Because I work in the criminal justice system, some readers ask me why I don\u2019t generally comment on high profile shooting cases that are in the news. I guess I owe them, and you, an explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the past I worked as a police prosecutor, prosecuting misdemeanor cases. I was a cop for longer than that, and I\u2019ve been an expert witness for the courts since 1979, the one of those three jobs that I\u2019m still doing. As a prosecutor, I was taught what any law student is taught in law school and what every cop is taught in the police academy: We don\u2019t discuss our cases in the press! It will all come out in court!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, in recent years we have seen a lot of politically-driven cases where the accusers violate that treaty and use the press as a bludgeon, giving them a theory of the case which paints the defendant as a monster. When one side violates the treaty, the other side is no longer bound by it. I personally believe defense lawyers who don\u2019t speak for their clients when those clients are being falsely demonized are failing to represent their clients in the Court of Public Opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the defense side needs to be presented to the public under such exigent circumstances I believe it\u2019s the job of the defense lawyers to do that, not people like me. I certainly don\u2019t comment on cases where I\u2019m personally involved until court matters are concluded. But I try not to comment on ongoing cases where I\u2019m not involved, for one simple reason: not being involved, I don\u2019t know the whole story and won\u2019t until the facts come out at trial.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the case has been adjudicated, I see it as fair game and am happy to analyze it based on what I know about the dynamics of violent encounters and how they are processed by the system.\u00a0\u00a0By then, we have all the facts to discuss and learn from and hopefully keep tragic outcomes from being repeated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Because I work in the criminal justice system, some readers ask me why I don\u2019t generally comment on high profile shooting cases that are in the news. I guess I owe them, and you, an explanation. In the past I worked as a police prosecutor, prosecuting misdemeanor cases. I was a cop for longer than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9270,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9269\/revisions\/9270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}