Michigan Case Offers An Example Of How Public Trust Suffers When Police Officers Lie

A Black man who was detained by police dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing walk in a qui­et com­mu­ni­ty north­west of Detroit says the white offi­cer who threw him against a squad car, cuffed him and accused him of plan­ning to break into a car also told a sig­nif­i­cant lie. Brian Chaney says he asked for a super­vi­sor dur­ing his arrest in Keego Harbor, Michigan, and Police Officer Richard Lindquist told him that anoth­er offi­cer was present and in charge. The prob­lem: That sec­ond offi­cer was not a super­vi­sor or even a mem­ber of the Keego Harbor Police Department. Lindquist was nev­er dis­ci­plined and his chief says that while a sus­pect has the right to request a super­vi­sor, what the offi­cer did was OK. “An offi­cer can lie in the field when he’s not under oath,” Keego Harbor Police Chief John Fitzgerald said in a depo­si­tion in Chaney’s $10 mil­lion wrong­ful deten­tion law­suit.
But with American trust in police plum­met­ing, but­tressed by cell­phone and body­cam videos that can expose untruths, a pro­fes­sion once broad­ly con­sid­ered above reproach has seen its rep­u­ta­tion suffer.

“It’s well accept­ed that the weak­est and most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of soci­ety are the biggest vic­tims of coer­cive prac­tices, like police being dis­hon­est and decep­tive prac­tices in inter­ro­ga­tions,” said James Craven, a legal asso­ciate with Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice and a for­mer crim­i­nal defense attor­ney. In a Gallup poll last year, 43% of respon­dents said they have a great deal or quite a lot of con­fi­dence in the police, down from 51% in 2021 and 64% in 2004. Gallup says 43% is an all-time low. “We need police we can trust,” Craven said. “We need to start envi­sion­ing a police force that’s built with integri­ty at the cen­ter.” Several recent cas­es under­score that need. In May, a Washington, D.C., police offi­cer was arrest­ed on charges that he obstruct­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion and lied about leak­ing con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to Proud Boys extrem­ist group leader Enrique Tarrio. A white police offi­cer and union leader in Portland, Oregon, was fired in 2022for leak­ing a false report from a 911 caller who claimed a Black city com­mis­sion­er had been involved in a hit-and-run. The depart­ment lat­er rein­stat­ed him.

A for­mer offi­cer in Louisville, Kentucky, admit­ted in court that she and anoth­er offi­cer fal­si­fied infor­ma­tion in a search war­rant that led to the 2020 fatal police shoot­ing of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman. Police are allowed to use decep­tion and present false evi­dence dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions to get sus­pects to admit guilt, accord­ing to a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing. New York State has con­sid­ered leg­is­la­tion that would ban police from lying to sus­pects dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tions, while Illinois,Colorado and Oregon pro­hib­it police from lying when inter­ro­gat­ing juve­niles. Chaney, a licensed ther­a­pist and cer­ti­fied hyp­nother­a­pist from sub­ur­ban Detroit, says in his law­suit that in July 2021 he dropped his two teenage sons off at a gym. He was walk­ing for exer­cise along a com­mer­cial street in Keego Harbor, about 30 miles (50 kilo­me­ters) north­west of Detroit, when Lindquist drove up behind and shout­ed: “Get your hands out of your pock­et!” According to the law­suit, Lindquist told Chaney, “I’m going to frisk you because you look like you have a weapon and were going to break into cars.”

Lindquist called him a “dog,” shoved him in the back and pushed him against the squad car, injur­ing his groin. His wrist was hurt from the hand­cuffs in the ordeal last­ing more than 20 min­utes, Chaney’s com­plaint says. Chaney said Lindquist only released him after he asked, “What are you going to do next, put your knee into my neck?” ref­er­enc­ing the killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.

Fitzgerald said in his depo­si­tion on July 18, 2022, that Lindquist was­n’t dis­ci­plined over the lie about the super­vi­sor, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as “an attempt­ed de-esca­la­tion, momen­tary spec­u­la­tion.” He insist­ed lying is not pol­i­cy in his depart­ment but that “it’s what they’re allowed to do.” Citizens who have been detained can ask for a super­vi­sor — in this case, Fitzgerald — and offi­cers should call him. Lindquist didn’t call and he did­n’t think the offi­cer gave Chaney his phone num­ber, Fitzgerald said. The chief declined to com­ment to The Associated Press, cit­ing the pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion, and sev­er­al nation­al and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions advo­cat­ing on behalf of law enforce­ment did not respond to mes­sages from the AP. Lindquist no longer works for the Keego Harbor police and the AP was unable to reach him. Attorneys rep­re­sent­ing Lindquist in Chaney’s case did not respond to requests for com­ment. “You should not have the right to lie,” said Leonard Mungo, Chaney’s attor­ney. “That’s some­thing that we’re writ­ing into the moral fab­ric of the most pow­er­ful insti­tu­tion of our soci­ety that has the author­i­ty to put you in jail.” Detroit-area attor­ney David A. Robinson said the lies are a disappointment.

“People hold police in high esteem,” said Robinson, who spent 13 years as a Detroit police offi­cer. “A cop’s fall from grace is high­er than that of a reg­u­lar per­son when he is caught in a lie, sim­ply because of this per­cep­tion.” Robinson is Black and most of his clients are Black peo­ple alleg­ing civ­il rights vio­la­tions by police. “My expe­ri­ence with the pro­fes­sion reveals police offi­cers seem often to take lib­er­ties in reports in order to jus­ti­fy force or but­tress an arrest,” Robinson said. “It is there­fore fool­ish to take an officer’s word at face val­ue.” Once some­one real­izes an offi­cer has lied to them, trust is dif­fi­cult to restore, accord­ing to Robert Feldman, pro­fes­sor of Psychological and Brain Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Basically, I think police offi­cers lie because they can,” Feldman said. “Most of the time they are not caught lying, and even if they are, they get away with it. If you come to an under­stand­ing the police are not cred­i­ble and they use deceit, it makes you sus­pi­cious of every­thing they are saying.”

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