Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
shot and killed 19-year-old suspected car thief Mary Hawkes
after she allegedly pulled a gun out at officers. It may have been
just another police shooting in America but for it being the third
one in Albuquerque in the last month and the first since a scathing
Department of Justice (DOJ)
report on civil rights violations and brutality in the
Albuquerque Police Department (APD).
The DOJ report stopped short of holding any actual police
officers accountable for the pattern and practice of constitutional
violations. But the fatal shooting of Hawkes highlights the
necessity of holding police officers to a high standard and
penalizing them up to the point of termination for poor conduct,
even if that conduct doesn’t rise to the level of actual crime.
Too often, cops are not accused of crimes, because such an
accusation requires a determination be made by a prosecutor who
almost always relies on cooperation from police to pursue other
cases. Prosecutors, then, aren’t usually interested in prosecuting
cops. So-called officer-involved shootings often end with
investigations partly or wholly undertaken by the departments to
which the cops under investigation belong, with prosecutors
declining to prosecute or failing to make a case to indict to a
grand jury.
By the account of the APD, the shooting of Hawkes appears
arguably justifiable. No narrative from the family, which includes
her foster father, a former judge and cop, or anyone else has
emerged to contradict the police’s story. Yet, unsurprisingly,
doubts remain about what happened, because a decades-long pattern
of abuse and brutality at the department—while police continue to
duck accountability for any wrongdoing—has eroded any constructive
relationship the police may have with the community. In this
particular shooting, the police chief, Gordon Eden, said lapel
video from Jeremy Dear, the officer who killed Hawkes, could not be
recovered and that officers who fail to activate their lapel
cams could face letters of reprimand or suspensions.
If the APD hopes to ever restore its relationship with the
community and its very integrity, it will have to treat cops who
fail to follow procedure and then kill in the line of duty far more
harshly. Dear may or may not have erred in shooting Hawkes, but he
erred in not activating his lapel camera every time he went on
duty. That negligence has now contributed to uncertainty about the
shooting, further wrecking the reputation of the APD and
exacerbating the pattern or practice of abuse, brutality, and
corruption in Albuquerque that the DOJ reported on to
just two weeks ago. Dear may or may not belong in jail. His
dereliction of duty, however, ought to already preclude him from
continued employment with the APD.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1jBUvy0
via IFTTT