The Magic Words Are “Reasonable Suspicion”

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PJ Tatler:

Legal Experts Weigh In On Whether Bloomberg’s Security Guard Really Had ‘Security Jurisdiction’

Earlier today, news broke that NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to disarm his security detail in the interests of gun control. The answer came when journalist Jason Mattera confronted him and asked him to disarm, while the mayor was visiting Washington DC for the US Conference of Mayors on January 18.

Bloomberg answered, “Uh, we’ll get back with you on that.” Then later, after Mattera had left the area, an Officer Stockton followed him down the street.

Officer Stockton asked Mattera to present his drivers license. Mattera refused, and asked Stockton if he had jurisdiction to ask him any questions.

Stockton replied that he had “security jurisdiction.”

I asked PJ Media’s legal experts, Hans A. von Spakovsky, and Christian Adams, about this question of “security jurisdiction.” Both formerly worked as lawyers in the United States Department of Justice.

Spakovsky replied:

Police officers who are outside of their normal jurisdiction but who are acting as protection for a public figure like Bloomberg certainly have the ability to act to protect their principal from a threat of imminent harm. But no such officer has “security jurisdiction” that allows him to harass a member of the press or a member of the public who is not physically threatening his principal. There is no law justifying what the NYPD officer was doing.

Even a Washington, D.C. police officer assigned to help protect Bloomberg while he is in Washington would have no right to engage in such harassment. And it is clear from the video that Mattera wasn’t doing anything other than asking Bloomberg a legitimate question about a political issue that Bloomberg has taken up publicly in a very pronounced way. The NYPD officer was acting far beyond his authority.

And you can quote me on that.

Adams’ reply regarding “security jurisdiction” was a bit more succinct:

No such thing.

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The magic words are “reasonable suspicion”. A cop can walk up to you in public and ask you questions any time he wants. But you don’t have to talk to him and you are free to walk away – unless he has reasonable suspicion to detain you.

Defined: “Reasonable suspicion” is information which is sufficient to cause a reasonable law enforcement officer, taking into account his or her training and experience, to reasonably believe that the person to be detained is, was, or is about to be, involved in criminal activity. The officer must be able to articulate more than an “inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or ‘hunch‘ of criminal activity.” (Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392 U.S. 1, 27 [20 L.Ed.2^nd 889, 909].)

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The purpose of the detention is to investigate. If the investigation reveals probable cause then the detention becomes an arrest. Of course you never have to talk to cops, so even if they have reasonable suspicion to detain you they can’t force you to answer questions. If after a reasonable time they cannot develop probable cause to arrest, they must release you.

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WTF?

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Police drug search intrudes on husband’s final moments with deceased wife

A man says Vernal police disrupted an intimate moment of mourning with his deceased wife of 58 years when they searched his house for her prescription medication without a warrant within minutes of her death.

Barbara Alice Mahaffey died of colon cancer in her bedroom last May. Ben D. Mahaffey, 80, said he was distraught and trying to make sure his wife’s body would be taken to the funeral home with dignity, when he says officers insisted he help them look for the drugs.

“I was holding her hand saying goodbye when all the intrusion happened,” he told the Deseret News.

Barbara Mahaffey died at 12:35 a.m. with Mahaffey, a Navy medic in the Korean War, and his friend, an EMT, at her side. In addition to police, a mortician and a hospice worker arrived at the home about 12:45 a.m., Mahaffey said. He said he doesn’t know how police came to be there.

“I was indignant to think you can’t even have a private moment. All these people were there and they’re not concerned about her or me. They’re concerned about the damn drugs. Isn’t that something?” Mahaffey said.

Mahaffey said he was treated as if he were going to sell the painkillers, which included OxyContin, oxycodone and morphine, on the street.

“I had no interest in the drugs,” he said. “I’m no addict.”

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If I was on the jury I would give the guy at least $1 million for emotional distress. That’s how you get police policies changed.

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Bad Cop, No Donut!

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California Man Jailed Four Days for Recording Cops

A California man was jailed for four days for attempting to record police officers on a public street.

Daniel J. Saulmon was charged with resisting, delaying and obstructing an officer but the video shows he was standing well out the way of a traffic stop and was only arrested when he failed to produce identification to an approaching officer.

And there is no law in California that requires citizens to produce identification. And even if there was, it would require the officer to have a reasonable suspicion that he was committing a crime.

But prosecutors have already dropped the charge against Saulmon as well as a few other minor citations relating to his bicycle such as not have proper reflectors on the pedals.

And they most likely knew who he was considering he won a $25,000 settlement from the same police department after they unlawfully arrested him on eavesdropping/wiretapping charges in 2005.

This time, it appears the Hawthorne Police Department will be dishing out much more, thanks to officer Gabriel Lira’s abuse of authority.

“They knew exactly who I was,” Saulmon said in a telephone interview with Photography is Not a Crime Saturday, adding that he has recorded them on a regular basis since the 2005 arrest when he was jailed after attempting to file a complaint inside the police station.

“They always address me as ‘Mr. Saulmon’,” he said.

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I’m sure the City of Hawthorne will be paying out another settlement from taxpayer funds. The cops should have to be personally liable for this kind of shit. If they knew it was coming out of their own paychecks they would be less cavalier with the constitutional rights of the people they meet in the performance of their duties.

And lest anyone think I am being inconsistent because I mocked the Occupiers that got themselves arrested, there is one critical difference between this case and the Occupiers: THE OCCUPIERS WERE BREAKING THE LAW!

If you intentionally break the law, even with the best of motives, you forfeit any reason to complain when you get arrested. If you want to be a martyr then you should suffer in silence.

But when you are obeying the law and you get wrongfully arrested by some badge-heavy fascist, you are entitled to scream bloody murder about it. You get to sue, too.

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Saturday Night Open Thread

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Busted: The Citizen’s Guide To Surviving Police Encounters

Remember – free legal advice is worth every penny you pay for it.

(Via College Insurrection)

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Paging Al Sharpton!

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Oh, wait. The dead guy is white? Nevermind.

Deputies shoot, kill man after knocking on wrong door

Lake County Sheriff’s Office deputies shot and killed a man they assumed was an attempted murder suspect on Sunday, but they now know they shot the wrong man.

In the early morning hours, deputies knocked on 26-year-old Andrew Lee Scott’s door without identifying themselves as law enforcement officers. Scott answered the door with a gun in his hand.

“When we knocked on the door, the door opened and the occupant of that apartment was pointing a gun at deputies and that’s when we opened fire and killed him,” Lt. John Herrell said.

Deputies thought they were confronting Jonathan Brown, a man accused of attempted murder. Brown was spotted at the Blueberry Hills Apartment complex and his motorcycle was parked across from Andrew Scott’s front door.

“It’s just a bizarre set of circumstances. The bottom line is, you point a gun at a deputy sheriff or police office, you’re going to get shot,” Herrell said.

Residents said the unannounced knock at the door at 1:30 a.m. may be the reason why the tragedy happened.

“He was the wrong guy and he got shot and killed anyway. There’s fault on both sides. I think more so on the county,” Ryan Perry said. “I can understand why he [the deputy] did it, but it should have never gone down like that,” Perry said.

Brown was arrested near the same building where Scott was shot. Brown and another suspect in the same case, Anthony Rodriguez, were booked into the Lake County Jail over the weekend.

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WTF were cops doing banging on the guy’s door at 1:30 in the morning? It doesn’t sound as if they had a warrant and they weren’t in hot pursuit. This was an apartment complex, the suspect they were looking for could have been anywhere.

Arming yourself before answering a strange knock in the middle of the night is not unreasonable or unforeseeable. If the deputies had identified themselves the guy would likely have put the gun away before answering the door.

Were they going door-to-door or did they they have reason to believe the suspect was in that apartment? How many deputies were on the scene? Why didn’t they stake the place out and wait for daylight?

I’d love to represent the guy’s family in the civil suit that is coming.

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Racial Profiling

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One day back when I was working retail security I was watching by CCTV when I observed a black male adult approach the pneumatic tools, select one and conceal it in his pants. Then he selected a second one and concealed in his pants with the first. Then he headed for the exit.

I un-assed the office and ran after him, catching up with him outside in the parking lot. I identified myself and placed him under arrest. As I was handcuffing him he said “It’s cuz I’m black, right?” I had to bite my tongue to keep from replying “Yeah, we let white people steal whatever they want.“

The first time I heard the term “racial profiling” was in a 60 Minutes story about drug couriers (aka “mules”) transporting cocaine and other drugs from entry ports in Florida and along the US-Mexico border via the interstate highways to cities in the northeast. This led to the creation of “Operation Pipeline“:

The term “profiling” first became associated with a method of interdicting drug traffickers during the late 1970s. In 1985, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) instituted Operation Pipeline, an intelligence-based assessment of the method by which drug networks transported bulk drugs to drug markets, and began training local and state police in applying a drug courier profile as part of highway drug interdiction techniques. Under Operation Pipeline, police were trained to apply a profile that included evidence of concealment in the vehicle, indications of fast, point-to-point driving, as well as the age- and race characteristics of the probable drivers. In some cases, the profiling technique was distorted, so that officers began targeting black and Hispanic male drivers by stopping them for technical traffic violations as a pretext for ascertaining whether the drivers were carrying drugs.

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This is also about the time that drug forfeiture became trendy in law enforcement. State and local cops in rural Texas, Tennessee and Georgia staked out the interstates, stopping black and Hispanic drivers on any pretext hoping to find drug couriers.

A term used synonymous with racial profiling is “driving while black (or brown).” This is the idea that the cops stop people because of their race. I have no doubt that it occurs, but how common is it?

In some cities and neighborhoods nearly everyone is a member of a racial minority. If the police pulled over every black and brown driver in South-Central LA there wouldn’t be any cars left on the road. But if they pulled cars over at random they would still be stopping more black and brown drivers.

Poor neighborhoods are the ones most likely to be high-crime neighborhoods with heavier police patrols. More cops means more traffic stops. Poor people are also more likely to be driving older vehicles in need of repair or to have expired registrations, which are the kind of things cops look for. And blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be poor.

Cops are supposed to enforce traffic laws. So how do we determine which traffic stops are legit and which ones are based on racial profiling?

The answer is a pet cause of mine – cameras in police cars.

I think every patrol car in the country should be equipped with a dash cam that includes a microphone worn by the cops. With today’s digital recording capabilities entire shifts could easily and cheaply be recorded and stored. Then we would have a record of everything that took place from the beginning of a traffic stop until the end. We can also compare how the officers treat drivers of different races.

It’s not a perfect solution but it would answer a lot of questions.

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Justiced Delayed

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New Orleans Police sentenced for violating civil rights in Katrina aftermath

Four New Orleans police officers were sentenced to 38 to 65 years in prison for convictions including violating the civil rights of two people killed a week after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005.

U.S. District Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt in New Orleans sentenced a fifth officer today to six years for covering up the crimes.

A federal jury in August convicted officers Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso of opening fire on unarmed black civilians on the city’s Danziger Bridge and conspiring with others to cover up their actions. The fifth, homicide detective Arthur “Archie” Kaufman, was convicted of conspiring to make the shootings appear justified.

“We hope that today’s sentences give a measure of peace and closure to the victims of this terrible shooting, who have suffered unspeakable pain and who have waited so patiently for justice to be done,” Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in an e-mailed statement. “The officers who shot innocent people on the bridge and then went to great lengths to cover up their own crimes have finally been held accountable for their actions.”

The civil rights violations caused the deaths of James Brissette and Ronald Madison, the jury found, which meant that the four officers directly involved faced a maximum punishment of life in prison. Bowen was sentenced to 40 years, Faulcon to 65, Gisevius to 40, Villavaso to 38, and Kaufman to six.

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Obviously this isn’t a happy ending. But the real question is whether or not these cops were just the tip of the iceberg. There are still a lot of missing people and lots of stories of men in paramilitary uniforms shooting people.

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Death by Taser

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Via Hot Air:

FHP trooper cleared in use of Taser, which put woman in vegetative state

One day last September, Danielle Maudsley, clad in handcuffs, bolted out the door of a Florida Highway Patrol substation after she had been arrested in a hit-and-run case.

A dashboard video camera in a patrol cruiser in the parking lot captured Trooper Daniel Cole chasing her. Cole was only a few feet behind her when he pulled out his Taser and fired its electric probes into her back.

Maudsley spun, fell backward and smacked her head on the asphalt parking lot. She lay there, bleeding and crying as Cole stood over her. Then she went unconscious.

[...]

“Tell me that’s not excessive force,” Cheryl Maudsley said. “I’m not saying she was an angel, but she didn’t deserve that. He couldn’t reach out and grab her? He was an arm’s length away.”

Cole had arrested Danielle Maudsley after she was suspected of leaving the scene of two traffic crashes. She had a suspended license and blood tests later showed she had cocaine and oxycodone in her system, the report states.

While she sat in the back of his cruiser, Maudsley removed her right hand from the handcuffs, the report said. When Cole opened the door to take her out, she told him, “I took this off.”

Maudsley was placed back in handcuffs and Cole took her into the substation, according to the report. As he worked on paperwork in a conference room, he sensed that Maudsley was moving, turned, and saw her at the main exit. He asked where she was going and got up from his seat before she ran out the door.

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She’s now in a persistent vegetative state – effectively dead. The official verdict?

Justified

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Cops lie, video doesn’t

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Cop is so busted

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but this video is worth seven years.

That’s what John Hockenjos was facing after being accused on Sunday of creating a “grave risk of death” by whipping his car into a driveway at a “high rate of speed,” forcing a cop to jump out of the way to save his life.

The only problem with the case is that a “crystal- clear” surveillance video shows Hockenjos slowly pulling into the driveway while Officer Diego Palacios stands absolutely still, said Craig Newman, Hockenjos’ lawyer.

“In my 20 years of legal experience, I’ve never seen a more crystal-clear example of a false arrest,” Newman said outside court after he asked Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Alexander Jeong to dismiss the case yesterday.

The arrest stemmed from a dispute between Hockenjos, 55, and his neighbor Argo Paumere over who owns the driveway between their Sheepshead Bay houses.

Palacios was standing in the driveway when Hockenjos calmly pulled in and got out of his car.

But when the exchange got heated, Palacios cuffed Hockenjos and charged him with first-degree reckless endangerment.

The case was undone by a surveillance camera that Hockenjos had mounted in the driveway.

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There is no explanation as to why the cop decided to lie and charge the man with a serious felony. But the video leaves no doubt – he was lying.

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