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Related: About this forumPapantonio: The Safety Net For Police Officers
The prosecuting attorney in the Darren Wilson grand jury could have easily brought an indictment against Wilson for killing Michael Brown. But the system is so rigged, that it is nearly impossible to indict a police officer in this country.
America's Lawyer, Mike Papantonio, and attorney Karen Evans explain why that is.
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Papantonio: The Safety Net For Police Officers (Original Post)
GoLeft TV
Dec 2014
OP
mrdmk
(2,943 posts)1. Here is The Nation article referred in the OP
Why Its Impossible to Indict a Cop
Its not just Fergusonheres how the system protects police.
Chase Madar
November 24, 2014
Riot police in Ferguson, Missouri (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
How to police the police is a question as old as civilization, now given special urgency by a St. Louis County grand jurys return of a no bill of indictment for Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in his fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown. The result is shocking to many, depressingly predictable to more than a few.
Can the cops be controlled? Its never been easy: according to one old sociological chestnut, the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence is what defines modern government, and this monopoly is jealously protected against the second-guessing of puny civilians. All over the country, the issue of restraining police power is framed around the retribution against individual cops, from Staten Island to Milwaukee to Los Angeles. But is this the best way to impose discipline on law enforcement and roll back what even Republican appellate court appointees are calling rampant criminalization?
Police shootings in America
First, the big picture. Last year, the FBI tallied 461 justifiable homicides committed by law enforcementjustifiable because the Bureau assumes so, and the nations courts have not found otherwise. This is the highest number in two decades, even as the nations overall homicide rate continues to drop. Homicides committed by on-duty law enforcement make up 3 percent of the 14,196 homicides committed in the United States in 2013. A USA Today analysis of the FBI database found an average of about ninety-six police homicides a year in which a white officer kills a black person.
The FBIs police homicide stats are fuzzy, and they are surely an undercount, given that they come from voluntary reports to the FBI from police departments all over the country. That the federal government does not keep a strict national tally shows just how seriously it takes this problem. A crowdsourced database has sprung up to fill the gap, as has a wiki-tabulation.
(more at link) http://www.thenation.com/article/190937/why-its-impossible-indict-cop
Its not just Fergusonheres how the system protects police.
Chase Madar
November 24, 2014
Riot police in Ferguson, Missouri (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
How to police the police is a question as old as civilization, now given special urgency by a St. Louis County grand jurys return of a no bill of indictment for Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in his fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown. The result is shocking to many, depressingly predictable to more than a few.
Can the cops be controlled? Its never been easy: according to one old sociological chestnut, the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence is what defines modern government, and this monopoly is jealously protected against the second-guessing of puny civilians. All over the country, the issue of restraining police power is framed around the retribution against individual cops, from Staten Island to Milwaukee to Los Angeles. But is this the best way to impose discipline on law enforcement and roll back what even Republican appellate court appointees are calling rampant criminalization?
Police shootings in America
First, the big picture. Last year, the FBI tallied 461 justifiable homicides committed by law enforcementjustifiable because the Bureau assumes so, and the nations courts have not found otherwise. This is the highest number in two decades, even as the nations overall homicide rate continues to drop. Homicides committed by on-duty law enforcement make up 3 percent of the 14,196 homicides committed in the United States in 2013. A USA Today analysis of the FBI database found an average of about ninety-six police homicides a year in which a white officer kills a black person.
The FBIs police homicide stats are fuzzy, and they are surely an undercount, given that they come from voluntary reports to the FBI from police departments all over the country. That the federal government does not keep a strict national tally shows just how seriously it takes this problem. A crowdsourced database has sprung up to fill the gap, as has a wiki-tabulation.
(more at link) http://www.thenation.com/article/190937/why-its-impossible-indict-cop
pipoman
(16,038 posts)2. Exactly
Wilson, under the circumstances, couldn't have been convicted. This isn't the DA's fault, or the GJ. ..it is the umbrella of immunity given to police.