"An eight-month Chicago Tribune investigation of 200+ police shootings going back 10 years found that within hours of a police shooting, the police department convenes hastily-assembled, wagon-circling "roundtables" of law enforcement officials where police and witnesses are questioned but not sworn or recorded, where the officers involved are allowed to confer to get their stories straight before being questioned, and where the inevitable conclusion is always that the shooting was justified. From there, broader, show-investigations begin. Key witnesses go uninterviewed. Forensic evidence is ignored. And the shooting officer is inevitably exonerated.
The paper also found that even on those rare occasions when investigators find a shooting to be unjustified, the officer in question isn't disciplined.
Officer David Rodriguez asserted that he shot Herbert McCarter in the abdomen in a struggle over the officer's gun in December 1999. But Smith concluded Rodriguez lied and recommended his firing, according to Smith and a lawsuit filed by McCarter.
Key to that recommendation: medical records showing that McCarter actually had been shot in the back, and gunshot residue tests on his clothes indicating he had not been shot at close range.
Rodriguez, who declined to comment, remains a police officer. According to McCarter's lawsuit, no disciplinary action was taken despite the OPS chief investigator's conclusion.
McCarter, however, was charged with aggravated battery of a police officer. He was found guilty and sentenced to 5 years in prison.
In his 2006 lawsuit, McCarter alleged that city officials hid the OPS conclusions and recommendation from his lawyer in his criminal trial. The city settled McCarter's lawsuit for $90,000 this year.
The same officer was later sued in another questionable shooting. That suit resulted in a $4 million settlement from the city.
Finally, the paper found that this incredible deference to police officers extends also to officers who shoot people while off-duty. Cops who've shot people after drinking at bars, in road rage incidents, and during domestic disputes are given the same administrative privileges (privileges not given to you or I) as cops who shoot someone while on duty."
Total power corrupts totally.All of this sounds like a bad B-Western doesn't it? Local law enforcement does what it damned well pleases to do, the city is in turmoil, citizens fearful for their lives...
The problem is there isn't anyone riding into town soon wearing a white hat. The police have taken over, lock, stock, and smoking barrel. The state doesn't give a damn, and the Feds aren't jumping in to prosecute the local yokels for interfering with any of their victims civil rights. The Second City has always tried to go one-up on New York, and it looks like they sure have.
Police corruption seems far more pervasive than what one would find in the Apple.
Thanks to Free Constitution
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