re: #459 Shropshire Slasher

Expect the charges to be escalated.

But here’s the thing - this is the reverse of what typically happens and is how charges usually flow when a cop murders or engages in excessive force against a person in custody. They usually aren’t even charged, or if they are, it’s at the lowest range of the charging guidelines.

Recall that the cop who murdered Mr. Floyd was charged with the lowest level of homicide in MN, even though it appears premeditated.

The NYPD union is notorious for going after prosecutors and politicians who dare attempt to hold them accountable. Heck, the union has led riots in the past, and they’ve gotten away with doing damage that anyone else would have been prosecuted and imprisoned for.

It again goes to the fact that law enforcement is held to an entirely different standard than everyone else that allows them to get away with murder - literally and figuratively. That we have to have this argument every time a black person is murdered by a cop shows that this institutional racism and acceptance of police violence has to change.

Cops should be held to a higher standard - not a lower one.

Cops should be held accountable when they kill someone in the line of duty where their life was not threatened.

Cops should be fired for engaging in excessive force and prevented from being hired by police departments elsewhere (national registry of records on police brutality/excessive force). Departments must hold bad cops accountable and drum them out.

It’s wishful thinking of course, because there’s a lot of politicians who wont stand up to police departments or unions because they’d be seen as weak on crime (even though they’re standing up against crimes by cops against the rest of us). But that’s how right wingers and statists will frame things.