Posted on 08/12/2011 6:18:13 AM PDT by truthkeeper
Fullerton's acting police chief acknowledged Thursday that the department had allowed police officers involved in a deadly encounter with a homeless man to watch a video that captures the incident before writing their reports about it.
Acting Chief Kevin Hamilton said supervisors allowed the review so that the officers would have a chance to refresh their memory and write an accurate account of the incident involving Kelly Thomas.
But the practice is at odds with the way many other police departments deal with serious use-of-force cases. The LAPD's former inspector general, Jeffrey Eglash, said that allowing police to look at video before giving evidence is a "bad practice."
"You want each person's recollection. I would look at the videotape like another witness," he said. "It allows the officers to conform their statements to other evidence rather than getting their independent witness recollection. It is not a practice that advances the truth-seeking."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Honest to God...*that* is why you don't let the cops watch the video. Of course the reports will match the video if you let the cops watch the video while writing the reports. Get that cop out of your mouth.
Which is exactly why they should NOT be viewed BEFORE the reports are written. As "trained observers" LEOs should have no need of these moving pictures.
What the video DOES NOT display is motive.
..UNLESS their reports would conflict with the moving pictures in a way that would demonstrate motive.
http://articles.coastlinepilot.com/2007-04-13/local/cpt-dunlevy13_1_jail-cell-laguna-beach-police-department-taser
So the cops will lie on their report, conflicting with the video evidence, to make themselves look good and assure a prison sentence? Not gonna happen. And if they're stupid enough to do it, off to prison with them.
Hypothetically, let's say I am suspected of a crime that was caught on tape. I am asked for a statement as part of the investigation and that statement will probably be used as evidence.
Would I not also be allowed to review the video before making my statement to refresh my memory, just as our brave boys in blue?
Correction: Not a review *by* the subjects of the investigation.
Maybe if you have a good lawyer. You have the right to remain silent.
the reports are used in court. if they are corrupted, it makes getting at the truth in court more difficult.
“Nope. Nothing special about it. They have evidence. The more, the better. They file reports based on that evidence.”
That’s fine and dandy when filing your standard police reports. However, we’re talking about a situation where everyone involved knew there would have to be at the minimum an internal investigation, and quite possibly a criminal prosecution of one or more offices involved. I don’t think police should be allowed to collude and get their stories straight, under direction of and abetted by their superiors, in a case like this, certainly not when it involves a homicide.
Why would it be a lie?
They look at the video and then write down EXACTLY what the video shows, slipping in first-person accounts for what is essentially a third-person viewing. Statement matches video 100% case closed.
The only way they could be caught in a lie is if they were required to give statements independently of collaboration with fellow officers or with video evidence. But that’s not gonna happen now.
Of course, the video shows what happended, so if there’s something there, it MIGHT see the light of day. I’m not optimistic. This past spring, an Indianapolis cop was drunk driving on-duty in a police vehicle and rear-ended a group of motorcyclists who were stopped at a traffic light.
The cops who responded took the officer to a non-approved testing center and even though the results were seriously incriminating, they were disallowed because career cops who’d done this hundreds of times before make a mistake on this one. Go figure. Blue protecting blue, at its finest. I don’t expect anything different here.
I was sure if anything would make the people say “enough is enough” it would certainly be a horrific incident like this. But now it’s becoming clearer why people obediently formed nice orderly lines to board boxcars to the death camps. Before you despise a wolf in shepherds clothing, remember your choice to be sheep.
Snuff films are typically intended for small private audiences.
I'm as staunchly pro law-and-order as anyone, BUT there is a tipping point where it becomes more important to rein in police than blindly support them.
1. After an incident of this type occurs, the officers involved are, at minimum, WITNESSES, if not outright perpetrators of a crime. Every human being sees and hears things from his or her own unique perspective. The only way to obtain a full understanding of an incident is to get every possible witness statement independently of all others. That gives you as many perspectives as there are witnesses.2. EQUIVALENT TO means the statement is an analogy. Just in case you never heard of the concept, it is a comparison between two things that are not the same, but have some similarities. The purpose of an analogy is to clarify and explain.
3. Allowing the officers who did this beating to see the video was equivalent to allowing them to coordinate their stories before writing their reports. Plain and simple. It might or might not be collusion in the legal sense, but it sure as heck is in the commonly understood sense.
4. Because the average person doesn't come in contact with police often, most people are not aware of the incredible growth in policing agencies at federal, state, county and local levels. Not only growth, but an increasing tendency to turn police into overly aggressive paramilitary organizations. Click here to see a list of the federal agencies with policing powers. The feds have made it a crime to lie to the FBI despite the fact that the Constitution guarantees us a right against self-incrimination. If you don't talk to them, they assume you're guilty and pressure you immensely. They are legally allowed to lie to you. If you do talk to them, you can't lie to them even to protect yourself. Most state and local policing agencies follow what the feds do.
5. Lastly, but most importantly, the man these officers beat to death was known to them. He was a slight man of about 135 pounds. He was a diagnosed schizophrenic. He was not even accused of any crime. He was merely in an area where some citizen had called 911 to say they thought someone was trying to break into cars. That's it. Six or seven or eight (whatever the number) big, tough, armed cops beat a mentally ill 135-lb innocent man to death. It is not a constitutionally conservative thing to defend the cops in cases like this. Quite the opposite.
Libloather, like most people, you are incredibly naive when it comes to cops, district attorneys, and our entire laughable criminal justice system. Incredibly naive.
It is completely amazing that this practice is acceptable —the tape should be like a black box accessible only via a protocol heavily laden with paperwork and officialdom.
They’re acting guilty as sin.
More and more law-abiding people are stuck between non-badged criminals permitted to run wild with impunity and a smaller number with badges who react by hyperControlling those who are law-abiding.
You’ll end up with a society whose expensive cops who cannot muster the tiniest bits of support or intel from the people —a formula for total disaster.
Great post.
Imagine astronomy 1,500 years ago:
“We’ve tasked you, Mr. Scientist, with acertaining the conformation of planet Earth —how is it shaped? We’ll let you know that every respected scientist similarly tasked before you found that Earth is flat —a finding for which they were lauded and well paid.
“One utter KOOK whose name started with “N” claimed Earth is like an orange —something for which we’ve imprisoned him.
“How do YOU think Earth is shaped....?”
—>THAT IS WHAT WE HAVE HERE.<—
The cops should be UTTERLY in the dark about what the tape shows and does not show.
Fair is fair and all we want is to get the facts and the truth.
The participants of the attempted surgery and recussitation go immediately and write in their own hand (or dictate) the events as they unfolded. Then if they get together at a later date to collude and each get their stories straight, they have committed a crime and a tort.
This is what happened. The police clearly know what was done was nothing less than murder. They are closing ranks, to create an illusion and lie to have those in authority accept a fiction to be the final record. It is disgusting.
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