Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent: the Role of Prosecutors, Police and other Law Enforcement

Link to Full Report

"This is a report about the role of official misconduct in the conviction of innocent people. We discuss cases that are listed in the National Registry of Exonerations, an ongoing online archive that includes all known exonerations in the United States since 1989, 2,663 as of this writing. This Report describes official misconduct in the first 2,400 exonerations in the Registry, those posted by February 27, 2019....

The Report is limited to misconduct by government officials that contributed to the false convictions of defendants who were later exonerated—misconduct that distorts the evidence used to determine guilt or innocence. Concretely, that means misconduct that produces unreliable, misleading or false evidence of guilt, or that conceals, distorts or undercuts true evidence of innocence."

The Wandering Officer

Link to Full Text

“'Wandering officers' are law-enforcement officers fired by one department, sometimes for serious misconduct, who then find work at another agency. Policing experts hold disparate views about the extent and character of the wandering-officer phenomenon. Some insist that wandering officers are everywhere—possibly increasingly so—and that they’re dangerous. Others, however, maintain that critics cherry-pick rare and egregious anecdotes that distort broader realities. In the absence of systematic data, we simply do not know how common wandering officers are or how much of a threat they pose, nor can we know whether and how to address the issue through policy reform."

Defunding the Police: Does Europe Offer Lessons for the U.S.?

Link to Article

"Calls to 'defund the police' have grown in the United States since the May 25 death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in police custody.

President Donald Trump has dismissed the movements as radical. But advocates say scaling back the remit of the police and bolstering other services is viable."

To Serve and Protect Each Other: How Police-Prosecutor Codependence Enables Police Misconduct

Link to Article

"Most Americans are rightly enraged when police shoot unarmed civilians, use excessive force, or engage in unethical practices like planting evidence. However, there is little popular understanding and scholarly attention as to why prosecutors fail to charge or otherwise hold officers accountable. This Article offers a novel contribution to the study of police misconduct by examining how prosecutors nationwide enable police misconduct on an institutional level."

Can Big Data Stop Bad Cops?
" This article is part of an ongoing examination by The Washington Post of fatal shootings by police. In 2015, The Post began tracking cases nationwide and compiled a database of all fatal shootings by officers in the line of duty. The project has expanded this year to include details about the officers involved. View the 2016 database here.

The Justice Department’s investigation of Baltimore police this month rebuked the agency for an entrenched culture of discriminatory policing. Deep within their findings, Justice investigators singled out a core failure: Baltimore’s system for identifying troubled officers was broken and existed in name only.

In Baltimore, Justice found that critical disciplinary records were excluded from its early intervention system, that police supervisors often intervened only after an officer’s behavior became egregious and that when they did, the steps they took were inadequate....

...The problems with Baltimore’s early intervention system are not isolated to police in that city. In numerous departments nationwide, police have failed to use early intervention systems effectively, Justice has found. Since 1994, 36 civil rights investigations by Justice discovered that local agencies had deeply flawed early intervention systems or no system in place at all, according to a review of those investigations by The Washington Post."

View the DOJ Report 

Chicago Rarely Penalizes Officers for Complaints, Data Shows

"In 18 years with the Chicago Police Department, the nation’s second-largest, Jerome Finnigan had never been disciplined — although 68 citizen complaints had been lodged against him, including accusations that he used excessive force and regularly conducted illegal searches.

Then, in 2011, he admitted to robbing criminal suspects while serving in an elite police unit and ordering a hit on a fellow police officer he thought intended to turn him in. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. 'My bosses knew what I was doing out there, and it went on and on,' he said in court when he pleaded guilty. 'And this wasn’t the exception to the rule. This was the rule.'

Mr. Finnigan is one of thousands of Chicago police officers who have been the subject of citizen complaints over the years but have not been disciplined by the department, according to data released this month by the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit journalism organization, and the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic of the University of Chicago Law School. Such information is rarely made public and has come to light in Chicago only after a decade-long legal battle by the institute and the clinic."

Watching the Watchmen: Best Practices for Police Body Cameras
"Coverage of recent police killings has prompted a much-needed debate on law enforcement reform, and proposals for police body cameras have featured heavily in these discussions.  Body cameras undoubtedly gather valuable evidence of police misconduct, and although research on the effects of body cameras is comparatively limited there are good reasons to believe that they can improve police behavior.  

However, without the right policies in place the use of police body cameras could result in citizens' privacy being needlessly violated.  In addition, poorly considered police body camera policies governing the storage and release of footage might be too costly to implement.
 
This paper examines the research on the costs and benefits of police body cameras, arguing that the devices can, if properly deployed and regulated, provide a valuable disincentive to police abuses as well as valuable evidence for punishing abuses when they occur."

The Hard Truth About Cops Who Lie http://t.co/3mt2tV9pie MT @WNYC pic.twitter.com/X49pdMdE08

— Prison_Health (@Prison_Health) October 15, 2015

More from the U.K.:

• Stop and Search Powers 2: Are the Police Using them Effectively and Fairly?
  "The report Stop and Search Powers 2: are the police using them effectively and fairly? sets out the findings of an inspection into the progress made by forces since HMIC’s 2013 stop and search report and addresses the Home Secretary’s new commission for HMIC to examine the way the police use powers to stop motor vehicles and strip search people."
• Chief Officer Misconduct in Policing: An Exploratory Study
• Scottish Justice Matters: Environmental Crime and Justice

Police who lie: Attorney general orders probe of police deception

Ontario’s chief prosecutor will probe the issue of police officers who are found by judges to have lied in court.
Attorney General John Gerretsen made the announcement Monday following a Toronto Star investigation that found more than 100 cases of police deception in Ontario and across the country.
“The most important thing is that people tell the truth in court. The question really becomes: if a judge makes a serious comment (about an officer’s testimony) what should happen?” said Gerretsen.

James Cornish, chief prosecutor for Ontario, has been asked to look into the matter and report back by early summer. Cornish formerly headed the Special Investigations Unit, the province’s police watchdog.
“We should do whatever we can at our level of the administration of justice to make sure that people have faith and belief in the system. And if there are areas in which we can improve that, we should do so,” Gerretsen said.

Read on...

Here are two previous stories in this series:

Police who lie: For hollering at police, a man was beaten and Tasered

 Police who lie: National police body says justice system needs to act over lies

Police who lie: False testimony often goes unpunished

The first time Toronto police Det. Scott Aikman deceived the court, a judge denounced his “misleading” testimony and threw out a cocaine charge against a man.
The second time, Det. Aikman’s story explaining why he and his partner searched a minivan led to the acquittal of four suspects accused of masterminding an international credit-card data-theft ring.

Aikman “either fabricated or concealed evidence” to justify the van search, the judge said. The four suspects, charged with a total of 321 offences, walked free. Was Aikman disciplined for his conduct in court?

“No. Of course not,” said Aikman, explaining to the Star that he had done nothing wrong.
A coast-to-coast Toronto Star investigation found more than 120 police officers have been accused by judges of outright lying, misleading the court or fabricating evidence since 2005. Many of the officers have gone unpunished.

Read on...

Ottawa cops reviewing detention policies after release of disturbing videos

OTTAWA — A beleaguered Ottawa police force is reviewing its detention policies and defending the rank-and-file after videos were released showing officers striking two prisoners and cutting a woman’s clothes off.

Chief Vern White says the videos have shaken the public’s confidence in the force.

“I’m always concerned about public confidence,” White told a news conference on Thursday.

“The public, overall, I think have tremendous confidence in what we do. And I understand they’re shaken by what they’ve seen.”

White was the chief of police for the Durham Regional Police Service before taking up the position in Ottawa.

Read on...

Maybe Canada needs something like National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project. Tom

FL Deputies Raid House, Play Wii For 9 Hours

By Jeralyn,

Ever wonder what really goes on during the execution of a search warrant for drugs? Hopefully, this is an anomaly. Watch as Lakeland, FL Sheriff's deputies play a Wii bowling game on the suspects' TV for 9 straight hours. They were caught by his home security camera. The funniest part is the cop who jumps up and down for joy when getting a strike.

Read on...

There is YouTube video of this. I"ve played Wii bowling, and can't imagine playing it for nine hours. Tom