Wednesday, November 26, 2014

This is simply jaw-droppingly amazing . . . depth of bias in Ferguson police

People are now pouring over the thousands of pages of grand jury testimony and evidence released by the prosecutor's office.   This gem comes from a Daily Kos entry.

This is from the testimony of the medical examiner about usual practices when he goes to investigate a shooting.   Here's the point:   whenever there is a shooting involving a police officer, it is routine to consider it "an assault of law enforcement," regardless of the fact -- as in this case -- that the police officer did the shooting that killed a suspect.

Here's the transcript:   
Q: Were you told when you initially arrived at the scene that there was some type of altercation involving an officer and the deceased?
A: Yes, ma'am.
Q: And that was described as an assault?
A: Correct.
Q: So when you began this investigation, you were characterizing this as an assault of a law enforcement officer, correct?
A: Yes.
Q: Is that in any way meant to be your opinion of what happened or who was a victim in this case? A: No, ma'am. Any time I'm involved in an officer involved shooting, be it a fatal one or non-fatal, it is always during my initial investigation listed as an assault on law enforcement.
Q: And so on various evidence items that you package on these sheets, you list a victim name?
A: Correct.
Q:  And when you began this investigation, who was your victim name on these packages? 
A: Officer Wilson.
We're not talking about racial bias here.   This is bias that assumes that police officers are never at fault.   And, indeed, we now learn that they almost never are indicted, despite the countless stories of police shooting unarmed victims -- just in the past year since we began paying attention following the Trayvon Martin killing by a vigilante stand-your-ground neighborhood watch guy who got off scott free.

Ralph

No comments:

Post a Comment