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Stealing this from @ToaKraka in the FF thread:
Our own BJ Campbell wrote that this is one of the important differences between the US and Western Europe. A German or British police officer would have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery and physical evidence wouldn't be suppressed even if obtained without following the proper trail of investigation.
Is the USA shooting itself in the foot there? What will it lose if it changes its legal norms to lower the bar on probable cause and evidence suppression?
This sounds like woke judging for black youths. No detention took place. There is an underlying assumption here that black youth are not smart enough to talk to a police officer.
If I want to talk to someone I walk directly at them in their path. That’s a completely normal interaction. The black youth in question could have just responded to the cop “I don’t want to talk you can you get out of my way”
I would like to see the body cam to see how the cop impeded the black youth but everything in the report is just a normal human interaction. And yes a big way we catch criminals is they are not that smart. But that’s a criminals problem not a cops.
IMO if I had a bright orange t-shirt on and the officer did not think I was the criminal he was searching for but wanted to talk to me and asks “hey did you see a couple teens in black around here” the cops behavior would likely be 100% identical. This is just how you approach someone at night you want to talk to. We can’t make it illegal for cops to talk to people.
You aren't a police officer with the power to stop someone for questioning. Even for a normal person, intentionally blocking someone else's path is rude. For a police officer, it can rise to the level of implicit detention.
The suspect has reasonable methods to find out if they’re being detained. They can walk around the officer or just say “hello could you please get out of my way”.
You can’t make it illegal for police to talk to people. There is a difference between being rude and being detained. And I disagree it’s even rude to walk directly towards someone you want to talk to.
Yes, both of these tests will work. In the sense that if you ARE being detained, you'll know it, because you'll be down on the ground with a split lip.
In reality, the police will just say no, and only beat you if you resist arrest.
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You are going too far. This would be a very easy civil lawsuit to win if the police behaved as you just described.
LOL, no. The police will say whatever it takes to win, the judges support them (in court, your word is suspect and theirs is gospel), and even if they get caught doing something wrong, there's qualified immunity. When they lose cases it's because the politicians want them to lose (e.g. sympathetic minority plaintiff)
That’s not what qualified immunity is. It means you can’t sue the cop personally. You can sue the city. And you can get jury trial. And you would have video evidence.
you can sue the city for what?
"cop did something bad" isn't enough to hold a city liability for the bad behavior of one of their cops
a video of a cop protected by qualified immunity doing something bad isn't some golden ticket to find municipal liability
under Monell, it is even more difficult to find municipal liability than individual liability with a steep evidentiary burden which courts are very reluctant to allow much discovery (if any) to find (if they don't just dismiss the claim during the pleading stage for failure to present supporting evidence)
in roughly half the federal circuits, a finding of municipal liability when qualified immunity has been upheld is all but impossible because the circuits have held local governments cannot fail to train to prevent a cop from violating a constitutional right which isn't clearly established
iirc, only the 9th circuit allows an independent claim to functionally survive upheld qualified immunity but in practical terms is very hard and very rare
for all practical purposes in typical cases, an upheld finding of qualified immunity ends the lawsuit
responding to someone pointing out these cases are not "a very easy civil lawsuit" by implying these sorts of claims are difficult because the vast majority of the time qualified immunity is upheld that they don't understand this situation because municipal liability is, to be frank, ridiculous
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Yes, exactly what he said. The law is swift and brutal to you, not to underclass criminals.
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