At one point during the interrogation, the investigators even threatened to have his pet Labrador Retriever, Margosha, euthanized as a stray, and brought the dog into the room so he could say goodbye. “OK? Your dog’s now gone, forget about it,” said an investigator.
Finally, after curling up with the dog on the floor, Perez broke down and confessed. He said he had stabbed his father multiple times with a pair of scissors during an altercation in which his father hit Perez over the head with a beer bottle.
Perez’s father wasn’t dead — or even missing. Thomas Sr. was at Los Angeles International Airport waiting for a flight to see his daughter in Northern California. But police didn’t immediately tell Perez.
The tax payer pays up almost $1M and these scumbags remain employed. How predictable.
Also, just in case anyone isn’t aware: rule number one if you’re in the US and police ever bring you in and try to interrogate you is to shut down and demand a lawyer. Legally, the interview has to stop immediately until you have one present. If the officers don’t comply, then you know they’re corrupt and there’s no reason to believe anything they say from that point onwards.
Unfortunately, there has been precedent for the argument that the right to remain silent is one that needs to be continuously and positively invoked.
So if they keep interrogating you and you choose to start talking, that can be interpreted as you waiving your right to remain silent.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/questioning-after-claiming-miranda.html
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-how-invoke-your-right-silence.html
Remaining silent is not enough, you have to articulate that you want to invoke your right to remain silent, unambiguously request a lawyer (no “I think I should have a lawyer for this”), and request a lawyer generally (no “I want a lawyer before I answer any questions about where I was”).
“I am invoking my right to remain silent and I want a lawyer” is basically all you should say.
The ACLU remains an excellent resource for being aware of your rights.
My father-in-law is a defense attorney for juveniles, he always said that the best thing to say is " I understand you guys are just doing your jobs, and I really would like to cooperate, but to do so I need a lawyer present".
Otherwise they can basically classify you as a combative witness, or claim that you are interfering with an ongoing investigation.
By saying that you really want to help, it puts the imperative of wasting time on their end. If you guys need the information that bad, you should be rushing to get some representation here as fast as possible.
Its kinda bullshit that to get proper treatment people need to know a bunch of little phrases to throw out like a secret password. Fuck cops for real
I watched this video a few years ago. You can tell its age, but I found it very enlighting. In it a lawyer explains why you should never talk to the police even if you’re innocent:
It’s fun to mock sovcit whackos, but this is the sort of thing that gives them the idea that there are magic words they can invoke that let them wallhack through the legal system. The judicial system has spent literally hundreds of years working hand-in-glove with police and prosecutors to make it as difficult as possible for the everyday citizen to exercise the legal rights that protect you from them, and only by knowing exactly how to navigate the legal labyrinth set up between you and those rights can you actually use them.
A lot of it’s not intentionally for that purpose, but a side effect of hundreds of years of arguing over wording and what exactly the law means in different situations.
The cases that caused the “disagreeable” (most polite phrases I can think of) changes to Miranda protections happened only in the past few decades.
It’s still preposterous that the system, which is constitutionally pretty obviously slanted against the government, is so eager to find loopholes in protections for people to the advantage of the government.
Also noteworthy for visitors to the U.S.: The police are allowed to lie to you.
The police are allowed to lie to you.
The pig is allowed to lie to you pretty much everywhere.
They are not allowed to lie in court, under oath… but they will anyway. To protect their illegal searches, their planted evidence, their bullying and excessive force, or just to save another cop they don’t even like! It’s called “the Blue Wall” and they will kill you or send you to prison to defend their right to be above the law…
It’s my turn to share it again! The most important video for any American to watch:
It should come from malpractice insurance police officers should be required to have.
Bad cops will weed themselves out of the system, when they can’t afford the premiums, if they continue having incident after incident where they are responsible for damages.
Good cops won’t have to worry about high premiums or negative sentiment from the public about bad cops. You’d probably see cops clamoring to wear body cams to back their stories up if they were actually held accountable for their transgressions.
I think it should come from the union, and directly from the pensions.
Why?
This is about changing culture. It’s not one bad cop in isolation; this is a system of bad cops in league.
If a 30 year officer is hiring having their ability to retire threatened by a rookie cops behavior, that sr. officer WILL not be accepting any bullshit from the rookie.
If you want to change the culture it has to come from within the institution and their needs to be a forcing function to do so.
So what you’re saying is a simple law proposal of “you cannot ask questions without a lawyer present. Any interview done without legal representation is illegal and inadmissible.” Would do wonders for civil rights?
They’ll just have an in-house “lawyer” present in the room. Boom, law complied with, abuse continues.
There wasn’t even a crime and they got a confession.
This should make every confession they’ve ever received inadmissible.
These cops will never testify in a case again without being asked about this.
they generally aren’t. Unless related information is proven, for example the location of the body.
From my understanding these types of cases are usually hit with a plea deal, which would somewhat nullify this factor of it, though it’s still fucked up.
But how can it nullify a plea deal that was met because of all the “proof” they had from a tortured confession? If I knew it was fake but could stop the torture sooner I’d immediately confess and plea for less time if I’m having to serve it anyways.
because a plea deal is literally defined as “admitting to the crime regardless of whether or not you did it, in exchange for lighter sentencing” which is often done in cases where the burden of proof is too difficult and can cause problems.
Still doesn’t make it a just case here, but that’s just how plea deals work. Regardless you could still sue the state to appeal, you have these options, and people have exercised them before, and they will continue to exercise them into the future.
They don’t publish the names of the bad officers in this story or any others because of fear of retribution. But it wasnt always this way. Police unions put pressure on media to remove the names because the officers felt threatened. Imagine being a bully and then demanding protection for it? That’s the police. They are cowards and should be exposed to the public as a matter of safety. It will keep the police polite.
Until the police union releases the names of the officers who did this, their community should treat the entire department like they were all collectively responsible, and act accordingly
How are these cops not under arrest by the FBI and why aren’t they on trial??
Because all cops are bastards. The system is working as intended.
There was a case here in Sweden where the Swedish police was tipped off on a potential paedophile by an American agency that had trawled through Yahoo email and found suspected CSAM. Swedish Police essentially swatted this man, assaulted him early in the morning, while he was in his bed sleeping, took him away without telling him what was going on; he thought he was being kidnapped. Eventually when it was made clear that the materials were private photos of him and his 30 year old boyfriend getting it on, they faced no repercussions.
The reasoning behind it? The police were masked so they couldn’t single out who was responsible for the assault. Of course they knew who was present, but since they didn’t know the actual perps it’d be unfair to investigate properly because that’d put them all under unfair suspicion, and it obviously wouldn’t be reasonable to punish all of the police present.
But it’s perfectly okay to beat the shit out of someone they think is a paedophile, and honestly it’s probably because he’s of middle-eastern descent.
I’ve tried and failed to find an article telling this story. Do you have a link?
It honestly wasn’t as covered as it ought have been. SVT has a couple of articles, as well as an outlet called Kontext Press.
- Article about the event on SVT
- Article on how the officers were never questioned
- Article on how video evidence (and the lack thereof in this case) is often critical when it comes to punishing misbehaving cops
There’s also three articles on Kontext. I hadn’t heard of Kontext before, and was thus rather suspicious of the whole thing; it all sounds too American to be true. SVT however is a very reputable source.
- Article about the event on Kontext
- Article on how cases like these often don’t lead to any sort of punishment
- Follow-up with a chief of police on the event, who tries very hard to say that the thing didn’t happen without outright stating that the victim is lying
It’s all in Swedish. I’ve tried and failed to locate sources in English before. This event wasn’t reported on nearly as much as I personally would’ve liked to see. My impression of Swedish police has always been a positive one, but this kind of thing is beyond unforgivable.
- Article about the event on SVT
- Article on how the officers were never questioned
- Article on how video evidence (and the lack thereof in this case) is often critical when it comes to punishing misbehaving cops
- Article about the event on Kontext
- Article on how cases like these often don’t lead to any sort of punishment
- Follow-up with a chief of police on the event, who tries very hard to say that the thing didn’t happen without outright stating that the victim is lying
Knock yourself out, sweaty.
When I see this, I don’t only see this man, I see every man, woman, and child who interacted with this police precinct.
How many current prisoners were put in prison by this type of psychological torture?
How many of those prisoners weren’t as lucky as this man to have undeniable evidence of innocence?
How many citizens going about their day pull off the road when they spot a police car in their rear view mirror due to terrifying encounters shared by neighbors?
Fascist morons. Morons seem particularly useful to fascists, they love being the boot and they are too stupid to look up and see an even larger boot ready to crush them when they step out of line.
