Excerpt:
"Former DA: Planting Guns On Shooting Victims ‘Standard Operating Procedure’
Attorney Arthur Aidala is a frequent guest on Fox News. The former Senior Assistant District Attorney for Kings County, NY had a lot of first hand experience in dealing with the troubled NYPD of the 1990’s. In a segment discussing the shooting death of Walter Scott by Officer Michael Slager, he may have revealed an open secret, something long claimed but difficult to prove regarding police, accountability, and their ability to get away with murder.
When I was in the DA’s office in the 80s and 90s, that was standard operating procedure. Police officers — I hate to say this — would keep a second gun that nobody knew about on their ankle, so if they ever killed someone they shouldn’t have they would take that gun out.
As a DA, knowing this, he clearly supported the policy at least indirectly. After all, nobody wants the reputation of being against the police, particularly a DA which is reliant upon them for doing their jobs. A hostile DA-police rapport would render the DA unable to fulfill his duty, so whatever the police wished to get away with, they would.
In this case, he was quite frank on Officer Slager’s situation:
There’s going to be no sympathy for this police officer, except for the fact that it’s a 33-year-old human being who is getting paid $40,000 to protect his own life and protect everyone else’s life. Nobody thinks this cop woke up that morning and said let me go kill somebody. He made split second decisions and they were wrong. Obviously he made wrong decisions. It’s going to be about, in my opinion, how much jail time does he serve."
3 comments:
And without Feiden Santana's extraordinary video, the police would have gotten away with murder once again.
Accountability? There is none. Time to change all that ...
Kathryn Johnston shooting
"Kathryn Johnston (June 26, 1914 – November 21, 2006)[1] was an elderly Atlanta, Georgia, woman who was shot by undercover police officers in her home on Neal Street in northwest Atlanta on November 21, 2006, where she had lived for 17 years. Three officers had entered her home in what was later described as a 'botched' drug raid.[2][3][4] Officers cut off burglar bars and broke down her door using a no-knock warrant.[5] Police said Johnston fired at them and they fired in response; she fired one shot out the door over the officers' heads and they fired 39 shots, five or six of which hit her.[3][6] None of the officers were injured by her gunfire, but Johnston was killed by the officers. Police injuries were later attributed to "friendly fire" from each other's weapons.[2][3][6]
One of the officers planted marijuana in Johnston's house after the shooting.[7][8] Later investigations found that the paperwork stating that drugs present at Johnston's house, which had been the basis for the raid, had been falsified.[3] The officers later admitted to having lied when they submitted cocaine as evidence claiming that they had bought it at Johnston's house.[7] Three officers were tried for manslaughter and other charges surrounding falsification and were sentenced to ten, six, and five years.[3]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Johnston_shooting
"In Esquire's July 1968 issue, published just after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the magazine talked to James Baldwin about the state of race relations in the country ..."
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/interviews/a23960/james-baldwin-cool-it/
Q. Do you think that the local community control of schools is necessary?
BALDWIN: Schools and policemen.
Q. Why policemen?
BALDWIN: Look, we live in Harlem, let's say, or we live in Watts. The mother who comes down there with his cap and his own gun in his holster, he doesn't know what my day is like. He doesn't know why I get drunk when I do. He doesn't know anything about me at all. He's scared shitless of me. Now, what— the—fuck is he doing there? All he can do id shoot me. He's a hired concentration-camp keeper. I can police my own community far better than you ever will. Because you can't. It's not in you to do it. I know why somebody there is upset when he is upset. The cats were right when they were told by somebody, some cop, some leader, some mayor to go home. They said you go home, we are home, baby. We can take care of ourselves. This is the message we're trying to get across; we don't need you to take care of us. Good Lord, we can't afford to have you take care of us any longer! Look what you've done. To us. And to yourselves in taking care of us. No. I think the black people in this country should run their own schools, and run their own police force. Because you can't do it. All you can do I bring in tanks and tear gas… and call the National Guard when it gets too tight. And think you can fight a civil war and a global war at the same time.
Q. There used to be a New York City regulation that a policeman couldn't reside in the precinct to which he was assigned. You are saying that the regulation should require him to live there.
BALDWIN: Yeah, I'm telling you that.
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