- “I’m looking at Sarge, like, ‘What am I writing him for?’ The sergeant said, ‘Blocking pedestrian traffic.'” [Brian Doherty]
- “No one is innocent: I broke the law yesterday and again today and I will probably break the law tomorrow” [Alex Tabarrok, BLT]
- Alabama officials reviewing NTSB-funded weekend roadblocks where motorists were asked for breath, blood and saliva samples [Montgomery Advertiser] “Maybe the NTSB should become a Common Rule agency” [i.e., subject to Human Subjects Research rules; @MichelleNMeyer]
- New Jersey bill would require driver in some traffic mishaps to hand over cellphone to cop [S. 2783 (Holzapfel, Sen.) via @MeckReal]
- “In Dubai airport, three poppy seeds from a bread roll fell in a Swiss man’s clothes and got him four years in prison” [@SanhoTree on BBC 2008 report]
- “Hookup Shocker: The Sex Is Legal, but Talking About It Is a Felony!” [Jacob Sullum] “The Man Who Abused Me is Not on the Sex Offender List (The One who Saved Me Is)” [Free-Range Kids; related on registries, Michele Goodwin, Bill of Health]
- “Senator Ervin, ‘No-Knock’ Warrants, and the Fight to Stop Cops from Smashing into Homes the Way Burglars Do” [Radley Balko guestblogging at ACLU; yesterday’s post on Balko’s new book, and more (“7 Ways The Obama Administration Has Accelerated Police Militarization”)]
Search Results for ‘police militarization’
New book: Radley Balko on militarized police
Radley Balko, often linked in this space, is out with a new book entitled Rise of the Warrior Cop, about the militarization of local police forces. [Reviews: Scott Greenfield, Diane Goldstein] A Salon excerpt details SWAT team raids over such offenses as sports gambling (“It [the Fairfax County, Va. 2006 shooting of football bettor Sal Culosi) wasn’t even the first time a Virginia SWAT team had killed someone during a gambling raid”) as well as dog shootings by police and aggressive actions against political protests. Balko has been devoting his Huffington Post column to such related topics as the police-industrial complex, and the ABA Journal also has an extensive treatment (related podcast).
Best of Overlawyered — August 2014
- “Put Down the Cupcake: New Ban Hits School Bake Sales.”
- New Facebook acquaintance, most likely a lawyer-marketing-bot, “wanted to know if I’d died or was suffering a lingering fatal condition…. I thought I’d finally found Zombie Dating.”
- Shut down Uber, Lyft, and other ride-sharing apps until they can demonstrate disabled accessibility? Salt Lake City slaps $6,500 tickets on ridesharing drivers;
- Federal grant programs drive police militarization; “Wrongfully arrested man charged for getting blood on cops’ uniforms.“
- British Medical Journal urges government action against salty cheeses such as Roquefort, feta and halloumi; FDA vs. wooden onion crates;
- Warning sign: “this sign that warned you will be ‘Exhibit 1’“;
- “L.A. to pay $26 million for ban on naps by garbage-truck drivers.”
Obama: let’s step up federal cop subsidies
It’s like a parody of one’s worst expectations: President Obama refuses to curtail the federal police militarization program, instead calling for a big hike in federal spending on aid to local departments with the usual micromanaging strings attached. [The Guardian] The administration has now gathered some useful information on the Pentagon’s 1033 surplus-gear program, but still has no plans to improve data gathering on police use of lethal force [Washington Post editorial] More from USA Today: “The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, has waged an intense lobbying campaign to keep the surplus equipment flowing,” and its executive director specifically speaks up in favor of the transfer of armored vehicles and personnel carriers. More: Trevor Timm.
Related: Conor Friedersdorf gathers stories of cops reinstated in union arbitration from Oakland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Miami, Sarasota, and other cities. He concludes:
I’d rather see 10 wrongful terminations than one person wrongfully shot and killed. Because good police officers and bad police officers pay the same union dues and are equally entitled to labor representation, police unions have pushed for arbitration procedures that skew in the opposite direction. Why have we let them? If at-will employment, the standard that would best protect the public, is not currently possible, arbitration proceedings should at a minimum be transparent and fully reviewable so that miscarriages of justice are known when they happen. With full facts, the public would favor at-will employment eventually.
You can’t tackle the excessive force problem credibly unless you tackle the power of the police unions. Period.
October 23 roundup
- I’m quoted by Nicky Woolf of Great Britain’s Guardian on the police militarization angle in Keene, N.H. civil disturbances (also: Van Smith, Baltimore City Paper). Also quoted regarding the ominous move to heavy armaments of Wisconsin prosecutors investigating their political opponents in the dawn-raids “John Doe” proceeding [Watchdog, and second post, earlier] Humor in The New Yorker from Bruce McCall [“Pentagon Cop Aid Hits Snags“] And here’s a previously unlinked Cato panel last month on cop militarization with David Kopel, Mark Lomax, and Cheye Calvo, moderated by Tim Lynch;
- Australia prime minister declares “repeal day” with “bonfire” of regulations [Jeff Bennett and Susan Dudley, Cato Regulation mag; earlier on Minnesota legislative “unsession” to dump outmoded or pointless laws]
- “After dawdling for a year, panel tosses bogus complaint against Judge [Edith] Jones” [@andrewmgrossman on Houston Chronicle via Howard Bashman, Richard Kopf, Tamara Tabo, earlier here, here, and here]
- Making waves: Michelle Boardman review of Margaret Radin book on boilerplate, adhesion contracts, fine print [Harvard Law Review, SSRN]
- Why litigation lobby could cost Democrats Senate majority this year [Tim Carney]
- Online-services companies, better not do business in Maryland since the state has a very special law that one law professor believes sharply restricts your customer research [Masnick/TechDirt]
- Picking Thomas Perez as Attorney General would (or should!) ignite firestorm of opposition. Is that why President’s waiting till after Nov. 4? [Washington Examiner]
Let’s demilitarize the regulatory agencies too
One consequence of the events in Ferguson, Mo. is that people are talking with each other across ideological lines who usually don’t, a symbol being the attention paid on both left and right to Sen. Rand Paul’s op-ed last week in Time. And one point worth discussing is how the problem of police militarization manifests itself similarly these days in local policing and in the enforcement of federal regulation.
At BuzzFeed, Evan McMorris-Santoro generously quotes me on the prospects for finding common ground on these issues. The feds’ Gibson Guitar raid — our coverage of that here — did much to raise the profile of regulatory SWAT tactics, and John Fund cited others in an April report:
Many of the raids [federal paramilitary enforcers] conduct are against harmless, often innocent, Americans who typically are accused of non-violent civil or administrative violations.
Take the case of Kenneth Wright of Stockton, Calif., who was “visited” by a SWAT team from the U.S. Department of Education in June 2011. Agents battered down the door of his home at 6 a.m., dragged him outside in his boxer shorts, and handcuffed him as they put his three children (ages 3, 7, and 11) in a police car for two hours while they searched his home. The raid was allegedly intended to uncover information on Wright’s estranged wife, Michelle, who hadn’t been living with him and was suspected of college financial-aid fraud.
The year before the raid on Wright, a SWAT team from the Food and Drug Administration raided the farm of Dan Allgyer of Lancaster, Pa. His crime was shipping unpasteurized milk across state lines to a cooperative of young women with children in Washington, D.C., called Grass Fed on the Hill. Raw milk can be sold in Pennsylvania, but it is illegal to transport it across state lines. The raid forced Allgyer to close down his business.
Fund goes on to discuss the rise of homeland-security and military-surplus programs that have contributed to the rapid proliferation of SWAT and paramilitary methods in local policing. He cites Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop, which similarly treats both manifestations of paramilitary policing as part of the same trend.
As McMorris-Santoro notes in the BuzzFeed piece, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) has introduced a bill called the Regulatory Agency Demilitarization Act, citing such unsettling developments as a U.S. Department of Agriculture solicitation for submachine guns. 28 House Republicans have joined as sponsors, according to Ryan Lovelace at National Review.
There has already been left-right cooperation on the issue, as witness the unsuccessful Grayson-Amash amendment in June seeking to cut off the military-surplus 1033 program. As both sides come to appreciate some of the common interests at stake in keeping law enforcement as peaceful and proportionate as situations allow, there will be room for more such cooperation. (& welcome Instapundit, Radley Balko, Bainbridge readers; cross-posted at Cato at Liberty)
Call of Duty V: Bambi Raid
According to Ed Schulze, an employee of the Society of St. Francis animal shelter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, nine state agents and four deputy sheriffs were “armed to the teeth” and appeared “like a SWAT team” when they descended without warning on the shelter two weeks ago. Their target? A fawn that shelter employees had rescued and planned to release into a wildlife preserve the next day. Possession of wildlife is unlawful in Wisconsin, and officials proceeded to euthanize (kill) the juvenile deer. [WISN]
Asked later why the action was staged as a surprise raid, supervisor Jennifer Niemeyer told WISN, “If a sheriff’s department is going in to do a search warrant on a drug bust, they don’t call them and ask them to voluntarily surrender their marijuana or whatever drug that they have before they show up.”
Much of the reaction to this story concentrates on sympathy for the deer, which is understandable, but please spare some thought for what happens to humans when such police conduct comes to be accepted as normal. Our coverage of Radley Balko’s new book on police militarization, Rise of the Warrior Cop, is here, here, here, etc.
August 2 roundup
- Radley Balko on a roll with harrowing, Louisiana-focused piece on misbehaving prosecutors and the system that protects them [HuffPo] “Former Cops Speak Out About Police Militarization” And a BBC interview (auto-plays video);
- Judge Alsup: pay-to-play allegations against Democratic Attorneys General Association, Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood, MSPERS won’t derail class action [Courthouse News]
- “Smoker’s Son Recovers $12.8M for Loss of Consortium” [NLJ]
- How easy is it to get a free federal cellphone (or two or three) without actually qualifying? [Jillian Kay Melchior, NR]
- “‘Total’ly Milking the FCPA Cash Cow?” [Koehler, FCPA Professor]
- “The unfair attack on arbitration” [Hans von Spakovsky]
- How public interest litigators got 501(c)(3) charitable status [Scott Walter, Philanthropy Daily; related earlier]
Crime and punishment roundup
- Coming Oct. 18: Cato all-day conference on Criminal Justice at the Crossroads, speakers include Hon. Jed Rakoff, Clark Neily, Jeffrey Miron, Suja Thomas, Scott Greenfield, register here or watch online;
- A bail bond agent’s letter to the editor responding to my Wall Street Journal piece on Maryland bail reform;
- Domestic violence: Ontario Court of Appeal rules cultural differences cannot justify lighter sentence in criminal cases [Toronto Star, 2015]
- “Police Union Complains That Public Got to See Them Roughing Up Utah Nurse” [Scott Shackford] “Bad Cops Will Keep Getting Rehired As Long As You Have Powerful Police Unions” [Ed Krayewski]
- “Federal Judge In Colorado Rules Sex Offender Registry Is Unconstitutional” [Lenore Skenazy, Jacob Sullum, CBS Denver, Scott Greenfield] If a young man is mentally disabled and exposes himself, should he be barred for good from a busboy job or participation in Special Olympics? [Skenazy] More: David Feige, New York Times via Greenfield on the Supreme Court’s acceptance of a fateful factoid;
- Trump to lift curbs on disposal of military surplus gear to police [Adam Bates, Jonathan Blanks, earlier]
Tenth Circuit rules on hydroponic tomato raid
A hydroponic-tomato setup and the finding of soggy tea leaves in discarded trash led heavily armed cops to stage an early morning surprise raid on a Kansas family’s home, part of a police venture called Operation Constant Gardener. As noted earlier, my colleagues at the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief urging the Tenth Circuit to uphold the family’s rights by applying “the knock-and-announce rule… an ancient one rooted in the English common law dating back to the early 17th century.”
This week a Tenth Circuit panel reinstated many of the claims in the family’s lawsuit. Kyle Swenson, Washington Post:
…this week a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled that the family could move forward in court. The decision has larger implications for Fourth Amendment litigation and legislation targeting badly behaving police officers.
The scorching judicial pronouncement blasted authorities for laziness and possible fabrication, the kind of overzealous police work that’s become a sometimes deadly facet of the drug war….
“The defendants in this case caused an unjustified governmental intrusion into the Hartes’ home based on nothing more than junk science, an incompetent investigation, and a publicity stunt,” Judge Carlos Lucero wrote in his opinion. “The Fourth Amendment does not condone this conduct, and neither can I.”…
The appellate win, if not successfully appealed, means the Hartes will be able to press their case in district court.
And this from Ilya Shapiro on the new Tenth Circuit decision:
Even if the court didn’t fully address the issues Cato raised in our brief, the ruling in Harte v. Board of Commissioners of Johnson County, Kansas is a step forward….
The Tenth Circuit mostly agreed with Cato on the Fourth Amendment issue. Two judges on the three-judge panel found that the district court had been wrong to grant summary judgment to the police on the search and seizure issue, with Judge Carlos Lucero alluding briefly to the knock-and-announce requirement. It was a convoluted opinion that took a long time to produce because of each judge writing separately and different sets of judges coming together on different parts of the ruling. Most importantly, Judge Gregory Phillips, joined by Judge Lucero, found that “what the deputies learned early on in the search dissipated any probable cause to continue searching.”
Ultimately, the judges only discussed in passing the police-militarization and general-warrant concerns raised by Cato and sided with the police on the excessive-force claims. Nevertheless, the court held that what the Hartes experienced qualified as unreasonable search and seizure – and also let them continue with their state-law claims – so Harte v. Board of Commissioners represents a positive development in the jurisprudence surrounding dynamic police raids.