"As a legal system, and as a society, we have to ask ourselves whether these civil rights violations are a priority or concern or not."
For "minor" violations, they are not a priority at all. At least that's my experience and what I was told by that lawyer as well. If nobody in the system will enforce or defend your rights, then do you really even have those rights?
> If nobody in the system will enforce or defend your rights, then do you really even have those rights?
Nobody is a stretch. They can be enforced, just at great expense. So some people can defend those rights; others can’t.
We can’t extend this to the latter not having the rights because people intervene on behalf of others’ legal cases all the time, there are non-profits set up to do this (e.g. the ACLU and EFF) and some wealthy retired lawyers’ pass times.
The police don't, the DA doesn't, the judges don't - they are the main actors in the system. The civil rights attorneys and ACLU only take on the biggest issues due to constrained resources. Same with the DOJ Civil rights division.
Supposedly their job is to seek justice. Trampling people right, even if civil offenses, is something they aren't supposed to do. In fact it's their job to not violate those rights and take steps to mitigate their impact if they do occur. Violating those rights can undermine any criminal case they're working on.
Are you an attorney with experience with color of law violations, or just a citizen with an idea of what "should be correct" in a court of law? The American justice system is extremely convoluted. It's already been explicitly explained to you that "Most civil rights violations aren’t criminal offences. It literally isn’t the police or DA’s job". If you think there is a chance of changing this through "color of law" violations, I highly encourage you to seek counsel and pursue it - it would be a massive win! But, any lawyer worth their salt would tell you that it would be an impossible case and that you have a massive misunderstanding of how the justice system works.
You're completely misunderstanding the conversation here.
Did you see the quote about "legally, not at all"? This is easily identified as false. There are criminal charges in at least 4% of civil rights cases.
On top of that, we aren't just talking about charging some. We're talking about the idea that protection of civil rights is part of the job for police and prosecutors. This is also easy to prove. Police are required to Miranda-ize before interrogation, the agency they work for is required to investigate IAD complaints without being hostile to the complainant, etc. Prosecutors are required to maintain Guiglio lists, follow Brady for exculpatory evidence, etc. These are clearly defined examples of where the actors are in fact legally required to take steps to protect one's civil rights.
Do they sometimes violate these? Sure. The point is that it is in fact their job to ensure they are not violating people's civil rights. The reason they get away with it is that there's no real oversight, and even the civil cases are overseen by judges who are also part of the system and inevitably have biases to support the other members of that system.
For "minor" violations, they are not a priority at all. At least that's my experience and what I was told by that lawyer as well. If nobody in the system will enforce or defend your rights, then do you really even have those rights?