THOUSANDS of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury’s believing their word over a police officer’s are slim to none.
As a juror, whom are you likely to believe: the alleged criminal in an orange jumpsuit or two well-groomed police officers in uniforms who just swore to God they’re telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? As one of my colleagues recently put it, “Everyone knows you have to be crazy to accuse the police of lying.”
But
are police officers necessarily more trustworthy than alleged
criminals? I think not. Not just because the police have a special
inclination toward confabulation, but because, disturbingly, they have
an incentive to lie.
In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.
In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.
That
may sound harsh, but numerous law enforcement officials have put the
matter more bluntly. Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police
commissioner, wrote an article in The San Francisco Chronicle decrying a
police culture that treats lying as the norm:
“Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.”
The
New York City Police Department is not exempt from this critique. In
2011, hundreds of drug cases were dismissed after several police
officers were accused of mishandling evidence. That year, Justice Gustin
L. Reichbach of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn condemned a
widespread culture of lying and corruption in the department’s drug
enforcement units.
“I thought I was not naïve,” he said when announcing a guilty verdict involving a police detective who had planted crack cocaine on a pair of suspects. “But even this court was shocked, not only by the seeming pervasive scope of misconduct but even more distressingly by the seeming casualness by which such conduct is employed.”
Remarkably,
New York City officers have been found to engage in patterns of deceit
in cases involving charges as minor as trespass. In September it was
reported that the Bronx district attorney’s office was so alarmed by
police lying that it decided to stop prosecuting people who were stopped
and arrested for trespassing at public housing projects, unless
prosecutors first interviewed the arresting officer to ensure the arrest
was actually warranted. Jeannette Rucker, the chief of arraignments for
the Bronx district attorney, explained in a letter that it had become
apparent that the police were arresting people even when there was
convincing evidence that they were innocent. To justify the arrests, Ms.
Rucker claimed, police officers provided false written statements, and
in depositions, the arresting officers gave false testimony.
Mr.
Keane, in his Chronicle article, offered two major reasons the police
lie so much.
- First, because they can. Police officers “know that in a swearing match between a drug defendant and a police officer, the judge always rules in favor of the officer.” At worst, the case will be dismissed, but the officer is free to continue business as usual.
- Second, criminal defendants are typically poor and uneducated, often belong to a racial minority, and often have a criminal record. “Police know that no one cares about these people,” Mr. Keane explained.
All true, but there is more to the story than that.
Police
departments have been rewarded in recent years for the sheer numbers of
stops, searches and arrests. In the war on drugs, federal grant
programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program
have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug
arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies
receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug
offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence.
Law
enforcement has increasingly become a numbers game. And as it has,
police officers’ tendency to regard procedural rules as optional and to
lie and distort the facts has grown as well. Numerous scandals involving
police officers lying or planting drugs — in Tulia, Tex. and Oakland,
Calif., for example — have been linked to federally funded drug task
forces eager to keep the cash rolling in.
THE
pressure to boost arrest numbers is not limited to drug law
enforcement. Even where no clear financial incentives exist, the “get
tough” movement has warped police culture to such a degree that police
chiefs and individual officers feel pressured to meet stop-and-frisk or
arrest quotas in order to prove their “productivity.”
For
the record, the New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly,
denies that his department has arrest quotas. Such denials are
mandatory, given that quotas are illegal under state law. But as the
Urban Justice Center’s Police Reform Organizing Project has documented,
numerous officers have contradicted Mr. Kelly. In 2010, a New York City
police officer named Adil Polanco told a local ABC News reporter that
“our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to
assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back
with them.” He continued:
“At the end of the night you have to come back with something. You have to write somebody, you have to arrest somebody, even if the crime is not committed, the number’s there. So our choice is to come up with the number.”
Exposing
police lying is difficult largely because it is rare for the police to
admit their own lies or to acknowledge the lies of other officers. This
reluctance derives partly from the code of silence that governs police
practice and from the ways in which the system of mass incarceration is
structured to reward dishonesty. But it’s also because police officers
are human.
Research
shows that ordinary human beings lie a lot — multiple times a day —
even when there’s no clear benefit to lying. Generally, humans lie about
relatively minor things like “I lost your phone number; that’s why I
didn’t call” or “No, really, you don’t look fat.” But humans can also be
persuaded to lie about far more important matters, especially if the
lie will enhance or protect their reputation or standing in a group.
The
natural tendency to lie makes quota systems and financial incentives
that reward the police for the sheer numbers of people stopped, frisked
or arrested especially dangerous. One lie can destroy a life, resulting
in the loss of employment, a prison term and relegation to permanent
second-class status.
The fact that our legal system has become so
tolerant of police lying indicates how corrupted our criminal justice
system has become by declarations of war, “get tough” mantras, and a
seemingly insatiable appetite for locking up and locking out the poorest
and darkest among us.
And, no, I’m not crazy for thinking so.
The FBI's Philosophy on Why Cops Are Corrupt
ReplyDeleteby misslisacarolfremont
This article explores their thoughts on WHY cops go bad and the ethics of police corruption. It's from while back so you may of read it but it is interesting to me.
What jumped out to me was the part where a corrupt leadership is going to set the tone for a corrupt organization.
I am reminded that the love of money is the root of all evil. Also thought of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings where an Elven Queen who has lived for over a thousand years says of us, mankind, "Men...who desire power above all else."
https://leb.fbi.gov/2011/may/police-corruption-an-analytical-look-into-police-ethics
[–]JLWhitaker
I used to teach ethics. Culture is so important, either home culture, subgroup culture (think 'gangs', popular kids) or work culture (LE). People behave within the norms they experience. To UNlearn those norms takes guts and a very strong sense of self and self-worth.
Being bad is really the easy route. Avoiding ends justifies means thinking is as hard because it provides what could be considered socially accepted outcomes, with or without proof (the planting of evidence fits that). Not all LE is unethical, but in any workplace where power is limited to begin with (the hierarchy in a small town sheriff's office), any amount of power if valued, even the tiniest bit.
And if you have a means for power over the big dogs (think competing males), well, you're eventually calling the shots. If one sniffs out a bad act from someone higher up the ladder, you got him by the cajones. There's nothing the higher up can do without exposing himself. That's how corruption permeates. It doesn't take long.
[–]knowjustice
Yes, it is systemic and institutionalized. The reason everyone follows the leader. Play by the bosses rules and you get promoted. The threats made to officers explains the culture of corruption.
Had AG Lautenschlager done her job, this may never have happened, Instead, she gave the organization to continue operating with the same set of unwritten rule.
[–]VillageIdiot34
that woman needs punishment via the law
[–]knowjustice 1 point 2 hours ago
At minimum, by exonerating the MTSO and Vogel in the '85 case, her decision actually obstructed justice. IMO, the only reason she refused to hold anyone accountable was to ensure she would not alienate LE; she needed their votes to win re-election. It didn't work.
[–]VillageIdiot34
she should be incarcerated
[–]knowjustice
Please don't hold your breath. ;( In the true crime book, Darker than Night, the Michigan State Police detective who is the lead character in the book opines that the primary role of a state's Attorney General from the day he or she take office is to ensure he or she is re-elected in the next election cycle. The idea this position is the top LE officer of the state is a joke. Every decision rendered is carefully crafted so as not to alienate the person's base. Because politics always supersedes job performance, rather than doing the job the AG's Office is, in theory, designed to do; ensuring state actors, including LE, perform their job with the utmost integrity, ethics and professionalism, the majority of states attorneys general focus their attention on corporate malfeasance so as to maintain political neutrality as it pertains to public officers and officials.
There is nothing wrong with holding private organizations responsible for unlawful conduct. However, one would expect the top LE of every state be just as, if not more diligent in ensuring state actors and government entities play be the rules. Our tax dollars are funding these entities and employees and as such, the electorate needs to demand accountability.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MakingaMurderer/comments/4d4erw/the_fbis_philosophy_on_why_cops_are_corrupt/