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Legal Experts: Even TOTALLY INNOCENT People Should Avoid Talking to Law Enforcement
A law school professor and former criminal defense attorney explains why you should never agree to be interviewed by the police:
We’ve previously documented that there are so many federal and state laws in the United States, that no one can keep track of them all, and everyone violates laws every day without even knowing it.
As such, it is best to avoid law enforcement when possible.
It’s vital to note, however, that the Supreme Court ruled this year that your silence CAN be used against you (the link is to the website of one of America’s top constitutional law professors) … at least until you’re read your Miranda rights. Therefore, if you remain silent when police are questioning you, it is very important to tell the police that you are exercising your right to remain silent. As the Atlantic notes:
Basically, if you’re ever in any trouble with police… and want to keep your mouth shut, you will need to announce that you’re invoking your Fifth Amendment right instead of, you know, just keeping your mouth shut. “Petitioner’s Fifth Amendment claim fails because he did not expressly invoke the privilege against self-incrimination in response to the officer’s question,” reads the [Supreme Court] opinion ….
It’s Not Andy Griffith’s America Any More
This is not to say that all law enforcement personnel are bad folks. Many of them are outstanding people.
But our police forces have become so insanely militarized and the fear of terror has become so wildly overblown that many law enforcement personnel have become hair-trigger tense.
People have been severely harassed when they’ve asked for help from law enforcement. For example, an anti-war website was spied on for 6 years after they asked for help by the FBI. And the FBI rifled through all of a woman’s electronic communications after she told the FBI that she was being harassed.
Police have recently tasered numerous deaf or retarded people for “failing to follow orders”.
And they’ve shot and killed people who were just looking for help. See this and this.
Again, we’re not trying to paint with a broad brush; most law enforcement personnel are good folks just trying to do their job. And police are human, too … sometimes they get scared and overreact.
But it’s not the same ole Andy Griffith show type demeanor among law enforcement today. So it’s best to be careful.
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They are not there to serve and protect except themselves and the interests they protect. They usually are not local. They enforce a number of economic laws and get their cut. I gave up when I requested a jury trial for a minor traffic enfraction, and the judge with a completely straight face, said they don't offer jury trials for this type of "law breaking".
Pretty much they're bad.
New police motto:
"To Serve and Protect? -- Bullshit! Gun 'em down. Hoooraah."
Shoot the dog.
Sounds like the dog likes to sniff assholes and maybe he's confused from being around so many of them.
Ya mean like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHhcMz8WiQ
No, no, no...
The new motto is, "Comply or else!"
Go ahead and paint with a broad brush. It's easier to list the trustworthy cops in my local area than it is to list the untrustworthy cops. They've murdered, robbed, beaten people, etc... and have been caught perjuring themselves to get convictions. They have tampered with evidence on many occasions. And since it's relevant as to why you don't want to interact with the man (not my local PD):
http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3209305.shtml
This includes the motion for partial summary judgment and some of the evidence in the lawsuit that Eckert has against all of the Defendants:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/05/what-began-as-a-mans-simple-t...
And here is the federal complaint:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/181730326/Traffic-Complaint-pdf
And after all that shit, the hospital sent the guy a bil for $6k.
And to make matters worse:
http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3210356.shtml?cat=500#.Unvao_E0IXf
Silver City is a hell of a long ways from Deming and not on any main road. In fact, its a long trip into the mountains. Must be a very compliant med center as there are closer places.
FORWARD STASI!
These cops today have all the angles covered. Brutalize until every time you pull someone over, their sphincter puckers, and then when it does, use it as an excuse to sodomize them! Genius!
Wow.
To be medically anally abused multiple times, with and without anesthesia and then to find no narcotics. Wow.
Thanks for the post.
+1 (system is not letting me up arrow your post)
If they had found narcotics, then would it have been justified?
no it would not,
but the irony of no doobie in the booty makes it the more odious.
No.
The warrant was not valid in the county the anality happened in.
And there was a case where drugs pumped from a person's stomach AFTER the cops watched the person swallow them were deemed inadmissable, because it was so excessivly invasive as to be shocking. I think that the same probably applies here.
Cops are usually fairly well versed in the limits of their warrants. What could possibly have possessed them to go to this extreme and blatently disregard this? I guess their victim is just lucky they gave up when they did and didn't require an open exploratory laparotomy with a complete running of the bowel to confirm the negative diagnosis.
Glad you posted this in detail. It should be sent to everybody in your address book.
It's just hard to believe that this happened.
Pretty much ranks at the top of the humilation scale.
I hope the guy gets millions.
I think he has an excellend chance that that day of humiliation will turn into the biggest payday of his life, as it should. I hope he is suing the hospital where the indignities were performed, as well.
But don't you see, that is their out. That is the safety valve they keep pulling over and over. Dead kids family get a couple hundred thousand. That basically gives them carte blanche to do what they want, and if you get mutilated, or killed, you may or may not get rich from the encounter. That keeps the populace from defending themselves from the armed and dangerous gangs that plague this nation.
He's suing everybody and everything whether its nailed down or not. Cops. Doctors. PDs. Hospital. Deputy District Attorney. He's going after them all. It looks like the only one who has a chance of getting out of it is the Deputy DA, and that's only because the Deputy DA may or may not be able to claim absolute immunity. I hope not. The evidence is there.
Oh, and I've read rulings from the chief judge in the court that he is in. He's what you wish more judges were. He is absolutly ruthless to police when they overstep their boundaries.
There is another out, oh, the good judge will fix things and the bad police people will be sorry. They always keep the illusion going, when the whole system is broken, but they don't want it to stop.
The immunity of a public official is not absolute and ends where his/her actions become "ultra vires" or beyond the scope of his or her office. This comes up in sexual harassment cases and it is why the perpetrator is personally liable and must provide for his own defence.
true, but the issue here, as in virtually all cases, is plausible deniability... there appears to be no dispute that something funny was going on with the guy's ass before the cops started making it their playground... you're going to get testimony that "in my experience, when people do this sort of thing, they got drugs up their ass and we had to go to the hospital to find out" and "we had to give him a few enemas to make sure that his system was entirely flushed as sometimes the first enema won't blow the drugs out because they're lodged in there." The whole "violating an established law" bit gets pretty difficult to pin down.
In my experience, the general lean of courts is to side with qualified immunity for state actors. It takes something incredibly egregious, objectively (with no plausible deniability) to leave state actors personally liable.
Cops make my sphincter clench too, but it isn't standard practice in my area to require someone stopped for a minor traffic violation to get out of their car. In fact, the cops insist that you sit there.
I'm concerned that a higher court than the one this is working it's way through will eventually rule that once you fall into the hands of the police no matter how small the alleged infraction, anything they require along these lines will be permissible. After all, it could be argued that their safety and the safety of the public require such measures.
The judges are all former prosecutors.
There are other ways that a DA can lose absolute immunity too, but it's been quite a while since I've gone over them. A DA can be acting within the scope of his or her office, but within that scope can play different roles, and some of those roles have absolute immunity attached, others, not so much. I'd have to go through it again to be up to snuff on this though. I wouldn't be at all surprised if absolute immunity is granted in this case, but then again, it's so egregious... who knows?
Good, because money and violence are the only thing little tin gods understand, and I think costing them money is more painful. The municipalities, cities and counties are the employers of their police and where the buck stops regarding their behavior. It was all fun and games when they were relieving people passing through of their cash and valuables. If they have to pay out their grift heads will roll. I hope the officers involved in this clusterfuck, who seem to have done this just because they thought they could and it probably amused them (and think very carefully about what this implies about the character of people this line of work attracts), are held personally liable as well. Why should cops fear to overstep and ride roughshod over anyone and anything if they aren't held to painful account. Once the first step is taken and no consequences are felt, it is easy and human nature to take the next step and the next.
"The municipalities, cities and counties are the employers of their police and where the buck stops regarding their behavior."
Not where it stops, where it started. It wouldn't look like it does if it wasn't accepted and orchestrated for their benefit. Don't you see the pattern, every government entity has it's own legalized exclusive army to protect its interests. That is totally by design. You local revenue generating soldier is just one piece of the fabric. One thing is clear to me, they don't want you to know them personally. They want their identities hidden for the most part, so it's stranger on stranger enforcement, never neighbor on neighbor, and it's never about serve and protect, it's almost always about revenue generation or economic enforcmement. Let you kid start a lemonade stand, and you will see their true colors.
Well, this is part of the luxury of being a turnip... the cops have no net worth that any attorney worth a shit would care to go after... the only target is the hospital/doctors. Forcing someone into bankruptcy who has little/no assets, nor much of a chance to get any, isn't much of a deterrent... and there won't be any criminal charges...
The big lesson here is to tell cops that they're on private property and to get the fuck away from the hospital unless they want to be arrested for trespassing... there needs to be a healthy skepticism and adversarial nature when citizens, of all walks, are dealing with the police.
PS, when the plaintiff's attorneys hold up the bill for services, the case will be over... liability determined... the only question is "how much" it will cost the hospital.
Little solace when the pigs merely have to put a gun to another's head to pay him off.
Government has zero monies that it first has not extracted from the populace, either through taxation or currency devaluation (money printing).
pods
It will be just the counties, municipalities, hospital and individuals who have to pay this. Those parts of southern NM can be very corrupt and the people support that corruption either by being apethetic or by voting for it. The time for apathy is over. The people need to know what is being done on their dime, and if that means doing without public services because their pigs are complete fucking psychopaths, then so be it.
most likely only the hospital and hospital staff... depending on how the employment is handled, there might be some medical groups on the hook and some indemnity provisions for the hospital... I seriously doubt there is anything awarded against the cops in their official capacities, i.e. as state actors. Remember, you've got a court deciding the issue who is paid by ____________________. Soveriegn immunity applies to the state and all its branches... the only question is whether the individual actors are shielded from personal liability by doing their job...
It'll be settled out of court by the deep pockets and they'll quit pursuing the rest... the only issue now is the insurance companies deciding how much the case is worth.
You've also got the issue of due process limitations to punitives... not sure how much compensatory is here, but in the scheme of injuries, having a couple enemas and being humiliated is probably low on the totem pole. If they killed him it would be worth a couple mil... but, playing with his butthole has to be somewhere less... largely depends on the area's values and the types of awards juries usually give... I would be incredibly surprised if the guy gets 8 figures out of a perfect jury trial and maximum award of punitives... half of which will be taken by his lawyers...
He's in federal court with a chief justice who regularly slams local PDs. Not all judges in the district are as harsh as him, but he steers the ship, so to speak.
Much of the lawsuit falls under 42 USC 1983, which means that not only can he be awarded damages and punitive damages, but also attorney's fees on top of that. Part of the lawsuit with the hospital specifically is under the NM Unfair Trade Practices Act, which also allows for attorney's fees to be awarded. They really do want to settle out of court, because there is the potential for a 7 figure jury verdict, plus $100k-$1M in attorney's fees, should it go to trial.
Right, but there are two aspects, liability AND collectibility. Focusing on the liability part is only a small part of the story... The fact that you can get a judgment against someone doesn't mean shit if you can't collect on the judgment. I guess you could file a lawsuit just to make someone file bankruptcy, but that won't pay the light bill...
All people want to settle out of court... it's why ~3% of lawsuits go to trial... and attorneys fees of $1m in this case don't mean shit compared to the possible verdict, so I don't think saving a couple hundred K is going to be a deciding factor... the only issue at this point is how much the insurance companies think it's worth and whether their insureds are covered... if they're covered, then the only issue is the extent of coverage and whether they want to throw in the policy limits... I'm guessing $1-5m per doctor group and $5-10m for the hospital on policy limits... conservatively, there's probably $5-7m in insurance money sitting out there... if not, then the lawsuit has a much worse chance...
Also, I'd be curious about charitable immunity for the hospital, given many of them are NFPs.
There's also the issue of injunctive relief. I'm the type of guy who would get a judgement against them to not only get injunctive relief, but just to force them to file Chapter 7. Or maybe garnish $150/mo from their paychecks. Not much, but enough so that they know I'm there, and that they fucked with the wrong guy. But this guy was arrested multiple times by the PD. He'd get arrested, they'd charge him with felonies, they'd transfer the case from magistrate court to district court because magistrate has no jurisdiction over felony cases, and then, except for one time, they'd drop the case. He did get one drug conviction. One of the times that it was dropped, it was dropped almost instantly after being transferred. DAs in NM almost never drop a case that fast unless the case is absolute shit. They'll hold out hoping that you'll at least plea to a lesser charge even with nothing but the testimony of one or two persons as evidence. Sometimes, even the testimony of a 5 yr old is good enough for them to hold on until the day of trial before they dismiss. (I do know of such a case in NM.) There is also talk of other run-ins with the cops too. When the guy says that he is terrified, I believe him, and I think that the injunctive relief at this point is a really, really good idea.
I would not use the caveat "most are good people, blah blah blah."
They are all acting on behalf of an immoral, tyrannical government.
Fuck them all.
pods
But pods...the good ones are just trying to change the system from within...
/sarc
pods are you an anarchist? I'm not avocating a normalcy bias but if you want to be aware of tyrany that good but it isint as black and white as that.
Would there be police in Pods utopia?
I run under the simple common law premise that there has to be a trespass (victim) for there to be a crime.
And I am under no delusion of Utopia, as that usually means coersion and I am against all forms of coersion.
Not ducking your question as to my political philosophy, I just don't like labels much cause that makes me beholden to anything attached to that label.
There is no black or white, as when somehow a servant of the people (police) obtain a power not held by the people that is tyranny.
I have no right to sodomize anyone, for any reason.
Nevermind a crime against "the state."
If that guy did have drugs up his ass, it is between him and his ass. No need for the state to be involved.
pods
If we would whittle the law back to 95% common law, then the country would be a better place... of course, that would take a couple centuries of statutes filled with pork off the books, so it'll never happen...
All laws should have an automatic sunset clause of something around 10 years on them, and they should not be renewed unless they are read, out loud, infront of a quorum of the body that passed them. Every single law, including prohibitions against murder, rape and robbery. If we're going to have legislative bodies, they should be forced to think about what's actually important.
Every law should have a cover sheet that clearly spells out the reason for the law, what it is designed to accomplish, how the result will be measured, etc.
Intent should never be in question, but our Lawyer politicians would never go for that. After all, they live on loopholes.
They typically do state a purpose/intent... they'll even include emergency clause boiler plate that sometimes further explains the purpose of the law... The problem is that before you get to trudge down the road of statutory interpretation, you'll need some viable ambiguity or vagueness in the law... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_interpretation
Yep, and every statute benefitted someone along the line, so repeal will trot out the heartstring pulling victim saved by the law.
Common law was easy to understand and easy to obey.
Now I probably break a dozen statutes easy per day.
Just too many to keep track of.
pods
there are countries that have no "Common Law" at all, and yet they haven't those issues. it's not a question of Law "System", imho. just saying
Countries who don't have a problem with legislation benefitting those in power have informal mechanisms of control that accomplish the same thing... so, it's six of one, half dozen of another.
For all of its fault, the common law is as academically honest system as the west has managed to devise for the judiciary and those situations where the judiciary plays in the legislature's sandbox... and, frankly, it's vastly more justifiable than the present macro statutory scheme.
Also, you might have places that don't have a "common law" per se, but adopt a material amount of the same philosophies/rules in the same situations... again, this is because the common law is simply a practical system devised over centuries of duking matters out in court and academia... and tweaked to correct injustice. Again, it's not a perfect system, but the adversarial nature of its development has insured that it's vastly more practical, fair, and accomplishes the appropriate public policies of the judiciary much better than a politician can devise with the help of his benefactors.
I break many of them on purpose, as a matter of principle. Highwayman has set up a speed trap?
Floor it the instant I'm clear (assuming I'm not creating a hazard by doing so).
lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
.
Step 1: lie down with pigs
Step 2: ?
Step 3: bacon
Shoot some 'roids, kick some ass.