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No longer uncommon for police to be charged for misconduct, experts say
By Austin Mirmina
New Haven Police / Associated Press
NEW HAVEN — The availability of high-quality video evidence — borne from ever-developing advances in camera technology — has made it less uncommon for police officers to be charged for misconduct, experts say.
These advances are largely responsible for the perceived uptick in the number of police officers being charged for misconduct in recent years, according to law and criminal justice experts at three local universities.
Other social and political factors have played a role, such as the public outcry that erupts after a particularly graphic video involving police misconduct is released, putting pressure on prosecutors, many of whom are elected officials, to bring justice, experts said.
But the access to clear-cut evidence — produced either from a body-worn police camera or video captured on a bystander’s cellphone — has emboldened prosecutors who for years have been forced to rely on witness testimony as their basis for pursuing charges, according to the experts. The access to better technology, they said, has triggered a seismic shift in how members of law enforcement are being held accountable for alleged misconduct.
When it comes to prosecutors charging police officers for misconduct, “I am certain that it is more common today than it was perhaps as little as 10 or more years ago,” Quinnipiac law professor William Dunlap said. “I think the primary reason for it is technology. It was almost always the word of a police officer against a defendant, and in many (homicide) cases the victim was dead.
“Now a lot of these incidents take place on camera,” Dunlap added.
In the case of Richard “Randy” Cox, recently released body camera and surveillance video shows him being driven to a New Haven police station June 19 for processing on a weapons charge when the driver braked hard at an intersection to avoid a collision, causing Cox to fly headfirst into a metal partition in the van, according to multiple arrest warrants.
Once Cox had arrived at the facility, some of the officers mocked him and accused him of faking his injuries, according to dialogue captured by the camera footage.
Officers dragged Cox by his feet from the van and placed him in a holding cell prior to his eventual transfer to a hospital, the warrant stated. Cox, who had been handcuffed and unbuckled in the back of the police transport van, was later found to have a fractured neck and was paralyzed, according to the warrant.
The encounter resulted in charges against five New Haven officers: Officer Oscar Diaz, Sgt. Betsy Segui, Officer Ronald Pressley, Officer Jocelyn Lavandier and Officer Luis Rivera.
The charges, announced Monday, include reckless endangerment and cruelty to persons, both misdemeanors.
All three experts said they weren’t surprised by the charges brought against the five officers considering the nature of the videos that were released and the severity of Cox’s injuries.
“When police take somebody into custody, they’re not supposed to be paralyzed,” said Dan Maxwell, a retired Madison police officer and a lecturer from the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science at the University of New Haven. “Anybody who got in our (police) car, whether it was in the front seat or the back seat, had to be seatbelted in.”
In similar cases of police misconduct, Dunlap said, once video of a confrontation is made public and goes viral, “it’s virtually impossible for prosecutors to ignore it.”
“In the past, it was very easy to say we just don’t have the evidence,” Dunlap said. “Twenty or thirty years ago, it’s quite likely there would have been no prosecution here.”
While there is no authoritative data showing how many police officers are prosecuted annually, anecdotal evidence suggests that prosecutors have become more willing to charge them for misconduct, buoyed by sometimes indisputable video evidence.
“Everybody has a camera now, so more and more police conduct, good and bad, is being captured,” Maxwell said. “It’s hard to get around a video tape of somebody doing something.”
Like any eye witness account, video technology comes with its own biases and limitations and should be utilized responsibly, said Jorge Camacho, the policing, law, and policy director of The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School. But for prosecutors trying to build a case against a defendant, “they are very happy to have that evidence available.”
In addition to prosecutors, the state lawmaker took action to address alleged police misconduct. The Police Accountability Bill, passed last year, started requiring all local police departments to use body camera and dash camera technology, both of which were used to prosecute officers in the Randy Cox incident.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to presume that the availability of all of that (video) evidence was at least spurred or facilitated by the investments made by New Haven after the passage of the Police Accountability Bill,” Camacho said.
Along with the bill, the state created the position of the Inspector General, who is responsible for investigating certain types of police misconduct, prosecuting any officers whose use of force is found to be unjustifiable. Attorney Robert J. Devlin Jr. was appointed to the position last year.
The Inspector General’s independent and objective investigations of police misconduct are beneficial because they are independent from investigations by prosecutors who work closely with the police department on a day-to-day basis, experts said.
Devlin’s work has resulted in the prosecution of at least one police officer: Connecticut State Trooper Brian D. North, who was charged with manslaughter following the fatal shooting of Mubarak Soulemane in West Haven in January 2020, according to the state’s website.
Experts highlighted different moments in the history of the United States that signaled a shift in how aggressively police officers were prosecuted.
Maxwell referenced the 1992 Rodney King case as being the moment that "ushered us into the video age" and made people more aware of police brutality. In that case, bystander video captured several officers beating King with their batons. However, none of the involved officers were convicted.
“Everybody knew there was such a thing as police brutality, and it was like a unicorn, ‘Yeah I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen one,” Maxwell said. “And now with the Rodney King case, everybody saw it.”
Both Dunlap and Camacho said they thought the most significant shifts have occurred more recently, starting with the unrest in Ferguson, Mo. after the death of Michael Brown, to the conviction of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd. The public demand for accountability sparked by Floyd’s murder reached a “fever pitch” in a way that hadn’t been seen in the aftermath of other high-profile examples of police misconduct, Camacho said.
“That gives prosecutors perhaps a little bit more confidence in their ability to build a case and present a case in a way that a jury will find favorable,” he said.
While the justification for prosecuting the officers in the Randy Cox case was “wholly appropriate” based on the evidence, Camacho added, getting a conviction will be a much more difficult task for prosecutors, who will be required to prove the alleged misconduct was intentional.
“It’s not going to be a clearcut case, even though the video evidence is strong and compelling,” Camacho said. austin.mirmina@he