A regular person who commits a murder will be sent to jail, even if he is later exonerated. A cop goes home and continues to collect his income.
How is that not a reward?
How is that not a reward?
This is true. However, I interpret it as yet another reason why police should be systemically held to a stricter standard for unjustified killings: they know they are far more likely to get away with it, so the process of investigation should be a deterrent in itself to counteract the low likelihood of punishment.
Think about this case for a second. The chief gave no information about whether the victim was carrying a weapon or threatened the officers. The victim was surrounded by cops and yet there is no immediate clarity about precisely what happened.
Cops are a fraternity, and they deal extensively with the justice system. There are systemic benefits that they enjoy due to this. Many cops have gotten away with murders that were documented on video, and witnessed by other cops.
To counter this, you have to construct parts of the system as a deterrent to killing nonthreatening people. That may make the job more dangerous, but it's better to put a trained officer in danger of being attacked, than to put an innocent and clueless civilian in danger of being gunned down by a careless SWAT team.
1. Bail is refundable collateral. It's supposed to be priced within attainability, but it needs to be an amount sufficient to motivate compliance with the court. And when you're looking at criminal charges, that amount generally has to be quite significant, since compliance may result in incarceration or other seriously adverse outcomes. Also, bail will be set based upon the totality of the circumstances including the severity of the crime; the amounts you hear are frequently high because the crime must be serious and/or noteworthy to grab attention on the news.
2. There is a whole industry built up around helping people make bail. "I can't make bail" is not a novel problem and there is a lot of infrastructure in place to assist with this.
3. Excessive bail is not allowed and motions can be filed to get bail reduced.
4. No matter what, in every large system with rules that get enforced, there will be anomalies and anecdotes about the rules going awry. Isolated heart-wrenching stories of breakage should be addressed, but are not grounds for condemning the system as a whole.