Police Misconduct and the Legal System

"Someone has taken justice and hidden it in the law."
--Judge Benjamin Caulfield (The Star Chamber)

Recent events suggest that race demagogues are fond of associating racism with grand jury refusals to indict white police officers for capital crimes involving black victims.

The demagogues' claims are either a) polically motivated, or b) the product of selective reasoning, as there are have been cases where grand juries have not indicted police officers for criminal misconduct regardless of victim skin color. For example, a local grand jury recently failed to indict a white police officer for shooting and killing a white teenage girl in Hebron under questionable circumstances (dash cam here).

Indeed, various studies (including this one) suggest that police officers facing criminal charges are indicted at significantly lower rates than the general public and, if indicted, face significantly lower conviction rates and sentencing lengths.

Bias toward police officers might come from a) prosecutors, judges that enjoy or need to work with law enforcement to advance prosecutorial interests and b) juries that are sympathetic to law enforcement officers.

Efforts to better understand the causes of this bias and eliminating them from the system would better reflect equality under the law.