When Defending Cops Becomes Impossible

[Ivanhoe]

Bravo;

https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/pushback-former-police-chief-who-illegally-raided-local-kansas-newspaper-charged/

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The wheels of justice ground slow, but grind they do: In August 2023 the entire police department of Marion, Kansas, performed a Gestapo-like raid of a local newspaper’s offices as well as the homes the town’s vice mayor, the newspaper’s 98-year-old owner Joan Meyer (resulting in her death the next day from a heart attack), and one reporter.

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It appears that these prosecutors found there was no grounds for charging Cody for the raids, but his actions allowed them to charge him with obstruction of judicial process, though no specifics of that charge have as yet been released.

Most importantly, the prosecutors concluded without doubt that no crime of any kind had been committed by any of the people accused by Cody. He thus had no cause for doing any search, other than his own personal vendatta.

 

I suppose a "vendatta" is a vendetta involving data.

Unfortunately;

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Meanwhile the judge who approved the search warrant, Laura Viar, managed to escape discipline for her actions. In the secret proceedings before the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct, her defense made her appear quite incompetent and untrustworthy, since it was clear she approved a warrant when there was no evidence of any probable cause for a search. The commission let her off the hook, but the public outrage against her and the commission still lingers.

 

[JWB]

Will any of them get punished?

 

[Mr King]

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Father body slammed and arrested by cops for taking "suspicious" early morning walk with his 6 year old son

 

[Murph]

On 8/15/2024 at 8:46 AM, Ivanhoe said:

Bravo;

https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/pushback-former-police-chief-who-illegally-raided-local-kansas-newspaper-charged/

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I suppose a "vendatta" is a vendetta involving data.

Unfortunately;

 

Judges protect their own.  As do lawyers.  They have no accountability at all.

[JWB]

Case closed.

 

[R011]

5 hours ago, JWB said:

Case closed.

 

And what happened to the rapist?  Charged?  Fired?  Promoted?

[Skywalkre]

5 minutes ago, R011 said:

And what happened to the rapist?  Charged?  Fired?  Promoted?

I'd laugh if the last bit didn't have some truth to it.

As to this PoS it looks like the system actually worked.  He died in Federal prison earlier this year while serving a 14-year sentence related to these events.

[Skywalkre]

Took 'em long enough to file charges considering it was pretty obvious from the bodycam footage.  Still, there's the whole issue of if he'll actually be convicted.  Per this quote from later in the article that's a rare thing in FL (as is being charged in the first place).

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It is highly unusual for Florida law enforcement officers to be charged for an on-duty killing — it has only happened four times in the last 35 years before Friday. Even then, only one of those officers has been convicted.

Here's the opening of the article and link:

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Ex-sheriff’s deputy charged in fatal shooting of Florida airman

CRESTVIEW, Fla. — A Florida Panhandle sheriff’s deputy is facing a charge of manslaughter with a firearm in connection with the fatal shooting of an airman who opened his apartment door while holding a gun.

Former Okaloosa County deputy Eddie Duran was charged Friday in the May 3 shooting death of Senior Airman Roger Fortson, Assistant State Attorney Greg Marcille said Friday. That is a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2024/08/23/ex-sheriffs-deputy-charged-in-fatal-shooting-of-florida-airman/

[sunday]

This is different. Intra-police shenanigans. One does not know if to cry or to laugh.

 

[Ivanhoe]

TMK we don't really have a "landmark court cases" thread, so I'll put it here;

https://thetexan.news/judicial/geofencing-warrants-split-appeals-courts-after-5th-circuit-finds-fourth-amendment-violation/article_ba4bf1e8-5e4d-11ef-ae84-e3b2d62ebd13.html
 

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Geofencing warrants, the court explained, are different from normal search warrants that are based on probable cause and allow the police to search a known specific person or thing. Instead, law enforcement uses geofencing warrants when the identity of the suspect isn’t known, such as in this instance.

The warrants work in reverse from traditional search warrants. Most commonly, as with this case, investigators ask Google to search a database containing data from every one of their users who has their location history enabled on their smartphones.

 

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When Google receives a geofencing warrant, the company must search all records in the Sensorvault for location data that corresponds to the warrant — for all accounts that were within a certain geographic location at a certain time.

This creates a list of potential suspects, and in this case, led agents to McThunel.

The appeals court took a critical tone in pointing out that rather than rationing this powerful new tool for major cases, law enforcement has rampantly “abused” it to investigate petty crimes, flooding Google with warrants.

 

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The appeals court agreed the warrants violated the Fourth Amendment. 

“Geofence warrants present the exact sort of ‘general, exploratory rummaging’ that the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent,” the panel wrote, noting the history of what prompted the Founding Fathers to write the Fourth Amendment.

“The Fourth Amendment was the founding generation’s response to the reviled ‘general warrants’ and ‘writs of assistance’ of the colonial era, which allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity.”

“It is undeniable that general warrants are plainly unconstitutional,” they concluded.

The judges also noted that their ruling contradicts a decision by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that geofencing warrants were not “searches” under the Fourth Amendment because Google, not the government, did the searching.

“This proposition is breathtaking,” the court said in criticizing their judicial peers.

 

To this layman, this sounds like a Good Thing. Else state and federal LE will simply find a cooperative judge and use a flurry of geofence warrants to vacuum up location/time/ID data for everyone, creating a Stasi-like monitoring system.

 

 

[DB]

On 7/31/2024 at 2:34 AM, Tim Sielbeck said:

Not quite.  There is a W Va. judge that recently lost her AI because she wasn’t acting properly.  And didn’t an Austin prosecutor get sued for withholding evidence within the last two decades?

Coming late to this party, but there is a difference between protection from litigation and protection from consequences.

In this case, just because the judge can't be prosecuted doesn't mean they can't be fired. Similarly, if someone with immunity is found to have lied in court and that has resulted in an incorrect verdict, there would be grounds for appeal at the least, on the grounds that the verdict was unsafe.

What seems to have gone missing here is that somewhere the responsibility to "play the game" properly has been lost by some (many?) and the protection they receive from malicious prosecution (the immunity, however qualified) is being misused. Enforce the professional standards properly and this problem goes away.

It sems to me that at least the following should be considered (some or all of which may be present in some parts of US police/sheriff departments, but not all).

- Minimum standard professional training. Follow a national standard training regime (or demonstrably equivalent alternative) to gain a departmental certification.

- Professional code of conduct. Violations to be investigated professionally, by an independent body and proven infractions result in gross misconduct dismissal and disbarment (highest level of possible punishment)

- National register of disbarred ex-officers to prevent jurisdiction-hopping power trippers.

I know that many dislike the idea of national (essentially for the US meaning Federal) level interference, but the intent here would be to establish a common level of competence and consistency so that citizens would have a common understanding of what to expect from law enforcement, wherever they meet it. If a non-Federal arrangement would work, then have at it. There could be State-level cooperation on developing such initiatives, that way you get to choose at State level whether you want to join in the initiative.

Of course, unions could do something useful and lead on the officer competence front, as if they were a traditional skills guild, but if the accounts here are anything to go by, that's not what they do in the US.

[Murph]

A bad cop is a bad cop, no caveats, and they need to be removed from the profession.  But good cops who are doing a job in a terrible world do not need to be punished because of "optics".  

[NickM]

Didn't Donut Operator have LOTSA DEI failures in the Po=Po? I recall a bunch of male NYPD (?) officers trying physically overpower a guy trying to grab the holstered weapon away from one of 'em, and the clearly bloated, overweight wymmyn DEI hire fired a couple pistol shots into the room 'to help out'---I think one or two of the other officers physically ejected her from the apartment before she got anybody killed.  Another where three other bloated DEI (Chiraq PD?) wymmyn hires tried to restrain a single male shoplifter and failed?  Then there's one where the 'Girlboss' clumsily executes a trailer entry with 'her team' and when shots start flying, she runs out and cowers==right in the line of fire but outside of the trailer?

[rmgill]

He or Angry Cops. Officer Tatum has had a few as well. 

Here's one....

 

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-09-03/oakland-police-officer-home-illegal-weed-grow
 

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When officers of the state Department of Cannabis Control swooped in on a neighborhood in the Bay Area city of Antioch this spring, they found what they were looking for — about $1 million in illegal marijuana — and one surprise.

One of the three houses they raided was owned by an officer of the Oakland Police Department.

In an email, the department confirmed that it “is aware of the allegations made against one of our members and is cooperating with outside law enforcement agencies on the case.”

The officer was placed on administrative leave April 30, and the matter is under investigation, the statement said.

 

There's that old saying, cops have the best dope.

[rmgill]

He was just staying there. It's not his house. It's his cousin's house. He has no idea how it got there. He doesn't know his cousin's name.  

[NickM]

34 minutes ago, rmgill said:

He was just staying there. It's not his house. It's his cousin's house. He has no idea how it got there. He doesn't know his cousin's name.  

DEI Oakland cop?

[rmgill]

5 minutes ago, NickM said:

DEI Oakland cop?

I was more citing the oft heard responses to someone found with drugs in their pants. 

These aren't my pants! I don't don't know how these got here. These are my cousin's pants! When asked for the cousin's name, the response is slow as if trying to make up a name of someone not his cousin. 

[JWB]

41 minutes ago, NickM said:

DEI Oakland cop?

PRC

https://www.foxnews.com/us/chinese-nationals-operate-nearly-illegal-indoor-marijuana-farm-largest-us-county-sergeant-says

[JWB]

No end to the ineptitude.

 

[Murph]

DEI hires are pretty stupid and this proves it.

[Tim Sielbeck]

 

[Mr King]

10 minutes ago, Tim Sielbeck said:

 

I worked in a photo lab during the golden age of film photography before everything was replaced by digital. I got quite a few nude photos, and while I was a dumb kid and the temptation was great at times to make copies, I never did. Though the photos of a very stacked petite redhead and her girlfriends having fun in a big bathtub will forever be burned into my memory lol.

 

[JWB]

Yep, he did.

 

[Murph]

Yeah, that is why a good IA office is needed.