Bad (and, Thankfully, Dumb) Cops

It's really hard to give cops the benefit of the doubt when their preparation for testilying is caught on videotape. Their own videotape, to boot.

Here's the story, from south Florida. A woman got into a car crash with a police officer. Actually, the cop rear ended her. He called for backup and she was immediately arrested for DUI and put in the back of one of the responding police cars. Then the shenanigans began:

The cops begin to brainstorm believable excuses for the accident.

'As far as I'm concerned. I'm going to put words in his mouth. She went to accelerate and a cat jumped out of the window at which point he thought it could have been a pedestrian, which distracted him,' Pressley tells Sgt. Andrew Diaz, another veteran of the force. 'I mean what's the chances of hitting a f[uck]in drunk when a cat jumps out of the window?'

* * *

Then, another cop debates with Pressley on who is going to write up the fabricated report to clear their police comrade.

'I know how I'm going to word this with the cat so we can get him off the hook. I'll write the narrative,' Pressley says. 'We're going to bend this a little bit.'

The rationalizations one cop comes up with for lying is just precious:

Throughout the tape, the cops acknowledged what they are doing is illegal, but when you are the law, there is nothing wrong with bending it for a fellow cop, one says.

'I don't lie and make things up ever because it's wrong, but if I need to bend it a little bit to protect a cop, I'll do it,' Pressley tells Francisco after reassuring him no one will ever find out.

Hear that, jurors of the world? It's OK for a cop to lie if it's to protect another cop (sort of like Minbari, I guess). Does that mean that every cop lies all the time? Nope. It just means that they're human, like the rest of us, not a font of always accurate and unbiased information.