New York’s Attorney General Eric
Schneiderman, a Democrat, was first elected in 2010 and the grand
jury in the Eric Garner case wasn’t the first to fail to indict a
New York City police officer accused of killing someone they had
targeted. Nevertheless, with the right amount of mainstream media
attention, some politicians are willing to jump.
Schneiderman now wants Gov. Andrew Cuomo, another Democrat first
elected in 2010, to give him the power to oversee all prosecutions
of police officers accused of killing “civilians.” In a
letter to Cuomo, Schneiderman argues the governor is permitted
by state law to place any kind of criminal prosecution under the
purview of the Attorney General, bypassing local District
Attorneys, and that bills to that effect have been introduced in
the state legislature since as early as 1999, to no avail.
“The crisis of confidence is long in the making and has deep
roots,” wrote Schneiderman, identifying a large part of the
problem: “A common thread in many of these cases is the belief of
the victim’s family and others that the investigation of the death,
and the decision whether to prosecute, have been improperly and
unfairly influenced by the close working relationship between the
county District Attorney and the police officers he or she works
with and depends on every day.”
The attorney general stressed that the “majority” of prosecutors
are fair in their disposition of such cases and that instead it’s
the lack of public confidence that’s the problem. He therefore
asked Cuomo for authority:
to (1) investigate the circumstances surrounding the commission
or alleged commission by any police officer or peace officer in the
State of any act or acts, committed while the officer is engaged in
the performance of his or her official duties, that result in the
death of any unarmed person other than a fellow law enforcement
officer so engaged: and (2) where warranted, criminally prosecute
the officer for such acts as provided in those subdivisions.
Schneiderman writes that he doesn’t want to “compromise” any
ongoing investigations and so only wants the authority for new
cases, and only until the legislature acts on the issue.
No word yet from Cuomo on whether he’ll act on Schneiderman’s
request. A Republican state legislator in Missouri wants to
introduce similar legislation which would transfer the power to
prosecute cops for on-duty deaths to the attorney general. Cuomo,
meanwhile, is
also considering a bill that passed the Democrat-controlled
legislature handily earlier this year that would give police unions
more power to determine the disciplinary regime under which cops
fall.
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