One by one, we are ridding the ghettos of petty crooks, making it a safer place for gang bangers, whookers, dealers and hopheads.
Cops walk every time, it seems.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/ny...ions.html?_r=0
Grand Jury System, With Exceptions, Favors the Police in Fatalities
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. and AL BAKERDEC. 7, 2014
Photo
Demonstrators put their hands around their throats in Grand Central Station as they protested a grand jury verdict in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.
and police officers in Webster Groves, Mo., last week during a protest of the grand jury’s decision in the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson.Police Face a Long and Complex Task to Mend Distrust Deepened by Killings DEC. 7, 2014
Ashley Bernaugh of Florissant, Mo., said that after Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., she was surprised and upset by reactions from some family members.Police Killings Reveal Chasms Between Races DEC. 5, 2014
Wave of Protests After Grand Jury Doesn’t Indict Officer in Eric Garner Chokehold CaseDEC.
3, 2014
The encounter, glimpsed in a still from a video obtained by The New York Daily News.Man’s
Death After Chokehold Raises Old Issue for the PoliceJULY 18, 2014
Second Grand Jury Indicts Officer in Shooting DeathJAN. 27, 2014
Betty Jones, left, Luciana Collins and her daughter, Jada Collins, added to a memorial in
Charlotte, N.C., near where Jonathan Ferrell was killed by the police.Asking for Help, Then Killed by an Officer’s BarrageSEPT. 16, 2013
The circumstances of the case, like others before it and others that would follow, in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, were familiar. A police officer killed an unarmed man. The officer claimed he acted appropriately. A grand jury declined to bring charges.
But the state’s case in Charlotte, N.C., against Officer Randall Kerrick, would not end there. The state attorney general’s office, which inherited the case after the local prosecutor recused himself, quickly resubmitted the case to a different grand jury.
Evidence was reheard. Twice as many as witnesses were called. And in January, the second grand jury indicted Officer Kerrick on charges of voluntary manslaughter in the death of Jonathan Ferrell, 24, a former college football player.
The extraordinary steps taken in North Carolina — along with the recent grand jury decisions to bring no charges against white police officers who killed unarmed black men in New York and Missouri — illustrate how the justice system can favor the police, often sThielding them from murder or serious manslaughter charges.
The balance tips toward the police from the start: In most felony cases, an arrest is made and a grand jury indictment follows within a prescribed period of time. But in police fatality cases, prosecutors generally use special grand juries sitting for lengthy periods to investigate and gather evidence before determining if an arrest and indictment are warranted.
Another hurdle is the law itself. Most states give officers wide discretion to use whatever force they reasonably believe is necessary to make an arrest or to protect themselves, a standard that hinges on the officer’s perceptions of danger during the encounter, legal scholars and criminologists say.
“The whole process is really reluctant to criminalize police behavior,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “The grand jurors are, the jurors are, the judges are, the appellate courts are.”
The recent decisions to refrain from bringing charges on Staten Island and in Ferguson have sparked protests because, among other things, they seem to defy logic: Shouldn’t the cases be heard at trial, many protesters have asked, and be decided by a full jury?
The questions have strengthened calls for wholesale changes in the grand jury system. Some elected leaders in New York have called for special prosecutors, or the attorney general, to investigate all fatal police encounters. Others say the current process should be stripped of its cloak of secrecy.
No precise figures exist for the number of people killed by the police in the United States, but police departments each year voluntarily report about 400 “justifiable police homicides” to the Federal Bureau of Investigation; it is an incomplete count, criminologists say
Rarely do deaths lead to murder or manslaughter charges. Research by Philip M. Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, reports that 41 officers were charged with either murder or manslaughter in shootings while on duty over a seven-year period ending in 2011. Over that same period, police departments reported 2,600 justifiable homicides to the F.B.I.
YOU GET THE PICTURE, especially if you'believe that black hoodlums threaten your every day of wife. Stand with the killer cops...be half American (and half-asses)