The riots came about due to racial tensions sparked by the acquittal of three officers accused of police brutality against Rodney King following a high speed chase on March 3, 1991. It would be easy to suggest that the Rodney King trial and verdict was the cause of the rioting, considering the immediate reaction to the news. However, although the acquittal of the police officers was the immediate precipitant, the Los Angeles riots of 1992 were the result of many underlying macro social conditions - specifically racism, social Injustice, and poverty. The living conditions in South Central Los Angeles in the years prior to the riots were below average. The per capita income was less than half that of Los Angeles as a whole, and poverty and unemployment rates were more than twice as high.
Criminal Justice scholars and investigative commissions have documented police lying under oath. (Cliffnotes 2010) The most well known is the 1994 Mollen Commission Report. (Cliffnotes 2010) This commission was charged with reviewing reports of police corruption in the New York Police Department. (Slobogin 1996) The Mollen Commission found that police perjury was an epidemic. (Slobogin 1996) The study showed that good cops lie the most because they honestly believe a guilty defendant will go free.
The identification was ruled too suggestive. I feel like eyewitness testimony is too unreliable for the simple reason that the identification is able to be so suggestive. Recently I have been doing a lot of research on wrongful execution, and there have been people wrongfully put to death due to eyewitness testimony. It is a miscarriage of justice for an innocent person to spend one day in jail, it is a tragedy for an innocent person to be put to death. One innocent person punished in any way for the crime of another is one too many.
1 Police Brutality Police brutality is still one of the most serious human violations in the United States. The intentional use of excessive force, usually physical, but potentially also in the form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation by police officers persists because of overwhelming barriers to accountability. Police brutality can be from calling a citizen by his or her name to a death by a policeman’s bullet. What the average citizen thinks of when he hears the term, however, it is something midway between these two occurrences which can be more common to what the police profession knows as alley court. These facts make it possible for officers who commit human rights violations to escape due punishment and often repeat their offenses.
Here are the statics: “Since 1989 when the first DNA exoneration occurred, 328 defendants have been exonerated in the United States after being convicted of serious crimes such as rape and murder. The exonerated were 316 men and 12 women; 145 of them were cleared by DNA identification and 183 by other kinds of evidence” (http://www.ur.umich.edu/0304/May10_04/25.shtml). What went wrong? * Eyewitness Misidentification * Improper Forensic Science * False Confessions * Overzealousness/Public Pressure Eyewitness Misidentification Imagine being a victim so frighten and traumatized after such a hideous unimaginable experience. It can be hard, almost impossible to accurately describe the assailant.
Many civilians, including myself, believe that these police officers think they can do these things because they believe they are merely ‘’above the law.’’ This summer I was a victim of such crimes brought about by the New York Police Department. Due to the simple fact that I was only 16 years old and out late, I was seriously hospitalized and incarcerated. As I walked down a dark and discreet block with a friend of mine, I heard a deep voice bark at me. “Stay where you are!” I stopped in an instant, only to immediately get roundhouse punched across the face. Then I was maliciously thrown face first into the hood of the police car, cuffed accordingly, and repeatedly beat in the face a number
Criminal Psychology: Trauma that influences criminal behavior Criminal activity is the act of an individual breaking a law. This could vary from a violent murder to a simple argument out in public. Criminals are usually prosecuted and sometimes are not granted a fair trail due to the severity of the crime they have committed, but could there be a psychological reason as to why an individual is persuaded to commit a crime? This has been a controversial debate that has been researched over the years. It is believed that certain traumas and different environments have a great effect on how ones mind develops.
Everyone would like to think that police officers are all good and upstanding citizens in order to serve and protect, but there are corrupt police officers everywhere. Corruption has been an ongoing problem amongst the police enforcement for centuries. A police officer who is committed to their job will expose criminal activity and put a halt to crime. A corrupt police officer will cover up and partake in criminal activity. Corrupt police officers are dishonest and a disgrace to the entire police enforcement.
In the year of 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were convicted of robbery and murder. Although the arguments brought against them were mostly disproven in court, the fact that the two men were known radicals, prejudiced the judge and jury against them. It didn’t help that their trial took place during the height of the Red Scare. On April 9, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti's final appeal was declined, and the two were sentenced to death. The most prominent and respectable critic of the trial was known to be Felix Frankfurter, a professor at Harvard Law School.
The main thing that is hurting our country right now is violence, when you read the news about Chicago they had more murders then the soldiers in Iraq due to gang violence. Furthermore if the police love arresting criminals they should arrest all the thugs and send them to prison because they are the problem. Arresting somebody for drugs is not that Title: Non-Violent Criminals Should Be Punish With Fines serious for being put behind bars that person should pay a fine for his or her punishment. Non-violent criminals have a recidivism rate of 3% according the Department of Justice. In other words a non-violent criminal has a slight chance of repeating the same