"Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse (Unless You’re in Law Enforcement)"

Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse (Unless You’re in Law Enforcement) | The Agitator:

"...Here’s the problem: If you have a permit, it’s perfectly legal to walk into a McDonalds in Connecticut while plainly carrying a firearm. As Gideon notes, the problem is that too many cops in Connecticut simply don’t know the law. Lawlor’s solution isn’t to educate them, but to come up with creative (and baseless) applications of other laws that allow cops to continue to violate the rights of Connecticut citizens who exercise their right to carry.

Gideon’s analogy to the camera issue is spot-on. Because exercising this particular right tends to upset police officers, and because police officers aren’t aware of the law, the state officials in charge of law enforcement have chosen to simply not give a damn about protecting this particular right. If a citizen exercising his rights combined with a cops’ ignorance of the law results in a “breach of the peace,” Lawlor’s conclusion is that the proper thing to do is charge you for breaching the peace. It’s an abhorrent and lazy mindset that forgets everything about who serves who in a free society. In a just world, Lawlor would be resigning over it..."

"First Circuit Panel Says There’s a Clear Constitutional Right To Openly Record Cops."

First Circuit Panel Says There’s a Clear Constitutional Right To Openly Record Cops. | The Agitator:

"The opinion not only states that there’s a First Amendment right to record cops, but that said right is firmly established, and that the cops should have known that it’s firmly established."

'via Blog this'

"Prosecutors don’t need more “tools” in these cases. They have plenty. They need more discretion. And empathy. And a more complete understanding of justice."

More at the link.

Prosecutors and Grieving Parents | The Agitator:

"When I’ve pointed out some hypothetical situations where an innocent parent or caretaker could be unjustly charged with the death of a child—cases where a parent may be guilty of poor decisions or bad parenting, but hasn’t broken any laws—the response is usually that prosecutors would never a grieving parent or caretaker under those scenarios.

Enter the Marietta, Georgia, case of 30-year-old Raquel Nelson... Last April, Nelson was crossing a street with her three children when her 4-year-old was struck and killed by a car. She was crossing at an intersection, but was apparently not in a designated crosswalk. The driver who killed her had been drinking, taking painkillers, and was blind in one eye. He also has two prior hit-and-run convictions. Nelson and her daughter were also struck and injured. Residents of Nelson’s apartment building have complained to the city about the intersection. The nearest crosswalk is a half mile away.

If we have as little to fear from overly aggressive prosecutors as supporters of Caylee’s Law claim, we could expect the prosecutor in this case to show some discretion and mercy for Nelson, right? Yes, she admits to jaywalking. Yes, she erred, and subjected her kids to unnecessary risk. But she just lost her son. It’s hard to fathom a more punishing, heartbreaking sentence. Moreover, the underlying “crime” here was a misdemeanor, one most of us commit every day. So mercy, right?

Of course not. Nelson was charged with second-degree vehicular homicide. Which is insane. She was convicted last week. When she’s sentenced later this month, she could spend more time in jail than the man who struck and killed her son. The prosecutor will say he was just enforcing the law. The jury will say they were just applying it. Both are excuses to duck responsibility (prosecutors can decline to bring charges, juries can nullify)..."

"This Is Your War on Drugs... Cops dressed like soldiers breaking into private homes, tossing concussion grenades, training their guns on nonviolent citizens, and slaughtering dogs as a matter of procedure." | The Agitator

This Is Your War on Drugs | The Agitator:

"...This isn’t like watching video of a car accident or a natural disaster. This doesn’t have to happen. You’re watching something your government does to your fellow citizens about 150 times per day in this country. If this very literal “drug war” insanity is going to continue to be waged in our name, we ought to make goddamned sure everyone knows exactly what it entails. And this is what it entails. Cops dressed like soldiers breaking into private homes, tossing concussion grenades, training their guns on nonviolent citizens, and slaughtering dogs as a matter of procedure."

Truth/Perspective 101 - "Osama Won" Via Hit & Run: Reason Magazine.

Osama Won - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine:

"...Osama bin Laden’s motivation for the attacks that he planned in the 1990s, and then the September 11 attacks, was to draw the U.S. and the West into a prolonged war—an actual war in Afghanistan, and a broader global war with Islam.

Osama got both. And we gave him a prolonged war in Iraq to boot. By the end of Obama’s first term, we’ll probably top 6,000 dead U.S. troops in those two wars, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans. The cost for both wars is also now well over $1 trillion.

We have also fundamentally altered who we are. A partial, off-the-top-of-my-head list of how we’ve changed since September 11...

We’ve sent terrorist suspects to “black sites” to be detained without trial and tortured.

We’ve turned terrorist suspects over to other regimes, knowing that they’d be tortured.

In those cases when our government later learned it got the wrong guy, federal officials not only refused to apologize or compensate him, they went to court to argue he should be barred from using our courts to seek justice, and that the details of his abduction, torture, and detainment should be kept secret.

We’ve abducted and imprisoned dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in Guantanamo who turned out to have been innocent. Again, the government felt no obligation to do right by them.

The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are implicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.

The government illegally spied and eavesdropped on thousands of American citizens.

Presidents from both of the two major political parties have claimed the power to detain suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, based solely on the president’s designation of them as an “enemy combatant,” essentially making the president prosecutor, judge, and jury. (I’d also argue that the treatment of someone like Bradley Manning wouldn’t have been tolerated before September 11.)

The current president has also claimed the power to execute U.S. citizens, off the battlefield, without a trial, and to prevent anyone from knowing about it after the fact.

The Congress approved, the president signed, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a broadly written law making it a crime to advocate for any organization the government deems sympathetic to terrorism. This includes challenging the “terrorist” designation in the first place.

Flying in America now means enduring a humiliating and hassling ritual that does little if anything to actually make flying any safer. Every time the government fails to catch an attempt at terrorism, it punishes the public for its failure by adding to the ritual.

American Muslims, a heartening story of success and assimilation, are now harassed and denigrated for merely trying to build houses of worship.

Without a warrant, the government can search and seize indefinitely the laptops and other personal electronic devices of anyone entering the country.

The Department of Homeland Security now gives terrorism-fighting grants for local police departments across the country to purchase military equipment, such as armored personnel carriers, which is then used against U.S. citizens, mostly to serve drug warrants..."

Police dogs are nonsense and send innocents to jail.

And the fault lies not with them, but as usual, with us. Click over for the the in-full detailed article.

The Mind of a Police Dog - Reason Magazine:

"...When we think dogs are using their well-honed noses to sniff out drugs or criminal suspects, they may actually be displaying a more recently evolved trait: an urgent desire to please their masters, coupled with the ability to read their cues.

Several studies and tests have shown that drug-sniffing dogs, scent hounds, and even explosive-detecting dogs are not nearly as accurate as they have been portrayed in court. A recent Chicago Tribune survey of traffic stops by suburban police departments from 2007 to 2009, for example, found that searches turned up contraband in just 44 percent of the cases where police dogs alerted to the presence of narcotics. (An alert is a signal, such as barking or sitting, that dogs are trained to display when they detect the target scent.) In stops involving Hispanic drivers, the dogs' success rate was just 27 percent. The two largest departments the Tribune surveyed—the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois State Police—said they don't even keep track of such information.

...The problem is our confusion about when dogs are picking up a scent and when they are responding to cues from their handlers. The Economist's "Babbage" blog summarizes a recent study led by Lisa Lit, a neurologist (and former dog handler) at the University of California-Davis...

The results? Dog/handler teams correctly completed a search with no alerts in just 21 of the 144 walk-throughs. The other 123 searches produced an astounding 225 alerts, every one of them false.

...the U.S. Supreme Court says a dog sniff is not invasive enough to qualify as a "search" under the Fourth Amendment, so police do not need a warrant or probable cause to have a dog smell your luggage or your car. At the same time, however, the courts treat an alert by a drug-sniffing dog as probable cause for an actual, no-question-about-it search, the kind that involves going through your pockets, opening your luggage, looking in your trunk, and perusing your personal belongings. The problem is that a dog barking or sitting may be responding not to a smell but to his handler's hunch about a suspect's guilt. The reason we have a Fourth Amendment is precisely to prevent searches based on hunches.

The consequences of misusing police dogs go well beyond unconstitutional searches. A drug dog's alert can help establish a connection between a suspect's property and drug activity, allowing police to seize the property for possible forfeiture...

...In 2006 University of North Carolina law professor Richard Myers conducted a statistical analysis of police dog accuracy tests and concluded that the animals were not reliable enough to produce probable cause for a search, let alone serve as the cornerstone of a conviction. At least five states have banned or restricted the use of scent lineups in criminal cases, but they are still frequently used in courtrooms across the country..."

"Civility is nice; nonviolence is even better."

Well said.

Civility is nice; nonviolence is even better | Richmond Times-Dispatch:

"The frenzy surrounding Jared Loughner's rampage in Tucson this month has finally died down. As tempers cool, perhaps distance could turn reflection toward some bigger questions. Many Republicans and Democrats have lamented the frequency of violent rhetoric in politics. Fewer seem to have regrets about the actual use of violence itself.

...what about violence by the state? Liberals and conservatives alike often embrace it as a means to an end they desire.

Government, as Max Weber famously put it, is distinguished from other social organizations by its claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. A church or club might invite you to join, but cannot conscript you as government can. A developer cannot take your property by eminent domain; only government can. Acme might try to persuade you to buy widgets through advertising. A gay-rights group might try to coerce Acme to adopt gay-friendly personnel policies by organizing a boycott of Acme's products. But Acme cannot make you buy widgets at the point of a gun, and gay-rights groups cannot change Acme's employee policies by kidnapping the CEO's daughter.

...The debate over the size and scope of government, then, is an argument over when to use violence to change things and circumstances consensual activity cannot. Liberals (broadly speaking) find inequality odious and think the government should use force in the economic arena by redistributing wealth but leave individuals alone in matters of personal morality, such as whom they have sex with. Conservatives (broadly speaking) are less troubled by inequality and disdain the redistributive uses of government power. But social conservatives are outraged by immorality, as they define it, and therefore think the state should use the threat of violence to enforce personal moral codes by banning prostitution, homosexual sodomy, and the like.

Then there are a small minority of diehard libertarians who would like to minimize government involvement in both arenas, and a small minority of diehard communitarians who think government should dictate behavior of every stripe.

Admittedly, this oversimplifies the issue...

Force is sometimes necessary. We must have police and courts and national defense and environmental protection and so on. But government at all levels does much more nowadays than is strictly necessary, because both liberals and conservatives delight in using it to make other people do what they would not do through mutual consent.

In the wake of the butchery in Tucson, it has been nice to hear many people say we should not speak so well of violence. It would be even nicer to hear more say we should not vote for it quite so often, either."

Via On Voting for Less Violence | The Agitator

Once again, "drug warriors" fail to think things through.

Shockingly, Anti-Meth Laws Have Had Unintended Consequences - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine:

"An A.P. investigation into the fallout from those meth fighting laws that restrict the sale of cold medication has turned up results that 'surprised' law makers and law enforcement officials...

Meth use was also up 34 percent in 2009. So the new laws are inconveniencing law-abiding people who want to treat cold and allergy symptoms, have had either zero or a positive effect on meth use, have lured new people into the meth trade, and have created a bigger market for smuggling meth and meth ingredients into the country from Mexico.

But perhaps we should go easy on the politicians who passed these laws. I mean, it's not like anyone could possibly have predicted any of this."

"...public safety laws need to be clear, enforceable, and should actually achieve their intended purpose." - Our drunk driving laws are stupid.

"...the average BAC in alcohol-related fatal accidents was 0.17, and two-thirds of such accidents involved drivers with BACs of 0.14 or higher. In fact, drivers with BACs between 0.01 and 0.03 were involved in more fatal accidents than drivers with BACs between 0.08 and 0.10."

More on Abolishing Drunk Driving Laws - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine:

"...The fact that people between .08 and .10 aren't impaired enough to make the sorts of mistakes clearly impaired drivers make necessitates the need for the roadblocks. Which in addition to being constitutionally suspect, are more revenue generators than highway safety endeavors.

E.G.'s argument seems to be that because BAC is some way of measuring alcohol impairment, we should go ahead and use it, even if it isn't a particularly accurate method of measurement, and even if the cutoff point we choose is mostly arbitrary. It's really an argument against consuming any alcohol before driving. Maybe that's what he wants. I'm convinced that's what MADD wants. But let's then at least be up front about that.

... But I'm not arguing in favor of a freedom to drive while obliterated, or that there's some right to drive drunk that outweighs the safety of other motorists and pedestrians. I'm arguing that public safety laws need to be clear, enforceable, and should actually achieve their intended purpose. I'm not sure our current DWI laws meet any of those criteria. (It's just a small sample from one city, but see this recent article from Nashville, where DWI arrests are down by a third due to budgetary woes—to no effect on actual DWI fatalities.)"

The Thin Blue Line - "America's Most Successful Stop Snitchin' Campaign."

Yep, this.

America's Most Successful Stop Snitchin' Campaign - Reason Magazine:

"The most disturbing aspect of these stories is not that there are bad cops in Kansas City, New York, and Albuquerque. It's not even that other cops covered for them, or that police unions have institutionalized the protection of bad cops. The most disturbing part of these cases is that the cover-up and retaliation extend all the way to the top of the chain of command—and that so far there has been no action, or even condemnation, from the elected officials who are supposed to hold police leaders accountable."

"Proving once again that pot ruins lives. Not because of the drug itself, but because of what the government will do to you if they catch you with it."

On getting kids to rat out their pot-smoking parents.  Wonder if Officer Friendly mentioned they'd be torn out their homes and thrown into the Family Services system over misdemeanor levels of marijuana possession.  Hm... probably not.

D.A.R.E.: Ripping Families Apart Since 1983 | The Agitator

"Another Study Shows Widespread Prosecutorial Misconduct, Little Sanction | The Agitator"

Little galls me more than abuse of authority.

Another Study Shows Widespread Prosecutorial Misconduct, Little Sanction | The Agitator:

"...prosecutors are almost never sanctioned for misconduct, even egregious violations that lead to wrongful convictions."

"My favorite thing about religion has always been the music." - Ditto.

Bonus Afternoon Links | The Agitator:

"Interesting article about black churches in Harlem marketing themselves to curious tourists. I say more power to them. My favorite thing about religion has always been the music."

Girl forced to apologize for her own rape in church -- more of that healing power of religion.

Evil.

Alleged Rape Victim Tina Anderson Accuses Trinity Baptist Church Deacon Ernest Willis of Abuse - ABC News:

"Tina Anderson was only 15 when she said she was forced to stand terrified before her entire Baptist congregation to confess her 'sin' -- she had become pregnant. What she wasn't allowed to tell the group was that the pregnancy was the result of being raped by a church deacon, a man twice her age."

Via Sunday Links | The Agitator

"Harass people for non-crimes while brushing off actual crimes, and the people are eventually going to lose trust in law enforcement." - Done.

Oh, You Mean Those Quotas - Reason Magazine:

"In March, I wrote a column detailing a number of credible accusations made against the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for instituting a quota system for arrests and for stop-and-frisk searches. At the same time, additional allegations charged higher-ups in the department with actively discouraging crime victims from reporting crimes—as well as downgrading felonies to misdemeanors—in order to make the city's crime statistics look better. Taken together, these allegations painted an ugly picture of New Yorkers being stopped, hassled, and frisked for either petty offenses or for no offense at all, while the victims of acutal crimes faced unsympathetic law enforcement officials.

...Now comes another set of recordings from another New York precinct that validates both the Molloy study and Polanco's allegations. Earlier this month, the Village Voice obtained over 100 recordings of roll call meetings in Brooklyn's 81st precinct made by Officer Adrian Schoolcraft. They're damning.

...In other words, the statistical manipulation extends beyond property crimes. Journalist Debbie Nathan, who was sexually assaulted in a city park last February, says that she was shocked to learn that the officers who wrote up her report classified the crime as a misdemeanor. It was later upgraded to a felony, but only after Nathan went to the district attorney. And according to the DA's investigation, the six officers who responded to Nathan's attack admitted leaving key portions of her story out of the report. As Nathan told the Village Voice, rape crisis centers throughout New York City have documented similar complaints from victims of sexual assault.

...Officers were instructed to arrest people for "blocking the sidewalk," for not possessing ID (even while just feet from their homes), even for no reason at all (cops were told to "articulate" a charge at a later time). The cops were told to make arrests even if they knew they'd be voiding the charge at the end of their shifts. As a sergeant implores in one recording, "Again, it's all about the numbers."

...This is the natural progression of two related policing trends in New York: Broken Windows, which posits that cracking down on petty crime leads to a reduction in more serious crime, and COMPSTAT, a data-driven method of policing. There's debate over the effectiveness of both policies, but even if they do work to drive down crime, it's important to understand the political realities of the institutions that are using them.

Politicians want lower crime rates. This is the demand they make of the police officials who report to them. If your policing philosophy is Broken Windows, and your method of accountability is COMPSTAT, over time there will be a natural pull on the police department to enforce increasingly petty offenses and to manipulate data on more serious crimes...

In addition to the obvious civil liberties concerns about stopping, arresting, and holding people for non-crimes, these practices also poison police-community relations, particularly among minority groups. Harass people for non-crimes while brushing off actual crimes, and the people are eventually going to lose trust in law enforcement."

"Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan."

America at war with itself.

More Militarized Than the Military | The Agitator:

"A reader who asks his name not be used writes about the drug raid video from Columbia, Missouri:

I am a US Army officer, currently serving in Afghanistan. My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan.

For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they’re after is present at the location, and that it’s too dangerous to try less coercive methods...

Oh, and all of the bad guys we’re going after are closely tied to killing and maiming people.

What might be amazing to American cops is that the vast majority of our targets surrender when called out.

I don’t have a clear picture of the resources available to most police departments, but even so, I don’t see any reason why they can’t use similar methods.

I’ve heard similar accounts from other members of the military. A couple of years ago after I’d given a speech on this issue, a retired military officer and former instructor at West Point specifically asked me to stop using the term “militarization,” because he thought comparing SWAT teams to the military reflected poorly on the military."

"I don’t promote government failure, I expect it. And my expectations are met fairly often." - Radley Balko.

A Distinction | The Agitator:

"I don’t promote government failure, I expect it. And my expectations are met fairly often. What I promote is the idea that more people share my expectations, so fewer people are harmed by government failure, and so we can stop this slide toward increasingly large portions of our lives being subject to the whims, interests, and prejudices of politicians.

...When government fails, people like Dinauer and, well, the government claim it’s a sign that we need more government. 

...It’s a nifty trick. The right does it with national security. The fact that we haven’t had a major terrorist attack since September 11, 2001 proves that the Bush administration’s heavy-handed, high-security approach to fighting terrorism worked! But if we had suffered another attack, the same people would have been arguing that we need to surrender moreof our civil liberties to the security state. Two sides. Same coin..."

Yes, this. - "Paramilitary police don't make us safer."

BALKO: Paramilitary police don't make us safer - Washington Times:

"...SWAT teams today overwhelmingly are used to serve search warrants on suspected drug offenders. Where their purpose once was to defuse an already violent situation, today they break into homes to look for illicit drugs, creating violence and confrontation where there was none before.

Whatever you think of drug prohibition, this is the wrong way to enforce it. Even if the police nabbed a drug dealer and contraband every time they broke into a home on a SWAT raid, there would be reason to object to these tactics. There's an old Cold War saying commonly attributed to Winston Churchill (though I haven't found any hard documentation that he said it) that goes, "Democracy means that when there's a knock on the door at 3 a.m., it's probably the milkman." The idea is that free societies don't send armed government agents dressed in black to raid the private homes of citizens for political crimes. Given that all parties who participate in a drug transaction do so voluntarily, the prohibition of drugs is at heart a political policy. SWAT raids are being used increasingly to break up poker games and suspected houses of prostitution, too.

Of course, the police don't always get the people they're after in these raids. In a paper I wrote for the Cato Institute in 2006, I documented dozens of incidents in which police raided the wrong home, terrorizing, wounding and sometimes killing innocent people. Since that paper came out, there have been more high-profile incidents, including the 2006 Atlanta raid in which police shot and killed innocent, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, and the 2007 raid on the home of Berwyn Heights, Md., Mayor Cheye Calvo in which the police shot and killed Mr. Calvo's two black Labradors. Small towns considering forming a SWAT team might want to consider the lawsuits and settlements Atlanta and Prince George's County inevitably will be financing in coming years.

...Supporters of using SWAT teams for drug enforcement often argue that they are reserved for high-level, heavily armed and particularly dangerous drug suppliers. But when newspapers have surveyed the use of no-knock raids after a high-profile incident in their respective cities over the years, they usually have found that the raids don't turn huge supplies of drugs and high-powered weapons and, more often than not, result in little more than misdemeanor charges against the suspect."

"...if your goal is not to be abused... then “don’t be mouthy to a cop” is excellent practical advice. But dammit, we shouldn’t have to give that advice."

Yes, all of this. 

From Popehat, via Radley Balko.

Flex Your Rights Debuts 10 Rules for Dealing With Police Film About Asserting Rights When Stopped By Cops | Popehat:

"See, if your goal is not to be abused, wrongfully arrested, falsely accused, searched without probable cause, or proned out on the pavement because you irritated someone with a gun and a badge, then “don’t be mouthy to a cop” is excellent practical advice. But dammit, we shouldn’t have to give that advice. The concept that you should expect to be abused if you aren’t meek (or, to be more realistic, subservient) in dealing with public servants ought to be abhorrent to a society of free people. Courtesy is admirable, and unnecessary rudeness is not, but rudeness ought not be seen as inviting government employees to break the law. But the reality is that our society largely issues apologias for, not denunciations of, police abuse. The prevailing belief is that claims of abuse are about lawyers or crooks trying to game the system, that people accused of crimes generally committed them, and that cops are heroes of the sort who deserve the benefit of the doubt when their account of a roadside encounter differs from that of a citizen. Our society, for the most part, indulges cops in their expectation that citizens will be subservient. As a result, “don’t talk back to a cop” remains tragically apt practical advice.

Moreover, the truth of it is that many cops will interpret an assertion of your constitutional rights, however politely delivered, as a rude challenge. They are supported in that view by four decades of “law and order” talk that classifies constitutional rights as mere instrumentalities of crime, not as the rules by which we have chosen to live.

Shame on us if we put up with that."

Witness! The amazing hypocrisy!

Not. To. Be. Trusted. Ever.

Anyone care to explain how "professional courtesy" isn't corruption or a crime?

Law Enforcement and DWI | The Agitator:

"A quick roundup of recent stories on law enforcement officials and DWI laws…

• Ten police officers in Westchester County, New York admit to local newspaper that they routinely let other officers off after catching them driving drunk off duty.
• Off-duty, possibly drunk South Carolina officer pulled over after a chase demands “professional courtesy” she says is customarily granted to other officers. She was charged with reckless driving and disorderly conduct, but wasn’t arrested or given a breath test, and was allowed to go home.
• Chicago police officer shown to have faked dozens of DWI arrests won’t face criminal charges.
• Off-duty Massachusetts state police lieutenant crashes into pickup truck, causing the truck to flip several times. Officer admitted drinking earlier in the day and two open beer cans were found in his car. Other officers don’t administer field sobriety test for 2 1/2 hours, after allowing him to talk to his attorney. He was also never given breath or blood tests. He did get a $20 traffic ticket.
• From last year, DWI charges dropped against Nevada DA who caused two crashes within six hours while in California, and tested over the legal limit after the second. He was allowed to plead to reckless driving."