There is an interesting case out of Santa Ana this month where police officers were allegedly caught on camera wolfing down pot products in a raid on a medical marijuana dispensary. The officer reportedly disabled all but one of the security cameras. They are now arguing that there rights were violated by being videotaped without their consent.
The video below shows a sizable number of police raiding the dispensary with guns drawn and forcing everyone to the floor. It then shows officers methodically shutting off cameras. The remaining camera however then shows the officers eating presumably marijuana laced products at the Sky High Collective. The video also shows the officers making derogatory comments about a disabled woman.
Three Santa Ana police officers have sued to quash a surveillance video
in a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court to prevent Santa Ana Police Department internal affairs investigators from using the video. They have been allowed to conceal their identities. Of course, police routinely used such videotapes against others for alleging crimes. It is also unclear why a public servant should have his or her name protected in such a case. While some officers may be undercover and have a good claim, most of these officers are in uniform.
Attorney Corey W. Glave representing the Santa Ana Police Officers Association and the three officers insists that the video was taken without the officers’ knowledge and that the videotape was handled by various people before being turned over to the police. He has suggested that the videotape may have been altered. Glave has gone as far as to accuse his opposing counsel of misconduct: “The attorney representing the drug dispensary intentionally has misrepresented what happened.”
Matthew Pappas is the lawyer for Sky High identified in articles. Pappas has said that he gave the Santa Ana police two versions of the raid footage, a highlight reel with subtitles and unedited video clips.
One question that we have previously discussed is why police routinely dismantled such cameras to prevent a videotape record of arrests or searches. One argument may be that undercover officers were involved and should not be videotaped for their own protection.
What the remaining camera did catch as a male officer asking a female colleague about a woman with an amputated left leg: “Did you punch that one-legged old Benita?” he asks. The female officer responds “I was about to kick her in her (expletive) nub.”
The lawsuit says that the officers are the victims: “All police personnel present had a reasonable expectation that their conversations were no longer being recorded and the undercover officers, feeling that they were safe to do so, removed their masks.”
The lawsuit further notes that “Without the illegal recordings, there would have been no internal investigation of any officer.”
No officers have been terminated in connection with the ongoing internal affairs investigation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/06/an-unarmed-white-teen-was-shot-dead-by-police-his-family-asks-where-is-the-outrage/
White young man shot in back and killed by police according to reports.
“Zachary Hammond was on a first date when he was fatally shot by a police officer in his car during a drug bust in South Carolina, his family says.
Morton, 23, was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana — all 10 grams of it — which, according to police, was the reason undercover agents set up the drug buy.
The official police report never mentioned the two gunshots that killed Hammond on July 26 in a Hardees parking lot. Seneca police say a second report — which has not been released to the public — details the officer’s account of the shooting.
On Wednesday, Hammond’s family released the results of a private autopsy, which concluded that both bullets entered Hammond’s body from the back. According to the autopsy, the second bullet proved to be fatal, entering from the back of Hammond’s left side and passing through his chest, piercing his lungs and heart.”
“lead investigators is caught in a lie on an issue as sensitive as race”
Somewhere in this statement is the error and reason for the miscarriage of justice that allowed a brutal murderer to go free.
If your goal is justice, you likely will have to eschew “sensitivity.”
If your goal is to lose your entire country, “sensitivity” will do nicely.
I wonder if readers know that Santa Ana, a once attractive American city, is Mexico City or Tijuana north and that it is infested with illegal aliens. It wouldn’t do for people to have the wrong impression or perspective.
This is the kind of crap the American people have to put up with.
https://youtu.be/BOnx5k2TiGk
“stevegroen
I can’t imagine how an LA jury found Orenthal Simpson not guilty.”
Can I be honest here? Black, brown and yellow people are the most racist on earth with Europeans and Americans bringing up the rear, based on sheer numbers, or a lack thereof.
The black Simpson jury was always going to find the black Simpson, represented by a black lawyer, INNOCENT from the outset.
“Minorities” were wildly cheering Simpson from freeway overpasses during his freeway police chase, knowing that Simpson had insanely and viciously slaughtered two people including his ex-wife.
It’s like the Hillary (democrat) candidacy. The unions, minorities, asylum seekers, illegal aliens and various and sundry forms of parasites CARE NOT what criminal or unsavory activities the democrat has engaged in, as long as they, the parasites, get their ridiculous wages and incalculable forms of “free stuff.”
“Rainbow Coalition” means colors against white for COLOR’S SAKE with color as a basis.
HELLO!
So much can be understood about our current difficulties if we simply bothered to study the writings of people such as Tocqueville.
“Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
“Our contemporaries are constantly wracked by two warring passions: they feel the need to be led and the desire to remain free. Unable to destroy either of these contrary instincts, they seek to satisfy both at once. They imagine a single, omnipotent, tutelary power, but one that is elected by the citizens. They combine centralization with popular sovereignty. This gives them some respite. They console themselves for being treated as wards by imagining that they have chosen their own protectors. Each individual allows himself to be clapped in chains because that the other end of the chain is held not by a man or a class but by the people themselves.” Alexis de Tocqueville
I can’t imagine how an LA jury found Orenthal Simpson not guilty.
Quote of the Month: “Nick, Try to make sense, please. we depend on you.” – feyd rautha
stevegroen – I watched the O.J. Simpson trial gavel to gavel and I would have voted not guilty, too.
When one of the lead investigators is caught in a lie on an issue as sensitive as race and when he is otherwise given the benefit of the doubt for his evidentiary claims, jury nullification isn’t surprising.
In a free society, or even partially free society we have today, the one person who should be subjected to constant vigilance is the local police chief. The chief of police must hold members of the department accountable. This whole incident is disgusting.
“In the political world of spiderwebs of connectivity between issues it is appealing to view things simplistically and attempt to come up with one reason for many problems regardless of how interdependent the pros and cons are.”
“I am also for revisiting the initial convictions of this country to retain, adapt, or eliminate as the country progresses.”
“Human nature and flaws will always present this sort of behavior but it must be seen for what it is and dealt with, not confused into politically ideological issues and attached to other human shortcomings.”
Isaac,
I applaud your honesty with respect to how you would prefer to be governed. Much of it came as no surprise but I wanted to highlight those three statements from you.
In our “spider web of connectivity” there are some fundamental truths that tend to be ignored. Those that are represented as “self-evident” in the Declaration of Independence SHOULD BE revisited often as they were meant to guide this nation as it progresses towards becoming a more perfect union. The last quote I included here from you represents perhaps the ONE THING that makes government necessary. Human Nature is the same today as it was in the beginning of time. IT DOES NOT CHANGE. Our form of government was intended to constrain that nature in the people elected to govern, but it has regressed to a form of government used more and more to constrain the people. JT talks about a constitutional tipping point and when the People are more constrained than government then we have regressed beyond that tipping point.
The ubiquitous abuse of constitutional authority is presented in this blog on a daily basis. This story is one of many and it is a micro-example of what is happening at the macro-level with our federal government. We should rightly condemn this abuse at all levels of government. To do so here and whitewash it at the federal level is simply willful ignorance.
With that being said, In 2011 I conducted a root cause analysis online that ran for one year, 240 different participants and with nearly 2,000 posts. It was titled:
“We have many problems with many causes but is there one root cause?”.
The conclusion:
Voter Ignorance
Voter Apathy
Voter Dependence
Essentially, stop pointing fingers and get informed. Get active and stop looking at government as the solution to our problems.
John
So, leave it all alone, behind closed doors, privileged, above the law, lying, coverups, etc. Or, give the people an instrument of oversight. Any system is only as good as its participants but no system is the worst.
Regardless of the political issues, the contradictions between the feds and the particular states concerning legalizing pot, the one issue here that applies to all circumstances, arguments, and subject matters is that cops should not be able to function outside the law but be instead to a higher standard within the same laws for all. If this was a raid on a moonshine business and the cops guzzled some booze it would be no different. If there was no controversy between the feds and the locals, it would be no different.
You have to separate the issues and deal with them for what they are at the core. In this case those very people who are there to uphold the law and protect the public were breaking the law and laughing about it. If they get away with this, it gets worse. If they are nailed for this, it slows it down. Human nature and flaws will always present this sort of behavior but it must be seen for what it is and dealt with, not confused into politically ideological issues and attached to other human shortcomings.
In the political world of spiderwebs of connectivity between issues it is appealing to view things simplistically and attempt to come up with one reason for many problems regardless of how interdependent the pros and cons are. Even at the top there is a severe deficiency of clarity and resolve. However, this is at the bottom, at the street, in contact with the people. This is not rocket science nor politics. This is simple abuse of privilege and obligation.
Issac “Hopefully someday there will be actions taken by the Federal Government to roll in and take over police forces that are sorely wanting in ethics and morality.”
OMG, did you just say that out loud!?!?
Maybe your right and the central Gov isn’t DIRECTLY responsible for the actions of the local Gov, but the thought that the Feds would be better than the local Gov are hilarious!!
Because if you have been watching what the Fed Gov HAS been doing then you’d know that they are at least indirectly responsible for the actions of the police.
Paul C. Schulte. . are you still to blind to the fact that our cup (or glass) runeth over from the Utopian guidance of our transplanted citizen? Having perfected all things Canadian, his evangelical fervor to perfect this rotten, corrupt, colonialist nation is perfectly understandable.
Why else would he voluntarily step down to citizenship of his corrupt southern neighbor. You should he more appreciative of his holy mission, and his sacrifices.
Paul
I am progressively for: creating industry to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, mandated cooperation between government, labor, and management pertaining to major industries that employ hundreds of thousands, coordination between labor, management, and government pertaining to trade agreements, regarding the ownership of American technology and wealth as being of the people of the US and not those that occupy a few seats at the top-what happens in American industry is the business of the workers, citizens, as well as private investment-there would be no money to invest and nothing to invest in if it were not for the workers and the consumers, elimination of private financing of political campaigns starting from the top down, issuance at government expense of photo id to guarantee every citizen of voting age and standing the right to vote, government financed transportation to voting stations during elections, elimination of advertising of pharmaceuticals, free access to FDA approved pharmaceuticals explaining all aspects of the drugs, elimination of the insurance monopoly on health care insurance with the establishment of a single payer government administered basic tier program styled on medicare.
This and much more would create wealth, redistribute wealth, break down monopolies and weaken the oligarchical structure of this disgrace of a political system, create in the government the organization and presentation of candidates instead of leaving it to the circus of the media and private money, etc., etc., etc.. I am for disclosure in all facets of the workings of the country. I am also for revisiting the initial convictions of this country to retain, adapt, or eliminate as the country progresses.
Accomplishing this and more would be well worth whatever is drained out of your glass.
issac – what are you smoking? Nothing drained out of my glass is worth anything that you listed. You owe me for everything you have stolen from my glass. Stay out of my glass from now on.
I have been seriously entertaining the concept of filing a state lawsuit against Orin Hatch and also Rob Bishop if he voted for the NDAA and any other bills that deprives its residence of their constitutional rights.
DBQ: Actually, there are three types (and probably more)
The person who thinks the glass is half empty.
The person who thinks the glass is half full.
And the person like myself who realizes that we have the wrong sized glass and gets a correct sized glass, solves the problem and drinks the contents of the glass instead of having angst about it.
Actually, there is a fourth person (myself) who says the glass doesn’t really exist, it’s an illusion.
http://www.learning-mind.com/5-thought-provoking-quantum-experiments-showing-that-reality-is-an-illusion/
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” ~Albert Einstein
issac you said: The ability for authority to force a citizen to surrender their passport has been around for sometime. When someone is charged or under suspicion of crimes a judge has been able to order that person to surrender their passport for obvious reasons. This seems to include another agency in the process.
The key to the story is the complete lack of due process which flies in the face of the constitution period.
A quick review of the bill shows this to be an amendment to an existing 1926 passport law. The amendment states the Secretary “may” revoke or refuse to issue but according to the following language, the Secretary “Shall” submit a report for review of that decision. What part of the amendment to this law denies a citizen due process? I’m open to arguments this will infringe the rights of our citizens but how does this amendment do that?
“(1) IN GENERAL.—If the Secretary of State refuses to issue or revokes a passport pursuant to subsection (a), the Secretary shall, not later than 30 days after such refusal or revocation, submit to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate a report on such refusal or revocation, as the case may be.
“(2) FORM.—The report submitted under paragraph (1) may be submitted in classified or unclassified form.”.
Neo
The ability for authority to force a citizen to surrender their passport has been around for sometime. When someone is charged or under suspicion of crimes a judge has been able to order that person to surrender their passport for obvious reasons. This seems to include another agency in the process.
The typical and in place before this new bill methods were perhaps not efficient enough to ‘grab’ someone or keep someone from leaving. Given the war on terror etc, it is debatable whether or not this is necessary or an infringement on some rights listed somewhere.
That there was a non recorded vote is always a bad thing. The people have a right to access the workings of their government on this level, above all else. Accountability comes from transparency. The lack of transparency has been a constant problem with governments throughout history and especially as events turn more complex. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama have all continued to avail themselves of secrecy when possible.
There is a point to be made as to how it would be possible to run this country if every detail went through the public’s scrutiny, debated with or without understanding. The ability of a government to move without accounting for every twist and turn is a double edged sword. Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Jr. illustrated that above and beyond all other recent Presidents. Obama is the President and these actions come with the job. The comparison and contrast seems to point to many idealistic arguments for Obama at this time. He has yet to match Nixon, Reagan, or the little cowboy for disastrous results.
http://www.inlandnewstoday.com/story.php?s=38790
WASHINGTON – (INT) – Rep. Paul Cook (R- Apple Valley) on Tuesday voted for HR 237, the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) Passport Revocation Act. This bill would authorize the State Department to revoke or deny passports and passport cards to individuals affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations.
Cook said, “ISIS has gained unprecedented ground in Iraq and Syria. Unfortunately, over 100 US citizens are fighting with ISIS in the Middle East. They’ve voluntarily signed up with a terrorist army dedicated to destroying the United States. American citizens fighting for ISIS in Syria and Iraq are a huge threat to the United States and they must not be permitted to return to the US undetected.”
A member of the House Natural Resources, Armed Services, and Foreign Affairs Committees, Cook served as an infantry officer and retired after 26 years as a Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps. During his time in combat, he was awarded the Bronze Star and two Purple Heart.
********************
Well at least we know two guys who voted for this Bill, Rep.Ted Poe- R Texas, who introduced the Bill and Rep. Paul Cook- R, CA. So are these two guys Progressives?
Neo,
The voice vote is disturbing. Why not a recorded vote? I want to know who voted and how they voted.