Lawdoc1

This is the correct answer.

Courts (including SCOTUS) have repeatedly ruled that police have no duty to protect you. And if they have no duty to do that, then that begs the question of what their duty is?

The answer is to protect the status quo. That normally means making sure the rich people aren’t bothered too much by the lower classes (whether it be violent or property crime), and making sure the rich neighborhoods don’t lose property value.

Everything I am about to say, I say as someone that practiced criminal defense for 15 years. I handled all level of cases from minor summary offenses up to and including murder, kidnap, and sexual assault cases. I have done this at the state and federal level and I have done it in inner city Philadelphia as well as its rich suburbs.

I recently transitioned out of criminal defense because I was getting burnt out and because I was starting to feel as though I was just part of the system that treated people like commodities. It was a lousy feeling.

Prosecutors routinely run for office or for reelection based on the idea that they "will make things safer." The only way they can really quantify something so vague is by giving statistics.

Those statistics normally mean showing how many "arrests and convictions" they have been able to achieve. So in the world of the justice system, these things are basically commodities that are to be collected for value.

As a result, the police are incentivized to make arrests and prosecutors are incentivized to secure convictions. The more of these they achieve, the more likely they retain their jobs and the more likely they are to be able to increase their budgets.

You can see clear evidence of this in the way criminal statutes are written and in the way crimes are charged. In most cases a person rarely receives a single charge because their alleged behavior is often covered by multiple statutes.

The result of this is that prosecutors then have a lot of discretion on which charges to pursue and which charges they are willing to dismiss. They use this in three main ways:

1. By offering to dismiss some charges at the preliminary (or evidentiary) hearing, they get many defendants to waive their right to that hearing. This means that the defendant does not take the opportunity to get valuable testimony from police and witnesses. But they make this decision because the prosecutor is offering to remove their exposure to potential risk of more charges and/or more serious charges.

This sometimes occurs even without the defendant having an attorney. In some cases, it is because they can’t afford one, but they make just a bit more money than is allowed to qualify for a Public Defender (free, court-appointed counsel).

1. Once the case proceeds past the preliminary stages, in nearly all but the most serious or most high-profile cases, the prosecutor will offer a plea deal. This is another, but more final version of what happened at the preliminary hearing.
   Basically, a person agrees to accept responsibility for a lesser charge so they do not run the risk of being convicted of a more serious charge at trial.
   The defendant has the additional pressure of having to face the very steep legal fees that come with taking a case to trial. This does not apply to those that qualify for a Public Defender, but qualifying for that is difficult as a person must be basically indigent. Once you do qualify for a Public Defender, it is the luck of the draw (you don't get to pick which one you want). So you may get either a very inexperienced attorney, a very bad attorney, or both. Even in the cases when you get a very good attorney (and many PDs are very good attorneys), you will get an attorney with an unbelievably large caseload that is pressed for time and resources (such as independent investigators, experts, etc...).

2. In cases with multiple co-defendants, they can use the above style tactics to persuade one or more defendants to turn against the other defendant or defendants and provide valuable testimony against the targeted defendant or defendants. While this practice is common, it also incentivizes the co-defendants to provide less than truthful and/or embellished testimony as it will help that witness secure lesser charges and as a result, a lower punishment.

As a result of all of the above, the Prosecutors and Police have A LOT of power over how people progress through the system. They have much greater resources at their disposal in regards to their own investigative force (police and detectives) as well as greater money to use expert witnesses (such as this junk science about 911 calls).

As alluded to above, very few defendants in the criminal justice system have the means to properly and effectively fight against the prosecutors power. Those that do have those means routinely receive much different (and much better) outcomes than the average defendant. (There are exceptions to that rule.)

I highly recommend that people go and spend a free day at the courthouse several times a year to see how this works. And I don’t mean a trial. I mean an open court where a judge is hearing plea deals. You will see how it is normally run very efficiently. They are literally processing people like Amazon processes orders.

Which brings me to my final point about the criminal justice system. In most cases, judges are former prosecutors. In some places, you may find a few that were former defense attorneys (even then, they were likely a prosecutor before going to private defense), but you will rarely find a judge that is a former Public Defender. As a result, you often have a judge on the bench that is either a former colleague of the very prosecutors that appear before them or is at the very least more understanding and ideologically aligned with the prosecutors.

Am I jaded? You are goddamn right I am. But I fully believe the system is fucked and I believe I have seen and experienced enough to provide numerous examples that back my opinion. I say that as someone that grew up in a lily white midwestern neighborhood and spent nearly 6 years in the active duty military before going back to school to get my law degree. To be clear, I used to drink the kool-aid. Then I spent time up close and personal with the system.

I will say that there are signs of some change. The BLM movement, and specifically the surrounding attention on policing and prosecution as a result of their efforts, has made many more people sit up and notice. This is a good thing.

You are starting to see some prosecutors get better about understanding the major differences between violent crime and drug/property crime. You are also starting to see prosecutors be more aware of how rampant mental health disease is among those in the criminal justice system and how those mental health issues are major factors not just in the initial actions of defendants, but also how those conditions are exacerbated by incarceration and the difficulties experienced by those with criminal records.

We still have a long, long way to go. But I am hoping that as each generation progresses, we see people with a better understanding o the human condition and as a result, hopefully they support enacting much needed reform.

[Edit - Not sure why the numbering is wonky. When I went to edit it, it showed as 1-3, but when I save it, it goes back to 1, 1, 2.]

You would be shocked at how poorly most police run investigations. It is nothing like TV.

I worked as a defense attorney for about 15 years, and I was repeatedly astounded with how little inquiry there was when police were involved.

They tended to arrive at a conclusion fairly quickly, and then only seek out evidence or other information that supported their initial conclusion.

Which is the exact opposite of what they should be doing, but then again, the standards for becoming a cop are not exactly such that you attract the most intelligent and the most logical.

Also a former paramedic here. This has been a long time problem in general when it comes to coordination.

It was my experience that there was always too much ego involved from the leadership of nearly every entity that participated.

The cops think they're kings, the FF think they are, and usually, the higher ranking EMS folks do as well.

As a result, that creates barriers to cooperation which creates barriers to communication.

I am former military as well and I used to see this in the military as well, though that has gotten much better over the past several decades (though it can always use improvement).

Do you or your organization target any issues other than CAF, and if so, what are they?

I didn't start law school until I was 30. Prior to that I had been a military medic and then a civilian medic so it was a significant career change.

I have been practicing for 8 years now and I thoroughly enjoy what I do.

The key to starting later is not comparing yourself to those that went to law school either directly after or soon after their undergraduate degree in their early 20s.

Once you get into practice you will be colleagues with people much younger than you are and in some cases you will be working for people younger than yourself. That doesn't matter unless you make it matter. Use your advantage of maturity and life experience and you will do fine.