Cops will always protect cops: This is why prosecutors and grand juries let the police off easy
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The racial dynamic is clear to everyone, but city governments have had enormous difficulty reining in their police.
A 2014 Daily News study of 179 fatalities involving on-duty NYPD cops over the previous fifteen years found that only three cases led to indictments and only one to a conviction. Where the race of the victim was known, 86% were black or Hispanic. The current racial dynamic has been familiar since at least the 1950s, but, throughout history, city and state governments have had enormous difficulty reigning in and punishing police misconduct.
Over a century ago, in 1894, the first sensational political investigation of the modern era revealed in shocking and unprecedented detail how the police force managed New York City’s lucrative vice economy, extorted payoffs from respectable businesses, and enjoyed near total immunity from charges of police brutality. Established by the New York State Senate, the Lexow Committee heard public testimony from nearly 700 witnesses, representing all walks of New York life, on how the police force abused their role to protect and serve.
The investigation included an unprecedented inquiry into police violence against individual citizens, brutality that always went unpunished. On October 2, 1894 investigation chief counsel John W. Goff presented a startling sight that put human—and battered—faces on police immunity from the law. In what The New York Timesdescribed as “a spectacle without parallel, as amazing as it was unique,” Goff summoned ninety uniformed policemen to appear, each of whom had been convicted by the Police Board of Commissioners over the past three years for brutality. Many of their most recent victims, who were still bandaged and bloodied, were present as well. A long procession of cops told how the Police Board found them guilty of clubbing, punching, kicking, or choking citizens, only to be fined a few days’ pay. None were dismissed from the force. The entire day’s testimony, Goff declared, “goes home to the very question of the rights, the liberties, and the safety of the citizens of New York.” The accumulated weight of the day’s display, the Morning Advertiser concluded, demonstrated to the world that “New York has the most brutal police force on the earth.”
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