None of that is relevant to what I said. I didn’t say juries are perfect or infallible. Congress is neither perfect nor infallible, but when they make a law that is the law. They are not wrong or mistaken, it is, in fact, the law. Same with a jury’s decision. When they say someone is guilty or not guilty, that is the case, just as the law is the case.
It is the jury’s verdict that makes someone guilty, just as it’s the legislatures actions that make something illegal. It’s not someone’s morality, or actions, or opinions, that do so.
If you are saying that everyone should enjoy the level of deference that police officers receive when it comes to the justice system, I could agree to that.
But that is not the system we have. We do have a different level of presumption of innocence between civilians and police officers.
Do you really think that if you were standing over a body holding a smoking gun, that you would be given every chance that a police officer is given?
Now, I do believe that police should be held to a higher standard than civilians. They are the ones charged with keeping the peace and preventing crime. If they are the ones disturbing the peace and committing crimes, then that causes far more problems for the community that is paying them than a random civilian criminal performing the same acts.
Being given power by the state, being handed a badge of authority and a gun to use, being entrusted with the protection of the community, should mean that there should be a higher bar for officers to claim self defense, not a lower one. There should be a higher bar for conduct, not a lower one.
In conclusion, if your argument is that police should be held to the same standards as civilians, I can get behind that, even though I do think that in their position they should actually be held to higher standards. If your argument is that they ARE held to the same or higher standards as civilians, then I am sorry, but you are very sadly mistaken.
No, I don’t. I thought my post was clear, but it seems not… Some, perhaps many, people do not get the treatment they are entitled to, but the answer to that is not to treat other people worse, it’s to treat these people correctly.
Unlike some other crimes, though, gun crimes by the police often do have to be handled slightly differently, as there are things the police can legally do that others can’t - such as threaten people with a gun. This might mean that an investigation would need to proceed differently, but should be no less thorough.
But ultimately, if you are found having killed someone, and claim it was self defence, you should be believed unless there’s evidence otherwise. Same with anyone else accused of a crime - there needs to be actual evidence of a crime before they are arrested or charged.
This isn’t something that’s going to get a lot of people off of murder charges, mainly because to claim self defence you have to admit to killing them. That’s not something most people would do unless it was actually self defence. There’s obviously exceptions but they are, well, exceptional.
If you acknowledge that there is a problem of police violence, then fair enough. However the tone and substance of your posts suggests that you don’t acknowledge that it’s widespread; you insist, for example, that if a jury finds an officer innocent, then by definition he must be. That’s just a silly semantic quibble that fails to acknowledge the possibility that the jury was wrong and that there has been a miscarriage of justice, or the fact that, as noted in post #278, the odds are stacked in favor of the police and that it’s likely that this doesn’t just happen sometimes, but happens a lot.
And it’s not hard to understand why. Police not only enjoy an elevated sense of credibility with most of the general public despite their record of malfeasance, but around here and I’m sure many other places the police union gets involved to make sure they have the best possible legal representation. So when it comes to defending a police officer, it is often the case that cost is no object – ask OJ about “dream team” defense lawyers. Of course it doesn’t guarantee a win, but it sure helps change the odds. When a police officer in Toronto was charged with attempted murder for needlessly shooting a mentally ill teenager wielding a knife, his legal team included two high-powered lawyers from a prominent firm specializing in police defense; his lead lawyer was its senior partner and is a multi-millionaire who grosses $37 million a year just from his part ownership of some luxury restaurants – do you think this guy works cheap? Do you think your or I would have any chance on hell of getting this defense team?
This is a perfect follow-on to what I just said above. First of all, it means that you can’t conclude from the number of police officer acquittals compared to the general rate of acquittals that police are usually innocent. As already said, the general public has an inherent bias in favor of police, plus the really major factor that police charged with a crime tend to get really first-rate representation.
And that can go far beyond being treated “correctly” – it can extend to having a powerhouse legal team that dwarfs the humble underpaid civil servants conducting the prosecution. Someone like the late F. Lee Bailey, about whom it was legendary that “if you have Bailey as your defense lawyer, you must be guilty as sin” – yet such was his expertise and cunning that he kept winning case after case for clients backed by enough money to be able to afford him. And it doesn’t help to have someone like you then come along and claim that if the jury acquitted, then by definition the accused was innocent, so everything is wonderful and as it should be.
BPC - I guess that makes you a mixer-throwing eel. Please point out in the Terrence Crutcher video where he had his hands in the air after 19:44:44 (which is before he was shot) in the helicopter video. He DID NOT have his hands in the air when shot. “Alternative facts” undermine your whole argument. That officer had many reasons to believe that Crutcher presented a deadly threat (I’ll list them if necessary) and acted accordingly. The jury agreed.
I am not sure I agree to that low a bar of self defense. There are many scenarios I can imagine murdering someone in a way that it would be impossible to prove that I did not fear for my life. If the same standard of proof is required of me as it is of an officer, all I have to do is say that he had his hands in his pockets, or he had a cell phone in his hand. I do think that there should be some standard greater than just my say so that it was self defense.
The reason that people do not admit to having pulled the trigger and claiming self defense is because it is not that easy. If people could get off with that defense as easily, then more people would be using it.
The jury did not agree. They agreed the charges weren’t warranted based on the evidence presented and current law. That is not the same thing.
Edit: And btw, I live in Tulsa and have interest in this and the case where the cop shot the guy dating his daughter he kicked out…in fact the judge is sitting in my restaurant now. Any q’s?
A cop could shoot Ryan Seacrest on the NYE show and still not get convicted or forced to resign. The system does not discipline cops for wrong doing. They are above the system.
I find myself quite often explaining the law, and then being accused of favoring the unwanted result the law provides.
So I’ll just ask first: is this a question you’re genuinely curious about? There is an area of law that balances threats against the First Amendment and there is an analytical approach in that area of law designed to answer this query.
Or is this an aside, intended to signal your disgust with the sentiment and not your curiosity about the law?
Honestly? 50/50. I could have sworn that death threats were illegal, but either way I’m pretty outraged by how insane this sentiment is, and how this guy is apparently popular and teaching police how to interact with the public.
So the cop in Minneapolis is getting shunned by the Mayor and Chief of Police. It will be amazing to watch how the union gets him off on this charge. Oh yeah, technology issues. None of the cameras were working.
I won’t accuse you of agreeing with the outcome. I’ll probably just still be astounded at how bizarrely the law treats that - and whether or not it’s illegal, it’s still totally not okay to threaten to hunt down and kill someone if their reporting on you is negative. Please, enlighten me, I would legitimately like to know. Does this not qualify as a death threat? Is that not against the law? Does he have some kind of “stage persona” defense in his role?
As a general rule, the First Amendment protects the right to speak. Against that, we have to balance the very agreeable principle that we wish to constrain threats against life and safety.
The way we do that is by determining if the speech constitutes a “true threat.” Is the speech such that the speaker communicates a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals? If it is, it’s a true threat, and the speech is unprotected by the First Amendment.
This doctrine was first enunciated in 1969, in Watts v. United States. That case involved an anti-war rally in which a speaker spoke against the draft. He said that if they ever did draft him, and put a gun in his hands, the first person he’d get in his sights was the President. He was arrested and convicted for threatening the President, but the Supreme Court ultimately reversed the conviction. They pointed out that the speech was political, which enjoys strong First Amendment protection, and that the speaker was using hyperbole. They pointed to the reaction of the crowd and the use of a conditional (“If such-and-so happens”) as opposed to a flat declaration of intent.
Overall, they said, taking into account all the circumstances, the speech was crude hyperbole, but not a true threat.
The courts in the years following this decision developed a number of tests. Without going into law-geeky detail, there is a subjective element in play: what did the speaker actually intend? And there’s a objective element: what would a reasonable speaker have intended with those words in those circumstances? And what would a reasonable listener have understood in the circumstances?
Different circuits adopted different tests, but the majority favored the objective reasonable speaker view: speech is a true threat if it was made “under such circumstances wherein a reasonable person would foresee that the statement would be interpreted by those to whom the maker communicates the statement as a serious expression of an intention to inflict bodily harm."
That’s essentially[sup]*[/sup] where the law sits now. In the instance described above, the joking manner and the laughter following the remark all point to the lack of a serious expression of an intent to do harm.
In Virginia v. Black, the Court offered a sentence on threats that may have slightly changed the landscape, but isn’t really relevant here. Still, if anyone’s curious, it was a cross-burning case and the Court reversed convictions for (roughly) the reasons above.
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Considering both the law & agency policy strictly detail when deadly force can be used, please provide evidence that police officers can kill on a whim.
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Why did you post a video w/o any information/context? Were you afraid that it would show how utterly devoid of facts your agenda is?