When cops are the criminals

-The newsgroup rec.gambling.poker has a thread on those nut-case Phillie cops who pulled some guys out of a car and beat them up (and got filmed doing it).

One of the things I said in that thread is

Cops lie on a regular basis. It's institutionalized.

Do you know what an inventory search is? It's a pretense that allows the
search of a car without a warrent and without any particular reason. When
a cop claims he did an inventory search he's almost always lying. Ask a
cop, any cop, if he's actually ever written down an inventory as part of
an inventory search. They don't. Not ever. It's pretense. It's a lie.

Cops know it's a lie, prosecutors know, defense attorneys know, judges
know. But they all ignore it and accept the lie. It's built into the
system and has been approved by the Supreme Court. But it's a lie, it's
not the truth.

Our system of justice is built on that kind of nonsense. Cops lie. It's
what they do. It's part of their job. If any of them was ever truthful
about an inventory search he'd lose his job.

The Agitator gives us an example from Atlanta that results in a lot more than just somebody getting their car trashed -- cops lie and somebody dies as a result.

We don't seem to expect much from our cops. And, as a result we don't get much. It's really time to raise our expectations. It's time that we demand that our enforcers of the law actually follow the law. We're either a nation of laws are we aren't.