■■ topic paper – police practices
CP (agent) - attorney general
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- ....end the grand jury process
- CP (agent) - court
- Supreme court changes 4 th amendment ruling: re SWAT raids
- Courts increase criminal liability of police
CP (agent) - attorney generalCP solvency – U.S. attorney ....independent U.S. Attorney office decision (prosecute, grand jury, or no prosecution) for any police shootingCAPPS writer at CityLab 2014 (Kriston, also former senior editor at Architect magazine, “8 Ways to Get Serious About Police Reform”, http://www.citylab.com/crime/2014/12/how-to-get-serious-about-police-reform/383395/, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] Take Prosecutors Off Cases That Involve Police Shootings//// A police officer is almost always a key witness in any prosecution. So if a prosecutor starts indicting cops, cops will stop testifying for the prosecutor, which is bad not just for the prosecutor but for the police, the community, and the entire criminal justice system. Not indicting an officer in an egregious case, on the other hand, diminishes the legitimacy of the justice system, which is also bad for the police, the community, and the entire criminal justice system.//// Therefore prosecutors face a standing conflict of interest in homicide cases that involve police. "The prosecutor in a police-involved shooting is in an absolutely impossible situation," Roman says.//// One answer might be to take these cases out of the hands of local authorities. A U.S. Attorney's office covers every jurisdiction in the U.S. In the case of an officer-involved shooting, the relevant U.S. Attorney could make a recommendation about how to proceed: prosecute the officer or officers involved, set up a grand jury to investigate, or decline to prosecute.//// "Then you'd have an independent voice making a recommendation," Roman says. "It would give local law enforcement and local prosecutors the ability to make much better decisions." ....end the grand jury processCAPPS writer at CityLab 2014 (Kriston, also former senior editor at Architect magazine, “8 Ways to Get Serious About Police Reform”, http://www.citylab.com/crime/2014/12/how-to-get-serious-about-police-reform/383395/, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin and The New Republic's Noam Scheiber are among the critics who pilloried St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch for his failure to secure an indictment against Wilson. Grand juries so overwhelmingly tender indictments that the Wilson grand jury was suspect just by the fact of its decision. The prosecutor had two legitimate options, and instead chose a third, Scheiber writes: The first would have been simply to decline to indict Wilson for the reasons McCulloch’s defenders posit—that the law would have made it very difficult to secure a conviction. The second legitimate option would have been to obtain an indictment against Wilson from the grand jury, which McCulloch almost certainly could have done had he sought one. But McCulloch chose a third option—using the grand jury process to establish Wilson’s innocence—which is deeply unfair. Roman concurs: A grand jury hears the argument that the prosecutor wants the grand jury to hear. "It creates the patina of democracy where there is none," he says. "It's a farce."//// The alternative is simple and, indeed, bedrock democratic stuff: When prosecutors decide to prosecute, the question should be put to a jury of the defendant's peers in a trial. In a case in which the prosecutor has a straightforward incentive to side with one of the parties—and that's every officer-involved shooting, since prosecutors rely on police to do their jobs—the case should go automatically to criminal trial. (Or however an independent U.S. Attorney or special prosecutor recommends.) //// "A prosecutor and a grand jury is like a parent talking to their child about someone outside the family," Roman says. "What's the child going to do? They're going to do whatever the parents tell them to do."
Generic – courts solveCourts can direct police practices - empiricalETERNO associate dean and director of gradiate studies @ Molloy College 2010 (John, PhD in criminal justice from SUNY Albany, is also retired captain of NYPD, managing editor of Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, author of Policing Within the Law: A Case Study of the New York City Police Department (2003), has published in various journals including The International Journal of Police Science and Management, Women and Criminal Justice, Justice Research and Policy, etc, “Policing in the United States: Balancing Crime Fighting and Legal Rights”, in Eterno & Das (eds) Police Practices in Global Perspective, p5., note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] In fact, a wide range of factors contribute to the complex nature of law enforcement in the United States. First, police are limited in power in the U.S. They must work with the law while they enforce the law. This means following all the laws including those made by other branches of government. In particular, the complexity and ambiguity of the procedural laws (those laws that explain and limit police power generally explicated by the courts) complicate the situation for law enforcement. Police are often faced with an array of guidelines issued by various courts and legislatures that, at times, make little or no sense.1 Supreme court changes 4th amendment ruling: re SWAT raidsSWAT teams get their latitude for ‘no-knock’ raids from permissive court interpretations of 4th amendmentACLU 2014 (American Civil Liberties Union, “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing”, June 2014, p.2, https://www.aclu.org/report/war-comes-home-excessive-militarization-american-police, p.23-24, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] Generally speaking, the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the police from entering a person’s home without a warrant. Historically, if the police had a warrant to search a person’s home, they were required by law to knock on the door, announce their presence, and wait for someone to answer.55 When a person answered the door, the police were required to show the warrant and were then entitled to demand entry to conduct a search.//// Although the “knock-and-announce” rule still exists, today police executing a search warrant need not follow the rule if they have “reasonable suspicion” that the circumstances present a threat of physical violence or that evidence would be destroyed if advance notice were given.56 Further, if they believe in advance of executing the search warrant that either of these circumstances will exist, they can obtain a “no-knock warrant,” which allows them to enter a person’s home without knocking. In either case, the police are permitted to force their way into a person’s home. As a consequence, even though the police are not allowed to barge their way into a person’s home simply because they believe drugs are present,57 given that any time they have reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence would “inhibit the investigation of the crime by … allowing the destruction of evidence,”58 the reality is that drug cases often provide police with vast discretion to use forced entry into a person’s home to execute a search warrant. Even when a court finds that the police have violated the knock-and-announce rule, the Supreme Court has held that the prosecution can still use the evidence seized as a result of a subsequent search at trial, significantly diluting the knock-and-announce requirement’s value as a deterrent to police overreach.59//// While search warrants authorize the police to search a given place for a particular item or items, they rarely delineate the tactics the police may use in executing the warrant (other than no-knock warrants, which, as explained above, authorize the police to enter without knocking or announcing their presence, and sometimes specifically authorize use of a night-time search). And though the Supreme Court has held as a general matter that the method of police entry into a home is a factor to be considered in assessing the reasonableness (and, hence, constitutionality) of the search,60 there is no per se prohibition on the use of any particular method. Therefore, the fact that the police obtained a warrant in a given case does little to constrain their broad discretion to decide whether to deploy a SWAT team, break down a door with a battering ram, deploy a distraction device, etc.//// In sum, while courts can at times provide recourse to violations of Fourth Amendment rights, by and large they do not offer robust protection from police use of aggressive equipment and tactics to execute search warrants in people’s homes. Courts increase criminal liability of policePossible court mechanisms: increase penalties to help victims of police militarization, impose criminal liability for police in the chain of command, etcHILL and BERGER 2009 (Stephen, associate prof International Relatkions @ University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, specializing in paramilitary policing and conflict resolution, and Randall, professor criminal justice @ Univ. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, “A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut”, Social Justice, V.36 No. 1, p.35, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] If left unchecked, the danger exists that the militarization of policing will reach a point of no return or, at least, a point at which it is very difficult to return. The Israeli National Police (INP) represents perhaps the best example. Sergio Herzog (2001: 188), having studied the militarized ideology of policing adopted by the INP?in which the "offender" is perceived as an "enemy who only understands the language of force"? concludes that such approaches tend "to induce 'pre-violence behavior,' namely, exaggerated suspicion, rude and inconsiderate conduct, resort to unreasonable and unnecessary measures, unwillingness to explain or to listen, and acceptance of violence for its own sake." Herzog also proffers an equally prescient warning about the difficulties of demilitarizing the police. Despite attempts to demilitarize the INP since 1994, he notes, "the prevailing police subculture [still] boasts a strong esprit de corps (as in the army), which serves to perpetuate alienation and separation from the public. An 'us against them' stand still prevails regarding anyone who 'isn't a cop,' particularly minorities (Palestinians and Israeli Arabs) or groups identified as 'typical criminal offenders'" (p. 188). Not surprisingly, Herzog concludes from the Israeli experience that "the blurring of limits between the military and police force has always been disadvantageous for the public, whom the latter is supposed to serve" (pp. 205-206). Controlling the paramilitary policing juggernaut before it reaches such a level is thus essential to the future of democratic policing in the United States and overseas. This will not be easy since powerful forces drive police militarization. Opportuni? ties to slow its momentum and perhaps establish a footing for its eventual reversal do exist. For instance, to "put teeth" into the Posse Comitatus Act, Bloeser (2003: 30) proposes the following measures: ? Increase the penalty provision to allow a maximum of 10 years in prison and mandatory restitution to the victim, with required prison time if death or significant physical injury results. ? Allow criminal liability for those up the chain of command if intentional failure to supervise contributed to the [PCA] violation. ? Require military personnel, perhaps by anonymous identification number, to report PCA violations directly to an independent office at the Department of Justice and provide protection to reporting individuals against retribution. Download 1 Mb. Share with your friends:
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