No, it isn't. Filling out a report isn't a exam.
And yes, this is different from a bank robbery... someone was killed in this event.
I thought a police report was a legal document, admissible as evidence in court, from an officer of the court.
So, from now on, we can treat them as so much toilet paper, just a pack of self-serving lies, written by a slimy criminal? Cool.
It sure as hell is. It's a strategy designed to protect the wrong doers as opposed to arriving at the truth and the facts.
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.