Why don't police officers get prosecuted properly?

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

MidiChlorian, great point about the police unions. On the list of answers to the titular question, "Why don't police officers get prosecuted properly", that surely is somewhere on the top of that list.

***

Wilson, I appreciate your thoughtful responses, and I am enjoying this discussion. Again excuse the point-by-point way I quote and respond to your post below.

You may think Wikipedia is not reliable, but I disagree [...]

Well Wikipedia disagrees with you which makes your whole argument regarding Wikipedia contradictory. See the page "Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_source" on Wikipedia.

"Wikipedia is not a reliable source" -Wikipedia

Here are a couple of excerpts from americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/a_ ... agedy.html

Before I will accept the analysis of the writer in the article you linked to being accepted into our evidence in this debate, we must first analyze the source. Who is the alleged expert writer of the article? What are his credentials? Does he have a political bias?

What is the publication policy of "AmericanThinker"? Is it a blog or does it follow journalistic standards?

The racial outrage is getting ridiculous. Yesterday a black man was pointing a gun at policemen and he was shot and killed, and the black community went ballistic.

Source, please. Is the black community upset because they don't want black people to be shot by police when those black people are pointing guns at police or are they upset because they disagree with the facts you have alleged without even a single source? If the latter, then your second sentence in know way supports the conclusion of the first, and has very fallacious implications.

Here's a newspaper article about the incident: nypost.com/2014/12/24/officer-shoots-ki ... -louis-pd/

Please stop posting bare links. Links must be summarized, or at least you must specify where I need to look in the article to see what the article allegedly supports as a source, such as a page and/or paragraph number. (Nothing personal to you and your links, but rather this is the way I believe sources must be used in philosophical discussion/debate to be conducive to the discussion/debate.)

Also, you didn't answer my question: "Is the black community upset because they don't want black people to be shot by police when those black people are pointing guns at police or are they upset because they disagree with the facts you have alleged without even a single source?"

I think there's racial prejudice in a lot of people. Blacks against whites, whites against blacks.

That's true, but it also goes deeper than that. Scientific studies show consistently that almost all people (in the USA at least) are racist and share the same stereotypes. It's not just whites against blacks. It's blacks against blacks too. Some studies even show that the racism seems to be unconscious. Regardless of the race of the first person, a first person will unfairly estimate the likelihood that a black person is poorly educated, committing a crime, or unfit for a job. I can provided many sources to show these statistics. However, the most poignant example might be from a hidden camera TV show as explained in my topic on this site: Racism as the epitome of moral philosophy. In the video, black people and white people do the same thing, and black people are treated as terrible criminals and white people are assisted by bystanders. Another poignant but not directly scientific example is simply what is being shown by the #CrimeingWhileWhite hashtag. But again that should only be taken as an illustration of what the statistics actually show in terms of Whites benefiting over blacks from a legal double standard. However, as I said, I have the raw data sourced by scientific studies if the reality of statistically verified discrimination is doubted, which it is my understanding you do not doubt but rather argue is justified below.

But it depends on your definition of prejudice. Is it prejudice to think that a black man is more likely to murder someone than an Asian man?

Because he is black? Yes. It's not only prejudice; it's foolish. It's a misuse of statistical knowledge--applying the general to the specific, that is. It's like pinning an 80-year old-man with bad lungs against a fit, strong woman in a boxing match and betting on the 80-year-old on grounds that 'statistically men beat women in fights'.

Or is that simply looking at the statistics? (Black people are almost ten times as likely to be murdered and to commit murder than whites and Asians.

Source please. And please make sure it is a source that black people commit murder more often than whites/asians not a source that black people get convicted of murder more often than whites/asians. The latter would just support the argument of prejudice being a huge factor in society and racists being people who foolishly misapply and misunderstand statistics and/or believe patently false things.

Young black men are much more likely to be incarcerated than whites and Asians, and while you may think that's partly due to inconsistent enforcement of laws, I think that it's a fact that there's a culture of criminality in some inner cities, and a lot more young black men are inclined to break the law than whites and Asians.

You thinking it doesn't make it true. Do you have any credible evidence or argument to support the would-be conclusion that the disproportionate incarceration of certain races is due to an alleged culture of criminality as opposed to racism in creating the laws, enforcing the laws, and judicially following through to incarceration? The racial prejudice that would cause two people who commit the same act to statistically receive significantly different sentences/verdicts/arrest-records on average simply because they are different races is easily verifiable. And it's not even from the law. We could show that--just for one example of how racism spreads in effect--unemployed people are more likely to get arrested and that all things the same a white person will get a job over a black person. Indeed, studies have shown that simply sending in identical fake resumes to jobs with only the name changed leads to the black-sounding names not getting called over the white-sounding names. That's just one of many examples. But really the issue is that it's either nature or nurture/ And while there is plenty of evidence the systemic discrimination against blacks leads to at least a large part of these discrepancies, I have seen no evidence that black people are genetically predisposed to committing crime or being poor, let alone having a genetic predisposition to a culture thereof.

We can discuss the reasons for that, but I don't think there's much doubt about it.) Here's a link: poynter.org/news/mediawire/266133/fact- ... -shooting/

Reasons for what? (I am not clicking on a link unless I am told exactly what it is supposed to be a source of, exactly why it is a source and exactly where the text that supports the fact you say it supports can be found.)

So I don't doubt that a lot of policemen who deal mostly with black criminals harbor a mistrust of black people. I hope that most cops treat individuals as individuals rather than racial stereotypes [...]

I agree with this part but then it flows into the below:

[...] but a heightened suspicion of black suspects is somewhat justified, based on statistics.

No, that is logically invalid. It is quite clearly a circular argument. The so-called justification for the law enforcement and judicial system being prejudiced against blacks by using stereotypes is that the law enforcement and judicial system arrests and imprisons more blacks. That's blatantly circular and logically invalid, even if the latter is separated by several paragraphs of text from the former.

Is there any other alleged justification for the existence of a racist law enforcement and racist judicial system that statistically speaking will more often arrest, more often convict, and give a longer average sentence to a black person versus a white person if they commit the same act and face the same evidence?

But the point of my statement was that the main problem is in how policemen deal with people considered dangerous, regardless of race. I'm sure there are plenty of cases of white suspects who weren't treated kindly by white cops, and plenty of cases of black suspects who weren't treated kindly by black cops. But of course those incidents don't become "causes"

I agree very strongly with the first sentence in the above quote. This isn't about one man who was killed by the police. Thousands of people are killed by the police each year in the USA, many unarmed and many children. Not only are there problems with police procedure that you wisely point out; But also this happens because of other factors such as the existence of laws that needlessly, violently and expensively create a massive non-violent criminal class with many lives lost, some as intended damage and some as collateral damage, in the likes of the war on drugs.

[Wilson]

Scott, no offense, but you're acting unreasonably in your insistence on gold-plated, expert-validated, officially-vetted links before you read them. I'm not on a crusade here, I don't have unlimited time to read through a hundred links to find one that will meet your high standards. You asked for links, I googled, picked one that sounded applicable, and posted it. If you're interested in getting the facts rather than making a point, please search, yourself. The incident I mentioned was pretty clear-cut. Most of the civic leaders, including black leaders, are telling the public that this is a case of the black kid initiating the incident. The link I gave you specifies the particular case and you can investigate further if you don't believe my account.

In the case of the statistics I posted about how many black people are murdered compared to whites and Asians, that's a fairly reliable number. It has nothing to do with enforcement tendencies or racism, it's simply counting the number of murder victims compared to the population. And I've read over and over that the great majority of black murder victims are killed by black people. Really beyond dispute, so I'm not going to spend time searching for links to satisfy you. If you disagree, find me some evidence.

Scott, you impress me as an intelligent guy and a great moderator. However, on the subject of race I feel that you are unable to look at reality squarely in the face. It's obvious that young black men are MUCH more likely to be involved in crime than young white or Asian men. (Young Hispanic men are also more likely than whites and Asians.) Anyone who doesn't accept that fact is simply refusing to accept the evidence around him. In other words, I think on this particular subject you feel so badly for how black people have been treated in the past that you have turned off your critical reasoning faculties.

We can discuss the reasons for increased black crime, how the statistics are distorted by variations in police attitudes or racism, what should be done, and so on - but if someone refuses to agree that crime is more of a problem in the black community than elsewhere, I feel that he is on a holy mission rather than interested in the truth.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Scott, no offense, but you're acting unreasonably in your insistence on gold-plated, expert-validated, officially-vetted links before you read them. I'm not on a crusade here, I don't have unlimited time to read through a hundred links to find one that will meet your high standards. You asked for links, I googled, picked one that sounded applicable, and posted it. If you're interested in getting the facts rather than making a point, please search, yourself.

I understand your complaint, but as you don't have the time I certainly do not have the time to read through piles of text you've merely Google searched a link to in search of evidence in support of your otherwise unsourced claims. If I wished to argue with myself, I will without using the forums.

The racial outrage is getting ridiculous. Yesterday a black man was pointing a gun at policemen and he was shot and killed, and the black community went ballistic.

Source, please. Is the black community upset because they don't want black people to be shot by police when those black people are pointing guns at police or are they upset because they disagree with the facts you have alleged without even a single source? If the latter, then your second sentence in know way supports the conclusion of the first, and has very fallacious implications.

Here's a newspaper article about the incident: nypost.com/2014/12/24/officer-shoots-ki ... -louis-pd/

Please stop posting bare links. Links must be summarized, or at least you must specify where I need to look in the article to see what the article allegedly supports as a source, such as a page and/or paragraph number. (Nothing personal to you and your links, but rather this is the way I believe sources must be used in philosophical discussion/debate to be conducive to the discussion/debate.)

Also, you didn't answer my question: "Is the black community upset because they don't want black people to be shot by police when those black people are pointing guns at police or are they upset because they disagree with the facts you have alleged without even a single source?"

The incident I mentioned was pretty clear-cut. Most of the civic leaders, including black leaders, are telling the public that this is a case of the black kid initiating the incident. The link I gave you specifies the particular case and you can investigate further if you don't believe my account.

If it is clear-cut, please answer the question then: "Is the black community upset because they don't want black people to be shot by police when those black people are pointing guns at police or are they upset because they disagree with the facts you have alleged without even a single source?"

Is it prejudice to think that a black man is more likely to murder someone than an Asian man? Or is that simply looking at the statistics? (Black people are almost ten times as likely to be murdered and to commit murder than whites and Asians.

Source please. And please make sure it is a source that black people commit murder more often than whites/asians not a source that black people get convicted of murder more often than whites/asians. The latter would just support the argument of prejudice being a huge factor in society and racists being people who foolishly misapply and misunderstand statistics and/or believe patently false things.

In the case of the statistics I posted about how many black people are murdered compared to whites and Asians, that's a fairly reliable number. It has nothing to do with enforcement tendencies or racism, it's simply counting the number of murder victims compared to the population.

I do not dispute that black people are murdered more often than whites in the USA, nor do I see how that relates to the topic directly anyway. My concern is with the claim that "Black people are almost ten times as likely [...] to commit murder than whites and Asians." Again, I ask what is the source for that statistical claim, and again as I asked before are you sure the source actually says that black people commit more murder 10x as often as opposed to getting convicted of murder 10x as often?

And I've read over and over that the great majority of black murder victims are killed by black people.

The majority of white victims are killed by white people. What's your point?

If you disagree, find me some evidence.

Shifting the burden of proof fallacy. You presented the statistics for which I am asking for evidence.

Scott, you impress me as an intelligent guy and a great moderator. However, on the subject of race I feel that you are unable to look at reality squarely in the face. It's obvious that young black men are MUCH more likely to be involved in crime than young white or Asian men.

To this I would have 2 sets of questions that I think a person will need to answer for themselves to be considered to be 'looking reality in the face':

1) What do you mean by "involved in crime"? Do you mean that they get arrested, convicted and/or imprisoned for committing crime more often or do you mean that they actually commit crime more often?

2) Are you saying that black people are genetically predisposed to committing more crime, or is the alleged discrepancy due to nurture (i.e. society being racist)?

(Young Hispanic men are also more likely than whites and Asians.)

Incidentally, hispanic isn't a continental race like black and white. Hispanics, like everyone else, are also either White or Black or Asian or Native-American or a combination thereof. The Latin/Greco distinction is separate and more recent than the Asian/African/American/European ancestral distinction.

Anyone who doesn't accept that fact is simply refusing to accept the evidence around him.

What evidence? Saying evidence is there doesn't make it so. Doing a quick google search for said evidence and then just posting a link to some internet site that seems like it might support something similar without having the 'unlimited time' to post properly specific citation doesn't make it so.

In other words, I think on this particular subject you feel so badly for how black people have been treated in the past that you have turned off your critical reasoning faculties.

This is either ad hominem or you have put the cart before the horse. Instead of providing evidence that what you have claimed is true, you are making conclusions about what that would mean about my reasoning abilities if what you claimed is true. Those conclusions are irrelevant and unconvincing.

We can discuss the reasons for increased black crime, how the statistics are distorted by variations in police attitudes or racism, what should be done, and so on - but if someone refuses to agree that crime is more of a problem in the black community than elsewhere [...]

The problem with agreeing with that statement and other similar ones you have made is that it is not even clear what you mean. I have asked repeatedly and yet to get answer to my questions. "Crime is more of a problem in the[...]"? What does that even mean? I have never disagreed that blacks get arrested more often than whites and that that is problem.

[...] I feel that he is on a holy mission rather than interested in the truth.

I feel that that is an ad hominem argument. It is a common way to respond when someone disagrees, but it is fallacious and unconvincing. In contrast, when someone disagrees with me, I ask them for evidence to support their claims with which I disagree, and I present evidence or argument for the claims of mine with which they explicitly disagree, instead of making conclusions about that person's personal goals, intentions or character.

[Wilson]

Well, this is turning into quite a thang.

You didn't trust my summary and asked for a source for that story, so I posted a link. And you said:

Please stop posting bare links. Links must be summarized, or at least you must specify where I need to look in the article to see what the article allegedly supports as a source, such as a page and/or paragraph number. (Nothing personal to you and your links, but rather this is the way I believe sources must be used in philosophical discussion/debate to be conducive to the discussion/debate.)

Also, you didn't answer my question: "Is the black community upset because they don't want black people to be shot by police when those black people are pointing guns at police or are they upset because they disagree with the facts you have alleged without even a single source?"

My point was that here was a situation where a black man pointed a gun at a policeman and was shot. As far as I can tell the shooting was justified. Yet the black community began demonstrating against the police. You ask me why the black community is upset? My answer is that in the present climate the facts of the case almost don't matter to those members of the black community who are protesting. There's a general anger against policemen and they are looking for any excuse to express that anger. Some of them just want to riot and cause damage to show their frustration. I find that rather disgusting.

Please search for articles about the incident in question. You refused to accept my interpretation of events, which is fine, but you then refused to search for articles about it. In other words, it seems to me that you were more interested in refuting what I had written than in learning what actually happened. Bad form. Facts do matter.

I do not dispute that black people are murdered more often than whites in the USA, nor do I see how that relates to the topic directly anyway. My concern is with the claim that "Black people are almost ten times as likely [...] to commit murder than whites and Asians." Again, I ask what is the source for that statistical claim, and again as I asked before are you sure the source actually says that black people commit more murder 10x as often as opposed to getting convicted of murder 10x as often?

And I've read over and over that the great majority of black murder victims are killed by black people.

The majority of white victims are killed by white people. What's your point?

Well, if you agree that many, many more black people are murdered than whites proportionately (close to 10 to 1, I believe), and that the great majority of murder victims are killed by members of the same race, doesn't it follow that blacks are committing more murders than whites (proportionately)? I think I posted statistics that showed a hugely disproportionate number of black murder victims, and the reason I posted that rather than conviction rates was to eliminate for the most part the effect of the criminal justice system, since I assumed that you feel that any differences in incarceration rates must be due to racism and couldn't possible be due to differences in behavior, so I felt you'd not be swayed by conviction statistics.

In other words, I think on this particular subject you feel so badly for how black people have been treated in the past that you have turned off your critical reasoning faculties.

This is either ad hominem or you have put the cart before the horse. Instead of providing evidence that what you have claimed is true, you are making conclusions about what that would mean about my reasoning abilities if what you claimed is true. Those conclusions are irrelevant and unconvincing.

I was stating my opinion as why you believe as you do, based on what you've written. That's allowed, is it not? I wasn't trying to be insulting. Honestly, I have trouble understanding how anyone can dispute that the crime statistics indicate a real problem in the black community. And ignoring the facts of an issue makes it impossible to find a fix.

[Theophane]

Bottom line, don't brandish a gun in public, don't resist arrest, maybe even be respectful, and your chances of getting killed by a policeman are just about nil.

Indeed! But it is possible to use racism as a shield and get away with bad behaviour on account of your race. Collective punishment is unfair yet it happens every day. Does your skin-colour entitle you to commit crimes with impunity? It shouldn't, but it does. Political Correctness is easily more trouble than it's worth, given the extremes to which Liberal PC guardians go. In the case of white-on-black violence, its opposite (black-on-white violence) is something we treat like a myth. Does the "Knock-Out Game" really exist or do white people lie about being assaulted by city-dwelling blacks?


The racial profiling of suspects by law enforcement is unjust but inevitable. Police officers don't get prosecuted properly for the same reason dangerous felons escape justice and make a mockery of the legal system.

Scott, you seem to have adopted a rather black-and-white moral view of these matters (no pun).

[Obvious Leo]

Does your skin-colour entitle you to commit crimes with impunity?

No it doesn't. If this is your ambition you'll have to become a banker and get a job on Wall St.

Regards Leo

[PaulNZ]

I was a police officer for 15 years, the first 6 of which were on the street in uniform. I was trained to apply the carotid hold, which appeared to be what the officer who put his arm around the offenders neck was trying to apply. Without applying pressure to the windpipe (because it sits in the "V" of the elbow) it reduces the bloodflow to the brain causing a temporary loss of consciousness for about 8 to 10 seconds - usually enough to apply the handcuffs if you're quick enough. It is notoriously difficult to apply to large people and it didn't appear to me as though the arresting officer trying to apply the hold managed to get it on - he ended up using his weight to pull the offenders head toward the ground. Large people are also susceptible to positional asphyxia - a physical inability to breathe brought about by a large gut restricting the offenders ability to breathe in and out. Deaths have ocurred both from carotid holds that are applied properly and from positional asphyxia where offenders are restrained. I am not aware of any deaths to have ocurred from a carotid hold that has been applied incorrectly i.e. crushing the windpipe. Squeezing the windpipe often ocurrs but this chap was talking. When this hold has been applied to me in training incorrectly and my windpipe was squeezed, my only reflex was to cough violently, almost to the point of vomitting, but as soon as the pressure was released I was fine. The only way a properly applied carotid hold could cause serious injury or death would be if there was a pre-existing medical condition or the officer applying the hold dropped the offender after rendering the person unconscious.

Just a few thoughts from an operational perspective.

[ScottieX]

I think generally it would be hard to prove a police officer was guilty of a crime. Police generally will have a reasonable record of honesty, those they harm will probably have a long record of dishonesty and police will have a wide range of circumstances where harming that person is legitimate and a large support network for finding those reasons such that they can be used in a defense.

And a good defense almost always beats a good prosecution (or at least so I learned from the OJ Simpson case).

[Theophane]

There's nothing wrong being a criminal, Scott. Be it a criminal with a badge or one without.

-- Updated January 2nd, 2015, 5:26 pm to add the following --

There's nothing wrong being a criminal, Scott, be it a criminal with a badge or one without.You said it yourself in Post #13.

[Obvious Leo]

I think generally it would be hard to prove a police officer was guilty of a crime.

Why is it harder to prove this for a police officer than it is for any other citizen? Surely this is the central thrust of the entire OP because what you say is true and damn well shouldn't be. If the rule of law is to have any meaning it must be uniformly applied.

And a good defense almost always beats a good prosecution

This is due to a simple flaw in our criminal justice system which admits of no easy resolution. Reasonable doubt is impossible to define and trial by jury is vastly less just than trial by empanelled judges who better understand the nuances of criminal law. In the US the lawyers even get to pick the jury, a corruption of justice which makes them the laughing stock of the jurisprudence world.

Regards Leo

[PaulNZ]

I think generally it would be hard to prove a police officer was guilty of a crime.

Why is it harder to prove this for a police officer than it is for any other citizen? Surely this is the central thrust of the entire OP because what you say is true and damn well shouldn't be. If the rule of law is to have any meaning it must be uniformly applied.

And a good defense almost always beats a good prosecution

This is due to a simple flaw in our criminal justice system which admits of no easy resolution. Reasonable doubt is impossible to define and trial by jury is vastly less just than trial by empanelled judges who better understand the nuances of criminal law. In the US the lawyers even get to pick the jury, a corruption of justice which makes them the laughing stock of the jurisprudence world.

Regards Leo

Juries and Judges are human beings foremost and as such are subject to the same prejudices and cognitive biases that we are all subject to, to varying degrees. Compounding this is a system weighted in the favour of those being prosecuted, simply as a safety margin to minimise the number of those persons wrongfully convicted. Judges have many rules about what warnings to give a jury, in particular about how much weight they attach to witness testimony, identity where identity is in issue, intoxication, reputation and any number of other things that arise duriong the course of a hearing. The prosecution present facts within the rules of evidence, whereas the defence can "play" with the evidence and hypothesise all sorts of unlikely scenarios to create doubt. The threshold of beyond reasonable doubt is frustrating for prosecutors but necessary. There are a lot of influences on a jury and on Judges, most of which relate to how they feel, not necessarily the evidence presented. I have known Judges be swayed quite clearly to onlookers like myself, by position in society and status of the accused. This again is human nature and is shown in the crime statistics. Compare the sentences handed out to middle class white people with the same offending comitted by poorer coloured people, and typically there is a noticable difference. It is human nature to catogorise and group things and behave in a groupish manner. The colour of the skin is one of those groupings; it is morally wrong but we are groupish animals. I suspect these types of influence are at play in all people, police, judges, offenders and through all ethnicities. Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind talks about some of this stuff. Nasty stuff but I suppose from an evolutionary perspective, quite useful for survival - us versus them, which after all is exactly what the Court environment is.

[ScottieX]

Why is it harder to prove this for a police officer than it is for any other citizen? Surely this is the central thrust of the entire OP because what you say is true and damn well shouldn't be. If the rule of law is to have any meaning it must be uniformly applied.

I think you are confusing the law being universally applied with getting fair outcomes. These two things are not the same.

If you want to correct for the fact that in practice police are not convicted you need the rule of law to NOT be uniformly applied, some sort of "with the powers of the police come extra responsibilities - and legal risks."

This is due to a simple flaw in our criminal justice system which admits of no easy resolution. Reasonable doubt is impossible to define and trial by jury is vastly less just than trial by empanelled judges who better understand the nuances of criminal law. In the US the lawyers even get to pick the jury, a corruption of justice which makes them the laughing stock of the jurisprudence world.

Well in theory you could just gradually increase the amount of trials that go to judges over a decade or two. But I suppose there are forces at work that would resist that sort of a move.