There are some things you hear so often , you can smell a lie even if we have no definitive proof about it.
When Diallo was shot 41 times, many of us instinctively called bullshit on the claim by the cops that they thought Diallo was reaching for a gun when he only had a wallet or id in his pocket. I actually think Diallo didn't even reach for the wallet.
THe cops had to reverse engineer the story to make up for the fact that Diallo had nothing bad on him.
Then we had the Michael Brown case. THey waited 4 days to make sure he had something to do with the incident in the store so they could emphasize their initial claims that there was a major struggle between Brown and the cop but somehow Brown who is only guilty of bullying a tiny harmless shopkeeper(where Brown didn't have the fear of retaliation) is stupid enough to want to reach for a uniformed cop's gun.
Unless I see video backing that cop's claim, I am believing the witnesses. Trust our gut because we get to those instincts with the help of many such incidents in history. So all things being equal, the neutral eyewitnesses should be more credible than the cop in trouble.
And here is one such example of where we can justify our natural inclination to believe the eyewitnesses over the killer cop.
Here is the setup:
Marcus Jeter faced a years-long prison sentence.
The New Jersey DJ, 30, was arrested in a 2012 traffic stop and charged with eluding police, resisting arrest and assault. Prosecutors insisted that Jeter do prison time.
"The first plea was five years," Jeter said.
But after Jeter's attorney, Steven Brown, filed a request for records, all of the charges against him were dropped, with dash-cam video apparently showing what really happened June 7, 2012. Now, the officers are facing charges.
The video, which prosecutors say they never saw before filing the initial charges, shows Jeter holding his hands above his head.
"The next thing I know, one of them busts the [car] door and there is glass all over my face," he told ABC News station WABC-TV about the arrest.
"As soon as they opened the door, one officer reached in and punched me in my face. As he's trying to take off my seat belt, I'm thinking, 'Something is going to go wrong.'"
I was watching the video and the cops in the video were saying "DON"T GO FOR MY GUN" "STOP RESISTING ARREST" incredibly thinking that merely saying stuff like that would be enough audio evidence against Jeter in case no one got a good video angle of the incident. But to these idiots dismay, there was a dashboard cam from one of the cars that cxlearly shows Jeter WITH HIS HANDS UP surrendering. Sounds familiar????
And it clearly shows Jeter not reaching for the cops guns or even attacking the cops despite the cops claiming that Jeter was resisting arrest. SOUNDS FAMILIAR AGAIN????(remember when witnesses said it looked like Brown was mostly pulling away more than attacking the officer in the midst of a scuffle).
It is even worse in the NJ case as the cops seem to be actively altering the facts DURING the scuffle by shouting at Jeter to stop resisting and not to reach for their guns. You hear about cops doing this after the incident. Now, they are doing it DURING the incident.
AMAZING.
A few more excerpts:
The two officers pulled out guns.
Jeter didn't get out of the car. He was afraid.
"There was a cop on my left with a gun pointed at me, a cop on the other side with a shotgun," he said.
The video that was not initially turned over -- from the dashboard of a second police cruiser -- shows a third officer coming from the opposite direction, crossing the median and striking Jeter's car. That incident was not mentioned in any police reports related to the arrest.
As soon as prosecutors saw the second video, they dismissed all of the charges against Jeter.
A grand jury has since indicted two Bloomfield police officers -- Orlando Trinidad and Sean Courter -- on various charges, including conspiracy and official misconduct.
The question is why the prosecutors should not be held accountable. Though I am sure there are people in that office who are not fully bad as they at least brought charges on the cops. They should be acting in everybody's interests. They are not supposed to be the cops attorney. WHen this guy told them the cops were lying, the prosecutors did not bother to check whether he was telling the truth or not. How come it took the defense attorney to request that dashboard cam?
The next time a right winger or moderate tells you that we don't have all the facts and that Brown could have struggled with the cop, show them this to tell them why you believe eyewitnesses over the cop. Hell, even in a better world, I would not take a cop's word blindly. But the credibility scale just tips away from the cops as there are too many to disprove the notion that it's the rare bad cop who does that.
Jeter does not appear to be an angel judging by some domestic disturbance call. What would have happened if a cop shot him in the struggle and there was no dashboard cam. it would have been EASILY dismissed as another black guy paying for his life because he supposedly fought with the cops. They would have used the domestic disturbance call to paint him in a worse light to get more credibility for the cops.