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“I’m so tired from this raid that I just want to perk myself up with this candy — HEY, WAIT A MINUTE!”
We here at OJB love to salute the Register when they do their job right. So … wait a moment while we look up the directions in this manual on how to salute, ok got it … here’s a big salute to the Orange Lady for this story! (All emphasis to quoted material below added by OJB.)
Three Santa Ana police officers want to quash a surveillance video that shows officers making derogatory comments about a disabled woman and possibly snacking on pot edibles during a recent raid of a medical marijuana dispensary.
Oh! Oh! This is great! They don’t want the SAPD internal affairs investigators to use the video in their investigation, in which they say the video could play a key role! (You can click the link to the Register story to get access to the video.)
Matthew Pappas, a lawyer for Sky High, pointed to the irony of police seeking to shoot down the use of video as evidence in an investigation when they routinely use videos to investigate other crimes. “It’s pretty pathetic for police to say if we don’t like something that it can’t be used as evidence,” Pappas said.
The attorney for the police officers accuses Pappas of altering the video to put the police in a falsely negative light. Pappas denies it and says that he gave the full video to both the Santa Ana police and to the Register.
The lawsuit argues that that the police, who had destroyed every video camera they could find upon entering the shop, had relaxed and removed their masks because they thought that they were off camera — and it notes that the dispensary did not obtain the consent of any officer to record them.
Pappas’ answer was:
“They knew they were on video. … Just because they missed [disabling] one camera doesn’t make [using it to record them] illegal.”
To anyone familiar with police views on the use of evidence by people being recorded surreptitiously under conditions where they objectively don’t have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” — like, say, WHEN YOU ARE IN A PUBLIC SPACE, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YOU HAVE TRIED TO DESTROY ALL CAMERAS THAT YOU SEE — this is high comedy. (No pun intended.) By all means, let the officers quash evidence obtained from surreptitious recording of their wrongful actions — just as soon as they extend that courtesy to everyone else!
That is to say: never. Y’all broke the Fourth Amendment; now you have to pay for it.
UPDATE (unrelated to Santa Ana, but related to Fourth Amendment): I cannot believe this recent Supreme Court ruling on search and seizure that I had either missed … or suppressed. It’s along the same lines as the complaint in this case: arguing that cops should LEGALLY be excused from meeting standards to which the rest of us are held. It should offend you down to your bone marrow. All five conservatives went along with it, as did two of the four nominal “liberals.” Only Sotomayor dissented from the outcome.
UPDATE 2: Voice of OC reports that the hearing into the tentative decision to grant an order preventing use of the video for the time being has been postponed until August 13. Judge Ronald Bauer was <s>inclined</s> <u>asked</u> to grant it, but went on vacation, with the case then falling to Judge William Claster. Claster was <s>more</s> doubtful about the cops’ request, but put off the question for Bauer to address when he returns next week. (Strikeouts reflect a VOC correction.) The details in the VOC story are worth reading.
This is why there’s a serious deficiency of trust between law enforcement and the community they serve.
Cops. Do. Not. Have. Special. Rights.
If they do, then you and are are second class citizens subject to their whim and interpretation VB of what the law actually is.
That’s no way to run a free society and in the long run, it makes a LEO’s already difficult job impossible to do.
We need serious reform.
That word “special” is sorta vague misleading.
Don’t cops have PARTICULAR rights (ie. search and seizure, when granted by a court) that you and I don’t have?
If the court authorized you to conduct a search, you’d have that right.
LEOs have appreciable and differential responsibilities attached to their roles, like open carry of a firearm or the ability to make an arrest for misdemeanors not conducted within their immediate presence. They don’t have a special right to use that firearm any differently than you do or to make an arrest at a lower standard than you do ( false imprisonment is false imprisonment.)
They do not have special extraordinary rights say to privacy, that exceed your own.
Agreed.
Wait a second, let me flesh that last item out a bit…
If LE obtains a warrant for search and seizure in my home based on probable cause, can’t that be seen as an invasion on my privacy that is not the same as privacy rights afforded to me?
The state has a right, as approved by the court.
The cop is working for the state. He or she doesn’t get any special rights. Theoretically, I could execute that same warrant . . . because the state says so, not because I have a badge number.
“They do not have special extraordinary rights say to privacy, that exceed your own.”
Well, that’s problematical, because POBR recognizes that cops do have those special “rights,” although maybe they would be better labeled “privileges.”
Whatever you call them, the privacy enjoyed by crime-committing cops IS extraordinary and should be gotten rid of. If you or I are accused of a crime the cop PIO immediately releases our name and mug shot for the whole world to see. We, on the other hand, don’t even get to know the name of a cop who commits a crime unless somebody finds out accidentally. We don’t know if the cop even got fired – unless the department really wants to get the stink off their hands.
I’m being fast and loose with “don’t”.
I don’t think LEOs gain a super right above and beyond normal constitutional liberties because some state legislature decided it ought to be so. Our shared rights derive from the Constitution, not campaign contributions.
So my ” don’t ” is really an idealistic should.
Note: nowhere in my comment did I suggest these cops did nothing wrong.
Noted and what you’re clarifying is appreciated and correct.
This whole Santa Ana MMJ thing is a bust. It’s so f’d up there it’s almost worse than when you bought it on the streets. BB AND CC both suck. We need fair, sensible rules of engagement for the customers, dispeseraries,famlies and the city.
In the same vein,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/jimmy-carter-is-correct-that-the-u-s-is-no-longer-a-democracy/5466597 and
http://www.thestreet.com/story/13239214/1/ge-saves-33-billion-with-cuts-to-retirees-life-health-benefits.htm
That’s the GE run by Jeff Immelt, Obama’s Jobs Czar, right?
Dont worry POBOR will protect them all.
Looks like judge is going for the cops’ argument!!!
http://voiceofoc.org/2015/08/judge-poised-to-temporarily-quash-video-showing-cops-allegedly-eating-pot-edibles/
Wtf? There will be “irreparable harm” to the officers if this is used in an internal SAPD investigation, because the undercover cops took off their masks?
But the public has seen the video, and it’s not going back in the toothpaste tube.
And the SAPD presumably KNOWS who their undercover cops are.
And there’s a judge who thinks all this makes sense? (A judge I assume who NEVER disagrees with cops.)
I used to say that a judge is just a public employee in a robe. Now I’m changing it” a judge is just a cop in a robe.
They’ve already found that a cop can do any damn thing he wants in the course of his duties. And the duties themselves can be anything the cop wants as soon as he puts on his uniform – and in some cases not even that.
VOC made a mistake there.
LOL wat better