This gives me hope. The state I live in (MA) finally has a POST database, but it's a work in progress at best.
The current version of the police watchdog agency’s database, which contains about 3,400 sustained complaints against still-active officers going back to the 1980s, features only 13 complaints of racial or ethnic bias, involving 11 officers.
So yeah, 13 complaints about racial bias since the 80's sounds... generous.
Just the other day there was a post here about a California prison guard sexually assaulting female inmates, confessing to the crime, and we still had comments ... supporting the guard? At the very least, victim-blaming:
On the other hand, the ones claiming to be sexually assaulted are hardly the best people themselves, so you have to take their stories with a fair amount of salt.
And that's a huge part of the problem. Some people, especially in the US, just don't give a shit about anyone in the system. These same idiots also fail to realize that at any moment of their small, boring lives they could also be carted off to prison for a crime they didn't commit. It happens all the time, every day.
We need real investigations, and we need the general public to put pressure on state attorneys to actually investigate and file charges.
May I ask why you think that sentence is excessively long? It's ten counts. I don't know anything about VA law, but in some states the maximum sentence for one count of child solicitation is five years, so it could have been a lot longer.
Edit: changed PA to VA whoops
Man, I just spent this morning looking up the officer who (illegally) denied one of my FOIA requests. Turns out he was terminated for falsifying detail slips and lying about it (he was paid for an eight hour shift monitoring traffic at a construction project but spent 6 of those hours at town hall doing something for the police union and then tried to cover it up). Well, somehow he got reinstated with back pay to the tune of $500k. EVEN THAT came out of the town's general budget and not the police department budget-- backpay for police wages. Absurd.
Edit: Since his reinstatement in 2018 he's been promoted multiple times and is now the Deputy Police Chief rofl
Excellently put.
They will often keep trying. "OK, so you've requested a lawyer and we won't be able to talk to you after this, we can't help you at all. Are you sure you want to go to jail for life instead of just explaining what happened?" and then it becomes "subject changed his mind." It's harder than it sound sometimes, but you have to stick to it and not say a damn word.
Aw jeez, how many DA's does one city need??
I'm sorry if I seemed like I was trying to pick a fight, I wasn't being disingenuous when I asked.