What legal authorities provide for DHS to police cities? I heard about 40 U.S. Code § 1315 on a podcast. It allows HHS officers to safeguard federal property and gives them arrest power under explicit conditions - (c) arrest people they witness committing federal crimes and (d) serve warrants. They also have (e) the power to investigate violation of federal laws. Blocking traffic and being rowdy in the streets and failure to disperse are not federal crimes. In media discussions about their activities in Portland in July 2020 I have heard much about the advisability, morality and optics of these activities but little about the legality. I see that law provides that they may enter into agreements with state and local authorities for other activities. This has clearly not happened in Portland. Therefore when they are blocks away from federal property detaining people there seems to be no legal leg to stand on, unless it is -- (f) carry out such other activities for the promotion of homeland security as the Secretary may prescribe. Is there any more specific legal authority, and if so, has the administration cited it?
You've omitted a critical part of paragraph (b)(2)(C): make arrests without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in the presence of the officer or agent or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if the officer or agent has reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing a felony So if the crime in question is a felony, the agent does not have to have witnessed its commission; they only need &quot;reasonable grounds to believe&quot; that the person they're arresting did it. One possible felony that may come into play is 18 USC 1361: damage or attempted damage to federal property in excess of $1000 is punishable by up to ten years imprisonment. Anything greater than one year is a felony.
Utah has a lot of public parks, so to point in the right direction, I will assume that this is a public park in Salt Lake City, it's just a plain old grassy field, and it's not during a special event. A person is suspected of some crime like selling drugs, not arrested, but told by a police officer to go away and never come back. This is way beyond the power of the police. After due legal process, a proven (not just suspected) public menace could be ordered by the court to stay away from the park. A police officer can, of course, order a person to leave a park when they violate a park rule, in fact rule number 1 is "It is unlawful for any person to do or to allow or permit any of the acts prohibited by this chapter in any park in Salt Lake City", so the police cannot legally turn a blind eye to rule violations. Violation of park rules is an infraction which can earn you a ticket of up to $299. However, the officer can tell you to go away, rather than giving you a ticket or arresting you. But an police order cannot issue a unilateral restraining order. Apart from city laws, there are general state laws regarding trespass and destruction of property. The state criminal trespass law says that A person is guilty of criminal trespass if...knowing the person's... entry or presence is unlawful, the person enters or remains on to which notice against entering is given by...personal communication to the person by the owner or someone with apparent authority to act for the owner In this case, the owner is the city, and the officer has apparent authority to act for that owner. In the case of private property, the owner or his agent has very broad authority to give notice requiring you to leave (e.g. if you don't like their politics or their shirt); but in the case of public property, the government has more narrowly circumscribed authority to kick you out.
Answering the question title, a Texas law enforcement officer can certainly make arrests in Louisiana these days under the right circumstances (I'm not about to look up the laws as of 1934). For starters, Louisiana law grants any person the authority to make an arrest when the person being arrested has committed a felony, whether or not that felony was committed in the presence of the person making the arrest. This is normally a legally risky thing to do (the arrest is illegal unless the person actually committed a felony, while a cop's felony arrest is legal as long as the cop had probable cause), but in this case the pair had been involved in a kidnapping and a robbery in Louisiana. Any person could have made a lawful arrest, and could have used necessary force to effect that arrest. But suppose the gang turned out to be innocent of the Louisiana crimes. In that case, a citizen's arrest would be illegal. But the Texas lawmen weren't at the ambush alone. They were there with the parish sheriff and a deputy, who were Louisiana peace officers with the authority to make an arrest on probable cause. And under Article 219 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, A peace officer making a lawful arrest may call upon as many persons as he considers necessary to aid him in making the arrest. A person thus called upon shall be considered a peace officer for such purposes. Neither of these things depends on the Texas officers' status as Texas officers. There are some arrests which are legal based on that (e.g. hot pursuit), and a Texas officer has some extra powers in Louisiana based on federal law that make an arrest easier (e.g. cops in the US can carry concealed firearms nationwide without needing a CCW permit), but under normal circumstances a Texas police officer has no special authority to make an arrest in Louisiana. However, it's not at all uncommon for police agencies in different states (or at the state and federal level) to cooperate on something, and there are ways to make it work out. With more planning, there are normally formal ways to do it instead of needing to rely on "we'll ask you for assistance" (for instance, officers could formally be appointed as deputies in the appropriate agency; this happens a lot on federal task forces, where a deputized state or local cop gets nationwide jurisdiction). If Bonnie and Clyde existed these days but the feds wanted to involve state cops, they'd just set up a federal task force, make Hamer a special deputy US marshal, and go from there.
When the LEO violently assaulted the citizen on the easement is he out of his jurisdiction? No. Federal law enforcement officers' jurisdiction generally* includes the entire US. Federal and state jurisdiction are said to be concurrent with one another. If the federal law enforcement officer has a lawful basis to effect an arrest, the arrest can be effected on a state† highway easement. Is there any immediate or long term consequence for an officer committing crimes or doing so egregiously (with or without qualified immunity) out of his jurisdiction as opposed to doing so in his jurisdiction? If the officer were outside his jurisdiction (which isn't the case here) then the officer is generally treated as any other private individual. In this case, &quot;outside his jurisdiction&quot; means &quot;in another country,&quot; which brings up all sorts of additional complications that aren't really in scope here, largely because the laws and legal systems of other countries are different from those in the US. Are there any nuances to jurisdiction and law enforcement by LEOs that a first amendment auditor should be aware of? There are plenty, but perhaps the most prominent one, if the internet is any guide, is that an officer is not required to articulate the basis for reasonable suspicion or probable cause at the time of a Terry stop or an arrest. The time for this is much later, after a judge is involved. Arguing with an officer on this score is just going to make things worse. Instead, one should cooperate while stating one's objections clearly and calmly, especially making it clear that cooperation does not imply consent. * Some categories of officers do have more limited jurisdiction: thanks to cpast for the example of park rangers, whose jurisdiction is essentially restricted to national parks. The officers in this case are CBP field officers. There is a wide misconception that CBP officers' jurisdiction is limited to within 100 miles of the border, but that 100-mile limit only applies to their power to board and search vessels and vehicles without a warrant in order to prevent illegal entry into the US. Their power to make warrantless arrests &quot;for any offence against the United States&quot; committed in their presence is not geographically restricted. † The original video was filmed in South Portland, Maine, and the roadway is a municipal street, Gannett Drive, to be precise. The point remains, however, that it is a public right-of-way, and federal officers are not &quot;out of their jurisdiction&quot; simply because they've left a federal facility and entered a public place.
The district court judge, as reported in this news story has held that there was probable cause to arrest Daniel Robbins in this case, and that his rights were not violated. If this ruling stands, officers acted legally, although they might still be required to return the phone with the images. Whether there is probable cause for an arrest (or a search) is always a very fact-based issue. I have not found the judge's actual decision, only a news summary of it, which can often be misleading. Specific facts about exactly what Robbins did or said may be important in determining whether there was in fact probable cause. It appears that Robbins intends to appeal this decision. If he does there may be an opinion from a Circuit Court of Appeals expanding on whether there was probable cause or any violation of rights, and why. Previous cases have established that normally there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for acts performed in public; that one my photograph or video record such public acts legally from anywhere that one may legally be; that there is a right photograph or record police officers engaged in official actions or the use of police powers; and that laws attempting to forbid such recording are unconstitutional when so applied. However, it seems from the news story that here the police officers were off-duty and not engaging in any official acts or use of police powers. That might change the ruling. I rather expect the district court's decision to be overturned, but there is no case exact;ly on point that i know of, and one can never be absolutely sure what a court will do in a particular case. I can see why police officers may have felt threatened, and why the Judge may have been inclined to sympathize with them, although I think the decision was incorrect. But a Judge of the Appeals Court might possibly feel the same way. Until the Appeals Court rules, one cannot be sure what the law in this matter will finally be. (It is possibly, but statistically a bit unlikely, there there will eventually be a ruling from the US Supreme Court on this case.) This article from Nolo Press discusses the issue of recording police, primarily in the context of police who are performing their official duties. It says: Almost every court to consider the issue has determined that the First Amendment gives you the right to record (pictures, video, and audio) police officers in public while they are performing their duties. But that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to record if you’re doing so surreptitiously (secretly), interfering with the officer, or otherwise breaking the law. The courts' primary rationale for allowing police officer recording is that the First Amendment includes the right to freely discuss our government, and the right of freedom of the press and public access to information. Given the prevalence of personal filming devices, more and more “news” is being gathered and disseminated by members of the public. The courts have found that freedom of the press applies to citizen journalists and documentarians just as it does to formal members of the press. (See, for example, Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011).) The Nolo article goes on to discuss whether a Section 1983 Federal suit against police officers who arrest someone recording their actions will succeed, indicating that this will depend on the specific facts of the case. The Nolo article mentions that one is not allowed to interfere with an officer during process of recording. What exactly constitutes &quot;interference&quot; is not fully clear, and will depend on the facts of a specific case. The Nolo article mentions other circumstances when recording an officer may not be legal.
You have misread the DMLP page. In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to record a conversation if you are a party and if the other party does not consent. The fact that federal law doesn't ban something doesn't mean that states can't ban it. There is generally a presumption that when both the feds and the states can legitimately regulate something, the feds weren't trying to preempt all state laws on the topic. While people often say "federal law takes precedence over state law," the normal rule is that both laws apply; the federal law only blocks the state law if the feds wanted to block said state laws. So far as I can tell, the federal law has never been held to preempt two-party consent laws; the point of the federal law was to restrict recording, not extend it. It's like how federal law doesn't prohibit taking hostages inside the US to coerce a private company into doing what you want (anti-terrorism laws might, I guess, but the federal hostage-taking law doesn't); while the federal law excludes most hostage-taking in the US, that doesn't mean that it's legal to take hostages. Congress sometimes wants to establish nationwide standards for something, but the presumption is that they didn't.
A state or local law enforcement officer cannot enforce federal laws unless the officer has been deputized by the federal government to do so. State and local law enforcement officers are sometimes deputized to enforce federal law, but this would almost never be done in the case of FCC regulations.
1-3: This would be prohibited under Article VI, paragraph 2 of the US Constitution, which provides that federal law, and the ability to enforce that law, has supremacy over state law. As summarized by Cornell Law, the Supremacy Clause: establishes that the federal constitution, and federal law generally, take precedence over state laws, and even state constitutions. It prohibits states from interfering with the federal government's exercise of its constitutional powers... 4: Not legally; see above. 5: Yes, probably a lot of laws. Those charges could range anywhere from interfering with a federal investigation, wrongful imprisonment, assault, or kidnapping. I think it's important to point out that it is highly unlikely the situation would ever escalate to 4, let alone 5. The federal government is incredibly well resourced with regards to being able to move its law enforcement officers throughout the country. And that's not withstanding that the FBI and other agencies (CBP, TSA) are already stationed in any particular state. A non-zero number of those agents are also residents of the state they're stationed in, which would complicate things further.