• My issue has been and indeed continues to be the lack of police accountability. The unwillingness of police officials to take action against those officers who brutalize innocent victims and murder unarmed individuals. That unwillingness can be seen when police are neither “fired nor suspended” after murdering or brutalizing an innocent victim. Nothing is done pending an investigation. While it’s true that guilt cannot be determined unless an investigation occurs – there is NOTHING preventing police officials from taking action against an officer “before” the conclusion of an investigation – where established policy, rules and procedures have been violated! This is the part that seems to evade the attention many. Police who have violated POLICY resulting in death and police who have maimed and brutalized in excess of what could legitimately be deemed necessary in no case, should be allowed to retain employment. For not only did they violate established policy but “murdered and maimed” in the process. Yet the authority possessed by department heads to “act” upon the violation is NEVER taken. What is done instead, is a reliance and a dependence upon the results of a “criminal investigation” seeking charges from the district attorney. Again, such investigations are needed and necessary for they determine the “criminal aspects” of the deed committed. But it should not and does not absolve police officials from “acting” upon those officers who violated department procedures, violated policies and rules and “killed a man” in the process. That alone is worthy of being “fired” and the criminal investigation has nothing to do with it. They may still be subject to criminal prosecution upon the conclusion of the investigation. Why are we allowing police officials to negate their own responsibility and shift the burden of finding wrong doing upon a prosecutor, when the violations of their own policy and procedures are “winked” at and go unpunished? And that being the case, will it matter if “better policy’s or training” is created when the violations of them all – go unpunished? We are going “round and round in circles” and I think it’s high time to get off the merry-go-round and demand they be held accountable. There is indeed an avoidance of holding police accountable even when legitimate authority and reason exists to do so! If we cannot and do not see it, if it yet evades our attention, we will be insisting and demanding things that get us no where as people are dying.

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