Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: please answer rogue cops

The situation is not as dire as you seem to think. There are police officers who do this sort of thing from time to time and some who do it often, but the vast majority of police officers are honest and try to do the best job they can of determining who committed the crimes they investigate.

Keep in mind that police officers are cross-examined about their actions all the time. Even though most cases settle before trial, the vast majority of them involve preliminary hearings where the defense counsel can grill an officer she suspects of acting improperly. Officers who lie are often tripped up, or are exposed later when evidence turns up which contradicts their stories. Because these examinations happen so often, cops would have to worry about being caught eventually even if the risk in any given case is small. This is a strong disincentive for them to lie.

As I said, these things do happen. In fact, they happen often enough that it is a genuine social problem and not just a collection of isolated incidents. I even have an appeal pending now where the investigating and arresting officers were caught in a series of lies they made up in order to justify an illegal arrest. But it is like many other social problems -- it won't affect most people, and some of us are more likely to be affected than others.

My sense is that when police try to pin a case on a person, it is someone they have reason to believe is a criminal. This does not justify their actions in any way, but it does mean that people who neither are nor appear to be criminals have little to fear. The "average citizen" is not likely to be targeted, though sadly the average black or Hispanic citizen is substantially more likely to face such problems than the average white person. Even so, the odds of something like this happening to you are probably too remote to justify taking any kind of dramatic steps to protect yourself.