Can't we all just get along?

Office_Shredder

This is not at all the case but thanks for playing

Ryan_m_b

To deal with this properly are you seriously suggesting that police officers should commit crimes before covering them up by forging others as a way of dealing with a legal system that you believe has flaws? If you think there are flaws why would you not advocate dealing directly with them?

The idea that a police officer should plant evidence is insanity. You'll end up with a situation where legitimate examples of police corruption and illegalit is covered up as standard and you'll open the door for police to plant evidence in a variety of other cases.

nitsuj

It's easy enough to bark back at those wild comments regarding planting evidence. But that point of view is not entirely ridicules.


Many criminals CANNOT be prosecuted due to technicalities. Including violent, black & white cases where "beyond reasonable doubt" throws the case out. (Be empathetic to how someone "risking" there life to stop criminals, sees them walking free. In particular consider the mind set of a cop; for sure it includes a sense of power, at least over criminals. Making the free to walk criminal situation that much more difficult to "swallow")


Wanna plant a gun on the guy who violently rapes somebody but gets off due to technicalities?

I appreciate this is an extreme rarity, so much so a suggestion like cops carrying "incriminating evidence" on them to later plant on "criminals" is mental, and way over powered.

There is a neat Robert DiNero & Al Piciano movie where They are cops, one starts taking "matters into his own hands".

Ryan_m_b

Nope, I still absolutely disagree. The moment you start allowing manipulation of justice is the moment that you damage justice. It's very easy to throw up incredibly defined hypotheticals along the lines of

Imagine that rapist X has his friend secretly destroy vital evidence and all it would take is for noble police officer Y to [insert forgery here] to make sure he gets convicted; oh and obviously he'll never do it again

but these hypotheticals don't mirror reality at all.

If there are problems with the justice system fix the justice system, don't advocate gaming it because then you make justice secret and under the control of people with no oversight and therefore no guarentee that they will act in an ethical manner. A last point is that everyone should critically think about any case they hear/read about that is presented as nitsuj has above i.e.
It is extremely rare for a case that is "black and white" to get thrown out, more often than not it is simply a media manipulation to sell stories or a political lie to push agenda (for example Micheal Howard's erroneous criticisms of the Human Rights Act on the basis of hear say legal cases). Also I can't believe I have to point out the logic behind reasonable doubt in a justice system unless we should just do away with innocent til proven guilty (not to mention that a case cannot be both "black and white" and "not beyond reasonable doubt")

We all want justice to be done but the correct manner to do so is to help create an open legal system with proper oversight. Not to encourage criminal activity as some sort of counter.

Office_Shredder

If a case is black and white then by definition there is no reasonable doubt. Black and white means there is no doubt in the matter

Andre

Plus one,

This discussion is filed under "noble cause corruption".

Maybe it's not limited to justice.

zoobyshoe

Exactly.

The guilt of O.J. Simpson was thrown into considerable doubt when his defense was able to make a persuasive case for some of the evidence against him having been planted by Mark Fuhrman. If cops think they can do this, and its known they think so, a jury can't be sure of any evidence against anyone.

By extention, we could do this in science: fake up experimental support for a theory because we believe the theory is so good it must be right.

Hobin

It's somewhat unfortunate that - unlike in science - it's impractical to replicate the 'experiment' when you're trying to find out who the bad guy is.

Ryan_m_b

Definitely and you've hinted at an important point here. Arguments of ends justify means tend to fail at properly identifying all the ends. Sure one end might be that a guilty criminal goes to jail, but at the same time a possible end is that the practice becomes more common which could lead to false imprisonments and eventual revelation in court or the press which undermines a great deal of cases and confidence in the justice system.

zoobyshoe

FBI profilers, at least, are very good at reconstructing crime scenes.

nitsuj

Yikes!

zoobyshoe

Back in the '60's it became clear police corruption was rampant in many parts of the US and clamping down on them has made things very much better here. We do not want to slide back the other way. Planted evidence for "good" reasons, will just about automatically lead to it being used for corrupt purposes.

nitsuj

hmmm..... With that logic there are no innocent people in jail.

zoobyshoe

I'm not talking about TV shows, if that's what you're yikeing about. Read one of the books by FBI Profiler, John Douglas.

nitsuj

oh no,

just a general yikes to the reaction to me trying to play devils advocate.