To serve and protect, police are allowed to slander and destroy. Cops in many states and localities have acquired the right to lie about their shootings, searches, and practically anything else. Police have routinely planted drugs, guns, and other evidence to incriminate innocent people, while police labs have engaged in wholesale fraud blighting tens of thousands of lives.
Supreme Court rulings turned a trickle of police perjury into a torrent. In 1967, the Supreme Court, in the case of McCray v. Illinois, gave policemen the right to keep secret the name of their “reliable informant” they used to get search warrants or target people for arrest. Law professor Irving Younger observed at the time: “The McCray case almost guarantees wholesale police perjury. When his conduct is challenged as constituting an unreasonable search and seizure … every policeman will have a genie-like informer to legalize his master’s arrests.” The Supreme Court created a judicial playing field on which police were the only witnesses who can safely lie.
In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that government officials are immune from lawsuits even when their brazen lies in court testimony resulted in the conviction of innocent people. The court fretted that “the alternative of limiting the official’s immunity would disserve the broader public interest.” Honest government was not one of the “broader public interests” the court recognized that day.
I worked for a retired deputy sheriff and he told me they had what was called a ‘drop gun‘ which was a gun that was planted at the scene if an unarmed suspect was shot by one of the deputies so they could say the shooting was justified because the suspect was armed.
Thank you @ACSOL and RH for posting this article.
These and other legal matters such as these which are important to the people, and very importantly PFRs, need to be posted for enlightenment of all. It shows why and how horrible our legal (not a justice) and LE systems have gotten over the duration of this country’s history through the prosecution offices, courts and in the streets. As I shared the other day with another poster here in the forum, LE can legally lie and slander within limits in the commission of their job with immunity but that doesn’t mean it is or make it right. The qualified immunity model has taken on a life of its own and this enabling behavior has only strengthened it, sadly. This is why the people have their 1A right to record LE in the commission of their duty in their jobs as set in court precedent. This can and will counter LE when they lie against a suspect and are caught in it. It is a check and balance to the lying and slandering against people. At the same time, use your 5A right to be quiet. Nothing will frustrate LE more than zipping the lips after asking for counsel.
Those who have been falsely or wrongly convicted should take on the jurisdictions and people in court to seek redress for the shady actions of these bad actors where they hopefully will receive a fair day in court (not an unfair day with a judicial member who is in the pockets of those who provide their docket daily).
Presume everybody the cops interact with is “guilty of something” and whatever the cops do is justified by that! That way, everything they do is “increasing your safety” in ways that can never cause a problem to you, because you’re not guilty of anything! Thus the corrupt behaviors are fine, so long as they only target the, “Right people”?
We see this in the distrust in the Justice Department and certain LE, particularly the FBI,…?
When they arrest Citizen X for pictures, proof they are Heros! However arrest Citizen T for anything, proof they are corrupt monsters that are destroying America! How can they be both things?
“Before” the entire Justice System lived in a State of Immaculate Angelic Grace, but they were recently transformed into a Cabal of Demons trying to Destroy America? However, they are still occasionally “Heros”, when they aren’t too busy destroying America?
When “Justice” targets the “Right people” anything goes! Now that it threatens the “Wrong people” it’s evil?