A Maryland police officer was convicted on Friday of charges that he joined a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and hurled a smoke bomb and other objects at police officers guarding a tunnel entrance.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden heard two days of trial testimony without a jury this week before he found Montgomery County Police Officer Justin Lee guilty of two felonies and three misdemeanors. The judge, who also acquitted Lee of two other misdemeanors, is scheduled to sentence him on Nov. 22.
Lee, 26, ignited and threw a smoke bomb into the tunnel entrance on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where a mob of rioters attacked a group of outnumbered police officers. The device struck a police officer’s riot shield and filled the mouth of the tunnel with a large plume of smoke, prosecutors said.
Think the following question over yourself. Don’t bother answering it here.
As the enforcer of the law, how many times have you casually broken the law and felt ok doing it? How many times have you seen a fellow police officer break the law and failed to hold them accountable or even helped them cover it up? In your experience, these events may have only involved minor crimes - not murder or rape or anything - but you almost certainly still operated in an environment of willingness to break the law and fraternal duty to protect your colleagues at any cost. The same situation is too common with serious crimes, as we see in the news on a regular basis.
Good cops don’t help cover up the crimes of bad cops.
I will reply, because I don’t agree with your perception and the implications of your comment.
In work? Literally never. Not once. Everything is recorded in BWV and is disclosable in court. Documentation and usually a statement is required for the exercise of any legal power. It’s all auditable. We even had community engagement groups who watch videos of incidents chosen at random by a computer, and I’ve had several of mine pulled up for feedback by them.
Putting aside the obvious ethical reasons why I haven’t done that and wouldn’t want to. Why would I risk my career and income anyway?
Never. Not once. I have reported multiple colleagues in the past for doing things which I thought were questionable, and those concerns were always appropriately actioned by management. I faced no consequences from my peers or the organisation for doing so.
Your presumptions are incorrect. Maybe they are correct where you live, I don’t know, but they’re not my experience at all. For what it’s worth, I’m not American.
I’m not saying these things don’t happen and as I’ve said repeatedly, I’m not saying modern policing is without issues. As someone who has worked in the criminal justice system for years with multiple degrees in the area, your perception of how things actually work in real life and how those problems manifest are not correct, and your judgements towards individuals (including myself) are totally unfair and without nuance.
I’m not sure how things work in your country. You’ve helpfully neglected to even state what country that is (which conveniently makes it difficult to find examples of the state of policing in your country).
This article is discussing American police and so that’s the context of my statements. We don’t do police accountability or oversight here, so your counterpoint doesn’t lend much weight.
I’ve intentionally left my country ambiguous to highlight that saying ALL of any group is a ridiculous statement, because I could be from anywhere in the world and somehow you think you know enough to apply that statement to me and my former colleagues.
So you’ve waded into an article about the criminal behavior of an American policeman, found a comment calling for police accountability in the US and posted some unverifiable anecdotal “evidence” that only qualifies their statement in the vaguest sense, but is aimed to plant uncertainty and doubt in the sentiment that police as a whole are bastards and need better oversight and accountability…
Well, the first A in ACAB stands for “all”. Meaning the claim is not limited to America. It’s a statement about policing as an institution in general, and so I think it’s perfectly reasonable for me to contribute to the discussion even though I’m a foreigner.
I don’t think my view can be dismissed as anecdotal. A person basing a view off of one anecdote is anecdotal. A person who has worked in the field for years and has multiple degrees in the area isn’t giving anecdotal evidence, they’re giving expert and specialist insight. Furthermore, I was specifically asked about my individual experience.
I defend the profession because it’s my opinion that policing CAN be a force for good. I don’t have direct experience with America so I won’t comment on that. But your accusations that even “good” cops are complicit in corruption by turning a blind eye or defending it is simply not true across the board and massively unfair towards people who sacrifice a lot for a very difficult job for selfless reasons. The organisation I worked for had tens of thousands of officers and staff so I’m obviously not going to claim it had zero issues and zero corruption, but it tended to be isolated to specific teams with their own internal culture that outsiders are rarely even aware of. I know this based on both my own experience and my studies of police corruption as part of my first degree.
I can honestly say with my hand on my heart that corruption was extremely rare in my professional experience. And when I saw something questionable (which was almost always down to incompetence rather than malice) I raised it and it was dealt with as appropriate.
I haven’t seen any comments qualifying their statement with “ACAB but only America” so I don’t think I’ve “waded in” at all (even putting aside the fact that this is a public forum anyway). All means all, and I object to such a blanket statement. I want to reiterate that I’m really not just trying to bootlick. As I said before, I have no good will towards my precious employer (for totally separate reasons) and I do agree that there are issues in modern policing that need to be addressed.
Dude, logic won’t work but I appreciate the attempt. I think people are angry and need a group to let it out on, tale as old as time. Bad cops are too vague of a topic, it’s easier to hate them all and justify it by a “bad system” which just makes it worse. Hate all cops and paint them as the enemy while asking them to change. Don’t ever acknowledge good cops and encourage that behavior. It’s childish.