[Peace-discuss] Another side

[Brian Dolinar]

Police misconduct justifies review board Tuesday July 17, 2007

The correct response to the views of the July 16 letter supporting "law
enforcement personnel" by John Norwood is that law enforcement personnel can
engage and have engaged in criminal or wrongful acts when apprehending or
pursuing suspects. That is why their acts need to be monitored by civilian
authorities such as civilian police review boards.

Norwood writes, "I couldn't care less about how criminals are treated." This
brings to mind the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, not to mention
brutal and criminal acts occasionally committed at home by police
authorities. Evidently, Norwood believes all who are apprehended by
authorities are guilty of crimes. It is either inconceivable to him, or else
from a totalitarian mindset, that those apprehended ought to be presumed
innocent until proven otherwise in a fair court of law. But perhaps even
worse, he believes that there should be no standards of correct police
behavior in treating those under their jurisdiction.

With reference to whether a police review board might be allowed to have as
members either felons or former police officials, I would suggest that both
might have valuable insights, or prejudices, to offer in evaluating a case
brought to their attention. However, there is no real equivalence here: The
police point of view already would be amply present in cases brought before
the board, as police are naturally involved in such cases, whereas the
perspective of someone, even a former felon, who has been subject to police
action adds a useful dimension not already present. I would hope that the
Urbana City Council will consider these issues carefully.

MORTON K. BRUSSEL

Urbana
------------------------------
Find this article at:
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/opinions/letters/2007/07/17/police_misconduct_justifies_review_board
Comments

-- 
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/private/peace-discuss/attachments/20070717/0300caec/attachment.htm