Post & Courier: Letter to the Editor               

 

More “talk” about the police misconduct crisis

 

January 8, 2006 -- There is a solution to the police misconduct epidemic within the North Charleston Police Department and every other police department in South Carolina.  It’s called the Police Officer Conduct Accountability Act.  North Charleston Chief of Police, Chief Zumalt has received a copy of the POCAA.  So have the Charleston Police Department, Mt. Pleasant Police Department, and Charleston County Sheriff’s Office, along with each member of Mt. Pleasant Town Council and the South Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee.  I know because I wrote the POCAA and e-mailed, faxed, and directed mailed it to these agencies and officials. 

 

None of the aforementioned are willing to fix the police misconduct problem.  They fear the POCAA because they know that if it were to be implemented, a least one-third of all police officers duly sworn to serve and protect in South Carolina would quit their posts before going to jail.  This one-third represents the worst of the worst - men and women who break the law to enforce it.  To deny the problem and resist the solution makes all elected officials and good cops accessories – before, during, and after the fact. 

 

There is nothing funny, amusing, macho, cool, or impressive about our fellow citizens being locked in state prisons as the result of police misconduct, even if the inmate was guilty of the crime(s) in which they were convicted.   The end does not justify the means.  Then there is the innocent.  As a Christian man, it makes my blood boil when I think of the hundreds if not thousands of innocent men and women who are locked up by the state.  And make no mistake about it. There are innocent men and women locked up in the South Carolina Industrial Prison Complex.  Some are being raped daily, and nobody seems to care.  How lawmakers and the public can look the other way when innocent and guilty human beings are being repeatedly raped, sodomized, beat, and tortured while in the custody of the State of South Carolina is unfathomable. How Christians can ignore it, is unconceivable. Sodomy as punishment for committing a crime is nowhere to be found in the South Carolina Codes, so why is the public tolerating it?  Prison rape is an appalling reality in South Carolina that should make every Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or Atheist sick.  When it occurs as the result of police misconduct, it is especially atrocious. 

 

The answer to the problem is the Police Officer Conduct Accountability Act that establishes a mandatory lie detector test for every police officer, on each and every occasion when an allegation of police misconduct is levied against a police officer.  The outcome of the lie detector tests will not in and of themselves, result in disciplinary action, but will serve as cues for further investigation.  They will also be useful to identify patterns of behavior. 

 

My late grandfather always used to say, “Talk is cheap”.  He was right. There’s been enough talk about police misconduct in South Carolina.  It is time for the people to demand that restraint and accountability be placed on our law enforcement through the passage of the POCAA at the city, county, and state level.  Now. 

 

To read the Police Officer Conduct Accountability Act (POCAA), please visit:

 

http://teamliberty.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/pocaa.pdf

 

Ed Haas

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