New Orleans Police Violation

The New Orleans Police Officers involved in the Danziger Bridge incident violated the law for many reasons that today. According to some police reports when a group of officers arrive that day at the bridge they were informed before arrival that police were being fired upon and two officers were down, this information was the beginning of the cover up (Bohm, Haley, 2014). There were reasons why these reports were falsified and it was mostly because these officers were afraid of what could happen if the truth come out. Even though we are well aware that police officers face different stressors on a daily basis, does not give them good premises for violating the law they are supposed to uphold. In fact Police Officers are supposed to be trained

to deal with different types of stressful situations.

This case took place right after a major disaster that came through New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina. The Police Department was in a state of chaos, and during this time the Police Officers were desperately trying to take back their city (Bohm, Haley, 2014). Even though this could be used as a reason as to why the New Orleans Police did what they did at that time it does not excuse it. It had not been long since this disaster struck and any effective antipolice corruption strategies that could have been used are usually a long term reform, and these strategies should take into account the society the police serves (Gutierrez-Garcia, Rodriguez, 2016), and at that time the society in which the New Orleans Police Department serves was in an uproar.

There are always ways to prevent the police corruption, some departments have anti corruption training or moral training yearly to help prevent this.

Although this is true there is still corruption happening in all different departments throughout the United States. The four officers who received the longest sentences were found guilty of violating federal civil rights, obstruction of justice along with gun laws (Bohm, Haley, 2014). So to have prevented these charges if Kaufman would not have lied in his testimony and made up witnesses that lied on the stand he would not have been charged with any of these (Bohm, Haley, 2014). Along with other officers who lied in their reports about what took place on that bridge. So why does this misconduct fall under police corruption? This is because the definition of police corruption is based on any behavior that someone uses to gain a dishonest advantage over someone else (Hailstone, 1992). This is obviously the case with the Danziger case because the officers were trying to get off after fatally wounding Madison. They were trying to get off by being dishonest about what took place, which in return falls under police corruption. It is also relates misconduct to any kind of conduct that is used and is a criminal offense or a disciplinary breach that would constitute termination for that person (Hailstone, 1992). All of which were the case during this investigation, if only these officers had not lied about what took place their punishment would of not of been as severe. After a chaotic situation such as Hurricane Katrina it would have helped if the department offered debriefing and allowed the officers some sort of anti stress tactics during this time.

Citizens in the United States are sentenced and incarcerated everyday, in fact there are an average of about 1.2 million people incarcerated in prisons through out this country (Brennan, 1995). Some people who are incarcerated are serving sentenced imposed on them for crimes that are no where near as life threatening as these crimes that had been committed by thee police officers. Just because they are law enforcement officials does not mean that they should not uphold the law, in fact they should be held at a higher standard than everyone else. Three of these officials were sentenced to 38 years, while one received 63 years and another received only 6 (Bohm, Haley, 2014). These sentences reflected the crimes that had been committed and shows that the judge and jury took their jobs during the process very seriously. This incident left two innocent people dead and four wounded (Bohm, Haley, 2014), this is not something that should be taken lightly. What even makes this worse is the fact that these officers tried to cover up what had actually happened instead of just telling the truth. These sentences imposed on thee former officers reflect their actions, they should not receive a lesser sentences just because the positions they held in society. The cover up included not only lying on police reports but they went as far as planting a gun at the scene (Bohm, Haley, 2014), this on its own should take precedence only because they had to have manipulated this plan even after the shock wore off.

The legal outcome may have been somewhat different if the officers had not attempted to have covered up what had happened on the bridge. Although what happened was tragic if the officers had told the truth and explained exactly what happened and why the outcome might have been somewhat different for those officers. One issue of the case was that they were trying to determine if the people who the police shot at were the actual shooters or if they were just innocent bystanders (Bohm, Haley, 2014). In this case if the police were honest and told investigators why they thought that these were the individuals that were shooting at them, instead the cover up began. Without the cover up these officers would not have faced additional charges but because they did lie about what took place their sentences had increased. The officer did in fact fact additional penalties because of the cover up when if they had not they would not be facing these other charges. These additional charges included conspiracy to cover up what had really happened that day, and conspiracy to file charges against two victims (Lance Madison and Jose Holmes) on the basis of false evidence (Newswire, 2010). So without the cover up these additional charges would not exist and there sentencing was based on all their charges, so they may have received a lesser sentencing. Although they still committed a crime and would have been charged regardless, these charges added to the sentencing imposed on them by the judge.

Both trial systems, the adversarial as well as the inquisitorial both have proved to be successful in ascertaining the truth. Yet usually certain countries fall toward one or the other, and now the trend seems to be leaning toward a mixed trial system that make use of elements in both adversarial and inquisitorial (Bohm, Haley, 2014). Both systems offer two very different ways to gain the truth during the trial and before. The best way is the adversarial trial systems, we are more familiar with this system in the United States and this type of trial system is more interested in legal guilt rather than factual guilt (Bohm, Haley, 2014). Another attribute to adversarial trial systems are the fact that the judge acts as an impartial decision maker who compares and contrasts the presentations and evaluates each presentation which afterwards makes a decision that allows a positive outcome for one party and a negative for the other (Sevier, 2014). This system seems to work best for us, along with implementing certain aspects from the inquisitorial trial systems. While judges here act as the impartial decision maker, a judge in an inquisitorial trial systems is the decision maker (Sevier, 2014). This way happens to work for certain countries and the truth is still uncovered yet here we are working to perfect this system and even with the impartial decision maker are still able to access the truth during a trial because of the way the law is stated along with the roles of the prosecutor, defense team and jury.

Inquisitorial systems and adversarial systems both have large roles in juries, evidence and roles of the victims but the adversarial system is more superior in these aspects than the inquisitorial system.

In the roles of the juries the inquisitorial systems have a lay judge while the adversarial have the jury trials (Bohm, Haley, 2014). While in the subject of the rules of the evidence the adversarial system has strict rules while the inquisitional system is less restrictive than the adversarial (Bohm, Haley, 2014). As a judge in the adversarial court system they have to wait for the evidence to be presented to them, while the other the judge is already aware of the evidence that is going to be presented in the case because they are part of the investigation. During an adversarial trial each side is given alternating times to present their evidence so it is fair and they are both allowed a first and last word in the court room (Spottswood, 2016). As far as victims are concerned there are certain countries that actually allow them to become involved in the interviews that take place and they are able to suggest lines when questioning the defendant, while during adversarial a lot of times the victims have no place in the proceedings (Bohm, Haley, 2014). It is important to remember both systems have their pros and cons but regarding the role of the juries, rules of evidence and roles of victims the adversarial system has more to do with these subjects than the

other.

There are many advantages and disadvantages to the inquisitorial trial system compared to the adversarial trial system. For instance during an adversarial trial most prosecutors or defense attorneys are only worried about winning the trial when in a inquisitorial trial system winning does not supercede the truth (Bohm, Haley, 2014). One disadvantage to the inquisitorial trial system is the fact that only judges are able to examine the witnesses and defendants while the defense attorney and the prosecutions are only able to ask certain types of questions (Bohm, Haley, 2014). This would prove to be very difficult in a trial, the attorneys would have to rely on the judge and hope that we would ask the right questions. Another couple of disadvantages to this type of system is that if a defendant decides to remain silent they are basically admitting guilt. While the adversarial system allows the defendant to remain silent without being guilty because of it (Bohm, Haley, 2014). As far as evidence is concerned one disadvantage to that in the inquisitorial system is the fact that hearsay evidence is allowed while it is not in the adversarial system. Although no system wether it is adversarial or inquisitorial is going to be perfect (Mosteller, 2011) it seems as though the inquisitorial system has more disadvantages. Both systems can be biased in different ways, such as the adversarial system allows narrow minded questions during the testimony that may distort it, that proves to be disadvantage in the inquisitorial system because only questions of that nature would be asked by a judge.

Like discussed before there is no perfect trial system, each system implemented is going to have some type of disadvantages. So it is best if there is some mixture between the inquisitorial and the adversarial trial systems. In the United States we mostly have the adversarial trial system, there are already some aspects that are used in our system that coincide with the inquisitorial system. There are some others that could be implemented to help certain aspects of the trial system that we already have in place. This may include an extensive investigation and examination of all evidence (Bohm, Haley, 2014) at which case could be done by a judge. We could implement this as the European jurisdictions do, their judges have a responsibility before the trial to examine all evidence so that they know if it would lead to inculpatory or exculpatory evidence, and after the investigation the results are placed in a file that is used for the decision making and questioning during the pubic hearing (Field, West, 2003). This would allow for less work for the defense and the prosecutors, yet it would allow more work for the judges yet then we could allow for more judges and less work load compared to what they have now. It would also allow for the investigation to focus more on the evidence and determine wether or not it is fact or fiction. Also, some countries that incorporate the inquisitorial system allow their victims to suggest lines of questioning for a defendant (Bohm, Haley, 2014). This would not be a terrible idea considering that they were actually there and know what took place.