Oklahoma Jail Guards Charged with Murder – Homicide

July 22, 2009











Police get special rights in potential Oklahoma City Criminal Charges

July 17, 2009












July 4, 2009













April 27, 2009









“Drug Arrests” and Your Fictional Constitutional Rights

April 20, 2009

Police search vehicles every day on trumped up excuses and cover their tracks later.  Who cares?  Certainly not the citizens of the United States.  The protections citizens believe they have from the Fourth Amendment concerning unreasonable search and seizure simply do not exist in reality, on the street where the uniformed police always push the envelope in the name of “fighting crime.”

A pastor in Arizona was beaten by Border Patrol agents when they insisted on searching his car at a Border Patrol checkpoint.  The pastor thought he had rights protected by the Constitution.  The Border Patrol knew otherwise because they were more powerful and they could later justify pretty much anything they did because, no matter what they do, they are “fighting crime.”

Steven Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, was stopped by Border Patrol checkpoint 87.5 miles from the Mexican border.  He was well within the United States.  When stopped, he refused to allow a search of his rented vehicle.  He had no drugs and no other occupants in his car.  That did not stop the Border Patrol, who used a drug sniffing dog, which, the Border Patrol claims, made a “hit” on Anderson’s car, thus giving them “probable cause” to search his car for drugs. When Anderson refused to allow a search, the police broke both front  windows, immediately began using a Taser gun on him and continued to so, bashed his head into the broken glass on the car window, dragged him out and shoved him on the ground and stood on his head, regardless that he never physically resisted at all,  As blood streamed over his face, they handcuffed his hands behind his back, put him in their trailer, and the officers came in to laugh at him.  Eventually the police drove him to be given eleven stitches but took as long as possible, with stops to exchange casual chat with some fellow officers along the way, before allowing Anderson to use the rest room.  This is standard procedure, in case you don’t know.  Police officers think it’s funny to degrade arrested suspects by making them wet their pants.

Anderson says the drug dog did not bark or give any other indication, but the Border Patrol insists the dog “alerted” to drugs in the vehicle.  Of course, no drugs were found in the vehicle, and we have only the Border Patrol’s word that the dog ever made any indication.  Some have claimed in the past that police goad  drug dogs to make a sign when the police want them to.  Then, the police can just point to the dog as though the dog is some sort of scientific instrument with objective reliability as the predicate for their actions.  But in many cases, as in this case, no one can say the dog ever made any indication at all.

After arresting him, the police told the bloodied Anderson this would never have happened if he had just answered their questions when they stopped him.  Anderson called them on their story switch and said “I thought you said you searched my car because the drug dog hit on it.”

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 2000, in Indianapolis vs. Edmond that police cannot set up roadblocks with drug dogs to randomly search vehicles for drugs.   However, an earlier exception had been made for the Border Patrol.  The Court in 1976 decided United States vs. Martinez-Fuerte, there is an exception to this rule which allows Border Patrol the unique power to establish checkpoints for seeking illegal immigrants, allowing a secondary purpose of finding drugs.  Therefore, while ordinary police cannot set up a checkpoint with a drug-detecting dog within the Fourth Amendment, the Border Patrol is allowed to do so, and the Border Patrol is not required to have “probable cause” before using their drug-detecting dog on a vehicle.  Moreover, the Border Patrol is allowed to establish checkpoints up to 100 miles inside the United States.

There is another exception allowed for checkpoints that applies to ordinary police.  That is the checkpoints set up to find drunk drivers, which was allowed by Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990.

Anderson was pulled from his car by officers of the Arizona Department of Public Safety, tasered and bloodied by the glass the police broke.  He was then jailed overnight.  Certainly he is startled that the rights he thought he had, the rights talked about on television and in classrooms are trumped by the reality of armed uniformed police who are on a mission to stamp out crime, and who are given more and more leeway by the courts.

Who cares?  No one, apparently.  The United States Supreme Court has continued over the years to chisel away at the rights of citizens so as to make things easier for police to act with impunity.  The Supreme Court has even mused about eliminating the exclusionary rule, the “Fruit of the Poisonous Tree” doctrine, which requires suppression of evidence illegally obtained by the police.  You can imagine how illegal activity by police will flourish if that action is taken. The Congress has never given any indication it believes its citizens are at risk from police increasing intrusion.  It, like the press and most Americans, believes that American citizens are at risk from “crime,” not from the crime chasers.

Only the Bill of Rights limits the use of government power.  Police naturally push the boundaries of the permitted use of government power- always.  They think they are doing their jobs by impinging on the right of citizens whenever a criminal case might be made.  Once in a while police officers are caught red-handed lying, trumping up evidence or the like, just to make a case against a suspect the police “believes” really has it coming.  This corruption in the system is inherent where the word of police is taken and rarely can be challenged factually.  The more slack leash the United States Supreme Court gives them, the police will be able to make a few more criminal cases stick, of course, but the more diminished will be the rights of the American citizen.  The Bill of Rights becomes just a wall ornament.

“Safe” Taser Guns Cause Deaths in Arrests

February 26, 2009








Injustice for sale — Judges jail children for money

February 24, 2009










