Police officers are rarely charged with crimes accusing them of brutality.

        And when they are, prosecutors say, convictions are hard to come by.

        The deadlocked jury in the case of Police Officer Robert “Blaine” Jorg has reinforced some of those perceptions this week.

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        Officer Jorg's trial ended with an acquittal on an assault charge and a 10-2 vote for acquittal on a felony charge of involuntary manslaughter.

        Prosecutor Mike Allen describes cases against police officers as “an uphill battle.” Other law enforcement officials, from New York to Washington, D.C., have complained for years about the difficulty of winning such cases.

        Numbers supporting those perceptions are hard to come by. But prosecutors readily cite anecdotal evidence, from the first Rodney King case in Los Angeles to the recent acquittal of New York officers accused of shooting to death an innocent man.

        “Judges and juries show extraordinary deference to police officers,” said Samuel Walker, an author and criminal justice professor at the University of Nebraska. “It's just extremely difficult to obtain a conviction.”

        He said jurors tend to give police the benefit of the doubt in tough cases and are sometimes willing to overlook their flaws when confronted with solid evidence.

        He also said police officers — regardless of the charges against them — almost always impress a jury more than the suspects they are accused of harming.

        Drug users, prostitutes and others with checkered pasts rarely come across as sympathetic figures, Mr. Walker said.

        Some say police are treated differently in court because they are different from most defendants. They are given more authority and more power than anyone else.

        They carry guns, billy clubs and Mace, and they are permitted to use deadly force to protect themselves or others.

        “Police cannot perform their jobs without those powers,” said Scott Croswell, Mr. Jorg's attorney. He said police are rarely charged or convicted because “they very rarely commit a criminal offense.”

        “In a large percentage of cases,” Mr. Croswell said, “they did nothing wrong.”

        The U.S. Department of Justice charged nearly 100 officers with criminal civil rights violations last year, and won convictions in 80 percent of the cases. But the conviction rate for non-law enforcement officers was over 90 percent.

        Those cases often are considered the most egregious, and therefore the most winnable.

        Prosecutors at the local level complain about much lower success rates. A 1998 study by the Vera Institute, a non-profit research group, found that local prosecutors often are not as well-prepared to handle the cases as federal lawyers specializing in them.

        Keith Fangman, president of Cincinnati's police union, said the complaints about cases against police are unfounded. “The accusation ... is an outright fabrication,” he said.

        He noted that at least four Cincinnati officers were convicted in the past few years for crimes ranging from soliciting sex to drug trafficking.

        Prosecutors have been less successful, however, in use of force cases. Officer Jorg's case ended in a mistrial, and Officer Stephen Roach was recently acquitted of misdemeanor charges in the shooting death of Timothy Thomas in April.

        Mr. Thomas' death triggered days of rioting and unrest in Cincinnati.

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