Why Cops Lie

Remember when hearing “Oh, no, not another cop killing” meant a cop had been killed?

I’m watching this story about this guy that was shot Sept. 4 by a cop in SC, even though he responded promptly (maybe too promptly) and properly to every instruction given by the officer.

Of course, the cop claims that he challenged the guy (who was already stopped in a Shell station), because (having left the roadway and entered a parking area) he took his seat belt off. The cop also claimed that the reason he shot the guy as he was reaching for his license was that he “lunged”.

Look, this cop is lying. The cops that shot that guy in the Wal-Mart were lying. The cops that shot that crazy guy in East St. Louis were lying. The Ferguson police were lying. This is clear, in each of these cases, from the forensic evidence.

Why does someone lie? One very common reason is that they’ve somehow gotten in trouble, and hiding the truth may mitigate or even avoid repercussions. Now, in the vast majority of situations, the lie will, one way or another, be revealed, and the individual(s) suffer repercussions — sometimes even harsher — anyway.

But when you’re talking about use of deadly force by a police officer — who are humans, after all, sharing all our flaws — so much of the judgment gets based on what the cop’s attitude was, what he (and it’s been pretty exclusively men, hasn’t it? hm.) BELIEVED about the situation.

Well, what someone claims he believes in any given situation is simply not refutable. If an officer says, “I thought he was reaching for a gun” — or worse yet, “my gun” — it’s essentially impossible to challenge that in court. And so, that’s all a cop has to say. If he sticks to it, he’ll get away with what for anyone else would be murder — hell, some morons will call him a hero.

The incentive is to lie. There’s no incentive to not, quite the contrary, there’s an active disincentive to tell the truth. For heaven’s sake, the Ferguson PD and St. Louis County Sheriff have been almost ironic in the transparency of their obfuscation (no incident report? really?).

Until this wall of institutional mendacity and cover-up is broken through, and cops start going to jail for extended periods for improper use of deadly force — for these mistakes — they’ll continue.

I think we should be treating cops, not like tradesmen, as currently, but as the professionals they aspire to be. Y’know, like doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants, actuaries… That means professional-level training, professional-level salaries, and, most importantly, professional-level standards, will all the possibility of sanction within those standards. I think we should hold cops to at least the same level of professional standards that we hold actuaries.