Grand Juries and Police Officers

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

I'm going to start by saying, yes this is in response to the Eric Garner/Michael Brown case, but that isn't the topic. Not going there.

The question is, how do you deal with the ingrained biases inherent in the Grand Jury system specifically with regards to police officers.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/f...darren-wilson/

I had three thoughts that sprung to mind tonight.

1. Completely remove internal affairs from police jurisdiction
2. Have a seperate elected official responsible for prosecution of police officers that is not encumbered with depending on the police for their job
3. If necessary, create or modify federal laws to govern the prosecution of police officers

My thought is, if the system is busted then you modify the system. The thing right now is, because some of it has been written by judicial fiat in the Supreme Court (hence the need for laws) and the natural biases are the result of organization, the system is actually working as designed. So if we don't like the results, yea we can yell about it but I'd be curious how many citizens will actually work on the local and federal levels to fix it. Essentially this is legislative issue, and we've gotten really bad at actually doing anything about those.

[Greenday]

I thought the real question was when will the media stop ttying to imply every single case of a white person shooting a black person is racist.

[Andara Bledin]

That'll probably happen around the same time that apologists stop trying to imply that every single case of cop shooting citizen is justified.

Fun fact about that, btw: The FBI classes anyone killed by a cop as a felon. Who know it was a felony to get killed by the police?

[gremcint]

here's the thing, if it is supposed to be so rare not to pass the grand jury like .003 percent rare why even have the grand jury, save some time and money and just go to trial.

[Gravekeeper]

I thought the real question was when will the media stop ttying to imply every single case of a white person shooting a black person is racist.

You're STILL going to go with that? Even after documents from Ferguson? Even after Eric Garner was choked to death by an officer ( who already has two other lawsuits against him in progress as I recall ), on camera, when his department prohibits choke holds? Even after Tamir Rice was shot to death inside of 2 seconds of the police arriving on scene by an officer who hard already been *fired* from another department for being unfit for duty? Then both him and his partner lied about it unaware it was caught on camera?

The real question is when will you admit America has a major systematic friggan problem and it desperately needs to be fixed?

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Green day-

I included the five thirty eight article because it ISN'T explicitly about race. In a situation where the prosecutor gets sole discretion as to what's presented(it's an evidentiary hearing that saves a judge the time by conscripting jurors) cops are not going to trial by and large.

Whether or not they're convicted is the defense's job. The defense never is getting called.

When the stats are 1 in 83 in Dallas, I have questions. Obviously Gravekeeper and I have very different opinions on Ferguson, but even I saw sufficient evidence to impanel a jury.

The topic is how do you fix a system making actual mistakes regularly. Whether or not cops are eventually convicted is an entirely different kettle of fish.

[HYHYBT]

here's the thing, if it is supposed to be so rare not to pass the grand jury like .003 percent rare why even have the grand jury, save some time and money and just go to trial.

In principle, to make sure it stays that way. Just as, while almost everyone put on trial is guilty, that wouldn't stay true for long if they were assumed to be.

[Hyena Dandy]

here's the thing, if it is supposed to be so rare not to pass the grand jury like .003 percent rare why even have the grand jury, save some time and money and just go to trial.

To my knowledge, grand juries also decide what you're charged with. A prosecutor will likely only bring something before a grand jury if he thinks that there's probable cause for somethihng, but might ask for Murder 1 and get manslaughter.

[Gravekeeper]

To my knowledge, grand juries also decide what you're charged with. A prosecutor will likely only bring something before a grand jury if he thinks that there's probable cause for somethihng, but might ask for Murder 1 and get manslaughter.

The prosecutor should bring the possible charges to the attention of the grand jury. In the case of Ferguson the prosecutor did not suggest any charges and basically refused to even consider that a crime may have been committed. Referring to it only as a "situation". Technically, the defendant of a grand jury proceeding doesn't even have the right to be present. Never mind being on the witness stand like Ferguson.

Thus is the problem where the prosecutor has sole discretion over everything. The prosecutor can, in essence, take a judicial dive and quite often does in the case of a police officer. Though I've never seen it taken to the farcical lengths of the Ferguson grand jury.

[Hyena Dandy]

The prosecutor should bring the possible charges to the attention of the grand jury. In the case of Ferguson the prosecutor did not suggest any charges and basically refused to even consider that a crime may have been committed. Referring to it only as a "situation". Technically, the defendant of a grand jury proceeding doesn't even have the right to be present. Never mind being on the witness stand like Ferguson.

Thus is the problem where the prosecutor has sole discretion over everything. The prosecutor can, in essence, take a judicial dive and quite often does in the case of a police officer. Though I've never seen it taken to the farcical lengths of the Ferguson grand jury.

I have no idea what you think I'm trying to say. It seems that you have confused "Why grand juries exist" with "I think the Ferguson grand jury was properly conducted" which is quite honestly baffling. That's not remotely tied to my statement.

gremcint asked

here's the thing, if it is supposed to be so rare not to pass the grand jury like .003 percent rare why even have the grand jury, save some time and money and just go to trial.

Going straight to trial would mean that the prosecutor gets to decide if he has a case, and decide what to charge someone with. There are OTHER processes that do the same thing as Grand Juries, determination of probable cause, but none of those can be called "Going straight to trial."

HYHYBT answered that the reason is, hypothetically, to KEEP it that grand juries will only be approached when the prosecutor thinks there's a good reason. I added that they're also approached to choose charges, so while Grand Juries will indict someone on SOMETHING 99.997% of the time, they do still perform a function even in the 99.997% of the time that they do indict.

That's totally unrelated to the question of whether a particular grand jury trial was properly conducted.

[Gravekeeper]

I have no idea what you think I'm trying to say. It seems that you have confused "Why grand juries exist" with "I think the Ferguson grand jury was properly conducted" which is quite honestly baffling. That's not remotely tied to my statement.

Its baffling because that wasn't what I was saying at all. >.>

All I was saying was the Ferguson grand jury wasn't even going by typical grand jury procedure. I did not say you said it was properly conducted at all. Quite the contrary. I was saying that it was not conducted properly based on the proper conduct you were outlining.

You can quote someone as a starting point to continue a conversation you know. It doesn't mean I'm attacking or disagreeing with you. I'm quoting you because you made me think of something which was related to what you were talking about.

[BlaqueKatt]

The real question is when will you admit America has a major systematic friggan problem and it desperately needs to be fixed?

even after a criminologist and others review EMPIRICAL DATA and find evidence of implicit racial bias, to the point they've started training programs to deal with it?

How police are racist without even knowing it

[Greenday]

You're STILL going to go with that? Even after documents from Ferguson? Even after Eric Garner was choked to death by an officer ( who already has two other lawsuits against him in progress as I recall ), on camera, when his department prohibits choke holds? Even after Tamir Rice was shot to death inside of 2 seconds of the police arriving on scene by an officer who hard already been *fired* from another department for being unfit for duty? Then both him and his partner lied about it unaware it was caught on camera?

The real question is when will you admit America has a major systematic friggan problem and it desperately needs to be fixed?

Of course I'm still going with it, it's the truth in these situations. Michael Brown attacked a cop and died doing so. That's not a racial problem. Eric Garner had the cops called on him by multiple store owners sick of him selling cigarettes in front of their stores, killing business. The police show up, he gets rowdy, resists arrest, and dies afterwards due to complications from his poor health. He wasn't choked to death. You can't yell "I CAN'T BREATHE!" when you are being choked.

Missouri and New York are not examples of white on black racism. They are examples of the media taking a story and spinning them for maximum ratings. There are people who actually have to deal with racism all the time and protesting and rioting because of these two events is a slap in the face to people who actually do no wrong other than having a different color skin. There's plenty of police brutality to protest about but the amount of lies needed to vilify the police in these situations is absurd.

[Andara Bledin]

Of course I'm still going with it, it's the truth in these situations.

Those are the facts, but not all of them, and certainly not "the truth."

What you are oh-so-conveniently ignoring in your race to be a blindered apologist is that blacks are statistically 80% of all police interactions despite the actual truth being that blacks do not actually commit that much of the crime.

The reason that there is so much mistrust, so much resistance, and so many incidences of white on black police violence is because the police officers involved instigate these incidents.

Michael Brown was walking in the middle of a residential street and being a nuissance when a police officer decided to assert his authority against him by rolling up on him to tell him and his friend to get out of the way of the traffic that, at the time, consisted of him. The officer was looking to teach Brown "his place" and when Brown resisted, he reacted with unreasonable and unreasoning fear and gunned him down, shooting him repeatedly after it was obvious he was not any kind of threat to make sure he got the point. And then left the body, in the street, in the open, in the middle of the neighborhood so that everybody else could get a good look at what happens to people who don't know "their place."

[Greenday]

Michael Brown was walking in the middle of a residential street and being a nuissance when a police officer decided to assert his authority against him by rolling up on him to tell him and his friend to get out of the way of the traffic that, at the time, consisted of him. The officer was looking to teach Brown "his place" and when Brown resisted, he reacted with unreasonable and unreasoning fear and gunned him down, shooting him repeatedly after it was obvious he was not any kind of threat to make sure he got the point. And then left the body, in the street, in the open, in the middle of the neighborhood so that everybody else could get a good look at what happens to people who don't know "their place."

Oh, heaven forbid! You mean a cop doing his job telling two guys to stop blocking traffic is doing something wrong by doing so? How horrible of him! Racist bastard!

The way you act, it's like he shot Brown for not listening and had NOTHING to do with the fact that Brown attempted to take his gun already and was charging at him. It'd be pretty reasonable for Wilson to assume the guy charging him would go for the gun a second time.