Shocking, I know.
Most CopBlock readers probably remember the viral video of a New York City policeman who viciously assaulted a Critical Mass bicyclist in Times Square in July, 2008. The punk former policeman, Patrick Pogan, was convicted of lying about the incident (how many acts are really more criminal than a policeman abusing his power and then lying so as to cover it up?) and acquitted (yeah, I know) of assault and filing a false arrest report.
If a tourist had not happened to be filming that precise spot at that precise moment there would not have been even the felony conviction. The bicyclist, Christopher Long, would probably still be in jail right now.
The prosecution asked for prison time and probation.
The defense tried to get only community service for the violent former policeman.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley did the defense one better. Zero prison time. Zero jail time. Zero probation. Zero community service.
Zero justice.
From the NY Daily News article:
‘Long, 31, who admitted on the stand he smokes marijuana daily, could not be reached,’
How is that relevant to anything whatsoever?
Yeah and the former cop’s father was a cop who seemed to think it was a perfectly reasonable course of action. What we have in this country is a culture of “I’m a cop and I don’t have to give a fuck.”
If I were to do to a cop what he did to that cyclist I would be dead before even reaching a holding cell.
What Pogan did was despicable. No question.
We can also all probably agree that sending Pogan to jail would not have provided justice either if innocent people are being forced to pay for his incarceration.
I would love to simply have Pogan indebted to Long for the next 20 years and to pay restitution and to pull his weeds, and such, but unfortunately that’s not the way the system works.
The tax payers, by and large, buy into the current system and are already paying a (not large enough, imho) settlement to Mr. Long. Maybe it’s my age and the fact that I am become more crotchety by the day but I don’t have the sympathy for the tax payers that I once did.
I’d love to hear some suggestions though for enforcing free market justice on wrongdoers in our current society.
I think it would be awesome if people distributed Pogan’s picture with a description of what happened to the cyclist to restaurants and other establishments that are open to the public, so as to ostracise this cretin. There is a famous case of a boycott against cops in Ireland, where the Royal Irish Constabulary were boycotted by Irish republicans. In the end, the British gov’t had to send supplies to the constabulary forces from Britain. Shipping those supplies across the Irish Sea got pretty damn expensive after a while.
I’d love to see this happen everywhere our “protectors” are acting as oppressors.
This is the problem with our country. These judges are quick to slam the gavel on everyday citizens. However, when it is a public servant it seems to be the rule rather than the exception that a judge will let them go on their merry way. The judicial activism has to stop. From SCOTUS to the local level. I see it all the time, in the civil courts here in New Jersey..