So you believe, then, that O.J. Simpson didn’t murder his wife and Ron Goldman, since a jury found him not guilty? And yet a different jury in a civil trial found him liable for their wrongful deaths. It’s all very confusing, this belief in the infallibility of juries!
Then how come so many of these officers are murderers? Shooters of unarmed black men, mostly, sometimes kids, and this inexplicable shooting of the Australian woman we were just discussing, who did nothing more than report an assault as any good citizen would? The crime for which she died, a month before her wedding day, was apparently to dare to walk too close to a couple of these exemplars of psychological perfection and credibility.
No. No it is not. In a legal sense, sure. It’s entirely impossible for a jury to be wrong. Just like in a legal sense, it’s entirely impossible for a supreme court judgment to be wrong. I’m not sure if this is clear yet, but I’m not speaking legally. I’m speaking colloquially. You know, like how technically a drunk driver is only ever guilty of DUI manslaughter, but we still might call the person who hit our sister a “murderer”? Or how one might, despite the judgment of 14 random-ass strangers with probably little to no prior understanding of the law being plied by the best lawyers the police union can buy, be able to watch a video and draw the conclusion that an officer who shot a fleeing, unarmed, non-dangerous suspect in the back is a murderer.
So, in other words, you have literally never objected to the outcome of a jury trial. Is that right? You, regardless of any other factors, will take a jury at its word and assume that its judgment is 100% correct given the facts on the ground. Is that about right?
Because that’s kinda bizarre.
If that’s not what you believe (and I really hope that’s not what you believe), then I have no idea why you’re so fervently objecting here. I think the juries in the Crutcher and Castile cases were wrong. Dead wrong. I think the video evidence bears out that a reasonable person wouldn’t have made that decision, and that there’s no way this qualifies as justified self-defense. As wrong as the jury that failed to convinced Michael Slager for what is obviously murder. And you know exactly what I mean - semantics is not important or useful here.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
The man was walking towards his car with his hands up. He gets to the car, hands still up, turns around, and she shoots him.
If this is self-defense, I am a pickled eel who lives and throws regular mixers inside of Antonin Scalia’s rotting asshole.
The officer is *told* he has a gun, immediately flips his shit, pulls his weapon, and opens fire.
If this qualifies as self-defense, the second amendment clearly does not apply in any meaningful way to civilians.
The suspect is running away when the officer takes potshots at him. The officer then tries to plant evidence that this was anything other than the cowardly murder it looks like. His trial was a mistrial, because even with evidence like this, the jury still couldn’t figure out whether or not this was self-defense. Slager took a plea deal - the state won’t press charges against him. He’s not going to see the inside of a prison. That’s sick. That’s a complete failure of the legal system.
None of these cases are self-defense. Don’t fucking lawyer me on this one. Don’t say “Jury says X, therefore I agree”. Actually explain to me how the fuck any of these qualify as self-defense in any meaningful way. I don’t think you can, for the same reason you can’t explain to me how this picture is of an innocent man. They aren’t. They’re the panicked reaction of people who think their lives might be in danger, but who ultimately have no true justification for that belief. Their cowardice led to people dying at their hands. They should see some actual fucking consequences for that.
And the brutal irony here? In today’s America, a black person seeing those videos would be just as justified to say, “I am afraid for my life” in any interaction with the police. Yet if they see the officer doing what they thought might be reaching for their service weapon and, in response, opened fire - you know, exactly what these two cops did - no jury in America would claim that that was justifiable self-defense. Only when cops do it. Maybe if the standard for self-defense was always this low. But no. In practice, it’s only ever when the cops do it.
Steophan, the infallible jury argument you’re making is the most bizarre thing I’ve read on here in a while.
The standard isn’t “Guilt beyond the ability of the jury to doubt”, the standard is “Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” If the jury is unreasonable, or biased, they can arrive at the wrong outcome. The fact that our system generally allows such miscarriages of justice to stand doesn’t mean they aren’t miscarriages of justice.
The fact that the decision of the jury is binding doesn’t mean that the decision of the jury is inherently correct.
Of the nearly 400 officers and supervisors from the Office of Public Safety who applied to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department in 2010, about 280 were hired. Of those:
188 Were rejected for jobs at law enforcement agencies before being hired by the Sheriff’s Department.
97 showed evidence of dishonesty.
92 were disciplined previously by other police agencies for significant misconduct on duty.
Martin is one of 39 applicants with criminal backgrounds who received exemptions allowing them to seek, receive or extend certification in Colorado in the past five years. The Denver Post, which has published a series of articles on police officers certified and hired in Colorado despite troubled pasts, sought records from the state for all applicants who applied for exemptions since 2010.
There were 192 applicants, of whom 170 obtained exemptions. Many were seeking extensions to their certifications, which were expiring because of extended lapses in employment at police agencies. Officers seeking to transfer from an agency in another state also often were granted exemptions from work history requirements.
And of course, given how free cops are to abuse people and how little oversight there is, I wonder how many departments would have taken this asshole before his most recent misadventure got caught on film.
The Gwinnett County Police Department released files showing that Bongiovanni had at least 67 use of force incident reports, 12 citizen misconduct complaints, and four administrative conduct investigations in the nearly 20 years he was an officer. In all of those times, he was apparently sanctioned just once. And that one time, wasn’t even for an act of misconduct against the public. (He was recommended for a demotion and ultimately a 15-day suspension in 2014 for the administrative crime of “failure to supervise and lead those under his command.”)
So clearly, there’s some disconnect here. Maybe if we didn’t hear so much about cops seriously abusing their power (seriously, just look at the “cops” tag on Popehat), I would take your claims a little more seriously. But we hear about cops abusing their power all the time (alternatively, if you don’t feel like scrolling through Popehat, check out this thread right from SDMB, currently sitting pretty at 218-219 pages). Bad cops exist. In fact, there seem to be a lot of them. Good cops overwhelmingly seem willing to cover for bad cops. There is a systemic rot within police culture. The extra credibility given to officers is not earned, and should be examined very carefully.
[QUOTE=HocusPocus]
The extra credibility that officers are given isn’t just given. It was earned.
[/quote]
They aren’t.
You should be asking why the media is putting out incomplete truths (profit is a good part of it).
And to suggest the police are mostly “murderers” is libeling those in the profession. Learn the definition of “murder” before you throw it around.
You can wish all you want that police officers won’t make mistakes, but the reality is that mistakes will be made as long as the job is performed by humans. W/o a doubt, some incidents aren’t mistakes (Walter Scott). But considering how rarely police officers shoot compared to how many don’t (especially those who never do) it’s a huge misrepresentation to consider them “murderous” or “trigger-happy.”
First off, wtf does the fact that she was engaged to be married have to do w/ whether it was a justifiable use of force? Are fiances incapable of being threats?
Secondly, you said she walked to close to the officers. The investigation has just started w/ few facts being released, yet you’re already making suppositions. How do you know she walked up?
OK then - what standard do we adopt in the cases of police accused of unjustified shootings? Do we give up the presumption of innocence? Do we appoint someone to overrule the jury’s decision? Do we adopt a lower standard of evidence? Do we take a vote on the Internet?
You are speaking either wrongly or meaninglessly. Saying you are using colloquialisms doesn’t excuse either of those.
If a jury finds someone not guilty, it’s not a question of whether I agree, or object, or assume, or believe them, or anything like that. They are not guilty. The jury has literally found - discovered - that fact.
I can certainly object to the result of a trial, if it turns out that the jury were not shown all the evidence, or mislead about the law. In neither case, though, were the jury wrong.
I can also object to the outcome of a trial if I disagree with the law.
In neither case, though, is the verdict in any way wrong, not is the accused anything other than not guilty, and in no way should the verdict be questioned.
This is, for obvious reasons, not the case with a guilty verdict. If appropriate, they can and should be questioned if there’s any possibility of innocence.
It’s only bizarre if you think that there’s some sort of objective truth about events that happened in the past. There obviously isn’t which is why we need a jury to determine from the evidence what the fact is, as we can’t observe it.
Literally the only way you can think that is if you fundamentally misunderstand what a jury is.
Semantics is necessary, as using words correctly is the only way communication is possible. The reason you don’t understand why the jury can’t actually be wrong is because you are refusing to use words correctly, despite having repeatedly been told what they mean.
In any formal context, word usage is prescriptive. This is not casual speech, this is a Great Debate (ha) about legal matters, so formal usage should be expected.
They are self defence because the accused claimed it was, and wasn’t proven to be wrong. If you want to know the exact legal reasoning, look at the defence arguments in the trials. The standard is not, never has been, and never will be “does it look like self defence to someone who doesn’t understand the law, and hasn’t seen the full evidence”.
The videos look bad. They look like there’s a possibility of an unjustified killing, possibly a murder. So, they were investigated. But, after the investigation concluded with the trials, it was found that they were not, in fact, criminal killings. If what had happened is that the videos were seen, and the powers that be had said “no problem, no investigation needed” there would be a problem. But that’s not what happened, obviously. The events were thoroughly investigated, and were not - despite what it looks like might have been the case - criminal.
We’ve been through all this before, in the various George Zimmerman threads, and it turns out that (proportionately if not absolutely, I can’t remember the exact figures) more black people benefit from self defence laws than any other race, mainly because for whatever reason such a disproportionate amount of gun violence in America is black-on-black.
As for the supposed irony, that’s just ridiculous. Millions of people of all colours are stopped by the police, and only a tiny proportion are shot - and of those, only a small proportion are killed in a questionable manner. It may have been true in the past that those killings were no properly investigated, but the ones people keep bringing up have been. Strangely, you don’t seem to mention the cases where police officers have been convicted… I wonder why?
It’s not that they are infallible, it’s that it’s not a question of right or wrong, of true or false. By determining the guilt or otherwise of the accused, the jury make it the case that he is guilty, or reaffirm the innocence that he is presumed to have.
We’ll never know, because, contrary to policy, the refused to turn them on. In any case, any camera recording would help to exonerate the officer, if he did nothing wrong. If the woman made some sort of furtive gesture, that may have been recorded on tape and given them some justification. As it is there is no evidence whatsoever that the shooting was justified other than their word.
I ask you, if I shot some unarmed woman that was talking to the driver of a vehicle I was a passenger in, would my word be as golden to you?
And, just so you know, just because they are called cameras does not mean that they only record video, they record audio as well, which could have given more insight into what happened in the cruiser.
In the case of the woman in PJ’s, turning on the camera immediately after the shot would have shown the entire sequence that led up to it. Those cameras continuously record a 30 second loop, but they have to be told to save it. They were not. That was either gross incompetence or deliberate concealment.
I thought it through plenty. The cameras do have a wide field of view, and turning your body very slightly is enough to catch her in view. And I am not saying that they would have caught anything, just that if this officer shot for a justified reason, then furtive movements could have been caught on camera. This was why I said that anything caught on camera could be used to exonerate them. I did not say that there would be anything caught on camera.
If it is such a problem, then they can take the camera off and place it on the dash to point at the person they are talking to. Or have cameras installed on the dash explicitly for that purpose.
The point is, is that video recording can only serve to help an officer prove justification for shooting, if the shooting was justified. Turning your camera off, in violation of policy, means that there is no evidence that the officer’s actions were justified, and so they should be given the same level of benefit of the doubt of any other citizen who is objectively responsible for the end of someone’s life. If there is evidence that backs up their claim of self defence, great. If not, then you may be held responsible for causing the death of another person.
If nothing else, having the camera on would have shown that the officers were following policy, rather than deliberately ignoring it, giving myself and the rest of the public less reason to disbelieve their story.
Even given that I do not know that there would have been anything caught on camera, had they been on, can you tell me what would be expected to be seen if the cameras were off?
Please give post numbers in the future, if you want someone to track it down. Not all of us live on the west coast.
Anyway, that post of yours was fairly thoroughly debunked. Officers do not get nearly the level of screening, testing, or examinations you seem to imagine that they go through, often, their past work history and references aren’t even checked.
How so, do you know what would have been recorded? Once again, it would only serve to exonerate the officers if it were recorded. If the woman started yelling or threatening, then there’d be a justification.
No, we of course allow the decision of the jury to stand. But we do this, not because we believe the jury is incapable of error, but because – as you indicate – we don’t really have any better options for the question of “Who decides?”
But Steophan’s statement I was reacting to was not “We have to follow the ruling of the jury even though they might be wrong”. It’s this:
That’s a much stronger statement, and one which suggests there’s no point in even considering steps to make sure juries get it wrong less often, since in Steophan’s view they can’t get it wrong.
If we accept that juries can make mistakes, then there’s all sorts of things we could try to help them make fewer mistakes, such as regulations on how police interactions are recorded and how officer-involved shootings are investigated, which might give the jury more obvious evidence of guilt or innocence, to changes in the laws that would make the questions before the jury more clear-cut. Or changes in how we screen jurors for potential bias. Or even just efforts to inform the general public about cases of police misconduct, so they aren’t quite so likely to assume whatever doubts they may have are reasonable just because the defendant is a police officer.
But why bother, if juries always make the right decision.:rolleyes:
I haven’t been one of the ones arguing that it was a violation of policy, but to save others from having to scan through a boatload of dry police policy to find the relevant portion, here it is:
I look forward to hearing / reading Officer Noor’s reason(s) for failing to activate his BWC. I suspect it will be something along the lines of “it was unsafe to do so”, and I’ll be interested to see how long after the shooting he finally determined it was safe to do so.
Ours record for 90 seconds before activation and 90 seconds after turning them off. There is no valid reason the in car camera should not be recording.
