{"id":9360,"date":"2015-05-06T16:46:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T20:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=9360"},"modified":"2015-05-06T16:46:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T20:46:08","slug":"in-a-cop-culture-the-bill-of-rights-doesnt-amount-to-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/in-a-cop-culture-the-bill-of-rights-doesnt-amount-to-much\/","title":{"rendered":"In a Cop Culture, the Bill of Rights Doesn\u2019t Amount to Much"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"05-05-2015_CommentaryGraphic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Police officers are more likely to be struck by lightning<\/a><\/span> than be held financially accountable for their actions.\u2014Law professor Joanna C. Schwartz (paraphrased)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIn a democratic society,\u201d observed Oakland police chief Sean Whent, \u201cpeople have a say in how they are policed<\/a><\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, if you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and even killed by a police officer, and that officer is never held accountable for violating your rights and his oath of office to serve and protect, never forced to make amends, never told that what he did was wrong, and never made to change his modus operandi<\/em>, then you don\u2019t live in a constitutional republic.<\/p>\n

You live in a police state.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t even matter that \u201ccrime is at historic lows<\/a><\/span> and most cities are safer than they have been in generations, for residents and officers alike,\u201d as the New York Times<\/em> reports.<\/p>\n

What matters is whether you\u2019re going to make it through a police confrontation alive and with your health and freedoms intact. For a growing number of Americans, those confrontations do not end well.<\/p>\n

As David O. Brown, the Dallas chief of police, noted: \u201cSometimes it seems like our young officers want to get into an athletic event with people they want to arrest. They have a \u2018don\u2019t retreat\u2019 mentality. They feel like they\u2019re warriors and they can\u2019t back down<\/a><\/span> when someone is running from them, no matter how minor the underlying crime is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making matters worse, in the cop culture that is America today, the Bill of Rights doesn\u2019t amount to much. Unless, that is, it\u2019s the Law Enforcement Officers\u2019 Bill of Rights<\/a><\/span> (LEOBoR), which protects police officers from being subjected to the kinds of debilitating indignities heaped upon the average citizen.<\/p>\n

Most Americans, oblivious about their own rights, aren\u2019t even aware that police officers have their own Bill of Rights. Yet at the same time that our own protections against government abuses have been reduced to little more than historic window dressing,\u00a014 states have already adopted LEOBoRs\u2014written by police unions and being considered by many more states and Congress\u2014which provides police officers accused of a crime with special due process rights and privileges not afforded to the average citizen.<\/p>\n

In other words, the LEOBoR protects police officers from being treated as we are treated during criminal investigations<\/a><\/span>: questioned unmercifully for hours on end, harassed, harangued, browbeaten, denied food, water and bathroom breaks, subjected to hostile interrogations, and left in the dark about our accusers and any charges and evidence against us.<\/p>\n

Not only are officers given a 10-day \u201ccooling-off period<\/span>\u201d<\/a> during which they cannot be forced to make any<\/em> statements about the incident, but when they are questioned, it must be \u201cfor a reasonable length of time, at a reasonable hour, by only one or two investigators (who must be fellow policemen), and with plenty of breaks for food and water.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to investigative journalist Eli Hager, the most common rights afforded police officers accused of wrongdoing<\/a><\/span> are as follows:<\/p>\n