Police Punish the ‘Good Apples’

[tulc]

Police Punish the ‘Good Apples’

Isaac “Ike” Lambert was a decorated detective who had served more than 24 years in the Chicago Police Department. In 2017, an off-duty officer shot a teenager named Ricardo Hayes, who had autism and whose caregivers had reported him missing hours before. Some officers, according to Lambert, then tried to charge Hayes with assault on the basis of a distorted police report. Lambert noticed that his colleague’s official narrative of the encounter was sharply at odds with eyewitness accounts and other evidence (including video of the incident). Lambert declined to press charges against Hayes, then repeatedly refused to sign off on the officers’ fraudulent report—despite higher-ups insisting he help bury the incident. For this, Lambert asserted in a whistleblower lawsuit, he was promptly “dumped” to patrol duty.

tulc(interesting article)

 

[The Barbarian]

Police officers are an extremely insular group. They work closely with one another in what can often be a confrontational, adversarial and legitimately dangerous work environment.
...
“Whistleblowers aren’t just seen as stabbing other officers in the back, they’re almost inevitably seen as a potential physical threat to every officer,” said Stoughton.

And that perceived threat is often met with retaliation. One of the most well-known examples is Frank Serpico, a former New York Police Department detective whose accusation of widespread corruption in the department during the late 1960s nearly cost him his life.
...
But more than half a century later, police whistleblowers are still at risk.
...
After reporting an instance of officer brutality in 2011, former Baltimore police officer Joe Crystal was actively harassed for the next two years by fellow officers who labeled him a rat, threatened his career, refused to help him, and placed a dead rat on the windshield of his car outside of his home.

At times, when Crystal called for backup while pursuing suspects on the job, he would be ignored.

In 2018, a female former Spokane, Wa., police officer who accused a male colleague of sexual assault reported being immediately ostracized by her fellow officers, facing open hostility in the workplace, and being avoided by people who, before her complaint, she had considered friends.

In both cases, the officers eventually left the force. Joe Crystal had to leave the state.
The Plight of the Police Whistleblower | The Crime Report

 

[The Barbarian]

Overall, 25% of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in the police, 27% quite a lot, 30% "some," 16% "very little" and 2% "none." The combined 18% who have very little or no confidence in police is the highest Gallup has measured to date. The full results for the trend are shown at the end of this article.
In U.S., Confidence in Police Lowest in 22 Years

That's disturbing. Extremely so. If we don't have a strong majority trusting the police, it bodes very badly for society. And the answer isn't to ban security cameras and smart phones.

It's to weed out the relatively few criminals among the police.

 

[jgarden]

Police Punish the ‘Good Apples’

Police officers have yet to come to terms that this is the 21stC and they should assume that every confrontation they have in public will be recorded on video by someone somewhere!

The American public has seen enough videos that they are no longer willing to give police the benefit of the doubt - officers who turn off their body cameras are sending a strong message that they didn't want video confirmation to verify their written reports!

We may also be seeing a change in policing culture whereby some officers are no longer willing to put their jobs and the welfare of their families at risk to support a "bad apple" in their ranks who would take them all down!