When American police brutality is discussed, people now think of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Ferguson, Cleveland, Tulsa, and even Albuquerque. But curiously, the entire state of Georgia has pretty much gotten a pass.
It shouldn't.
Atlanta's leading paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in partnership with Channel 2 Action News did an incredibly deep dive into police brutality in my home state. What they found is deeply disturbing.
The AJC/Channel 2 investigation found that:
Not a single fatal police shooting since 2010 has gone to trial.
Two-thirds of police shooting cases never went to a grand jury because district attorneys used their discretion not to bring charges.
Of 48 cases that went to grand jury, only nine involved the presentation of a criminal indictment. In the rest, the prosecutor simply asked the grand jury to determine if the shooting was justified or unjustified.
Consequently, only one officer has ever been indicted in Georgia and less than 24 hours after the indictment, a judge overturned it. It's the Georgia way. Not one case of police murder has even gone to trial.
When it comes to using lethal force, Georgia police are absolutely above the law. As expected, the study found that the majority of times police used lethal force, it was often when they were faced with extremely dangerous circumstances. This is fine. This is fair.
What crosses the ethical boundaries of fairness is the completely unrealistic and downright ridiculous possibility that of the 171 times Georgia police officers killed someone, they were never in error. According to the record, Georgia police are mathematically perfect when it comes to lethal force.
That, though, is why such a deep dive is critical. They aren't perfect. Egregiously unethical cases of police violence exist in Georgia, but even in those cases ... crickets.
This is by design. Here's how ...
According to the AJC:
Georgia is the only state in the nation that permits police officers facing possible criminal indictment to be inside the grand jury room for the entire proceeding and to make an unchallenged statement at the end, a special privilege that does not extend to private citizens.
“That is a problem,” said GBI Director Vernon Keenan, whose agency investigates most police shootings in Georgia. “That law gives an officer certain rights, but I don’t know that it serves the interest of justice in the end.”
Grand jury proceedings are secret and not open to the public, but the AJC was able to glean certain details related to police shooting cases. In the nine cases where district attorneys presented an indictment — roughly five percent of all fatal police shootings — the AJC identified eight where the officer was present in the grand jury room under Georgia’s special provision. The district attorney in the ninth case did not respond to questions.
In other words, in the mere nine cases where an officer was even close to being indicted for criminal wrongdoing, a ridiculous provision allowing officers to be present and make the closing statement sealed the deal in each and every case. Yeah, right—a grand jury is going to indict an officer who is staring them right in the face during a proceeding that's closed to the public.
WTF?
Such a thing is practically unheard of. The bottom line is that the deck is completely stacked. We aren't calling for innocent officers to be indicted, but for those that actually commit egregious violations to be held responsible.
It's a mess, but it's an on-purpose kind of mess.
