Court to Cops: No Immunity If You 'Don't Have Time for Constitutional Bullshit'
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I'm increasingly of the belief that the domestic police in the United States shouldn't even be called a force, they should be called a service. They should not carry firearms, and they should not receive primarily military training. They should be well paid and receive aggressive financial incentives to continue their education. They should always be wearing a body cam when on duty.
There will always be a need for armed police at some point, but that point is not the streets, and not daily response to mundane events.
The bad cop stereotype is universal. But America's current police culture in my opinion encourages bad cop behavior. The culture is way too military-oriented versus community oriented at the moment. It is hard to "protect and serve" your community if you are always at "war" with some "enemy". This case is a perfect example of that.
It seems to me like the most outrageous police brutality sources would be solved by high-level oversight.
Clearly the local police made various constitutional violations against a suicidal war veteran and they trashed his place and left it for him to come back to. How jaded and unconcerned?
Sadly one of my former employees left and joined the war and while there lost a buddy in Iraq. After being home for 12 months he took his life leaving all of us in shock. If police did that to a hero who are they willing to go for bat for????
If he was suicidal it even makes the actions of the police even worse. The whole issue is not the initial interactions with the police nor their initial entree into the home. The issue is the second and third entree into his home and unconstitutional search of his home. This occurred hours after the first search was conducted and the subject was getting medical treatment.
...and was done so to encourage early intervention, sometimes before the veteran becomes suicidal.
https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/About/AboutVeteransCrisis...
>> In 2011, the National Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline was renamed the Veterans Crisis Line to encourage Veterans and their families and friends to make the call. People who know a Veteran best may be the first to recognize emotional distress and reach out for support when issues reach a crisis point — and well before a Veteran is at risk of suicide.
No one. This should be obvious if you're living in the US. Even if you've never had an encounter with police, watch ANY cop show, especially the reality ones. Every roughly 20-30 seconds you will hear some cop talk about how dangerous the job is (it really isn't) and how their main objective is to get back to their family. The police does not give a fuck about you and they certainly will not "stand up" for you if you are in danger. They will get back home to their families at all costs, including your own life. The rest of the "serve and protect" bullshit is for rubes and other idiots who are dumb enough to believe it and whose parents did them a huge disservice by not teaching them about one of the gravest dangers of American society.
Rather than rally against the police in general, we really should focus on identifying the sources of the horrible ones and how to develop more of the honest officers. Personally I believe this can only occur through transparency and accountability but that's just my 2 cents.
I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying, until you have truly revolutionary change, all cops will be perceived as the absolute danger to life, limb, and property that they potentially are. That is unfortunate for the good ones, but that's life. I don't go around questioning whether members of other gangs like the Bloods or Crips have ill intent for me, so I certainly will not question whether members of the biggest, most heavily armed, most dangerous gang in the US have ill intent for me. I just assume they do because the majority do.
A really significant portion of my "official" interactions with police have been negative. I've listed these here before:
- I watched a friend being roughed up by cops. (not beaten, but physically pushed around) for absolutely no reason.
- I've had evidence of a traffic violation fabricated against me. (full disclosure: I was guilty, but that doesn't excuse lying about evidence)
- I've had police at a traffic stop curse at me and throw my documents. (I understand why he felt this way, but it was due to him making assumptions, starting with a belligerent attitude, and misreading the situation)
- Some older kids were physically bullying me and a friend. We went to a cop for help, and the extent of his aid was to say to us "better watch out, they'll probably hit you again".
Given the limited amount of interaction people normally have with police, the number of times this has happened to me says that I'm either a lightning rod for lousy cops, or the problem is more than just a few isolated bad eggs.
But what communities want is a police force that provides safety to citizens, not one that fights enemies. There's a big difference between those mindsets.
The military's job is to defeat enemies. If you are a soldier, enemies are people who want to kill you, the soldier. They're enemies when everyone wakes up and they're enemies when everyone goes to bed. So the soldiers' job in-country is to sort people into enemies and civilians; to defend civilians and kill enemies.
In the U.S., a police officer's job is to enforce the law. They are supposed to be policing behavior, not sorting people. Everyone is a civilian. A civilian who broke the law is not an enemy, and the justice system is not seeking to defeat them. The law is supposed to punish behavior in proportion to the crime, and in accordance with the written law.
Now of course it's not that simple; there are organized crime syndicates, like drug gangs or terrorist cells, who target police. But the reality is that those are a tiny tiny percentage of the population.
But law enforcement has spent a decade re-organizing itself to defeat them. That's how you get an "Emergency Response Team" (SWAT) setting up a secure perimeter and clearing houses around a sleepy veteran who just called for a little support, as in this story.
They didn't show up to help a veteran; they showed up to defeat an enemy.
Unfortunately in a society where a lot of citizens have fire arms, where gang culture exist this will not be possible at all. How many times police was shot on routine daily events? Police not carrying weapons is not realistic in USA.
Hyperbole much? I expect most arrests are done without firearms being drawn.
> plenty of people are willing to kill to avoid that outcome.
And plenty of people are willing to kill for other reasons too, which is why no one's discussing that zero police officers should carry firearms. What's being questioned is the policy of all of them doing it.
It's a given here in the US that the moment you as much as appear to draw a gun at a cop, you're getting shot. So I don't think criminals even have to think about it to know that it's a "kill first or die" situation, once you're down that route. Now, if the criminal knows that the cop is unarmed, all of that changes: his gun is just leverage. He flees (or expels the cops off his house), which is undesirable; but then's when the situation can be escalated. No more "wild West" situations of "this guy might shoot me any moment, better be prepared to kill him for my life".
I'm going to call bullshit on that. Proportionally few criminals are North Hollywood Shootout types that require lethal force to be subdued. I would think that a very large fraction of arrests can be accomplished with threats of extra legal penalties or physical man-handling.
Certain officers and teams absolutely should well armed, but it should be a much smaller subset of the force. A call for deadly force should be an explicit, intentional escalation.
If the police don't have any weapons, why would they patrol ANY area that might be dangerous?
Edit: I see you recognize that some should be armed. Perhaps you're right. Maybe its discretionary based on your patrol. They could deputize parking enforcement. Oh wait, that might be worse haha.
>what makes it different from the criminal stumbling upon a postman, an unarmed private security guard, or just a regular unarmed person?
Is that police officers jobs have them actively going towards and engaging these criminals, not just accidentally stumbling upon them like the postman.
"gang culture" and "lots of firearms" are not reasons for beat cops to be armed on a daily basis.
"how many times has a police officer been shot during routine daily events?" - this is not relevant. Having a gun does not protect you from being shot. Quite the opposite, in general.
If a police officer is attempting to make an arrest and experiences armed resistance, then it is of course necessary to have a small, dedicated part of the police force that is authorized to use firearms.
About 64 officers die per year. Not all of those are shot.
In 2013: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release...
>> 76 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents in 2013. Of these, 27 law enforcement officers died as a result of felonious acts, and 49 officers died in accidents.
Most of those felonious killings were by gun.
>> In 2013, of the 49,851 officers assaulted while performing their duties, 29.2 percent were injured. The largest percentage of victim officers (31.2 percent) were assaulted while responding to disturbance calls. Assailants used personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.) in 79.8 percent of the incidents, firearms in 4.5 percent of incidents, and knives or other cutting instruments in 1.8 percent of the incidents. Other types of dangerous weapons were used in 13.9 percent of assaults. Expanded assault details have been included in the 2013 publication. Data for assaults during which officers were injured with firearms or knives/other cutting instruments are located in new tables, figures, and selected narratives.
From this I don't know if the 4.5% of gun incidents refers to 4.5% of 49,851 officers assaulted, or to the 29.2% of those which were injured.
How many people are shot and killed by police each year? We don't know, the police don't count these numbers. How many people are shot and injured by police each year? Again, we don't know, because the police don't count these shootings.
I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that the ability to use lethal force with near impunity has enabled a police culture of maximum-confrontation. That culture is going to be hard to root out, and taking away the guns that enabled it (from most cops, and increasing scrutiny of who are still allowed to carry) could be a good start and do a lot of good.
My buddy is a copy in a mid-size south florida town and is getting 6K retirement checks after 20 years of service and still working full time in the DROP program. I'd say he's fairly well paid for only high school education.
Agreed. Also works if the citizenry wear body cams.
People respond to incentives. Giving any individual any sort of immunity against laws that apply to everyone else will ultimately lead to the worst abuses. How many will we never hear about?
This sort of story will continue to appear until there is a systemic change.
So you can't compel a doctor to provide healthcare, whether you think it's a good thing or not.
Libertarians are for state's rights. You can be for both individual rights & liberty AND state's rights. That's perfectly inline with the Constitution.
And votes may go against individual liberty at the state level, but at least that's the proper domain for most decisions and it's local.
It would have been better if I'd referred to "the rights of the individual over the powers of the state," since the original intent behind the Constitution and its amendments was to enumerate the latter but not the former. Once again, though, this has nothing to do with the dichotomy between federal powers and those reserved to the individual US states.
All individuals in society should be treated equally under the law, including members of law enforcement and others within the government. If I am not allowed to commit violence against you until you have been convicted of a crime, neither should anyone else, whether or not they wear a police uniform. Indeed, libertarianism advocates for private, rather than public, police forces.
> what is the ideology that lacks them
Statism in all forms grants special privilege to members of the government, including the power to tax and hold monopoly on the use of force. The US criminal code is full of exceptions for on-duty police officers, judges, and others, especially regarding firearms laws. Police officers can carry firearms into school buildings where others are guilty of a felony if they do, for instance. Thus you have inequality under the law. Such police immunity is what leads to the abuses we see every day.
But they were the cops doing it, so...
Don't physically try to stop the police. That's going to cause trouble. But if they're doing something out of line, record it if you can. If they tell you to stop, you can claim that you have the legal right to do so. If they continue to tell you to stop, stop. But still watch if you can.
Note well: IANAL. This is not legal advice. In particular, if anyone with real knowledge wants to correct the "If they tell you to stop, you can claim that you have the legal right to do so" part, feel free.
This is the metapolice we're talking about, not the police. The metapolice have no jurisdiction over ordinary citizens. Now, if police were to interfere in lawful metapolice activity, that would be one hell of a crime.
Police A and Police B who police each other besides the ordinary citizens. Add incentives so that they look extra closely at the other side.
The alternative is two sides fighting a war of escalation which would likely encourage scary corrupt behavior. "Those guys busted Johnny for some minor offense, so lets go get some dirt on one of their guys, or plant it. Can't let them think they can just mess with us"
This is going by the current us vs them mentality of the police forces.
If that is so, then at least if both "us" and "them" are heavily armed cops with warrior mentalities, they'd focus less of their aggression on the general public.
/s
the other option is a higher jurisdiction, eg state police investigating sheriff's deputies or municipal police, or federal law enforcement like the FBI investigating bad actors at the state or major metro level.
That last option is about to get turned inside out, though.
It's not at all clear that the officers are the criminals here, and not their chief, their mayor, their governor. Holding the system/state accountable is a complicated question. Civil suits are a relatively flexible tool.
When you look at police shootings, for example, we pursue criminal charges when the officers show personal malice or "hate crime", not when they shoot in accordance with their training and the department's overall use-of-force principles. It's hard to show that it's correct to throw individual officers in jail for following the will of "the People overall" and the local Executive.
Obviously funding and regulatory-capture would be a problem, but maybe that can be mitigated somehow.
I'm clearly no suicide prevention expert, but questioning the caller on drug use, repeatedly demanding to put weapons (that are not even present) away, then calling a militant police force upon no response, shows that the Hotline isn't really being the sympathetic role they were initially intended to be.
As bad as this situation has been for veterans, it brings to light how poorly (IMO) they are handling citizens reaching out for help as well.
The drug use question is a reasonable one, at least in terms of active use. It has a significant impact on how you want to talk to someone, how at-risk they are, and yes, on what the police should be aware of if they're eventually contacted. It shouldn't ever go further if the person doesn't need a police visit, though.
Demanding that he "say the guns are down" sounds like stupid and alarming legalism. It strikes me as someone reading a script, unable to deal with an answer of "they were never up to begin with, and are locked away, can we move on".
And the whole thing... yes, the police can help with suicides. Yes, someone hanging up without explanation is a bad sign. But you can't fail to help people, then assume they're unstable for hanging up on you, then make wild and unjustified claims to the police.
As an initial thought, I would have expected the hotline to operate under the same privacy regulations as any other medical facility. At least in the absence of any warning otherwise.
Edit: District court did rule in MPD's favor. Which isn't surprising of course. Still, wouldn't have been surprised if MPD appealed had it gone against them, for above mentioned reasons.
> [Corrigan] now appeals the grant of summary judgment to the defendants, challenging the district court’s rulings that there was no constitutional violation and that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
Also interesting is how close this case was: the appeals court panel was split 2-1. The dissenting judge agrees that there was a constitutional violation, but says this law was not "clearly established" so the officers should have immunity. It goes to show how low the qualified immunity bar is.
For the most part, most cops are mostly good... there are some very bad apples out there, and some jurisdictions are definitely worse than others.
Have you ever seen what happens when you leave a bad apple in with a bunch of good apples? Very quickly, the entire bunch of apples is bad.
That's why we have the whole saying about "bad apples".
It utterly amazes me that people constantly use this "bad apples" expression without understanding this. Anyone who eats apples should have this basic understanding about bad apples.
Anyway, from what I can tell, whether cops are good or bad is basically department-wide: either a department has decent cops, or they're all horrible and complicit. It's exactly like the "bad apples" analogy, and it depends on the leadership of the department. Notice that it's usually the same departments that come up over and over in the news.
And here we see why the current American problem is uniquely American — because that would never have happened.
https://www.google.com/search?q=strip+search+texas+road
And not just in Texas, see some of the articles.
ADDED: I missed that, to date, to my knowledge and from what I've just been reviewing, none of the police in these cases have been so much as criminally charged.
Yes, that indeed shows it didn't happen in the US.
Of course it isn't absolutely true, but I think it is clear enough that there is lots of work to do in making sure that abuses of power are punished.
https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/GetHelp/WhatToExpect.aspx
And the uninformed still wonder why we have so many problems with mental health and suicide in the US, a place where seeking help--even by accident--is likely to make things worse or even lead to death.
There is, for sure. There are crisis centers that don't respond like that. They may not be common - so maybe some luck is involved - but there are people out there trying to help others.
veterans go though a unique form of stress. and they get seperate medical care etc, which I hear is not always that great.
> A disabled vet with PTSD accidentally called a suicide prevention hotline when
> intending to dial the Veterans Crisis Line.
Is it too much to ask to read the article?
>On the night of February 2, 2010, suffering from sleep deprivation, he inadvertently phoned the National Suicide Hotline when dialing a number he thought to be a Veterans Crisis Line.
> In 2011, the National Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline was renamed the Veterans Crisis
> Line to encourage Veterans and their families and friends to make the call. People who know
> a Veteran best may be the first to recognize emotional distress and reach out for support
> when issues reach a crisis point — and well before a Veteran is at risk of suicide.
>If you’re thinking of hurting yourself, looking for ways to kill yourself, or becoming self-destructive, don’t continue to face it alone. Contact the Veterans Crisis Line immediately...
>For Veterans NOT in immediate crisis:
>Help is always available. Suicide Prevention Coordinators are at all VA Medical Centers (VAMCs) nationwide and work closely with Veterans dealing with mental health conditions and with difficult life events and experiences.
I'm not too surprised that the suicide hotline had trouble handling someone who wasn't suicidal. I called one once, trying to figure out how to help a mentally ill person who had been e-mailing me. They weren't exactly the appropriate place to call, but this person was in another country and they were the first people I could think of to at least point me in the right direction. They did help, but they also kept asking me questions like, "does this make you suicidal?" Strange experience, although it did work out fine in the end for me.
Even assuming, without deciding, that the initial “sweep” of Corrigan’s home [was justified], the second top-to-bottom search by the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit (“EOD”) after the MPD had been on the scene for several hours was not.
EOD officers cut open every zipped bag, dumped onto the floor the contents of every box and drawer, broke into locked boxes under the bed and in the closet, emptied shelves into piles in each room, and broke into locked boxes containing Corrigan’s three firearms. [..] the police had left the contents of his bureau drawers and shelves scattered on the floor, his electric stove had been left on, and the front door of his home was left unlocked.
"Because it was (and is) clearly established that law enforcement officers must have an objectively reasonable basis for believing an exigency justifies a warrantless search of a home, and because no reasonable officer could have concluded such a basis existed for the second more intrusive search, the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity across the board."
I wouldn't call it inexcusable, I'd simply call it criminal.
Police have the hardest job in America BUT that does not mean anything negative to police is bias. What positive spin could you possibly give this issue with the police or the lower courts?
I'm sure there are a few professions that would disagree. Air Traffic Controller comes to mind immediately. And before you say something about cops having to face the threat of death, most cops never even come close to that. Conversely, every ATC is responsible for thousands of lives daily.
(I really appreciate that linking, btw.)