When the public complains about police misconduct, they are often met with the “few bad apples” response—implying that the problem is limited to a few rogue individuals and is not nearly as widespread or pervasive as some might think. However, despite attempts to paint it otherwise, there is a culture within policing rife with lying and bad behaviors that does exist. And it needs to be addressed and rooted out in order to ensure accuracy, fairness, and an increase the public trust.
The New York Times conducted an investigation that looked at “testilying” by New York City police—a nickname given to describe when officers give false testimony about a case. While the data doesn’t suggest that every officer or even a majority of them engage in this practice, it does highlight an important problem that could ruin the lives of innocent people.
An investigation by The New York Times has found that on more than 25 occasions since January 2015, judges or prosecutors determined that a key aspect of a New York City police officer’s testimony was probably untrue. [...]
In these cases, officers have lied about the whereabouts of guns, putting them in suspects’ hands or waistbands when they were actually hidden out of sight. They have barged into apartments and conducted searches, only to testify otherwise later. Under oath, they have given firsthand accounts of crimes or arrests that they did not in fact witness. They have falsely claimed to have watched drug deals happen, only to later recant or be shown to have lied.
No detail, seemingly, is too minor to embellish.
Officers have often been caught in a lie by cameras (body cameras, surveillance cameras, etc) when the footage doesn’t match their court testimony or statements. They have also been caught lying at times when their story continues to change over a period of time. The Times reporting reveals that when police officers lie in court cases, it is often because they are attempting to justify unreasonable searches and seizures. It also appears that they lie and use false evidence when they are trying to convict individuals—whether or not they have or have not actually committed a crime. This is a critical issue that has an impact on trust and relationship-building with the community, while also undermining the integrity of the justice system.
Police lying raises the likelihood that the innocent end up in jail — and that as juries and judges come to regard the police as less credible, or as cases are dismissed when the lies are discovered, the guilty will go free. Police falsehoods also impede judges’ efforts to enforce constitutional limits on police searches and seizures.
“We have 36,000 officers with law enforcement power, and there are a small handful of these cases every year,” said J. Peter Donald, a spokesman for the Police Department, the nation’s largest municipal force. “That doesn’t make any of these cases any less troubling. Our goal is always, always zero. One is too many, but we have taken significant steps to combat this issue.”
However, The Times also notes that even though they only identified 25 cases in the last three years where officers have been suspected of or proven to have lied, the reality of these incidents is likely much higher.
This is because of a judicial system that allows for plea deals, dismissed cases, and sealed records—so it is unclear just how many officers have lied to justify abuse, mistreatment, or misconduct but were never charged. And while its easy for us to relegate this to a past where police corruption remained unchecked, the practice of police perjury is still very much entrenched in the culture of the NYPD.
[A] vast majority of cases end in plea deals before an officer is ever required to take the witness stand in open court, meaning the possibility that an officer lied is seldom aired in public. And in the rare cases when an officer does testify in court — and a judge finds the testimony suspicious, leading to the dismissal of the case — the proceedings are often sealed afterward. [...]
Indeed, it’s tempting to think about police lying as a bygone of past eras: a form of misconduct that ran unchecked as soaring street violence left the police overwhelmed during the 1980s and early 1990s and that re-emerged as police embraced stop-and-frisk tactics and covered up constitutional violations with lies.
But false testimony by the police persists even as crime has drastically receded across the city and as the Police Department has renounced the excesses of the stop-and-frisk years.
Another grave concern emerging from this story is the fact that officers don’t always lie because they have committed an abuse themselves, such as an unconstitutional stop and search. Instead, they sometimes lie because they feel pressure to meet arrest or ticket quotas, or close a case. This speaks to another problem in policing, which seems to indicate shortcuts taken and pressure felt to determine a quick-fix approach to solving crime. It’s understandable that police have a lot to do and may often feel underresourced and understaffed. But harming people, circumventing the law, and sacrificing the public good are not acceptable casualties in their attempts to get the job done.
It will be a difficult road ahead to transform this culture within the NYPD. And though this report solely focuses on New York City, it raises questions about how many more cities around the country have police officers doing the exact same thing. Sadly, if its up to the Justice Department under the current leadership of Jeff Sessions, we will likely never know.
This is why a free and independent press is so important when it comes to shedding light on corrupt institutional practices. It’s too bad this administration wants to wage war on the press instead of root out this kind of behavior and make us all safer. Until then, let’s hope that judges continue to dismiss cases where they see obvious false statements by police taking place.