They tried the weakest case first in Baltimore fwiw.

California just took a step in the right direction banning grand juries in police related killings.

It boggles my mind that these cases that are multi-million dollar settlements can't even make it to a criminal trial.

If they believe no crime has been committee the prosecution should just man up and not charge.

Ongoing debate on my FB started when an African-American woman wrote a long post essentially begging her white friends to stop calling the police in situations involving black people, especially black kids. Her argument was basically that police misconduct is so common that involving the cops in anything other than the most serious crimes was setting the kids up to get brutalized.

- My first thought is that it must be teriffying to live in a world where the police are so mistrusted.

- My second thought was that refusing to ever call the cops seems like an absurd overreaction, but I might think twice before involving the police in something minor.

- My third thought was wondering if the woman who called 911 on Tamir Rice might actually feel more remorse over what happened than the officers do?

Not even sure if I have a point, just venting...

So why couldn't the first x dollars come from him?

That sounds like a criminal fine with a lower burden of proof.

Loll....Classic Sklansky. You were just saying civil liabilities have saved lives. Now it's we could hypthetically change the law to maybe save some lives....ignore what I said before.

Classic max, completely unaware of the possibility that one approach could have an effect while still leaving open the possibility of tweaks to that approach having additional effects.

Calif. outlawed grand juries for police shootings a few months ago. The prosecutor must decide to bring charges or not.

Thats how errything works here in the lolstralia. Dont super see the point of grand juries. Stops malicious prosecution I guess?

Civil courts (which can assess fines) typically do have a lower burden of proof. But it's various laws shielding liability that's the issue.

That and the conclusion of judges (in bench trials), juries, etc. around what objectively reasonable means in policing and use of deadly force/fearing for one's safety. "Reached for waistband" used to just be a way to conduct dubious searches, not it's approaching a license to kill.

They could, but bankruptcy is bankruptcy, so the X is probably going to be pretty small for most cops. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm saying it's not the answer, because the actual problem is a much deeper societal one, as demonstrated by this post by seattelou:


Jesus Christ why are people nice to this guy? That's how it works for EVERY OTHER PROFESSION, lou, only the hated government employees of the criminal justice system escape that. GTFO with this bull****.

What we need is, as a culture, to cut out our weird worship of "first responders"(and, unrelated but also a good idea, "the troops") and just remember they are regular people with jobs, not American Heroes Keeping Us Safe From Lean-Addled Teens who are casing us up for the knockout game.

I think it is an interesting idea for modifying police behavior. It could be an insurable risk and the insurance companies would demand better training and the removal of bad cops. Or maybe it is more like a regulatory fine.

From what I read this was not the weakest case. Porter was the only one who admitted that Gray asked for help. The plan was to have this testimony at the other trials and now without it some of the other trials will become far weaker. Maybe only the driver will have a stronger case. Putting him in the van v. in charge of the van as well as a higher rank.

I disagree. Cops should be held personally liable for their actions. Agree that the settlements wouldn't be big but the incidents would substantially decline. Cops would not be violating citizens rights on a daily basis if they knew everything they own was on the line and it wasn't the taxpayers paying the bill for their misconduct.

If there is an award of 5mm the first X should come from the cop. That X should equal literally everything they own.

Huge payouts don't work now but maybe cops wouldn't roll up and insta shoot children if they knew there was a high likelihood that kids parents would be driving their car, living in their home and watching old home movies on their tv. The victim's family should also get any police pension they are owed if applicable.

This doesn't exclude the prison sentence they should also get of course.

It is already a risk insured by citizens via the government.

Just have the government mandate better training and removal of bad cops. Skip the middle step of assuming you need a ****ing insurance company to be involved to get them to not murder people.

Taking these cases to a grand jury is politically imperative.

Btw, I'm assuming but fairly confident when I suppose that all police contracts call for the government to hold them harmless from any potential personal liability.

why would they do that?

Shouldn't they try their best case first and win it to send a message to the rest so they have a bargaining chip to get guilty pleas on their weaker cases?

The judge set the dates for the trials.

The prosecutor had a lot of input as to the order of the trials. It was widely reported that he plan was to try Porter and then force him to testify in the trials against the driver and supervisor.

http://www.wbaltv.com/news/no-new-tr...-case/37010756

Exactly this. This whole support the troops fetish that has been steadily growing and reached fever pitch after 9/11 has very real consequences in how it changes incentives, and things like the way police in general behave is exactly what you would expect.

If we really believed in this "cops are true heroes" nonsense then we should be much MORE harsh towards cops who do things like "accidentally murder a guy getting out of his wrecked car" or "panic and overreact and shoot a black kid." These are like barely acceptable human responses of scared, untrained, idiot coward civilians in high-stress situations. Heroes worthy of respect would demand a far higher standard, not a far lower one.

Would you say this goes for violence against these groups as well or just when taking them to court ? The opposite is happening right now in other countries due to increase in violence against these persons. Often prosecutors will now request penalties (be it fines or jailtimes) up to 300% of what would be the norm were it (the violence) against a civilian. I'm completely against hugging the troops nuts but that isn't really a thing anywhere else then the states imo.

the "support the troops" thought process comes from how crappy we treated the troops returning from vietnam. i have no problem with that, vietnam vet treatment is still a huge guilt complex for many.

however, i have a big problem when people try to use it as faux-patriotism, e.g. using "support the troops" as a rallying cry for war, but make sure the people don't see the dead ones, and don't do anything to actually support the troops, like the whole post 9/11 routine. deciding that arming local yokel police departments like they were preparing for massive terrorist attacks was NOT a good idea, either.

i could not agree more with the second paragraph. if you wanna hero worship, you need to demand more from your heroes. we aren't demanding anything of them now.

typed by white person who is generally afraid of cops. i wish i wasn't. but getting stopped/harassed repeatedly back in the day when i worked at an arcade because they thought we were selling drugs out of there (which would have been stupid stupid stupid) didn't exactly impress me. 30 some odd years later, my viewpoint hasn't changed.

i would not want to be a black person dealing with cops. full stop.