Remember the video from about 8 months ago where the cop in Frankfort, Kentucky, barged into a woman’s home without a warrant and illegally arrested her while she was wearing only a towel? She correctly tells (former) Officer Larry “Gus” Curtis that he can’t do that – that what he was doing was illegal, due to the fact that he was acting without a warrant. Curtis tells her, “if it’s illegal, then file a civil lawsuit.” Well, she did file a civil lawsuit and it just settled. Was it enough?
Why would two separate police officers from two separate counties in rural Georgia both happen to end up harassing this super nice guy, driving this super nice vehicle, who incidentally is transporting his super adorable monkey that he has a YouTube channel with? And what were the chances that both officers would pull the vehicle over for “following too closely” to a tractor trailer, where coincidentally, both of the officers’ dash cameras would show the claims to be completely bogus?
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.
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.
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.
A special agent with the Lake County Narcotics Agency has resigned following an internal investigation into an incident of alleged unlawful detention at a Medina County Township bar in April. Daniel Lajack, 48, submitted his immediate resignation on Dec. 2, just weeks after being notified of potential disciplinary action for his involvement in a controversial encounter with a legal immigrant. Lajack also served as a federal task force officer for the Drug Enforcement Agency, before being removed shortly after the April incident became public.
The Oklahoma City Police Department has once again been caught on video violently slamming an innocent citizen to the ground. Last time it was the elderly Vietnamese man. This time, it’s a young girl who was shoved to the ground and arrested following a 4am noise complaint. But unlike the officer in my last video, this cop has been criminally charged. Why would this officer be charged, while the other officer, who seriously injured an elderly man, has not been charged?
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).
A few days ago I posted a video showing officers from the Idaho Falls, Idaho Police Department entering a family’s home and forcing them outside. When the homeowner, who was filming, demanded a warrant, the officer claimed that he didn’t need a warrant. The problem is, they did in fact need a warrant, as I explained in the prior video. The local TV news in Idaho picked up the video and reported on it, prompting the Idaho Falls Police Department to issue a statement. Here’s the statement:
Here’s the case law I discussed in the video:
Case law regarding any claims that this entry was justified by a claim of “exigent circumstances”:
The 9th Circuit discussing the very practical reason why the Fourth Amendment rights of homeowners must be protected:
