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Home | Opinion Exchange | Commentary

Michael Friedman: Let there be no tolerance for cops who lie

False reports, false arrests: Extremely damaging -- and too often ignored.

By MICHAEL FRIEDMAN

Last update: November 6, 2009 - 10:14 AM

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Here are recent cases that should be investigated further:

Minneapolis Police Officer Sherry Appeldorn reported to a superior officer that a suspect "failed to get on the ground" even though she was … read more yelling at him to do so. "I grabbed him and threw him down on the ground face first," she said. Appledorn said she then placed her knee "on the back of his head." She also claimed the suspect was trying to crawl under her squad car to escape. Video footage shows that none of this happened and that the suspect was on the ground and submissive when Appledorn ran up and started kicking him. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Security video footage shows that Minneapolis Police Officer Lucas Peterson lied on a police report. Officer Peterson claimed a woman jumped on his partners back twice and so he maced her. The video tape shows that these things didn't happen at all and Officer Peterson fabricated his story. Lying in a police report is a crime. Where is the criminal charge against this officer? .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... According to a law suit recently settled against the city of Minneapolis, Officer Craig Taylor "covered up" his "misconduct" by filing a "misleading" report. The suit also said Taylor's police report "contains several materially false claims... "

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What happens when a police officer deliberately falsifies a police report submitted for the purpose of prosecution? Usually nothing.

An interesting exception was reported Oct. 28 in a front-page Star Tribune article about yet another lawsuit settlement paid by the city of Minneapolis. Officer Lucas Peterson submitted an arrest report that bore no resemblance to a video recording of the incident. Yet while the lawsuit settlement provided some compensation to the victim, Peterson remains a Minneapolis police officer and presumably is continuing to write reports about his arrests.

Why would Minneapolis choose to keep a police officer on the payroll who has proven to be willing to use the power of his position to falsely criminalize and put an innocent party behind bars? How can any of his testimony ever again be seen as credible? Even assuming that his next report is honest, what use to Minneapolis is a police officer whose testimony forever onward will be attacked by defense lawyers as suspect?

A further perplexity -- though not a mystery to anyone familiar with the criminal courts -- is the limited action by the prosecutor, who clearly learned when the criminal case was dismissed months before that his or her police witness was a liar. Unfortunately, every day business as usual at the criminal courts is to accept that dismissal will be the final outcome of a case in which an officer's false report is behind the arrest.

A member of the public can be convicted of a gross misdemeanor for intentionally providing a false report of police misconduct. But a police officer who intentionally provides a false report of a citizen's conduct rarely receives any consequence. Prosecutors not only decline to refer the matter for investigation and possible charges, they do not even seek to alert police management.

A few years back, at the Criminal Justice Institute, the primary state conference attended by most categories of criminal-justice professionals, the question of prosecution responsibility emerged during a discussion about racial bias in policing. Several prosecutors spoke about the political inhibitions for alerting managers at police departments or within their offices about false police testimony, carrying the perception of how it might harm their careers. Many did not have confidence that their police chiefs would follow through, although one defense attorney in the room disagreed. She was married to a small city's police chief and insisted her husband would want such information to protect the overall credibility of all the officers in the department.

Short of wrongful use of lethal force, the category of police misconduct most deserving of a zero-tolerance policy should be willful falsification of a report that could be used for prosecution. Incidents of excessive force are often heat-of-the-moment mistakes that will not necessarily be replicated. But an officer who comfortably lies with the goal of wrongly putting someone behind bars is not making a mistake under pressure. Such corruption is exceedingly dangerous for all of us, given the tendency of juries to believe police testimony.

I have heard both the former Minneapolis city attorney and the former leader of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association refer to their role in society as "ministers of justice." It is time for such ministers to earn their office not only with the number of criminals they have successfully prosecuted, but with how well they have helped prevent false criminalization.

Dismissing a case in such circumstances is not enough.

Michael Friedman is executive director of the Legal Rights Center and is the former chairman of the Minneapolis Civilian Police Review Authority.

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