Thursday, November 09, 2006

Well it worked

The jury found the former police officer not guilty of all charges.

6 comments:

  1. I'm as appalled as you are. Something about the way rape cases are handled by the judiciary in this country has to change. Right now. Yesterday.

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  2. Anonymous10:19 am

    Not surprising. This is the deposition by far in many cases involving onduty and off-duty misconduct by law enforcement in the United States.

    Only, the officers then take their acquittals, file law suits to get their jobs back, succeed and become millionaires in some cases.

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  3. Myth is stronger than reason... See this lampoon

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  4. Anonymous8:15 am

    Of course, then you have the Los Angeles Police Department, the most video-taped agency in the world, with yet another embarassing incident of force against an arrestee.

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  5. Radfem,

    Well I guess we are almost there in as far as we at least have tapes of them… Hard to see how you fix the situation you laid out without trampling all over the policemen's "rights" (at least as in the US… in other countries suing might jsut be very difficult or unprofitable of course)

    Maybe some sort of independent body able to deliver a wide range of sanctions on police officers (including driving a prosecution) and help develop standards? Maybe you already have something like that?

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  6. Anonymous4:21 pm

    Almost all of the independent boards or groups are advisory, with varying degrees of

    Most sanctions that come against departments are from the federal or state department of justices. They can investigate, using legislation that was passed in the 1990s and threaten to sue the agencies' cities or counties. Usually both sides settle, enter long periods of negotiations and come out with a list of mandated reforms and dates that they will be completed(with the whole process usually lasting five or more years).

    The LAPD had a federal consent decree(which is what the federal agreements are called) and they were up to be released but their presiding federal judge mandated 2-3 years longer on it.

    One of the LAPD's gaps was implementation of an early warning system which through computer tracks problem behaviors in officers(usually after two reportable incidents in a year). They're way behind on that, as it's already been released that one of the officers involved in the latest video incident had prior complaints on his record.

    My city did this process for five years. it's not a panacea. It still takes a lot of commitment and work afterwards or you'll undo whatever has been done in due time.

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