Courts Incessantly Move Goalpost To Accommodate Police Violence

One of the most impor­tant under­pin­nings that gird police vio­lence in the United States is dis­trict, appel­late, and the supreme court’s will­ing­ness to move the goal­post to accom­mo­date police violence.
Police offi­cers and their depart­ments know this, so when cit­i­zens stand on their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, police bla­tant­ly tell them they do not care about what they do.
Not only are they unfazed by the fact that even if suc­cess­ful­ly sued, they them­selves will not pay a pen­ny of the judg­ment they are über-con­fi­dent they will not be pros­e­cut­ed for their crimes, and if pros­e­cut­ed, judges will go as far as to vacate a jury ver­dict to favor them.
The cal­cu­lus for the courts seems to be that despite what the con­sti­tu­tion says and how right the cit­i­zens are about their rights under the con­sti­tu­tion, the right of the state to con­trol the cit­i­zen­ry is more important.
Despite the hun­dreds of thou­sands of videos on social media that show police clear­ly bru­tal­iz­ing and mur­der­ing cit­i­zens, only a minus­cule num­ber of them are held account­able, and even when con­vict­ed, they are giv­en a slap on the wrist com­pared to the penal­ties hand­ed down to ordi­nary cit­i­zens. Black cit­i­zens are at even greater peril.
Starting with 2015, the aver­age pros­e­cu­tion of crim­i­nal cops is up to rough­ly 13 a year — mean­ing cops are now pros­e­cut­ed in less than 2 per­cent of fatal shoot­ings, up from less than 1 per­cent. But con­vic­tions haven’t increased much yet. Still, even the cas­es that result in charges are a tiny frac­tion of fatal police shootings.
Even as the United States cas­ti­gate and penal­ize oth­er less pow­er­ful nations for alleged human rights abuse in their secu­ri­ty forces, American police con­sis­tent­ly con­tin­ue to be among the words most lethal and abusive.
Mapping Police vio­lence col­lect­ed data on near­ly 1,200 killings by police in 2022. “We com­piled this infor­ma­tion from media reports, obit­u­ar­ies, pub­lic records, and data­bas­es like The Gun Violence Archive and the Washington Post. As such, this report rep­re­sents the most com­pre­hen­sive pub­lic account­ing of dead­ly police vio­lence in 2022. Our analy­sis sug­gests a sub­stan­tial pro­por­tion of all killings by police in 2022 could have been pre­vent­ed and that spe­cif­ic poli­cies and prac­tices might pre­vent police killings in the future”.(https://​police​vi​o​lencere​port​.org)

Additionally, pros­e­cu­tors’ unwill­ing­ness to pros­e­cute crimes com­mit­ted by the police fur­ther embold­ens offi­cers to be brazen with their bru­tal­i­ty. Some experts look­ing at this issue have argued pros­e­cu­tors’ close work­ing rela­tion­ship with police col­ors their judg­ment as it per­tains to the pros­e­cu­tion of police officers.
I believe it goes much deep­er than mere work­ing rela­tion­ships. Politics and ide­ol­o­gy are sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tors to that dynamic.
In June 2020, the New York Times reviewed nation­al dis­patch data from the FBI and found that just 4% of offi­cers’ time is devot­ed to vio­lent crime. Fighting and inves­ti­gat­ing vio­lent crimes is hard­ly high on the agen­da because it does not gen­er­ate rev­enue for cities and munic­i­pal­i­ties. In fact, it can rea­son­ably be argued cops are more inter­est­ed in traf­fic stops to get the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of dri­vers so they may gen­er­ate rev­enue and check for warrants.
This is the feed­ing tube to the for-prof­it prisons.
So while many vio­lent crimes, includ­ing mur­ders and miss­ing per­son reports, go unsolved, police are busy pulling dri­vers over because they failed to sig­nal before mak­ing a turn.
As you digest that, remem­ber that your won­der­ful supreme court ruled that police have no spe­cif­ic oblig­a­tion to pro­tect. In its 1989 deci­sion in DeShaney v.Winnebago County Department of Social Services.
Yet in anoth­er deci­sion, the court ruled local gov­ern­ments don’t owe duties to pro­tect par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als,” they owe a duty to the pub­lic to pro­tect. But that means that as a com­mu­ni­ty, we have a right for the police to pro­tect us.”
The log­ic here is that col­lec­tive­ly, cit­i­zens have a right to police pro­tec­tion, but indi­vid­u­al­ly we are on our own.
It makes a lot of sense, — — –not.

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.