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.
66 year-old John Hardwick is a dementia patient who loves to shop with his wife at the Walmart in Danville, Kentucky. As they were shopping, he became separated from his wife. He ended up being harassed by employees of Walmart, who then asked their cop buddies to join the harassment. Several officers with the Danville Police Department then violently arrested John. Surveillance footage captured one of the officers punching Mr. Hardwick 6 times. Sadly, they subsequently continued to prosecute him. Fortunately, his wife hired a great lawyer, and he blew the coverup wide open.
Two police officers in Asheville, North Carolina, violently arrested a beloved local 63 year-old janitor after receiving a false report from the local Subaru dealership that one of their cars was being used without authorization. Louis Searles, the janitor, sees the officers looking at a car outside the building where he works. He had observed the woman who was driving the vehicle, so he walked up to the officers and told then where the woman was (in a local business called “Thrive,” which is in the building where he works as a janitor. Instead of going and locating that woman, they decided to violently arrest the janitor.
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.
Deputies in Onondaga County, New York bravely captured the wrong dangerous 11 Year Old, handcuffing her in front of her friends, who filmed the incident. Sheriff Toby Shelley said the deputies had received a description of a girl who allegedly ran from a stolen car just half an hour before. Turns out, it was the wrong person. Sheriff Shelley explained that handcuffing the innocent 11 Year Old was completely appropriate.
An innocent Kentucky man was shot dead by the London, Kentucky police after they raided the wrong house, surprising him at night during an impromptu search warrant execution, looking for a “Judge’s” missing weedeater. So far, authorities have released almost no information. But here’s what we do know so far, and it doesn’t look good at all…
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.
In Sharp County, Arkansas, Sheriff Shane Russell showed up at a family’s front door, following allegations from a neighbor that they had been revving their engines earlier (on their own property). Sheriff Russell, flanked by other police officers, did not have a warrant. But he didn’t let that stop him.
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).
