I’m back from a wonderful vacation to Ecuador and Peru and Machu Picchu—only to listen to the media talking about bad cops again. Uh, it’s 
back to reality again! We’ve all heard about the police in various cities accused of unnecessarily killing people who were being arrested or were in custody And many of us wonder: how can the police get away with this? We wonder: why aren’t cops convicted of crimes?
Of course, it is a crime to kill someone else and any of us who did that would be prosecuted immediately. That’s because citizens are not allowed to use deadly force against another citizen. It’s different for police. They are the only people authorized to use deadly force. But when does the use of deadly force become a crime?
In Baltimore, the mistrial of a cop who was accused of causing the death of Freddy Gray while in custody has, once again, raised this question.
http://www.startribune.com/following-deadlock-porter-jury-struggles-to-find-verdict/362590611/
Even when there are witnesses and video showing the police killing someone, the cops are not convicted of murder. Why aren’t cops convicted of crimes?
It’s because of the legal authorization for cops to use deadly force—so it’s important to understand that when put on trial for a crime, the police are judged by a different standard than the rest of us. Here are the three principals the U.S. Supreme Court has established as the standard for police charged with a crime:
- A police officer has the right to use force in making an arrest, including deadly force.
- Deadly force is appropriate when the officer reasonably believes that the person to be arrested poses a threat of serious physical harm to the officer
- The question of “reasonableness” must take into account that a cop often makes split-second decisions in circumstances that are often tense, uncertain, and rapidly changing.
You can see that the law is set to give police a wide latitude in doing their jobs. That makes sense so that in the process of stopping dangerous people, cops don’t have to hesitate and worry about being convicted of a crime themselves. The standard to prove police guilty is very high and difficult for a prosecutor to convince a jury. As a country, we have decided that public safety is more important, generally, than the rights of individuals who are suspected of committing crimes. It explains why cops aren’t convicted of crimes more often.
What do you think?
