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After winning $1.1M in false arrest case against New York cops, attorney says he sees "a real change societally in willingness to believe in police misconduct cases and to punish bad behavior" (www.law360.com)

submitted 1 year ago by DougHolland@lemmy.world to c/thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world

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Earlier this year, a federal jury awarded Jawaun Fraser nearly $2 million on claims that officers fabricated evidence in order to prosecute him for robbery. Fraser spent two years in prison before a state court threw out his conviction because prosecutors and the NYPD failed to disclose that the charging officers in his case had faced dozens of civil suits alleging evidence fabrication.
Meanwhile, several district attorneys in the city have moved to vacate convictions connected to discredited police officers. The efforts were ignited by a 2021 letter from a coalition of public defenders and legal aid groups that flagged 22 former NYPD officers who had themselves been convicted of crimes or otherwise accused of misconduct.
In Adams' case, he said police arrested him one morning in March 2018 in the hallway of the Staten Island housing complex for alleged possession of a marijuana cigarette, which was never recovered. He was also accused of lunging at one of the officers and pushing him down one of the building's stairwells.
Prosecutors went on to drop the assault charges after seeing a video of the incident in the stairwell, according to court documents. Additional charges of resisting arrest, obstruction and marijuana possession were eventually adjourned in contemplation of dismissal — a process through which defendants can have cases dropped if they stay out of trouble for a set period of time.

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[-] scytale@lemm.ee 27 points 1 year ago

As long as the payments come from taxpayers and officers are just re-assigned to other places, nothing will change. Take the money directly from them or their pension, fire them, ban them from public service for life, and add some jail time. Then we’ll start to see change.

[-] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

No, pulling from the pension fund is a bad idea that will further exacerbate the blue wall of silence. Imo we need a complete restructuring of policing to a rotating consent-based police force from the local community, with an oversight committee to track people that can no longer hold those positions of power.

[-] habitualcynic@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

I agree, I think the equivalent of malpractice insurance would be simplest to enact. Others could even get lower rates for testifying against bad cops in malpractice suits to incentivize a culture of policing their peers. That would help restore community trust.

[-] DougHolland@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Ooh, I like that second part a lot.

[-] Coreidan@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Nah. How about this. Any cop that is in violation of the law has their arms and legs removed.

They can keep the pension.

[-] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't know if banning from public service is needed for a lot of the cases?

They can only do that because they have authority and guns.

That's includes a lot of jobs like dmv or parks worker.

this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023

117 points (100.0% liked)

THE POLICE PROBLEM

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The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.

99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.

When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.

When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."

When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.

Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.

The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.

All this is a path to a police state.

In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.

Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.

That's the solution.

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