Tag Archives: get a warrant

Policing America: should the green shirts be exchanged for Brown Shirts?

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Fascism-When-We-Do-ItI submit that is a question you need to ask.

First, watch this video, an excerpt from the John Stossel show “Policing America: Security vs Liberty” recently broadcasted on Fox News, July 26th, involving USBP checkpoints up to 100 miles inland from an American border:

I find this shameful and repulsive, personally and professionally.  As anyone in law enforcement (as I am) knows, there is the spirit or the law and the letter of the law.

A pastor had both of his vehicle windows broken and was Tazed from both sides when he refused to let USBP search his vehicle.  He is Caucasoid and spoke clear English.

The issue?  The federal law indicating “a reasonable distance from the border.”  Is 60 miles reasonable?  100 miles?  Yes, 100 miles.  As Stossel points out, that’s where most Americans live, when you consider our borders north and south, and our coastlines east and west.

Some persons are installing cameras in their cars to document these abrogations, God bless them.  This is pushback and they are patriotic for doing so.  Again, see the video above.

The SCOTUS said that travelers can be briefly detained for the purpose of conducting a limited inquiry into residence status, as per United States vs Martinez-Fuerte, 428 US 543 (1976).  Neither the vehicle nor its occupants can be searched, yet the video clearly shows that Americans are being told to submit to detentions, searches, and arrests resulting from non-cooperation when more than an ID check is demanded.

How does one conduct a brief check into residency status?  Speak to the individual stopped, see if they speak English, check for a driver’s license and/or other forms of identification.  Any prudent and reasonable LEO can tell you this readily.

What we see displayed above is what is known in law enforcement as “contempt of cop.”  As in: you have pissed me off because you have dared to challenge my authority, and I am now making it personal.

John Stossel says “big government creates problems,” and that is certainly the case here, involving the Fourth Amendment.  “It’s like living in occupied territory,” some lawful residents of the United States of America are saying.

More Americans, as Stossel says, are pushing back.  As I submit they should, particularly if they possess video evidence of their incidents.  Further, as an affected citizen in an incident similar to those above, I would be suing the federal agencies involved and then the individuals themselves because, as the agents themselves made it personal, perhaps they should take a helping of “personal” in return.

Let there be no mistake: I have been in law enforcement for 41 years.  I have worked in a LE capacity for the federal government and for local agencies, where I have worked now for 35 years.  I was a Field Training Officer (FTO) in Patrol and have been in training the bulk of my LE career.  I taught my trainees to respect the foundational documents and in fact they had not only to conform to my agency training regimen, but my personal training regimen as well, which included knowledge about the Bill of Rights and its applicable amendments.

I emphasized that arrests and detentions should be built but upon solid probable cause and reasonable suspicion, and that we do not bluff.  If the law is not on our side, then we don’t make a potential bad situation worse.  We know, I would literally say (and wrote in my own adjunct training manual that I would hand out to my charges), when to back down.

Let me submit this for your consideration: if the USBP were literally “striking it rich” from vehicle blockades many miles within the United States proper, they and the Obama Administration would be crowing about it from the tallest of spires, the mightiest hilltops, far and wide, proving the efficacy of these policies.  Not only that, the American Media Maggots, sycophants that they are, would plaster these statistics over TV screens and newspapers for days and days.

Except they aren’t.  Which tells me one very salient thing: the stats are not bearing out the efficacy of this policy.  Trust me, if these interior check points were literal gold mines of success and productivity you would know.

And as far as Representative Peter King (R) is concerned, he is wrong.  Open your eyes.  All you have to do, sir, is watch this video.

Big Brother is indeed watching.  But in this case, watching the wrong Americans — whilst purposely allowing illegal invaders easy passage through our southern border.

Big-Brother-BWThis makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to me.

This is not the America I remember from even, say, 30 years ago.

I still adhere to the age-old axiom and standard I was held to when I worked Detectives, in Theft, Child Abuse, Warrants, Robbery and Homicide: see below.

Come Back With a WarrantThat is how it is done in a free United States of America where the police respect the foundational documents, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Should the USBP exchange their green shirts for Brown Shirts?

BZ

 

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Supreme Court bans warrantless cell phone searches, updates privacy laws

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WarrantI couldn’t agree more with the Supreme Court.  And I’m a cop.

From the WashingtonTimes.com:

Major ruling updates privacy laws for 21st century

by Stephen Dinan

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police cannot go snooping through people’s cell phones without a warrant, in a unanimous decision that amounts to a major statement in favor of privacy rights.

Police agencies had argued that searching through the data on cell phones was no different than asking someone to turn out his pockets, but the justices rejected that, saying a cell phone is more fundamental.

Those making the argument on behalf of law enforcement that searching a cell phone is no more intrusive than turning out pockets, are daft and liars and in contravention of the 4th Amendment.

Which I have sworn to uphold and take quite seriously.

In more “layman’s” terms: that argument is bullshit.

Cell phones are no longer just phones.  They no longer just take calls.  They now can represent an entire person’s life in the digital age.  They have contact lists, internet links, calendared events, assignments, lists, apps, e-mails and providers, and just about every footprint imagined in today’s digital world.

They are a far cry from the original brick phones used solely for convenient phone calls from semi-distant locations.

Justice Roberts nails it:

“The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the unanimous court.

“Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple— get a warrant.”

Which is, quite simply, what I’ve had to do for years.  If I valued my information, my evidence, my statements, my witnesses, my chronology, my informants, I was forced to acquire a warrant as “your affiant” and submitted to a lawful judge in my jurisdiction.

I should not be able to search your cell phone on a vehicle stop.  I should not be able to search your phone on a domestic violence call.  I should not be able to search your cell phone on a fight call.  I should not be able to search your cell phone on a theft call.

Not unless I can ascribe truly probative and evidentiary value to it, and make a direct linkage between your cell phone and the crime I allege you to have committed.

Down to the heart of the matter:

Justices even said police cannot check a cellphone’s call log, saying even those contain more information that just phone numbers, and so perusing them is a violation of privacy that can only be justified with a warrant.

The chief justice said cellphones are different not only because people can carry around so much more data — the equivalent of millions of pages of documents — that police would have access to, but that the data itself is qualitatively different than what someone might otherwise carry.

He said it could lay bare someone’s entire personal history, from their medical records to their “specific movements down to the minute.”

You want it?

Do what I’ve had to do for years.

Get a warrant.

I can only hope the issue of the NSA is next.

BZ

 

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