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Another bad cop horror in the news. I know the plaintiff's attorney, Wendy Crew. She's a good attorney. I hope she sticks these bastards for all they're worth, and then some. Article excerpt:
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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Five Birmingham police officers were fired Wednesday for beating an unconscious suspect ejected from a car after a chase, an attack captured on a patrol car videotape that didn't surface publicly for a year. Police Chief A.C. Roper said the officers, who were not identified, were seasoned veterans but acted in a "shameful" manner.
An employment and former civil rights attorney I know that employee misconduct (to put it mildly) is more often than not a product of their (a) lack of training and supervision, and (b) culture of permissiveness of/for misconduct. This can manifest itself in everything from in-office sexual harassment to police brutality/wilding.
I know of what I speak. My last argument in my last police misconduct case is forever etched in my mind, happening before a 3-Judge Panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on the morning of September 11, 2001.
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Please see this very brief backgrounder on my real-world experience with 42 U.S.C. 1983, the Federal Statute that makes state actors subject to civil liability for violating a person's civil rights "under color of law", but which has more, and more, and more been interpreted by non-empathizing, Right Wing District, Circuit and Supreme Court Jurists as providing "Qualified Immunity" (read: these-days-close-to-absolute-immunity) to bad cops and especially their supervisors: Sheriffs, Chiefs of Police, Jail Supervisors and Prison Wardens.
You see, if the people in charge are incentivized -- by the Federal Circuit Courts and the U.S. Supreme Court -- to turn as blind an eye as possible to police wilding on suspects or depriving jail inmates of basic human, and humane, rights, then that attitude of "who gives a shit?" will, I guarantee, ooze down into the rank and file and result in unjustified beatings, and worse.
Even good Police Chiefs, the ones who want to do the right thing, can't screen-out or rein-in all the bad cops if the totality of the law enforcement environment takes its cues and patterns itself off of Federal Court Judges and Justices simply not applying existing statutory law to deter and punish wrongdoing among the ranks.
And this provides us all another real-time, real-world example of why we need our next U.S. Supreme Court Justice to be a Liberal, and for a host of Liberal appointments to our Nation's U.S. District and Circuit Courts. Period.
BenGoshi
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