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Simpich writes: "American prosecutors have a dual responsibility to prosecute wrongdoers and to promote justice for the entire community. They also work hand-in-hand with the police on a daily basis. They have an inherent conflict of interest when a police officer is charged in a capital case. They can't be expected to be objective. They're not."

Ferguson police under holiday decorations. (photo: AP)
Ferguson police under holiday decorations. (photo: AP)


ALSO SEE: Why Darren Wilson Wasn't Charged for Killing Michael Brown

Police Body Cameras and Special Prosecutors

By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News

25 November 14

 

ere’s the lead in the New York Times: “Brien Redmon, 31, stood in the cold watching a burning police car and sporadic looting after the announcement that there would be no indictments for Mr. Brown’s death at 18.”

“This is not about vandalizing,” he said. “This is about fighting a police organization that doesn’t care about the lives they serve.”

Passionate and powerful, yes. Wilson must be indicted – this must not stand. There are better ways, however, to win hearts and minds then by setting things on fire.

We have to focus our fury and strike a powerful blow in the battle for community control of the police. We must stop state attacks on people of color.

If we want to win, we have to be strategic. If not now, when?

Mike Brown’s family has suggested the next step: demand body cameras for every police officer across the land. Many others have called for special prosecutors in police shooting cases. It’s about watching the watchers.

This short-term approach will not solve everything, not by a long shot.

But it’s a winnable way for this emerging cross-racial movement for justice to come together.

The need for police body cameras is a no-brainer. You don’t need nearly as many witnesses when you’ve got good video. A lot of stupid arguments go away.

Why special prosecutors? Because in our society – unlike others – prosecutors are basically police with suits. Civilian attorneys are not chosen from a pool to prosecute criminal cases, but they are often seen on the defense side. For example, the public defender’s office has a conflict of interest when co-defendants have opposing interests. In some communities, public defender tasks are routinely farmed out to willing attorneys.

American prosecutors have a dual responsibility to prosecute wrongdoers and to promote justice for the entire community. They also work hand-in-hand with the police on a daily basis. They have an inherent conflict of interest when a police officer is charged in a capital case. They can’t be expected to be objective. They’re not.

In the last 20 years, one survey revealed, only something like 17 officers were charged with murder. Most murder indictments end in conviction. Not only were none of these officers convicted for murder, but most of them were convicted for nothing at all.

In the real world, the prosecutor’s office steps aside and a special prosecutor is brought in whenever the prosecutor’s office has a conflict of interest. Unfortunately for the real world, this usually happens only when the entire office has an inherent conflict that will make it impossible for the defendant to get a fair trial.

The irony is obvious. When a police officer is the defendant, the problem is that the defendant will get cut loose. A capital case with a police defendant is a different kind of unfair trial – unfair to the victim, and unfair to the general public.

The county prosecutor, Bob McCulloch, has a built-in conflict of interest on top of the generic conflict all prosecutors have. McCulloch’s father was a police officer who was killed by an African-American man in a public housing complex when McCulloch was 12. Besides his father, McCulloch’s mother, brother, uncle, and cousin have all worked for the police department. The Mound City Bar Association, one of the oldest African-American bar associations in the country, asked Governor Jay Nixon months ago to take McCulloch off the Brown case, saying that he is “emotionally invested in protecting law enforcement.”

McCulloch could have brought an indictment in the Mike Brown case immediately – he had no duty to wait for a grand jury. When he went to the grand jury, he buried them in a mountain of evidence rather than present them with a tightly focused presentation. McCulloch claimed he did it in order to be fair – instead, as another grand jury prosecutor in Ferguson has written, McCulloch’s entire pattern of conduct was a charade designed to overwhelm the grand jurors with minutiae and persuade them not to indict the officer.

McCulloch and others then did their best to hurt their political opponents by setting the announcement of the grand jury’s finding at 8 pm CST. What they wanted was flames in the nighttime sky across America, knowing that people’s anger would be the greatest right when the light went out. It’s hard to imagine a more cynical maneuver.

It’s cold comfort that McCulloch behaved like an idiot on television, commenting on the evidence and making a series of snide remarks about the numerous witnesses. He was so bad that CBS and PBS cut away from him before his announcement was finished.

You’re not going to find an “objective prosecutor,” just like you’re not going to find an “objective public defender.” Their onerous task is the role of an advocate. For a career prosecutor to objectively prosecute the police is to expect the impossible. A champion prosecuting the police has to be someone who doesn’t depend on the police daily to make sure the family gets fed at the end of the work day.

We have to take these forces head-on and shake them to their roots.



Bill Simpich is a civil rights attorney and an antiwar activist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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