The Police have way too much power & they are gaining more & more power all of the time. They think they are allowed to be both judge & jury (& frequently, executioners as well). I find the increasingly militarized Law Enforcement agencies to be very disturbing. As long as this ‘trend’ continues, very little will be done when Police lie under oath, or kick down the wrong doors, practice racism, practice ‘classism’, continue racial profiling/gender profiling.

A four paragraph Slate story does not a perjury case make. You need proof and evidence, not a slanted story, @ETpro from a slanted online magazine. You say police perjury is a routine thing because you were arrested when you were in your 20s and pled to a lessor charge. That is silliness.

Standard operating procedure here, too @ETpro. We’ve had several high profile cases with groups of officers perjuring themselves only to have one or two put on desk duty whilst collecting their paycheck.

Why? It’s a system where the judges and DAs need tickets written off and for the officers to do their dirty work for them. They certainly won’t be prosecuted by compadres.

The principles behind the Blue Shield are often applicable to other aspects of police work.

In a legal system where Judges are elected rather than selected on the basis of experience and merit, corruption has to be expected. In a country where the presumption of innocence no longer really applies, judicial corruption leads to injustice.

District Attorneys are also elected and assessment of their effectiveness is based on the number of convictions regardless of the merits of their cases. If DAs suborn or tolerate perjury from police witnesses, there can be no fair trials.

In countries where positions as Judge and DA (or Crown Attorneys) are made on the basis of experience, knowledge and merit and where they don’t have to perform like trained monkeys in election years, there is less pressure to promote routine miscarriage of justice.

With the erosion of human rights and personal freedoms in legislation since 9/11, the “authorities” have more power and defendants are pawns of a system run amok.

Show me a judge or a DA in America who doesn’t have experience or merit, @Dr_Lawrence. You can’t become a judge or a DA without experience in the judicial system. I don’t think I give the voters too much credit, they aren’t stupid.. Of course there are corrupt judges and corrupt DAs. That goes without saying to anyone who can think. But you can’t just make blanket statements about police officers, judges, attorney, prosecuting attorneys or even defense attorneys. I gotta standup for my police friends.

@bkcunningham I was not suggesting that all elected judges and DAs are corrupt or lacking the merit or experience to hold their positions, only that elections can often be dogma driven popularity contests and the pressure to get reelected pressures people in these positions to remain popular with a fickle public which I fear lends itself to poorer judgment and more pressure to corrupt or dishonest behaviour.

I have great respect for police officers but it would be naive to deny that fellow officers experience pressure to toe the line and corroborate their fellow officer’s testimony whether they saw the same thing or not.

Of course police perjure themselves. Why the hell wouldn’t they? Forget the deference they get from courts, rules of evidence in just about every state and the federal government mean there are tremendous advantages to perjury for police. If they interview you, they can say you said whatever in the interview, especially if it might line up with some evidence that’s not in your favor (e.g., witness testimony) – suddenly it’s your word against other witnesses. This is why you shouldn’t ever even talk to the police, even if you’re innocent as a lamb. Even if a statement to the police is exculpatory, the pig state can use it against you – it won’t be used in your favor.

I thought it was a given that they get charged for perjury. They should be charged with perjury and the penalty should be higher for them than for people who are not in law and order field.

There is one case here
Let’s hope that it is not a rarity.

Okay that is not the right story, since the officer is not charged, sorry. Here is the one I meant to post.

First, apologies. In the question details, I wrote 96 months when I meant to write (6 months.

@Linda_Owl I completely agree that the expanded police power and the apparent suspension of the Posse Comitatus Act make for a very dangerous mix. If we do not change course, we are headed for being a police state. I’ve long been warning that the GOP love of growing wealth inequality has us on track to be a banana republic. Banana Republics generally are police states. I wonder if the GOP rank and file like @bkcunningham even have a clue what an explosive mixture they are courting and supporting. The people of Germany mostly did not when they swung almost monolithically toward the far right after, guess what, a financial meltdown. It took years for most of them to finally wake up to the horror they had brought upon themselves.

@bkcunningham The judge threw the case out of court based on the evidence. Do you dismiss that too as a story in Slate? Do you think Slate just made the story up. BTW< read the question details. Neither I nor any of the responses above ever suggested that all police officers lie. I was careful to point out that is NOT the case. So those words came from your mind, not mine.

And I most definitely know I was not guilty of ANY crime when I got rousted by the LAPD.

@SpatzieLover Sad but not unexpected.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Thanks for the link. Great info.

@Dr_Lawrence I very strongly agree that both judges and DAs should be appointed on merit, not elected on charm. Look where a crepe like John Edwards could have gotten with his boyish charm and $400 haircuts.

@bolwerk Makes you wonder what it will take to clean up the system.

@flo Thanks. Both the links go to show the story I noted in the OP isn’t an isolated instance. I think most people that live in the Evidence Based Community know that.

@bkcunningham
you state, ”Show me a judge or a DA in America who doesn’t have experience or merit…”

Elena Kagan, for one. While she has an impressive paper resume, she had no judicial experience and very limited trial experience prior to being appointed a Supreme Court justice.

Bill Gibbons in Tennessee worked in private practice, but was appointed D.A. (then won election as D.A.), and as Wikipedia (admittedly not the most reliable source) states, “When Bill was appointed District Attorney General in 1996, he had no criminal experience as a prosecutor or defense lawyer. When he left the District Attorney’s position in 2011, he left with no experience as a prosecutor. In fifteen years on the job, he tried no cases, argued no motions, and negotiated no guilty plea settlements.”

This blog posting states that a D.A. in Georgia, Joe Mulholland had just passed the bar three years prior to seeking the post of District Attorney.

The problem, as others have mentioned, is that prosecutors and judges are too often politicized posts, and as the United States becomes more and more politically corrupt, these important jobs become political stepping-stones and careers with high potential for abuse of power rather than the socially and ethically responsible jobs they are and should be.

@ETpro I thought you meant that they don’t get accused period.
BTW, in the second link I posted there were charged but I wonder if they ended up getting convicted. ”Attorneys for the accused officers said their clients would fight the charges…” I wonder how they defended/would defend themselves.

@flo I’d love to know that too.