The field piping fabrication methods, field foundation building, and improper spring support sizing can result in excessive case stresses even though the systems were properly designed.
The investigation stems from accusations that the Police Department's failure to discipline officers in excessive force cases has fostered a climate of brutality.
The defense also plans to call James Fyfe, an expert on police shootings, who has often testified against the police in excessive force cases.
The case, growing out of an incident at a San Francisco military base during an appearance there six years ago by Vice President Al Gore, is an appeal by the federal government on an issue that comes up frequently in excessive force cases.
In responding to the government's appeal, Dr. Katz's lawyers agreed that the Supreme Court should take the case in order to "provide a clear, simple, uniform methodology for the trial courts to handle the issue of qualified immunity in excessive force cases".
A three-year inquiry by the office of the United States attorney in Brooklyn, prompted by the 1997 station house torture of Abner Louima, found that the department was so lenient with officers in excessive force cases that it had bred a climate that failed to deter brutal acts.
In fact, the critics say, the leniency in punishment over the last three years continues to demonstrate that the department does not have a commitment to discipline officers in excessive force cases and that only institutional and structural change under the oversight of a monitor can change the department's culture.
At the very least, the low or no bail for police officers in excessive force cases reinforces the strong public perception that judges and prosecutors reflexively give the kid glove treatment to police officers who are hauled into the docket in sharp contrast to a poor, African-American or Hispanic defendant.
Distinguishing the expected number of cases (seasonal variation in incidence) from excessive case numbers (outbreaks) can be difficult for many communicable diseases that exhibit complicated transmission dynamics that are imperfectly sampled by health systems.
In college speeches, he said the criminal justice system, by routinely acquitting officers in excessive-force cases, had given the police "a license to hunt down blacks".
