Police profit and the Fourth Amendment
Topics: Rights
30 Oct 1994
From: "DG Ervan Darnell"
7/12/94 Eric wrote:
>7/12/94 Ervan wrote:
>> The Fourth Amendment is the same way. The first rule is that
>> the police cannot profit from depriving people of their rights
>> (working here with your saying you believed in the Fourth Amendment).
>> Your change would give them the chance to profit from it.
>
>Do the police "profit" from convicting a criminal in any more than
>a very abstract way (increased public support, etc.)? And you say above
At the time I replied that the profit the police take is not more
convictions but more personal profit in the form of corruption.
There was a piece tonight on "60 Minutes" that makes my case. The New
Orleans police department has the worst record of any big city in the
country for corrupt police officers and brutality complaints.
They interviewed one police officer who was in jail for bank robbery,
extortion, and various lesser offenses. He said (whatever little it's
worth) that corruption was systemic.
The police chief resigned in the face of allegations of corruption (within
the last couple of years). The second in command was fired by the new chief
for corruption. 80 officers have been fired in the last year (I think it
was a year) for corruption.
There was a case where a suspect was injured and taken to the hospital. 60
police officers showed up at the hospital to protest so that the suspect
could not be admitted. They took to him to the police station instead. He
turned up dead a day later. The police claimed it happened because fell
(which their autopsy confirmed). A justice department autopsy later showed
multiple blows to the head, teeth forced back into the skull, ruptured
testicles, and other injuries I have forgotten. No one has been prosecuted yet.
There was another case where an unarmed man, who had been incorrectly
identified as a suspect, was shot point blank by the police in daylight with
multiple witnesses. No prosecutions of the officers yet.
Police officers are fighting (I mean physically fist fighting) each other
for the privilege of having the most drug infested neighborhoods to shake
down for their personal profit. Applying the protection racket to the legal
trade of the bars on Bourbon street also seems rampant.
This is the way in which the police profit and it is to avoid this sort of
situation for which we have the Fourth & Fifth amendment. Relaxing them (as
they are being ignored in New Orleans) leads to this sort of behavior
because it gives the police discretion which cannot be properly applied (or
contained). It would inevitably corrupt the best of us.
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