DARREN CHAKER, remember that name---because of him and his superhuman seven year long fight against every police agency in this state, in court, all the way up to the U.S. Appeals Court, you can now make a formal complaint against a police officer (s) without worry that you will be opening up yourself to criminal charges, if something you say is believed as inaccurate, or just plain false, in a court of law. (CLICK ON LINK here FOR ACTUAL COURT PAPERS) Barring those who are young and/or naive, one knows that the police have a huge arsenal of weaponry to force the public to comply with it. And one of these means used as a retaliatory measure is placing on their "Internal Affairs Complaint Form" a line at the end that says, in essense: "I sign under penalty of perjury that the above is true and correct." Yet the police do not have to do the same in a response or counter complaint. Below is his case decided recently in California---whether or not one can make a formal complaint against a cop (s) without risking being charged criminally for making a false statement against a cop (s):

The Ninth Circuit last Thursday 11/10/05 threw out a California law making it illegal to falsely impugn a cop because the law doesn't prohibit false praise of police officers. "Because we conclude that the statute impermissibly discriminates on the basis of a speaker's viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment," wrote Judge Harry Pregerson for a unanimous three-judge panel, "we reverse the district court and grant the petition" for habeas corpus. While the state developed its investigation procedures to make officers more accountable to the public, the law, Pregerson wrote, "undermines that goal by holding only citizen complainants accountable for their knowing falsehoods, while leaving unregulated the knowingly false speech of a peace officer or witness."

The opinion came in the case of Darren Chaker, who in 1998 claimed that an El Cajon police officer roughed him up during an arrest after Chaker was accused of taking his car from a mechanic without paying. The San Diego district attorney's office then filed misdemeanor charges against Chaker for filing false misconduct charges against the officer.

The San Francisco Chronicle Newspaper has finally joined in the chorus againts foul police behavior that has been the norm for many, many years in this country. Go to SFgate.com and go to "The Use of Force," and you will find all you need to know about the goings on of this police department, and the mayor's proposed measures to truly stop the brutality.

Mind you, this is known world wide as the most tolerant, liberal city in the world, yet the strangle hold by police political power still grips its people. Imagine elsewhere where human rights and civil rights are openly far less valued?