Bill Quick linked a horror story from California.
Here it is. It speaks for itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaGAy5XEv-o&feature=player_embedded
The cops arrived without a warrant (claiming they’d had a “domestic violence report”), demanded entry, which was refused, so they kicked in the door, assaulted the wife, and tazed her husband for trying to help her. How manly of them!
So much for the 4th Amendment. The courts have thrown it out. All it takes is an unsubstantiated phone call.
The cops “explain” here:
In a press release, Cotati police said the officers’ actions were justified because it was a call for domestic violence, and as such, the officers could not leave without making sure everyone inside the apartment was safe.
“To do so would be a neglect of duty,” said the statement. “Due to the exigent circumstances, the officers were forced to kick the door open in order to enter the apartment. Constitutional law allows for officers to make entries under these types of circumstances without a warrant.”
Paul Henderson, a former prosecutor and KPIX 5 legal analyst, agreed the officers had the right to force entry into the home.
“In the case where you have a third party calling from outside of the house, the cops have to investigate,” said Henderson. “They’re not necessarily going to take or believe someone telling them from behind a locked door that everything is okay without doing an investigation.”
According to the police press release, Wood faces two charges: obstructing a peace officer and false imprisonment.
Jennifer Wood, James’ wife, showed KPIX 5 bruises on her arm and said an officer caused them. She was adamant that there was absolutely no domestic violence between her and her husband, just a loud disagreement about finances.
“The officer later tried to get me to say my husband abused me,” Jennifer Wood said. “But I told him, ‘the only one that hurt me was you.’”
That’s right. Kick in the door and taze people to make sure they’re safe! And if they have a dog, by all means shoot the dog to death while you’re at it!
We have to make sure people are safe in their homes.
(The Gestapo would have loved these people.)
Comments
14 responses to “In the name of “safety,” your rights are gone!”
I dunno. I have read quite recently of cases where the police knocked on the door, and no one answered, so they just went away… and someone was laying in the bathtub, bleeding to death after a vicious beating; or chained, naked, in the basement; or being held at knifepoint, and soforth.
And, of course, when this sort of thing happens, the police are severely criticized. So you’re kind of putting them in a no-win situation, here.
The spokesman is right, here. If it’s a possible domestic violence situation, the cops are not going to accept someone’s unsupported word from behind a locked door. They do need to see for themselves that everything’s OK.
Of course, this is the kind of thing where the police really need to have peoples’ goodwill and willing cooperation. If they’ve been in the habit of swaggering around in their black stormtrooper uniforms and acting like overbearing a-holes, then maybe they’ve destroyed the goodwill, and willing cooperation might be in short supply.
That their first reaction to “no” was to kick in the door and (literally) start jerking people around, argues that maybe that’s the case.
If the police have probable cause to believe a crime has occurred, they can get a search warrant. Whether a phone call about a loud argument supplies probable cause is up to the judge. There is no “safety” exception in the 4th Amendment, nor is there any exception for crimes involving “domestic violence,” or children (as the CPS seems to believe) or animals (as animal control bureaucrats seem to believe). What’s next? A “terrorist” exception? A “hate crime” exception? A “copyright violation” exception?
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the man had beaten his wife. That is a crime, is it not? If there is probable cause that the crime occurred, then why not go get a warrant according to legal procedures? If a crime is occurring right in front of the officers, they have a right to make an arrest, but here they just demanded to enter and look around. Precisely what the 4th Amendment was intended to prevent.
As to the police being criticized for not doing enough, I don’t see how that justifies another 4th Amendment exception either.
Like you I’m outraged at police over reach and Gestapo like tactics. But for every story like the one cited above, there are unfortunately stories about police negligence that result in horrible crimes. One such incident happened recently near me.
The sheriff’s office had been called on a domestic dispute concerning a man who had threatened his wife. Apparently they get so many of these that it is treated routinely. The man had isolated his wife and two young daughters. He ended up killing all three and is now the subject of a manhunt in Humbolt County.
http://www.times-standard.com/news/ci_23277786/manhunt-shane-miller-day-11-deputies-continue-scaled
We are aware that sometimes it is determined later that the cops left while there were horrible things afoot on the premises.
Nonetheless, is this sort of situation not why we have a Constitution? If the cops believed that their anonymous snitch was telling the truth, why didn’t they go to a judge and get a warrant to enter the premises?
Yes. We know. That’s craaaaaaaazy talk.
Is absolute safety what you desire? Then you are a deadly enemy of individual liberty.
Bill, I’m on your side. I abhor the militarization of local police, the SWAT teams called out for every minor raid, and the mindset that OK’s police behavior trashing our rights and running over the Constitution.
Having said that, there is the other problem of police ignoring real problems while chalking up their negligence to budget cuts. In the case of Shane Miller they had been called previously, by the wife, and ignored the signs. The tragedy occurred on their watch and partly through their incompetence. It wasn’t a matter of too much police force that allowed a man to kill his little girls.
I’m sorry if this doesn’t fit, but it’s the other side. Deal with it.
Cops do not prevent crimes from occurring. They even handed over to Jeffrey Dahmer one of the victims he was in the middle of processing, and the officer who did that was later made president of the Milwaukee PD:
http://classicalvalues.com/2009/11/no_one_is_accou/
Cops can do whatever they want, and the lawyers justify it later. I think this more is about power than anything else.
If they have to get a warrant when a citizen refuses entry, why are the cops making that such a big deal? It is not as if warrants are unusual; there are well-established procedures, and warrants are routinely cranked out by judges like shit through a goose.
I think some cops just want to be allowed to do whatever they want.
Here is a perfect example of how law enforcement shrugs their duty by not bothering the answer domestic violence calls:
http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2013/05/23/911-dispatcher-tells-woman-about-to-be-sexually-assaulted-there-are-no-cops-to-help-her-due-to-budget-cuts/
Forget the “protect and serve” bullshit, it’s all about money, and the power trip.
The only way people will ever be safe in their homes is by being armed and dangerous. And suspicious.
Kathy, amen.
[…] In the name of "safety," your rights are gone! […]
It’s important to resist becoming a police state, the overuse of paramilitary tactics, and the criminalization of acts that should be, at most, regulatory matters with civil penalties. And I really f’n hate it when the SWAT barges in and kills the dogs, regardless of the apparent level of threat by the dogs.
However, I don’t think this situation is a clear-cut example of such abuses. Police protocol typically mandates that they ascertain with certainty if there is violence going on. These citizens really did unnecessarily escalate the situation–and they had kids there. I would eat any amount of crow to protect my kids from being traumatized or put in danger.
Sometimes there aren’t neat lines that can be drawn.
According to the police themselves, there was a report of a loud argument. The parties stated that there was no domestic violence and refused entry. At this point, the police should have simply waited there and gotten a warrant. If they see a crime being committed in front of them, they can intervene, but here they had only a hunch that maybe there was violence. No sounds of blows, no calls for help, etc. To say that they have a right to break down the door without a warrant under these circumstances is, I think, morally wrong, as well as unconstitutional.
The 4th Amendment contains no exception from the warrant requirement in cases of “domestic violence” or “when children are present” or “when drugs might be flushed down the toilet” etc. It might be inconvenient, but the cops are supposed to get a warrant before using force to break into a home.
Our legal tradition stems from the idea that a man’s home is supposed to be his castle.
I’d say it’s not much of a castle if the cops can break down your door on this pretext!
Regarding getting a warrant: based on what? The police will not have any more information than they did when they decided they had to enter by force. IOW, this is either exigent circumstances…or it’s a situation with insufficient information to ever constitute probable cause for a warrant.
Domestic violence is such a weird dynamic; again, there are often no easy lines to be drawn in messy human affairs. Here, the police were confronted with a common domestic violence scenario. There is a report from neighbors; they arrive and there is no obvious sign of injury and two people say there is no problem. The police protocol probably includes getting identities on parties and ascertaining who is in the dwelling, and if everyone there is alright. The husband here being all amped-up and agitated was, unfortunately, a red-flag.
I don’t know why they tased him and you can’t tell from the video, but I’m suspicious that they didn’t have cause to do so.