Police dash cam video exonerates New Jersey man, leads to indictment of cops

[ArcadiaGP]

officers who accused a motorist of trying to grab one of their guns were convicted Thursday of misconduct in part because a dashcam video showed the motorist holding his hands up

Dashcam video of man holding hands up helps convict officers

 

[sidewinder27]

I'll probably get flamed for this and granted this is not a completely worked out thought, but here it goes.

It is time for police officers to have to carry their own liability or 'malpractice' insurance. Not the department paying for it with tax payer's money, but the officer themselves paying for it. Here's the kicker. If you work in a department with a high number of bad officers with judgements against their liability insurance due to them being scumbags....well guess what, your insurance premiums go up. That's how it works in other industries. It's time for departments to take out their trash. This will ONLY happen when it hurts them NOT to.

Your thoughts?

I pay for E & O insurance and the more I sell the higher it goes. Which it suck because I'm essentialy being punished for doing well. But yes they should have to carry a personal bond or insurance.

 

[ckcollins2003]

I pay for E & O insurance and the more I sell the higher it goes. Which it suck because I'm essentialy being punished for doing well. But yes they should have to carry a personal bond or insurance.

Umm... no. Officers don't make enough money as it is and I'm sick of seeing the government forcing Americans to buy insurance already.. I'd say about 70% of the officers I know work 2 jobs, 60-70 hours a week if not more just to try and make ends meet and most of the time they don't have enough to go out to a nice dinner on the weekends.

I don't think forcing people with careers that interact with other human beings should require any type of malpractice or liability insurance. With todays technology and cameras everywhere the bad officers are getting what they deserve.

 

[level0]

Umm... no. Officers don't make enough money as it is and I'm sick of seeing the government forcing Americans to buy insurance already.. I'd say about 70% of the officers I know work 2 jobs, 60-70 hours a week if not more just to try and make ends meet and most of the time they don't have enough to go out to a nice dinner on the weekends.

I don't think forcing people with careers that interact with other human beings should require any type of malpractice or liability insurance. With todays technology and cameras everywhere the bad officers are getting what they deserve.

 

[GIJEW]

I'm surprised that they would think they could hide that kind of evidence unless they expected their superiors and the prosecutor to cover for them. If everyone knows the dash cam exists, they'd have to expect the defense attorney would ask to see the video. Kind like looking for the "black box" after a plane crash.

 

[Lil Bob]

I am glad to see that they were held accountable for their actions. In the end this is what should happen. I do not believe that police officers should have to carry insurance. However, we should hold officers accountable for their actions. I live near Chicago and the city has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits over the last decade brought about because of police misconduct. What I find sad is when you learn that multiple lawsuits costing the city multiple millions of dollars was attributed to a few officers. This is a problem that I see across all areas of business/employment - we keep employees that are not suited for their employment.

 

[jwh20]

Hopefully the civil suit that will result from this against the city and the officers will bankrupt them all! There should be consequences for this behavior and the blame surely goes above these individual officers. Just as we saw with the IMPD and Officer Bisard, there was (and hopefully it's WAS now) a systemic attitude in that dept. that "we protect our own". While that is a good and a valuable idea, when you extend it to we protect our own EVEN when they become the criminal, that becomes wrong!

 

[Manan]

As a 21 year LEO I can tell ya the vast majority of dash cam video exonerates the cops of false accusations. That being said, there is NO room in law enforcement for liars and those that let the authority go to their head and abuse the public in any way.

 

[Libertarian01]

What I fail to understand here, and in other such instances, is the officers motivation for doing such a thing to someone.

Years ago there was an episode of NYPD Blue where Detective Sipowicz was explaining his use of beating a confession out of a suspect. The suspect had sexually assaulted a little girl. (Allegedly for Kirk ) Sipowicz was saying there were two (2) overriding factors in beating the confession out of the man. #1) They absolutely knew he did it; #2) He didn't want the little girl to go through the pressure of a trial. That was it. He had his reasoning.

Now, we may well agree or disagree with this TV characters reasoning, but it was there. He wasn't going out of his way to jack up somebody for no reason. He had a real suspect and some good evidence, and was targeting one lone individual.

What I cannot understand is the officers behavior in this situation. Why? The guy had done nothing. They had a complaint that was unsubstantiated from earlier, but that was it. Coming up on him he did just about everything right. He pulled over. He raised his hands. He did fail to exit the vehicle, but that was it.

I understand that LE puts up with all of us on our worst days. Even a person who is an angel 364 days out of the year is being seen by LE on day 365, that one (1) day that they have just had it and blown a gasket. That has to wear down a persons soul. So I really do appreciate the good cops out there who can continue to swallow the crap every day and still remain fresh themselves.

Regards,

Doug

 

[WestSider]

Umm... no. Officers don't make enough money as it is and I'm sick of seeing the government forcing Americans to buy insurance already.. I'd say about 70% of the officers I know work 2 jobs, 60-70 hours a week if not more just to try and make ends meet and most of the time they don't have enough to go out to a nice dinner on the weekends.

I don't think forcing people with careers that interact with other human beings should require any type of malpractice or liability insurance. With todays technology and cameras everywhere the bad officers are getting what they deserve.

This is me, I can't even afford the lousy medical insurance my department offers due to it being so poor on the coverage because I have 2 children with metabolic disorders. If they heaped another thing on me I would actually have to think about moving to another department or quitting altogether.

Bottom line is cops are people, and sometimes people do dumb things. As long as they get held personally accountable for it, that's all I ask. I don't see the need to bankrupt an entire agency over the dumb actions of one officer.

 

[ajeandy]

Racist pieces of sh*t