Current Events > Judge in LA Drop charges on LAPD even with video evidence.

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Criminal charges were dismissed Tuesday against three Los Angeles police officers accused of falsely documenting people as gang members.
Following more than two weeks of testimony at a preliminary hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor ruled that prosecutors did not have enough evidence to continue with the case against officers Rene Braga, Julio Garcia and Raul Uribe, according to the officers attorney and a transcript of Pastors remarks.
In reaching his decision, Pastor noted that the officers had been accused of misrepresenting evidence in a single case, not a pattern of offenses, as are three other LAPD officers who have been charged in another case. Pastor said he did not believe the officers had the specific intent to make false statements or a fraudulent or deceitful purpose when they noted in police records that people they encountered during a traffic stop had gang affiliations.
The charges were part of a broader scandal in which the six LAPD officers were accused of falsifying field interview cards that officers use to record and track information about suspects and others they encounter while on patrol. The allegations roiled the LAPD and illustrated how, despite decades of reform efforts, distrust toward the department in Black and Latino communities remains high.
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Braga, Garcia and Uribe were each accused in October 2020 of writing on a field card that the person they had stopped admitted to being a gang member, even though body-worn camera video showed the defendants either never asked the individuals about their gang membership, or the individuals denied gang membership if they were asked, prosecutors alleged at the time....

Pastor instead sided with the officers defense attorney, who argued at the hearing that the LAPD at the time had no clear definition of what it means for someone to have self-admitted their membership in a gang.
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https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-08/judge-tosses-case-against-three-of-six-lapd-officers-charged-in-gang-labeling-scandal

There is no training that can fix this shit.

Cops being lying sacks of shit and judges protecting them? I am shocked. SHOCKED I SAY.

The system is broken

Weird that you're putting this on the judge and not the cops. 3 of the co-defendants were bound over. The 3 that had charges dismissed were obviously not seen to be as culpable.

lilORANG posted...

Weird that you're putting this on the judge and not the cops. 3 of the co-defendants were bound over. The 3 that had charges dismissed were obviously not seen to be as culpable.

They are on video lying . The excuse was that the LAPD have not made it clear what and admission to a gang is. So judges like this just want to see more black people dead or in jail.

I saw this one, no one from a gang will outright literally say they are in a gang. They flaunted their gang tattoo and hand gestured it/yelled out gang slang code