My brother is in prison for murder. He did it and confessed to it. Still, during the trial the detectives saw fit to lie under oath, and bring forth evidence of his character (his diary) obtained illegally (they lied and said it was obtained via a neighbor who found it in a trash can in his house 0_o). All of this even though they had an open and shut case. It blew my mind that in a case that they had in the bag and where the evidence of the crime itself was enough to put him away forever they still did all of that. The story of the diary was especially ridiculous. It's not like the detectives told some whoppers just to make things easier on themselves. They lied about all sorts of small things, like how his arrest actually happened. From that I learned to fear the system. If they'll do that with a slam dunk case, what will they do to get a conviction when the case is a tough one? How many men has this state (Texas) executed as a result of this system?
It's quite fascinating really. The police officer he has come up to speak talks about some of the tricks they use to get people to confess and they talk about word tricks they use to get convictions even of innocent people. It's pretty terrifying.
What I find interesting is how many TV shows depict suspects running their mouths to the police like they're all buddies. You're NEVER supposed to do that. Even innocent people can very easily incriminate themselves, as they show in the above video.
Speaking of Texas and executions, have you ever read about Todd Willingham?
Willingham was convicted of "multiple infanticide" for burning his house down with his daughters still inside. He maintained his innocence until the end, and finally found a fire investigator to review the case shortly before he was scheduled to be executed. The investigator provided conclusive evidence that he DID NOT start the fire, but the Board of Pardons and Paroles apparently didn't even read it:
“The only reasonable conclusion is that the governor’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles ignored scientific evidence.”
And so, sadly, he was executed.
There are so many WTFs in this case, which is probably partly why the article is so long. One thing that stood out is how the witness testimony changed from "he was frantically trying to put the fire out" to "he didn't seem to be doing much of all" after he was charged with starting the fire (the witnesses became biased). And how the fire investigators could be high school drop outs with minimal training, and how they used gut feelings and super outdated science while investigating the case. Their investigation is really what caused him to be convicted. Pretty sad story, and it seems to happen a lot like this, especially in Texas.
My sister in law is a public defender, she has managed to get cops that lie under oath fired. We're not talking capital crimes here, we're talking stupid traffic citations where the officer would rather lie than admit they made a bad call.
Her belief is that lying is like cocaine, you use it once to get through the case because you know that even though its not strictly the truth the right thing will happen, and then you use it because you really didn't prepare enough, and suddenly its not a 'big deal' in your mind, after all these are people committing crimes right? We're protecting the 'good' people from these scumbags. And you lose yourself.
Why managing to get them fired is considered a good result?
Perjury is a serious crime and should be prosecuted as such.
Cops should [be made to] understand that lying in court even in small cases carries a risk of criminal charges (in USA, up to 5 years IIRC) instead of internal disciplinary action.
I was arrested when I was 18 after a guy I was with was caught selling mdma at a gathering in the desert. The police report was filled with lies. The officers approached me during the night(it was 10F) and asked to sit in my car. I was having a heart to heart with my girlfriend but obliged because they were obviously cold and being welcoming is part of that subculture. They made some lewd inappropriate comments about my gf and then asked to buy drugs. I told them I didnt have any. They begged. I said sorry I dont have any.
I read the police report and they wrote that i wanted to sell them drugs but told them I had just taken the last of mine and recommended them to my friend.
They were rude and total dicks to everyone. In court the judge admonished them for grinding up on underage girls on their surveillance videos.
Wholeheartedly agree with the erosion of personal freedoms in the favor of laws made by people 'who know better.' Speeding is a perfect example--any law that 80% of people on the freeway break is a terrible law.
The whole system is blatantly fucked up and I'm more stunned by people's non-chalant reaction or 'it's the law reaction'.
I live in a small town in New Jersey where my mom works for the town.. recently there was a police 'strike' around contract negotiations, where, to prove the town should give them a raise they stopped writing tickets to show the town how much money the police department makes them. What this means to me (and I'm pretty sure is obvious) is that they stopped writing stupid 'money making' tickets and were actually... doing their job of protecting its citizens.
The worst thing about all of this is I have no idea how to fix it.
I can rant on shit like this for a long time but I'll ask one question that hopefully someone will be inclined to share their opinion.
I think one major problem (that most seem to disagree about) is the slowly creeping loss of personal freedom 'for the publics best interest' I think speed limit's are against this freedom, is it really that inconceivable to believe we can't judge what is a safe speed? (obviously reckless driving would still be a thing that police would be used for) or even smaller... Why is it a law that I must wear a seatbelt? Or even drugs.. why does any law care if I want to smoke crack?
I generally agree with this, but it gets tricky when you factor in social services.
If a society decides that it should support health or medical services with public funds then there is a line of logic that conditions based on that support (such as a seatbelt laws, drug laws, or even banning soda) should be allowed.
I don't agree with this, but if I was arguing for that side that would be how I'd frame it.
The seatbelt law is particularly weird to me considering that motorcycles are perfectly legal.
Nearly the entire job of police is to collect evidence of crimes being committed. (Actually stopping crimes in progress is secondary at best).
Falsifying evidence is the opposite of this job. Not just not doing the job, but doing its inverse. Provably falsifying evidence even one time should be enough to be banned from ever being entrusted to carry out this role again.
Forget banned, they should be jailed, if not worse. They are undermining the entire legitimacy of the justice system, a cornerstone of our society. There are few worse crimes than undermining our ability to punish crime itself.
Extraordinary responsibility should be balanced with extraordinary liability.
> Nearly the entire job of police is to collect evidence of crimes being committed.
I have to disagree. Their job is to maintain social control using violence (and the threat of it). If you take food from a store and give it to a hungry person, you'll face a man with a stick.
What happens when you watch a DVD movie? You get threatened that a man with a stick will come after you if you copy it. Similar goes if you simply have the wrong color, which once meant you were a slave... or engage in civil disobedience.
We can fantasize about how something like "police" would act in a future society, who just focus on real problems like violent drunks and child abusers. But that's not our world. We're like people under feudalism talking about how the king is a benevolent administrator of people's needs.
Provably falsifying evidence even one time should be enough to be banned from ever being entrusted to carry out this role again.
Not enough, IMO. The should face the same sentence the accused would have. But then, will we find enough cops and prosecutors without sins to throw the stones?
On a historic note, Stalin's first, bloodiest purges were also governed by quotas and the heads of various departments of the secret police (NKVD) trying to one up each other, exerting pressure on their subordinates, and in the absence of judicial oversight. Stalin ended up replacing over-enthusiastic NKVD chiefs twice, and the last one, the one we remember the most and whose name, Beria, we come to associate with the oppressive force, was actually less brutal then the previous two (Yagoda and Ezhov).
It's veering a bit off-topic, but there's a fascinating historical debate on the Purges going on since the opening of many Soviet archives post-1990. Some historians (though not all) are moving away from the traditional view of Stalin as mastermind in complete control of the situation, and are putting more emphasis on machinations within the NKVD, which seems to have been the source of a lot more independent activity than we had thought, with Stalin often not appearing to be in the loop. In the strong form of the interpretation that's led some to argue that the purges were primarily a function of the bureaucratic machine, with Stalin mostly riding the wave and trying to stay on top of the chaos. In fact they argue that the traditional view, of Stalin as Machiavellian mastermind, was largely an invention of Stalin himself, who was trying to appear in complete control of the situation. Other interpretations revise the traditional view somewhat less, but most do seem to be putting more emphasis on what was going on in the NKVD.
Stalin was and will always be one of the most evil mass murderers in history. The fact he was responsible for the death of tens of millions of people in Eastern Europe is hard to fathom - but it's true.
It baffles the mind how he could have got so far. It must be in part because people didn't speak up early on, either out of fear or because they were uninformed.
Unspeakably sad how bad it got. They probably thought it wasn't possible. Perhaps too trusting?
People today can never become complacent. Never be too distracted, preoccupied or inconvenienced to speak up and stand up against oppression. Even when the oppression is from our own elected governments.
When I worked on a student newspaper in Montreal, a photographer of ours was once detained by Metro (subway) cops and beaten in a back room.
I did the followup and a cop read the police report to me over the phone. It detailed how the photographer had aggressively interfered with the police in the performance of their duties, quoting the French profanities he had uttered.
Problem: the photographer was a unilingual English-speaker from Ontario.
When they told me that, I got a little too excited about getting them to give me these exact quotes from the report. The police officer suddenly said he'd call me back. Fifteen minutes later, he called me back, opening with "aaah, actually we don't know exactly what he said."
This isn't even the most interesting case of cops lying that I know of, but you always remember your first.
The only section of that page that might be relevant to what you just said was " police and military personnel, groups with more reason to deny past illegal drug use, were twice as likely to recant than the general population." You appear to be arguing that police are intrinsically more likely to lie, but this study doesn't support that, it actually supports the quote you are trying to refute.
They are free to do what they want and rarely get any punishment. The only thing they get is Leave Without Pay for some time and that's only when they screwed up really bad.
One of the things privileged members of society have a hard time understanding is the cynical viewpoint of the underprivileged. What does one think when the "justice" system commits fraud and one grows up realizing that you're too poor to afford facts being facts and the truth being the truth? It's George Orwell's "ultimate insult," writ savage.
> Research shows that ordinary human beings lie a lot — multiple times a day — even when there’s no clear benefit to lying.
Years ago, I mentioned the notion of never lying in front of my girlfriend's mom, and she laughed out loud. I was shocked. Is this what most people are really like? I'm beginning to think that I don't like most people.
Story about people lying is exclusively based on interviewing a few people and trusting that they are telling the truth about people lying.
I'm sure it happens, I'm sure it's terrible, but I'm sure interviewing people isn't a useful means of doing anything about it. The whole premise is that people lie and are incentivized to do so, but somehow this is magically not true of the people telling you about the lies?
You must have missed the part about hundreds of drug cases being thrown out because of such lies. Here it is from the OP
> 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.”
> In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.
At least in Maryland where I live, whether you trust the police less (or more) so than other witnesses is one of the half dozen standard things they ask you in voir dire, and saying yes will exclude you from serving on a jury.
Disclaimer: my experience with US police officers is limited to being asked questions by a couple of cops at the airport and watching The Wire.
Assuming that cops do actually have quotas, and that their bonus are tied to achieving these quotas, this effectively creates a for-profit police force. Which mechanically leads to aberrations like the DEA agent mentioned in the Caswell case[1] who was paid taxpayer money to find private properties for seizing. And who watches the watchmen?
Note this situation is not unique: in France, the former right wing government put a heavy emphasis on crime statistics, and since the new "left wing" interior minister seems to follow the same policies, it's probably still the case.
...how expensive would it be to have all policemen use something like mini-cameras with mikes on them and have a full video archive of all police actions? If things like Google-glass catch on, the cost of a one way system without the projector, plus a streaming system via mobile phone app will make this disposable cheap (yeah, then we'll get into the privacy matter - like a video of you being stopped for speeding with a hooker in your car risking to get on youtube for your wife to see... but still)
I've witnessed a police officer lying under oath. I think it was a combination of bad recollection and justifying the lies as minor compared to the overall situation.
In the US perjury is a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to five years.
Does that somehow not apply to the police? If a cop's performance is measured by number of arrests or convictions, and the repercussions of lying under oath is maybe a suspension with pay or worst case being fired, I do not see how this is going to change.
IMHO, law enforcement officials should be held to higher standard.
[+] [-] ryanmarsh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IamBren|13 years ago|reply
"An law school professor and former criminal defense attorney tells you why you should never agree to be interviewed by the police."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
It's quite fascinating really. The police officer he has come up to speak talks about some of the tricks they use to get people to confess and they talk about word tricks they use to get convictions even of innocent people. It's pretty terrifying.
What I find interesting is how many TV shows depict suspects running their mouths to the police like they're all buddies. You're NEVER supposed to do that. Even innocent people can very easily incriminate themselves, as they show in the above video.
Speaking of Texas and executions, have you ever read about Todd Willingham?
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_...
Willingham was convicted of "multiple infanticide" for burning his house down with his daughters still inside. He maintained his innocence until the end, and finally found a fire investigator to review the case shortly before he was scheduled to be executed. The investigator provided conclusive evidence that he DID NOT start the fire, but the Board of Pardons and Paroles apparently didn't even read it:
“The only reasonable conclusion is that the governor’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles ignored scientific evidence.”
And so, sadly, he was executed.
There are so many WTFs in this case, which is probably partly why the article is so long. One thing that stood out is how the witness testimony changed from "he was frantically trying to put the fire out" to "he didn't seem to be doing much of all" after he was charged with starting the fire (the witnesses became biased). And how the fire investigators could be high school drop outs with minimal training, and how they used gut feelings and super outdated science while investigating the case. Their investigation is really what caused him to be convicted. Pretty sad story, and it seems to happen a lot like this, especially in Texas.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
Her belief is that lying is like cocaine, you use it once to get through the case because you know that even though its not strictly the truth the right thing will happen, and then you use it because you really didn't prepare enough, and suddenly its not a 'big deal' in your mind, after all these are people committing crimes right? We're protecting the 'good' people from these scumbags. And you lose yourself.
Exceptionally sad.
[+] [-] PeterisP|13 years ago|reply
Perjury is a serious crime and should be prosecuted as such. Cops should [be made to] understand that lying in court even in small cases carries a risk of criminal charges (in USA, up to 5 years IIRC) instead of internal disciplinary action.
[+] [-] mattstreet|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inuhj|13 years ago|reply
I read the police report and they wrote that i wanted to sell them drugs but told them I had just taken the last of mine and recommended them to my friend.
They were rude and total dicks to everyone. In court the judge admonished them for grinding up on underage girls on their surveillance videos.
[+] [-] dlokshin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siphor|13 years ago|reply
I live in a small town in New Jersey where my mom works for the town.. recently there was a police 'strike' around contract negotiations, where, to prove the town should give them a raise they stopped writing tickets to show the town how much money the police department makes them. What this means to me (and I'm pretty sure is obvious) is that they stopped writing stupid 'money making' tickets and were actually... doing their job of protecting its citizens.
The worst thing about all of this is I have no idea how to fix it.
I can rant on shit like this for a long time but I'll ask one question that hopefully someone will be inclined to share their opinion.
I think one major problem (that most seem to disagree about) is the slowly creeping loss of personal freedom 'for the publics best interest' I think speed limit's are against this freedom, is it really that inconceivable to believe we can't judge what is a safe speed? (obviously reckless driving would still be a thing that police would be used for) or even smaller... Why is it a law that I must wear a seatbelt? Or even drugs.. why does any law care if I want to smoke crack?
this may have been off topic sorry.
[+] [-] gonehome|13 years ago|reply
If a society decides that it should support health or medical services with public funds then there is a line of logic that conditions based on that support (such as a seatbelt laws, drug laws, or even banning soda) should be allowed.
I don't agree with this, but if I was arguing for that side that would be how I'd frame it.
The seatbelt law is particularly weird to me considering that motorcycles are perfectly legal.
[+] [-] forrestthewoods|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] noonespecial|13 years ago|reply
Falsifying evidence is the opposite of this job. Not just not doing the job, but doing its inverse. Provably falsifying evidence even one time should be enough to be banned from ever being entrusted to carry out this role again.
[+] [-] jlgreco|13 years ago|reply
Extraordinary responsibility should be balanced with extraordinary liability.
[+] [-] calibraxis|13 years ago|reply
I have to disagree. Their job is to maintain social control using violence (and the threat of it). If you take food from a store and give it to a hungry person, you'll face a man with a stick.
What happens when you watch a DVD movie? You get threatened that a man with a stick will come after you if you copy it. Similar goes if you simply have the wrong color, which once meant you were a slave... or engage in civil disobedience.
We can fantasize about how something like "police" would act in a future society, who just focus on real problems like violent drunks and child abusers. But that's not our world. We're like people under feudalism talking about how the king is a benevolent administrator of people's needs.
[+] [-] OGinparadise|13 years ago|reply
Not enough, IMO. The should face the same sentence the accused would have. But then, will we find enough cops and prosecutors without sins to throw the stones?
[+] [-] DenisM|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|13 years ago|reply
The log would go something like this:
-- Dec, 14 : Found and eliminated Ivan X.
-- Dec, 17 : Turns out that was the wrong Ivan X.
-- Dec, 20 : Found and eliminated the real Ivan X.
[+] [-] mjn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philwelch|13 years ago|reply
You know things are bad when Josef Stalin replaces you because you're overenthusiastic.
[+] [-] thoughtcriminal|13 years ago|reply
It baffles the mind how he could have got so far. It must be in part because people didn't speak up early on, either out of fear or because they were uninformed.
Unspeakably sad how bad it got. They probably thought it wasn't possible. Perhaps too trusting?
People today can never become complacent. Never be too distracted, preoccupied or inconvenienced to speak up and stand up against oppression. Even when the oppression is from our own elected governments.
[+] [-] neilk|13 years ago|reply
I did the followup and a cop read the police report to me over the phone. It detailed how the photographer had aggressively interfered with the police in the performance of their duties, quoting the French profanities he had uttered.
Problem: the photographer was a unilingual English-speaker from Ontario.
When they told me that, I got a little too excited about getting them to give me these exact quotes from the report. The police officer suddenly said he'd call me back. Fifteen minutes later, he called me back, opening with "aaah, actually we don't know exactly what he said."
This isn't even the most interesting case of cops lying that I know of, but you always remember your first.
[+] [-] Alex3917|13 years ago|reply
Actually there have been studies showing that police lie much more than the general public. E.g. here is a summary of one such study showing that:
http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/statistics/statistics_ar...
[+] [-] jacalata|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saalweachter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saosebastiao|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricardonunez|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wylie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lisper|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|13 years ago|reply
> Research shows that ordinary human beings lie a lot — multiple times a day — even when there’s no clear benefit to lying.
Years ago, I mentioned the notion of never lying in front of my girlfriend's mom, and she laughed out loud. I was shocked. Is this what most people are really like? I'm beginning to think that I don't like most people.
[+] [-] pkteison|13 years ago|reply
I'm sure it happens, I'm sure it's terrible, but I'm sure interviewing people isn't a useful means of doing anything about it. The whole premise is that people lie and are incentivized to do so, but somehow this is magically not true of the people telling you about the lies?
[+] [-] danso|13 years ago|reply
> 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.”
[+] [-] ck2|13 years ago|reply
because they can
[+] [-] jrochkind1|13 years ago|reply
At least in Maryland where I live, whether you trust the police less (or more) so than other witnesses is one of the half dozen standard things they ask you in voir dire, and saying yes will exclude you from serving on a jury.
[+] [-] mercurial|13 years ago|reply
Assuming that cops do actually have quotas, and that their bonus are tied to achieving these quotas, this effectively creates a for-profit police force. Which mechanically leads to aberrations like the DEA agent mentioned in the Caswell case[1] who was paid taxpayer money to find private properties for seizing. And who watches the watchmen?
Note this situation is not unique: in France, the former right wing government put a heavy emphasis on crime statistics, and since the new "left wing" interior minister seems to follow the same policies, it's probably still the case.
1: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/01/17/carmen-ortizs-sordid-rap-sh...
[+] [-] robk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lutusp|13 years ago|reply
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/why-police-...
[+] [-] nnq|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] welder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linuxhansl|13 years ago|reply
Does that somehow not apply to the police? If a cop's performance is measured by number of arrests or convictions, and the repercussions of lying under oath is maybe a suspension with pay or worst case being fired, I do not see how this is going to change.
IMHO, law enforcement officials should be held to higher standard.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]