California law bars ex-LAPD officer Mark Fuhrman, who lied at OJ Simpson trial, from policing
California law bars ex-LAPD officer Mark Fuhrman, who lied at OJ Simpson trial, from policing
The former Los Angeles police detective who was convicted of lying on the witness stand in the O.J. Simpson trial three decades ago is now barred from law enforcement.
Former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman who was convicted of lying on the witness stand in the O.J. Simpson trial three decades ago, is now barred from law enforcement under a California police reform law meant to strip the badges of police officers who act criminally or with bias.
Fuhrman, who is white, was one of the first two police detectives sent to investigate the 1994 killings of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. The slayings and Simpson’s trial exposed divisions on race and policing in America.
Fuhrman reported finding a bloody glove at Simpson’s home but his credibility came under withering attack during the trial as the defense raised the prospect of racial bias.
Under cross-examination, Fuhrman testified that he had never made anti-Black racial slurs over the previous 10 years, but a recording made by an aspiring screenwriter showed he had done so repeatedly.
Fuhrman retired from the LAPD after Simpson’s 1995 acquittal and at age 72 his return was doubtful. The decertification was likely meant to make clear that California will not tolerate such officers.
You're viewing a single thread.
California law bars ex-LAPD officer Mark Fuhrman, who lied at OJ Simpson trial, from policing
That’s a very specific law.
Roughly 100 officers have been decertified since 2023.
The article is just framing this whole thing bizarrely so that OJ Simpson is in the headline to get more clicks. Looks like with the new law they're just going through and decertifying any police officer, past or present, that meets certain criteria. He hasn't been a police officer since 1995. This law was passed in 2021.
Exactly. Here's a relevant snippet from the article:
The California decertification law was passed in 2021 in the wake of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and took effect in 2023. The law came 18 years after lawmakers stripped that power from a state police standards commission. That left it to local agencies to decide if officers should be fired, but critics said they could often simply get a job in a different department.
This is big, although I wonder how difficult it is for an officer to move to a different state and get a job even if they were decertified by this law.
At least moving to a different state is a high enough barrier that some bad dudes will end up taking new jobs where there is less temptation to ruin lives.
Oh, that makes more sense.