The Part I took in Defence of Capt. Preston and the Soldiers, procured me Anxiety, and Obloquy enough. It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country. Judgment of Death against those Soldiers would have been as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently. As the Evidence was, the Verdict of the Jury was exactly right.
A group of undercover officers working in a gun- and drug-plagued strip joint in Queens had good reason to believe that a party leaving the club was armed and about to shoot an adversary. When one of the undercovers identified himself as an officer, the car holding the party twice tried to run him down. The officer started firing while yelling to the car’s occupants: “Let me see your hands.” His colleagues, believing they were under attack, fired as well, eventually shooting off 50 rounds and killing the driver, Sean Bell. No gun was found in the car, but witnesses and video footage confirm that a fourth man in the party fled the scene once the altercation began. Bell and the other men with him all had been arrested for illegal possession of guns in the past; one of Bell’s companions that night, Joseph Guzman, had spent considerable time in prison, including for an armed robbery in which he shot at his victim.
***
Liberals might consider
Earl Ofari Hutchinson articulate (for a black man), but his latest demand to
hang police officers calls back to more primitive days of pagan sacrifice and lynching.
When future president
John Adams defended British troops involved in the
Boston Massacre, the American jury acquitted the troops NOT because the shooting hadn’t occurred, but because the troops who fired the fatal shots had followed King George’s policies. Adams and the
jurors demonstrated tremendous courage before colonists who, like Hutchinson today, preferred a simple hanging over a careful examination of policy, procedure, and the law. And while a good hanging might satisfy Hutchinson and his angry mob today, it has little effect on tomorrow.
Warren Christopher proved this in 1991. Had Christopher served King George III in 1770, he might have recommended an “independent commission” to blame a handful of “problem troops” for the shooting. Such a finding would have been expedient for
King George, for Boston was then predominantly loyalist. But by exposing British policy, Adams helped colonists understand that their problem rested not with a handful of “problem troops,” but with the King of England himself.
This helps us understand why the
Rampart Scandal (1997) occurred so soon after the
Christopher Commission Report (1991). Had
Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley not appointed
his own lawyer to investigate the LAPD, it is possible that an independent commission might have implicated the mayor and his police commission’s brutal policies just as the
Walker Commission had done in Chicago (1968).
Warren Christopher had been in Chicago during the so-called “police riots” and did not forget how Walker had exposed Chicago Mayor Daly. So it’s hard to imagine that Christopher wasn’t thinking about Daly when he offered to investigate the Rodney King beating for his long-time client and personal friend, Tom Bradley. And if Christopher had exposed his client to civil or criminal liability, his law practice would have been jeopardized. This blatant conflict was ignored by everyone involved.
When
Bradley’s lawyer blamed the “44 problem officers” for LAPD brutality, LA’s leftist media, the ACLU, and a hundred trial lawyers and university professors were only too willing to play along. After all, they hated LAPD independence, which threatened to close in on Bradley’s political corruption. And because the
Christopher Commission Report did not address the real problems in LA, voters have since been subjected to continuing abuses that were rooted not in “bad cops” as Christopher had blamed, but with Bradley’s reckless hiring practices (affirmative action) and brutal use-of-force policies that were not disclosed until the case went to trial. And even after they were exposed, the media suppressed the evidence that the jurors used to acquit the officers.
In 1770 Boston, John Adams blamed King George. In 1991 Los Angeles, Mayor Bradley’s lawyer blamed the troops. LA residents got their hanging, but Bradley’s deceit resulted in a multi-billion dollar riot (one billion in damage, one billion in tourism) and nearly $200 million in lawsuits from false arrests and abuses from the Rampart Scandal that was already brewing but still completely ignored.
If we can imagine
Ken Lay hiring
Arthur Andersen to investigate the
Enron Scandal, we will appreciate the relationship between Mayor Bradley, his lawyer, and the Rodney King beating.
Despite the complementary and self-serving reports of LAPD abuses between the
LA Times,
Christopher Commission, ACLU, and others, no court has ever admitted the
Christopher Commission Report into evidence and no meaningful recommendation has been implemented. The
Christopher Commission Report is, today, little more than one worthless document used to support other worthless documents. Those reports are largely responsible for the continuing dysfunction, wasted tax dollars, ineffective law enforcement, and sluggish recruitment.
Since 1992, liberal Democrats have enjoyed exclusive control, crippling the LAPD with tedious consent decrees, frustrated inspector generals, and
incompetent or
ambitious chiefs of police. And whenever bad policy is questioned, the liberals in charge blame spurious accounts of
racial profiling and
bad cops.
But instead of exhibiting the temperament of John Adams, Earl Ofari Hutchinson joins
Judas horses like Al Sharpton to distract us from city officials to demand police blood. By exploiting and celebrating activist blacks, liberal politicians can blame cops rather than the misguided policies they impose on the communities they ostensibly serve.
Hutchinson writes:
But expectations, not to mention witness testimony, seemingly unimpeachable evidence, and even the official condemnation of the deadly shooting by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg won't guarantee that Isnora and the other two officers indicted are convicted. It's easy to see why. When cops go on trial for overuse of deadly force, their victims are generally poor blacks and Latinos.
Coincidentally, a quick review of
NYPD’s or
LAPD’s Most Wanted shows that most of their wanted felons are, strangely enough, low income blacks and Latinos. And if you click on their pictures you’ll see that most of these black and Latino felons have victimized other Latinos and blacks. Many have guns. When one of these individuals tries to run over police officers twice, their behavior might lead to a deadly use of force by officers.
Most cops do what they’re told. If voters want cops to stop a quota of five whites, six Latinos, and two blacks every day they can do it. But if they want cops to prevent crime they have to let cops investigate criminal behavior. Do liberals want cops to conduct race-based stops to alleviate racial anxiety, or investigate criminal behavior?
The attorneys that defend (police officers) are top gun defense attorneys, and have had much experience defending police officers accused of misconduct. Police unions pay them and they spare no expense in their defense. The cops rarely serve any pre-trial jail time, and are released on ridiculously low bail. During jury selection, their attorneys seek to get as many whites on the panel as possible.
Bail is low or non-existent because cops, like other non-offenders, have no criminal record, enjoy strong ties to the community, and rarely represent a threat to the community. When police officers are accused of following bad policies, they need good lawyers. And if Hutchinson was rational, he’d wait for evidence rather than call for a hanging. And if he examines the evidence, he might be able to influence politicians to change the policies that result in unnecessary and excessive force.
The presumption is that white jurors are much more likely to be middle-class, and conservative, and much more likely to believe the testimony of police and prosecution witnesses than black witnesses, defendants, or even the victims. The same rule applies to black or Latino jurors, and both may be represented on the New York cop's jury. They are generally middle-class, and share the same biases toward those they perceive as the criminal element as many whites.
Despite the questionable merits of
jury nullification, middle class jurors are less likely to ignore evidence to
convict the innocent or
acquit the guilty. John Adams saw the value of assembling a jury from outside of Boston. A jury of Boston hangmen would have made a trial pointless. And had a Boston jury acquitted the defendants, their own lives and professions might have been jeopardized. Even Adams’ law practice suffered from defending the British troops. But while their conviction would have made Bostonians happier in the short run, it would have weakened America’s justification for independence. The jury correctly acquitted the British troops.
Prosecutors have a big task in trying to overcome the pro-police attitudes, and the negative racial stereotypes of middle-class jurors. A 2003 Penn State University study found that many whites are likely to associate pictures of blacks with violent crimes, and in some cases where crimes were not committed by blacks they misidentified the perpetrator as an African-American.
The frequent media portrayal of young blacks and Latinos as crime-prone, drug-dealing gangsters, the gang and murder violence that continues to wrack many black neighborhoods, and the glorification of the thug lifestyle by many young blacks reinforces negative racial perceptions. Almost certainly, defense attorneys will try and type Bell and his two companions in that manner. This makes many whites, non-blacks and even many older blacks guarded, suspicious and fearful of young blacks.
Having arrested a few thousand criminals, I’m accustomed to having defense lawyers put me on trial. But as Thomas Sowell
observes, stereotypes are often rooted in behavioral traits or practices (i.e., Chinese/Laundromats, cops/doughnuts, etc.). Hutchinson’s obsession with police brutality stereotypes blind him to the epidemic reality of black criminality and violence – the roots of which are based in liberal Democrat policy.
But jurors should be concerned with the evidence of what drove officers to fear for their lives and fire their weapons. Bell’s behavior, and the officers’ response as it relates to NYPD policy, is more relevant than the skin color or stereotypes that Hutchinson prefers to focus.
There is no ironclad standard of what is or isn't acceptable use of force. It often comes down to a judgment call by the officer. In the Rodney King beating case in 1992 in which four LAPD officers stood trial, defense attorneys turned the tables and painted King as the aggressor and claimed that the level of force used against him was justified.
As I stated previously, the evidence showed that the officers had used excessive force against King, but that the force used was required by the LAPD Police Commission – who should have also been named co-defendants at that trial. Unlike
Nuremberg, LA’s generals were defended by Warren Christopher. Had Rodney King cooperated as did his two passengers, he would have been handcuffed and transported without a scratch, just as they were.
The four New York City cops tried for gunning down African immigrant, Amadou Diallo in 1999, also claimed that they feared for their lives. The jury believed them and acquitted them. In Cincinnati, a municipal judge summarily acquitted white Cincinnati police officer, Stephen Roach of criminal charges in the slaying of 19-year-old Timothy Thomas during a traffic pursuit in 2001. The shooting ignited three days of riots. The judge bought Roach's tale that he feared for his life, and fired in self-defense.
In 1992, the LA riots exploded after the Rodney King defendants were acquitted. I don’t blame the rioters. After all, Mayor Bradley’s lawyer had convicted the officers months before their trial started. I haven’t studied the details of the Diallo or Thomas cases, but I’d place more faith in the jurors than I would Hutchinson’s race-based condemnation.
In the Bell case, Kasaryk and the other officer's attorneys almost certainly will use the same tact and argue that the officers feared for their lives when they fired. In his initial call to a supervising police lieutenant, Isnora said he thought one of the suspects had a gun, made a suspicious move, and that the car they were in bumped him.
That’s the only time deadly force can be used – when officers fear for their own lives or perceive an immediately deadly threat to others. Does Hutchinson expect officers to say they were not afraid? ALL of the officers fired upon Bell. I fired my pistol once at a carjacker and I was terrified. Race had nothing to do with the carjacker or me. I was in fear of my life and fired.
The code of silence is another powerful obstacle to convicting bad cops. Officers hide behind it and refuse to testify against other officers, or tailor their testimony to put the officer's action in the best possible light.
Another stereotype. I would never risk my career to cover for a bad cop – or one that used excessive force. Most officers wouldn’t. The
two LA cops who planted guns and shot unarmed suspects were bad apples BEFORE LA’s civilian Personnel Department forced the LAPD to accept them. Their behavior had nothing to do with cops covering up crime scenes and everything to do with substandard hiring practices (affirmative action). By the way, those officers were arrested by LAPD officers and they went to prison. Three falsely accused officers who were implicated by Raphael Perez were recently awarded
$15 million for malicious prosecution – conduct that Hutchinson now promotes in the Bell case.
Prosecutors often are barred from using statements made during internal investigations of officer misconduct in court proceedings on grounds of self-incrimination. This knocks out another potentially crucial prosecution weapon.
Whether street cops or career criminals, all defendants enjoy protection against self-incrimination. This actually places officers in a worse position than street thugs. After all, if Hutchinson had punched me in the face during an arrest, he might receive a few months in jail and probation, or a fine. However, if I punched Hutchinson in the face illegally, I would lose my career, annual income, and retirement plan – a far greater penalty than the courts impose for a simple assault. I haven’t reviewed the Bell shooting, but I can imagine that the accused officers thought a lot harder about shooting Bell than Bell thought of repeatedly crashing his car into the officers.
Federal prosecutors that retried the officers that beat King learned a vital lesson from the abysmal failure of local prosecutors to convict them. They did not rely exclusively on the videotape but on expert testimony on the use of force to prove that the officers went way over the top against King. Yet despite the massive time, resources, and care they devoted to the case, they still only managed to convict two of the four officers.
During the federal trial, prosecutors solicited dozens of nationally recognized use of force experts before finding one sergeant to testify. Had the officers used excessive force, hundreds of experts would have willingly testified against them. That prosecutors struggled to find one was telling.
The federal trial was an obvious political compromise. After all, how can two of the four defendants be convicted of violating Rodney King’s civil rights while two are acquitted. The four acted together. They are either all guilty, or innocent.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson doesn’t care about evidence or civil rights. His outcome-based sensibilities make him an unsuitable juror and an incompetent defender of civil rights. He expresses many of the same attitudes that made LAPD Officer Rafael Perez an unsuitable candidate for law enforcement.
Like
Kevin Gaines, Rafael Perez, and David Mack, Earl Ofari Hutchinson would have made a lousy cop.
