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This has got to be one of the worst Supreme Court decisions that I’ve ever seen. (And among other things, it reinforces the view I’ve had since her nomination that Elena Kagan, who sided with the Republican majority, is nearly worthless.)
You know all of those cases we’ve been hearing about where people are standing around doing nothing in their front yard or, like Stephon Clark, in their grandmother’s backyard doing nothing wrong and police, acting on a tip from some fearful neighbor, show up and shoot them?
The Supreme Court says it’s OK!
The Supreme Court on Monday shielded a police officer from being sued for shooting an Arizona woman in her front yard, once again making it harder to bring legal action against officers who use excessive force, even against an innocent person.
With two dissents, the high court tossed out a lawsuit by a Tucson woman who was shot four times outside her home because she was seen carrying a large knife.
The ruling — which comes at a time of growing controversy over police shootings nationwide — effectively advises courts to rely more heavily on the officer’s view of such incidents, rather than the victim’s…
Seriously, pretty much everything in our local OC police shooting cases that we’ve argued is unconstitutional — unless there is planted evidence, of course — is wiped out by this decision. The police are now essentially entitled to act as slave patrols, trying to make ebellion impossible by keeping fear of summary execution too high.
You can almost hear Lucille Kring saying “saved us the cost of a trial!”
I’m a longtime advocate of non-violence. I don’t think that it does poorer and darker people much good, given society’s interest and inclination to retaliate against them, and anyone unlucky enough to be around them, tenfold or a hundredfold. But if we are really saying to law-abiding people who happen to be of a type that scares police officers — that is, poorer and darker — how am I supposed to convince them to just lie there and accept a reality when police can shoot them with impunity and get away with it?
…The ruling — which comes at a time of growing controversy over police shootings nationwide — effectively advises courts to rely more heavily on the officer’s view of such incidents, rather than the victim’s.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in dissent the victim did not threaten the police or a friend who was standing nearby. This “decision is not just wrong on the law; it also sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public. It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later,” Sotomayor wrote…
Once — in the name of the need to “public safety,” by which we mean allowing killing of innocent people — you are willing to credit the police version of events in all shootings even when it is nonsensical on paper, WITHOUT EVEN LETTING IT GO TO A JURY, then you’ve lost our democracy. Oh, you probably haven’t lost if for *yourself*, if you aren’t darker or poorer, but you’ve lost it for the people who will be victims of government violence — and, constitutionally, that is worse. Or I should say, that was what the constitution said until this morning.
…”Today’s ruling gives yet another green light to officers who use deadly force as a tool of first resort instead of last,” said Clark Neily, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute. “It does so based on a legal doctrine — qualified immunity — that the Supreme Court invented out of whole cloth to help create a policy of near-zero accountability for law enforcement.”
…Erwin Chemerinsky said Monday’s decision is part of a trend. “In case after case involving excessive police force, the Supreme Court is finding for the police and keeping juries from ever being able to decide if the police acted impermissibly. This contributes significantly to the difficulties in holding police accountable,” he said…
Only when people (probably using burner phones for their own) start calling the police on wealthier white people with lawfully held knives and guns, and some of THEM get killed, will the public start to see the injustice in this. Of course, those people won’t get killed by the police — and certainly not without them FIRST GETTING AN ORAL WARNING TO DROP THEIR WEAPON, which the officer didn’t bother issuing here before firing.
All of those jokes from minority comedians about police showing up at a boisterous party of white teenagers and combing through the crowd until they could find the Black of Mexican or Filipino kid to shoot? Those. Aren’t. Jokes.
And WHERE THE HELL are the Second Amendment people on this? Who has to be killed for legally holding a kitchen knife in their front yard before THEY pay attention?
You have to remember the cardinal rule of law enforcement: If you are using your phone, while someone is trying to arrest you – that is called: “Resisting Arrest”…..now lets extrapolate from there…..if someone is “Resisting Arrest” can they be engaged with force of arms? Dr. D., may know the answer to that question…..but our guess is that it is strictly a local determination of each department.when each officer can use deadly force. There is an SOP…..and who writes it?
The right to bear arms doesn’t include knives, walking sticks, toy pistols or garden hose nozzles. It’s right there in the Constitution.
Oh, wait…
A similar fact pattern to the Kisela v. Hughes played out down the street from my house in Anaheim a few weeks ago. @10 pm, more than a dozen police officers showed up in numerous cruisers, a man screaming at them to shoot him (couldn’t see clearly in the dark, but he might have been brandishing something). I saw no shots fired (but might have heard some earlier), an arrest followed, no injuries I could see. Kudos Anaheim PD.
The qualified immunity standard presented as “immunity protects all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law” is a tough nut to crack. Personally, I prefer Ginsburg/Sotomayor’s (and the 9th’s) reading – but the majority has a fair point: Blanford established that qualified immunity applies when the police shoot a man holding 30-inch cavalry sword who growled at the police officers – why wouldn’t that apply to, say, a 6-inch kitchen knife as well?
As for Kagan…well, hard to say what this opinion would have looked like otherwise. By limiting it to the facts (and drawing the inquiry toward the weapon possessed by the victim), there’s a little space left for challenges to qualified immunity. If you’re gonna lose anyway, sometimes losing less is better than dissenting.
BTW, this is a misreading of the case:
“Of course, those people won’t get killed by the police — and certainly not without them FIRST GETTING AN ORAL WARNING TO DROP THEIR WEAPON, which the officer didn’t bother issuing here before firing.”
In this case, both the majority and the minority note that the police did command Hughes to drop her weapon. The dissent noted, rather, “The evidence in the record suggests that
Hughes may not have heard or understood the officers’ commands and may not have been aware of the officers’ presence at all.” Certainly a relevant fact, that ought to be read in Hughes’ favor (and brought to a jury’s attention!) – but not at all a case where they failed to tell her to drop her weapon.
Of course, am I the only one who links this to a certain candidate for OC DA and his own ‘threatening knife’ shenanigans?
Thanks for this and your other thoughtful reply, Donovan. That fact wasn’t in the LA Times story, on which basis I posted the above on Facebook. It came out in comments there and I amended my view slightly in response, but when Vern ported this post from FB to here that clarification didn’t make the transition. (Yes, we can post in each other’s names, although we rarely do.)
A DA candidate and “threatening knife” shenanigans? It hardly seems possible! Tell us more! (No, you’re not the only one — but you get to take the first shot, as it were, at making the comparison!)
LOL, I have nothing to tell you about a certain gent mortally terrified of street preachers that you don’t know better than I do.
the state of california is about to change the definition of use of force in a significant way
Yeah! I’d been meaning to put this up… it looks like it would be real progress.
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article207757824.html
“Legislation by Assembly members Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, and Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, would change the way police are allowed to use deadly force in California. Right now, officers follow the standard of what’s “reasonable,” and need not try non-lethal tactics or de-escalation to subdue a suspect first.
“Assembly Bill 931 would permit lethal force only when it’s “necessary,” meaning when there’s no other way to prevent “imminent” injury. Also, law enforcement officers whose own actions made such force necessary would no longer be justified in killing suspects.”
*So….when the cop stops someone they have to say: “Is that a hand grenade or are you just glad to see me?”
Life and death decisions have a tough time be legislated. In the Military it is called “Rules of Engagement”. These rules have to be set for each area, region or group encountered. These rules many times change within days, sometimes hours to the prior authority. Either the Legislation will be weak or it could be too strong for many situations. What isn’t shown on TV….it the “Average Senario”, where the drunken husband is beating up the neighbor and the cops come. They jump on the drunk who is very upset and then the wife jumps on the back of the cop, that is beating up here husband. Mom, could be using her cell phone or a garden rake as a weapon. Could be that someone gets killed in that mess. How do you legislate that type of situation again?
Anyone know how our reps in OC stand on AB 931?
I am not sure why the cops are so afraid. Many fear the public as they might be hurt or killed by a lady in her yard. But statistically they are not in the top 10 of deaths on the job.
Driving down the streets when you see a roofer you should stop and say a prayer cause they are about 10 times more likely to die or be injured on the job than a cop. Does that mean that roofers can shoot home owners that offer them jobs? Or taze home owners that even approach them just looking like they might offer them a job roofing their homes?
Out in front of the Anaheim police station is a memorial to Anaheim cops who’ve died in the line of duty. There are THREE, in 150 years. If I remember right (I’ll check again and correct this if I have to) two were from the 19th century, and one was a helicopter crash.
If they had one for people killed BY Anaheim cops … well, you’ve seen Renee Balenti’s huge lists. And they’re all in the last 15 years or so.
Scared panicky people have no business being cops. They should be stockbrokers instead.
# Trade War With China Means Fewer Jobs
*OK, let’s be totally truthful…..the reason why cops are “disconnected from the citizenry” comes from them NOT living in the neighborhoods they serve. This stems from a couple of things, not less than the fact that the PD”s recruit from the ranks of other departments because they have experience. Next is the affordability factor of rental property and home buying in the communities they serve. The example is: A rookie cop recruited from Carona or Riverside….lives in a high crime area….they go to Newport Beach and see how spoiled and “entitled” many citizens believe themselves to be. It is difficult to separate, the Hedge Fund Dealers from the International Drug Dealers….they all drive Ferrari’s with blacked out windows. The examples for locations like Anaheim, Fullerton and Costa Mesa are just as complicated. Police Officers used to have to live in the Communities they served. NO MORE! As long as this type of disconnect continues……there will be schisms in the system at large. When you have really good Police Chief’s – they make sure that their Watch Commanders live in the Community and take no nonsense from Patrol and Traffic cops when it comes to implementing police powers. The bad guys get written up, put on unpaid leave and the other guys and girls take serious notice. This is the reason, we find the outsourcing of Policing to Departments like the OC Sheriff’s a basic disconnect. In this senario…either the Sheriff’s employ too much force or too little. The new Sheriff in the OC, does not need to be a strict “Law and Order Type”, but someone that understands the complexities of our very diverse County. And of course is one hell of a politician, capable of offering up Excellent, Incisive and Broad Public Policy to the Board of Supervisors and the Public at large.