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Jarmak posted:Again, I specifically addressed this argument already and you haven't done anything but repeat it without adding anything new, but sure lets try this again: So if the chief writes "don't rape people during traffic stops" and then a cop does, is it a matter of internal policy not punishable by criminal justice?
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Dec 1, 2015 18:19
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Jarmak posted:The thing is breaking department policy is not the same thing as breaking the law. I understand that people's reaction to this is that if it breaks policy how can it be a legal/official/legitimate application of force so it must be a crime, but it doesn't work that way.What constitutes criminal behavior or legally allowable force is the law, which includes statute and case law. Departments can set policies that are more restrictive then what an officer is legally allowed to do, but unless we write into the appropriate statutes that violating department policy voids a justification defense the only means they have to enforce those more restrictive rules are professional consequences. I'm not so sure that law & department policy are so cleanly separated. The choke hold (like pretty much all arrests) was battery. The officers want to establish a defense to battery. The typical defense is that the force was lawful because it was necessary to make an arrest. That only works when the arrest is (1) reasonable, and (2) part of their duties as peace officers. The exact NY Statute is: quote:Justification; generally. I agree that "reasonable" is a question for the courts. But, an officer's "official duties" are defined by their department. If, for instance, the cops had all been on suspension, then their choke hold would have been obviously illegal, even though 'suspension' is a matter of internal department policy. The argument I'd make is that officers 'official duties' are to uphold the law within the confines of their department policies. When officers start doing things that are policy-violating, they should lose their "justification via official duties" defense. The policies define their duties, and they're acting outside of them. This doesn't seem like an especially dangerous slope; those officers would still have all the defenses available to the rest of us.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:21
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SedanChair posted:So if the chief writes "don't rape people during traffic stops" and then a cop does, is it a matter of internal policy not punishable by criminal justice? I'm sure that's against statute regardless of department policy. It's not like it would be legal if the chief wrote "rape all you want".
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Dec 1, 2015 18:22
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VitalSigns posted:I'm sure that's against statute regardless of department policy. It's not like it would be legal if the chief wrote "rape all you want". And it's normally pretty illegal to choke people as well, so I'm not sure why you get even the slightest bit of special protection if you choke somebody outside of policy.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:23
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Huh, reading further down the page, there's a more explicit bit:quote:Justification; use of physical force in making an arrest or in preventing an escape. This seems to support Jarmak; the statute is about the officer's personal beliefs. I'll have to walk my position back a bit. We ought add an 'in the course of official duties' section to that law.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:32
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falcon2424 posted:Huh, reading further down the page, there's a more explicit bit: Except, none of the officers involved have made the claim that they needed to kill him in self-defense right? This is an arrest takedown gone bad, not a self-defense slaying, correct?
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Dec 1, 2015 18:37
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falcon2424 posted:When officers start doing things that are policy-violating, they should lose their "justification via official duties" defense. The policies define their duties, and they're acting outside of them. I'm unclear on the level of training this particular person received regarding grappling people, it would be both ideal and plausible to me that they are trained enough that they couldn't reasonably believe a choke hold to be necessary. I also wouldn't be surprised if the training was terrible and useless, at which point allowing the government to hold someone criminally responsible for failing to following a policy the government set, but then failed to train them in seems problematic.
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Dec 1, 2015 19:33
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Uhhh, the government being able to arrest someone for killing people because he wasn't trained well enough to keep from killing people sounds a whole lot less worrying than the government sending out untrained agents and shrugging when they kill people. You're worried about an overzealous government....yet jail for killers bothers you more than civilians being killed for no reason?
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Dec 1, 2015 19:43
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I'll try to respond to people more in depth later when I'm not on my phone, but I wanted to make one quick note. I think we're having a major disconnect on what level of force was applied to Garner. First off he wasn't "choked to death" which implies the cop kept him in a hold until he was dead and would be legit lethal force. This level of force is much more in line with something like throwing a suspect to the ground and accidentally putting his head into the curb in the process. It's a non-lethal level of force that resulted in accidental death, in many departments it is a completely authorized method to effect a non compliant arrest. Any application of force always carries a risk of lethality, that doesn't retroactively mean "lethal force was applied".
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Dec 1, 2015 19:59
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Isn't a large part of the outrage also because the officers themselves often don't seem to give a poo poo and fail to provide basic medical care or call in for medical assistance when it's obviously warranted? I can understand the former because they're not medically trained but the latter is inexcusable.
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Dec 1, 2015 20:04
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Taeke posted:Isn't a large part of the outrage also because the officers themselves often don't seem to give a poo poo and fail to provide basic medical care or call in for medical assistance when it's obviously warranted? I can understand the former because they're not medically trained but the latter is inexcusable.
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Dec 1, 2015 20:05
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Taeke posted:Isn't a large part of the outrage also because the officers themselves often don't seem to give a poo poo and fail to provide basic medical care or call in for medical assistance when it's obviously warranted? I can understand the former because they're not medically trained but the latter is inexcusable. This is perfectly fair, right now this would be a professional consequence not legal. Is creating a legal duty to provide adequate care a road people are interested in going down? I know when I lived in Italy it was a criminal offense to pass a auto wreck without stopping to render aid so that's kind of the line of thought I'm thinking of. I honestly haven't given this idea much thought so I don't have an opinion.
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Dec 1, 2015 20:11
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Jarmak posted:Is creating a legal duty to provide adequate care a road people are interested in going down? I think it makes perfect sense that if an officer seriously injures a person in the line of duty, they should most definitely have to request medical assistance for that person. To what extent they should be held liable, I don't know. I haven't put too much though into it, either.
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Dec 1, 2015 20:22
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Jarmak posted:This is perfectly fair, right now this would be a professional consequence not legal. Is creating a legal duty to provide adequate care a road people are interested in going down? I know when I lived in Italy it was a criminal offense to pass a auto wreck without stopping to render aid so that's kind of the line of thought I'm thinking of. IANAL. This is referred to as "duty to rescue" or "duty to assist", and it is very uncommon except in cases where the harm or risk to the other was caused by the person in the first place. Bottom line, there are very good reasons for there to not be a general legal duty to assist others. Requirements for people who cause the harm or risk are more variable and complicated, regardless of their profession (doctors are almost never subject to a profession-specific duty to rescue). A duty to rescue is more likely to arrive if you have some sort of specific personal responsibility for the person at risk, such as an employee or someone you invited onto your property that is injured by a nonobvious hazard. Again, though, this is a simplification of a really broad swathe of civil and criminal law. The situation you describe in Italy is itself pretty strange- are you sure that was the entirety of the law? Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 20:23
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Jarmak posted:I understand the argument for negligent homicide but I just really don't think its a winner, if that chokehold had been uniformly banned then you'd have a strong case but since in other departments it would have been allowable under their policies I just don't think that case has a chance. Civil negligence is a different issue however, though you'd have to go after the department because there's no way that conduct pierces qualified immunity. Jarmak posted:First off he wasn't "choked to death" which implies the cop kept him in a hold until he was dead and would be legit lethal force. This level of force is much more in line with something like throwing a suspect to the ground and accidentally putting his head into the curb in the process. It's a non-lethal level of force that resulted in accidental death, in many departments it is a completely authorized method to effect a non compliant arrest.
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Dec 1, 2015 20:37
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quote:Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday that he has asked for the resignation of Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/01/us/chicago-laquan-mcdonald-police-shooting/index.html
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Dec 1, 2015 20:57
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The Mattybee posted:If this is what you were trying to say, then maybe you spent too much time getting choked in the military. Because this is not what people are up in arms about. This is exactly why people get up your rear end and exactly what you were criticized of before, that you will focus on diversionary poo poo that distracts from the main issue. The point is not "he was violating departmental policy", but "his loving chokehold (which also happened to be against department policy) killed a dude completely unnecessarily. The policy thing is not the important thing, which is why you're focusing on it. Again. As in: No, he didn't deserved to be killed, if all you want out of this thread is a chorus of "man that sucks and shouldn't have happened" then its going to be a pretty boring thread. I'm trying to discuss what level and what form of culpability the officer should face and what steps if any can be taken to reduce the likelihood of future occurrences, which is a far more nuanced question. Discendo Vox posted:IANAL. This is referred to as "duty to rescue" or "duty to assist", and it is very uncommon except in cases where the harm or risk to the other was caused by the person in the first place. I'll be honest, I don't know very much at all about the specifics about that law and I don't have the time to research it right now, my knowledge comes entirely from being briefed multiple times that if we witnessed a wreck we had a duty to stop and if we didn't we could face no poo poo criminal charges. Dead Reckoning posted:I'd disagree on that point. The officer might have a QI defense if the officer's level of force was reasonable for the circumstances, even if the method was outside the scope of department policy, but it wasn't. I don't think Pantaleo ever tried to raise a QI defense at trial. By "not piercing QI" I meant "QI definitely would apply and can not be pierced" not "QI would not come into play", sorry if that wasn't clear. There's a difference between "as a policy we've decided this type of force is too dangerous" and straight up deadly force, especially when there's controversy between departments whether it is in fact too dangerous. I very intentionally said in my hypothetical that the bashing of the head into the curb was accidental, because I was trying to illustrate how even widely accepted forms of non-lethal force always carry a danger of serious injury or death, the lethality of force is a continuum, not a binary attribute. Trabisnikof posted:So are there any lethal actions police could have taken to kill Garner that you'd argue are illegal? Yes, I'm not sure where you're getting this, I never said lethal force was okay at all, a chokehold is not typically lethal force and is allowed in many departments as a non-lethal compliance method. Trabisnikof posted:Except, none of the officers involved have made the claim that they needed to kill him in self-defense right? This is an arrest takedown gone bad, not a self-defense slaying, correct? I think you're missing that part he's trying to highlight, which is this: quote:may use physical force when and
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Dec 1, 2015 20:57
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Jarmak posted:I'll be honest, I don't know very much at all about the specifics about that law and I don't have the time to research it right now, my knowledge comes entirely from being briefed multiple times that if we witnessed a wreck we had a duty to stop and if we didn't we could face no poo poo criminal charges. If it was presented like that then it sounds like there actually is an honest-to-goodness general duty to rescue regime. Weird. That's pretty unheard of. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 20:59
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Discendo Vox posted:If it was presented like that then it sounds like there actually is an honest-to-goodness general duty to rescue regime. Weird. That's pretty unheard of. I should be doing work right now but I couldn't resist a quick google search, Wikipedia at least provides the following under the article "duty to rescue" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue posted:Criminal law
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Dec 1, 2015 21:10
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Jarmak posted:No, he didn't deserved to be killed, if all you want out of this thread is a chorus of "man that sucks and shouldn't have happened" then its going to be a pretty boring thread. I'm trying to discuss what level and what form of culpability the officer should face and what steps if any can be taken to reduce the likelihood of future occurrences, which is a far more nuanced question. As with a lot of these cases it involved a man being arrested for a really low level crime that shouldn't be an arrestable offense. The simplest way to reduce incidents that happen while people are being arrested is to arrest fewer people.
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Dec 1, 2015 21:12
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Jarmak posted:This is perfectly fair, right now this would be a professional consequence not legal. Is creating a legal duty to provide adequate care a road people are interested in going down? I know when I lived in Italy it was a criminal offense to pass a auto wreck without stopping to render aid so that's kind of the line of thought I'm thinking of.
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Dec 1, 2015 21:17
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Jarmak posted:I'll try to respond to people more in depth later when I'm not on my phone, but I wanted to make one quick note. I think we're having a major disconnect on what level of force was applied to Garner. I agree, and again, bringing up Pantaleo alone when several other officers were pressing on Garner's back was a deliberate obfuscation by the DA to help kill the case. The Los Angeles Times posted:Transcripts of witness testimony, Garner's autopsy report, the exact charges Donovan pursued against Pantaleo and other key information was not made public. Without knowing the autopsy report or the list of charges, it's almost impossible for us to discuss this in any productive way. By design. Infinite Karma posted:I'm surprised that there aren't more DAs gunning for bad cops to nail to the wall. People are thirsty as hell to see cops going to prison when they assault and murder people. Every case of an indicted cop is national news. Actually convicting a cop would make any DA an overnight superstar. A DA might theoretically do this, but the voting demographics often push the other way. DAs campaign on 'law and order' because it's literally their job, and voters, especially for local offices, tend to be older, whiter, and wealthier than average. The Garner/Pantaleo case was prosecuted by the DA of Staten Island (Richmond County), who is now the Republican US Representative for that area after winning a special election in 2015 to replace this guy. That's a somewhat extreme example, but the general trend holds true across the country, and the office of District Attorney is often seen as a stepping stone to higher office. Additionally, DAs have to work closely with the police to do their jobs, which incentivizes them to avoid antagonizing cops. rockopete fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 21:41
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twodot posted:Your latest post seems directly on point, but I want to talk about this a bit. We generally want people to be able to figure out whether or not they are committing a crime on their own and quickly. This isn't always possible, but it's a nice goal which is why there's the "reasonably believes" wording in there. It makes sense that something a reasonable person could believe is necessary shouldn't be illegal. When departmental policy controls whether something is criminal or not, knowing whether you're committing crime requires having read and remembered the latest memo. Sometimes this isn't a problem, like you pointed out suspended officers aren't allowed to make arrests (I assume), but there shouldn't be any way for someone to argue they were unaware they were suspended. In other scenarios I can definitely see it being a problem. I agree with your "reasonable belief" addition; I'm sure there are departments where policy is vague. The way I'd like the rules to work would be to modify the justification statute to have a "reasonable belief that force was necessary for the completion of duties," caveat. Then, we'd write the department policy so that "duties" = "enforce the laws, within the department's use-of-force rules." Assuming that the officer was (or should reasonably have been) aware of the "no chokeholds for misdemeanors" rule, we'd say that his decision to make an unsafe arrest for a misdemeanor was obviously outside of policy, and so not part of his job. I'm not too worried about over-criminalization because there'd still be the possibility of justification via self-defense. So my change only matter when (1) officers used too much force (2) they likely knew they were choosing to break policy and (3) weren't in immediate danger when they did it. This change would create a problem in that police officers are incentivized to claim ignorance of department policy. So, if we really wanted to get incentives aligned, I'd give departments a civil duty to train their officers in policy. This way, when an officer claims ignorance, the department needs to either show that their officer was correctly trained, or become civilly liable their mistakes in training.
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Dec 1, 2015 22:19
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Jarmak posted:I should be doing work right now but I couldn't resist a quick google search, Wikipedia at least provides the following under the article "duty to rescue" Huh- that creates a lot of perverse incentives- I wonder how those countries manage them. Ah well 
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Dec 1, 2015 22:19
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Jarmak posted:This is perfectly fair, right now this would be a professional consequence not legal. Is creating a legal duty to provide adequate care a road people are interested in going down? I know when I lived in Italy it was a criminal offense to pass a auto wreck without stopping to render aid so that's kind of the line of thought I'm thinking of. I'd support that duty (and am surprised if it doesn't exist). I'd argue that police officers are in a very different position than passive bystanders. One difference I'd focus on is that, when conducting an arrest, they're actively preventing their suspect from getting aid. I'm ok with a general rule like, "You either leave people free to care for themselves OR accept that burden on yourself." --- In addition, we should treat the use-of-force as continuing until the situation is completely over. So, decisions to mitigate harm (or not) should matter when we're deciding if an officer's force was excessive. As a hypothetical: A police officer makes a misdemeanor arrest. When doing so, the police officer causes the suspect to trip and hit their head. (Assume this is reasonable, if unfortunate). The suspect happens to fall unconscious and rolls, face down, into a shallow puddle of water. The officer watches as the suspect drowns. Is this manslaughter? My argument is that the officer's use-of-force decision was, "trip suspect AND leave their head in water if they happen to fall that way." The tripping wouldn't be lethal force. But the second bit would qualify. And I'd argue that it should.
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Dec 1, 2015 22:38
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I think the problem with your hypothetical is that "being face down in a puddle of water" isn't a medical problem, whereas a gunshot wound or difficulty breathing are.
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Dec 1, 2015 22:46
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Koalas March posted:http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/01/us/chicago-laquan-mcdonald-police-shooting/index.html any update if he stepped down or not?
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Dec 1, 2015 23:02
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Koalas March posted:http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/01/us/chicago-laquan-mcdonald-police-shooting/index.html So, what do we think the odds are of Superintendent McCarthy popping up in a cush do-nothing job with some close personal friends of Mayor Emanuel in a month or so?
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Dec 1, 2015 23:04
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Dead Reckoning posted:I think the problem with your hypothetical is that "being face down in a puddle of water" isn't a medical problem, whereas a gunshot wound or difficulty breathing are. I disagree; a blocked airway is as medical as anything else. It happens to be a danger that everyone understands and knows how to mitigate. But that doesn't change a police officers duty (or lack of duty) to mitigate continued injury that's a consequence of their arrest.
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Dec 1, 2015 23:31
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Guess somebody had to take one for the team. pretty much. he is the most visible police leader and was in charge when the CPD was doing all the awful poo poo(recent awful poo poo i mean) so the machine decided to make him an easy sacrifice. kinda hope he tries to drag everyone down with him.
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Dec 1, 2015 23:33
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falcon2424 posted:I disagree; a blocked airway is as medical as anything else. I agree that the police have an obligation to ensure that people in their custody receive appropriate medical care, whatever that may be, but I think making the officers themselves responsible for providing that care is problematic legally. Most officers aren't going to be certified EMT-Bs, so you'd basically be requiring them to provide untrained medical care to injured suspects. If an officer shoots a suspect, and the suspect dies shortly afterward while the same officer is treating them, can the officer be sued for malpractice? Charged with murder?
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Dec 2, 2015 00:04
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falcon2424 posted:This change would create a problem in that police officers are incentivized to claim ignorance of department policy. So, if we really wanted to get incentives aligned, I'd give departments a civil duty to train their officers in policy. This way, when an officer claims ignorance, the department needs to either show that their officer was correctly trained, or become civilly liable their mistakes in training. I feel like failing to be familiar with the policies you work under should be some sort of negligence. "I choked a dude because I didn't actually read anything they gave me when I signed up" is not a defense, it's a confession.
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Dec 2, 2015 00:14
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Dapper_Swindler posted:pretty much. he is the most visible police leader and was in charge when the CPD was doing all the awful poo poo(recent awful poo poo i mean) so the machine decided to make him an easy sacrifice. kinda hope he tries to drag everyone down with him. He knows the game too well I'd guess to rock the boat. He can join ex-supt Terry Hillard in that Taser company
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Dec 2, 2015 00:22
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Javid posted:I feel like failing to be familiar with the policies you work under should be some sort of negligence. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Dec 2, 2015 |
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Dec 2, 2015 00:26
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What are the odds that this is legitimate?quote:HUNDREDS OF CASES PROSECUTED WITH PLANTED EVIDENCE, MANY WRONGLY CONVICTED STILL IN PRISON There are scans of the documents included at the link, but I don't know how one would go about confirming they are legitimate. If this is true though, loving  .e. Looks like the link is dying from going viral. RIP, hopefully it will clear up quickly.
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Dec 2, 2015 01:35
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Dead Reckoning posted:Not really. It's the difference between pulling someone out of a fire and treating burn injuries. I agree that there should be a caveat like, "provide aid to mitigate ongoing injuries, within the scope of the person's training." Police aren't EMTs. So, I'd expect them to pull people out of immediate danger, provide simple first-aid to keep severe injuries from getting worse, and call EMTs when necessary. To walk through your shooting case: Let's assume the cops shoot a guy. Suspect ends up handcuffed with a bad leg wound. The leg is bleeding a lot. Suspect stops resisting when handcuffed. I'm saying that police (like everyone else) know that excessive bleeding is dangerous. So, it's obvious that the person is going to receive additional harm by inaction. The rule I'm proposing would only come down on the cops if they end up standing around and watch the guy bleed out. I'd set it up so we'd establish that (1) they reasonably should have known about the danger, (2) they had the ability to mitigate the danger, (3) they choose not to, (4) the person was harmed as a result and (5) the inaction wasn't justified by one of the various defenses to assault.
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Dec 2, 2015 01:41
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rockopete posted:Yes, you are. Private sector employees do not 'plead the Fifth' with their employer, in the same sense that a private employee has no recourse to the First Amendment if fired for speech. Outside certain protected classes and Equal Employment Opportunity issues, private companies are bound only to the contract they have made with their employees. Police officers are employed by the government, so the Fifth comes into play there. I know that. That is why they were fired in that scenario because you can't do it.
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Dec 2, 2015 01:42
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Frabba posted:What are the odds that this is legitimate? It's straight out of a bad movie, so 50/50
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Dec 2, 2015 01:46
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falcon2424 posted:I agree that there should be a caveat like, "provide aid to mitigate ongoing injuries, within the scope of the person's training." A lot of medical interventions carry risks for the patient.
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Dec 2, 2015 01:58
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Dead Reckoning posted:OK, so let's say that, because he has the equivalent of a Boy Scout's first aid merit badge, the officer applies a bad tourniquet to the leg, and it ends up having to be amputated. Is the officer liable for that? Except dogpiling a non-violent suspect until he suffocates can not by any stretch of the imagination be called a necessary medical intervention. Was Freddie Gray suffering from an acute case of verticalitis?
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Dec 2, 2015 02:05
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