Additional Pattern Six: Strategies of Attrition

A pattern evident from the cross-case analysis is that police and prosecutorial organizations that comply with public policies of transparency produce the most rapid internal investigations of police-civilian interactions, the most complete public statements of findings, and the most balanced penalties for misconduct, if any. Conversely, police organizations that do not comply with public policies of transparency are likely to engage strategies of delay in investigation, in publication of findings, and in production of evidence during the discovery phase of both civil and criminal court cases. These organizations are also likely to deny the possession or existence of evidence. Finally, police organizations that do not comply with public policies of transparency are likely to exhibit bad faith in negotiations or mediation. The outcomes for such organizations also tend to the extremes: zero penalties, or the most severe penalties, with little to no middle ground. Thus, it appears likely to be counter to the best interests of the injured parties to allow such organizations to control any investigation of or compensation for official misconduct, particularly when the injured parties have user-generated online video of the police-civilian interaction. However, even in the examined cases with incontrovertible video evidence of misconduct, the strategies of delay typically held off compensation of the injured parties for three to four years.

The constraints of the present research do not allow the development of this observed pattern into a robust theory.

The observed pattern of official uses of the strategies of delay, denial, and bad faith are not new in American legal history, but there may be opportunities for original research investigating the effects of user-generated online video on final outcomes, on the proportion of pretrial settlements, and on the length of litigation in cases of alleged police misconduct. Prior to the present study, the small number of relevant cases has tended to favor qualitative methodologies. The rapid growth in police-civilian interactions documented by user-generated online video has now made quantitative methodologies feasible for future research. There may be particularly rewarding opportunities for comparison studies of before and after the 2005-2010 transformative period, and of cases with and without user-generated online video.