[ColdNoMore]

Originally Posted by TooColdNJ

Shameful? That you feel the officers in these situations should be given the benefit of the doubt when their lives were not in danger.

The deceased should not be deceased.

Read a state trooper’s take on this, as a law enforcement officer, somewhere in this thread. If you think all police, all doctors, all teachers, all nurses, etc. should be given the benefit of the doubt as well, I don’t agree. We should trust these professionals based on their duties to society, but it’s a bit narrow-minded if you don’t believe there are a few bad apples in any bunch, as was just proven, but we should give them all the benefit of the doubt because they’re police officers! It’s situational; a man was kneed in the throat and died as a result. The other one was shot—while the officers’ lives weren’t in any danger. They were chasing the guy- they weren’t being chased. You may have the opinion that the scum of the earth may be always be so, but it’s wrong to believe that they should have been killed.., especially for their past criminal activity, and especially if they served time for those crimes. Every criminal is NOT WORTHLESS; some can be rehabilitated. If there are other options- which there clearly were, they should not have killed him. No one has the time to stop everything and look into their entire criminal background. What if they weren’t criminals?

In the recent killings, although having criminal backgrounds, they weren’t committing a murder, rape, armed robbery.... or assault with a deadly weapon. There were no warrants out for their rests because of those violent crimes, either.

They weren’t even carrying guns. They didn’t deserve to die as they did. The officers were in no immediate danger.

All excellent points, but unfortunately the actual underlying issues of why this keeps happening... are primarily twofold.

1. The police unions are so powerful, that prosecutors are leery to even bring up charges against LEO's...because of the likelihood their prosecution will be unsuccessful.

2. The reason the prosecutors have the deck stacked against them is for a number of reasons, but you can bet every single cop knows that they are almost untouchable from criminal prosecution...or even being permanently terminated.

The laws basically allow them to be... "bubble-wrapped" (yeah, I borrowed that term )


Difficulty in prosecuting bad cops (click here)

It is rare, and extremely difficult, to convict a law enforcement officer after a fatal shooting, according to criminal justice experts who spoke to NBC News on Monday.

For legal scholars and criminologists who study law enforcement, those outcomes are not exactly surprising.

Cops are held to a different standard.

The law, generally speaking, is on the side of the cops, who have wide latitude when it comes to using force, according to David A. Harris, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who teaches in police behavior.

"For better or worse, whether you believe in it or not, [the law] (*Note-the SCOTUS ruling just today, 6/15/20, of refusing to revisit the the "qualified immunity" standard for police...reinforces this). is very favorable to police use of force," Harris said. "That objective standard is very wide in terms of giving police discretion."

And you can bet your last dollar, those facts are in the back of every single cop's mind and especially with the 1% of bad ones...and/or of those (a much higher %) who emotionally have no business being in law enforcement.

I mean cripes, who in the world can watch the Rodney King over-the-top and totally unwarranted beating (given that he was certainly no threat)...and not shake their heads at how those involved got away with it?

If you watch any documentary of King's case, it quickly becomes evident that a change of venue to a much more receptive jury pool...was the foundation of the outcome.

And then we get the miscarriage of justice with OJ, which those same documentaries basically call 'payback' for Rodney King.

NEITHER of those cases...received true justice.

If the unions (which also includes teachers) did more to police their own people, a LOT of the problems we're seeing now...would go away.

And this is NOT a general "anti-union rant," because in a lot of cases unions actually protect the employees...from abusive supervisors/employers.