras are a thing here yet.

[TriPolar]

@Simplicio

Cops in the UK carry personal cameras? Like, they just record all the time? That’s kinda cool.

In the US most cop cars have dashboard cams, but I don’t think personal cameras are a thing here yet.

A few localities have them. A lot have the radio on the shoulder thing. I hear cops love it, they get a lot of complaints about their treatment of people in minor incidents like traffic stops, it almost always turns out the person pulled over was being abusive to the cop.

[Kobal2]

@Quartz

With police carrying personal cameras there maybe little need for statements.

Unless of course the relevant tapes mysteriously vanish or get “accidentally” wiped. Happens with dashcams in the US, I don’t see a compelling reason personal cameras would be any different.

Actually, that might be an workable way to custodiet these custodies : have the cameras broadcast their footage in real time, to be remotely stored (one copy at the PD, one for the rat squad, a third in public archives maybe.)

[Stanislaus]

Personal cameras are being trialledin the UK now.

The UK police watchdog (IPCC) has proposed new rules governing the aftermath of police use of weapons:

@Guardian

Under the IPCC plans, which cover all forces in England and Wales, officers would be separated from each other where practical after serious incidents such as a shooting, use of a Taser stun gun or a death in custody.

Officers would not be allowed to talk to each other at any stage before or while writing up their account, according to the IPCC’s proposals, which the watchdog is consulting on. They would also be expected to write their full account before going off duty, instead of the current system where they have 48 hours to recover.

The police’s counterarguments are a) that they would refuse to testify at inquests, feeling that they were risking prosecution; and b) that the current system of keeping officers together after a shooting is a means of stress management.

@Guardian

Basu [the Met’s head of armed policing] said a leading lawyer for armed officers had warned that they would refuse to answer questions from the IPCC if the watchdog insisted on separating them after shootings.

“No amount of fantastic Churchilian leadership from me is going to make an officer want to contribute to an inquiry where they are being made a suspect,” he said. “They will be legally advised to make no comment. Why wouldn’t they, knowing that the slightest mistake they make … and they are potentially facing a murder charge for doing their job?”

Basu said separating officers after an incident as traumatic as a shooting would increase their stress, leaving them isolated at a time of their greatest need.

I think the officers’/lawyer’s assessment that giving independent accounts of shootings would put them at risk of prosecution is ill-founded, to say the least. Juries tend to be very sympathetic to the police; it smacks of paranoia to claim that they would seize on small inconsistencies and convict on them.

More importantly, the given reason for allowing officers to collaborate on the events (that it helps manage stress) seems ludicrous on its face. There are lots of ways of helping people cope with traumatic situations that don’t raise the spectre of officers colluding.

[Pjen]

@Quartz

With police carrying personal cameras there maybe little need for statements.

A very good point. I suspect they would cavil at that though.

[Pjen]

@Simplicio

Cops in the UK carry personal cameras? Like, they just record all the time? That’s kinda cool.

In the US most cop cars have dashboard cams, but I don’t think personal cameras are a thing here yet.

They are trialing them in London and elsewhere. They are said to reduce complaints about police behaviour considerably. No-one has yet researched whether that is becasue of a change in Police or Public behaviour!

[Quartz]

@Simplicio

Cops in the UK carry personal cameras? Like, they just record all the time? That’s kinda cool.

As has been mentioned they’re being trialled.

[Bricker]

@Pjen

My view is that any professional who is required to do something risky as part of their job should be willing to give account for their actions.

Even if the statement would legally incriminate them?

I don’t know the law in the United Kingdom.

In the United States, as a general rule the police cannot require a suspect to give a statement – this is the first line of the famous “Miranda Warning:” You have the right to remain silent.

How does this apply if the police are questioning a police officer about his handling of a shooting?

This question was answered by the Supreme Court of the United States back in 1967, in a case styled Garrity v. New Jersey. Several police officers were interrogated concerning their supposed role in a “ticket fixing” scheme. They were told they had a right to remain silent, but if they exercised that right and refused to answer questions, they would be fired.

The Supreme Court found that this was impermissible coercion under the Fifth Amendment. “The choice given petitioners either to forfeit their jobs or to incriminate themselves constituted coercion.”

[74westy]

@Bricker

This question was answered by the Supreme Court of the United States back in 1967, in a case styled Garrity v. New Jersey. Several police officers were interrogated concerning their supposed role in a “ticket fixing” scheme. They were told they had a right to remain silent, but if they exercised that right and refused to answer questions, they would be fired.

The Supreme Court found that this was impermissible coercion under the Fifth Amendment. “The choice given petitioners either to forfeit their jobs or to incriminate themselves constituted coercion.”

Interesting. Does it matter who my employer is? If I work at McDonald’s and withhold information from my employer, are they prevented from firing me if that information could incriminate me?

[Martin_Hyde]

@Pjen

Recent cases in the UK where firearms have been used by the police have called into question the veracity of Police statements which have been shown by later analysis to be not true accounts of the situation.

British police officers have been allowed to confer (collude) in order to present one coherent picture of an incident, but given human nature, the accounts given are defensive and self serving.

Juries at inquests (few police are ever prosecuted for illegal gun use- they get a massive benefit of the doubt) are usually quite sympathetic to the problems of policing violence with guns, but have been getting more suspicious of some police accounts, calling them into question in narrative verdicts if not actually finding for unlawful killing.

Armed officers are threatening a two pronged action (they did this in the Met after the Menezes case). They are saying that if they are required to give individual statements they will only give “no comment” interviews, and that if they are ordered to give statements they will resign from the Firearms unit (regular police do not carry firearms.)

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

My view is that any professional who is required to do something risky as part of their job should be willing to give account for their actions.

It is a widely held police belief that only the guilty give No Comment interviews- what does that say about their trust in the system that they are paid to uphold if they insist on non-cooperation?

Nothing about this is surprising. I imagine in most cases the collusion is just a matter of ass covering, and the police were not actually acting improperly but want to make sure they have an iron-clad story to tell. In the cases of errors of judgment or genuine malicious intent collusion I assume would also be common.

If you give people the opportunity to collude they will, more or less. This is why police when they arrest multiple suspects they suspect of being involved together in criminal activity they do not allow them to confer with one another to shore up their story.

[Stanislaus]

In England and Wales, there is a right to silence but it does not prevent “the drawing of adverse inferences”.

The relevant equivalent to the Miranda Warning is “You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in Court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

This applies to silence during questioning pre-charge, silence on being charged, failure to account for anything suspicious about your person (e.g. blood stains, small bags of narcotics, the head of your Alfredo Garcia), or failure to account for your presence in the vicinity of whatever crime is under discussion.

For example, an officer gives an initial account of a shooting which does not state that he believed the subject to be armed. Pressed in court, he claims to have seen a suspicious bulge in the deceased’s jacket. The jury would be entitled, but not required, to conclude that this is something that should have been mentioned from the start and that this failure to bring it up until now is indicative of guilt.
In the Guardian article I linked to above, the cops state that they would remain silent on legal advice. This would be subject to areasonableness test as follows:

[ol]
[li]Did the defendant genuinely rely on the legal advice, i.e. did the defendant accept the advice and believe that he was entitled to follow it? and [/li][li]Was it reasonable for the defendant to rely on the advice? By way of example, a defendant may be acting unreasonably if he relied on the legal advice to remain silent because he had no explanation to give and the advice suited his own purposes.[/li][/ol]

If I understand that right, the question of whether they could safely be silent on legal advice comes down to whether their fear that any kind of testimony would place them in jeopardy is reasonable.

I don’t agree that police should have any lesser right to silence than the general public. But in some circumstances at least, that right to silence wouldn’t prevent them from incriminating themselves.

I do agree, that as Martin Hyde suggests, they shouldn’t have any greater right to confer about the story they wish to tell the authorities than the general public do either.

[Bricker]

@74westy

Interesting. Does it matter who my employer is? If I work at McDonald’s and withhold information from my employer, are they prevented from firing me if that information could incriminate me?

The decision applied only when the government is the employer.

[Stringbean]

What’s hilariously disgusting is that it’s illegal in some places to videotape law enforcement even in public places.

[Pjen]

@Bricker

Even if the statement would legally incriminate them?

I don’t know the law in the United Kingdom.

In the United States, as a general rule the police cannot require a suspect to give a statement – this is the first line of the famous “Miranda Warning:” You have the right to remain silent.

How does this apply if the police are questioning a police officer about his handling of a shooting?

This question was answered by the Supreme Court of the United States back in 1967, in a case styled Garrity v. New Jersey. Several police officers were interrogated concerning their supposed role in a “ticket fixing” scheme. They were told they had a right to remain silent, but if they exercised that right and refused to answer questions, they would be fired.

The Supreme Court found that this was impermissible coercion under the Fifth Amendment. “The choice given petitioners either to forfeit their jobs or to incriminate themselves constituted coercion.”

In England the equivalent to the Miranda Warning was watered down some decades ago. It now reads:

“You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

It used to read:

“You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so but what you say may be given in evidence.”

This has been used only rarely where the defence springs a surprise explanation of why the person did something which was not previously revealed to the investigators. It is up to the jury to decide if the hiding of such evidence indicates guilt on the part of the defendant.

[Pjen]

@Martin_Hyde

Nothing about this is surprising. I imagine in most cases the collusion is just a matter of ass covering, and the police were not actually acting improperly but want to make sure they have an iron-clad story to tell. In the cases of errors of judgment or genuine malicious intent collusion I assume would also be common.

If you give people the opportunity to collude they will, more or less. This is why police when they arrest multiple suspects they suspect of being involved together in criminal activity they do not allow them to confer with one another to shore up their story.

And that is why the police should make individual contemporaneous statements, not the concocted works of fiction that inquests suggest are the norm for such events.

[Pjen]

@Stanislaus

In England and Wales, there is a right to silence but it does not prevent “the drawing of adverse inferences”.

The relevant equivalent to the Miranda Warning is “You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in Court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

This applies to silence during questioning pre-charge, silence on being charged, failure to account for anything suspicious about your person (e.g. blood stains, small bags of narcotics, the head of your Alfredo Garcia), or failure to account for your presence in the vicinity of whatever crime is under discussion.

For example, an officer gives an initial account of a shooting which does not state that he believed the subject to be armed. Pressed in court, he claims to have seen a suspicious bulge in the deceased’s jacket. The jury would be entitled, but not required, to conclude that this is something that should have been mentioned from the start and that this failure to bring it up until now is indicative of guilt.
In the Guardian article I linked to above, the cops state that they would remain silent on legal advice. This would be subject to areasonableness test as follows:

[ol]
[li]Did the defendant genuinely rely on the legal advice, i.e. did the defendant accept the advice and believe that he was entitled to follow it? and [/li][li]Was it reasonable for the defendant to rely on the advice? By way of example, a defendant may be acting unreasonably if he relied on the legal advice to remain silent because he had no explanation to give and the advice suited his own purposes.[/li][/ol]

If I understand that right, the question of whether they could safely be silent on legal advice comes down to whether their fear that any kind of testimony would place them in jeopardy is reasonable.

I don’t agree that police should have any lesser right to silence than the general public. But in some circumstances at least, that right to silence wouldn’t prevent them from incriminating themselves.

I do agree, that as Martin Hyde suggests, they shouldn’t have any greater right to confer about the story they wish to tell the authorities than the general public do either.

I believe that English Case Law about Public Servants makes the police position different here. I think that public servants have a duty of candour- if they refuse to cooperate in such enquiries, they may face disciplinary charges and may be dismissed. I suspect that any evidence coming directly from such statements would be inadmissible as evidence against that person, but what they say about others would be, as would other evidence collected as a result of the statement.

[Pjen]

@Stringbean

What’s hilariously disgusting is that it’s illegal in some places to videotape law enforcement even in public places.

Not in the UK. Police have been warned that they have very limited rights to do this- they have to show cause to exclude videoing etc. People cannot just be banned without cause.

The police operate an officious video and still collection of evidence at many peaceful demonstrations.

[MikeF]

My understanding of Garrity is that you CAN be compelled to give a statement but that it may not be used against you in criminal court. It can be used against you administratively, however.

Cameras, while a great help, are not the answer to everything. They show what the camera saw, which isn’t necessarily the same thing the officer saw. Also, the officer gets to make his assessment and act after viewing the situation once and in real time. Its easy to Monday morning quarterback by looking at the video twenty times, freeze frame, slow motion etc. from the comfort of your chair.