The United States Far Exceeds Most Wealthy Democracies In Killings By Police, And Officers Seldom Face Legal Consequences

It simply isn’t possible to understand the criminal justice crisis in the United States without properly understanding how these officers of the court, ostensible stewards of justice, have worked for decades to build a system of overcriminalization, blatant race-based discrimination, rampant police brutality, and mass incarceration. (David S. D’Amato)

Where else in the world are police offi­cers con­vict­ed of crimes allowed to con­tin­ue serv­ing as police offi­cers except the United States? Is it any won­der then that cops com­mit felonies indis­crim­i­nate­ly against the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect with impunity?
Imagine being a law enforce­ment offi­cer and being allowed to plead down from a felony com­mit­ted as an offi­cer and allowed to remain a police officer!
I spent a decade as a police offi­cer in Jamaica from 1982 to 1992; I laugh at this because no offi­cer of the Jamaican Constabulary Force in its long his­to­ry has ever com­mit­ted a felony was ever allowed to plead guilty to a mis­de­meanor and remain an officer.
In fact, in my time, a mis­de­meanor con­vic­tion meant instant dis­missal from our depart­ment. Is it any won­der then that American police offi­cers steal drugs from deal­ers, steal their dirty mon­ey, sell the drugs back to oth­er deal­ers, plant drugs on peo­ple they do not like, lie in their state­ments, lie on the wit­ness stand, fal­si­fy evi­dence, bru­tal­ize and mur­der inno­cent unarmed citizens?
They are reg­u­lar gangs of bul­lies roam­ing around to see who they can rob and steal from as part of the con­cept of polic­ing for prof­it that is a sta­ple in American policing…U.S. polic­ing has also drawn con­tro­ver­sy over exces­sive fines, fees, and asset for­fei­ture, a wide­spread prac­tice in which depart­ments prof­it from seiz­ing the assets of cit­i­zens, many of whom are nev­er charged with a crime.

At least 630 police offi­cers have been con­vict­ed of a crime in California over the past decade — an aver­age of more than one every week. Nearly a fifth of those offi­cers are still work­ing or on the job more than a year after sen­tenc­ing. Their con­vic­tions range from dri­ving under the influ­ence to sex offens­es — some with minors — to domes­tic abuse and assault. Officers charged with felonies that would bar them from car­ry­ing a gun and, con­se­quent­ly, from work­ing as a police offi­cer fre­quent­ly plea down to less­er offens­es that enable them to keep their gun — and their job. And even offi­cers who are ter­mi­nat­ed from one depart­ment often con­tin­ue work­ing as cops by jump­ing from one depart­ment to the next. The United States’ own Council on Foreign Relations reports the following.

• Other advanced democ­ra­cies orga­nize, fund, train, arm, and dis­ci­pline their police offi­cers dif­fer­ent­ly than the United States does.
• Many coun­tries, includ­ing the United States, strug­gle with police bru­tal­i­ty and tense rela­tions between law enforce­ment and minor­i­ty communities.
• The United States far exceeds most wealthy democ­ra­cies in killings by police, and offi­cers sel­dom face legal consequences.

Why do you think that the United States sel­dom dis­ci­plines its police offi­cers when they run afoul of the laws? Could it be that the answer is right there in the Council’s sec­ond paragraph?
Could it be that polic­ing is still tan­ta­mount to slave catch­ing as it was when the idea was first con­cep­tu­al­ized despite all of the talks about American excep­tion­al­ism and American advance­ment? Researchers esti­mate that one in ten police calls in the United States is relat­ed to men­tal health. Approximately one-fifth of peo­ple shot and killed by police in 2019 showed signs of men­tal ill­ness. This means that twen­ty (20) per­cent of all the peo­ple they killed in 2019 were peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health issues. It is not that the offi­cers do not know that most of these peo­ple are expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal issues, they are often told by their dis­patch or told by rel­a­tives on arrival. Shooting a dis­traught per­son down in cold blood is done as soon as they can con­trive a legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to fit their nar­ra­tive that they were in fear for their lives. In some cas­es the vic­tim they gun down is stark naked and unarmed.

Basic U.S. train­ing pro­grams take twen­ty-one weeks on aver­age, where­as sim­i­lar European pro­grams can last more than three years. In Finland and Norway, recruits study polic­ing in nation­al col­leges, spend­ing part of the time in an intern­ship with local police, and earn degrees in crim­i­nal jus­tice or relat­ed fields.
With hun­dreds of police acad­e­mies, the United States lacks nation­al stan­dards for what recruits should learn. U.S. acad­e­mies tend to empha­size tech­ni­cal skills rather than com­mu­ni­ca­tion and restraint. According to a 2013 U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report, acad­e­mies on aver­age spent the most time — sev­en­ty-one hours — on firearm skills, com­pared with twen­ty-one hours on de-esca­la­tion train­ing (which teach­es how to use con­ver­sa­tion and oth­er tac­tics to calm a sit­u­a­tion with­out using force) and cri­sis-inter­ven­tion strate­gies. In Germany, firearms train­ing focus­es on how to avoid using force. Japanese offi­cers are trained in mar­tial arts.

The United States far sur­pass­es most wealthy democ­ra­cies in police killings. U.S. police killed an esti­mat­ed 7,638 peo­ple between 2013 and 2019. (According to the same data­base, they killed anoth­er 1,125 peo­ple in 2020.) In com­par­i­son, at least 224 peo­ple died in encoun­ters with Canadian police between 2013 and 2019. Some coun­tries, such as Finland and Norway, have gone years with­out police killings.
A study done by the US Department of Justice found that the lack of data on police crime is clear­ly a prob­lem; since the devel­op­ment of strate­gies to mit­i­gate police crime in the least requires that they be doc­u­ment­ed and described in some sys­tem­at­ic and gen­er­al­iz­able man­ner. You can’t fix what you don’t know.
If you do not want to fix it you do not keep a record of it; that has been the strat­e­gy of the United States on police vio­lence. If there is no data to look at there is no prob­lem, no data means they can­not be con­front­ed with the facts.
Failure to doc­u­ment in a uni­fied and sys­temic way the vio­lence com­mit­ted by law enforce­ment in the United States has embold­ened police to con­tin­ue to act with impuni­ty in minor­i­ty communities.
Most of the almost 18,000 police depart­ments are allowed to with­hold even basic infor­ma­tion regard­ing offi­cers’ per­son­nel records, much less to doc­u­ment and hold offi­cers account­able for com­mit­ting crimes.
After the George Floyd killing, a few local leg­is­la­tures have moved to make offi­cer’s per­son­nel records avail­able when accused of crimes.
Rather than throw the book at them when they com­mit felonies, local pros­e­cu­tors who receive polit­i­cal endorse­ments from police unions frat­er­nize with offi­cers and allow dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal cops to plead guilty to mis­de­meanors so they can stay in uniform.
Consequently, dirty cops are allowed to remain in depart­ments and pose a grave dan­ger to the minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties through­out the country.

As the issue of police crimes become more under the micro­scope, it is impor­tant to know that [still], there is no Federal data­base that com­piles the num­ber of peo­ple who are killed one way or anoth­er by police each year, much less the num­ber of crimes police offi­cers are com­mit­ting and are allowed to plead down to mis­de­meanors by cor­rupt local pros­e­cu­tors with the acqui­es­cence of local equal­ly cor­rupt judges.
In her aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cle “Can You Be a Good Person and a Good Prosecutor?” law pro­fes­sor Abbé Smith implored lawyers “com­mit­ted to social and racial jus­tice” not to join a prosecutor’s office, urg­ing them to think care­ful­ly about the moral impli­ca­tions of that choice. Smith was ahead of her time. When she wrote the arti­cle almost 20 years ago, the ques­tion was a provoca­tive one, one that few were ask­ing.
She demon­strat­ed then what more Americans than ever are begin­ning to under­stand now: Prosecutors play an inte­gral, even cen­tral, role in a pro­found­ly cor­rupt and immoral sys­tem that has unjus­ti­fi­ably destroyed the lives of mil­lions of Americans.
Judges, too, are deeply impli­cat­ed in the moral crimes of this sys­tem but, like pros­e­cu­tors, are high­ly regard­ed in polite soci­ety; indeed, the role of a judge is arguably among the most hon­ored posi­tions in American society.
We think of judges as peo­ple who have espe­cial­ly good judg­ment and a strong moral com­pass. But to prod the real­i­ty of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem even a lit­tle is to reveal the cold, cal­lous cru­el­ty of the peo­ple charged with uphold­ing jus­tice and the rule of law.
It isn’t that judges and pros­e­cu­tors have mere­ly turned a blind eye to the rot of sys­temic racism and injus­tice at the heart of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Rather, they have been active­ly com­plic­it in advanc­ing and rein­forc­ing this sys­tem, work­ing direct­ly at odds with efforts to reform it. Given the tiny frac­tion of crim­i­nal cas­es that pro­ceed to tri­al, judges have effec­tive­ly abdi­cat­ed their role, allow­ing pros­e­cu­tors to coerce defen­dants into plea bar­gains whose terms force defen­dants to give up their most impor­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

These judges are par­ties to an impos­ture, car­ry­ing on the pre­tense that crim­i­nal defen­dants enjoy the ben­e­fits of an adver­sar­i­al process and a pre­sump­tion of inno­cence. On the con­trary, crim­i­nal cas­es have been reduced to mere admin­is­tra­tive pro­ceed­ings in which defen­dants (even com­plete­ly inno­cent ones) accept long, harsh sen­tences under duress. Judges also rou­tine­ly fail to scru­ti­nize ques­tion­able evi­dence offered by pros­e­cu­tors, includ­ing, notably, false tes­ti­mo­ny from police offi­cers who lied under oath (the wide­spread phe­nom­e­non even has its own lit­tle name, “testi­ly­ing”). They vir­tu­al­ly always uphold ille­gal search­es and arrests, agree­ing with police offi­cers in find­ing that there was prob­a­ble cause, thus mak­ing the exist­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al stan­dard effec­tive­ly mean­ing­less. Prosecutors are unique among advo­cates; their client is the state, and the stakes are unusu­al­ly high, as a vic­to­ry for their client fre­quent­ly means the forcible depri­va­tion of a citizen’s lib­er­ty. Thus do their eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions reflect this cat­e­gor­i­cal dif­fer­ence, at least in the­o­ry and on paper. “A prosecutor’s duty is to seek jus­tice, not mere­ly to con­vict,” accord­ing to the American Bar Association’s mod­el eth­i­cal rules. Prosecutors can behave much less eth­i­cal­ly than oth­er lawyers, large­ly because they have lit­tle incen­tive to take their eth­i­cal duties seri­ous­ly. There are noto­ri­ous­ly very few con­se­quences for pros­e­cu­tor mis­con­duct, and of course, pros­e­cu­tors know it. They can­not be held civil­ly liable for their acts as pros­e­cu­tors, and state bars (the same orga­ni­za­tions that have writ­ten so many nice-sound­ing words in the wake of George Floyd’s mur­der) almost always refuse to hold them to account.(Excerpt is tak­en from the Hill​.com)

I know you felt that was is a sys­tem that was set up to ensure jus­tice, unfor­tu­nate­ly, that is an incred­i­ble lie. The sys­tem has pre­cious lit­tle to do with the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice; is a sys­tem designed to cement and fur­ther white pow­er and white con­trol over every­one else.
Every ten­ta­cle, every fibrous vein was designed to func­tion to the detri­ment of the Black race. We are mere­ly get­ting a tiny glance into its inner work­ings, those of us who both­er to care that is.
For the rest, it’s coon­ery and buf­foon­ery, as usu­al, shuck­ing jiv­ing right back into bond­ed servitude…

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