All this talk of search warrants has me curious. The police come to my house with a search warrant. They find nothing illegal to possess. So they rip up my couches and chairs, tear up some floorboards, knock some holes in drywall. Still find nothing. Are the police liable for that property damage?

Cliff's of that story:

-Man triggers his life alert
-Man doesn't respond to life alert
-Life alert calls ambulance
-Police follow ambulance to scene
-Man claims to be fine and refuses to let police or medics in
(Not enough info to know why police felt a forced entry was needed)
-police enter force entry into home
(Not enough info to know why police felt beanbag rounds and tasers were required)
-Man allegedly withstands taser and beanbag rounds, allegedly grabs knife
-police kill man
-Department claims entry and shooting was justified

That story was missing many key details (and who knows what it means that the man was "known to the police") but one of the strangest parts for me was that LifeAlert didn't notify next-of-kin when an alarm is triggered (regarding the comment by the son that he would have been able to calm his father if he were there).

Kinda reminds me of the story where the guy called 911 because he was about to commit suicide and they sent a SWAT team that shot him.

Yes, you can file suit against the city.

What if they do find "something", are they still liable? Does it depend on what that something is?

What if they find drugs, and rip up the couch cushions but there were no drugs in the couch cushions?

Wouldn't that be an 'unclean hands' situation?

http://www.takepart.com/article/2012...al-needs-woman

Interesting video/article in it's own right with a couple of bonus tidbits about how law enforcement is constantly petitioning/threatening google to remove youtube videos of police abuse.

I give you people gold and get nothing while DBJ asks a guy his name and gets 350 replies about the supreme court.

Screw you all.

I read the link if it makes you feel any better.

I saw that the link was titled "hero vet captures cop punching special-needs woman" and decided it was probably not going to be interesting. Don't blame me for your poor marketing.

I dunno, man, cop has a sick right cross

Now that's the sort of information that you should have put in the original post.

Also, special needs woman carries her left a little low. Might hurt her in the later rounds imo

It's been run into the ground.

Cliffs:
- Woman is not ******ed (possibly LEGALLY but she certainly isn't low functioning)
- Cop is an ******* for hitting a woman
- Woman is bigger than cop
- DBJ you're a horrible person and a hate you.
- Woman appeared to be charging at cop.
- DBJ I hope you're burned alive in a horrific carfire
- No ones saying punching her was the best course of action, but it was barely acceptable under Graham v Conner
- I'm a lawyer and I disagree
- Let's discuss Graham v Conner then
- DBJ I hope you die fat pig!!!!

That's the short version.

There's no way that was "barely acceptable".

That's assault, brother

You feel that way because you're judging it from an emotional response. You're not seeing things the way courts do.

If ANY strike with an empty hand was justifiable, then this was. it was a strike. The location is going to be irrelevant in the eyes of the court.

Now we can have very technical legal arguments pulling from Graham V Conner about reasonableness, however last time we discussed this that's not what happened. 5000 knee jerk "ZOMG! IN THE FACE! IN THE FACE!" responses, few dozen personal attacks, couple death wishes, etc.

No one seemed capable of treating an empty hand strike as an empty hand strike. It was all Man v Woman and "TO THE FACE!"

Typically day at 2+2 for me IMO

How was a strike justified??

Like if she was in my pharmacy giving me lip there'd be no way I could legally deck her.

also: naughty of the cop to threaten the (really cool) guy who filmed it

She was in custody. Obviously I wasn't there, so I'm unaware, but watching the tape it's not a completely unreasonable belief that she was attempting to escape. She was pulling away, you can't really dispute that.

As I said, this is a borderline situation. Extremely borderline. I can think of many different tactics that would have been much more appropriate here. That being said, I can also see the reasonableness for some type of force to

a)back her away from him.
b)allow his partner to regain control.

Now did he do it in the stupidest way possible? Sure he did, I don't think anyone is debating that, but at that point he felt a level of physical force needed to be used. He used an empty hand strike. Me, I would have simply pushed her, but really what I would do is irrelevant at that point. It's a no-win situation by the time the cameras came out.

The cops weren't using good tactics from the beginning so having to use physical force on her was a corner he allowed himself to get pushed into. However, making a mistake (or several) earlier does not dismiss his ability to execute a lawful Criminal Trespass arrest at this point.

Was a strike necessary to accomplish this? Based on what I see on the tape, some physical force likely was. I would certainly struggle to make an argument that it was unreasonable to use force of any kind in a situation where an in custody individual was attempting to pull away from my partner and then squared off at me.

Well, the video is super edited so it's hard to say for sure. But the allegation that she was trying to escape, while on a bus, doesn't pass the guffaw test

I didn't mean escape the bus, I meant escape positive control of the female deputy.

Many people just placed under arrest are a good deal more interested in escaping positive control long enough to do harm to the arresting officer than they are in actually fleeing custody.

Is the bolded always true? (in a legal sense?)

In the sense that I was using the term "mistake" to mean "Approaching people in an idiotic manner likely to provoke violent reactions" yes.

DBJ, if you were this guy's boss what would you do?

May we have a discussion ITT of police strategy and tactics regarding suppression of protests, strikes, and direct actions? I can speak with a certain, but still quite limited, experience on the civilian side. What the cops are doing, and especially why, remains mostly a mystery on the streets.

It would be in everyone's safety interests if there was more information exchange regarding this topic.