Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Many police officials and experts express optimism that the prevalence of cameras will reduce police lying. As officers begin to accept that digital evidence of an encounter will emerge, lying will be perceived as too risky -- or so the thinking goes.

[...]

"Yet interviews with officers suggest the prevalence of cameras alone won't end police lying. That's because even with cameras present, some officers still figure -- with good reason -- that a lie is unlikely to be exposed. Because plea deals are a typical outcome, it's rare for a case to develop to the point where the defendant can question an officer's version of events at a hearing.

"'There's no fear of being caught,' said one Brooklyn officer who has been on the force for roughly a decade. 'You're not going to go to trial and nobody is going to be cross-examined.'

"The percentage of cases that progress to the point where an officer is cross-examined is tiny. In 2016, for instance, there were slightly more than 185 guilty pleas, dismissals or other non-trial outcomes for each criminal case in New York City that went to trial and reached a verdict. There were 1,460 trial verdicts in criminal cases that year, while 270,304 criminal cases were resolved without a trial.

"To be sure, officers are sometimes called to testify before trial at so-called suppression hearings in which the legality of police conduct is evaluated. But those are rare. In Manhattan, about 2.4 percent of felony criminal cases have a suppression hearing, according to data from the Manhattan district attorney's office. The rate for non-felony cases is slightly more than one-tenth of 1 percent."

-- Joseph Goldstein, "'Testilying' by Police: A Stubborn Problem", 2018-03-18, The New York Times [thanks to twistedchick for linking to this]