http://justiceforkelly.com/

I don’t believe for a second that the legal system or spineless asswipes commonly known as legislators will ever address this. (Can’t be “soft” on crime.) It is going to take an armed populace and a stack of dead blue bodies for this crap to stop. That’s all they understand. Once it becomes clear to the boys in blue that the American public will not longer be bullied, killed and maimed at random, they start to think twice.

That said, however, I ain’t holding my breath. In general, Americans are the same sheep and cowards as the public servants they hire to “protect” them.

The reason that cops beat and torture people is because they are selected for sadistic tendencies. If you do not have a predisposition to violence, you are not selected to be a cop. Period.

One might as well wonder why water is wet.

‘The hallmarks of a Terry stop are (1) non-custodial questioning, based on (2) a reasonably articulable suspicion.

Once there is an attempt to restrain or cuff, it becomes an arrest, which requires probable cause for it to be legal.’

No, you are very much mistaken. The courts in many states, as well as the Federal courts, have held that a “Terry stop” may include significant elements of physical restraint, including holding the citizen, locking the citizen in a vehicle, making them stay inside their own vehicle, or handcuffing, without it necessarily morphing into an arrest. A lot depends on circumstances and the apparent willingness of the citizen to comply with the temporaray detention without resisting.

I don’t want this to degrade into a battle of citations, so will leave it to our gracious host to state whether he wants more answers to various other erroneous or incomplete statements – including at least one of my own.

To the question posted by el coronado, namely:

‘So here’s the question: Do any of y’all really believe the cops will be brought to heel by the same legal system that they’ve been intimately & intricately plugged into for decades?’

my answer is – regretfully – no.

The changes that need to take place are in other places, including recruitment, training, incentivization (positive and negative) and funding. By the time the excesses of police officers or their departments come to the attention of the CJS, it’s already too late.

The first and most effective way to reduce the sorts of police behaviours that are constantly on parade here is to end the War on Drugs and sweep away all of the assaults on civil liberties made in its name. This is the single largest perverse incentive that causes individual officers, as well as the system as a whole, to behave the way they do.

But, of course, it may be too late already. The WoD provides a good living for vast armies of CJS employees, many of them unionized, who will fight tooth-and-nail against any steps that might reduce their numbers or their incomes – and civil liberties be damned. Look at how the correctional-officers union in CA is literally leading the state government around by the nose.

It will take a bold leader at the Federal level, and many more at the State level, to undo the damage done by the WoD. I do not see any such on the horizon.

Sorry.

llater,

llamas

No I can’t imagine it being reformed or changed in any way through the normal legal channels. Legislators are pathetic object cowards and will never let themselves be seen as anything other than support “our brave heros in blue” and the courts and press aren’t any less deferential.

The only way it will ever change will be through violent revolt or through a Soviet style breakup when cities will no longer be able to pay for these standing armies.

One thing is clear to me, as an institution the police in America are evil, just evil, like Hitler’s Gestapo evil and they will get theirs someday, hopefully soon.

Inevitably, though, the comment threads devolve into ‘Legal Chat’. “Well, per the ‘Smith’ decision of 1995…”; “Per the ‘Jones” decision of 1974….” etc etc ad nauseam. If the thread goes on long enough, it literally ends up as useful a debate as ‘How many cops can lie under oath on the head of a pin?’

Meanwhile, the cops get worse every single year. More aggressive. More brutal. More trigger-happy. More likely to kill a dog – any dog – that just happens to be nearby. More open in their utter contempt of anybody who ain’t a cop. At the same time, courts and prosecutors are a) following down the same tyrannical path and b) refusing to punish the mad dog coppers – unless there’s *absolutely unassailable* video evidence AND political pressure to prosecute the cop in question. Which don’t happen too often, does it.

And still, as (mostly) in this very thread, we’re distracting ourselves from the issue at hand by everybody playing amateur legal scholars. So here’s the question: Do any of y’all really believe the cops will be brought to heel by the same legal system that they’ve been intimately & intricately plugged into for decades? (You’d be absolutely *amazed* how many city/county/state judges are married to [usually fairly senior] cops, BTW. Interestingly, that info is almost never reported.) Or do you think it’s going to require more direct, brusque, unorthodox, outside-the-box action to rein them in?

It appears that from the outselt the police were attempting to perform an arrest, as opposed to a Terry stop.

The hallmarks of an arrest are (1) custody, based on (2) probable cause.

The hallmarks of a Terry stop are (1) non-custodial questioning, based on (2) a reasonably articulable suspicion.

Once there is an attempt to restrain or cuff, it becomes an arrest, which requires probable cause for it to be legal.

That is why Terry is all about the purpose and scope of the “frisk.” It’s sole purpose is to determine whether the subject is armed in a manner that presents an immediate danger to the police officer (i.e., if it feels like a handgun, or a knife, or a taser, or a heavy, rigid bar).

Your hypo mixes this up as well:

“[T]ry this thought experiment – an officer is despatched to your house late at night in response to reports of a woman screaming, the sound of breaking glass and shots fired. As he pulls up in the driveway, a man walks past him carrying a shotgun and womens’ undergarments, and dripping blood. He says to the man ‘Stop! I want to speak with you!’. The man replies. I don’t believe I will, goodnight, oficer’ and keeps walking.”

I believe most judges would find your hypothetical to be adequate probable cause for a custodial arrest.

The typical Terry stop involves far more ambiguous behavior, and the key is that it is non-custodial. The reason they exist is that that most people will comply with a police request for a non-custodial interrogation, and will submit to a pat down. If they do not want to comply with a request for a non-custodial interrogation, however, they are permitted to walk away if PC is lacking.

Moreover, flight does not create PC.

Let’s face it, the only crime committed by the guy on on this tape was contempt of cop.

Look back to where I wrote:

‘He doesn’t have to answer their questions or provide them with any information whatever – all he has to do is stand still.’

Trust me, I’ve forgotten more about the rights of the citizen in these sorts of encounters than you ever knew.

llater,

lllamas