So it turns out I did say something "to that effect" in a thread about someone you said in the same post I'm clarifying my reply to now, "should face punishment to fit the charges." That was Yanez, the cold-blooded killer of Philando Castile who got off last week, just as I predicted he would.
Anyway, what I said about "nearly all" cops should be behind bars was in the thread about Castile/Yanez, and here it is in its entirety:
Now, in order for that post to be understood in context,
18 U.S. Code § 242 needs to be likewise understood in context, which happens to be something that I believe most cops routinely ignore, and routinely get away with ignoring because both prosecutors and judges protect them from
having to pay attention to its mandates, which are, again, offered here in its entirety:
If a cop forces a contact on a subject under the color of the laws established in either the Fourth Amendment (probable cause) or Terry v. Ohio (reasonable articulable suspicion) when the subject is engaging in perfectly legal activity that cannot under any circumstances rise to the level of PC or RAS (for sake of brevity, we'll use only public photography or open carry as examples here), that cop falls under the auspices of 18 U.S. Code § 242. If the cop states that the subject is being detained in such a circumstance, he/she doubles his/her culpability under 18 U.S. Code § 242. If the cop cuffs them during the detention and the slightest of injuries ensues, his/her potential punishment goes from one year in jail to 10. If he arrests and forcibly removes the subject from the scene, that is kidnapping since the contact, detention and arrest are all based on
no law having been broken that would justify any of it, and the potential sentence goes from 10 years to unlimited years, up to and including life, and if a subject is killed under such dubious circumstances, the potential sentence goes from unlimited years in prison to the death penalty.
Now, the subject does indeed have some responsibility to establish the nature of the interaction for themselves, the most basic of which is asking the cop, "Am I being detained?" If the cop answers, "Yes, you are being detained," it is incumbent upon the subject to demand to know upon what PC or RAS of a crime having been, about to be, or in the process of being committed is he/she basing the detention. If the cop says something to the effect of, "I don't know yet. That's what we're here trying to figure out," then he/she immediately falls under the auspices of 18 U.S. Code § 242 because his/her hunch that something suspicious is going on because the subject is photographing in public or open carrying doesn't rise to the level of PC or RAS in and of itself.
Show me a cop who hasn't stammered and stuttered at one incident or another when the basis for the Terry stop was demanded of them, and I'll show you a liar. Show me a prosecutor who seeks indictments against cops on a regular basis for such "mundane" violations of citizens' rights, and I'll show you a prosecutor who has an untenable relationship with the agencies he/she depends on to provide investigatory and evidence-gathering services from so both entities can do their jobs. In other words, finding a prosecutor who holds cops to the mandates of 18 U.S. Code § 242 would be like finding a unicorn in the wild. It doesn't happen, and because it doesn't happen, cops ignore the provisions and restrictions of 18 U.S. Code § 242
all the time. They are almost never held to account to violations of that code section personally either. The worst that's almost ever going to happen when it can be proven that rights were violated by cops, is that the jurisdiction they work for gets successfully sued by their victim(s), which means that if their victim(s) are taxpayers, then they themselves foot the bill for their own "award" in civil, not criminal, court.
If you want to discuss the above without taking it personal that I distrust cops for the reasons articulated therein, that's fine. It's not just cops that I have a problem with as regards the near-boycott-like lack of enforcement of 18 U.S. Code § 242. I'm pretty sure the above quote of mine is the only time I've ever said cops belong behind bars, but I've said many times that the system is set up such that it's
impossible for cops to conduct themselves lawfully anymore, and I touched on it above regarding how the system puts alliances between LE agencies and prosecutors WAY above the protection and defense of citizens' rights, but it goes deeper than just that. I'd be glad to get into that too if you're inclined to understand how I could come to such a conclusion, but that's up to you. I don't hate you or any cop. I distrust that I will come out of a contact with them with my rights fully intact the way that I went into that contact. My personal way of avoiding that circumstance is to do everything I can to avoid being contacted in the first place, and being the law-abiding citizen I am, it ain't really all that hard. I do happen to open carry, but I don't happen to go to town very much at all, but when I do, I'd be lyin' if I said I wasn't on high alert for cops to harass me about it. Thankfully it hasn't happened to me since I've been OC'ing, but there are several well-known cases in this state where OC was the initial "suspicious activity" that escalated to arrests/charges/and even a couple of convictions that I'm aware of, of which one was overturned in the AL Supreme Court, but at a monumental cost to the man that he had to pay by begging for help from his fellow gun-rights proponents, and for which the cops, prosecutors and judges who violated his rights through four levels of courts and appeals, had to pay exactly zero. There's something wrong with that picture. If you disagree, tell me why. If you agree, tell me what should be done about it other than heaping criticism and distrust on the purveyors of the problem(s). Or, if you agree, but like the rest of us have very few answers to offer, just say OK, I get it, I understand, or umm.... you know....
something to that effect.
Blues
