Bad Police Officers Have Been Successfully Lying To Us For Decades
I have never thought that bad police officers were anything but a small minority of police forces, but unfortunately lack of accountability, a general unwillingness to punish bad officers, and even protection provided to bad officers by good ones all combine to let these bad officers do a lot of damage.
Lawrence Faulkenberry has been awarded $1.3 million for the police brutality he suffered. But in the decades before inexpensive personal video recording, he would have instead been rotting in jail.
The video, posted below, shows Fauklenberry standing outside his home when three deputies walk up with guns drawn, responding to a false report from his mentally ill son after a spat over homework, who had accused his father of being drunk and carrying a gun.
Not only does Faulkenberry not own a gun, he was not drunk.
“The video plainly shows that at no point during the entire incident did the plaintiff offer any resistance or assault any of the deputies.
...
Not only did Faulkenberry not assault deputies, the video shows Caldwell County Sergeant Dustin M. Yost using a judo-type leg sweep on Faulkenberry, causing him to fall down, even though he appeared to be fully cooperating.
Then all three deputies can be seen piling on top of him with one deputy punching him in the eye and another pushing him down with his knee.
The video also revealed at no point in the video did Faulkenberry assault deputy Michael Taylor and deputy Houseton, which they claimed as justification for their use of force.
Faulkenberry was arrested for felony assault on a public servant, resisting arrest and aggravated assault with a firearm.
One wonders how many innocent people went to jail, and still go to jail, because police know that they can make any story stick -- at least until video evidence started to appear, and even then it is hart to convict police of obvious crimes.
Postscript: I would add that this case illustrates one of my issues with the BLM approach to police violence -- it is not just an issue of racism. This is a white victim. And since it is really hard to fix racism anyway (thought there are police training programs that can help), the solution has to also involve a lot of hard work changing rules and union contracts to increase police accountability, hard work that pretty much is not happening or even being discussed anywhere -- instead we are arguing about NFL millionaires taking a knee during the national anthem.
