I wonder about that 1% which this cop [his term] says are bad cops. Certainly that means that the other cops are turning them in, right? That you, being the expert in proper policing techniques have been especially vigilant in watching for bad cops. Turned in any bad cops? I doubt it.
The Force Science Institute were he was trained, is a shoot first program. Police are taught that every encounter can end with your death and you should shoot if you feel threatened. This "I thought he was reaching for a gun" when I just told him to get his wallet defense sees citizens as the enemy. Such thinking is especially fraught when so many police, and the general public, have been conditioned to see Black men as dangerous. So a Black child playing with a toy gun does not get the benefit of the doubt that a white one would. So a Black man dancing down the sidewalk with earbuds who doesn't respond to a verbal order is taken down, choked and drugged to death.
The man who runs the Force institute is a favorite witness for cops charged in civilian shootings. Here is the NY Times in reference to one case where the head of the institute testified, with a quote from the officer's own defense attorney
Quote:
On a cold night in early 2003, for instance, Robert Murtha, an officer in Hartford, Conn., shot three times at the driver of a car. He said the vehicle had sped directly at him, knocking him to the ground as he fired. Video from a nearby police cruiser told another story. The officer had not been struck. He had fired through the driver’s-side window as the car passed him.
Officer Murtha’s story was so obviously incorrect that he was arrested on charges of assault and fabricating evidence. If officers can get away with shooting people and lying about it, the prosecutor declared, “the system is doomed.”
“There was no way around it — Murtha was dead wrong,” his lawyer, Hugh F. Keefe, recalled recently. But the officer was “bright, articulate and truthful,” Mr. Keefe said. Jurors needed an explanation for how the officer could be so wrong and still be innocent.
Dr. Lewinski testified at trial. The jury deliberated less than one full day. The officer was acquitted of all charges.
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I will accept the jury verdict. But I believe that not holding police to a higher standard is wrong. We train 18 year old soldiers who do not have fully developed frontal lobes and are in a real war zone that it is not okay to shoot unarmed civilians. And those 18 year olds can learn restraint and accept that such restraint may on rare occasions be a fatal error. Part of the risk when you sign up for the military. I do not see why a 25 or 35 year old cop cannot exercise the same restraint in a city or town in this country. They have more training than the soldier and more maturity and are not in a war zone, civilians are not their enemy.
I refer you to the recent firing of three white officers in North Carolina. They apparently accidentally turned on their recording device and the audio was captured while they were talking with each other. One of the three was seemingly the worst white racist bigot, but the other two who participated in the conversation never reported him or his thoughts about Black citizens. If no one turns in the bad apples, then you're all bad apples
"Piner said he's "ready" for a civil war. According to investigators, Piner said, using the n-word, that "we are just gonna go out and start slaughtering them."
"God I can't wait," Piner is reported to have said.
Piner also said, according to investigators, that he plans to buy an assault rifle and that society needed a civil war to "put 'em back about four or five generations...In interviews with investigators, all three of them said they were venting, citing what they called the current climate for police. They also denied being racist. " Yes sir, nothing at all racist here. And nothing would have changed had not they accidentally turned on the recording device. If I were a defense attorney I'd right now be looking at any case where these three were the arresting officers, handled evidence, or testified. I think my client is going to walk.