[BITList] who are you going to believe?

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      How will New Orleans Police Department decide which liars to fire? James Gill
      Published: Wednesday, December 01, 2010, 5:45 AM 
       James Gill 
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      It is a scene that must have been played out in a million courtrooms.

      Confronted with conflicting testimony, a prosecutor in his 


      closing argument will declaim, "Who are you going to believe -- a known lowlife or an upstanding police officer?"
      Do not try this in New Orleans. Jurors will fall about laughing.

      Deciding what to do with dishonest cops ought to be an easy decision, but not here. If Chief Ronal Serpas fired every liar in his department, we'd either have to cancel Mardi Gras or bring in state police to keep order.
      So it seems, anyway, amid constant reports of cover-ups for cops who allegedly killed or committed other heinous crimes. This, according to local law enforcement experts, presents Serpas with a dilemma because it is by no means unusual for an officer to start off lying and then decide to help the feds nail an errant colleague.

      According to this theory, firing such an officer might stymie future prosecutions by discouraging other liars from coming clean. Equally, of course, it might persuade them to tell the truth in the first place. NOPD has come to an even prettier pass than we knew if there really is any room for debate over the fate of officers who testified for the government only after recanting.

      It has just happened again, this time in the trial of officers charged in the shooting of Henry Glover and the incineration of his body.

      Helping the government prove its case are three officers who admit they lied either to the FBI, the grand jury or both in an earlier attempt to get the defendants off the hook. They changed their tune and agreed to finger their fellow officers when the feds gave them immunity from prosecution, which is fair enough. In order to nail one felon it is often necessary to give a lesser one a break.

      But allowing admitted criminals to stay out of jail is surely as much of a break as they can conceivably deserve. They are not entitled to a job of their choice as well, particularly one for which they are manifestly unsuited. Cops and crooks are supposed to be on opposite sides, and the dichotomy is one the public would prefer to preserve.

      Unless Serpas is unsure whether he wants his department to be trusted, there is no dilemma.

      The officers responsible for Glover's fate, and for the Danziger Bridge shootings, for instance, were certainly under considerable pressure in the chaos that followed Katrina, but then that's when the public most needs protection. There is no extenuation in any case for the cover-ups that lasted for months, or even years, after order was restored.




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