Lucy Steigerwald has an update on the beating of Jordan Miles, a case I wrote about in January. Miles was beaten nearly to death by three Pittsburgh police officers who say they mistook a bottle of Mountain Dew in Miles’ pocket for a gun. (The Mountain Dew bottle disappeared after the beating.) The cops claimed they confronted Miles because a neighbor had complained that the music student with no criminal record was skulking about her property. That neighbor denies ever making such a complaint. The cops also say Miles should have known they were cops, and say he’s responsible for his own beating for fleeing them. Miles is suing.

Which brings us to the update:

In response to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Jordan Miles over a beating he suffered from Pittsburgh Police in January 2010, a “law enforcement expert” has declared that the cops’ version of events is true. The aforementioned expert was hired by the city to fight the lawsuit from Miles, so it’s not exactly surprising that he came to some familiar conclusions about why the cops just had to do what they did.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The officers have consistently said that they identified themselves as such and displayed badges, wrote Joseph J. Stine, who ran Philadelphia’s Police Training Bureau and served as chief for New Britain Township, in a report filed in federal court. And Mr. Stine suggested that Mr. Miles couldn’t have logically reached the conclusion that the men were common thugs.

“It is my opinion that in order for Jordan Miles not to have known that the males who attempted to stop him and whom he eventually struggled with were police officers, he would have had to believe that three adult white males had come into [a] predominantly Afro-American community in order to rob him,” Mr. Stine wrote, despite little precedent for such an attack. “He would have to have not heard any of the constant repetition of ‘Police. Stop. Police.’”

Steigerwald comments:

Is there really no precedent at all for several white guys to visit an African-American neighborhood and want to make trouble? There’s certainly precedent for people impersonating police officers in order to commit crimes. Maybe the men did yell police and even flash badges, but so what? It was 11 p.m. in one of Pittsburgh’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods. And if the men grabbed at Miles while identifying themselves (or not), a logical fight or flight instinct still would have kicked in. Miles also said that the cops yelled “Where’s the money? Where’s the gun? Where’s the drugs?” at him, which made him believe he was being robbed, then abducted, when the men initially put handcuffs on him.

Stine says that it wasn’t “logical” for Miles to have thought that the officers were criminals, yet cops are often forgiven for reacting in the heat of the moment to an apparent threat, be it a human being with a three-inch carving knife or a dog which maybe bares its teeth at a stranger in its home. So why is then-highschool senior Miles not to be forgiven for his nervousness when adult, theoretically highly-trained cops are so often forgiven for theirs?

You could also argue that even if Miles did know they were cops, he was justified to run. For example, he might have recognized that he was a black teenager walking alone at night, he may have heard enough stories about cops who sometimes tend to assume the worst in those sorts of circumstances, and he may have consequently feared that something bad would go down if he stuck around. Something like—just hypothetically speaking—the cops mistaking an innocuous bulge in his coat for a gun, beating him to a bloody pulp, then arresting him for resisting them.

Two of the three cops have been the subject of prior excessive force complaints and lawsuits. Yet thanks to police union clout, all three were not only suspended with pay, they were also paid for the overtime they might have worked had they not been suspended. All three are now back on the force. The union also deemed the three cops “heroes” for beating the hell out of an unarmed, 150-pound viola player. When a local prankster put out a hoax press release mocking the union’s absurd celebration of Jordan Miles’ beating, the Pittsburgh Police Department launched a full-on raid of the video store where they thought the fake release was created.

• Puppycide. 
• And another one, this time a ferocious Jack Russell Terrier.
• Why Ken White matters. Be sure to read White’s excellent dissection of the culture of prosecutorial misconduct in the criminal justice issue of Reason.
• How many things wrong with this picture can you find?
• Police union fights to reinstate cop who was driving 143 mph with a .089 BAC.
• I always thought this was a joke. It apparently really exists. (It’s also available in a can, but only on your birthday.)
• How to make a Thing in a Jar.
• Headline of the day. (Bonus points: Santorum retweeted it.)
• 2012 will bring the end of Happy Hour in Utah.
• Indiana lawmaker wants to hand out fines for poor renditions of the national anthem.

Fresh off a federal report which found that 20 percent of the times Seattle police use force, they violate the Constitution . . . comes this:

A local man called the cops on Seattle officers when he felt a traffic stop was spinning out of control – and the entire incident was captured on a police video that shows the man being yanked from his car and thrown to the ground . . .

The video shows Seattle police pulling a car over for speeding, then one officer walking up to the driver who was pulled over.

Although the dashboard camera captured the incident, the officer did not wear his microphone – a violation of department policy.

Once stopped, the driver, Amanuel Gebreselassie, says the talk went bad from the beginning.

“He’s using profanity. He’s not acting professional. He’s just not acting like an officer,” says Gebreselassie.

In their report, police said the driver was “extremely verbally aggressive.” But Gebreselassie denies it – and says the stop seemed so out of line, he called 911.

An audiotape of the 911 call recorded the conversation between Gebreselassie and the 911 dispatcher.

“911. What are you reporting?” the dispatcher says.

“Uhh, an illegal stop by an officer – you know, I just want to make sure he’s a real officer. … There’s an officer here, but he’s talking crazy to me, and I’m not really dealing with this guy.”

The conversation was cut short when a group of officers returned to the car.

“Get out of the car,” one officer can be heard saying on the 911 tape.

“For what?”

“Get out of the car, man.”

Police say Gebresellassie resisted, so they yanked him to the ground.

In the video, one officer appears to deliver a sharp kick – but it’s unclear where it lands.

Video at the link. The cops then conducted an illegal search of Gebresellassie’s car. An internal review “reprimanded” three cops for profanity and the illegal search, but found nothing wrong with the use of force. Two of the cops were already under investigation for other incidents.

I propose a rule for cases like these: Any time a police officer inappropriately turns off his dash cam, turns off his uniform microphone, or illegally confiscates other audio or video of an incident which then ends up missing or destroyed, the courts will begin considering any disputed facts about the incident with a presumption that the citizen’s account is the correct one.

• Virginia drivers ticketed for breaking a law that doesn’t exist.
• Another tribute to Siobhan Reynolds from Eapen Thampy.
• Professional Courtesy: NYPD officer suspected of drunk driving after car crash wasn’t given a blood alcohol test until eight hours later.
• DOJ changes its position on the Wire Act, possibly clearing a path for legal online poker.
• Annapolis police arrest the wrong “Hot Dog.”
• The New York Times looks at the expanding bourbon market. I’m excited for the new Woodford Reserve Double Oaked.
• People Are Awesome, the 2011 edition.

• Nevada legalizes online poker. Of course, that’s the one state where they don’t really need it.
• Ex-cop won’t do jail time for multiple arsons.
• More genius from Lawrence O’Donnell.
• Obama breaks another campaign promise.
• “As was the case in 2010, the main obstacles to a GAO opinion on the accrual- based consolidated financial statements  were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.” But sure. Let’s give them more control over health care, too. (Via Peter Suderman.)

Maybe there’s a legitimate law enforcement reason to strip a man naked, strap him to a chair, tie a “spit hood” around his mouth, put a hood over his head (see video at the link), and douse him with pepper spray until he dies. That’s what sheriff’s deputies in Lee County, Florida did to 62-year-old Nick Christie two-and-a-half years ago.

I certainly can’t think of any such legitimate reason. But Lee County State’s Attorney Stephen Russell apparently can. Because he cleared the deputies involved of any wrongdoing.

Christie’s family just filed a lawsuit.

• George Will’s new column slagging Newt Gingrich is very good, but it would have been great if he’d just stopped after the first eight words.
• I wonder what makes them “Manhattan-style?”
• A fantastic photo of Central Park.
• Cop strikes, kills two pedestrians with his car. Witnesses say he wasn’t using flashers, sirens, or even headlights. Family of one victims shows up at the scene, gets arrested. Cop wasn’t tested for drugs or alcohol.
• Write your own caption.
• The year in economic charts.
• Once in a great while, a holiday video comes along that blends festive images,, a good pun, and a Yuletide message of Aryan supremacy.
• I’d imagine that Steven Phillips has some strong opinions about the legal system.

• Puppycide. During a raid. That turned up nothing. And the dog was chained. Bonus points: The pup was shot in front of a three-year-old.
• A partial list of Kim Jong Il’s titles. Also, “State textbooks claim Jong-Il does not produce urine or feces.”
• More to the point: Remembering Kim Jong Il’s victims.
• Ron Smith, the libertarian radio host at WBAL in Baltimore, has died. Ron was always one of my favorite interviews. Never a demagogue. And he always gave his guests time to make a point, with some nuance and context, even.
• Anne Applebaum on Vaclav Havel.
• Headline of the day, unfortunate wording edition.
• In case Minnesota decides to invade.
• More on the NTSB and cell phone bans, from Walter Olson, and from the National Motorists Association.

Apropos of the post below, here’s a ruling from the D.C. Court of Appeals demonstrating just how powerless citizens are when accosted by police officers—even when the cops themselves are clearly in the wrong. What’s most troubling about the ruling is its mundanity. The law is established here. There’s really nothing to debate.  It’s just a matter of the government rattling off the appropriate precedents.

The appellant is Terrance Crossland, who is asking the court to overturn his conviction on two counts of assaulting a police officer. Last April, Crossland and his cousin were approached by two D.C. Metro officers on patrol “to gather information about a rash of recent shootings and drug sales in the area.” Crossland was mowing his grass while smoking a cigarette. The police acknowledge that neither Crossland nor is cousin were doing anything unlawful.  The two men were told to turn around, put their hands against a fence, and submit to a search. By both accounts, Crossland initially complied, then said, “Fuck this shit. I’m tired of this.”

Police say Crossland then elbowed one officer in the head, at which point he was punched, taken to the ground, kicked several times, and pepper sprayed. Both the trial court, the appeals court, and even the prosecution acknowledge that because Crossland was doing nothing wrong before the incident, it was illegal for the police to stop, detain, and search him. Nevertheless . . .

• It’s funny because it’s true.
• Barney Frank challenges George Will, Paul Ryan on legalizing marijuana.
• Why good cops should want more video, audio recordings of their interactions with citizens.
• Artist makes statues of people, then submerges them. To beautiful effect.
• Who said it, Newt Gingrich or a Super Villain?
• Good enough for government work: Head of low-income house agency in Massachusetts worked 15 days, pulled in a $360,000 salary.
• This seems like a good way to start a horror movie.

• Rick Perry “retires” in order to engage in some pension/salary double dipping.
• Dog disguise kits to get around breed-specific prohibitions.
• Police meet man at airport baggage claim, then arrest, book him over expired vehicle tags.
• DOJ report finds that Seattle cops violate the Constitution one out of every five times they use force.
• Grandmother of convicted drug dealer fights to keep her home from the asset forfeiture brigade.
• If you’re a secretly gay mayor who preaches conservative politics, you probably shouldn’t fund trips to the adult bookstore with taxpayer money.
• Feds spend tens of millions of dollars to put Barry Bonds on probation for lying to a roomful of professional liars.

• The most uplifting, faith-in-humanity-restoring thing you’ll read today.
• Tennessee dealing with fallout from judge’s “ignominious descent into drug addiction, criminality and professional impropriety.”
• State police in Massachusetts refuse to release information about Lt. Gov. Tim Murray’s car accident, even though they’re required to do so under state law.
• “Another officer used his Taser and made contact, but the man knocked one of the wires away with the light saber.”
• Federal report finds mass violations of civil rights by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
• An op-ed arguing to decriminalize marijuana in Missouri. There’s a petition drive underway to put the issue on the November ballot.

• This won’t end well.
• Norway is out of butter.
• Police union alleges commanders are misspending forfeiture money.
• Ron Paul could pull an upset in Iowa. I predict that if he does, whoever comes in second will be declared the winner.
• Militarization watch: “Texas now has its own Navy!”
• 15-year-old shot by cop posing as pizza delivery guy.
• Want to be a tour guide in New Orleans? You’ll first need to pass a drug test, provide a fingerprint, pass a criminal background check, and take a history exam.
• Columbia, Missouri police chief Ken Burton does the right thing by firing a cop caught slamming a prisoner into the wall. Naturally the police union is calling for Burton’s head.

• Here’s a preview of the new Best Sex Writing of 2011 anthology. I have an article in the collection. I’m so good at it, they asked me to write about it. (Okay, so maybe that’s not why my piece was included.)
• Another minor is attacked by a police dog. Of course, since officer safety wasn’t threatened, the dog didn’t get the puppycide treatment.
• More indications that drones are become a part of domestic law enforcement.
• Scientists find a black hole the size of 21 billion suns.
• Oddly compelling photo series of suitcases left at an old New York psychiatric hospital. More explanation here.
• NIH paid a communications firm $1 million in stimulus money to promote how well NIH is spending stimulus money.
• From the archives of Newt Gingrich mendacity.
• Also, hipster Newt Gingrich.
• Aerial photos of the democracy protests in Russia.
• The International Development Ryan Gosling Tumblr.

• Your WTF of the day.
• Occupy Wall Street protesters crash the set of a Law & Order taping. City revokes the show’s permit in response.
• New study debunks much-hyped study claiming a “viral” component to obesity. New study will get 1/100th of the coverage the original study received.
• This sounds great. Provide it works as advertised. Disposable razors are such a ripoff.
• The latest nasty bit of censorship masquerading as “campaign finance reform.” Expect newspaper editorials to demand an an amendment to protect their right to editorialize before an election—and then endorse the restrictions for everyone else.
• Puppycide.
• The “freakiest ads of 2011.”
• U.S. citizen gets 2 1/2 years for insulting Thailand’s king on the Internet. The State Department is outraged, and rightly so. But as I’ve pointed out before, it’s no different than our arrest and imprisonment of online gambling executives.

• New plan: Neutralize the terrorists with a bad case of ice cream headache.
• Interesting read: “How Doctors Die”
• After all the awfulness he has perpetrated, Joe Arpaio may finally be brought down for not investigating suspected criminals.
• Mark Judge attempts to publicly baptize an ailing Christopher Hitchens. Pretty shameless, really.
•  Virginia Postrel on the tie between student aid and rising tuition.
• Congress decides that the conference committee debate over whether the government should be able to detain American citizens indefinitely without a trial or formal charges . . . will be done in secret. The vote wasn’t close.

Terrific reporting by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Thousands of Florida officers remain on the job despite arrests or evidence implicating them in crimes that could have landed them in prison, a Herald-Tribune investigation has found.

Even those officers with multiple offenses have been given chance after chance through a disciplinary system that has been reshaped in their favor by the state’s politically influential police unions. As a result, officers around Florida carry personnel files that are anything but heroic.

Corrections officer Kurt Stout, already dogged by allegations he groped and had sex with prisoners, was arrested on allegations he raped two teenage girls. Nick Viaggio capped a string of violent outbursts at the Ocala Police Department by attacking his girlfriend in a crowded nightclub until bouncers dragged him away. Palm Beach County deputy Craig Knowles-Hiller, under investigation for sleeping with a 14-year old, had to explain why the girl’s DNA was found on one of his sex toys.

In each case, state law enforcement officials let the men keep their badges….

Among the Herald-Tribune’s findings:

•One in 20 active law enforcement officers in Florida has committed a moral character violation serious enough to jeopardize his or her career. Nearly 600 have two or more such acts of misconduct on their record and 30 current officers and prison guards continue to wear a badge despite four or more offenses.

•The number of officers with serious violations is much higher than state records show. State law calls for every moral character violation to be reviewed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. But local agencies fail to report cases and have faced no consequences for doing so. The Union County Sheriff’s Office has not reported a case of misconduct in 26 years.

It just gets worse from there. The whole series is pretty amazing. Perhaps not terribly surprising if you read this site regularly. But the depth and breadth of the problem in Florida is eye-opening. Over and over, the paper found that even when a department wanted to fire an officer (and they didn’t want to often enough), some clause from the collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the police union put the cop back on the job.

Again, lots of praise to the Herald-Tribune for taking this on. The relatively small paper not only plowed through thousands of pages of personnel files, they also put them online.  The report also emphasizes how important it is that the public have access to police personnel files. In jurisdictions where personnel files are considered private, this kind of investigation wouldn’t be possible. As this and countless investigations like it show, we simply can’t allow government agencies to police themselves, especially without transparency. And because of the powers we give to cops and prosecutors, it’s particularly important when it comes to law enforcement agencies.

Via the comments, here’s an account of how police dismantled the Occupy encampment in St. Louis. I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but if true, praise, credit, and commendation to St. Louis law enforcement officials.

The first thing they did was the one that baffled me the most, at first: they gave the protesters nearly 36 hours notice, as opposed to the 20 to 60 minutes’ notice other cities gave. It has taken me almost a week, and the mistakes of several other cities, to see why that was a good idea, because here’s how they did it. Early afternoon on Thursday, they gave the protesters 24 hours’ notice: as of 3pm on Friday, the no structures in the plaza rule was going to be enforced, and as of 10pm, the curfew was going to be enforced. So, unsurprisingly, Occupy St. Louis put out a huge call for as many people as possible to come to the plaza by noon, to be trained in peaceful civil disobedience; local civil liberties lawyers showed up to brief them. Needless to say, the cops did not oblige them by showing up at 3pm. Heck, I knew they weren’t going to show up at 3pm; no way were they going to snarl downtown traffic during rush hour; I told my friend not to expect them any earlier than 7pm at the very earliest.

So, when no cops showed up anywhere near 3pm, the protesters had their biggest rally to date (as I suspect the cops were thinking, “getting it out of their system”), and then started to drift away. Rally organizers advised people to be back before 10pm, to block the enforcement of curfew. Sure enough, by 10pm, they had 350 people down there. And scant minutes later, people were jazzed up and ready to go, because outlying scouts reported that the police were gathering, en masse, with multiple cars, multiple buses, an ambulance, and a firetruck, only a couple of blocks away!

And sometime around an hour, hour and a half later, the cops just disappeared, dispersed, without ever having gotten within two blocks of the plaza. So the confused protesters declared victory, let most of the troops go home, and fewer than a hundred of them bedded down for the night in their tents. An hour later, somewhere around 150 cops showed up. I’m sure people in those tents tweeted and text messaged and phoned for reinforcements. But between the late hour, and the fact that people were exhausted after having been out there all day, and that it was the third call-up of the day? Nobody showed.

Ah, but the cops did more than just show up after two head-fakes and with sufficient numbers … they did right exactly what the Obama administration told everybody else to do wrong. They didn’t show up in riot gear and helmets, they showed up in shirt sleeves with their faces showing. They not only didn’t show up with SWAT gear, they showed up with no unusual weapons at all, and what weapons they had all securely holstered. They politely woke everybody up. They politely helped everybody who was willing to remove their property from the park to do so. They then asked, out of the 75 to 100 people down there, how many people were volunteering for being-arrested duty? Given 33 hours to think about it, and 10 hours to sweat it over, only 27 volunteered. As the police already knew, those people’s legal advisers had advised them not to even passively resist, so those 27 people lined up to be peacefully arrested, and were escorted away by a handful of cops. The rest were advised to please continue to protest, over there on the sidewalk … and what happened next was the most absolutely brilliant piece of crowd control policing I have heard of in my entire lifetime.

All of the cops who weren’t busy transporting and processing the voluntary arrestees lined up, blocking the stairs down into the plaza. They stood shoulder to shoulder. They kept calm and silent. They positioned the weapons on their belts out of sight. They crossed their hands low in front of them, in exactly the least provocative posture known to man. And they peacefully, silently, respectfully occupied the plaza, using exactly the same non-violent resistance techniques that the protesters themselves had been trained in.

Instead of brute force, cunning and creativity. Lo and behold, it worked. The Occupy encampment is gone. No one was sprayed or beaten. No horrifying photos or cell phone videos. No public funds spent defending lawsuits. No public relations nightmare. If it has to be done, this is how you do it.

• Great piece by my HuffPost colleague John Rudolf about an Alabama woman trying to find out why and how her son died in police custody.
• Marist poll (PDF): In hypothetical general election matchup with Obama, Ron Paul is tied. All the other GOP candidates would lose.
• Mississippi Supreme Court admonishes DA Forrest Allgood. (PDF)
• DEA has laundered millions of dollars from Mexican drug cartels. Hey, why not! It’s our policy that made them rich in the first place. Not to mention that we’re also arming them.
• Mitt Romney’s staff spent $100,000 in public funds to wipe out all email from his tenure as governor of Massachusetts.
• I did an interview yesterday with Wall Street Journal Radio about police militarization. You can listen here. My interview starts at about the 22 minute mark.
• New threat: drunken gummi bears.
• The Durbin Swipe Fee Amendment: the latest consumer protection measure that isn’t protecting consumers.
• How Rand Paul prevented World War III.

• Photos of abandoned water parks.
• Boston bans e-cigarettes in public spaces. 
• Kudos to Pinellas County, Florida, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who is teaching his deputies that there are other ways to deal with aggressive animals than filling them with bullets.
• NeverWet!
• Photos of elderly animals.
• Man receives summons for refusing to tell a law enforcement officer his country of origin. The prosecutor wants jail time.

• Disgraced former “Sheriff of the Year” arrested, now jailed in the building that’s named after him.
• The cognitive benefits of gum chewing.
• The reproductive perils of Wifi.
• Tennessee officials want to protect Tennesseeans from “synthetic drugs” by putting them in jail for trying them.
• Wonderful old color photographs from Russia.
• Federal prosecutor argues in a court brief that advocating jury nullification is a crime, “no matter where it occur[s].”

• Innocence no defense against Virginia’s sex offender list. Once you’re on these things, it’s damn near impossible to get removed.
• FDA considering mandatory salt reductions. Remember when everyone said not to worry, all this talk about reducing salt in food would be voluntary? Good times.
• California police captain voids police lieutenant’s ticket for causing an accident, says doing so was “in the interest of justice.”
• Headline of the day.
• Nutty, Tea-Party-backed senator proposes crazy-ass amendment to limit the federal government’s power.

We know what can happen if your dog so much as growls at a cop. But what happens when a police dog attacks a kid? Well, we get to hear about the dog’s exemplary service record.

Police say the Friday attack of the department’s police dog, Storm, on an 8-year-old boy was an unfortunate accident, but Storm has done much more good than bad during his time with the department.

The boy, Patrick Assion, was visiting his grandmother’s house in Campbell and playing hide-and-seek with his cousin in the backyard when Storm took hold of Patrick’s arm and dragged him to the ground.

The incident left the boy three physical reminders of the attack: a red mark on his arm, a T-shirt full of holes and a torn-up sweat shirt.

An off-duty Campbell police officer was walking Storm and allowed the dog to go to the bathroom in a fenced-in area. But the dog saw the boy and ran after him, apparently mistaking a running boy for a suspect . . .

“He has caught three armed robbers. He has located numerous amounts of drugs. He has tracked down suspects. He’s been a vital, vital part of our police department,” Rusnak said of the dog’s history.

And if someone had come to the kid’s defense and shot the dog, as on- and off-duty cops routinely do, that person would be in custody right now. Of course, the problem isn’t the dog, it’s the handler. And when cops kill the family pet, the problem also usually isn’t with the dog.

• “The American people want an adult, and no one has a stronger record of adultery than I do.”
• Arthur Brooks on fairness and the Occupy movement.
• Video shows UC-Davis students were clearly warned about use of force before pepper spray. I don’t think this justifies it. It’s hard to see what harm the students were causing by sitting on a sidewalk at a quad. But it does mitigate the casualness with which the cop appears to spray them.
• The Occupy crackdowns have at least forced more people to start paying attention to police militarization.
• FDA: U.S. facing severe Adderall shortage that is causing real harm to people who use the drug. DEA: Shut up.

• Ice finger of death!
• Man falls off bicycle. Cop kills him.
• Red light camera vendor sues Knoxville, Tennessee for not issuing tickets when people turn right at a red light.
• The Pentagon’s $3 billion mercenary war on drugs.
• AFL-CIO, Teamsters, other unions firmly backing SOPA.
• All your fish are belong to government.
• A good reminder as the country goes into panic—and politicians go into “there oughtta be a law” mode—in response to Penn State: False allegations of sex abuse can also ruin lives.