Over breakfast with a fellow farmer the other morning (we occasionally get together to solve all of the world’s problems in under two hours) of course the subject that’s on the minds of most thinking folks in Cleveland — police brutality and the consent decree currently being negotiated between the city and the Department of Justice (DOJ) — came up and he put forth a provocative theory: What if Frank Jackson really isn’t interested in settling matters with the feds? What if he’s really attempting to torpedo the consent decree?
Here’s his intriguing logic … that just might have some validity to it. But first you have to reexamine the legal concept of the “plea bargain.” This is how the vast majority of criminal cases are adjudicated.
A person facing, say, capital murder charges (which could carry the death penalty), is offered the opportunity by the prosecutor to cop a plea to a lesser charge; say life in prison without the possibility of parole. In this way a trial is avoided, and the individual loses all rights of appeal, but his or her life is spared.
But say the individual elects to go to trial in an effort to beat the rap entirely; they then are running the risk of eventually losing their life at some future point. The same principle applies to lesser charges also; cop to the charge and the prosecutor won’t seek the maximum allowable penalty.
Now, in the case of the consent decree (which is a form of legal negotiations similar to the one that takes place with a plea bargain) the city and the Justice Department comes to an agreement on the extent of the problems within the Cleveland Division of Police, and sets out on a course of action in concert to solve those problems. If the two parties cannot come to an agreement, the feds file a lawsuit in Federal Court to force the city to come to terms; but here’s the kicker, just like in the plea bargain for the murder charge, if the city loses the lawsuit, it’s punished for digging in its heels and not coming to terms.
In the case here in Cleveland, if the DOJ has to play hardball and go the lawsuit route, and they prevail, the punishment will be that a federal judge will end up with almost total control of the police department. The judge gets to make virtually all of the decisions on what changes must occur, but they also would shoulder all of the blame if the reforming of the department doesn’t go well — which just might be what Mayor Jackson is angling for.
In this manner the mayor sort of gets to have his cake and eat it too: If the feds take over the department they then bear the responsibility of fixing it, and if they manage to pull it off the city and Frank Jackson wins because we end up with a modern, well-functioning police department. However, if the feds fall flat on their faces and the reform fails, the mayor will still look good since he will be able to point a critical finger at the feds and blame them for their failure. It’s like, “heads I win, tails you lose.” Pretty neat trick.
[Photo: Tim]
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.