We see it again and again. A bad cop gets caught, usually on a smart phone camera, breaking the law. The video refutes what the bad cop says happened. And... one or two or more other cops are caught lying to cover for the bad cop. There should be a strictly enforced law that when cops cover for bad cops they lose their job and go to jail for at least a year, without probation or parole.
Cop culture is poisoned with criminal loyalty and it has to be cleaned up. Police unions will scream bloody murder. Let them. They are abetting criminals.
It won't take many prosecutions to change things. And the prosecutions should not be in the hands of locals. The law should be a federal law and it should be a federal crime. There is too much cronyism to trust local legal systems to do the difficult job of going after bad cop culture.
While laws are being passed, how about one that makes it a crime for a police officer to take away or damage a mobile phone, so as to protect citizens and prevent destruction of evidence. It may even be possible to make it a precedent, if some bold prosecutor steps forward, that taking or destroying a phone is interference with an investigation, with prosecution or destruction of evidence.
There are plenty of good, honest police. But there is pressure, even on them, to break the rules to protect fellow cops. That has to stop. It won't stop by saying please. Tough laws are needed.
Walter Scott, moments before he was killed-- police dash cam
(Image by Charleston Police Dept.) Details DMCAFor example, Officer Michael Slager, of Charleston, South Carolina, was charged with murdering Walter Scott. But the second officer on the scene, who it appears helped cover for Slager, has not been charged.
Wikipedia describes:
"There have been calls for the prosecution of Clarence Habersham, the second officer seen in the video, for an attempted cover-up, with allegations that he made false statements and deliberately left facts out of his report in an attempt to protect Slager.[36] Habersham has also been criticized for stating that he attempted to render aid to the victim by applying pressure to the gunshot wounds despite no such indication in the video.[37]
Under the law I am proposing, Habersham could be prosecuted. The law should include specific categories of actions, behaviors, statements and omissions that would be prosecutable.
We need a national conversation on this. What do you think?
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
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