Homeless in Arizona

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The police unions have been very successful at getting Americans to believe the mythology that cops never lie.

Sadly a large number of cops are pathological liars who routinely frame innocent people. Like NYPD Detective Kevin Descormeau in this article.

Another crooked NYPD cop is Detective Louis Scarcella who is suspected of framing over 50 people for murder. Before I was on Facebook I posted a number of articles about this sleazebag crooked cop. Two articles on him follows this.

Phoenix police detective Armando Saldate, Jr. seems to have used the same techniques that NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella used to frame murder suspects in New York City when he framed Debra Jean Milke for murdering her child.

There is no video or written record of the confession that Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate claims Debra Milke made about the murder.

Debra Milke, who spent 22 years on Arizona death row, was released when a judge ruled that the Arizona woman is innocent and dismissed all charges against her.

I put an article about Debra Milke and the sleazebag Phoenix cop, Armando Saldate who framed her for murder at the end.

I have also posted a number of article on Debra Milke before I was on Facebook.

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He Excelled as a Detective, Until Prosecutors Stopped Believing Him

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN OCT. 10, 2017

Detective Kevin Desormeau received a medal for valor, after a shootout in Queens. And he seemed to have a sixth sense for finding drugs and guns. In a decade on the force, he had made, by his own count, 350 arrests.

He was regarded as courageous, cunning and tireless. His supervisors within the New York Police Department heaped on such praise that in their telling he sounded half comic-book hero.

But prosecutors now say Detective Desormeau, 34, struggled with one aspect of police work: telling the truth. After relying on Detective Desormeau’s word in hundreds of cases, prosecutors no longer believe him credible. In two cases, prosecutors have accused Detective Desormeau and his partner of making up crucial details when arresting people, even testifying about criminal activity that may never have occurred. They have said they are reviewing some of his old cases, though how many is not clear.

The two detectives were indicted this year, adding to the body of evidence that police perjury and half-truths remain a persistent problem for the New York Police Department. And as more arrests and confrontations are being recorded, evidence of police falsehoods is more apparent.

The issue of false or misleading statements by the police has, on a national level, been intertwined with the issue of excessive force and the debate over whether officers are too quick to shoot people, particularly black men.

But the phenomenon of false or misleading police statements has not been confined to high-profile cases in which officers try to justify the use of deadly force. In New York, the practice of routinely making up facts to justify a dubious arrest was entrenched enough that it got its own nickname more than 20 years ago — “testilying.”

There is a long string of gun arrests over the years in which judges have cast doubt on the officers’ accounts. And troubling instances keep emerging. In recent years, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, a city agency that investigates police misconduct, has documented an increase in cases in which police officers give false statements.

“There is lying going on on a regular basis,” said Richard D. Emery, who until last year was the chairman of the review board. While he credits the department with effective reforms regarding use-of-force and unconstitutional search and seizures, he said, “the one major lapse in the fantastic work of the N.Y.P.D. is not addressing police lying.”

Lawrence Byrne, the department’s top legal official, disclosed in a recent panel discussion at the City Bar Association that 73 officers had “been fired or forced out of the department in the last five years for either perjury or making a false statement,” and that about twice that many officers had faced lesser penalties for false statements “in the last few years.”

In an interview, Mr. Byrne said of the department and its 36,000 officers, “I don’t believe we have a widespread perjury problem.”

Mr. Byrne said he believed that perjury was no more or less common among police officers than anyone else.

“I don’t believe — although nobody has done an empirical study — that the incidence of perjury among police officers is any higher or lower than the incidence of perjury among other categories of witnesses, which includes civilian witnesses, complainants, expert witnesses.”

In the case of Detective Desormeau, the charges brought against him by two separate district attorneys depict a police officer willing to tell whatever story fit the moment. In Manhattan, he is accused of providing a false account of what occurred in order to justify an illegal search that led to a gun; in Queens, he is accused of lying about having observed drug deals.

He and his partner, Detective Sasha Neve, both 34, have pleaded not guilty to the charges in Manhattan and Queens; both remain on the force, though they have been moved off the streets into positions that keep them away from the public, the police said.

In one episode in Brooklyn — which was investigated by the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, but is not the subject of any prosecution — Detective Desormeau’s motive appears to have been to get out of a bad situation that he and another officer had set in motion. Cellphone footage from that episode captures Detective Desormeau and another detective as they stood over a man sprawled on the street. They can be heard shaping a narrative of what occurred.

“I got a strange dude who jumped on my vehicle,” one says. A few moments later, the detective suggests the man is mentally ill. “You take your meds today, sir?” he asks.

A few moments later, the other detective validates the story. “He jumped on the car.”

One detective could be heard chuckling.

Video from a nearby surveillance camera told a different story. The man had been walking home when the detectives emerged from their unmarked car, and started searching him, focusing on the area around the man’s waist and his thighs. They later would claim they saw him holding a “suspicious bulge” in his pocket — maybe a gun? Finding nothing, the officers got in their car and prepared to drive away.

The man stepped in front of the detectives’ car to photograph the license plate. The detectives tried to pull around him, but the man blocked them again. The detectives pulled forward, the car hitting the man, who crumpled onto the hood and then fell backward onto the street.

“He jumped on the car,” the detectives insisted. There are further embellishments: The car was in reverse when the man jumped onto it.

Such falsehoods, even if they never travel beyond a city block, play their part in eroding the credibility of the police. On cellphone videos taken of the scene, relatives and neighbors of the man gathered around, listening to the detectives repeat their version — the police version — of what transpired. One bystander disdainfully asked, “You enjoy your job?”

That episode occurred in August 2015, on a block in East New York, one of Brooklyn’s toughest neighborhoods. Detective Desormeau had recently transferred there from Jamaica, Queens, five miles to the east. His sergeants there had regarded him as a gift to policing, according to his performance evaluations, which were described to The New York Times by someone who had reviewed them. He possessed “superior judgment.” He embodied “the most aggressive style of police work,” one wrote. Another called him a “primordial asset.”

But on the streets, some people knew him only by a nickname, “Training Day,” after the film about a corrupt cop played by Denzel Washington, said Robert Perreira, himself once arrested by Detective Desormeau’s unit.

Before being transferred to Brooklyn, Detective Desormeau was part of the Queens Gang Squad, a plainclothes unit assigned to get guns off the street. He often worked with Detective Neve. In interviews, several people who encountered the two detectives said that of the two, Detective Desormeau had the higher profile. He struck people as more outgoing and he was the one with the skill for cultivating informants. That in turn gave him control over the cases they pursued and also meant that he was the one whom those arrested tended to remember most vividly. His pitch was blunt: He would pay them thousands of dollars to give up the names of people who had guns, according to one woman he tried to enlist.

Detectives are sometimes reluctant to disclose an informant’s existence to a prosecutor or judge, concerned the informant’s identity could be compromised. That instinct may be what landed Detective Desormeau in trouble with prosecutors.

Through an informant, Detective Desormeau heard of a gun kept at an apartment in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, far from where he usually worked, according to the version of events that prosecutors have pieced together. Instead of bringing the informant to a judge to request a search warrant, Detectives Desormeau and Neve are accused of barging into the apartment on Nov. 6, 2014. They found the gun.

The detectives provided an account of the search whose details the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., described as fabricated “seemingly out of thin air.” The detectives claimed they were flagged down by a man who said his neighbor had just threatened him with a gun. When the detectives knocked on the neighbor’s door, the neighbor emerged with the gun visible in his waistband.

That story came under scrutiny as prosecutors learned more about the supposed witness, who the detectives said had flagged them down. Detectives Desormeau and Neve described him as a stranger who had approached them out of the blue. But prosecutors in Manhattan learned that their counterparts in Queens were under the impression that same man was an informant for Detective Desormeau who helped with gun cases, according to an internal memorandum filed by an assistant district attorney in Manhattan that was read to The New York Times.

Later the Manhattan district attorney’s office discovered surveillance video and text messages that further undermined the detectives’ account, according to the memorandum .

The episode led prosecutors to charge Detective Desormeau and his partner.

By then, the Queens district attorney’s office had begun to re-examine the two detectives’ account in a drug case, a review that led to the second perjury indictment against the officers. In that episode, Detective Desormeau claimed to have watched a man deal drugs near a restaurant in Jamaica, Queens. Detective Desormeau testified that he stopped the man outside the restaurant, searched him and found a bag of crack cocaine tucked behind his waistband.

But surveillance footage captured the initial search. There is little indication that drugs were discovered. And footage shows the man inside the restaurant playing pool, not outside, as the drug deals were said to have been occurring.

In interviews with The Times, three other people who have been arrested by Detectives Desormeau or Neve — or in their presence — claimed evidence was planted on them or that their property was stolen. But they have little proof, beyond their insistence.

“Those cops planted drugs,” one of the three, Anthony Lopez, a Queens basketball coach, said. He told prosecutors at the Queens district attorney’s office the same thing, but his claims of innocence grated on them, he recalled.

Eventually, however, their tone toward Mr. Lopez softened slightly. A basketball coach for the city schools, Mr. Lopez had no criminal record, he said, beyond a teenage marijuana arrest when Detectives Desormeau and Neve searched his apartment in 2014. They also claimed to have found cocaine and heroin in Mr. Lopez’s refrigerator, a charge that Mr. Lopez vehemently denied. They found a disassembled pistol and shotgun, which Mr. Lopez said he had reluctantly accepted from a relative who had discovered them after her child had been incarcerated. He said he had planned to start a “gun buyback program,” and had discussed it with a police officer he knew.

In the end, the Queens district attorney dropped the drug charges, offering Mr. Lopez a deal that involved pleading to misdemeanor gun charges, with no jail time. He took it.

He recalled a prosecutor telling him he was lucky to get the deal.

“I got lucky?” asked Mr. Lopez, who is suing the city. “What about the truth?”

Asked whether the Queens district attorney’s office was re-examining cases involving Detective Desormeau, Kevin Ryan, a spokesman for the office, said, “We are reviewing a number of cases where we believe such review is appropriate.”

Detective Desormeau and his lawyer declined to comment.

Detective Neve’s lawyer, James Moschella, said, “These are very defensible cases and Detective Neve looks forward to the entire story coming out, at the end of which we are confident she’ll be found not guilty.”

Susan C. Beachy and Doris Burke contributed research.

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Dirty ex-cop Louis Scarcella's framing of innocent black men is costing NYC millions

by David A. Love | January 14, 2015 at 6:40 AM Filed in: New York, News

If Louis Scarcella was considered one of New York’s finest, then the word fine leaves much to be desired.

By all accounts, the former NYPD detective is a bad man who helped put innocent people behind bars for decades, used phony witnesses to get the job done, and even beating some suspects into false confessions. And he is costing the city millions of dollars. You know you’re bad when you have a reputation among prisoners for being crooked or when the district attorney begs the judge to throw out the convictions of people you arrested.

Scarcella, 62, was on the force for nearly three decades, stationed in Brooklyn. And he had an impressive record of nabbing killers, doing whatever it took to get suspects to talk. As Sean Flynn reported in GQ magazine, the heavily decorated Scarcella received Chief of Detectives’ Award for Outstanding Police Investigation for the cases he purportedly solved.

Well-respected and even legendary, this hotshot detective was believable. Scarcella had investigated 241 murders — many of them high-profile and in the media — and even served as an expert, appearing on the Dr. Phil show, in 2007 to discuss false confessions from the police perspective. As was reported in The Village Voice, Scarcella told Dr. Phil that he never had a confession that did not corroborate and turned out to be false. “I will do whatever I have to do within the law to get a confession or to get someone to cooperate with me.”

“Are there rules when it comes to homicide? No. No, there are none,” he added.

Yet, Detective Scarcella was found out to be a sham only last year, 13 years after he retired.

Last year, one of Scarcella’s arrestees was released from prison. In 1991, David Ranta was convicted of the 1990 shooting death of Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger, a prominent rabbi in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. This despite the fact there was no physical evidence linking Ranta to the murder. And yet, there were two witnesses who pointed the finger at Ranta, and there was a confession, all of which Ranta, who proclaimed his innocence, denied. And with good reason.

In 2014, Brooklyn prosecutors took the extreme step of asking a judge to release Mr. Ranta after spending 20 years behind bars. He had no business being in prison, and the city paid Ranta $6.4 million. He didn’t even have time to take out his pen to sue the city. He suffered from a heart attack the day after his release.

Although Ranta is white, Scarcella’s victims typically were of color and poor.

Last year, the Kings County District Attorney’s office announced they would investigate fifty-seven cases in which an arrest by Detective Scarcella led to a conviction.

Just this week, it was announced that the City of New York will pay $17 million to three half-brothers — Alvena Jennette, Robert Hill and the estate of Darryl Austin. The men spent a combined 60 years behind bars for murders in the 1980s they did not commit, thanks to Scarcella’s handiwork. Jennette was paroled in 2007 after serving nearly two decades in prison, while Hill was released last year when charges against him were dismissed after spending 27 years in prison. Meanwhile, Austin had died in prison in 2000 after serving 13 years. Of the $17 million, $7.15 million was awarded to Hill, $6 million to Jennette and $3.85 million to Austin’s estate.

So far, Scarcella has cost the city of New York $24 million in settlements. Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, said the city is settling such cases in an effort to avoid lengthy, drawn out litigation. Similarly, the city plans to settle the $75 million Eric Garner case.

Last Friday, a Brooklyn court vacated the 1991 murder conviction of Derrick Hamilton, who said Scarcella had pressured a witness to name him as the killer. As was reported in The New York Times, Hamilton had learned many convictions involving Detective Scarcella often used the same witnesses and resulted in false or coerced confessions. Hamilton — who was released after prosecutors admitted the key witness in the case, the victim’s girlfriend, lied — maintained his innocence for 21 years.

It is not so far-fetched to believe that other cases involving Scarcella will come to the fore. After all, as GQ noted, one “crackhead” prostitute was a key witness, and typically the only witness, in six Scarcella cases. In addition to coercing confessions, the detective has also been accused of coaching witnesses and trading drugs for testimony on numerous occasions.

Sundhe Moses, who has been incarcerated upstate for 18 years for the killing of a 4-year-old girl in Brownsville, Brooklyn, claims the discredited detective beat him until he confessed. “Scarcella is a really dirty cop,” Moses, 37, told the Daily News. “He beat me until I signed that confession … I am angry. My life is gone. This confession is why I am in prison.”

Meanwhile, Rosean Hargrave, 40, hopes to be exonerated amid claims Scarcella framed him.

Scarcella conjures up images of Jon Burge, a former Chicago cop who tortured at least 120 black men over a period of over 20 years between 1972 and 1991. Burge served prison time and was able to keep his pension, while Scarcella remains a free man.

Police officers such as Louis Scarcella give good cops a bad name, this much is certain, but he is merely the tip of the iceberg. Remember that such individuals are allowed to operate in the criminal justice system because they are part of a larger web of corruption. The Detective Scarcellas of the world are unmonitored, given free reign to commit their wrongdoing, and are even awarded medals for it.

Moreover, Scarcella never convicted or sentenced innocent people; he merely arrested them. And he was on the force at a time of high crime, the crack epidemic, when public officials wanted to show they were taking bold steps to combat crime, even if they were secretly framing innocent people. Dirty cops, corrupt prosecutors and unscrupulous judges join forces with ineffective defense lawyers and gullible juries to create this problem.

Meanwhile, former Kings County D.A. Charles Hynes, who was head prosecutor when Scarcella was a Brooklyn cop, faces criminal charges in light of a report he may have paid his media consultant for political work with $200,000 seized from criminals.

So if Louis Scarcella ever goes down, he’d better take others down with him.

Follow David A. Love on Twitter at @davidalove.

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Louis Scarcella can’t be charged if he stays silent in court

By Rich Calder and Jennifer Bain July 13, 2017 | 10:41pm

As long as he continues to keep his mouth shut in court, there’s nothing authorities can do about retired Detective Louis Scarcella, who saw his 12th case involving a wrongfully convicted person overturned Wednesday in Brooklyn.

That’s because the best they could do is charge him with perjury for affirming that false evidence was true in court — and the statute of limitations is five years.

“Detective Scarcella is remarkably good at not remembering,” said lawyer Ron Kuby, whose client Jabbar Washington was the latest to be freed. “He knows as long as he doesn’t repeat his statement under oath, he can’t be charged.”

Scarcella has never been charged with a crime.

Scarcella’s attorneys, Joel Cohen and Alan Abramson said in a statement, “He’s been given no documents or notes by ANYONE to refresh his memory. Given his lack of access to his case materials he’s done remarkably well and has testified truthfully.”

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Debra Milke, who spent 22 years on Arizona death row, has murder case tossed

By Saeed Ahmed and Greg Botelho, CNN

Updated 3:49 PM ET, Tue March 24, 2015

Source: KTVK

(CNN)Debra Milke spent 22 years on death row, convicted of conspiring with two other men to kill her son allegedly for an insurance payout.

On Monday, a judge ruled that the Arizona woman is innocent and dismissed all charges against her.

This makes Milke only the second woman exonerated from death row in the United States. More importantly, the judge's decision finally clears Milke after years of legal back-and-forth in a case where she steadfastly maintained her innocence.

Key to the case's dismissal was prosecutorial misconduct, mainly that of a detective, Armando Saldate, who said Milke confessed to the crime to him -- even though there was no witness or recording.

Prosecutors withheld from the jury Saldate's personnel record which showed instances of misconduct in other cases, including lying under oath.

The two men with whom Milke was accused of conspiring were tried separately and are still on death row.

The killing

A day after seeing Santa Claus at a mall on December 1, 1989, young Christopher Milke asked his mother if he could go again.

Milke's roomate, James Styers, took the boy; then called Milke saying Christopher had disappeared.

Instead, Styers and a friend drove the boy out of town to a secluded ravine where Styers shot Christopher three times in the head, prosecutors said.

Styers and the friend were convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Milke's 'role

Milke was implicated based on alleged testimony from Styer's friend, Roger Scott.

The detective, Saldate, said Scott told him that Milke was involved in a plot to kill her son. And during her trial, prosecutors floated a likely motive: A $5,000 life insurance policy she had taken out on the child.

But neither Scott nor Styers testified to a plot in court.

No other witnesses or direct evidence linked Milke to the crime other than Saldate's testimony.

Milke's 'confession'

Saldate further said that Milke confessed to her role in the murder plot during interrogation and said it was a "bad judgment call."

There was no recording of the interrogation, no one else was in the room or watching from a two-way mirror, and Saldate said he threw away his notes shortly after completing his report. Milke offered a vastly different view of the interrogation and denied that she had confessed to any role.

The trial became a he-said/she-said contest between the two.

Ultimately, the jury believed the detective and convicted Milke of murder.

Saldate's past

What prosecutors didn't tell the court was the detective's long history of lying under oath and misconduct.

Saldate had been suspended five days for taking "liberties" with a female motorist and lying about it to his supervisors. Four confessions or indictments had been tossed out because Saldate had lied under oath. Judges suppressed or vacated four other confessions because Saldate had violated a person's constitutional rights.

In 2013, after more than 20 years in jail, an appeals court overturned Milke's conviction. "The Constitution requires a fair trial," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. "This never happened in Milke's case."

"The state knew of the evidence in the personnel file and had an obligation to produce the documents," Kozinski said. "... There can be no doubt that the state failed in its constitutional obligation."

Milke was released on bail, and the court said she couldn't be tried again.

The state appealed the decision to the Arizona Supreme Court.

The ending

Last week, the Arizona Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. And on Monday, all charges against Milke were finally dropped.

The ankle bracelet she had been wearing while on bail was removed. And Milke left the court room, sobbing in relief.

The case is now closed. Debra Milke is finally a free woman.

Sadly the "War on Drugs" is about $$$ MONEY $$$ which police departments get from the Feds for arresting people for victimless drug war crimes.

In the war on drugs, federal grant programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence.

SNIP

Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs — in Tulia, Tex. and Oakland, Calif., for example — have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in.

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Why Police Lie Under Oath

By MICHELLE ALEXANDERFEB. 2, 2013

THOUSANDS of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury’s believing their word over a police officer’s are slim to none. As a juror, whom are you likely to believe: the alleged criminal in an orange jumpsuit or two well-groomed police officers in uniforms who just swore to God they’re telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? As one of my colleagues recently put it, “Everyone knows you have to be crazy to accuse the police of lying.”

But are police officers necessarily more trustworthy than alleged criminals? I think not. Not just because the police have a special inclination toward confabulation, but because, disturbingly, they have an incentive to lie. In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.

That may sound harsh, but numerous law enforcement officials have put the matter more bluntly. Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote an article in The San Francisco Chronicle decrying a police culture that treats lying as the norm: “Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.”

The New York City Police Department is not exempt from this critique. In 2011, hundreds of drug cases were dismissed after several police officers were accused of mishandling evidence. That year, Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn condemned a widespread culture of lying and corruption in the department’s drug enforcement units. “I thought I was not naïve,” he said when announcing a guilty verdict involving a police detective who had planted crack cocaine on a pair of suspects. “But even this court was shocked, not only by the seeming pervasive scope of misconduct but even more distressingly by the seeming casualness by which such conduct is employed.”

Remarkably, New York City officers have been found to engage in patterns of deceit in cases involving charges as minor as trespass. In September it was reported that the Bronx district attorney’s office was so alarmed by police lying that it decided to stop prosecuting people who were stopped and arrested for trespassing at public housing projects, unless prosecutors first interviewed the arresting officer to ensure the arrest was actually warranted. Jeannette Rucker, the chief of arraignments for the Bronx district attorney, explained in a letter that it had become apparent that the police were arresting people even when there was convincing evidence that they were innocent. To justify the arrests, Ms. Rucker claimed, police officers provided false written statements, and in depositions, the arresting officers gave false testimony.

Continue reading the main story Mr. Keane, in his Chronicle article, offered two major reasons the police lie so much. First, because they can. Police officers “know that in a swearing match between a drug defendant and a police officer, the judge always rules in favor of the officer.” At worst, the case will be dismissed, but the officer is free to continue business as usual. Second, criminal defendants are typically poor and uneducated, often belong to a racial minority, and often have a criminal record. “Police know that no one cares about these people,” Mr. Keane explained.

Police departments have been rewarded in recent years for the sheer numbers of stops, searches and arrests. In the war on drugs, federal grant programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence. Law enforcement has increasingly become a numbers game. And as it has, police officers’ tendency to regard procedural rules as optional and to lie and distort the facts has grown as well. Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs — in Tulia, Tex. and Oakland, Calif., for example — have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in.

THE pressure to boost arrest numbers is not limited to drug law enforcement. Even where no clear financial incentives exist, the “get tough” movement has warped police culture to such a degree that police chiefs and individual officers feel pressured to meet stop-and-frisk or arrest quotas in order to prove their “productivity.”

For the record, the New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, denies that his department has arrest quotas. Such denials are mandatory, given that quotas are illegal under state law. But as the Urban Justice Center’s Police Reform Organizing Project has documented, numerous officers have contradicted Mr. Kelly. In 2010, a New York City police officer named Adil Polanco told a local ABC News reporter that “our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them.” He continued: “At the end of the night you have to come back with something. You have to write somebody, you have to arrest somebody, even if the crime is not committed, the number’s there. So our choice is to come up with the number.”

Exposing police lying is difficult largely because it is rare for the police to admit their own lies or to acknowledge the lies of other officers. This reluctance derives partly from the code of silence that governs police practice and from the ways in which the system of mass incarceration is structured to reward dishonesty. But it’s also because police officers are human.

Research shows that ordinary human beings lie a lot — multiple times a day — even when there’s no clear benefit to lying. Generally, humans lie about relatively minor things like “I lost your phone number; that’s why I didn’t call” or “No, really, you don’t look fat.” But humans can also be persuaded to lie about far more important matters, especially if the lie will enhance or protect their reputation or standing in a group.

The natural tendency to lie makes quota systems and financial incentives that reward the police for the sheer numbers of people stopped, frisked or arrested especially dangerous. One lie can destroy a life, resulting in the loss of employment, a prison term and relegation to permanent second-class status. The fact that our legal system has become so tolerant of police lying indicates how corrupted our criminal justice system has become by declarations of war, “get tough” mantras, and a seemingly insatiable appetite for locking up and locking out the poorest and darkest among us.

And, no, I’m not crazy for thinking so.

Michelle Alexander is the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

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