police (mis)conduct

[drewkitty]

I've had called to my attention (online) three separate incidents that involved police use of force. My opinions have sharply differed from the majority view.



1) Police officer shoots man who beat tot to death. (Rural road outside Turlock, CA)

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/17/national/main4187588.shtml

Majority view: bystanders should have done more to stop the killer.

My view: most bystanders are neither trained nor equipped nor mentally prepared to do what is necessary to stop a deadly aggressor of this type. "Shall issue" concealed carry in California might have saved this toddler's life.

2) Campus police officer arrests popular teacher for interfering with tow of her car. (San Jose, CA, SJSU)

http://media.www.thespartandaily.com/media/storage/paper852/news/2008/03/04/News/Dispute.Over.Upd.Incident-3249889.shtml

Majority view: poor teacher beaten on by the mean cop.

My view: justified use of force.

3) Custody officer beats transgender person with handcuffs, incident caught on tape. (Memphis, TN)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25265517/

Majority view: cops should do time in jail. Custody nurse withheld aid. Discrimination against transsexuals.

My view: cops should be fired. Beatings are illegal regardless of who is the target and why. Custody nurse did her job.



Additional links will require some use of Google-fu. I read several links on each incident and feel that I have a good grasp of the details.

Any comments?

Comments

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

In haste re: the custody nurse. The nurse had been paged to respond to an officer injured. When she arrived, she saw two officers with minor injuries and our victim (a prisoner) sitting on the floor under the effects of pepper spray. The victim stated that she felt that the nurse ignored her to go to the aid of the officers.

Being sprayed with pepper really sucks. It feels like it's going to kill you, but you are in fact almost perfectly safe. (All instructors MUST be sprayed, most police and all military students ARE sprayed.)

What the custody nurse did was to glance at the victim, see that she was not in life-threatening danger (having seen lots of people exposed to pepper spray), and then go to the officers. The nurse's job among other things is to carefully document any injuries reported for later use in court.

It is not uncommon -- in fact, it is just about the only legal defense left -- for peace officers who have engaged in excessive use of force to overstate their injuries. (What justifies hitting a handcuffed prisoner in the face, captured on video? Why, he must have grabbed and twisted my testicles just before the video recorded!) There's also the temporal order to consider: was the officer injured before, during, or after?

The nurse is a medical professional whose first duty is to care for the injured. Otherwise she should turn in her nurse's license and become a custody officer. If injuries are not life-threatening, the other part of her job comes into play -- custody nurse, where she is performing her duties in a custodial environment. Officers are treated before prisoners; this is the kind of rule that emphasizes the unfairness and control necessary to keep human beings in custody. Not only would she NOT be doing her job to reverse the order, but it would endanger her (and that of other nurses) future access to prisoners.

Only if the victim's injuries were life-threatening could the nurse justify reversing the order; but then the nurse would have to activate emergency protocols including additional officers, paramedics who are based off site (and therefore outside the custodial rules, and therefore need additional escort etc.)

It's an important part of the nurse's job to make this kind of decision, even if the officers would prefer that she did not. This keeps people from dying in custody of untreated injuries.

It is very difficult to go into a correctional environment and keep the faith with the rules of another profession. I think this speaks poorly of the correctional environment, which needs some major changes. But there's a difference between individual misconduct and what I would almost call "system misconduct."

[finnkveldulfr.livejournal.com]

Got it. :)
Thanks for the explanation/clarification-- so, the nurse was indeed doing her job as the situation required her to do.

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Would the accused's injuries have to be life-threatening to take priority over the officers, given that the accused also had (I'm assuming?) highly visible facial damage from being beaten with a metal object, and the officers had no visible injuries? Under ordinary triage rules, what justifies her ignoring someone who's visibly injured and in distress? And even if your interpretation of her duties is that she has to take the officers' word for it that they're injured even worse and it just doesn't show, how does she justify not seeing to the accused's injuries at all once she's done with the officers? Isn't that at least one visibly injured patient in her care, under her responsibility, that's she's neglecting?