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The search warrant forced them to disconnect his cameras and literally steal the cash out of his wallet? If they merely searched his place, determined he doesn't have a slave dungeon in his non-existent basement and then left than would be one thing. But no, they went further and disconnected his cameras and stole his cash. I now have no sympathy for them and advocate cruel public shaming.
I get this isn't my nicest view, but civil asset forfeiture is so vile. The incentives so perverse. I say good riddance and hope for more robbers wearing law enforcement uniforms to weep on camera from the targeted shaming.
This wasn't a civil asset forfeiture thing. It was a poorly issued criminal search warrant thing. Every jurisdiction has their own regulations, but disabling cameras might be standard. Seizing all cash in drug/prostitution operations certainly is standard for most jurisdictions.
The officers carrying out the search warrant weren't like NAZIs "just carrying out orders" they were literally executing a search warrant, not only approved by their superiors, but signed by a judge, and in a way that was indistinguishable from the dozens or hundreds of search warrants they had conducted in the past that looked (to them) the exact same. The petty cash tallying problem is a problem. But also they are not the smartest folks.
The real problem is this alleged source and the detective (and his Sergeant/Lieutenant) that believed it. They are the ones that created the situation and then lied to or misrepresented the facts to the judge. And not to let the judge who signed the warrant off the hook. Obviously, they are supposed to swear detectives to their search warrants. If you see something like this, its your judicial duty to bring down your weight on the department and detective. Perhaps through a contempt action, or simply refusing to sign all future warrants.
But they literally stole his money. It was also a civil asset forfeiture thing.
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I'd... argue otherwise.
It's especially bad here, where the alleged source was almost certainly a malicious or self-serving motivation behind the lurid claims, but a probable cause affidavit is just that: it's not a claim something must be wrong, but that someone could be wrong. Like a grand jury indictment, the standards for a search warrant are hilariously low, and the people signing it off and executing it have very close to cart blanche. Not everyone being searched will have evidence of a crime, and not everyone being investigated will be guilty, necessarily.
Which makes it a problem when these things are world-upending, without any valid need. There may well be a scenario that requires a six-person team with assault rifles. As with countless other examples such as Malinowski and going all the way back to Ken Ballew, it's very hard to understand what is benefit derived from those tactics here, which look to be optimizing for shock-and-awe at the cost of not just inconvenience to the suspect, but danger to the community and even alleged victims.
That's a criticism that sometimes is delivered with perfect hindsight or expecting clairvoyant police and judges, but I think it applies here even when considering the least convenient world. In an alternate universe where Foreman had been guilty and had dangerous control over kidnapped women, and had been at the residence at the time of the raid, this raid could have easily resulted in the kidnapped women turned into hostages or 'made incapable of testimony' at the first kick at the door.
This is a consideration police do take, before serving even far more strongly evidenced search or arrest warrants.
It's just really easy for them to not, when they're morons. My personal favorite example is the FBI leaking to press the location and time of the search of a suspected mad bomber, presumably not for the purpose of maximizing casualties if he went Molotov, but there's a long and storied set of examples. Some of that's bad-but-at-least-foreseeable motivations -- arrest warrants in particular tend to get served at home despite it being well-known to be dangerous as shit, because SCOTUS hasn't slapped down searches-while-executing-arrest nearly aggressively enough. A lot of it's just how things have always been done.
That's still not reason, alone, to keep doing it that way.
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This is where I'm at. Civil libertarian types like to screech about searches gone wrong but the reality is that a whole lot of searches, conducted in exactly the same way, go just fine, and you just don't hear about them because they went just fine.
I think this is misunderstanding the problem. Imagine if someone came along and said that those civil engineer types like to screech about bridges that fall down but the reality is that a whole lot of bridge, with cut corners in the same ways, are standing just fine, you just don't hear about them because they are still standing.
Using a disastrous result to highlight bad incentives, policies, and procedures is the expected part of examining something. If we only ever look at the medians and averages, we are basically ignoring the downsides as they are, by nature, almost entirely going to happen on the fringes in freak circumstances.
Even ignoring that, do we know that all those median searches go just fine? Is there not a loud and vocal movement against the justice system's current methods under the umbrella of "the process is the punishment"? Do people enjoy interacting with the justice system as witness, suspect, or even jurist or is it usually avoided at all costs, as recommended by the very profession that interacts with it the most?
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