We have followed the scandals in Durham involving its police chief and former district attorneys. Now Durham police officers have been shown to have lied about non-existent 911 calls to enter the homes of citizens without a warrant. Despite this illegal tactic that was admitted on the stand, no officers have been fired. Instead, Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez (left) has sent out a memo. You may recall Lopez who earlier reportedly said that a public defender deserved to be shot.
According to the testimony of a Durham police officer, it was routine that officers would target residences connected to individuals with outstanding warrants. They would then claim that the police dispatcher received a 911 call from that address. The disclosure was made on the stand by Officer A.B. Beck who said that this was official policy or at least a well-known practice. However, Lopez insisted that it was never an official policy and banned the practice. Of course, it should not require a ban since it is clearly unlawful to lie to citizens to trick them into allowing them to enter their homes. In the case at issue Beck used the lie to enter a home and make an arrest over two marijuana blunts and a marijuana grinder.
Beck said that the tactic was approved of by the department and defense counsel questioned him further:
Did you say there was a 911 hang-up?
Yes,
But there was not a 911 hang-up?
No.
So you entered the house based on a lie?
Yes.
And this is your policy for domestic violence warrants?
Yes.
Defense counsel moved to suppress and Marcia Morey, chief district judge for Durham County, granted the motion and stated “You cannot enter someone’s house based on a lie.” Charges were then dropped.
Lopez then sent out a memo telling officers not to lie anymore to circumvent the warrant requirement. There is no mention of a single act of discipline over the practice in the Durham Police Department.
Source: Indy Week
Okay, Chuck, I guess I’m being a little mean & unfair then.
traveling limey,
Dr. Harris has written extensively on his experiences as a high-functioning autistic person; e.g., Asperger’s. Some reference material at the links
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/aspergers-syndrome/basics/definition/con-20029249
http://www.aspergers.com/
Brian Harris at it again! Making sure we get bored of this blog & move on to another… Is it the Ph D that makes him talk like that?
Police officers who seemingly tell lies are actually acting out the requirements society imposes on them so that they can do the job society demands of them.
What is that job? My best guess to date: Preserving the errors of the status quo, and doing so as though regardless of personal and social costs and benefits.
In the manner of recent work in the field of the neurology of trauma as moral injury, the status quo is imprisonment of human minds within the errors of the distant past which have taken on standing as socially incontrovertible dogma and doctrine.
My field work research data suggest to me that about one person in fifty may be able to get a grasp, even if tenuous, even if not yet viable, of the significance of the finding of my bioengineering research, as presented in my Ph.D. dissertation, that no mistake ever made, no accident that ever happened, and, indeed, no event which ever occurred, could, after the fact, have happened in any way at all different than as it was made, happened, or occurred.
An Internet search engine (Google, for instance?) using the terms, “uic.edu” “INDIGO” and “J. Brian Harris” came up with the link to my dissertation, on the University of Illinois at Chicago web site with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (free culture) License.
If my work is incorrect, and/or false, its incorrectness and/or falsehood surely belongs to everyone. If my work is correct and/or true, its correctness and/or truthfulness surely belongs to everyone. In my world view (weltanschauung?) what is true is the property of everyone alike; only that which is false is private, and only falsehood(s) can actually be privatized.
As the rule of law in adversarial form is effectively privatized ((I cannot, by the rule of adversarial law, give people legal advice?), adversarial law practice is necessarily and inescapably of falsehood?
That is, my bioengineering research data relentlessly informs me, at the core of police actions that are done in the service of the law in ways that are done in the disservice of the law. Police officers are caught in the societal crossfire of adversarial law making itself its own greatest adversary, the public and public safety be dammed.
Note, for clarity, “dammed” is not a typo. I did not intend to, and did not, use the pejorative word, “damned.”
Truthfulness is dammed by adversarial law, adversarial law process, and adversarial law outcomes. The police are merely doing what they have been told to do, to enforce adversarial law in whatever way is achievable,and that way is as though becoming a terrible adversary to human public and private safety.
In my view, adversarial law, adversarial law practice, and adversarial law procedure are, taken as a whole, the most utterly, tragically, profoundly, atrociously addictive brain process I have yet been able to identify in my work in bioengineering.
This addictive nature of adversarial law is making itself publicly manifest in each and every one of the law enforcement calamities that clamor for attention on this Turley blog?
“This addictive nature of adversarial law is making itself publicly manifest …”
It can be a win-at-all-costs mentality. I know of a District Attorney who knew facts that completely absolved the defendant (and continuing the matter would cause psychological harm to the minor defendant) and still withheld that to this day. The DA is immune from any suit. Even knowing that a psychologist they have used as an expert witness believed that continuing the matter,would harm a child. That’s justice.
I have gotten “we heard there was a medical emergencyy here.” Truth. This is not an uncommon phenomenon unfortunately. They checked up on my house and drew me up a list with things like clean up the nail polish on the floor in the bathroom and the spider web in the corner of the drapes. This is when I had my Husband home at first when he was fully disabled and we were trying it out. I was home and we had a Life alert. It was just the situation.
I know cops lie. Their sworn affidavit upon which a search was based included, inter alia, statements demonstrably contrary to fact. My one arrest. Percentage of contacts in which cops have lied 100. YMMV.