I’m a trial lawyer. During a career of more than 60 years in the courtrooms of America defending the poor, the forgotten, the lost and the damned, I’ve shut out a haunting question: Are we safe from our own police?
This past year, the news media have drawn our focus to far-ranging, rampant police brutality. Just last week, we learned new details about the killing on Oct. 20, 2014, of Laquan McDonald, 17, a black youth who ended crumpled and dead on the streets of Chicago. His body was riddled with 16 bullets fired in about 15 seconds — 13 of those seconds, prosecutors say, while he lay prone and dying on the pavement. All the shots were fired by a single white cop while at least five other officers stood by.
...Please hear me clearly:
We need law enforcement. We want to be safe. We fear chaos and crime, and we’re willing to overlook occasional officer misconduct as the price we must pay for a predictable and safe society in which to pursue our lives. Moreover, at the outset I would be doing the police a gross disservice to argue that all officers are villainous crooks wearing a badge, and that the word “cop” and “killer” are synonymous. Such is not my belief. But what am I saying?
...When we permit persons to self-select police work as their life's work, we have also invited some who might yearn to dominate, to mutilate and even to kill others. That truth has long been recognized. What has happened in the lives of our officer candidates that causes them to seek power over others, especially over the powerless? Life-forming experiences usually come at an early age, and as adults we find ourselves still acting them out. The most conscientious law enforcement organizations now submit their candidates to rigorous testing in an attempt to identify the smiling, well presented individual who, at his or her core, is a latent killer. But any candid police department would surely have to admit that its testing provides little more than proof that it at least tried to identify and eliminate the most violent, sadistic candidates.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/11/29/killer-cops-loose-police-psychology-uncharged-murderers-column/76216998/
47 comments:
Ask the teacher why she chose her life’s work and she’ll tell you, “I love children and want to help them succeed.” Ask the cop the same question and his answer will be equally benign: “I want to keep people safe.” He’ll never say, “I’m looking for the opportunity to shoot a harmless, unarmed running black man in the back."
Shall we discuss the numbers of teachers who are sexually molesting the underage boys and girls under their control? The numbers of teachers who are cruelly crushing the souls of the little boys in their care?
When we permit persons to self-select police work as their life's work, we have also invited some who might yearn to dominate, to mutilate and even to kill others.
PERMIT????
When we "permit" persons to self select financial planning as their life's work, we have also invited some who might yearn to dominate and steal other's money.
You can say the same about any occupation where people chose or self select.
What is he suggesting? That people not be allowed to chose/self-select what occupations they would like to work in? That people should be selected by OTHERS, by the government and then pigeonholed into occupations. Sounds a bit Big Brother-ish to me. You want to be a cop....nope....garbage man for YOU!
Of course, in an occupation where you have control over others they should be carefully screened,monitored, screened and monitored some more to make sure that you haven't inadvertently allowed a sociopath or psychopath into the profession. Teacher pervert, broker thief, killer policeman, arsonist fireman, killer nurse and so on. NO occupation is exempt from attracting bad people.
Life is an inexact process and we can only do the best we can to protect ourselves and screen out the sick and evil people from it.
If we discourage people from self-selecting into occupations or berate them unmercifully for getting into those occupations, treat them as suspected criminals, where are we going to get the GOOD cops, teachers, firemen, nurses? They may just decide to self select elsewhere and say good riddance to being a person who would be able to make a difference and make society better. Screw it. I'll do something else. Make pots or weave a rug instead of being a nurse and saving lives :-)
"When we permit persons to self-select police work as their life's work"
I remember reading somewhere that in a fit of anger our brain is not just sending signals, is sending a flood of signals and it's up to the person's more recent and perhaps less robust part of the brain to interpret the fight/flight signals correctly.
To say people predisposed to violence pick law enforcement to get their kicks off, I think is an overreach.
Btw.. New research claims that it was our "darker side" that helped us spread across the world.
It was good for something.
Update: Rahm fires police chief.
Damn good point about female teachers, DBQ.
15,0000 homicides every year. Hundreds of thousand of rapes and other violent crimes. Number of people killed by Police about 500. Number of Police killed in violence about 80. Number of arrests - over a million.
I don't think "police violence" is an important issue.
Maybe like Robocop, you need to be afraid.
Which brings me to the discussion of how to behave when a cop pulls you over. I have told my son that before he reaches for his wallet in his back pocket, that he tells the officer, 'I'm reaching for my wallet,' and then to slowly take it out of his pocket.
This isn't because of general fear of police, but because there are too many misunderstandings of someone possibly going for their gun.
What did Laquan McDonald do again to warrant 15 shots?
would you feel better if he'd been killed by one shot?
As a fellow attorney, I have heard the same question asked about our own profession, that it attracts more than its share of aggressive weasels with personality disorders. The same could be said of political class - lazy, greedy weasels with laughable delusions of grandeur. Also their court stenographers, the journalists, weasels with typing skills.
How can we allow them to self-select? Wrong question. That's not up to us, how people want to earn their living.
The right question is: How do we promote a system that will weed out people who are not competent to do the job correctly?
With attorneys, you do it by having a really hard bar exam, following a senselessly expensive and lengthy schooling program. That weeds out the faint of heart and stupid of brain. Also, you can get your ticket yanked for various misbehaviors and you know no one will let you off the mat because everyone hates lawyers and no one has any problem punishing them when they screw up.
The problem with the cops is that they are not self-policing. Stop hollering and hear me out. The police union protects them, always, no matter what. Like with teachers. Like with the Church there for a while. (Reminder: I'm an attorney. I love Truth, and the sound of hollering.) If he was a bad cop, that's why he was still on the street, with gun, shooting people. Interestingly, in this case, the police union prioritized the politicians over the individual police officer. They know who pays the bills. This happened a year ago (correct?). The tape release was delayed so that Rahm Emmanuel would be re-elected Mayor of Chicago. If it had been brought out timely, Rahm Emmanuel would not have been re-elected ... and the officer probably wouldn't have been charged with murder. Now, he has to be charged with murder. This guy is going to fry so that Rahm Emmanuel can hang on to power with his sharp little claws. (Not because he was incompetent to be police officer and posed a danger to the community.) Priorities!
Until we get our priorities straight, and stop catering to the politicians and their moneybags union backers, we will not have a system that effectively polices the police.
This past year, the news media have drawn our focus to far-ranging, rampant police brutality
WTF is he talking about? A handful of cases out of millions of police/civilian interactions.
I'm no Pollyanna, there are bad policemen out there, but it is not the "far-ranging, rampant" problem he refers to.
Maybe he would prefer "The Giver" way, where a committed decides what you must do for the rest of your life, and you do it.
The writer sounds Orwellian. ALL professions have bad apples. The problem is getting rid of bad cops, attorneys, doctors, etc. They protect their own. In that regard, having extensive professional experience w/ all 3 professions, the worst @ protecting their own are attorneys, followed closely by cops. I have worked many med malpractice cases defending docs. In the past 3 decades I have seen more docs willing to give up their bad ones. Think about it, up until the 1960's, all 3 professions were virtually all male. When you have one sex dominating a profession, there are inherent problems w/ that lack of balance. Women have helped balance the medical profession. But, although there are many more female cops and barristers, they have been co-opted. In this regard, teaching was fairly balanced up until the 1960's. Now, it is almost 85% female. With that lack of balance we see more female teacher rapists. Balance is key to a good life.
What a crock. This is part of the effort to delegitmize the police in favor of the criminal element. For the political advantage of the Democrat party. They want to free criminals from jails. Force businesses to hire them by not disclosing their records. Giving them the right to vote along with illegal immigrants so rich liberal white ladies like Hillary and De Blasio can run things.
"would you feel better if he'd been killed by one shot?"
It would still be a bad shoot, and probably illegal. The cop can't claim fear for his life if the guy was walking away and the cop was advancing, both of which are clearly seen in the video.
Would it be OK for the cop to walk over to the prone man and put the gun to his head and shoot? I see what this cop did here as equivalent to that.
Amartel, Great comment. Here in Wisconsin, we are the last state to have unfettered diploma privilege. This is the most provincial state in the union. Diploma privilege means, if you graduate from either UW or Marquette, the only 2 law schools, you be an attorney!! No bar exam. I've ripped TOP for defending this archaic, incestuous, system. I have worked w/ attorneys from at least 20 different states. Wisconsin has the highest % of barristers who are dumber and more incompetent than any state.
bag, This shitbird Chicago cop was the only cop on the scene[there were several others] who fired his weapon. It is nice to see that shanty Irish Chief get shitcanned. Now the teeny tiny mayor needs to go. But, that won't happen.
It is all about power. For every bad shooting by a "bad" cop there is a thousand shootings by skells. That doesn't bother them. Those that write nonsense like this. They live in their ivy towers with private security guards. The don't have to throw dangerous skills out of their store every day like I do.
If you notice the skells who get shot by "bad" cops are all thieves or strong arm men or drug addled criminals. Their victims are grandmothers coming home from work or pregnant women in their own homes. People that those who support BLM don't give ash it about.
I was impressed that while the one cop fired 15/16 times, the other cops stayed composed and didn't also open fire. LA police could learn something from Chicago. Except that good impression was ruined when it took a year for this video to be released and new information suggests a cover up, which means more than one bad cop.
As for self-selecting occupations, I hate journalist that claim to choose a job with the responsibility to accurately report what is observed, and claim they wanted to "change the world". Seems like an admission of a lack of ethics to me.
That's like lawyers who say they went into the business to "help people."
It's a self-serving lie.
nd - That's pretty pathetic, no bar exam and automatic lawyer ticket if you go to the right school. Trust the schools to weed out people who should not be lawyers? Good luck with that!
Here in Cali we do Difficult Bar Exam right. Three grueling days in Hell.
Mayor Emmanuel threw his Chief under the bus. There, that should satisfy the baying idiots.
And it will. Mayor Emmanuel assessed the situation correctly.
I get so bugged by people focusing in on the number of shots as if being killed with 1 bullet is worse than being killed by 16. Cops have semi-automatic weapons, pull the trigger and bang. they also have large magazines AND they taught that once you start shooting you don't stop till the suspect is down.
So no the Cops aren't going to stop shooting after 1 or 2 bullets nor are they going to "wing them" or "shoot them in the shoulder" that's the kind of BS you only see on TV.
In the Chicago shooting the Cop went over the line when he shot the suspect when he was down. It probably didn't make much difference, the guy was full of lead he was probably a goner anyway. However, I don't think they'll get a Murder 1 on the Cop. I can they prove Premeditation? Obviously the Cop thought he was in danger. And the judicial standard is what the Cop thought, not what someone sitting at home thinks.
I expect a jury will find it unreasonable for him to have thought he was in danger, especially after seeing the first two shots bringing the guy down with no movement afterward. If a cop can claim that this situation was self-defense then they can pretty much execute any suspect they come across, including me walking down the street after a few too many drinks with a shiny cell phone in hand. I want to go on record here and say I personally don't want to be executed by a cop who is that easy to scare or anger. I wouldn't mind being shot in the leg, but I can't enjoy my settlement with a dozen extra unnecessary holes in me.
Looks like premeditation is not required for first degree murder in Illinois, just intent to kill without legal justification. No death penalty, but a 20 year minimum.
Putting aside this particular shooting, which I do find hard to justify the amount of force given that the guy appeared to be just walking away....putting it aside.
As Amartel said, self policing is not being done in some professions. The tendency to "circle the wagons" when a member of the group is under suspicion or being charged is well known. Unionized jobs like the police and the teachers are among the worst. The Church too.
There are bad apples in all professions. In some, it can be more of a life and death issue instead of just being a bad plumber or rude sales clerk. I've personally known some very great police officers and some really bad and stupid ones too.
Of course, the media piling on and inflating every small thing and distorting the reality of the actions, like in the Ferguson case where they just lied about it and continue to lie to this day, is only heaping fuel onto the fire.
In the case of the police, what are people going to do or say when they find that they are NOT going to be as protected as they were in the past? You can vilify and pillory people and expect that they will still put their lives on the line for you. Don't be surprised people when you make that 911 call, if the police are not going to be really interested in throwing themselves in front of the bullet for you. You don't deserve it and why should they. It's called standing down. Get used to it.
Judging all persons of a profession by one bad apple is unfair to the majority who are good, dedicated people.
Another solution: Cameras.
There are still going to be arguments about what is seen and how to interpret it, and what happened off camera, but at least there are visible objective facts there for all to see.
What is happening now is exactly what should happen: appropriate charges, then trial. If that happened immediately instead of the 1 year cover up and stonewalling then there really would be no issue. A guy (cop or not) apparently murdered another guy, so he gets charged and tried. If that happened there would be no reason to protest or say much about it, and most importantly, it would happen a lot less often. Bad cops need run out, jailed, or preferably never hired, then everyone is safer, and the cops get the respect they deserve. This is not complicated.
Someone correct me, but the fact Tippytoes bought the family's silence doesn't necessarily mean this is over. In fact, firing the chief has really nothing to do with the real problem.
And, am I wrong or was there evidence this kid was jacked up on drugs?
Amartel said...
Mayor Emmanuel threw his Chief under the bus. There, that should satisfy the baying idiots.
And it will. Mayor Emmanuel assessed the situation correctly
Don't count on it. In Baltimore, the mayor had to announce she's not running for re-election IIRC.
PS Are nd and Troop playing Good Cop, Bad Cop?
If there was no camera, the whole thing would have been a lie covering a murder to facilitate an election. All of that happened. We just happen to know now, so what will we do about it? I bet the politician (top dog) comes out least affected, and probably not hurt at all.
Ed-apparently Emmanuel's press conference was a disaster. But what can they do now? Stay tuned to see whether this crisis will go to waste. (So exciting!)
I don't know if it's true, but I heard that the shooter cop was reloading when his partner stopped him.
So if you are one of the cops there, and you see this, and you believe the cop did something you would never do. You believe you saw an illegal shooting and probably a murder. What do you do?
From the media's perspective you deduce the cops were responding to invitations to the kid's graduation party.
From what I have gleaned (admittedly over he internet);
The kid was 5 miles from home.
He had a knife.
He had either threatened to or had robbed a convenient store.
The coroner determined the kid was high on PCP.
The kid was breaking into cars and or slashing tires.
He slashed the tires of one of the cop cars there.
The cop had 18 complaints filed against him in his career.(low, normal or high?)
The city offered the family 5 million bucks
The kid may have been removed from the family when he was 4.
The state's attorney may have deliberately overcharged the cop.
The chief of police was a pandering ass to the black community.
The chief allegedly had his own sordid past with drunkeness and shooting out lamposts.
The cops on the force hated this chief (and the last chief) and are glad to see him gone.
The chief started in NYPD then moved to Newark. He was an outside choice for the CPD
ed, I don't play games or dance.
bag, In Chicago, NYC, LA, you keep your mouth shut and lie to protect a murdering cop. Actually, in virtually every big city police dept. that's what you do. There are good cops who are fearful of being truthful in situations like this. When you have a couple or 10 beers w/ cops who are friends, or trust you, they will tell you the pressure to cover up is overwhelming. If causes many good cops to leave. Shitbirds like this guy never leave. They enjoy having a license to kill.
Can we just call this what it is, a scam? This is all going to lead to nothing more than politically motivated policing. Oh look, black people, well, we'll just keep moving along. Let we the zoo keepers let the zoo animals deal with each other lest we take a politically motivated stand.
Any cop that lied about this should be fired, period - from bottom to the top. It's too bad if that's the culture they were in, but you can't fix it if you just accept it as normal. This leads to juries not believing the cops, so more bad guys (bad cops and thugs alike) get put back on the street.
That's the only way good cops can have some cover for being honest. You can't protect cops who cover up a murder and expect honest non-corrupt policing. As soon as you do that even once, the whole department is dirty and ruined. I know it's idealistic, but that's the kind of cops we should have in 2015. It's at least what we should be demanding. Shoot any bastard that needs it, and understand that mistakes will be made, but blatant murder and cover ups should never be part of it.
Thanks, guys, I was out all day and couldn't follow this.
Amartel said...
Ed-apparently Emmanuel's press conference was a disaster. But what can they do now? Stay tuned to see whether this crisis will go to waste. (So exciting!)
As the saying goes, it's an ill wind that blows no good. Maybe the protesters can actually accomplish something good (inadvertantly, of course) and shake up Chiraq - including seeing the Tippytoes' career in the public eye is over.
ampersand said...
The coroner determined the kid was high on PCP.
Thought I'd heard that.
ndspinelli said...
ed, I don't play games or dance.
I just call 'em like I see 'em.
As an ex cop. With over 22 years on the street. Let me begin by saying 99.9 % of cops do thier job and only want to sign out at the end of the night n go home to thier families. And most cops do not like fellow cops who give the dept a bad name. There are some bad ones out there. Of course but its the exception not the rule. A few guys I worked with were called mechanics because they used to tune guys up before they were brought in to the station house for arrest processing. But that was before cellphones and political correctness.
You believe you saw an illegal shooting and probably a murder. What do you do?
I had some person express shock that none of the other cops tried to stop the shooter cop. I don't get the shock. The officers have to have some trust in each other. We can state in relaxed retrospection that perhaps the trust is unfounded. But in the moment, the initial assumption is that the shooter had a reason to shoot. That perhaps he saw what others did not and acted appropriately. So for me, I think it would be a moment before I jumped to the conclusion that the other cop just murdered someone.
The shooting took less than a minute. How is someone supposed to stop that
I have read that cops can get hyped up on adrenalin. For example, after high speed chases.
I saw the most pitiful dash cam of a cop pulling a woman over for speeding. He had been following her, wanting her to pull over, she oblivious, and finally noticing him, pulled to the side. She was a rotund, middle-aged black woman, dressed as if for an office job or church, in a skirt and jacket. He held a gun on her and yelled at her to lay face down on the side of the road. She complied, her legs pointing at the dash cam, slightly rolling from side to side, because of her girth, and also because the berm slanted downward a little.
So no, if I were his fellow officer, I wouldn't have taken any chances interrupting this guy's adrenalin rush, or whatever it was.
On a side note. One of the most dangerous type of police action are car stops ....
Was there audio to go along with that video? I heard it may have been intentionally deleted from that video. Isn't anyone curious about that?
Certainly, no jury could convict based on tampered evidence.
From the looks of it the shooting was unjustified, and lots of people all the way up the chain of command participated in the cover up. I'm not defending the cop, but there's a fair amount of demonizing going on. His motivation probably had more to do with adrenaline and fear than racism and cold blooded murder. It is my opinion that he he is not the most evil, diabolical murderer in the history of Chicago..........I knew a cop whose unenviable job it was to clear the skels out of one of the public terminals before the morning rush hour. Some of them would become combative. He had to use his nightstick to subdue them. It was the era before cell phones, but he was always afraid that some earnest ACLU type on an early morning commute would take heed of his actions. He retired the first chance he got. It's the kind of job where you have to confront not just the primal emotions of the worst people on the street but your own response to those people. It's not as easy as it looks.
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