What about the ones that had no video?

From the LA Times...

A Los Angeles judge abruptly ended a trial and exonerated a man of possessing cocaine Monday after a courtroom confrontation in which a defense attorney produced a surprise video of his client's arrest that sharply contradicted the testimony of two police officers....

The drug charges against Alarcon rested almost entirely on the word of the two officers, Richard Amio and Evan Samuel....

Under cross-examination, Samuel and Amio denied hearing or saying several comments that the defense contended were made by officers on the video, including a threat against Alarcon to put him on his knees if he talked again.

The questioning climaxed when Alarcon's attorney finally asked Amio: "Are you aware of a video and audio recording that completely contradicts what you have testified to today?"...

The attorney accused the officers of targeting his client after they arrested him several weeks earlier on suspicion of assault, but discovered he had been released without charge.

The following is very telling about the problem this incident illustrates...

Civil rights attorney Connie Rice, who has studied the LAPD and pushed for reforms, said the department has tried in recent years to root out dishonest officers, particularly since Chief William J. Bratton took over in 2002. But she said, there are some who take shortcuts and lie.

"In their minds, they're compensating for a system that's rigged to keep them from making the arrests and getting the convictions they want," she said.

Of course it should be noted that the reason some police officers feel the need to lie in court is because of the laws civil rights attorneys have put in place making convictions extremely hard to get.

I elaborated on this problem here and more recently here. Judges invent laws from the bench, and the police are allowed to pick which laws they'll enforce, and on whom. That leaves ordinary citizens at the mercy of a handful of dictators who see their position in society as the arbiters of justice and punishment. The law becomes nothing but a decoration to make the totalitarianism somewhat more palatable.

The officers who committed perjury, rather than being arrested on the spot, are now on paid leave pending an investigation. Often such "investigations" are merely stalling tactics to get the issue out of the public's eye, so the officers can be put back on the street, and told to be more careful. There's no evidence that the Florida police officers who illegally harassed Christians at a Promise Keepers Conference 2 years ago have as yet to be punished in any way. The Christians have had to file a civil suit against the officers to ensure that such outrageous abuses of power are not repeated, since the police department itself seems content to ignore the problem.

Posted by Danny Carlton at July 2, 2008 6:58 AM