letters to the editor:

It’s time to hold police accountable

Fri, May 29, 2015 (2 a.m.)

Enough is enough! It’s time to establish and improve conspicuous eccentricity of police officers in the United States through a citizen oversight committee that will mandate the highest ethical standards in police organizations that oversee law enforcement. The evidence is profound, and even in the May 15 Review-Journal there were three articles that showed the police abuse of authority stemming from county to national police levels (“Former jail officials indicted in jail scandal”; “Former constable issued domestic battery warrant”; “Investigators: Secret Service supervisors failed to report two agents misconduct”). Any way you look at it, something is wrong.

Police officers must be held accountable to the public, which pays for their service. To ask a police internal investigation unit amassed by its own officers to probe a police officer’s misconduct is no more logical then letting a coyote judge a fox for ravishing the chicken coop. The omnipresent “us vs. them” mentality estranges police departments from the communities they are sworn and paid to protect. This was boldly stated by the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, who openly stated, “Let me be perfectly clear. We will use extreme discretion in every encounter. The rules are made to hurt you; we will use those rules to protect us!”

Police officers in the United States maim and kill civilians in shockingly high numbers. Simply asking police officers to wear body cameras that can be turned off at their own will is not enough. A citizen oversight committee will postulate accountability, transparency and reporting, resulting in admonishment of abusive officers, inadequate hiring screening and failed training. A recent Department of Justice study revealed that 84 percent of police officers report that they have seen colleagues use excessive force on civilians, and 61 percent admit they don’t always report “even serious criminal violations that involve abuse of authority by fellow officers.” Overall, officers fired or reprimanded for misconduct often appeal the decision, then get reinstated by obscure judges in secretive proceedings using reports generated by police internal investigation units.

As John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “Power always thinks it has a great soul, and it cannot be trusted if left unchecked.” A citizen oversight committee is a solution the police don’t want but which the basic rights granted by our Constitution demand.

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