DA's have to walk a tightrope, because if they push too hard in an investigation on a cop, they now find the well of police cooperation drying up on them. It's worse for their career to undermine their own ability to get convictions than it is to take on a cop here or there (I feel like the equation changes when you can make a career move like uncovering department-wide corruption).

I agree with you that if you have a different district/office handling this sort of stuff. But it always comes down to Who's Watching the Watchmen. Checks and balances are hard AF.

When a police officer does face charges, uniformed cops will show up en masse as a "show of solidarity" with the defendant but in reality they're trying to intimidate and influence the jury.

This is easy to control; while trials are required to be public, there is no reason a jurisdiction could not prohibit law enforcement officers wearing a uniform in court unless present in an official law enforcement capacity (e.g., acting as a bailiff.)

It's not so easy to control because judges have to be re-elected or aspire to sit on higher benches and having police unions oppose you can make that more difficult.

There's a reason why there are more former prosecutors on the bench than former defense attorneys.

> It's not so easy to control because judges

Judges don't make laws (well, at least, they aren't the ones I'm talking about with a jurisdiction-wide, state or federal, prohibition.)

Now, if you want to say that it's not easy to control because legislators and ultimately the electorate are biased toward and support this kind of police intimidation, that may be the case (though that's exactly saying it's not easy to solve because we, as a society, actively desire the status quo. It's easy to solve, it's hard to convince people it should be solved, which has always been the problem with civil liberties.)

Point of order: There's more former prosecutors on the bench than defense attorneys for a myriad of reasons, including financial (public service, bribes excluded, doesn't pay as well) and personal (there are honorable defense lawyers who believe the system is corrupt and want to make sure it doesn't win when it shouldn't).

The fact that they've pissed off the cops may or may not factor into it. Not saying you're wrong, just that it's not quite THAT simple.

Well now we're getting to the real issue with any of this stuff. It's not a great career move for a politician to make moves against the police unions, so trying to get more oversight laws is pretty hard. The unions are strong, their supporters are many, and who in their right mind would want to fight "law and order" that the cops represent.

I call this corruption. The police and the DA are both corrupt in that case.

That is exactly why a special prosecutor should always be appointed and the special prosecutor should always be someone who would not directly work with any police organization connected to the case.

There is an inherent conflict of interest in having the person responsible for investigating crimes be someone who needs to work closely with the people and organizations who allegedly committed the crimes.

Then we need to fire them, and blacklist them from the industry. They are not deserving of being cops.

The police officers involved are entitled to a jury trial just like everyone else.

The deeper problem is that juries do not convict police officers for this sort of thing, which is one of the reasons that prosecutors decline to charge officers. While a "special prosecutor" might result in a more enthusiastic prosecution, without the risk of damaging the relationship of the district attorney with the police force.

I don't think a law like this would be a panacea, or would even meaningfully impact the problem.

> The police officers involved are entitled to a jury trial just like everyone else.

Having a special prosecutor handle police misconduct cases, instead of the DA, does not in any way preclude the right to a jury. These cases would still go to trial like any other. The difference here is that the incentives would be flipped: DAs are incentivized to go as soft as possible on cops- either by instructing the grand jury not to indict or presenting the weakest case possible at the actual trial, because if they don't it harms their ability to work with the police for regular cases. Special prosecutors would not have that issue.

> I don't think a law like this would be a panacea, or would even meaningfully impact the problem.

I'm not claiming it's a silver bullet. But it would help, if only because cops would then know that they don't automatically have a friend in the prosecutor if they break the law. And unlike a lot of the other steps that need to be taken to fix the American justice system, this one could be done instantly just by passing a law.

> The police officers involved are entitled to a jury trial just like everyone else.

"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -- Anatole France

> That lets every person arrested charge the police with something criminal, and have it taken seriously, no matter how bogus the charge.

No, it doesn't. An independent special prosecutor can brush off an allegation as not credible as easily as a police-aligned prosecutor; in principle, they won't be biased by their other prosecutions depending on the police, but they don't somehow lose the capacity for judgement along with that source of bias.

I mean, the conviction rate on cops is embarrassingly low. You have body cam footage, cell phone footage, a law abiding citizen's testimony, and they still just get a month suspension. Too frequently we see cops abusing their power and they get a slap on the wrist.

I think there's a pretty wide range of options between "let the DA who needs the cops to lie so he can keep his conviction rate high half-ass his way though the case" and "bring charges literally every time someone wants to bring charges." I think OP was talking more about WHO handles them, rather than whether all of them have merit.

This is a non-issue. District Attorneys handle this situation all the time: they get plenty of bogus cases, or cases that could be real but have flimsy evidence, and then decide which ones are solid enough to take to trial and which ones are ignored. There is no reason a standing office of a special prosecutor for police misconduct couldn't do the same thing.

Fixing problems isn't just a matter of turning a knob on "who gets more trust" or "amount of investigation to do" or "how much government regulation to do'. Real-world problems don't exist on one-dimensional axes.

Fixing problems means making qualitative changes to how the broken processes work.