But despite an unarmed victim, forensics proving he was shot multiple times in the back, a police officer who made a false report, and clear video showing the entire debacle, Slager was not convicted of murder or manslaughter in his trial this week. A lone juror spared him that fate with a refusal to convict. That triggered a mistrial. [...]
My belief is that police officers should be treated like any other person accused of a crime. In the ongoing debate about policing, defenders of the status quo frequently point out, correctly, that patrolling America’s streets is a tremendously difficult job—one that puts all who perform it in frequent contact with dangerous criminals, risking injury or death while trying to protect public safety. Their view is that the risks involved, the difficult demands of the job, and the importance of the task to society mean cops should always be given the benefit of the doubt. [...]
In these two failed prosecutions of white police officers, the most proximate failures belonged to individual white jurors. The larger failure to hold police accountable in the United States, even in egregious cases, is a collective one, and any political movement that claims to revere individual liberty or the rights set down in the Constitution is lying to itself if it doesn’t expend effort to make things better.
