Outside prosecutor should decide on excessive force

A county prosecutor works closely with the police every day on investigations and prosecutions. Therefore, county prosecutors should not be responsible for making charging decisions in excessive-force cases involving a police officer in their county.

Rather, the charging decisions should be made by a county prosecutor from outside the county. An even better approach would be the creation of a state prosecutor to handle these cases.

Using out-of-county prosecutors would better assure an impartial charging decision, and would increase public acceptance of any decision not to prosecute a police officer.

This story was originally published September 28, 2015 at 1:54 PM with the headline "Outside prosecutor should decide on excessive force."