US death squads

In the 1970's Brazil had a series of murders of high level criminals by squds of military policemen who worked as vigilantes. These death squads targeted criminals who had become famous for their crimes and for evading the police or those involved in the killing of policemen (the most notorious case involved Lúcio Flávio, an infamous criminal known as "fair-haired devil").

Now if one looks to the United States similar high level criminals were coming out, and larger and growing criminal empires, as well as a general crack down on police corruption. So WI a group of policemen in different parts of America acted in a similar manner? Would there be greater police resitrictions? Harsher gangs? Different perception of the police?
 
Some city police departments (LA, Chicago) have exhibited behavior bordering on death squadish, or at least extrajudicial killings. I think a worse, more violent civil rights movement could lead to individual, isolated examples of murder becoming more coherent and at least informally structured in the 60's and 70's.
 
Some city police departments (LA, Chicago) have exhibited behavior bordering on death squadish, or at least extrajudicial killings. I think a worse, more violent civil rights movement could lead to individual, isolated examples of murder becoming more coherent and at least informally structured in the 60's and 70's.

But a more violent civil rights movement would, to me, make it police killing political factions, where as I am talking of the effect of police activly going out and killing drug lords, and high ranking criminals who avoid the law. First to mind would be the growing drug trade in CA, or the entrenched mafia system in the east coast.
 
In the 1970's Brazil had a series of murders of high level criminals by squds of military policemen who worked as vigilantes. These death squads targeted criminals who had become famous for their crimes and for evading the police or those involved in the killing of policemen (the most notorious case involved Lúcio Flávio, an infamous criminal known as "fair-haired devil").

Now if one looks to the United States similar high level criminals were coming out, and larger and growing criminal empires, as well as a general crack down on police corruption. So WI a group of policemen in different parts of America acted in a similar manner? Would there be greater police resitrictions? Harsher gangs? Different perception of the police?

One problem I see with this is that Brazil and other countries that have had trouble with high-profile criminals, such as Colombia, often have a problem within their judicial system. To put it in layman's terms, I've heard that some judges in Colombia used to be, or still are, as crooked as the criminals they prosecute. I'm not all that familiar with the judicial system in Brazil, but if the police felt extrajudicial killings were necessary, maybe it was a similar situation.

You'd need a fairly large POD to get this to transfer over into the US. Corruption has always been effectively fought against in US courts, especially when it involves high-profile cases or criminals. I wouldn't go as far as to say that US courts are corruption free, but one of the reasons why Latin American criminals fear extradition to the US is because they know they won't be able to bribe everyone involved.

Thus, what I think we'd need to see for this to happen is a break between the police and the courts. The police departments have to feel like arresting criminals doesn't do enough, since they'd just be right back out on the streets anyway. I don't really have any idea of how we could get that to happen, but that's at least what I see as needed in order for this to happen.
 
Top