When Crooked Cops Get Caught

With the ever expanding digital age, one of the greatest improvements has been in the area of the camera. Cameras have gone from expensive and bulky film cameras to digital cameras and video cameras and now they are cheaper and smaller than ever. Nearly everyone can afford to have a camera, and should.

Many have taken to using the cameras in their phones to record events happening around them, and in many cases the police themselves have been caught doing wrong. Police don't want to be videotaped, I am of the opinion that if an officer is not doing anything wrong, he or she will not have any objection to citizen photography. Police are short handed and underpaid and that is just one reason why citizen photography should be encouraged by the police , even the photographing of the police themselves.

Not every video on You Tube of police brutality is true brutality, but many are, and should be there and elsewhere. But what happens when they get caught. Especially the really bad ones. No it's not legal to park in the fire lane to go grocery shopping, but that's not brutality and frankly in some cases, buying groceries while in a squad car on a lunch break or on the way to work or on the way home is nothing wrong at all.

However, when they caught doing really wrong things, intentional murder of innocent people, lying to cover up a crime, getting drunk or Driving While Intoxicated or other serious crimes, the officers should receive at least as stiff a sentence as others would for the same offense.

It seems there are many situations where crooked officers either get off the hook completely or get very light to moderate sentences.

A while back in Texas the Williamson County Sheriff was caught drunk, he wasn't driving, but he did lose his job. At first he wasn't even arrested. Williamson County had and still has a reputation for "being tough on crime". That's true if you are an ordinary citizen, even to the point of arresting and convicting innocent people, but when it's one of their own, they get off easy. It shouldn't be that way, in fact those in authority need harsher punishment than ordinary citizens. Losing a job for committing a crime is a slap on the wrists. When cops are truly crooked, they need more than a little jail time, they need the same as others would get.