Lack of Trust in Cops? Say It Ain’t So!

A CNN story today reported
that Los Angeles judges are beginning to worry that because of the latest
scandal involving the Los Angeles Police Department, in which police officers
may have given false testimony and evidence in thousands of cases, jurors
are beginning to doubt the testimony of police.

Larry Fidler, supervising judge
for the Los Angeles Superior Court Criminal Division, told CNN, “We
are starting to see, based on information I get from the judges I supervise,
that verdicts are being affected, not so much from the evidnece that was
presented in a particular case, but based, aparently — because there
appears to be no othe reason — on the Rampart scandal. It is also very
terrible when people who are overwhelmingly guilty walk away when the
only reason is because there is a general feeling no in the bpulic —
if that’s what its’ coming to — that police officers’ testimony can’t
be trusted.”

But why should Los Angeles
jurors believe anything an LAPD officer has to say after seeing the depths
of the ongoing scandal. Taking into account past scandals, the LAPD (and
other law enforcement agencies) seem singularly unable to rid themselves
of corruption. Until they can do so, it is not unreasonable for jurors
to subject police testimony to the same sort of scrutiny and skepticism
they give to the testimony of other witnesses.

What Fidler’s judges may be
seeing is nothing more than juror’s no longer burying their heads in the
sand and assuming everything that a police officer testifies to is the
gospel truth.