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Nation’s Attorney General addresses bad-faith police behavior

On Behalf of | Aug 4, 2017 | Drug Possession |

There is no question — and certainly no media outlet arguing otherwise — that current U.S. Attorney General is anything other than a law-and-order type of guy.

That is, Sessions’ on-the-record comments, recently issued memos, strident calls for a return to harsher sentencing recommendations and other actions make it eminently clear that the nation’s top law-enforcement official is ardently pro-police and generally reluctant to criticize police departments across the country.

As noted in a recent Politico article, “Sessions often chastises others for badmouthing police.”

Sessions’ widely perceived enforcement bent often puts him in the crosshairs of critics from across a broad spectrum who claim a lack of balance on his part that promotes police/community tensions and leads to unjust outcomes engendered by police misconduct.

The AG does not seem wholly impervious to such criticism or lacking in understanding that his avowed tough-on-crime approach is viewed as threatening in select communities.

In fact, Politico notes that Sessions recently produced some “notable” comments in an address delivered before a largely minority audience, focused upon a matter he “rarely brings up.”

Namely, that is police on-the-job misconduct, which the AG conceded does occur when “bad officers” are allowed to operate without checks and balances for identifying, publicly acknowledging and punishing unlawful police behaviors.

Such behavior covers a lot of ground, of course, as amply evidenced by recurring news reports centered upon things like evidence tampering, illegal searches and seizures, acts of violence committed against citizens and additional actions.

Moreover, they occur in cases involving alleged drug possession, drunk driving, sex crimes and virtually every other conceivable criminal charge.

Undoubtedly, Sessions’ audience was pleased to hear the AG acknowledge the poisoning effect that bad cops can have on entire police departments.

As Politico points out, though, listeners might reasonably have been hoping to hear more, namely, Sessions’ concurrence that “some large police departments systematically violate the rights of individuals they encounter.”

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