Source: Cops: We “Expected Privacy” Because We Tried to Smash All the Cameras – Lowering the Bar
Category: Police
No Immunity For Cops Who Sent A SWAT Team To A 68-Year-Old Woman’s House For Threats Delivered Over Open WiFi Connection | Techdirt
Body cam captures cop shooting motorist in head, murder charges follow | Ars Technica
Footage contradicts officer who said he was dragged by vehicle and had to fire.
Source: Body cam captures cop shooting motorist in head, murder charges follow | Ars Technica
Chicago Police Put Antlers on Black Man and Posed for Pictures –
The photo shows two white Chicago Police officers posing with an unidentified black man. The officers — Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan — are holding rifles as the black man lies on the floor with a dazed look on his face and with antlers on his head as if he were a prized, big buck finally hunted down.
Finnegan is smiling and grabbing the right antler, while McDermott is holding up the man’s head as if it were his trophy.
The photo was taken in a police station on the West Side of Chicago sometime between 1999 and 2003. The Chicago Police Department successfully kept it hidden from the public until a judge refused to keep it under seal and the Chicago Sun-Times pulled a copy from a court filing.
Finnigan is a notoriously dirty ex-cop who was a member of the police department’s elite Special Operations Section (SOS) until 2006, when he was charged with leading a gang of fellow officers who robbed suspects, illegally invaded homes and stole thousands of dollars in cash. He’s now serving 12 years in federal prison.
In a 2012 interview with Playboy, Finnigan admitted the SOS beat and tortured multiple suspects, and described shutting down an internal affairs investigation by appealing to one of his comrades in blue who worked in the Internal Affairs Division.
Border Patrol Agents Tase Woman For Refusing To Cooperate With Their Bogus Search
These CBP agents — like too many other law enforcement officers — had no idea how to react when their authority was challenged. They only saw one route to take: escalation.
Cooke knew the CBP agents needed something in the way of reasonable suspicion to continue to detain her. But they had nothing. The only thing offered in the way of explanation as they ordered her to return to her detained vehicle was that she appeared “nervous” during her prior interaction with the female CBP agent. This threadbare assertion of “reasonable suspicion” is law enforcement’s blank check — one it writes itself and cashes with impunity.
The CBP supervisor then stated he’d be bringing in a drug dog to search her vehicle — another violation of Cooke’s rights. The Supreme Court very recently ruled that law enforcement cannot unnecessarily prolong routine stops in order to perform additional searches unrelated to the stop’s objective.
If the purpose of CBP is to secure borders and regulate immigration, then this stop had very little to do with the agency’s objectives. Cooke is an American citizen and had not crossed a border. If the CBP’s objective is to do whatever it wants within x number of miles of the border, then it’s apparently free to perform suspicionless searches. In this case, the CBP was operating in drug enforcement mode, but even so, it still hadn’t offered anything more than Cooke’s alleged “nervousness” to justify the search and detainment. Additionally, the CBP’s decision to bring in a drug dog raised the bar for justification.
FBI Says It Has No Idea Why Law Enforcement Agencies Are Following The Terms Of Its Stingray Non-Disclosure Agreements
The FBI doesn’t want to talk about its Stingray devices. It definitely doesn’t want local law enforcement agencies talking about them. It forces any agency seeking to acquire one to sign a very restrictive non-disclosure agreement that stipulates — among other things — that as little information as possible on IMSI catchers makes its way into the public domain, which includes opposing counsel, prosecutors’ offices and judges. The NDAs also instruct agencies to drop prosecutions if disclosure appears unavoidable. We know this because two NDAs have actually been obtained through Freedom of Information requests.
Now that Stingray usage and its attendant secrecy have been questioned by high-ranking DC legislators, the FBI is apparently feeling it should be a bit more proactive on the Stingray info front, presumably in hopes of heading off a more intrusive official inquiry. So, it has offered some “clarification” on its Stingray policies — including the NDAs it makes local agencies sign.
The “clarification” seems to contradict a great deal of what the FBI’s own NDAs require.
In a handful of criminal cases around the country, local police officers have testified in recent months that non-disclosure agreements with the FBI forbid them from acknowledging the use of secret cellphone-tracking devices. In some, prosecutors have settled cases rather than risk revealing, during court proceedings, sensitive details about the use of the devices.
The FBI, however, says such agreements do not prevent police from disclosing that they used such equipment, often called a StingRay. And only as a “last resort” would the FBI require state and local law enforcement agencies to drop criminal cases rather than sharing details of the devices’ use and “compromising the future use of the technique.”
To date, the bureau hasn’t invoked that provision, FBI spokesman Christopher Allen said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Let’s compare the official statement with statements found in the agreement signed with a New York sheriff’s department. The FBI says it’s OK for law enforcement agencies to disclose Stingray usage in this “clarification.” Here’sthe NDA:
The Erie County Sheriff’s Office shall not, in any civil or criminal proceeding, use or provide any information concerning the Harris Corporation wireless collection equipment/technology… beyond the evidentiary results obtained through the use of the equipment/technology including, but not limited to, during pre-trial matters, in search warrants and related affidavits, in discovery, in response to court ordered disclosure, in other affidavits, in grand jury hearings, in the State’s case-in-chief, rebuttal, or on appeal, or in testimony in any phase of civil or criminal trial, without the prior written approval of the FBI.
DEA Can’t Tell Senate How Detained Student Was Left to Drink Own Urine to Live
During an obscure Senate hearing on Tuesday morning, lawmakers vented their frustrations with the Drug Enforcement Administration for failing to answer questions about an incident that saw a man almost die of dehydration while in its custody.
“At what point do I have to conclude that the [Drug Enforcement Administration] is hiding something about what happened here?” asked Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, unsuccessfully prodding a DEA witness to explain why Senate inquiries into what happened to Daniel Chong have been met with silence.
On April 20, 2012, Chong was detained by DEA agents during a drug raid on a friend’s house in San Diego. The 23-year-old university student cooperated with agents during an interrogation, and was told that he would soon be free to go, only to be handcuffed with his hands behind his back and left in a small holding cell for five days without food or water. When he was finally discovered, Chong was suffering from near-kidney failure and hypothermia and in need of serious medical attention.
A Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation released last June shed additional light on Chong’s maddening de facto sentence — often served in complete darkness. He told investigators he was forced to drink his own urine and at one point attempted suicide.
Chong later received a $4.1 million settlement from the Justice Department.
The inspector general’s report, however, raised new questions about the incident, and cast doubt on DEA agents’ claims that they didn’t hear Chong’s repeated shouts and bangs in a bid to get someone’s attention. When his version of events was recreated for the purposes of the probe, an investigator “clearly heard the banging and yelling.”
Senator Grassley, who called the findings “shocking,” had last August sent a 19-question letter to DEA administrator Michele Leonhart.
“It’s been now eight months — I still don’t have a response from DEA to these questions,” Sen. Grassley said on Tuesday. He asked DEA Deputy Assistant Administrator of Drug Diversion Joseph Rannazzisi to commit the agency to responding to his inquiry by the end of the month.
Rannazzisi responded that “This was a regrettable tragic event,” before admitting that “I can’t speak for DEA or the department when the letter is going to come to you.”
Also lamenting the agency’s lack of transparency was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Her office sent two unanswered letters to the DEA last year in July and August seeking answers about the detention of her constituent.
“When we don’t get responses to our letters, that colors our view of the agency — particularly when we’re writing about a constituent who suffered from a real lapse in process,” Sen. Feinstein said during the hearing.
On Tuesday the Los Angeles Times revealed that the most severe punishment meted out to the agents responsible for Chong’s nightmare was a seven-day suspension.
“It blows my mind,” Sen. Feinstein said during the hearing, referring to the leniency afforded to the agents who were involved in what she described as a “serious infraction.”
US Marshal Shuts Down Citizen Recording By Grabbing Phone And Smashing It On The Ground
There’s a message being sent by this “tactical gear” and it says that these Marshals think they’re a military detachment and everyone around them not clearly labeled as law enforcement is the “enemy” — including anyone with a camera.
Now, it’s pretty well established that citizens have the right to film law enforcement officers while in public places. There are exceptions, of course, but none of those appear to be in play here.
What does appear to be in play is the mental exception far too many law enforcement officers feel they can deploy whenever they’d rather not be “watched.” According to an interview with Beatriz Paez, whose filming was “interrupted” by the US Marshal (and fortunately filmed by yet another person from across the street), the officers first turned their backs to her (which is fine) and then proceeded to keep moving towards her to block off her view.
When this more subtle intimidation failed to deter Paez, the US Marshal simply stormed up to her, grabbed her phone, smashed it to the ground and finally, kicked the shattered device back to her.
I guess she can be thankful he didn’t demand she hand over the phone as evidence. Although, if he had deployed that BS tactic, he’d just look stupid rather than abusive and potentially dangerous — a person armed to the teeth who can’t control his impulses.
Motel Decides It Should Just Start Faxing All Guest Info To Local Police Every Night
The Third Party Doctrine is ridiculous. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies routinely exploit this loophole to warrantlessly access all sorts of data because of the stupid assertion that anything you “voluntarily” turn over to a third party carries no expectation of privacy. The agencies blow right past the reality of the situation: that any “voluntary” exchange of personal data for services is anything but voluntary. Service providers won’t provide you with an internet connection or cell phone service without collecting massive amounts of usage data. Hotels and motels won’t rent you a room unless you tell them who you are and provide documentation to back up your claims.
So, it’s stupid all over and no one’s in any hurry to fix it because drugs need to be warred against and terrorists must be handcrafted by FBI undercover agents and the rest of whatever. The courts have generally refused to stretch the Fourth Amendment to cover the data created by these involuntary exchanges. That’s a problem and one that is only very slowly being addressed.
Motel 6 has just decided to make it worse. While warrantless access to motel records is being challenged in the Supreme Court, the chain has decided to preemptively strip away any privacy expectations that may result from court rulings and just hand it all over to law enforcement because sometimes criminals stay in motel rooms.
New Jersey Cop Demands Camera From Eyewitness After Police Dog Allowed To Maul Prone Suspect
If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide, right? That’s what the government tells us when it wants to erect cameras and fund domestic surveillance efforts. So, what do you tell a police officer who demands a citizen hand over their phone? Even if the officer has done something wrong, he still can at least attempt to hide it. And even if the effort fails, he still likely has nothing to fear. That’s the imbalance of power at work and it leads directly to this sort of thing.
New Jersey police may have gone too far when they took the cell phone from an onlooker who recorded their encounter with a suspect who was mauled by a police dog and later died.
The man, Phillip White, had dog bites all over his body last week, his lawyer said, and a jarring video shows cops struggling to pull the dog away.
A police officer took the video from a witness who was recording the arrest — possibly in violation of the law — but the footage was later obtained by NBC Philadelphia.