Police Behavior and What To Do About It

[LFC]

If you're black, you'll attack. If you're white, you're alright.

The Boston Police Department continues to receive harsh criticism for getting caught off guard on July 2 when nearly 100 members of the Patriot Front marched through downtown streets and assaulted a Black artist.

In the eye of the storm is the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), long denounced by activists for racist practices, according to a weekend report in the Boston Globe. Experts on policing and local activists told the newspaper that a bias toward focusing on Black gangs – while paying scant attention to white nationalist groups – is a key factor.

“Anticipating threats like the Patriot Front march is the whole reason institutions such as BRIC exist, according to Keith Taylor, a former sergeant in the New York City Police Department who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “’It’s a big problem when law enforcement is not aware of an oncoming threat to the citizens of the jurisdiction they’re responsible for,’ he said.

“BRIC’s database of gang members is overwhelmingly people of color, suggesting law enforcement has made limited inroads into white gang activity. As of late July, whites account for 10.5 percent of entries into the database, according to Boston police, although some may be white and Hispanic. More than 86 percent of those listed are Black.

“On the day of the Patriot Front march, police records obtained by the Globe show that the proportions weren’t much different. Boston police reported field interrogations and observations of 46 people: 69 percent were Black. Of the 11 people identified as white in the FIOs, eight were said to be of “Hispanic origin.” Not a single “field observation and interrogation” was issued on July 2 against a member of the Patriot Front, the Globe reported.

“It’s not surprising that an institution that has shown us time and time again that they have a problem with racism is of course not going to pay attention to white supremacy in this way,” Fatema Ahmad, executive director of the Boston-based Muslim Justice League, told the Globe.

[LFC]

Interesting "now that the shoe is on the other foot" kind of story.

Cops Love Immunity—Until They’re the Ones Abused by Police
An ATF agent is suing after he was roughed up by local officers. But he’d be immune from lawsuits if the roles were reversed, thanks to qualified immunity.

Patrol officers took no chances when they confronted a man claiming to be a federal agent in Dublin, Ohio, a small city about 20 miles north of Columbus. They drew their weapons first and asked questions later.

Bodycam footage captures the rapidly escalated standoff from summer 2020. After shouting contradictory commands at the man and forcing him onto the ground at gunpoint, two officers tased and handcuffed him. They then put him—still restrained—in the back of a patrol car for more than an hour while they checked out his story, which turned out to be true.

The detainee was James Burk, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), following up on a tip about an illegally owned gun. But because Burk did not don a uniform or carry a warrant, a woman at the condominium he came to visit called 911 instead of opening her door.

When officers arrived, Burk identified himself as a federal agent and explained that his badge was in his pocket. But the officers were not persuaded.

Six months after the incident, Burk filed a civil rights lawsuit against the acting officers from the Columbus Division of Police. Predictably, Burk now finds himself on the wrong end of a judge-made doctrine called “qualified immunity.”

The doctrine, which the U.S. Supreme Court invented in 1982, shields government employees from accountability for unreasonable actions—unless victims can point to a prior case in the same jurisdiction that clearly establishes the behavior as unconstitutional.

The irony of this case is that law enforcement officers like Burk normally love qualified immunity.

[LFC]

Bye!

The Uvalde school board voted unanimously Wednesday evening to terminate the contract of police chief Pete Arredondo after meeting in a closed session.

Arredondo didn't attend the meeting, with a statement from his attorney saying the district wasn't following legal procedure as it moved to fire him and he didn't feel safe attending the meeting.

[LFC]

And the slaughter continues. This one Columbus, OH:

Police in Columbus, Ohio, have released body camera video that shows a police officer serving a felony warrant fatally shooting an unarmed Black man in bed.

Donovan Lewis, 20, died Tuesday after being shot by Police Officer Ricky Anderson, a 30-year veteran with the Columbus Division of Police assigned to the K9 unit, according to a police statement.

There was no justification for the officer to shoot, Rex Elliott, an attorney for Lewis’ family, said at a news conference Thursday morning.

“Donovan was unarmed, and he was abiding by police commands to come out of his room when he was shot in cold blood by Officer Anderson,” Elliott said, flanked by Lewis’ parents, siblings, grandmother, aunt and family friends. They were “just a few of the many people that have had their lives altered forever because of the events of early Tuesday morning.”

This one is Los Angeles:

Immediately after Los Angeles police officers shot a 39-year-old Black man in the back several times, the department claimed its officers believed he was carrying a gun. In body camera footage of the July 18 incident released Wednesday, however, an officer can be heard saying, “It’s not a gun, bro,” as they pursue him on foot.

A 911 caller had alerted law enforcement to a man walking around the area brandishing “a black, semi-automatic gun,” according to audio of the call. Responding officers came across Jermaine Petit, who partially matched the caller’s description of the suspect, several blocks away from where the incident was reported.

In the footage, Petit is seen walking away as the officers converge on him with their weapons drawn. An officer then says, “What is… Bro, you said that’s not a gun?”

“Hey, drop it!” says another, identified as Officer Daryl Glover Jr., as they chase Petit across a road.

As LAPD Sgt. Brett Hayhoe—a “uniformed supervisor,” as Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore would put it a day later—pulls up alongside Petit in a squad car, multiple shots are heard in the footage, and Petit collapses. As he shifts on the ground, the officers yell to each other to take cover and for the 39-year-old to “stop reaching for it.”

The shooting of Petit, an Air Force veteran with a history of mental illness, including PTSD, marked the LAPD’s 20th of 2022. The release of the footage on Thursday was first flagged by Streetsblog Los Angeles and Twitter user William Gude.

[LFC]

Good. This shit is inexcusable. If found guilty (it IS Georgia, after all) he needs to be hit with a felony so he can never again own or handle a firearm. He's clearly not a "responsible gun owner."

A former Atlanta police officer has been hit with multiple charges related to an incident where he pointed a gun and yelled racial slurs while in uniform at a Black couple and their children at a traffic light, WSB-TV reports.

Officer Robert Malone resigned from the force over the incident in July.

On May 5, Courtney Harris said she, her boyfriend Quinton Rogers, and their three kids were waiting at a traffic light when light turned green, but the car in front of theirs never moved. When the family pulled around the car, Malone honked his horn and yelled racial epithets.

“He was in a rage,” Rogers told WSB-TV.

Harris says Malone, who is white and who was not on duty at the time, pointed a gun out the window. When she told him they had children in the car, he replied that he didn't care and called them the N-word. When Harris and Rogers got out of their car to confront Malone, they noticed his police badge. When another police officer arrived on the scene, Malone denied their allegations and sped away.

“It was just shocking,” Rogers said. “That could’ve easily went sideways.”

[goldenvalley]

Sept 2, 2022 19:52:29 GMT LFC said:

Good. This shit is inexcusable. If found guilty (it IS Georgia, after all) he needs to be hit with a felony so he can never again own or handle a firearm. He's clearly not a "responsible gun owner."

A former Atlanta police officer has been hit with multiple charges related to an incident where he pointed a gun and yelled racial slurs while in uniform at a Black couple and their children at a traffic light, WSB-TV reports.

Officer Robert Malone resigned from the force over the incident in July.

On May 5, Courtney Harris said she, her boyfriend Quinton Rogers, and their three kids were waiting at a traffic light when light turned green, but the car in front of theirs never moved. When the family pulled around the car, Malone honked his horn and yelled racial epithets.

“He was in a rage,” Rogers told WSB-TV.

Harris says Malone, who is white and who was not on duty at the time, pointed a gun out the window. When she told him they had children in the car, he replied that he didn't care and called them the N-word. When Harris and Rogers got out of their car to confront Malone, they noticed his police badge. When another police officer arrived on the scene, Malone denied their allegations and sped away.

“It was just shocking,” Rogers said. “That could’ve easily went sideways.”

Where the h$#& do they find these guys to hire?  Is there no personality profiling, psych screening?

[pnwguy]

Sept 2, 2022 19:55:16 GMT goldenvalley said:

Sept 2, 2022 19:52:29 GMT LFC said:

Good. This shit is inexcusable. If found guilty (it IS Georgia, after all) he needs to be hit with a felony so he can never again own or handle a firearm. He's clearly not a "responsible gun owner."

Where the h$#& do they find these guys to hire?  Is there no personality profiling, psych screening?

--> (it IS Georgia, after all)

Don't you think his attitude is what they are screening FOR?

Sort of like this old song.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NzFJxX8yoY

[goldenvalley]

You know how people like me keep saying things like how do some of these officers pass psychological testing?  Well, in Oakland, CA 47 sheriffs deputies were stripped of guns and powers to arrest because they failed. For example:

The letter from Sheriff Gregory Ahern notified a deputy — whose name was blacked out in the copy — that the deputy had been graded “D. Not Suited” in a psychological evaluation and under state law couldn’t serve as a peace officer.

The letter said the Sheriff’s Office had previously been operating under incorrect advice received several years ago from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which said it could hire candidates who received such a rating.

[LFC]

Sept 28, 2022 17:56:47 GMT goldenvalley said:

The letter said the Sheriff’s Office had previously been operating under incorrect advice received several years ago from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which said it could hire candidates who received such a rating.

Which dodges the question, why the F*** would you hire such a candidate even if allowed?

[LFC]

Destroying lives for fun and profit.

Harris Elias and his 15-year-old son were driving home from dinner at a local Fort Collins, Colorado, taco spot when they got pulled over.

Elias, a 51-year-old single father of three, told The Daily Beast that he immediately “put his defenses up” as he noticed Officer Jason Haferman walking up to his driver-side window on Dec. 3, 2021.

“At first, he asked me if I knew why he had pulled me over, which I thought was a ridiculous question because I had no idea why he would pull me over,” Elias said. “As soon as he asked me what I had to drink, I knew it was happening all over again.”

The harrowing sense of déjà vu, he said, was spurred because just two years prior, he had been arrested by a Loveland, Colorado, police officer on suspicion of driving under the influence (DUI). The case was eventually dismissed, but it instilled a deep fear of overzealous law enforcement in Elias.

In a police report obtained by The Daily Beast, Haferman claimed Elias’ “eyes were glassy, pupils constricted, and his breathing was deep” and immediately placed him under arrest to get tested for drugs and alcohol at a local hospital. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Services lab report later detected no drugs or alcohol in his system.

But before those results came back, Elias was already halfway to hell.

“I can’t explain what it is like walking through the hospital handcuffed. To see how people look at you, and how the staff interacts with you,” Elias said. “It was really degrading.”

The humiliation, he said, was just the start. When he was allowed to bond out of jail three days later, he said, he had to deal with child protective services and beg a judge to let him have contact with his son.

That’s because in Colorado, state law dictates that an individual who commits a DUI that involves a child can also be prosecuted for child abuse, a charge Elias faced in addition to driving under the influence and careless driving. Elias eventually got all charges dropped after approximately two months—but, he said, the sting hasn’t gone away.

“Knowing that I couldn’t even drive with my own kid and there was zero evidence that I violated any law… it made me feel six inches tall,” Elias explained. “By far, the thing that doesn’t go away from this case is the child abuse aspect of it. It is the ultimate way to hurt someone who has spent the last 15 years as a single dad.”

Elias is not the only Colorado resident to be wrongfully accused of driving under the influence after being stopped by Haferman. In fact, the Fort Collins Police Department confirmed to The Daily Beast that in the last two years, at least nine of Haferman’s DUI arrests were executed on drivers with no drugs or alcohol in their systems.

The shocking series of questionable arrests was first reported by Fox31.

This case is disgusting.

Not included among those nine is the case of Harley Padilla—even though the severely disabled man was forced to spend a year in jail when Haferman arrested him after he said Padilla was slurring his words and that his balance was uneven. After a motorcycle accident four years prior, the 52-year-old lost his left arm and is forced to speak through a hole in his throat.

“Because of his injuries, I don’t think Harley Padilla even has the capacity to slur words,” his attorney, Troy Krenning, told The Daily Beast. “He speaks through his throat and doesn’t use his tongue or lips. Haferman also talked about his balance being uneven. No shit, he is disabled.”

The officer resigned and faces no charges. He was a problem before he bailed.

But before Fort Collins Police Chief Jeff Swoboda could fire Haferman after an internal police investigation, the 31-year-old resigned from the force, as the chief announced early this month. A police spokesperson confirmed the resignation came after Haferman had been reassigned twice and ultimately placed on leave after a review initially began at the start of the year—before internal affairs began their own investigation in April.

“The internal affairs investigation did not identify any malintent or criminal violations,” the spokesperson said. “It did reveal a pattern of poor performance in terms of administrative responsibilities, procedural consistency, and adherence to the standards of operation that we train and expect from our officers.”

[goldenvalley]

Dec 13, 2022 17:32:53 GMT LFC said:

Destroying lives for fun and profit.

Harris Elias and his 15-year-old son were driving home from dinner at a local Fort Collins, Colorado, taco spot when they got pulled over.

Elias, a 51-year-old single father of three, told The Daily Beast that he immediately “put his defenses up” as he noticed Officer Jason Haferman walking up to his driver-side window on Dec. 3, 2021.

“At first, he asked me if I knew why he had pulled me over, which I thought was a ridiculous question because I had no idea why he would pull me over,” Elias said. “As soon as he asked me what I had to drink, I knew it was happening all over again.”

The harrowing sense of déjà vu, he said, was spurred because just two years prior, he had been arrested by a Loveland, Colorado, police officer on suspicion of driving under the influence (DUI). The case was eventually dismissed, but it instilled a deep fear of overzealous law enforcement in Elias.

In a police report obtained by The Daily Beast, Haferman claimed Elias’ “eyes were glassy, pupils constricted, and his breathing was deep” and immediately placed him under arrest to get tested for drugs and alcohol at a local hospital. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Services lab report later detected no drugs or alcohol in his system.

But before those results came back, Elias was already halfway to hell.

“I can’t explain what it is like walking through the hospital handcuffed. To see how people look at you, and how the staff interacts with you,” Elias said. “It was really degrading.”

The humiliation, he said, was just the start. When he was allowed to bond out of jail three days later, he said, he had to deal with child protective services and beg a judge to let him have contact with his son.

That’s because in Colorado, state law dictates that an individual who commits a DUI that involves a child can also be prosecuted for child abuse, a charge Elias faced in addition to driving under the influence and careless driving. Elias eventually got all charges dropped after approximately two months—but, he said, the sting hasn’t gone away.

“Knowing that I couldn’t even drive with my own kid and there was zero evidence that I violated any law… it made me feel six inches tall,” Elias explained. “By far, the thing that doesn’t go away from this case is the child abuse aspect of it. It is the ultimate way to hurt someone who has spent the last 15 years as a single dad.”

Elias is not the only Colorado resident to be wrongfully accused of driving under the influence after being stopped by Haferman. In fact, the Fort Collins Police Department confirmed to The Daily Beast that in the last two years, at least nine of Haferman’s DUI arrests were executed on drivers with no drugs or alcohol in their systems.

The shocking series of questionable arrests was first reported by Fox31.

This case is disgusting.

Not included among those nine is the case of Harley Padilla—even though the severely disabled man was forced to spend a year in jail when Haferman arrested him after he said Padilla was slurring his words and that his balance was uneven. After a motorcycle accident four years prior, the 52-year-old lost his left arm and is forced to speak through a hole in his throat.

“Because of his injuries, I don’t think Harley Padilla even has the capacity to slur words,” his attorney, Troy Krenning, told The Daily Beast. “He speaks through his throat and doesn’t use his tongue or lips. Haferman also talked about his balance being uneven. No shit, he is disabled.”

The officer resigned and faces no charges. He was a problem before he bailed.

But before Fort Collins Police Chief Jeff Swoboda could fire Haferman after an internal police investigation, the 31-year-old resigned from the force, as the chief announced early this month. A police spokesperson confirmed the resignation came after Haferman had been reassigned twice and ultimately placed on leave after a review initially began at the start of the year—before internal affairs began their own investigation in April.

“The internal affairs investigation did not identify any malintent or criminal violations,” the spokesperson said. “It did reveal a pattern of poor performance in terms of administrative responsibilities, procedural consistency, and adherence to the standards of operation that we train and expect from our officers.”

That is such awful behavior with long lasting impacts on innocent people.  I wonder if this police force has officers patrolling alone or paired up.  I'm thinking alone so that this guy can make up stuff on his reports to "justify" his arrests.  If a second officer were present, maybe the ability to do that is reduced and the second officer would be in a position to report this behavior to supervisors.  Of course, two officers could just agree to back each other up.  It depends on the type of person the officers are.

[AnBr]

Dec 13, 2022 17:54:05 GMT goldenvalley said:

That is such awful behavior with long lasting impacts on innocent people.  I wonder if this police force has officers patrolling alone or paired up.  I'm thinking alone so that this guy can make up stuff on his reports to "justify" his arrests.  If a second officer were present, maybe the ability to do that is reduced and the second officer would be in a position to report this behavior to supervisors.  Of course, two officers could just agree to back each other up.  It depends on the type of person the officers are.

You are forgetting about the blue wall of silence, so maybe or maybe not.

[pnwguy]

Even working for Rupert Murdoch doesn’t protect you if you are a Scary Black Man

youtu.be/U0MCWpqRzWg

[AnBr]

[LFC]

Destroying evidence? LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!

An Arkansas cop accused last summer of viciously beating a handcuffed man—the shocking scene caught on video by a horrified bystander—wiped his department-issued phone to destroy evidence that further implicated him, an FBI search warrant affidavit obtained by The Daily Beast alleges.

Then-Crawford County Sheriff’s Deputy Levi Garrett White “performed a factory reset that erased all data” on his department-issued iPhone 11 Pro Max after he brutally assaulted a shackled Randal Ray Worcester, states the affidavit. White deleted a series of incriminating text messages roughly 90 minutes before department brass arrived to pick it up two weeks after the incident, it claims.

The feds say White, 32, was worried the bystander’s video, which showed him punching Worcester in the head and slamming his skull into the pavement, would “ruin his life and cost him his job.” On the evening of the incident, White allegedly texted a former colleague from his personal phone, “I’ll fight back with someone trying to do that stupid shit every time. I don’t care.”

[LFC]

Louisville PD is out of control and had been long before they slaughtered Breonna Taylor. Remember that this type of DOJ investigation is the very type of behavior Attorney General Beauregard Sessions said up front he wouldn't perform.

The Louisville Metro Police Department routinely uses excessive force and practices “an aggressive style of policing” against Black people, the Justice Department said Wednesday after an investigation launched following the botched raid that killed Breonna Taylor.

The scathing assessment paints a shocking portrait of racist and abusive conduct in the Louisville police that harkens to practices more commonly seen in some southern cities during the civil rights era.

Investigators identified a pattern of police leaders in recent years commissioning reports that documented disproportionate violence directed toward African Americans and ignoring the findings or burying the internal reports. The abuses extended to the treatment of the disabled and even sex assault victims.

“For years, LMPD has practiced an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city,” the report said.

“LMPD cites people for minor offenses, like wide turns and broken taillights, while serious crimes like sexual assault and homicide go unsolved,” the report added. “Some officers demonstrate disrespect for the people they are sworn to protect. Some officers have videotaped themselves throwing drinks at pedestrians from their cars; insulted people with disabilities; and called Black people ‘monkeys,’ ‘animal,’ and ‘boy.’”

Louisville police use “unreasonable tactics” including unjustified neck restraints, police dogs and tasers, DOJ found. The report also found that the police department executes search warrants without knocking and announcing.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the results of the investigation Wednesday.

“This conduct is unacceptable. It is heartbreaking. It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing and it is an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve Louisville with honor,” Garland said at a news conference. “And it is an affront to the people of Louisville who deserve better.”

[LFC]

Why yes, I do believe there needs to be an independent board monitoring the actions of police departments. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to never cooperate with an officer, just be polite, say as little as possible, and offer nothing. It's sad but they're the ones who keep stepping over lines.

The week of last Thanksgiving, Michael Larkin, a business owner in Hamilton, Ohio, picked up his phone and answered a call. It was the local police, and they wanted footage from Larkin’s front door camera.

Larkin had a Ring video doorbell, one of the more than 10 million Americans with the Amazon-owned product installed at their front doors. His doorbell was among 21 Ring cameras in and around his home and business, picking up footage of Larkin, neighbors, customers and anyone else near his house.

The police said they were conducting a drug-related investigation on a neighbor, and they wanted videos of “suspicious activity” between 5 and 7 p.m. one night in October. Larkin cooperated, and sent clips of a car that drove by his Ring camera more than 12 times in that time frame.

He thought that was all the police would need. Instead, it was just the beginning.

They asked for more footage, now from the entire day’s worth of records. And a week later, Larkin received a notice from Ring itself: The company had received a warrant, signed by a local judge. The notice informed him it was obligated to send footage from more than 20 cameras — whether or not Larkin was willing to share it himself.

Questions of who owns private home security footage, and who can get access to it, have become a bigger issue in the national debate over digital privacy. And when law enforcement gets involved, even the slim existing legal protections evaporate.

“It really takes the control out of the hands of the homeowners, and I think that’s hugely problematic,” said Jennifer Lynch, the surveillance litigation director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group.

In the debate over home surveillance, much of the concern has focused on Ring in particular, because of its popularity, as well as the company’s track record of cooperating closely with law enforcement agencies. The company offers a multitude of products such as indoor cameras or spotlight cameras for homes or businesses, recording videos based on motion activation, with the footage stored for up to 180 days on Ring’s servers.

They amount to a large and unregulated web of eyes on American communities — which can provide law enforcement valuable information in the event of a crime, but also create a 24/7 recording operation that even the owners of the cameras aren’t fully aware they’ve helped to build.

“If you think about a search of a home, you’re limited to the physical space that’s inside the home and what can be held there,” Lynch said. “But in a warrant for electronic data, the account may have a nearly unlimited amount of data associated with it. And we’ve seen courts struggle with how to limit these warrants.”

The police simply took the video footage from inside his home and inside his business, despite that footage having nothing to do with their investigation. What a great way to keep people from installing home security. Bold mine.

After sending the initial footage, Larkin started to find the police demands onerous. “He sent one asking for all the footage from October 25,” Larkin said. That was a far bigger ask, he said. Larkin told POLITICO that he has five cameras surrounding his house, which record in 5 to 15 second bursts whenever they’re activated. He also has three cameras inside his house, as well as 13 cameras inside the store that he owns, which is nowhere near his home. All of these cameras are connected to his Ring account.

He declined that request. He says his main concern at first was practical: each clip, even if it were only 5 seconds long, would take up to a minute to download and send over.

After he stopped cooperating, he didn’t hear from the detective again, until he received an email from Ring, notifying him that his account was the subject of a warrant from the Hamilton police department.

This time, Larkin wasn’t able to choose which cameras he could send videos from. The warrant included all five of his outdoor cameras, and also added a sixth camera that was inside his house, as well as any videos from cameras associated with his account, which would include the cameras in his store. It would include footage recorded from cameras he had in his living room and bedroom, as well as the 13 cameras he had installed at his store associated with his account.

Larkin, now incensed that police were requesting footage from inside his home for an investigation that didn’t even involve him, wanted to fight the warrant. He estimated that a lawyer would have been too expensive, and he only had about seven days to challenge it before Ring would comply. He still doesn’t understand how a judge could have signed off on a warrant asking for footage from a camera inside his home, when the investigation was on his neighbor.

“That says to me that the cops can go in and subpoena anybody, no matter how weak their evidence is,” he said.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 10, 2023 22:53:29 GMT LFC said:

Why yes, I do believe there needs to be an independent board monitoring the actions of police departments. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to never cooperate with an officer, just be polite, say as little as possible, and offer nothing. It's sad but they're the ones who keep stepping over lines.

The week of last Thanksgiving, Michael Larkin, a business owner in Hamilton, Ohio, picked up his phone and answered a call. It was the local police, and they wanted footage from Larkin’s front door camera.

Larkin had a Ring video doorbell, one of the more than 10 million Americans with the Amazon-owned product installed at their front doors. His doorbell was among 21 Ring cameras in and around his home and business, picking up footage of Larkin, neighbors, customers and anyone else near his house.

The police said they were conducting a drug-related investigation on a neighbor, and they wanted videos of “suspicious activity” between 5 and 7 p.m. one night in October. Larkin cooperated, and sent clips of a car that drove by his Ring camera more than 12 times in that time frame.

He thought that was all the police would need. Instead, it was just the beginning.

They asked for more footage, now from the entire day’s worth of records. And a week later, Larkin received a notice from Ring itself: The company had received a warrant, signed by a local judge. The notice informed him it was obligated to send footage from more than 20 cameras — whether or not Larkin was willing to share it himself.

Questions of who owns private home security footage, and who can get access to it, have become a bigger issue in the national debate over digital privacy. And when law enforcement gets involved, even the slim existing legal protections evaporate.

“It really takes the control out of the hands of the homeowners, and I think that’s hugely problematic,” said Jennifer Lynch, the surveillance litigation director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group.

In the debate over home surveillance, much of the concern has focused on Ring in particular, because of its popularity, as well as the company’s track record of cooperating closely with law enforcement agencies. The company offers a multitude of products such as indoor cameras or spotlight cameras for homes or businesses, recording videos based on motion activation, with the footage stored for up to 180 days on Ring’s servers.

They amount to a large and unregulated web of eyes on American communities — which can provide law enforcement valuable information in the event of a crime, but also create a 24/7 recording operation that even the owners of the cameras aren’t fully aware they’ve helped to build.

“If you think about a search of a home, you’re limited to the physical space that’s inside the home and what can be held there,” Lynch said. “But in a warrant for electronic data, the account may have a nearly unlimited amount of data associated with it. And we’ve seen courts struggle with how to limit these warrants.”

The police simply took the video footage from inside his home and inside his business, despite that footage having nothing to do with their investigation. What a great way to keep people from installing home security. Bold mine.

After sending the initial footage, Larkin started to find the police demands onerous. “He sent one asking for all the footage from October 25,” Larkin said. That was a far bigger ask, he said. Larkin told POLITICO that he has five cameras surrounding his house, which record in 5 to 15 second bursts whenever they’re activated. He also has three cameras inside his house, as well as 13 cameras inside the store that he owns, which is nowhere near his home. All of these cameras are connected to his Ring account.

He declined that request. He says his main concern at first was practical: each clip, even if it were only 5 seconds long, would take up to a minute to download and send over.

After he stopped cooperating, he didn’t hear from the detective again, until he received an email from Ring, notifying him that his account was the subject of a warrant from the Hamilton police department.

This time, Larkin wasn’t able to choose which cameras he could send videos from. The warrant included all five of his outdoor cameras, and also added a sixth camera that was inside his house, as well as any videos from cameras associated with his account, which would include the cameras in his store. It would include footage recorded from cameras he had in his living room and bedroom, as well as the 13 cameras he had installed at his store associated with his account.

Larkin, now incensed that police were requesting footage from inside his home for an investigation that didn’t even involve him, wanted to fight the warrant. He estimated that a lawyer would have been too expensive, and he only had about seven days to challenge it before Ring would comply. He still doesn’t understand how a judge could have signed off on a warrant asking for footage from a camera inside his home, when the investigation was on his neighbor.

“That says to me that the cops can go in and subpoena anybody, no matter how weak their evidence is,” he said.

Not just cops.  Don't know why any judge would sign off on such an over broad search warrant.  Also there is a huge problem alluded to here...who owns the video?  Technology has again created legal issues that didn't exist before...and legislators aren't good at spotting potential problems so they can deal with them from the beginning.

[andydp]

This popped up on our editorial page this morning.  Some background on "Geofence Warrants", or how the police surveil you without you being accused of anything.  There's plenty in the article to be concerned about.  Basically, all the police have to do to see where you've been is get a Geofence Warrant.  It doesn't matter if you were eating dinner with a friend.  If you're in the capture area the police know you've been there. In other words: Big brother IS watching.


Stop police from using our cellphones against us

Police exploit geofence warrants every year, allowing them to trawl digital dragnets through entire communities. Now New York lawmakers are poised to pass a first-in-the-nation ban on police use of these warrants.

Geofence warrants allow law enforcement to force Google and other tech companies to identify everyone in a specified area during a period of time. They enable the police to search any area, regardless of size or the number of people whose data is collected. Other warrants require proof that an individual is suspected of a particular crime, but police issue geofence warrants even when they cannot declare how many people’s information will be combed through. Therefore, most data collected through geofence warrants is innocent bystander data.

digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/odn/albanytimesunion/default.aspx

[LFC]

Apr 10, 2023 11:01:26 GMT andydp said:

This popped up on our editorial page this morning.  Some background on "Geofence Warrants", or how the police surveil you without you being accused of anything.  There's plenty in the article to be concerned about.  Basically, all the police have to do to see where you've been is get a Geofence Warrant.  It doesn't matter if you were eating dinner with a friend.  If you're in the capture area the police know you've been there. In other words: Big brother IS watching.

I remember reporting on how the FBI abused low/no oversight warrants a few years back. They went from occasional use to tens of thousands annually. This is why the police can't be trusted to operate outside of strict guidelines. No-knock warrant usage skyrocketed when it was supposed to be used rarely and ended up with people dead, wounded, falsely arrested, and/or with property destruction.

Law enforcement has proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if they have leeway on any type of warrant that can be abused, they'll abuse it. If they proved themselves trustworthy with these tools it would be a different story but they clearly have not.

[LFC]

The revolving door of bad cops continues to spin.

Myles Cosgrove, one of the Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the 2020 shooting of Breonna Taylor, has been recently hired by the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, Cosgrove’s attorney told CNN.

The move prompted the family of Breonna Taylor to release a statement expressing “disgust” and “disappointment” the officer who fired the fatal bullet in the botched raid was hired by a sheriff’s office only 50 miles away from Louisville.

Cosgrove – the detective whose bullet ultimately killed Taylor according to the Kentucky Attorney General – began working for the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office on April 20, Sheriff Ryan Gosser told CNN affiliate WAVE.

The sheriff told WAVE his office did a normal background check prior to hiring Cosgrove, and pointed out Cosgrove was never indicted.

Gosser said Cosgrove brings experience which will be useful in the county, WAVE reported.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 27, 2023 13:00:07 GMT LFC said:

The revolving door of bad cops continues to spin.

Myles Cosgrove, one of the Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the 2020 shooting of Breonna Taylor, has been recently hired by the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, Cosgrove’s attorney told CNN.

The move prompted the family of Breonna Taylor to release a statement expressing “disgust” and “disappointment” the officer who fired the fatal bullet in the botched raid was hired by a sheriff’s office only 50 miles away from Louisville.

Cosgrove – the detective whose bullet ultimately killed Taylor according to the Kentucky Attorney General – began working for the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office on April 20, Sheriff Ryan Gosser told CNN affiliate WAVE.

The sheriff told WAVE his office did a normal background check prior to hiring Cosgrove, and pointed out Cosgrove was never indicted.

Gosser said Cosgrove brings experience which will be useful in the county, WAVE reported.

I looked up Carroll County.  Population is about 11,000.  I suspect hiring anyone to work for their sheriff's office is difficult due to low pay.  They'll take whoever has some training in police work. 

[AnBr]

[LFC]

Out of control. Nothing like threatening arrest for something you don't know is or isn't a crime and then attacking the person who actually sticks up for their own rights.

A country music fan had his leg smashed by a cop who took him down with an MMA move after telling him not to drink in public, according to a report.

Jason Slama was leaving the Luke Bryan show in rural Nebraska when Cass County Sheriff’s deputies stopped him and told him to discard his drink, according to The Washington Post. When Slama asked the officers to cite the Nebraska statute that prohibited him from finishing his beer in the privately owned field, they could not, the Post reported. He discarded the beer anyway.

But according to the Post, a sergeant from the neighboring Sarpy County Sheriff’s Department, Kevin Krecklow, approached Slama and threatened to arrest him for trespassing if he did not leave. Slama then asked for the statute number for trespassing.

Krecklow then grabbed Slama and slammed him to the ground with an “MMA-type technique.” He also stomped on Slama's right leg, leaving it fractured in multiple places, the Post reported, citing a lawsuit filed by Slama.

According to his lawsuit alleging excessive force, Slama said he needed surgery as a result of the incident.

“I’ve got a great respect, or had a great respect, for law enforcement,” Slama told The Washington Post. “Now after the incident that I’ve gone through, it’s considerably changed.”

[LFC]

These South Carolina deputies were completely out of control. There's not justification for this, even if the guy was an actual criminal rather than having a mental health episode. This is the warrior cop training at its worst.

The sheriff in York County will address disturbing body cam video of a man being shot at nearly 50 times by deputies while sitting in his pickup and a concurrent lawsuit filed last week.

The event is scheduled for 3 p.m. Wednesday and Queen City News will cover the event live.

Trevor Mullinax miraculously survived being shot at nearly 50 times by deputies while he was sitting in his pickup while, through the window of his vehicle, his mother tried to de-escalate a severe mental health episode he was undergoing.

He suffered nine gunshot wounds including one to the head, according to his legal team, who is filing a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office.

“The deputies jumped out of their vehicles and almost immediately started firing their weapons into Mullinax’s truck,” attorney Justin Bamberg said. The lawsuit was filed by Bamberg’s firm on Friday. “Tammy Beason had to leap out of the way and was nearly hit by the shots fired.”

Mullinax’s attorneys said he had a hunting shotgun in his truck, but never pointed it at deputies. According to the YCSO and SLED, Mullinax was armed during the incident and “retrieved his shotgun from the rear seat of the truck and presented it or pointed it at the officers.”

Deputies were responding to initial calls regarding a welfare check. The incident occurred in May of 2021 on East Highway 324 in Rock Hill. On Tuesday, York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson released a statement.