Almost exclusively, all of these nonsense "tactics" have been permitted due to the war on drugs. The rights of the public have been trampled, and it's disgusting.
Used to have? You're conflating a lot of very different things here. You may consider plain clothes officers to be "extremely unprofessional", but how does that infringe upon the rights of Americans? Plain clothes officers date way back to before the war on drugs, as do paid informants and undercover officers.
Much of what you're railing against is a fundamental part of law enforcement. If a tool is being misused you probably wouldn't ban it entirely. You are advocating a world in which high level organized crime would have a much, much easier time. I challenge you to find a RICO case that didn't involve paid informants, a wiretap, or an undercover officer.
The question we should be asking should be how do we stop these tools from being blatantly mis-used. It is absolutely wrong for the DEA to manipulate evidence so as to hide the use of surveillance from the defense. Does that make warranted surveillance on, say, a criminal syndicate wrong in the first place?
You are advocating a world in which high level organized crime would have a much, much easier time.
Yes, that's an unfortunate side effect of living in a free and open society which respects the freedom and innate rights of the individual which compose it.
Until organised crime infiltrate the government and they start ignoring the law. See the FBI under Hoover.
Is this an argument for more government, or less?
Plus organised crime hardly enables a free and open society. Especially as a free and open society revolves around a viable rule of law.
"Rule of Law" is one thing, and is largely desirable, yes. Capricious and arbitrary regulations that try (vainly) to pre-empt a crime that might not happen, and which infringe individual liberties in the process, are quite another thing.
> The courts need to get their heads out of the sand and restore the rights Americans used to have:
I'm not sure what point in America's history we had all those rights. Plainclothes officers are quite old. There wasn't even a police/sheriff badge in most of the US until at least the mid-19th century.
Undercover agents came about around prohibition (unless you consider spies to be undercover agents in which case, we've always had them).
Wiretaps certainly predate the war on drugs. In fact, they became so widespread during WW1 that they were temporarily outlawed.
Entrapment wasn't even a defense until the early 20th century.
Dogs have been used as probable cause to search well before America existed - often to run down outlaws and root out their hiding places, even if they were in homes.
> Entrapment wasn't even a defense until the early 20th century.
I've been thinking about this.
And you know what, if the 21st century were like the 19th century, I probably wouldn't care about entrapment:
- Drugs were legal
- Alcohol was legal
- Prostitution was (de facto?) legal
- Gambling was (de facto?) legal
- Price fixing was legal
- Insider trading was legal
- Braiding hair without a license was legal
- Lots of other stuff was... legal.
So hey, if all they're doing is entrapping thieves into thieving or murderers into murdering, I'm probably not going to be the guy freaking out about entrapment. But today, with lots of stuff not only illegal by statute but enforced with incredible zeal, I'm pretty comfortable being the anti-entrapment guy. And I'm pretty comfortable saying that entrapment is a modern problem, something which your American ancestors didn't have to deal with.
I was going to go into more detail, but I will keep it short. None of those were permitted due to the war on drugs. The closest you could call is drug dogs, but those were allowed after research showed their effectiveness.
Additionally they all are based on previous things cops were allowed to do. If you actually research the core of how law enforcement acts you will see it isn't nearly as willy-nilly as you imply here.
WoD contributed significantly to everything that is wrong with the police today - constant lying and fabrication, militarization, arrest quotas, abusing mentally ill or addicts to fill the said quotas, faking evidence and fradulent lab reports, legal highway robbery called "asset forfeiture", entrapping innocents, violating civil rights and criminal procedure rules, banning common household materials or chemicals because of being "drug precursors", making illegal searches and then asking for a warrant post-factum... And the list can go on and on. Look closer at any police/state power abuse and you'll probably find War on Drug's footprints on it.
That happens because they are fighting a losing war, on the citizens that they are originally supposed to serve and protect, and that can not be good neither for morale nor for morality. And it is not.
>>> Additionally they all are based on previous things cops were allowed to do.
When those paranoid libertarians say "next thing police would be allowed to strip-search and anally rape you because a dog said it's OK" - they are rightfully called crazy paranoid bastards. Then it happens and everybody is like "well, it's only based on things cops were previously allowed to do, so nothing to see here..."
All of those things weren't mentioned in the post I responded to.
> When those paranoid libertarians say "next thing police would be allowed to strip-search and anally rape you because a dog said it's OK" - they are rightfully called crazy paranoid bastards. Then it happens and everybody is like "well, it's only based on things cops were previously allowed to do, so nothing to see here..."
Again, I was disputing the fact that those powers came from the war on drugs.
Most of those as he listed I also agree with, but again, he didn't say "warrentless wiretaps" or "secret court wiretaps" he said "wiretaps". And in the same breath he said they should be required to wear a uniform 100% of the time they are doing official business.
It didn't came directly from WoD, but WoD was the reason and the motivation for them to exist. When you're talking about catching burglars and car thieves, you don't really need this kind of powers. But when you have moral panic that enables "all means necessary" approach - "OMG, drugs, think of the children!" - and you have police that is battling this war for decades and losing it, and thus feels it must up their game because nothing they did so far is even remotely close to working - then you get a perfect conditions for this kinds of abuse. It's not about drugs specifically, it is the conditions that WoD creates in the society and law enforcement that create this mess.
And yes, some of the things alexeisadeski3 listed make no sense. But again I suspect he listed them mainly because of the abuses that were perpetrated - if FBI only ever wiretapped mobsters, I doubt anybody would be ever objecting to it. In theory, mobsters have the same rights so it doesn't matter, in practice it does - all these things are created to protect good guys from bad guys, and if instead we have bad guys fighting even worse guys, on the way trampling good guys, then good guys would end up saying "WTF? A plague on both their houses!" That's how I see what alexeisadeski3 wrote.
And further research on drug dogs has shown that subtle body language by their handlers can cause them to alert. Fundamentally, a drug dog alerts because it wants to please its handler (and maybe get a snack). It doesn't understand the tension between drug laws and the 4th amendment, so it can't understand why it should be cautious about alerting. It doesn't understand the consequences of alerting could be a human getting stuck in a small cage for a long time.
And, they are used to punish people who do not consent to a search of their vehicle... officers will often have the dog jump on on the car and walk over the hood, top, and trunk a few times scratching the paint.
EDIT: If you are completely innocent and refuse to consent to a search and they call a K-9 unit in to "sniff" you are being punished for not giving up your rights.
1) A K-9 sniff is not considered an illegal search, because it detects only contraband.
2) An officer cannot detain you solely for the purpose of awaiting a K-9 unit, and it's getting harder and harder for them to fudge by being intentionally slow, with duty video cameras etc.
Well, that's what SCOTUS seems to believe. It is readily apparent though that dogs also detect handler cues, and may well also just alert erroneously, or detect such trace amounts that could be imparted to a car by incidental contact.
You were aware. Should I have assumed everyone else is too? I agree that this justification is weak, especially considering evidence that these dogs also respond to handlers' cues, but some folks are likely to be ignorant of the current law of the land. It was a statement of fact, not an argument in support of the law's interpretation.
re: drug dogs, there is no disputing that dogs are capable of detecting minute traces of various types of contraband. The problem is not with the dogs but rather the handlers. There is no practical way to guarantee the honesty of the handler.
I do not mean to say that drug dogs are okay. My point is that there is an amount of evidence that drug dogs do what they claim to do. The easiest way to get rid of them is to bring forward enough evidence to show they don't work as advertised.
Rather than the usual "drug dogs might not work so we should get rid of them" that gets thrown around.
>The easiest way to get rid of them is to bring forward enough evidence to show they don't work as advertised.
Unfortunately I don't share your optimism. In 2012 SCOTUS wasn't impressed with any fancy notions about data or statistics regarding false positives in prior policework; although, they didn't seem to mind 'objective' measurements of dog qualification when they were favorable (controlled environment qualification trials).
>"We have rejected rigid rules, bright-line tests, and mechanistic inquiries in favor of a more flexible, all-things-considered approach. In Gates, for example, we abandoned our old test for assessing the reliability of informants' tips because it had devolved into a "complex superstructure of evidentiary and analytical rules," any one of which, if not complied with, would derail a finding of probable cause. 462 U. S., at 235. We lamented the development of a list of "inflexible, independent requirements applicable in every case." Id., at 230, n. 6. Probable cause, we emphasized, is "a fluid concept--turning on the assessment of probabilities in particular factual contexts--not readily, or even use-
fully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules." Id., at 232."[1]
That's already the law in many contexts - e.g., making a knowingly false statement to the Congress is a felony AFAIK. It's just not enforced because if it were, the Attorney General would have to put himself in jail, together with a good bunch of his peers and colleagues from other departments and agencies.
Lying under oath, a.k.a. perjury, is always unlawful. I'm speaking of when not under oath and knowingly fabricating stories or making stuff up like the reply below alludes to.
The police can lie to you but if you lie to the police you can be charged with obstruction of justice (which I believe you should be if you knowingly do it). The police and government officers and officials should be charged with obscuring the truth if and when they knowing spread falsehoods and lies. Because of the imbalance of power and consequences, it's rarely, if ever, a good idea to talk to the police (and this is a shame).
I assume he refers to the common practice of police promising leniency in exchange for cooperation, then ignoring the offer after the suspect cooperates.
Or when police lie about an accomplice having cooperated and implicating the suspect - so hey you should help us out to and save yourself.
Or when police pretend to be hitmen, seeking payment for murder. Or when police pretend to be drug dealers. Or when police pretend to be terrorists or weapons smugglers or or or or.
The courts need to get their heads out of the sand and restore the rights Americans used to have:
-No more wiretaps
-Drug dogs can't provide cause for a search
-No law enforcement tips originating from DoD/CIA, never
-Law enforcement can't data mine
-No more undercover agents of any kind
-No more entrapment
-No plainclothes officers (extremely unprofessional)
-Paid and compensated informants must be banned
Almost exclusively, all of these nonsense "tactics" have been permitted due to the war on drugs. The rights of the public have been trampled, and it's disgusting.