Why Firing a Bad Cop Is Damn Near Impossible
A brief history of the "law enforcement bill of rights"
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In the last year, a Florida narcotics detective was charged with a slew of crimes ranging from rape and torture, to embezzlement and forgery; a Virginia police officer shot a retired Sunday school teacher in the back of the head and throat as she drove out of a church parking lot; six California cops beat a homeless man into a life-ending coma; a Milwaukee police officer was arrested for sodomizing suspects; a drunk man slapped a Philadelphia cop, and the cop responded by beating the drunk man's face bloody with his baton.
What do they all have in common? They were all known by their colleagues and employers to be bad cops long before they came to the public's attention.
Major Joseph Floyd was a problem cop at departments across Florida before beginning his two-year reign of terror in Crestview, Florida. Daniel Harmon-Wright was hired at the Culpeper Police Department despite a known drinking problem, and kept on the force despite complaints that he illegally entered a home and threatened its residents at gunpoint. At least one of the Fullerton PD officers who beat Kelly Thomas into a coma from which he never woke was accused of brutality the year before. Michael Vagnini's superiors in Milwaukee knew "for a couple years" that he'd been conducting illegal rectal searches. Before William J. Gress beat a drunk and unruly Oktoberfest reveler, he broke a woman's nose and spat on her outside a restaurant.
Additionally, all of those officers were working in states with a law enforcement bill of rights, and when they were all eventually disciplined, it was by a law enforcement agency other than the one they worked for.
While it's possible—maybe even likely, depending on the department—that these officers would have faced no internal discipline even if their states did not have law enforcement bills of rights, such laws discourage discipline and make it nearly impossible for the public to hold bad cops accountable.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
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When it is all chaf, there is no wheat to be sorted.
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law enforcement bill of rights
BARF.
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I'm not sure how cops are somehow afforded MORE rights than the average citizen.
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Higher standards!
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Because they are more equal. Judges said so and they went to fucking Yale. Get with the fucking program.
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Of course, Reason has championed time and time again special rights for public employees, like the idiot professor with the Mal Reynolds poster on his door.
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Don't you get bored of trolling?
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Because defending a college professor's constitutional free speech rights is TOTALLY the same thing as championing "special rights" for public Employees. Take your meds.
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Yeah that's the same as a cop killing an unarmed fleeing "suspect" by shooting him in the back (and claiming "he was reaching for a weapon") or raping a women during a traffic stop. Right? Wrong, you're barking at the wrong tree, watch it now, a cop might shoot you! You're either kidding or a fool.
"It has been determined that the officer followed all departmental policies and procedures during the rape and killing of the arrest-resisting perpetrator."
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You want them on that wall. You need them on that wall.
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Preferably attached to it with leg irons.
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Who.....Cops or Tulpas "Poster Boy"?
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Professional law enforcement is indistinguishable from organized crime.
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Mobsters have better work wardrobes!
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Well, the cops are the govt's gang, after all.
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Organized crime is more efficient.
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Perp kicks cop, cop kicks perp, and I'm supposed to be terribly upset about it? There are plenty of undeniable cases of police brutality that Reason covers almost obsessively, but this one barely moves the meter for me.
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Yea, because a kick to the shin from a prone position towards and unencumbered person is so similar to a kick to the head of a person who is immobile and encumbered.
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The valiant man in blue is supposed to know better. That's why he's well compensated and given these near super human powers of life and death...over both canine and mere mortal humans!
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If he had kicked her shin in return, I might have some sympathy for this. He didn't. He escalated to a potentially lethal attack. He should have been whipped through the streets.
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No, he should have been shot on the spot by either his fellow officers or by an armed citizen passing by. That's what you do when you see someone attempting murder.
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Soccer moms didn't like it.
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Are you so fucking stupid that you can't understand "an eye for an eye".
A kick to the shins deserves a kick to the shins.
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Yes, Papaya, give that fucking prick cop the "Officer of the Year" award.
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Title should be:
Why firing a Public Union Employee is Damn Near Impossible
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The dumb bastard should have been paying attention.
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the idiot professor with the Mal Reynolds poster on his door
did not physically strike or physically injure anybody.
You're just pissed because they made you take down your C3PO in a French Maid costume poster, aren't you?
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The utter evil of the state wrapped up in the public-employee union. Check for the union label!
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Let the felon keep his job as a cop. But since he's a felon now, make sure that he does his job unarmed, m'kay.
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Oh, that's... Eeeeeeevil. I LIKE it!
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Police unions are the equivalent of college frats . . . protect your brothers at all costs.
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Paper makes a poor shield against bullets. All the kevlar in the world won't be enough to save them given the numbers the police in the U.S. are outnumbered by.
The police have been pissing away any possible good will from the general public in exchange for tacticool toys for years now. Sooner or later, the balance will tip and they'll wish they hadn't done it. A vest that will save you from 999 out of 1000 shots looks great until there's thousands of people shooting at you.
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But most people won't shoot at police. Yes, the general public greatly outnumber the police, but they don't have the propensity for violence and the lack of self control that the police have. Most people shy away from harming others, and will avoid it if they can. The people that are attracted to police work, and government in general, are people who like violence and harming others.
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...under ordinary circumstances, yes...
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One way to help fix this problem would be to change the laws to allow people with a case against the police departments to sue the unions and all officials involved in cover ups personally, not the taxpayers.
If there is a chance that the union could be sued for big bucks all officers would be more conscious of what their "brother and sister officers" behave like.
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm sure there are some out their and maybe even some legislators that might want to start chipping away at this?
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F***ing autocorrect! "There" not "their".
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They're, they're, it's OK.
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It's possible. See my new book for some help. Perhaps one or more of the four major obstacles to police reform “arresting” your police? To find out -- and then what can be done about it see, “Arrested Development: A Veteran Police Chief Sounds Off About Protest, Racism, Corruption and the Seven Steps Necessary to Improve Our Nation’s Police” (Amazon.com in US and EU). And visit my blog at http://improvingpolice.wordpress.com for my help and a discussion of current issues confronting police.
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the officer under investigation is to be interrogated "at a reasonable hour," with a union member present. Unlike a member of the public, the officer can only be questioned by one person during his interrogation. Unlike a member of the public, the officer can be interrogated only "for reasonable periods," which "shall be timed to allow for such personal necessities and rest periods as are reasonably necessary."
Why can't what's "reasonable" be defined by police behavior towards common citizens?
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It should be, except that I don't advocate randomly shooting the guy's dog for no reason, like a cop would do under the circumstances. It's not the dog's fault.
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It's the same in Corrupticut. The police are part of a horrible judicial system that exonerates each other every time one of them gets caught.