Chokeholds and Police Abuse, Kept From the Public

[SummerMadness]

Chokeholds and Police Abuse, Kept From the Public

An administrative judge will decide soon whether a New York police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, should be fired for using a prohibited chokehold that led to the death of Eric Garner andwaves of protest over police brutality five years ago.

Whatever her decision, the public may never know about it.

That is because of the stunning reach of a state law that keeps the personnel and disciplinary files of the police, firefighters and corrections officers secret unless a judge orders them released. New York and Delaware are the only states that so explicitly bar the disclosure of such police records.

 

[Kenny'sID]

Baring disclosure should be against federal law, and enforced to the full extent. We shouldn't even have to request these documents...list them all online, and make them very search friendly.

 

[SummerMadness]

Baring disclosure should be against federal law, and enforced to the full extent. We shouldn't even have to request these documents...list them all online, and make them very search friendly.

There was a recent news story from New Jersey where they documented use of force by all police officers in the state. The biggest obstacle is there needs to be legislation that requires every police department to record such information. One of the worst crimes are the people that defend police misconduct and hide behind lack of records as an argument to suggest there isn't a problem, while arguing that no records should be kept.

 

[Kenny'sID]

There was a recent news story from New Jersey where they documented use of force by all police officers in the state. The biggest obstacle is there needs to be legislation that requires every police department to record such information. One of the worst crimes are the people that defend police misconduct and hide behind lack of records as an argument to suggest there isn't a problem, while arguing that no records should be kept.

It's ridiculous what they allow. For instance the police can take your money, just say they suspect it was involved in a crime and the victim has to get a lawyer to get it back, something so expensive it's not even close to doable to get it back. Then they are allowed to keep it to fund the Police department, so no deterrent whatsoever not to do that, but quite the opposite.

IOW they are allowed to flat out steal our money. The whole thing is crazy, where are the lawmakers? Why do they allow such clearly wrong things? I mean if there were good arguments for and against, fine, but there often isn't. There are so many wrong things allowed that are so far overdue for a fix, it tells us there is something awful bad going on to keep it that way.