rbennettucm, I certainly hope you are a writer by profession. If not, you should be. Your writing style is magnificent.
You ask if law enforcement officers fabricating testimony is ubiquitous. Although I admit my perception of the matter may be slightly distorted due to the area of Michigan where I work and reside (Detroit), I think it is a problem throughout the U.S.
In Detroit, in the early 2000s, we had a major police corruption case. It involved several police officers who were indicted for writing phony police reports to support false arrests based on planted evidence. The investigation not only uncovered illegal searches but the theft by officers of weapons, drugs and money. Hundreds of cases where the officers had testified had to be reviewed, and many of these cases were either dismissed or the convictions were overturned.
The lies by law enforcement officers, both on police reports and when testifying under oath, did not end with the end of that investigation, though.
As recently as last month, a county sheriff in this area was fired after conducting an illegal search of a home and then lying on the witness stand. A hundred or so cases where he testified are now being reviewed. Some of the cases where he had involvement have already been dismissed.
Many of the officers who have been "caught lying," both in the 2002-2003 corruption trial and in recent years, have been in law enforcement a long time. Some of the officers have been on special narcotics enforcement squads.
Today, in Detroit and its surrounding area, I would guess that many citizens (including judges) are not nearly as naive as they once were. There is definitely a greater media focus and reporting on corruption in our area. Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his various and assorted cohorts are on trial and a Detroit judge was just removed from the bench for fraud and these are our front page stories in the papers and the lead-off stories on television broadcasts (coupled with stories about Detroit's high homicide rate
).
That said, it is probably safe to say that the perception of the majority is still that a court will trust the testimony of a law enforcement officer over that of a person arrested and charged with a crime, to the extent that several defendants have been found who figured the cards were already stacked against them and so they agreed to plead guilty on lesser charges to crimes they never committed in the first place.
Late edit to add:
Released in March of last year was a 50-state study on state government transparency, accountability and anti-corruption efforts, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and Public Radio International. The study can be accessed through
http://www.stateintegrity.org.
In response to the study, which rated the state of Michigan as an "F" (no state was rated an A, and only five states received a B), Michigan formed a multi-agency task force to address public corruption. As a note, California was one of the "B" states.
