Short version of what happened: LaQuan McDonald was shot by a police officer. Several officers in the incident agreed to lie about it. But there was Video proved that they had all lied, and so the PD tried their best to prevent the video from being used. The PD also managed to abuse its power in other ways to dodge proper investigation of the incident (e.g. the officers were initially all questioned together instead of separately after being allowed time alone to get their fake stories straight). The officer who fired the shots - a man who also may have previously been involved in cover-ups of shootings other than this one - was just convicted of murder, and this is the reaction of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police: Disgusting. Aren't they supposed to be part of the "rule of law", and isn't part of that rule of law a trial by a jury of one's peers? There was nothing sham about that whatsoever - but it would have been a sham had they gotten their way and had the video proof held back from the jury. The other law enforcement officers in America ought to have nothing to worry about from this case (possibly others, but not this one). If you are part of upholding the law, don't try and subvert the law by getting together and lying about a legal situation. Oh, and don't repeatedly shoot a man in the back who is lying on the ground - getting convicted of doing this and then comparing the conviction to a stab in the back is repulsive.
Good to know the IFOP has bought into tribalism. And in turn, has eroded trust of the police even further than the cop who committed murder and the others who attempted the cover up.
I was at ACL Fest yesterday. David Byrne covered a song by a Janelle Monae (who will be playing on Sunday I believe). He said that she sang the song at the Women's March in DC which drew a positive reaction. The song is called Hell You Talmabout. This is the exact version I heard yesterday: There is a "say his name" section and Michael Brown is in there. This is the Left. Brown was murdered. They refuse to consider any other possibility. How do you come together when we cannot be more nuanced? At the same time, I agree that the police unions (irony) are a big problem in regulating their own.
The danger is that Police Departments are very insular. Understandably, they feel about each other as brothers in arms. But the less they identify with the community they serve the less effectively they will police. And when they defend criminals within the department it alienates the community from them. That is what has happened in many poorer neighborhoods. They have to purposefully reach out to be a part of the community and not its opponent.
I suppose if you bury a couple of your brothers it can cause that sort of thing. That's the psychological problem. Underpaid, underappreciated and at risk of losing your life the next time you pull someone over. Does it mean they should get away with aggressive use of force? No. We have to have the courage to analyze it and punish those who are hiding behind a badge and endangering the public. I've thought about it quite a bit. I get the seige mentality. I know some cops. It's a different world to them and yes, they profile. They track tendencies in their job (whether statistically or experience) just like many of us do in other ways. They are supposed to be trained but not firing until being fired upon is a tough job. Look at what just happened yesterday; some nut shot seven cops and one is dead probably because the couldn't get to him in time because they were being fired upon. So how does that department feel today?
I understand this, but two points are worth noting. First, the police department is an agency that has the power and broad authorization to use violent force against private citizens. Somebody has to do it, and they deserve respect. However, corruption simply can't be tolerated. There's too much at stake and too much potential for horrific abuse. Second, this kind of story gives credibility and ammunition to Black Lives Matter and other groups who have bad intentions and harmful ambitions. When they claim that the police are corrupt and dirty, it gets harder to discredit them when the police act corrupt and dirty like this.
This is the Chicago police? Anybody here familiar with their history? It is Chicago, folks, and it has been like this forever. Are we to believe the city of the Daley’s et al have a police force even a little bit clean? It’s like Lot and Sodom, there may be a few good men, but.........
bystander, your response illustrates my point. Further alienation from the populace will escalate tension which just leads to more violence on both sides. I never said the police have an easy job and I never said they don't have reasons to feel close camaraderie.
You're welcome! Ha... yeah, that is why they need to have some oversight so the insular environment doesn't prevent needed investigations.
And his colleagues who indisputably conspired together to lie to investigators and falsify reports about what happened got ZERO punishment? Message from the Law to the populace: It is effectively legal for Police Officers to give false testimony about anything they do to anyone, including murder, for the sake of their solidarity.
I always hesitate to judge verdicts in cases because the media so frequently get the facts and the law wrong in analyzing cases and often wildly wrong. Accordingly, I'm willing to listen to the judge's rationale, but after seeing the video, that sentence looks like a pretty flagrant injustice.
The acquittals of the other guys is even more baffling. Like, the low sentence is crazy, but I also understand that reasonable humans can disagree over what a reasonable sentence is for a crime. But there is no reasonable doubt that the other 3 officers all got to together and decided to flat-out lie in order to protect a man who was just convicted of murder. So the law agrees that the act in question WAS murder, and yet conspiring to lie about a murder one witnessed is apparently just fine as long as you have the Badge of Carte Blanche.
A lot people in government, not just the police, think they are above the law and better than everyone else. This is why the proper view of government is that it is a necessary evil and should have limited powers.
I don't know the evidence in that case well enough to know beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers conspired to lie in the police reports. However, I do know two things about that case. First, all three defendants waived a right to a trial by jury, so the judge was the finder of fact as well as the decider of questions of law. Second, the judge was a former trial partner of one of the defense counsels. Is that unethical? Not per se. Does it look really bad in such a contentious and high profile case? Yes. I would have recused and let a judge who didn't have at least a professional relationship with one of the parties' attorneys handle the case especially with a bench trial. I just don't see how the video isn't damning on everybody. McDonald was no choir boy. He was drugged up on PCP, brandishing a knife, breaking into vehicles, and had already stabbed the cop car's tire. He was also blowing off the officer's instructions. I can see why they were on guard. However, at the time of the shooting he was angling away from them. If they had tased him, I'd view it at justifiable, but the officer unloaded his weapon on the guy. If McDonald was charging at the officer or gesturing to throw the knife at him, I'd understand, but he very clearly wasn't doing either of things. He was just blowing them off. Obviously that's not ok, but it doesn't justify what amounted to a summary execution.