Turns out that, in addition to her legal talents, Shira Scheindlin believes herself something of a seer.
You know those recent deaths in police custody of Eric Garner and Michael Brown — the former in Staten Island, the latter in Ferguson, Mo.?
Judge Scheindlin asserts that if the cops in question had been wearing body cameras as she wants to force the NYPD to do, “neither incident would have ended with a dead body.”
Note that the judge didn’t say that cameras might have helped avert either or both of these deaths. She made a flat and unequivocal declaration. “Neither incident would have ended with a dead body.”
That’s a bold statement, especially since the Garner incident was filmed on a cellphone camera and cops were aware they were being taped. Not surprisingly, her remarks raised eyebrows, according to NY1, which first reported the speech.
The judge made her remarks at a Bronx County Bar Association dinner at which she was honored with the group’s 2014 President’s Award.
As the association made clear during it’s announcement, Scheindlin was chosen partly for her ruling on stop-and-frisk, which basically held the NYPD guilty of racial profiling.
Of course, to anyone who has watched Judge Scheindlin at work in her courtroom, none of this comes as any surprise.
Why have evidence and argument if the judge already has her conclusion? This is this same high-handedness that led the 2nd Circuit US Court of Appeals to take her off the stop-and-frisk case, on the grounds that reasonable people might find her biased.
That’s the polite way of putting it.