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The best way to win as a black man against white cops:
Don't make it about race.
Also, being in the legal and moral right certainly helps.
This is the story of Afroman, a rapper most known for the hit single "Because I Got High". Then his house was raided by the sheriff's office of Adams County, Ohio, based off of... almost nothing, as far as I can tell.
They damaged his door, gate, and security cameras. They were looking for narcotics smuggling and kidnapping victims, but instead found a few blunts and unused pipes, and filed no charges. The repairs cost $20k, not a single cent of which was paid by the officers, who also kept $400 of his cash.
So Afroman did what anyone would do if the cops came and unjustifiably kicked down his door and paid nothing for it: He made songs making fun of the raid, complete with his own security camera footage of the cops. This led to the production of such classics like "Will You Help Me Repair My Door", "Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera", and "Lemon Pound Cake" (about the officer who was eyeing a rather delectable slice of lemon pound cake sitting on his countertop). And in a sane world, this would have been the end of it, and the raid and associated songs would have faded into obscurity.
So of course, the Adams County Sheriff's Department decided to do the dumbest thing possible: Sue Afroman.
Somehow, the case went to trial, with the deputies unironically arguing -- with a straight face -- that Afroman's videos seriously defamed their character and reputation, enough to cause $4 million in damages. This led to a hilarious examination where a female officer cries on the stand as "Licc'em Low Lisa" plays. Afroman played his defense straight, pointing out that the entire situation was caused by the cops fucking up and raiding his house for basically no reason, and that he has a First Amendment right to criticize and make fun of the police. Also, he was wearing a badass suit covered entirely in the American flag.
The jury sided with Afroman.
A couple culture war takeaways here. First, I think the biggest factor in his success was not playing the race card at all, even though he easily could have. Instead, he stood behind the freedoms that every American has, and demonstrated that this could have happened to anyone, black or white. Every American has the right to not have their privacy invaded or property damaged, and when that right is violated, they have the right to speak freely and mock those who violated their rights. The race card would have only served as a distraction at best and polarized the jury at worst.
Second, this verdict could have only happened in America, where there is a strong legal tradition of freedom of speech. If it had taken place in a European country like Germany, where calling the government "parasites" gets your house raided, he would have lost. Having a jury trial was also very important in this case, because the judge was almost blatantly biased in favor of the plaintiffs. If this case had taken place in a country like the United Kingdom, which is seriously considering scrapping most jury trials, he also would have lost. Turns out, jury trials are there to protect the people from corrupt judges.
The point is that though Americans may be stereotyped as being irrationally fearful of a tyrannical government, this fear is entirely justified, and this case is a good example of it. Or at least a good example of how small town cops abuse their power, which seems to happen an awful lot in small towns across America.
And as a German I say rightfully so.
We have something called Persönlichkeitsrechte, or literally “right of personality”, which encompass the right to personal honor, the right to one's name, or the right to one's own image. There doesn’t seem to be an English wiki article about the concept, only a German and French one, so I link the translation:
https://de-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Pers%C3%B6nlichkeitsrecht_(Deutschland)?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
https://de-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Afroman should have pixelated the cops faces. The state invaded his home, not individual agents. If a cop would have been ill or on vacation or whatever they would have been replaced by a different officer. Also while I sympathize with Afroman as a victim of the almighty Leviathan there is also a power imbalance between him as a rich celebrity who can direct millions of YouTube views vs an individual police officers.
I get your point and entirely reject it.
The US government has at times murdered Americans. Including in the past few decades. By which of course I place personal blame and responsibility on the individuals who pulled the triggers, not on the amorphous and impersonal state.
"The department did [bad thing]." Makes it sound like an out of control building is victimizing Americans. Remember these are individuals with just as much moral agency as you and I. Don't let them hide behind a mask of collective guilt. As though department policy is an evil spirit haunting the land.
Thats kinda silly. The people executing the search warrant dont know what the PC was. Thats on the detective and the judge.
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 advocated 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.
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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