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Jury Finds Occupy Wall Street Protester Innocent After Video Contradicts Police

When I was a cop we had 2 officers get indited one for abuse for beating a prisoner in a cell and the other for having his own car stolen and filling a false insurance claim. I also know other officers who stood up for what was right and did the right thing.

You cannot hold all officers responsible for the reactions of a few. The fact is police officers for all their training etc are still just humans. They have all the weaknesses everyone else has.

They are held to a higher standard and this is acceptable. The problem is when they do go out of bounds it is far to often swept under the rug. This is the real problem.
 

Having worked for a firm that did a lot of criminal defense, I got to see how the police operated on a daily basis. I saw good things and bad but what I learned is that most NYPD cops have no problem breaking the law to get a collar and did so knowing that their co-workers would back them up.

I could give you examples of NYPD officers routinely and systematically breaking the law in order to make an arrest, oftentimes for the most petty of offenses.
 

And knowing NYPD works off of the COMPSTAT system, I can tell you that the majority of that was due to pressure from administrators to increase arrest numbers in order to impress even higher administrators and earn promotions.

Thats how that worthless system works. It encourages bull**** arrests and encourages under reporting of certain crimes in order to give the appearance that crime is being reduced through improper reporting practices.

It can turn any good department into a worthless ****hole....... one of the major reasons why I left law enforcement and rejoined the military.
 

That is very true. COMPSTAT was a great idea, perverted by politicians and cops looking to climb the ladder.
 

Are you talking about actual criminal activity, or doing things like questionable searches? Despite the claims of "illegal" search and seizure it really doesn't get into the area of actual criminal activity most of the time. Bad searches are reasons evidence gets tossed at trial, and perhaps disciplinary action, but breaking those laws doesn't have much criminal penalty to it. Maybe it should, but that is another argument. Oh, and BTW i used to work training cops and with departments in the bronx, white plains, and up into putnam and dutchess counties. i know the police in the area, and a lot of what police do. yes, i do know there is corruption there, but again you really are going to need a little bit more than your own perception given you don't see everything. having worked for a criminal defense firm you should be well aware they do not handle the majority of cases, so still there are reasons why you don't see everything. Most of the time while doing their things cops behave within the law. your experience shows something we know, that corruption exists. it does not quantify it in a way that can be applied to imply most cops are corrupt.
 
Poor law leads to poor governance and poor society.

In 2014 we will reach the century mark of the drug prohibition. Our society has been weakened thereby for nearly a century.
 

I'm talking about both of those and more. The fact that cops get away with illegal searches does not make them any less illegal.

And while it's not possible to prove, the evidence does imply that most cops break the law.
 

So its bad to point out the bad ones? Is it bad to point out bad politicians? Bad doctors? :shrug:

I have no problem appreciating good cops, but don't think for one moment that I won't speak up when bad cops do bad things.
 
sangha said:
Actually, the video showed that he was innocent of the charges that were brought against him, though "innocent" is not a valid finding for a jury
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Can you prove that he broke any other law? If not then there is something about this country which you should know. You see we have this little motto when it comes to our justice system. It's called "Innocent until proven guilty". Due to that everyone is innocent of any crime until such time as a jury delivers a guilty verdict. Any other verdict necessitates that the person is indeed innocent.
 

So instead of making the criminals pay you make the taxpayers pay. Good idea! Not.
 

And here's something you should know: WHen I say that "he was innocent" that means that I think he was innocent
 
If you watched the video it doesn't do squat to prove his innocence on the one charge. But really the whole crowd should have been arrested.

Let's be real here, how long before this moron will be bragging to his buds about how he charged the police?

Btw, not up to the prosecutor, though they have their say, it's up to the DA.
 

Umm...how is one suppose to charge ANYONE when they are crawling on their hands an knees trying to get out of a crowd of people without being trampled?
 
Kal'Stang said:
Umm...how is one suppose to charge ANYONE when they are crawling on their hands an knees trying to get out of a crowd of people without being trampled?
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If you watch the video, the blanket thing they were trying to coral the protesters with, with officers behind it, was charged (by who we don't see) BEFORE he was shown on the ground. That may have been how he got on the ground in the first place.

And he was already guilty of failure to disperse, just as the rest of the crowd. Add in disorderly conduct and creating a public disturbance.
 
The Occupy movement was a stupid embarrassment and it's over.
 

I saw no one charging.

And the guy was not charged with any of that other stuff.
 
Kal'Stang said:
I saw no one charging.

And the guy was not charged with any of that other stuff.
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Because you can't see squat from that video. The soft barrier is being held up, it bulges and the cops holding it are pushed back. That wasn't a strong wind that did that. From the video we don't see who did that, but the cops there do.
 
clownboy said:
Because you can't see squat from that video. The soft barrier is being held up, it bulges and the cops holding it are pushed back. That wasn't a strong wind that did that. From the video we don't see who did that, but the cops there do.
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OH so since the crowd behind that netting surges forward you think that the guy charged? :lamo Because I did see the crowd surge. But I saw no one charge.

BTW, just how exactly does one "charge" past a netting designed to hold people? Wouldn't the netting sort of stop any such charges, assuming that there was one of course.
 

Once again, none of those questions can be answered with that video. And how do you know from that video the crowd surged, how do you distinquish a surge from a charge? And no one said he charged past the netting, just that he charged into an officer (who could have been one of the ones holding the netting).

Either way, the video doesn't show squat that illuminates his guilt or innocence.
 

What he calls "the crowd surging", I call "people falling backwards because the cops pushed them"

Watch the video again. The cops at the front end of the netting push the crowd back, and they fall down as a result
 

What I find troubling is the evidence of the Officer Bosco, who is clearly seen in the shot with his arm way up in the air with a video camera clearly visible and yet he claims not to have shot any video that night, that is if the story itself is entirely true but as of yet I have seen no evidence to the contrary. I do not believe this officer when he says he has no video of that night, when he is clearly shown using a video camera. Now if there was no footage of the incident, the police should have just said so instead of claiming no footage exists because that I find hard to believe.

Because I took a few stills from the video that exonerated the suspect







I blacked out the faces of the officers because they are not the issue here, what is the issue is that in each picture you can see an officer with a video camera clearly in his hand. Now if as I said earlier, he did not film that exact incident than that is OK, show the defense the video (raw footage, not the edited stuff) and be done with it, don't say no film exists if the world can see for itself that it was being video taped.
 
Instead, just screw it, stop policing demonstrations. Let them have at it and warn the rest of the public off the streets if they care for their safety. Let the mob have the town. It's clear from the video, they can't pay police enough to make that a worthwhile job.

Btw, that was no peacable assembly.
 

One thing that should be noted....that camera is a digital camera. There would be no "film". Just a hard drive.
 

No, don't let the mob have the town, but while you are out there protecting and serving, stop trying to frame innocent people for crimes they did not commit.
 
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