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To: supercat
Okay, I can see that, even if we have strayed from the malfeasance of lawyers to that of police. Then again, you could argue that the cop's transgression was on the side of arresting the criminal, while the lawyer's transgression is on the side of lessening or eliminating the punishment of the criminal. While I cringe at the violation of privacy and illegal search and seizure laws, one might argue that the iilegal search of an innocent person's home will yield nothing, while that of an alleged perpetrator would.

A demotion or loss of overtime would be more than sufficient punishment for a cop, as it would involve significant financial penalties and functionally undo the convictions they have already gotten that would have led to their previous promotions.
228 posted on 07/28/2002 6:58:11 PM PDT by SpinyNorman
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To: SpinyNorman
A demotion or loss of overtime would be more than sufficient punishment for a cop, as it would involve significant financial penalties and functionally undo the convictions they have already gotten that would have led to their previous promotions.

Such punishments would be great if they were consistently applied against cops who violated people's rights. Indeed, if they were consistently enforced the Supreme Court probably never would have imposed the exclusionary rule. It had been demonstrated, however, that cops' supervisors were consistently able to overlook the misdeeds of cops who got convictions. Since a cop who kicks down people's doors without a warrant would probably find more crooks than one who went by the book (even if the former cop also harmed a lot more innocent people) police departments had been very lax in actually punishing them.

It's unfortunate that a court has no means of punishing a malfeasant cop except to throw out the evidence he gathered, but since police departments won't punish such cops it falls to the court to do so.

Personally, I would like to see a law which rules that any cop(s) entering any premises under circumstances requiring a warrant shall lose all protection of law if the entry party does not have in its posession a warrant which is at least superficially valid for conducting the search, or if the warrant is not served in a manner at least superficially consistent with its requirements.

In other words, while cops would not be required to thoroughly investigate the process behind issuing a warrant to ensure there was no funny business, all cops involved on a search/raid would be responsible for verifying information like the date, address, and manner of search on the warrant itself. If a bunch of cops raid 1235 Elm Street with a warrant for 1234 Elm Street, all cops on the raid should at minimum be prosecuted for breaking and entering; if anyone is hurt or killed on the raid, the cops involved should be prosecuted for battery, attempted murder, or murder. A cop's claim that someone told him the address was correct would not be any sort of defense. All cops on a raid should verify for themselves the essentials of the warrant; any cop who fails to do so has no business conducting a raid.

229 posted on 07/28/2002 7:28:25 PM PDT by supercat
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