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June 2021
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Cop Who Led Strike Team Into Wrong House During Drug Raid Granted Immunity By Eleventh Circuit

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In February 2018, 24 armed officers from the Flint Circuit Drug Task Force engaged in the raid of a McDonough, Georgia house. Led by Captain David Cody, the officers deployed flash-bang grenades and forced their way through the door of the house at 303 English Road. Inside, they found only Onree Davis, the 78-year-old owner of the house.Unfortunately for Davis, who was sitting innocently and non-drug-dealerly in his own home watching the news when it was raided, the task force was supposed to be raiding 305 English Road. But officers on the scene felt the house at the correct address (the same one they'd been investigating and surveilling on-and-off for two years) was "uninhabitable" and decided to try their luck at the house up the street.Even more unfortunately for Davis, the courts have decided every officer involved in the wrong house raid is protected by qualified immunity. The latest blow to common sense and professional decency comes courtesy of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which says the last officer whose immunity was still in question (Captain David Cody) is no longer in question. (via Reason)The lower court granted Cody immunity for leading the raid to the wrong address, despite the houses having different paint colors, different items in their yards, and different numbers of their houses. The Eleventh Circuit affirms [PDF] all of this, even though Capt. Cody admitted he failed to apprise himself of all the pertinent facts before leading a task force on a violent raid.

Capt. Cody testified that he reviewed the search warrant to make sure it was signed, confirmed it authorized no-knock entry, and confirmed the address matched the address used in the PowerPoint presentation, but admitted that he did not read it “all the way through.”
Not that Capt. Cody was especially careless. The footnote attached to this paragraph makes it clear SWAT team participants are generally more concerned about topping off on bullets and grenades than eyeballing the paperwork that grants them permission to temporarily bypass Fourth Amendment protections.
For the first time in Norris’s reply brief, he argues that whether Capt. Cody read the search warrant is a disputed fact based on Agent Hicks’s testimony that he did not recall any other officers asking to look at the search warrant during the briefing.
I guess this lack of preparedness makes it easier for officers to claim they had to "react" to "rapidly-changing situations" after they've violated some rights. After all, if you can't be bothered to appraise yourself of the specifics of the situation you'll soon be facing, you're bound to be surprised or confused and almost certainly "fear for your safety" when you're right in the thick of it.A N Y W A Y...Back to the case.So, the unprepared Capt. Cody led an unprepared task force into the house of the especially unprepared 78-year-old Onree Davis. But the court says this is fine and worthy of immunity because Cody's task force moved fast and broke stuff, making it more difficult to prevent themselves from acting in error.
Capt. Cody and the other officers involved carefully planned a high-risk raid at what was thought to be a dangerous target house but made a mistake when faced with an unexpected circumstance—the residence not matching the description given. The team was especially limited in their ability to respond to this unexpected circumstance because they had “announced” their presence with flash grenades, it was unsafe to communicate via radio, and they were forced to make a split second decision.
The most charitable reading is that the Eleventh Circuit thinks it's unfair to ask cops to think on their feet when conducting raids that could result in injuries or death. Once a raid is underway, the only way out of it is through it, even if "through" means breaking down the door of the wrong house and pointing guns at a person suspected of nothing.My uncharitable reading is that this encourages officers to immediately make as much noise as they can when conducting raids because once the "presence" is "announced," they're clear to do whatever they want until they feel the scene is "secure." Cause enough chaos and it will be tough to prove an officer knew better than to do whatever unconstitutional thing they did because what reasonable person could think clearly with all of this [gestures at flashes/bangs] going on.Capt. Cody armed himself with ignorance and explosives and that's enough for the court to give him permission to duck out of this lawsuit.
While the mistaken raid of Norris’s home was no doubt traumatic, given the significant factual differences between Capt. Cody’s actions in the raid and our prior precedent, we agree with the district court that Norris failed to meet his burden to show that Capt. Cody violated clearly established law.
That's how it ends for the man who suffered this violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. All twenty-four officers who participated have been granted immunity and are free to go. And with no declaration that this sort of thing violates rights, officers in this circuit are free to make these same mistakes again without worrying about being held accountable.

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posted at: 12:00am on 19-Jun-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

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Chinese Government Continues To Arrest More Journalists Over Nonsense 'National Security' Law

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The decline of democracy in Hong Kong, with Beijing continuing to tighten its grip, has accelerated. While the Chinese government pledged a hands off posture towards Hong Kong for 50 years when the UK relinquished its control, that pledge seems to have been worth less than the paper on which it was written. A couple years ago, Hong Kong implemented a new "national security" law that has almost nothing to do with national security beyond allowing for the prosecution of anyone who doesn't think the CCP are perfect in every way. The end result of that has been the arrest of media members accused of participating in "unauthorized protests", arrests of protesters themselves, and the ousting and later arrest of pro-democracy lawmakers for the crime of being pro-democracy.One of the media members arrested early on was Jimmy Lai, founder of the Apple Daily newspaper and website. Lai had initially gotten out on bail, only to have that bail revoked by the court on reinterpretation of the national security law. If the Chinese government thought that his arrest and treatment would end the voracious threat of an actual journalistic outfit in the Apple Daily, it was sorely mistaken. As you might expect, this of course has led to even further arrests of Apple Daily staff and partners.

Hong Kong police have arrested five editorial executives, including the editor in chief, of media outlet Apple Daily, freezing more corporate accounts and imperiling the future of the region's most feisty, investigative paper. Ryan Law, the chief editor, the CEO of the newspaper's publisher Cheung Kim-hung, the publisher's chief operating officer Chan Puiman, and two other editors were among those arrested. The Apple Daily live stream showed Law being led out of the paper's offices in handcuffs early Thursday morning."They're our top three editorial people, they've just stripped out our top three editorial people," said Mark Simon, a Taiwan-based executive with the paper's publisher Next Media.
These types of arrests in Hong Kong are so frequent now that they risk becoming routine in the eyes of the world. Thanks to the unfortunate rise of populist authoritarianism in many Western democracies, many world nations have self-neutered their ability to credibly respond. The end result is that Hong Kong has been largely left to the communist wolves, with much lip-service being paid by the rest of the world.In the case of these specific arrests, the Hong Kong stasi did its stasi-thing because the Apple Daily had the gaul to suggest that other countries should actually get off their asses and do more to help the Hong Kong people.
Li Guihua, a senior officer with Hong Kong's special legal body set up to prosecute national security cases, said that the editors were arrested because of "dozens of articles in Apple Daily that called on foreign agencies to impose sanctions on China or the Hong Kong government."Around 200 police officers were sent to Apple Daily's offices to search the premises and confiscate "journalistic materials," according to a national security police statement."There is huge frustration that Apple Daily won't stop," said Simon.
No doubt, but none of this means the rest of the world has to stand by and do nothing. Unfortunately, standing by and doing nothing appears to be the plan, as the Chinese government continues the slow reverse-drip of any independence in Hong Kong, sucking out the established freedoms of the population a handful of arrests at a time. The government's plan appears to still be to scare the absolute shit out of everyone until they self-censor. The below is again from Li Guihua:
“I also want to give a warning – don’t attract suspicion. If there’s no special circumstances for you to share it, I advise you not to do it, so as not to attract suspicion,” Li said.
And that's the real purpose in all of this. Yes, news organizations like the Apple Daily are a threat to Chinese rule, but the real threat is Hong Kong's citizens. If they collectively decided to really kickstart a pushback, that would create a crisis that would put Hong Kong in the type of international crosshairs that are more difficult to ignore.But for now, it seems, the world is content to just watch all this from the sidelines.

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posted at: 12:00am on 19-Jun-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

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