: re: Cyrus Vance Jr.’s ‘Moneyball’ Approach to Crime

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 6:22 AM
Subject: re: Cyrus Vance Jr.’s ‘Moneyball’ Approach to Crime
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Justice in America has a structural defect. Because of district attorneys' "extreme collaboration...working hand in glove with the investigators from the police", those D.A.s cannot be trusted to prosecute allegations of police malfeasance. The D.A. who relies on close relations with the police department for her/his daily work will hide behind a Grand Jury when an officer shoots, kills, chokes or sodomizes a citizen but make no case for indictment or conviction rather than risk souring those relations.

   We therefore need structural change. The appearance of police malfeasance must be enough to automatically create a special prosecutor, with no ties to the police force. That will not be without problems, of course. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? But the current system risks repeated miscarriages of justice as in Ferguson, MO and Staten Island at least, and armed revolution in the streets at worst.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/magazine/cyrus-vance-jrs-moneyball-approach-to-crime.html