This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 22nd, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis,

it's worth examining what special legal protections police have when they're accused of

misconduct.

In more than a dozen states, laws on the books include a wish list of special privileges

known as the Law Enforcement's Bill of Rights.

Cato's Walter Olson explains how they work and how they often stymie efforts to hold police

accountable.

Walter, when we think about criminal justice and the protections that we have for

criminal justice, it seems that in many states and localities, police have what I can't term as anything else special

rights. When police are accused of misconduct in many parts of the country. They have all sorts of rights that would not be extended to you and I if we were accused of a crime or if we were accused of some misconduct by our employer that was thinking of fire us.

So what do these look like and how widespread are these so-called law enforcement officers

Bill of rights?

About 16 states have law enforcement officers bill of rights and the details vary from one to the

next but some of the typical features are rules on how officers can be

interviewed if they are suspected of misconduct. Often there is a delay, a so-called

cooling off period, really silly term,

in which they can't begin to ask them questions about what went wrong

for five days or ten days after the incident. Now obviously that's not

something that controls ordinary employers and it's not something that

controls ordinary interrogations.

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