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Toche'! And how do you defend yourself in court on that matter? 999 times out of 1000 the courts always take a LEO's word over John Q. Public, even if the cop is dirtier than a homeless man's underwear.Originally Posted by rondog
"There is no news in the truth, and no truth in the news."
"The revolution will not be televised... Instead it will be filmed from multiple angles via cell phone cameras, promptly uploaded to YouTube, Tweeted about, and then shared on Facebook, pending a Wi-Fi connection."
Further proof that unsound principles yield bad results. The institution of 'police' as a law-enforcement tool is incompatible with Liberty. The Founders abhorred a standing army in peace-time society - the police constitute precisely that.
The original and proper American system of law-enforcement consisted of a locally elected officer - the sheriff - who depended upon temporary deputies enlisted from the community to deal with actual emergencies. This provided local accountability on at least two levels - election day and the potential refusal of the good people of the county to arbitrarily victimize their neighbors by enforcing bad laws or following bad orders from the sheriff (another level missing from today's judicial system is the jury's ability/duty to nullify bad laws). Today, the police are not effectively accountable to anyone. It should surprise no one when this sort of crap becomes 'normal'.
Why are they held to a lower standard then you or me? It should be the opposite.
Here is an interesting paper on that very subject: http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm
I am sympathetic to this view, but I think of course it would need to be updated due to the march of technology, the need to have people with at least a modicum of training in forensics go over crime scenes and access to labs, etc.
However, I genuinely believe these to be solvable problems. I don't have any such confidence in these problems (which seem to be a regular occurance in departments across the nation, not just DPD) that give rise to bad cops acting inappropriately can be solved without a huge overhaul of the entire system police operate under. What bothers so much isn't that the particular police officers acted inappropriately, but the tremendous amount of leeway and benefit of the doubt they get. I think good, honest cops get a minimum benefit from all this, but bad cops get a ton of benefit.
The system bothers me a tremendous amount more than the existence of bad cops.
I think the entire concept of police stems from collectivist premises, as well - the idea that there is a special class of people endowed by whatever power, God, Genes or whatever you wish, as superior beings who do not need to play by the same rules. These are our enlightened rulers, who know better than us how to run our own lives, or the police, who are better equipped to judge when the use of force is appropriate and so need not be held to the same standards as typical citizens.
Keeping the peace and fighting crime is properly a function of the entire community, not a special elite held separate and above citizens at large. I don't care to accuse any particular cop or police in general as corrupt; but I do think the system they operate under is.
A good first step, I think, would be to simultaneously overhaul the legal system to make frivolous lawsuits harder on the claimant vs the defendant (ie loser pays,) to protect cops from people suing them only to bankrupt them (hell, to protect everyone from that,) and to make police officers personally responsible for any misconduct vs being granted immunity as members of a special class of people.
I like that paper and would have to agree that I too share that viewpoint.
in particular:
Oddly enough, I have even shared this same premise in my Sig line well before this threadRESISTING ARREST
Nothing illustrates the modern disparity between the rights and powers of police and citizen as much as the modern law of resisting arrest. At the time of the nation's founding, any citizen was privileged to resist arrest if, for example, probable cause for arrest did not exist or the arresting person could not produce a valid arrest warrant where one was needed.92 As recently as one hundred years ago, but with a tone that seems as if from some other, more distant age, the United States Supreme Court held that it was permissible (or at least defensible) to shoot an officer who displays a gun with intent to commit a warrantless arrest based on insufficient cause.93 Officers who executed an arrest without proper warrant were themselves considered trespassers, and any trespassee had a right to violently resist (or even assault and batter) an officer to evade such arrest.94
Well into the twentieth century, violent resistance was considered a lawful remedy for Fourth Amendment violations.95 Even third-party intermeddlers were privileged to forcibly liberate wrongly arrested persons from unlawful custody.96 The doctrine of non-resistance against unlawful government action was harshly condemned at the constitutional conventions of the 1780s, and both the Maryland and New Hampshire constitutions contained provisions denouncing nonresistance as "absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."97
By the 1980s, however, many if not most states had (1) eliminated the common law right of resistance,98 (2) criminalized the resistance of any officer acting in his official capacity,99 (3) eliminated the requirement that an arresting officer present his warrant at the scene,100 and (4) drastically decreased the number and types of arrests for which a warrant is required.101 Although some state courts have balked at this march toward efficiency in favor of the state,102 none require the level of protection known to the Framers.103
But the right to resist unlawful arrest can be considered a constitutional one. It stems from the right of every person to his bodily integrity and liberty of movement, among the most fundamental of all rights.104 Substantive due process principles require that the government interfere with such a right only to further a compelling state interest105 — and the power to arrest the citizenry unlawfully can hardly be characterized as a compelling state interest.106 Thus, the advent of professional policing has endangered important rights of the American people
ugh...
This is absolutely gut-wrenching. To be honest thoug...being Denver PD, I am not shocked. On occasion I have heard they have a "beat & release" program for offenders.
It is cases like this that teach us all why the proper response when dealing with LE is always "I would like to speak with my lawyer prior to giving any statement, thank you."
Like a previous post mentioned, hopefully these idiot cops will get tired of being behind a desk and quit. The only scary thing is, when they quit now we have no way of knowing where they end up until another incident occurs.
The character of a man can be judged by how he treats those who can do nothing for him
I missed this, so...
So, let me get this right.
A cop can be fired for cause, for example an unlawful use of force that would get plebes like me a lengthy jail sentence, while the cop merely loses his job, and he gets to keep his pension?
Is there something wrong with that picture or is it just me?
its not just you.
but if I Say what I want to say I am getting another time out.
so I will settle with "it's not justice, or any semblance thereof."
That's the reasoning, though it really doesn't work that way.
If you have a hiring freeze and you have turn over (inevitable) you can't hire replacements, but the hours have to be filled so your experienced officers have to pull overtime, at overtime rates, to fill the hours. Not to mention the experienced officers make %50+ more than a new officer. So really you are spending twice as much to say "we're not hiring new officers to save money."
Adams county and greeley pd are also on hiring freezes, I'm sure there are more.
It's called the union...
Get public employees out of the union, that would solve a lot of these problems.
Sarcasm, Learn it, Know it, Live it....
Spleify 7-27-12Marlin is the end all be all of everything COAR-15...
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