Plural of anecdote is not data, and yadda yadda yadda.
I spent time as a criminal defense attorney, where virtually every trial involved trying to show a jury or judge that a police officer was lying. In the process, I developed a pretty good sense in most cases of when they actually WERE lying.
Yes, some cops lied routinely. No question about it.
However, I found them in the minority. It was unusual. The strong majority of police officers I encountered would tell the truth, even if it didn’t particularly help their case. Now, this is not to say they were falling all over themselves to be helpful to my side, or even to be scrupulously neutral observers. They obviously had a side to support and a story to tell. But under direct questioning, yes-or-no, did this happen, I found it to be rare that a cop would simply lie.
Observation number two: this is more ephermal and hard to define, but… when I came across the cops that did lie, I wasn’t the only one that knew about it. The judge could tell. The prosecutor could tell. His fellow officers could tell. Now, I admit I never once had another officer “throw a guy under the bus” and contradict sworn testimony. But they were loathe to confirm it. When a cop lied about a sequence of events, and I got another officer on the stand, it would usually be a flurry of, “I wasn’t in a position to observe that…” or “I was not able to hear that conversation…” In contrast, when Cop #1 was telling the truth, typically Cop #2 would be on the stand confirming everything confidently.
What often happened was that such cops quickly developed a reputation. And judges - though they, too, seldom directly “threw a cop under the bus” and said that they found the cop’s testimony not credible, would start bending over backwards to find little technicalities to drop the case… judges who I would have sworn forget that the Fourth Amendment even existed suddenly became Earl Freakin’ Warren in their concern for the rights of the accused.
All of which meant that prosecutors found reasons to not use those cops as witnesses, and drop cases that depended on those cops’ testimony.
Perfect system? No. Of course not. Do my experiences prove anything about this case? Not remotely.
But given the discussion about cops and lying, I thought perspective from someone with my background might be interesting.