When the Police Commit Misconduct
Seattle, Washington Police Misconduct Attorney
Throughout my career I have gravitated to cases in which there are issues of misconduct by law enforcement officers. Police misconduct is not limited to any category of crime, but, rather, can occur in any case involving any crime category. Over time I have developed strategies and techniques first for discovering and exposing the misconduct outside the courtroom and then confronting it in the courtroom. While these strategies and techniques rely upon knowledge of the pertinent law and of police practices and procedures, more important to a successful outcome is persistence. In my experience, law enforcement officers who commit misconduct tend to think they can keep their actions hidden, and frequently their fellow officers will try to help them in this effort, so the best response is to keep at them until there is nowhere left for them to hide.
The majority of law enforcement officers are honest and honorable, doing difficult work under difficult circumstances. Nevertheless, no group of human beings is completely immune from the human condition, and thus there will always be some law enforcement officers who act dishonestly and dishonorably, and who try to hide their misconduct behind the good reputation that the good officers have created for the group as a whole.
The good officers know that, even though their job is a difficult one, they themselves chose to do it, and thus they do not use that difficulty as an excuse for their mistakes. They know that they have been entrusted with enormous power, and uncomplainingly accept that they should be held to very high standards in how they exercise that power. They abide by the Constitution in doing their difficult work and deserve great credit and respect for doing so.
The bad officers think they personally own the power with which they have been entrusted. They feel that the Constitution is an impediment that makes their job harder, so dodging the Constitution’s commands and otherwise acting dishonorably is acceptable to them. However infrequently this happens when viewed in light of how the majority of officers act the majority of the time, when it does happen it is an affront to and an assault on justice.
Having worked for many years on death penalty and other cases with enormous consequences in which misconduct must always at least be suspected, Mr. Iaria has developed the tools to confront police misconduct when it occurs in any criminal case. Note, however, that he no longer handles civil cases against the police for misconduct.