Two years ago, Darius Lester, a young black man in rural West Virginia, was shot by a West Virginia State Police SWAT team while still in his bed during a botched pre-dawn raid while executing a search warrant at his uncle’s home. Despite the passage of two years, the state police still have not released the findings of their investigation into the shooting. The reason? They were most likely waiting the two years the victim had in which to sue them.
My client was driving in Martinsburg, West Virginia. He saw a police car belonging to the Martinsburg Police Department. Desiring to express some protected First Amendment speech, he flipped them the bird – the middle finger. They immediately pulled him over. A federal civil rights lawsuit is currently pending.
This woman’s family brought her to a hospital in Broward County, Florida because she was having a mental breakdown. She didn’t want to get out of the truck in the parking lot because she was afraid she would be hurt. She was right ,unfortunately. Several police officers offered to help get her into the hospital. One of those was Deputy Murillo with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. He ended up yanking her out of the truck “by the chain” and then literally breaking her arm in two.
Derrick House was returning home from a trip to Costco, headed to make dinner with his family. An unmarked car comes speeding up from behind him, suddenly blocking him in. Cops jump out and start pointing their pistols at him, threatening to shoot him in the face. What did he do wrong? Apparently he was just a black male driving a Volkswagen. Even though it was the wrong make, color (and license plate number) the cops figured it was close enough.
What was supposed to be a joyous Christmas celebration turned into a nightmare for Jennifer Heath Box, when Broward County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies arrested her and threw her in jail for three days—all because they refused to check their paperwork to make sure they had the right person. Because of indifference of police and jail personnel, Jennifer missed Christmas with her family and, most importantly, missed seeing her son before he deployed overseas with the United States Marines. Fortunately, the Institute for Justice is on the case…
Derrick Williams was fast asleep in the apartment he had been living in for about a month (which was leased by a friend/Uncle) when he heard a commotion outside his bedroom. It was the Chesterfield County (Virginia) Police Department, who had just opened the front door and sent in a police K9 to find him and violently attack him. But it was a mistake. He had done nothing wrong. His friend/Uncle’s ex-girlfriend had come by earlier to collect some belongings, saw him asleep in the apartment, and called 911, believing he was an intruder of some sort. Instead of realizing that Derrick was not an intruder, they just went full send with their attack K9, to bite first, and ask questions later. Now a lawsuit has been filed. But the cops are asking for qualified immunity, claiming they did nothing wrong.
Dallas Campbell walked into the police department in Hazard, Kentucky a free man, doing his best to keep a notoriously untrustworthy police agency (at least that’s what I learned watching the “Dukes of Hazard”) honest. Unfortunately, he left in handcuffs, the victim of a false arrest. But he had a small YouTube channel, and 12 days after he posted the video of his arrest, the Hazard Police Chief was fired.
Yet again, police officers pulled over an innocent driver, subjecting the individual to the so-called “felony stop” or “high risk stop,” which is the process wherein they treat an innocent American citizen as if they were a terrorist serial killer, forcing the person to get out of their car, walk backwards, and so on, all occurring at the barrel of a loaded gun. This time the victim was a teenage girl in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
The taxpayers shouldered the burden of the $250,000 settlement for the obvious police misconduct that occurred. However the police department has “no comment” for the community that employs them. And the city itself doesn’t even bother to say “no comment.”
Here’s the blog post where I last ranted about the unconstitutionality of these “high risk stops” based solely on computer (or human) mistakes about a car being stolen, along with some links to prior videos I’ve done involving similar situations. Therein I list numerous instances of this occurring to innocent people across the country, including Aurora, Colorado, Raymore, Missouri, Fairfax, Virginia, Norwalk, Connecticut, as well as Lehi, Utah (which is what the blog post and video from that post was about).
It all boils down to this: without more, police officers should not be aiming firearms at people. Reasonableness is the key. Aiming guns based on clerical entries and government policy is rarely going to be reasonable. Doing so should be based on actual perceived threats presented by the persons with whom they’re dealing. Here, the officers actions of handcuffing the teen at gunpoint could not have been reasonable, and thus they would most likely be found to be unconstitutional by the courts (which is why they settled).
Surprise Police Chief Piña recorded an internal message video for his police officers about a week after the arrest. In it, he defiantly and irrationally claims that there was no First Amendment violation. He also has another officer, who gained valuable experience in First Amendment (and other) violations, while working at the Phoenix Police Department, give the officers advice on how to respond to encounters with so-called First Amendment Auditors.
The Supreme Court has made clear that “one of the most precious of the liberties safeguarded by the Bill of Rights” is the sacred promise to every American, enshrined in the First Amendment, that citizens enjoy the freedom to complain about their leaders. Lozman v. Riviera Beach, 585 U.S. 87, 101 (2018). But the city of Surprise, Arizona and its mayor, Skip Hall, broke that promise, arresting Plaintiff Rebekah Massie in front of her 10-year-old daughter for criticizing a public official at a city council meeting.
Surprise Police Chief Piña recorded an internal message video for his police officers about a week after the arrest. In it, he defiantly and irrationally claims that there was no First Amendment violation. He also has another officer, who gained valuable experience in First Amendment (and other) violations, while working at the Phoenix Police Department, give the officers advice on how to respond to encounters with so-called First Amendment Auditors.
