Police Misconduct Quotes

Some folks in the office said I should explain in my complaint that I was a civil rights attorney working on police misconduct cases. It seemed to me that no one should need those kinds of credentials to complain about misconduct by police officers.

Mrs. Hayes has instructed me to file a police misconduct and civil rights wrongful death lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court against the officer who murdered her husband and against the city and police department that hired and trained this officer and turned him loose on an unsuspecting public.” “May I quote you on that?” Jillian is eager for a scoop. “Absolutely. Police brutality is a heinous act. Police officers work in service to the public. The public should be able to rely on that service and the preservation of their safety. The public should expect that police officer functions and services are even-handed, fair, and appropriate, applied the same way for all citizens, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin.

The long-simmering anger at racism and economic injustice of alienated black youth in the ghettoes was erupting into violent and destructive urban insurrections. In every case these “riots” were triggered by police brutality or misconduct, most usually the killing or brutalizing of an unarmed black man.

Sadly, the Trump right is just as intolerant of people who vary from their narrow set of beliefs and values as the most fervent Social Justice Warrior on the left. They’re just as dedicated to suppressing speech they dislike; ask Michelle Wolff or any NFL player who took a knee to protest police misconduct.

When I replayed the whole incident in my mind, what bothered me most was the moment when the officer drew his weapon and I thought about running. I was a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer who had worked on police misconduct cases. I had the judgment to speak calmly to the officer when he threatened to shoot me. When I thought about what I would have done when I was sixteen years old or nineteen or even twenty-four, I was scared to realize that I might have run. The more I thought about it, the more concerned I became about all the young black boys and men in that neighborhood. Did they know not to run?

with American police killing about six hundred people a year, an October 1981 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded that “no effective protection from police misconduct seems to exist for the individual citizen.

My thesis is that through most of American history, the Court has usually refused to impose constitutional checks on police or to provide adequate remedies for police misconduct. Instead, it has created a series of legal rules that fail to protect citizens’ constitutional rights and that facilitate and even encourage racist policing.

though now-familiar scenes of civilians, mostly black men, being beaten, shot or choked by law enforcement have rightly provoked the ire of the American public, sexual misconduct is the nation’s second most reported allegation of officer misconduct, according to a 2013 report by the Cato Institute. Nevertheless, broad narratives of police brutality tend to ignore both female victims and the often specific nature of the violence leveled against them in favor of focusing on the highly visible use of weapons to kill men.

I started writing my complaint determined not to reveal that I was an attorney. When I replayed the whole incident in my mind, what bothered me most was the moment when the officer drew his weapon and I thought about running. I was a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer who had worked on police misconduct cases. I had the judgment to speak calmly to the officer when he threatened to shoot me. When I thought about what I would have done when I was sixteen years old or nineteen or even twenty-four, I was scared to realize that I might have run. The more I thought about it, the more concerned I became about all the young black boys and men in that neighborhood. Did they know not to run? Did they know to stay calm and say, “It’s okay”?

we won a lawsuit for police misconduct in New York City. The police had been arresting homeless people for sleeping in public, and charging them with disorderly conduct. Hundreds of folks rallied to bring attention to this situation, and many of us slept outside to express our feeling that it should not be a crime to sleep in public. I was arrested one night as I slept. Through a long legal process, I was found not guilty, and then I filed a civil suit of wrongful arrest, wrongful prosecution, and police misconduct. And we won, in addition to a legal precedent, around $10,000, though we felt the money didn’t belong to me or to the Simple Way but to the homeless in New York for all they endure. It was their victory. The second thing

Once Brown was depicted as any kind of criminal or aggressor (in however trivial a way) via the footage of him in the convenience store, many white people couldn’t or wouldn’t see him as the victim of police brutality or misconduct. The two narratives—Brown as having committed a minor wrong, and Brown as the victim of a major civil rights violation, perhaps even murder—seemed to compete with each other, even though these two possibilities are of course compatible.

Don’t be one of those so-called leaders who take the Black vote for granted,” a supporter told me. I was sensitive to the criticism, for it wasn’t entirely wrong. A lot of Democratic politicians did take Black voters for granted—at least since 1968, when Richard Nixon had determined that a politics of white racial resentment was the surest path to Republican victory, and thereby left Black voters with nowhere else to go. It was not only white Democrats who made this calculation. There wasn’t a Black elected official who relied on white votes to stay in office who wasn’t aware of what Axe, Plouffe, and Gibbs were at least implicitly warning against—that too much focus on civil rights, police misconduct, or other issues considered specific to Black people risked triggering suspicion, if not a backlash, from the broader electorate. You might decide to speak up anyway, as a matter of conscience, but you understood there’d be a price—that Blacks could practice the standard special-interest politics of farmers, gun enthusiasts, or other ethnic groups only at their own peril.

Two Leningrad women were summoned to the police station. Had they been at a party with some men? Yes. Had sexual intercourse taken place? (This had already been established with the aid of a reliable informer.) Er—yes. Right, then, which is it: did you take part in the sexual act voluntarily or against your will? If voluntarily, we shall have to regard you as prostitutes, you will hand over your passports and get out of Leningrad in forty-eight hours. If it was against your will, you must bring a charge of rape! The women were not a bit anxious to leave Leningrad! So the men got twelve years each.

former U.S. senator Alan Simpson from Wyoming. Simpson had spent eighteen years in the Senate, including ten as the Republican whip, the second-ranking senator in his party. He had also been a former juvenile felon. He had been adjudicated as a juvenile delinquent when he was seventeen, for multiple convictions for arson, theft, aggravated assault, gun violence, and, finally, assaulting a police officer. He later confessed: “I was a monster.” His life didn’t begin to change until he found himself imprisoned in “a sea of puke and urine” following another arrest. Senator Simpson knew firsthand that you cannot judge a person’s full potential by his juvenile misconduct.

There has never been a more necessary time for law enforcement officers who reveal misconduct to be protected. By rising to uphold our Nation's values, ethical law enforcement officers choose a conflict for which no education, experience, or training can prepare them. They discover their communities breached and their opponent already beyond their gates. They confront criminals, intimidators, and tyrants that disguise themselves wearing the same badge they hold so dear. They advance against others who would otherwise seek to abuse the public, control the narrative, investigate themselves or obscure the truth beneath a facade of pursuing the greater good. Afterward, they often find themselves cast out, lost, and silenced permanently from their profession for doing nothing more than what we asked of them: Policing.

University of Maryland officials have concluded that a vulgar e-mail a student sent to members of his fraternity last year was "hateful and reprehensible" but did not violate the school's policies and is protected by the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech. University President Wallace D. Loh announced Wednesday the results of an investigation that involved campus and Prince George's County police, as well as the university's Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct. At issue was a private

Hope you’ve been keeping your nose clean,” DS Bradshaw said, trying to be jovial as he sipped a bottle of beer. I wondered what the police force would make of the fact that he was drinking alcohol at barely half past three in the afternoon. I would inform them at the first given opportunity, and also of his professional misconduct re Mum.

Federal review of San Diego police urges more supervision By ELLIOT SPAGAT SAN DIEGO (AP) — A U.S. Justice Department review of the San Diego Police Department finds lack of supervision and failure to hold officers accountable contributed to an environment that produced a rash of misconduct allegations. The audit released Tuesday offers 40 recommendations to improve recruiting, hiring, training and supervision aimed at more quickly identifying problem officers. Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman pledged to adopt all of the suggestions, but said some will require time and money. Zimmerman's predecessor, William Lansdowne, requested the federal review last year after misconduct allegations against officers rocked the department. Several were accused of committing sexual assault or battery while on-duty. Officer Anthony Arevalos was sentenced to eight years in prison after being charged with soliciting sexual favors from women he pulled over in traffic stops. Posted: Mar 17 3:56 pm

A USA Today/Pew Research Center poll of August 26, 2014, conducted in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, shows that by a two-to-one margin, Americans believe that:            police departments nationwide don’t do a good job in holding officers accountable for misconduct, treating racial groups equally and using the right amount of force. While most whites give police low marks on those measures, blacks are overwhelmingly negative in their assessment of police tactics. More than nine of 10 African Americans say the police do an “only fair” or poor job when it comes to equal treatment and appropriate force.8

The mission of policing can safely be entrusted only to those who grasp what is morally important and who respect integrity. Without this kind of personal character in police, no set of codes, rules, or laws can safeguard that mission from the ravages of police misconduct. No one need choose to be a police officer or to bear the public trust; but those who do so—no matter how naïvely and no matter how misguided their original expectations— must acquire the excellence of character necessary to live up to it.

Alex Landau, a Black transracial adoptee, had such a life-threatening encounter in 2009, when he was just nineteen. Stopped by the police and accused of making an illegal left turn, he was ordered out of his car and searched. Landau’s White father had never had “the talk” that is a rite of passage in African American families—when Black parents explain to their teenage sons how to behave if stopped by the police. Landau asserted his rights with the three police officers present and asked to see a warrant before they searched his car. The officers responded by punching him in the face. He was knocked to the ground and remembers hearing one of the officers saying, “Where’s your warrant now, you f—ing n—?” When his mother arrived at the jail, she was horrified to find her son there with forty-five stitches in his face. Though the officers were cleared of any misconduct, the City of Denver awarded Landau a $795,000 settlement. He and his mother are now working to educate other transracial families. Landau says, “I know my mother wishes she could have had the insight herself to prepare me for the ugly realities that can occur.

After all, being wrong is an important part of learning, and absolutely necessary for learning how to do things right.[27] When mistakes are openly acknowledged and reviewed in positive ways, they become sources of knowledge. And when mistakes are met with fair and predictable discipline when necessary, even serious mistakes can become sources of motivation—instead of reasons for cover-ups and misconduct.

Magnitudes more black men are killed by other black men in Baltimore and other American cities than by the police, yet those killings are ignored because they don’t fit into the favored narrative of a white, racist America lethally oppressing blacks. Police misconduct is deplorable and must be eradicated wherever it exists. But until the black crime rates come down, police presence is going to be higher in black neighborhoods, increasing the chances that when police tactics go awry, they will have a black victim.

The McCone Report goes on to mention two other "aggravating events in the twelve months prior to the riot." One was the failure of the poverty program to "live up to [its] press notices," combined with reports of "controversy and bickering" in Los Angeles over administering the program. The second "aggravating event" is summed up by the report in these words: Throughout the nation unpunished violence and disobedience to the law were widely reported, and almost daily there were exhortations, here and elsewhere, to take the most extreme and illegal remedies to right a wide variety of wrongs, real and supposed. It would be hard to frame a more insidiously equivocal statement of the Negro grievance concerning law enforcement during a period that included the release of the suspects in the murder of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi, the failure to obtain convictions against the suspected murderers of Medgar Evers and Mrs. Violet Liuzzo, the Gilligan incident in New York, the murder of Reverend James Reeb, and the police violence in Selma, Alabama—to mention only a few of the more notorious cases. And surely it would have been more to the point to mention that throughout the nation Negro demonstrations have almost invariably been nonviolent, and that the major influence of the civil rights movement on the Negro community has been the strategy of discipline and dignity. Obsessed by the few prophets of violent resistance, the McCone Commission ignores the fact that never before has an American group sent so many people to jail or been so severely punished for trying to uphold the law of the land.

too much focus on civil rights, police misconduct, or other issues considered specific to Black people risked triggering suspicion, if not a backlash, from the broader electorate.

1.3.2 Action item: When serious incidents occur, including those involving alleged police misconduct, agencies should communicate with citizens and the media swiftly, openly,  and neutrally, respecting areas where the law requires confidentiality. One way to promote neutrality is to ensure that agencies and their members do not release background information on involved parties. While a great deal of information is often publicly available, this information should not be proactively distributed by law enforcement.

Roberts went even further and said that the exclusionary rule applies only where the value of deterring police misconduct outweighs the costs of releasing a potentially guilty person:

Congress should eliminate absolute immunity for prosecutorial misconduct and for police officers who commit perjury.

Congress also should change the federal civil rights statute, 42 U.S. Code Section 1983, to hold cities liable for the misconduct of their police officers.

Hello Mr Police Officer, I know enough about police misconduct to regard you as a bully.

Mr Police Officer, you do not know me and as a police corruption researcher I will be filing a police complaint about you if I see any form of police misconduct from you.

Police officers do not fear police internal affairs, as they know it is designed to protect them from the misconduct they engage in with the public.

The good cops are bad cops and the bad cops are untouchable criminals.

The blue brotherhood is out of control!

I police the police.

An awareness of police misconduct on my 911 calls that was covered up by internal affairs is what prompted me to become a police corruption researcher.

I lived in Merseyside, UK, and observed problems with their police officers.

The reality of police body cameras is you may never get to see their video recordings if they show police misconduct.

Witnessed police officer misconduct? Expect to get the blue brotherhood runaround.

Police officer misconduct is common, what is very rare is the government doing something about it.

Internal affairs are adept at withholding police video recordings that show police officer misconduct.

Police officer misconduct? Expect to never see their video recordings that show it.

The reality of the bulk of police officer misconduct is that the government blatantly covers it up!

The blue brotherhood’s cover-up of police misconduct has made the police a dangerous entity.

The blue brotherhood will do everything they can to cover-up police misconduct.

I have never seen nor heard about a more clear-cut, intentional, and blatant case of police and prosecutorial misconduct.” Excerpt From: “12/26/75.

A forced confession is no confession at all

This culture within FPD influences officer activities in all areas of policing, beyond just ticketing. Officers expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority. They are inclined to interpret the exercise of free-speech rights as unlawful disobedience, innocent movements as physical threats, indications of mental or physical illness as belligerence. Police supervisors and leadership do too little to ensure that officers act in accordance with law and policy, and rarely respond meaningfully to civilian complaints of officer misconduct.

Even relatively routine misconduct by Ferguson police officers can have significant consequences for the people whose rights are violated. For example, in the summer of 2012, a 32-year-old African-American man sat in his car cooling off after playing basketball in a Ferguson public park. An officer pulled up behind the man’s car, blocking him in, and demanded the man’s Social Security number and identification. Without any cause, the officer accused the man of being a pedophile, referring to the presence of children in the park, and ordered the man out of his car for a pat-down, although the officer had no reason to believe the man was armed. The officer also asked to search the man’s car. The man objected, citing his constitutional rights. In response, the officer arrested the man, reportedly at gunpoint, charging him with eight violations of Ferguson’s municipal code. One charge, Making a False Declaration, was for initially providing the short form of his first name (e.g., “Mike” instead of “Michael”), and an address which, although legitimate, was different from the one on his driver’s license. Another charge was for not wearing a seat belt, even though he was seated in a parked car. The officer also charged the man both with having an expired operator’s license, and with having no operator’s license in his possession. The man told us that, because of these charges, he lost his job as a contractor with the federal government that he had held for years.

To be sure, policing is a difficult and often dangerous job. The tragic shooting deaths by a mentally ill assailant of two New York City police officers, allegedly in retaliation for Michael Brown’s death, underscored that reality. In the demonstrations following Michael Brown’s death some news outlets reported that some protesters explicitly called for violence and police officers’ deaths. It should hardly seem necessary for people with legitimate concerns about police misconduct to have to condemn the deeds of individuals who advocate or perpetrate violence against police officers. But while it is wrong for protesters to use incendiary language that calls for violence against police, it is also wrong to blame peaceful protestors, responsibly exercising their First Amendment rights, for violence against police. All law enforcement officers do not use excessive force against African Americans, and most protesters are not irresponsible in their exercise of their First Amendment rights. However, a culture within police departments of silence among good officers about excessive force on the part of other police officers, tears at the fabric of the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they police. Likewise, a failure by those protesting police brutality to condemn and distance themselves from calls for violence against police, compromises their protest.