From virtually every story I've read (here from a CNN story:

The shooter was unfit to be a police officer as evidenced by his firing from another PD and literally crying at his state gun qualification test cus it was too hard and the driver was still in training.

Yes, I understand the city hired him without checking reference (that he was fired from another PD). Bad on the city, they will (and should) pay a settlement for that.

Saying the gun "might" be a fake is the same as saying it might be real. You can't approach the situation and hope it's a fake based on a laypersons testimony seeing the gun from a distance.

The police being called and responding to the call are appropriate. The way in which they did it was not IMO. That article states they approached it as an "active shooter" situation but there were no shots fired (observed or reported).

If CPD checks references for cops they hire the kid is probably still alive.

The point is that the threat of civil consequences, even though it might be sad to say, almost certainly reduces the number of police shootings by a greater degree (compared to no consequences) than criminal consequences would reduce it (compared to having only civil consequences.) Those million dollar checks have saved a lot of lives and shouldn't be sneezed at.

True, being above the law is expensive.

This blew my mind

Indeed, never a truer statement made. At no point did any of the officers try to engage the suspect, which the prosecutor should have been on & why i quoted MvdB cos I thought i was reading the defense lawyers statements, whole story is sick as F**K
Oh really David. I know what will reduce shootings in america even more & that is JAIL TIME pure & simple. If that means that for a few years many people will think twice about joining the P.D then so be it, until american cops learn to disarm & not shoot to kill nothing will change.

12 year old black boy waves a toy gun around while committing no crime in broad daylight: instantaneous roadside execution after two seconds of officer analysis.

Mid 20's white guy with several guns, tactical gear, a booby-trapped apartment, and hundreds of rounds of ammo, opens up in the middle of a crowded movie theater, kills 12 and injures 70: arrested* and taken into custody without a scratch on him, undergoes trek through legal system during which time he's innocent until proven guilty.

*This is the part where some righty stupidly starts to furiously type BUT HE SURRENDERED AAAAAAARRRRGHHHHH! Ok, we can just jump over to Robert Dear then, who, you know, blasted cops during the rampage.

I don't think, at least in this situation or, say, Michael Brown's situation, police are thinking about criminal or civil consequences. The problem is they are more likely to perceive black males as a threat.

Since you can't give jail time to someone who used bad judgement or is only 80% to be guilty of a crime, you should be glad that you likely can get cash from them. That usually didn't used to be the case. That's all I am saying.

Yes, you can.

Maricopa County, AZ has paid out fortunes of money bec of 'The world's toughest sheriff', Joe Arpaio and it hasn't slowed him down in the least. It's regularly in the paper and he couldn't lose an election if he were caught in bed w/ both a live boy and a dead girl.

How is the city settling lawsuits a major deterrent? These guys just all really concerned about the city budget or something?

The people settling the lawsuit are no less afraid of the cops than the people paying the lawsuit. Cops literally can't lose.

Mayor Deblasio talked about how he taught his kids how to be careful aroubd food to try and not get murdered by them (which the cops actively say they want to happen) and they went on an illegal go slow and instantly started lobbying against him setting up his removal in three years or whatever mostly as a warning to anyone who tries to embarrass them like he did. They are literally acting like an organised crime syndicate.

Worst case scenario is these guys get caught lying covering for each other over a murder and then the murderers get fired and nothing happens to anyone else. He'll land on his feet in private security organised by his associates.

Well the theory is that whoever is accountable will do a better job selecting and training officers so they don't unnecessarily shoot civilians and cause the city to make costly payouts. Whether it actually works that way in practice is a different matter.

I don't see it either. The best case scenario is that city governments are pushed to reform their departments and train the force but I don't think governments are all that budget sensitive.

Municipalities that have been around long enough to make projections probably budget for having to pay if they lose a lawsuit.

Start taking settlement money out of police pension funds. See how long they keep protecting the bad apples.

Yes, and the theory is that if there are too many lawsuits (i.e., their lawsuit budget is exceeded) then that will be undesirable so they should act to try to reduce lawsuits.

Moreover, even if they have budgeted for lawsuits, the city still benefits if they can avoid paying them out, so they should try to act to reduce lawsuits.

Of course, all of the above is theoretical, but the reason that the deterrence may not work well in practice is a whole lot more than "They budget for lawsuits".

The prosecutor arguing for the side of the defence in a grand jury indictment really should be malpractice of some kind.

Can we just reiterate for a sec here that a cop pulled up and basically insta shot a 12 year old with a toy gun without making any attempt to resolve the situation any other way. And then the justice system decided not only that he had committed no crime but that he had no case to answer. "TEH SYSTEM WORKS" slappies have mysteriously gone missing for this one.

It's painfully obvious that all officer involved shootings need to be investigated by independent prosecutors.

This would almost certainly lead to Serpico-style informal assassinations of bad cops. Personal liability isn't the answer, either, because how much of the $5M Chicago paid out to McDonald's family could they possibly hope to get from a cop?

Luckily, the justice system has just the thing to discourage things that financial consequences alone don't punish severely enough:

The CRIMINAL justice system. It's just that for various reasons, mostly well understood reasons, people don't want to criminally punish cops for shooting a terrifying black demon standing almost 5'8" and wearing size 36 pants. Like, people bitch about the lack of indictments, and yeah it's obvious the prosecutor used the GJ to "launder" his own decision not to charge the cop.


But Cleveland.com had to turn off comments for all the Rice stories because they got too racist and they were deleting more comments than they were displaying. Those people get jury duty, too. A huge portion of America sees the role of cops as professional George Zimmermans.

It would be great if this happened. IANAL, but my understanding is that, as the prosecutor, it's perfectly within his rights to look at the evidence and use his discretion to say, we're not going to prosecute it. If he wants to take that stand, then he's free to spew all the defense arguments he wants.

However, if he is going to present it to the grand jury, then he needs to do his ****ing job. And if he thinks that it should not be presented but someone is "forcing him", the correct play, I would imagine would be to recuse himself, and have someone else present the case to the grand jury.

Of course, I think the chance of the prosecutor facing any sort of censure here is even less than the chance of the cops being indicted.

It's a cop out to point out how it's the prosecutors fault and he's in cahoots with the cops.

Obviously that's all true. But in Baltimore they (seemingly) had priorities/vision aligned with the prosecutor and head of police and they still could only get a hung jury.

The general public needs to look in the mirror and demand the entire justice system gets retrofitted and cleaned up.

Sadly that's never going to happen.

I don't disagree that ultimately the "problem" is that most people are just fine with the way things are. As you say, even when the prosecutor is competent (and actually trying) and the facts are damning, most people who wind up on juries are OK with the cops killing people for almost no reason. Especially if they're black. And even before the case gets to a jury of any kind, there are decision-makers that can prevent things from moving forward, and they too are fine with cops killing people without much justification. So very few cops ever face the consequences.

Basically people who have the same mindset as most posting in this thread are shockingly not that common at all. I do believe that this will change slowly over time as more and more of these incidents get publicized. But it's going to be a long while.