Lawprof Dan Solove has posted a series of three videos at Concurring Opinions of a lecture given by Newport Beach Police Officer (and 3L student) George Bruch to a law school class. I was mesmerized by the lecture, both for the underlying truth of it and for what it says about the nature of law enforcement.
Bruch provides enormous insight, much of it in ways that he is incapable of appreciating, about how police obtain statements and confessions from defendants. The moral of his lecture is that defendants should keep their mouths shut. But as he points out numerous times, they have little chance when manipulated by cops, “professionals” in obtaining statements.
Over and over, Bruch emphasizes that “defendants are stupid,” meaning that they are so easily manipulated into talking to the cops, even though there is nothing they could do that is more damning to their cause. That’s a cop talking. What he is really saying is that defendants are people, and people are flawed. That they fail to recognize that silence is in their best interest is not a reflection of their stupidity, but a reflection of their frailty, a trait which the cops take advantage of and capitalize on.
But there is one great message throughout this lecture that Police Officer cum law student Bruch fails to understand: He speaks of his desire not to prosecute an innocent person, and is proud of the fact that when he believes a person being interviewed (he never says interrogated because, as he explains, that makes it sound bad), he will not manipulate them into making a confession but cut them loose.
In other words, Bruch, the cop, decides on his own who is guilty and who is not, and if he decides that the person is guilty, then he will use every weapon at his disposal to extract a confession, overpowering their will and reason, to make a slam dunk case. Bruch shows neither doubt nor remorse, nor even the slightest recognition, that he might possibly be wrong in his assessment.
It takes a while to get through the three videos, but this is worth the time and certainly instructive:
Does this restore your faith in justice?
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Terrific video; I saw it some weeks ago, and have been recommending it to my carry permit students ever since.
Mr. Greenfield,
In the beginning of the video Bruch said that everybody does something they can get in trouble for and that when he was a uniformed officer he could follow a car for as long as he needed and eventually the driver will do something he can lawfully get pulled over for. “Don’t think you’re so innocent,” Bruch then said to the audience.
Bruch’s assertions are ok as long as Bruch includes himself in that statement.
In my view arrogance is more dangerous than the methods Bruch mentioned.
The police officer’s job is to bring a suspect and evidence to court. Police do need to interview people to find out what happened. What would you suggest the police do in the matter of interviews/interrogations?
Caveat: I’m a retired cop. Please don’t use big words or go into great depth.
Bottom line, Karl, is to avoid praying upon human frailty to obtain a statement/confession that is not knowing, intelligent and voluntary. The purpose is to avoid getting an innocent person to say something that will serve to convict him, even when the cop believes the person to be guilty and therefore has no qualms about playing the person. Get real statements and confessions, not manipulated ones.
This means that they will lose many statements/confessions that they could otherwise obtain, and prosecutors will be forced to try cases based on hard evidence rather than easy but potentially false evidence. On the other hand, this means that innocent people won’t get convicted as easily through manipulated statements and confessions. It’s a good trade-off.
I don’t disagree with you. Tempered zeal is important for ensuring justice. If someone is thought guilty and a confession is not freely obtained, by all means back off the interrogation and obtain lawful evidence elsewhere.
Thanks for correcting my previous double submit error.
Probably the most significant concern is that the cop, believing the perp to be guilty, similarly believes that obtaining the statement/confession by any means possible is wholly justified. After, bad guy so no harm, no foul.
The problem this creates is that the cop sets himself up as judge and jury. My experience with police officers is that they act with an unwarranted degree of certainty, and sometimes with just a bit of self-interest, in setting perps up for the fall. I would expect LEOs to disagree with me completely, but that’s because I, as an attorney, am fillable. They, as police, are not. And that is the problem.
I never have believed that obtaining a statement or confession by any means necessary is acceptable. I also took significant heat over the years for expressing my contrary policing views.
By “fallible” do you mean open to other opinions? If so, then I agree with you on that as well. Many cops are highly opinionated or more accurately, overflowing with their own opinions and generally not open to entertaining a differing point of view. I can’t say most cops though because I have not met most cops. I feel more comfortable saying many based on the hundreds that I have worked and trained with over the years and extrapolating from that experience.
That’s exactly what I mean by “fallible”, and you’ve expressed it better than I did.
Many cops are highly opinionated or more accurately, overflowing with their own opinions and generally not open to entertaining a differing point of view.
While my generalization is anecdotal, it has been a fairly consistent trait amonst police officers. In one sense, they must have a very strong sense of their own correctness to function. Indecision on the street could expose them to harm and failure. On the other hand, the rigid belief in their own accuracy leads them to justify actions that might otherwise be viewed as improper. It’s a difficult line to toe, but that’s a cops job.
I agree. It is a difficult line to toe. I also fully embrace the belief that society, along with the police themselves, should demand that police toe that line but that is not happening.
Yup. Just to pick one recent example here in Minneapolis, the heroes of the MPD SWAT team, who kicked in the door of the wrong house and shot the hell out of it (they were serving a warrant on a Rolling 60’s Crip, and didn’t bother to notice that the house was owned and occupied by the Khang family, who are Hmong — I don’t mention that to cast racial aspersions on anybody, but to suggest that keen-eyed law enforcers shouldn’t have a lot of trouble distinguishing between twentyish black thugs and little Asian children, even without pictures) were not only not disciplined, but got medals of valor.
No, I’m not making this up.
I see that my buddy Windy just posted about that particular incident.
Well, those were probably some mean looking Asian children, so of course they got medals of valor. I bet their mothers were so proud of them too.
Yeah, he’s not the only one; I’ve been blogging it since the day after.
The morning the story broke, I was sitting never-mind-quite where with two officers, with, collectively, somewhere around six decades of cop work between them.
“MPD shot up a house last night,” one said.
“I heard about it. Probably the wrong house, again.”
As they ran around shooting up the place, a couple of them tripped over a couple of cringing kids; that’s now immortalized as them having “protected the children with their bodies.” What’s not immortalized is that, at that point, the only folks shooting the hell out of the place were the highly-trained professional law enforcers in their executioners hoods tactical balaclavas.
Where any of the residents shot or injured in anyway? Did they file any type of lawsuit?
Shot, nope; all of the twenty-two round sprayed throughout the house (at least two going out the windows; I went over there the next day to see if I could find where they went, and wasn’t able to) didn’t hit anybody. Physical injuries were minor; the kids still have nightmares, understandably.
No lawsuit. Yet. They’ve gotten Tom Heffelfinger — former US Attorney; major heavy hitter — representing them, and he’s been trying to work out a settlement. Which is, of course, the right thing to do — if the client can win without going to court, a good attorney goes with the needs of the client, regardless of how the punitives of a good decision might benefit society.
But this is, after all, the MPD; it’s safe to predict that he will have to file suit, that the city will stall it as long as possible, and then settle at least figuratively and possibly literally on the courthouse steps.
It’s pretty ugly, all in all. The MPD pravda went from the informant having given lots of good information previously, resulting in many previous arrests, to it being a disgruntled girlfriend of a Crip who had given three, no two addresses, and made this one up, all pretty quickly.
They are, I think, still claiming that the SWAT doorkickers identified themselves immediately, although the 911 tape makes it clear that they, well, didn’t. “Who are you going to believe? A decorated police officer or your lying ears?”
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