If she abducted and murdered a random dude off the street, that would also make her guilty of the same offense as the officers, but I don't think that's the case either.

Meh, no way she can show the bike cops murdered anyone, knew he was about to be murdered or even participated in the multiple stops of the van. She charged them with arresting without probable cause because the knife was legal. The reports today from the police task force disagree with that and indicate it was an illegal knife. If so they did not abduct him either.

I don't think they were charged with murder.

It also isn't probable cause when you find something incriminating after the arrest.

'overcharging' and allowing defenders to plea bargain down with a 'lesser charge' is the problem with the entire US judicial system. Guarantees convictions without a trial. Over 2 million Americans in prison. But in this case when the cops beat the charges, how will Baltimore avoid another riot? Businesses will be losers. Baltimore residents will be losers.

Right or wrong the courts have up held stopping and searching someone under this fact pattern and if finding something then arresting him.

I was visiting san francisco recently. We went to the park and it was unlike anything I've ever seen. People were drinking from coconuts with rum, eating marijuana edibles, playing music and having a great time. Now, mix some police officers into this situation and I guarantee it turns ugly. Cops just need to change the way they do things. People shouldn't feel threatened by them. Some people were hiding their alcohol because they were scared cops would do something to them.

Drinking in a park and smoking weed aren't priorities for SF cops, it's not like they don't know these things go on. They don't care. Which is great, obviously.

The bike cops could easily be guilty of murder here. "This one tried to run, then he mouthed off. Give him a rough ride"

If people can't honestly agree on whether the knife was legal or not, then it won't be possible to convict the officers who arrested Gray. Even if the officer should have known the knife was legal, if he acted in good faith then I don't see a crime there. Unless Mosby has some very good evidence otherwise, charging police officers for merely being incompetent is going to backfire.

yup, said that the day the charges came down. A lot of the charges seem more based on placating people than justice.

LAPD killed another unarmed homeless black man last night. Yawn.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...ry.html#page=1


Brings the grand total to 404 people killed by police this year.

Why do you think this guy still has a job?

Mr Wookie, I appreciate your reply. I asked for a better reply to my proposition that juries tend to decide rightly in these cases and you did provide it.

I decided to wait for all the personal accusation crap in this thread to die down before posting my reply - now several days later.

I think we are not as far apart as you think. We both think that the police procedures and leadership should be majorly improved, we both posted as much in the aftermath of the DOJ report on Ferguson. I have not made a lot of posts on the topic because most people in this forum seem to be in agreement on that point.

Instead most of my posts have been on areas we disagree. Where I think we disagree is in the treatment of the individual officers who happen to unexpectedly find themselves in a situation that went horribly wrong. We seem to want to make these unexpectedly spotlighted officers bear the burden of the failings in the whole system. We should fix the system, not scapegoat these select few officers to carry the entire burden of the failed system.

When we scapegoat someone, when we overcharge them, we send a message that we are against all cops, not just the misbehaving cops, and not the failings of the department. Why wouldn't police unions fight for all cops when the activists want to persecute all cops. We should agree to go after the bad cops, but not persecute the others.

My concern is can we have two justice systems, a "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" for citizens, and a "guilty if you are involved in someone's death regardless of reasonable doubt" for cops.

A cop does not know when they are going to encounter an individual that is going to escalate a situation to a life or death situation. Is it fair to make the cop play spend-your-life-in-jail-if-you-tangle-with-the-wrong-guy lottery every day?

Cops should be punished when they do bad things, like this cop in SC and the two cops in AZ. But cops should not be punished because of bad luck in getting thrown into situations in which they did not do bad things but bad results occurred.

The same reasonable doubt standard should be available to cops. I am all for convicting any cop who is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Many of the publicized cases that have garnered much public protest did not rise to this level of beyond reasonable doubt. That is why the cops were not found guilty.

At least some of the six charged officers in Baltimore did not do anything that a reasonable person would think contributed to the death. So why are we charging all of them? Only one was charged with 2nd degree murder, perhaps he is the one who should be prosecuted, not the others.

A lot of us are not satisfied with police procedures and leadership. We should work to change the leadership and the procedure, but we should not take out our frustrations on the front line cop who just happens to find themselves in a situation that went horribly wrong.

Your concern about different justice systems is entirely warranted. But it decidedly works the opposite of how you think it does.

Police have a preponderance of additional rights when it comes to criminal investigations that are not available to everyone else in America.

http://popehat.com/2015/04/29/cops-w...n-you-citizen/

Doubt these additional rights are that common, would guess most states do not have such. But your really back to the Unions have too much sway with the politicians.

You'd be wrong:

About what?

Looks like only 14 states have this, most do not.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate...ouble-standard

The 2 cases talk about not threatening to fire cops if they did not waive their immunity of self incrimination. The bill of rights goes much further and is clearly something the Unions have pushed.

I would love to get a list of what those states are.

Because in GA we just had a sheriff shoot a woman in the stomach with his service weapon in a different county and he just walked away from the cops without answering questions because only a Superior Court judge can issue a warrant to arrest a sitting sheriff.

But good luck calling the cops and just peacing out if you or I shot a person in an abandoned house.

That's a list of states that have passed a specific bill of rights for cops. That list isn't a list of places that have laws giving special treatments.

Average citizen chokes out Eric Garner on camera, killing him, and faces no charges? Sure.

Only talking about additional due process rights (who can question them, how many can question them, when they are questioned, what information they must be given before questioning...), not laws or statutes that deal with ability to arrest, use of force etc.

The original post (abseeker's) was claiming that cops are held to a lower standard of proof than the average citizen.

Of course, it was such an absurd statement that everyone immediately moved on to a discussion of what additional rights cops have beyond that of the average citizen.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...-poor-and-male

This report says of the 100 largest countries is the USA Baltimore is the worst.

Even white males raised in below-median income families in Baltimore do poorly.

How would you know what those people were drinking or eating? Did you partake?
It's very simple, San Francisco protects the tourist trade. If you hurt the tourists trade, the cops will force you to leave the area.