oregoncivilrights

This is a complicated question. The government has the legal obligation to provide humane and safe conditions of confinement. They cannot discharge this duty by using a private provider. This duty includes safe housing, medical care, and personal safety for everyone. Many governments bought into the pitch by private companies that they could provide incarceration for the government affordably. Private prisons are run by large corporate conglomerates. Their goal is to make money at any expense to the prisoner.

These private companies bid on providing jail services to local governments and sometimes state governments at a flat contract price (for a multi-year contract). For example a local county jail might contract with Conmed for medical care in jail and promise to provide standard of care medical services for a flat rate for the term of the contract. What happens is that the private provider cuts corners and stops providing services because these contracts let the contractor keep the unspent funds at the end of the contract term. So the less they spend the more they make.

The consequence is that they hire Correction Officers (COs) with no experience, with very little background checks, who have engaged in some of the most horrendous abuse of prisoners I've read about. Private providers also do not allow prisoners to allow prisoners to have expensive medical tests or evaluations, and often times medication. Private providers are still obligated to meet the 8th amendment standards on incarceration for prisoners and can be sued as a quasi-government entity for failure to provide humane and safe conditions of confinement.

My opinion as to why we are over-incarcerated rests in the history of mandatory minimum sentencing, three-strikes laws, incarcerating for non-violent crimes at very high rates, criminalizing addiction, and the proliferation of prosecutors who are allowed to have too much control over sentencing.

The solution?

Get rid of private prisons and jails. The incentive systems are flawed in that there's no incentive to reduce prison population. It's as cheap to incarcerate one as it is a million.

Repeal all mandatory sentencing measures as the Feds did. Repeal all three-strikes laws. Use alternative processes for drug crimes such as drug court and treatment programs. Do no prosecute mentally ill folks, try to achieve hospitalization and medical care instead of jail. Decriminalize or reduce criminality of low-level property crimes. And incentivize rehabilitation instead of punishment. Introduce programs such as education and jobs training into prisons, because 90% of all folks who are incarcerated are going to be released.

And finally, I would recommend removing the stigma for housing, jobs, and voting for those who have been convicted of felony crimes. The inability to get a job or housing after release, removes hope from those who have been incarcerated and takes away their incentive to become a functioning member of society.

I have been stopped randomly by police in small towns and told to watch myself. I had an officer draw a weapon in a deposition. I've been frisk searched for no particular reason (more than once). There is not a name I have not been called. I've had to walk into rooms where departments posted armed officers outside while we were doing depositions.

These are not acts of retribution, but are intimidation and bullying tactics meant to scare and discourage anyone who challenges the police.

This conduct scares a lot of lawyers. It's why many lawyers don't practice this kind of law. For me, it fires me up. Fuck 'em.

You do this kind of work, don't you?

The top responses by a cop to your question: "He engaged in furtive movement", "He wouldn't show me his hands", "He lunged at me in a threatening manner", "He wouldn't obey commands", and yes "He reached for his waistband / pockets"

These cases are hard to prosecute because it's typically been the cops word against everyone else. Until this point in time juries gave a lot of deference to officers. They were our "heroes". In fact, The Culture Code, for cops was hero. But, with the advent of video that is changed. These last two weeks of real-time video of cops in action, I predict, will change juries view of that so-called hero.

What I do, I use forensic science to reconstruct shooting scenes so I can point out any and all inconsistencies with police testimony. I litigated a prison shooting case two years ago. A cop in a tower said that he could see my client stomping the head of the victim. We did a complete reconstruction on the prison yard and determined through science that the officer couldn't see anything. And then I showed the shooter went on comp-leave the next day, never returned to work, went on administrative leave and bought a winery with his comp settlement. So you have to create a villain, and he has to be bad. You should use science to disprove every lie or misstatement that cop makes, even the small ones.

If you can't use science, it's a much harder case. Unless there's a video. But there are always ways to attack the credibility of the officer. Including his past misconduct reports, eye witnesses, do the injuries match up with what the officer says, did his camera get conveniently turned off, was the person injured before he met the cop. The bottom line is if you only have the word of the cop against a private citizen, it used to be impossible to get past that. But the world has changed and you just keep fighting.

Really good question. I would honestly tear it all down and start over.

It remains broken because there's big money in law enforcement including providing equipment to each officer. For example, Taser, now Axon, worked for years to get Tasers on every officer and expensive training for each officer to be redone every two years. Now Axon is selling the uniform based video system they want all police departments to buy, and the expensive cloud-based video storage capabilities.

Each officer is required to carry a sidearm and some departments only allow them to carry one particular brand. Most departments have AR-15s for sniper shooting and the officers must be certified and trained on that. All of that riot gear you see cops wearing? Probably equals thousands of dollars per officer. Each one of these devices requires training, sometimes they go to Las Vegas and other venues on government dollars.

I'm not criticizing well trained officers or even a lot of the equipment that they have. But departments don't need all of the toys. And they're choosing training that emphasizes shoot-to-kill or "shoot until the threat stops". This mentality has produced a fear based system in politicians. Well armed cops are a sales tool for politicians: "If we don't arm our cops, we're gonna have thugs overtaking our city.", "Look at all pretty uniforms and shiny weapons that we're going to use to protect you.", and that's the lie. Instead of addressing problems like poverty, addiction, and mental health, we're throwing people in jail or killing them.

In my 30-some years, including some representing cops, I have found that cops are uniformly racist. I don't know if that's the egg or the chicken. They primarily arrest people of color, and so it reinforces a belief that color causes crime. And that's bullshit. Most cops do not have college education, have rarely traveled outside of where they work, most are white, and there is a fundamental group think in police departments. You do not snitch on a fellow cop. If you do, you become ostracized, and cops retaliate better than any other group on the planet.

Succinctly, the monetary incentive, racism, and group think contribute. But also, as social and financial disparity grow, so do our social problems, and we're asking police officers to be cops, social workers, mental health workers, and fix everything. We need to well fund addiction treatment, mental health housing, pay to get our kids educated in schools, and really look at the root of the problem. The wealthy really don't want to pay for the poor.

Interesting you should ask. I just wrote a protester manual dealing with this issue.

Number 1: Don't interfere with the officer in any way. If he is making a legitimate arrest you could be charged with interfering with a police officer. And in fact, you will be if you try to interject yourself.

Number 2: If you fail the attitude test, you're probably going to get arrested. It will be bullshit and a night in jail sucks regardless of your innocence.

Number 3: Even if it is an unlawful arrest in most states you only have the right to resist if you are protecting yourself or your life. Even if you don't resist they may use excessive force and unfortunately you may get hurt. Which is why it's important that all police encounters be video tapes. You more or less should not or cannot do anything in the moment. Your only real option is to seek recourse after the fact.

Number 4: Let the officers know that you're there watching and video taping. I think that when officers know that they're being video taped they will address their behavior. But as we've seen the last two weeks, hundreds of police encounters are being video taped in every major city and that caution that police normally display is gone. They seem to have given up and just said "fuck it". This is unusual. This is really the first time that in America that mass protests have been documented in real time and posted for the world to see. I get the sense that the longer the protests have gone on, the angrier and more entrenched in their defensive positions the police have gotten. Hence you see the calls for defunding the police.

Number 5: Make sure people know where you are in case you get arrested. The police will take your cell phone from you and you may not ever get it back. So password protect it. Please password protect it. They cannot get into your phone without a warrant, a password insures this.

Number 6: If you are arrested you'll be handcuffed, all your property will be taken from you, and you will be put in custody for a period of time. Don't mouth off to the police, don't make it worse. DON'T TALK TO THE POLICE. Exercise your right to be quiet. Try to let someone know you've been arrested in whatever way you can. If you are hurt ask someone to take pictures of your injuries right away and try to make it to the hospital as soon as possible. The hospital will (a) make sure you're ok, and (b) provide additional official documentation of your injuries.

Number 6: If the police are shooting "less lethal" weapons, stay out of the way. I represented a gentleman who had his testicle shot off by a rubber bullet (in his words "I'm your uniballer case"). This was not a great experience, even though it was less than lethal. Less lethal can still kill. Police are taught not to shoot in the chest or head for that reason, but they miss.

It's no longer one victim, one city, one cop. It's now the entire country, thousands of victims, and thousands of cops. Which indicates to me a systemic problem with law enforcement methods today.