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One solution is to relax the qualified immunity clause police officers receive, and allow civil penalties against the department and officers for perjury.

Right now they commit perjury and get promoted, things will only change when they start losing their jobs and pensions.



Civil penalties are a good call here - you cannot trust prosecutorial discretion in this case, as prosecutors who go after cops for lying on the stand find their jobs very difficult afterwards.


You could use a separate prosecutor for these cases, maybe even appoint a defence attorney as a special prosecutor.


Isn't this the exact point of Internal Affairs departments?


The point of the internal affairs department is often to appease voters by looking like they're doing something about police corruption. They're incentivized to go after high-profile career making cases, not the run-of-the-mill "cop says one thing and the videotape says another".

Making it easy and profitable to take clear-cut cases like this to civil court adds incentives to go after these sorts of things.


As I understand it, Internal Affairs departments tend to be investigatory rather than prosecutorial authorities.




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