Yesterday you believed that police officers were basically honest, with a few deviants here and there. Yesterday, you didn’t feel threatened if a police officer was driving behind you, because you believed that since you don’t break the law (and or since you look like white and respectable type), that the police are not going to do anything bad to you.

Yesterday is now gone. You still can’t believe that this really happened to you. You really didn’t do anything wrong, but you’ve been beaten-up and falsely arrested, and to boot, you are now being accused of a crime by the District Attorney’s Office; really to beat you down to protect the police from liability.

That’s reality. Today is a new day in your life. You would not have believed what really happened to you if it had happened to another. That all being said, since the police beat you up, you either deserved it or you didn’t. So, how are the politicians going to handle your situation?

BECAUSE OF CIVIL AND POLITICAL LIABILITY CONCERNS, THE POLICE CIRCLE THE WAGONS AND DENY THEIR WRONGS, NO MATTER HOW BAD THEY ARE.

Just imagine a Chief of Police or a County Sheriff announcing at a Press Conference, that his agency took the word of independent civilian witnesses over that of a group of police officers and is firing the officer or deputy for either using unreasonable force upon or falsely arresting a civilian. What would the politicians say? We know that that will never happen.

Just imagine the District Attorney of any County in California, who believes that an officer-involved death (i.e. shooting, hobbling / asphyxiation, beating to death, taser deaths) was a solid constitutional violation of the decedent’s Constitutional rights. What is he/she going to do? Are they going to criminally prosecute the police officer? If so, for what (i.e. excessive force, cruelty to prisoner, false arrest, manslaughter, murder). Moreover, even when the District Attorneys find that the officer was at fault but that they are not going to prosecute them because they believe that they will not be able to obtain a criminal conviction against the police, they don’t make findings against the police, so the injured civilian victim may not use that to obtain monetary redress.

California District Attorney’s almost always find police shootings to be justified; always. San Bernardino County is so creepy that the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office does their officer-involved-shooting investigations by reading the police reports. That is not a joke.

The District Attorneys of California know that save some incredibly horrible actual severe torturing of a civilian, they are not going to win a criminal case against the police. They don’t have their heart in it. They makes political enemies and cause others not to vote for them. They are humiliated when they lose.

All that being said, the District Attorneys of California do not prosecute the police for a duty related activity. They will prosecute them for DUI, or stealing a candy bar, or grabbing a lady’s rear end, but they won’t prosecute them for physically beating you up badly, or for thereafter procuring your bogus criminal prosecution based on a pack of material lies.

The District Attorney’s all know that this is part of the deal; part of the system. It’s the way it is. So, the District Attorney’s Office now has a choice. If you’re alive, they can prosecute you for striking the officer’s knuckles with your chin and broken orbital socket; and your missing tooth. This is no joke. These people have no souls. They have bargained those away by literally prosecuting the innocent victims of police violence and false arrests, and thereafter criminally prosecute them for resisting / obstructing / delaying a peace officer or battery on a peace officer. The creepier the County, the creepier the criminal filings for such resistance offenses.

Moreover, the system, and the “players” and “politicians” in that system, now recognize you as their enemy. As a matter of political and institutional reality, you, the victim of constitutional violations by peace officers acting under the color of authority, are someone who poses a real threat to them. After all, the cops put you in the hospital, and you’re now being prosecuted for resisting or delaying or obstructing them handcuffing you while you were trying to cover your face from the blows (Cal. Penal Code § 148(a)(1); resisting / obstructing / delaying peace officer; the most vague, nebulous and the most misused and abused section in the California Penal Code.)

If they beat you up too badly, the D.A. will throw in a Count of battery on a peace officer (Penal Code Section 243(b)) or felony preventing public officer from performing duty by use or threat of force (Penal Code Section 69). In the real world, 99% of the time, battery on a peace officer is really battery by a peace officer. If this offends your personal belief system, I’m sorry to pop your cherry. This is the modern world of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence (i.e. the right of the police to search and seize you and you home and property). The law isn’t what’s in a book or on the internet. The law is what happens to real people in the real world. The law isn’t what it says; only what it does.

Although we elect politicians and insist on them being totally honest with the public, we actually expect them to act in a dishonest and disingenuous way with the public. We expect the City Attorney to guard the City coffers, by denying that the police unlawfully committed a  duty related activity (i.e. using force on an innocent arrestee, or simply falsely arresting an innocent), even if they know otherwise; even if the evidence is so overwhelming and moving that no reasonable person would deny (with a straight face) that the police acted wrongfully. So, on the civil side, the City or County is going to claim that you’re to blame; that it’s your fault.

Then, the D.A.’s office jumps in the fray, and attempts to get you to plead to any crime; a plea that will almost assuredly preclude you from obtaining redress for the wrongs perpetrated upon you. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld release – dismissal agreements; an agreement where the D.A.’s offices promises to drop the bogus criminal case against you and let you out of jail, in exchange for a promise not to sue. Newton v. Rumery, 480 U.S. 386 (1987.) Creepy, huh? Extortion? Sounds like it. MacDonald v. Musick, 425 F. 2d 373 (9th Cir. 1970)(conditioning dismissal of criminal DUI charge in exchange of promise not to sue police is felonious extortion under California law.) But so long the government is the extorting party, no crime, since no one is going to prosecute a Deputy District Attorney for making such a dismissal offer.

Even when it’s obvious that a public entity is going to have to most likely pay money to a victim of their officer, the agency will never admit fault. So, since they didn’t do anything wrong, you must have. Therefore, you’re the enemy, because you’re a potential threat to them; to their paycheck; to them being imprisoned (however remote that really is); to them being promoted in the future; to them being disciplined (i.e. reprimanded, suspended, demoted or terminated) and to them being exposed to obloquy and disgrace.

Most of our law firm’s Police Misconduct clients, were factually and actually innocent of anything; yet most of them where at the wrong spot at the wrong time, or had the audacity to question police authority.

When many of our clients questioned or challenged police orders to them, the officers routinely have claimed that they have now “resisted” them or have “delayed” the officer’s investigation of them, or of another (real or imaginary; the most common claim by officers in bogus “Contempt of Cop” cases), by asking the officer for further identification, or by asking why there was a red laser targeting spot on their chest, or by asking why the officer wanted them to get prone-out on the ground when they had no clue why the police were even engaging them at all. These actions by our clients, true innocents, have typically resulted in them getting “gooned” by the cops, and half of them getting criminally prosecuted for non-existent crimes, to protect the officers and the agency from civil liability and disgrace. In all of these situations, the cops were going to show our client’s who’s in charge, and it’s not the client. These are truly ego crimes; “Contempt of Cop” crimes.

If you want to know what do to if you’ve been falsely arrested, retaliated against for exercise of your constitutional rights, beaten-up by the police or maliciously prosecuted, please contact us at (949) 474-1849 or jerrysteering@yahoo.com. Thank you for visiting with us, and best of luck. Even if you have a legal question that’s important to you, and you just need lawyer input, we’ll be glad to answer your questions.

Thank you again for visiting with us.

Jerry L. Steering, Esq., Suing Bad Cops And Defending Bogus Criminal Cases Since 1984

What to Do If You Have Been Falsely Arrested or Beaten-up by the Police – Click Here

Jerry L. Steering with Diane Sawyer, Co-counsel* Bob Dole, and former partner** Melvin M. Belli

Law Offices of Jerry L. Steering, 4063 Birch Street, Suite 100, Newport Beach, CA 92660; (949) 474-1849; Fax: (949) 474-1883; email: jerrysteering@yahoo.com