“The truth you know has all been a lie.” A.D. Aliwat

The 2014 police report in the police murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald stated that the shooting was justified because he approached police with a knife and refused to drop it.  Thirteen months later when the Chicago Police Department was forced to release the video footage, the world learned that the police report was pure fiction: Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times as he walked away from police.  The Officer was later convicted of Second-Degree Murder.

The 2014 police report in the death of Eric Garner stated that Mr. Garner had gone into cardiac arrest.  The report made no mention of the fact that Officer Daniel Panteleo used an extended chokehold on Garner. But video captured Garner's persistent pleas that he couldn't breathe until he eventually fell silent. Police literally choked the life choked out of him.

In 2015, South Carolina police officer Michael Slager reported that he shot Walter Scott because Scott grabbed for Slager's stun gun.  A bystander's video showed that Officer Slager chased Scott down killed him as he attempted to run away.

The initial police report in the death of George Floyd simply noted that Floyd had died because of “medical distress.” The whole world knows now that the police report conveniently left out that  Floyd had been pinned to the ground by way of Officer Derek Chauvin's knee on his neck as he repeatedly said that he couldn't breathe.  Freshly convicted of Murder, Chauvin now awaits sentencing.  

A few months ago, April 2021, Knoxville Tennessee Police Officer Jonathon Clabough shot and killed 17-year-old Anthony Thompson, Jr. at a high school. Claybough reported that the shooting was justified because Thompson had shot and injured a fellow officer and he returned fire.  I think by now you already know what happened, video footage revealed that it was actually Officer Clabough who shot his fellow officer before killing Thompson.

Because of the proliferation of smart phones capable of recording the police, some segments of our country (the vanilla side), are finally coming to terms with what other segments of our country (the chocolate side), has known for a very long time—that police officers often lie in court, on their police reports, during investigations and everywhere in between.  For far too long police in America have been taken at their word, they have enjoyed a default position of being honest and truthful. Until now.

Now, after so many instances of police reports being exposed as fiction—flat out lies, over 80% of police departments with over 500 officers use body cameras.  Now increasingly, body cam footage is being released much quicker.  I think this shows that it is becoming widely accepted, at least when video footage is available, that our best chance to know the truth is contained in the footage.  This begs the question, what are we to do when no video footage exists?  I believe that it leaves us where we've always been, false convictions, police getting away with maiming and murdering citizens.  Or as Moms Mabley said, “if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.”  Unless…we as a country decide to do something different with our newfound revelation (to some, the vanilla side) about these police fictions which too often lead to felonies and fatal affairs (for some, mostly the chocolate side).  I would propose that as part of police reform, police officers that are caught falsifying police reports, planting evidence, lying in court or any other deceptive actions, be immediately terminated, criminally charged, lose their  retirement and be permanently barred from serving as a law enforcement officer again.  Ever. Point Blank.  And PERIODT!! Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Or we can do nothing new to deal with an old problem.  If we do nothing, as the good book instructs us, “what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Corey L. Scott, 1099 N. Meridian Street, Suite 150, Indianapolis, IN 46204 (317) 634-0101, www.coreyscottlaw.com;    @coreyscottlaw.com