The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[jimmy olsen]

Damn court

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/11/sonia_sotomayor_dissents_in_mullenix_police_shooting_case.html

Sonia Sotomayor Takes a Stand Against Police Brutality

In a stunning dissent, the justice condemns the "culture" of deadly force.

By Mark Joseph Stern

On the night of March 23, 2010, trooper Chadrin Mullenix of the Texas Department of Public Safety stood on an overpass debating what to do. Israel Leija Jr., an allegedly armed and intoxicated fugitive, was fleeing the police in a high-speed chase a few miles away. Mullenix planned to set up spike strips—but as Leija approached, Mullenix decided to shoot at his car instead, a tactic in which he had no training. His supervisor, Sgt. Robert Byrd, responded that Mullenix should "stand by" rather than shooting and "see if the spikes" laid down the road "work first."

Mullenix ignored the order and fired six shots at Leija's car as it passed underneath—seconds before the vehicle hit the spike strips designed to stop it. Four of his bullets penetrated Leija's head, shoulders, and neck. Leija was killed.

Coincidentally, Mullenix had been singled out for a pep talk earlier that very day for not being "proactive" enough on the job. When he saw his supervisor after killing Leija, Mullenix quipped: "How's that for proactive?"

Leija's mother filed a civil rights suit against Mullenix, alleging that the trooper violated her son's Fourth Amendment rights by using "unreasonable force." She had a great case: A Department of Public Safety shooting review found that Mullenix had acted recklessly, lacking "sufficient legal or factual justification to use deadly force." On Monday, however, the Supreme Court handed Mullenix a huge legal victory, holding that his actions did not violate "clearly established constitutional law" and granting him qualified immunity. The decision provides yet more evidence that the court's "unreasonable force" standard has been defanged to provide cover to reckless officers.

The case also demonstrates that when it comes to understanding the systemic flaws and violent behavior of America's criminal justice system, there's no one quite like Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Every justice except Sotomayor, who dissented from the ruling, and Justice Antonin Scalia, who independently concurred, appears to have joined the court's brief, unsigned decision granting Mullenix immunity. (Sorry, Notorious R.B.G. groupies, but that includes Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has a bit of a law-and-order streak.) The majority opinion provides a classic retrospective rationalization of Mullenix's actions, leaning heavily on a brief by the National Association of Police Organizations, a pro–law-enforcement lobbying group. Mullenix, the court explained, could only be denied qualified immunity if the unreasonableness of his actions were "beyond debate." The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that officers may not use deadly force against a fleeing suspect unless he poses a "significant threat of violence," and despite what the court ruled, it's not at all obvious that Leija posed such a threat that Mullenix had to shoot at him seconds before he hit the spike strips.

But, the majority wrote on Monday, the appropriateness of deadly force "involving car chases" remains "hazy," with various circuit courts interpreting the deadly force standard differently in the car chase context. Because "qualified immunity protects actions in the hazy border between excessive and acceptable force," the court ruled, Mullenix gets the benefit of the doubt.

Scalia went even further, explaining that he "would not describe what occurred here as the application of deadly force in effecting an arrest" because Mullenix, despite shooting six bullets at the car as it passed beneath him, did not clearly intend to kill Leija. To prove his point, Scalia cites a hypothetical straight out of Looney Tunes:

It does not assist analysis to refer to all use of force that happens to kill the arrestee as the application of deadly force. The police might, for example, attempt to stop a fleeing felon's car by felling a large tree across the road; if they drop the tree too late, so that it crushes the car and its occupant, I would not call that the application of deadly force. Though it was force sufficient to kill, it was not applied with the object of harming the body of the felon.

Ultimately, it fell to Sotomayor—as it so often does—to remind her colleagues that individuals actually do have real constitutional protections against police intrusion. "This Court's precedents," Sotomayor wrote, "clearly establish that the Fourth Amendment is violated unless the 'governmental interests' in effectuating a particular kind of seizure outweigh the 'nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests.' " The government certainly had a strong interest in stopping Leija—but was that interest so strong as to justify shooting Leija before he hit the spikes? Sotomayor says no, concluding that "Mullenix ignored the longstanding and well-settled Fourth Amendment rule that there must be a governmental interest not just in seizing a suspect, but in the level of force used to effectuate that seizure."

The real power of Sotomayor's opinion lies in its last paragraph, which bluntly indicts the "culture" that led to Mullenix's actions (citations removed):

When Mullenix confronted his superior officer after the shooting, his first words were, "How's that for proactive?" (Mullenix was apparently referencing an earlier counseling session in which Byrd suggested that he was not enterprising enough.) The glib comment does not impact our legal analysis; an officer's actual intentions are irrelevant to the Fourth Amendment's "objectively reasonable" inquiry. But the comment seems to me revealing of the culture this Court's decision supports when it calls it reasonable—or even reasonably reasonable—to use deadly force for no discernible gain and over a supervisor's express order to "stand by." By sanctioning a "shoot first, think later" approach to policing, the Court renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow.

This stirring passage could easily have been delivered at an anti–police violence protest. That it was penned by a Supreme Court justice only adds to its intensity. As my colleague Leon Neyfakh recently wrote, courts have been whittling down constitutional protections against police violence for decades. That fact seems suddenly relevant in the face of seemingly endless police shootings. In her dissent Monday, Sotomayor took a courageous stand against such violence, directly indicting "shoot first, think later" police culture. Her words couldn't vindicate Leija's constitutional rights. But they'll send a clear message to police violence protestors that they have at least one ally on the highest court in the land.

[garbon]

Interesting that Slate calls out the comment by the officer about proactivity given that it also then notes in the quote that Sotomayor dismissed that comment as having any relevance to her legal analysis.

[garbon]

Anyway, as a non-lawyer, I'm not sure I take issue with this description at the end of the decision.

Finally, respondents argue that the danger Leija represented
was less substantial than the threats that courts
have found sufficient to justify deadly force. But the mere
fact that courts have approved deadly force in more extreme
circumstances says little, if anything, about whether
such force was reasonable in the circumstances here.
The fact is that when Mullenix fired, he reasonably understood
Leija to be a fugitive fleeing arrest, at speeds over
100 miles per hour, who was armed and possibly intoxicated,
who had threatened to kill any officer he saw if the
police did not abandon their pursuit, and who was racing
towards Officer Ducheneaux's position. Even accepting
that these circumstances fall somewhere between the two
sets of cases respondents discuss, qualified immunity
protects actions in the "'hazy border between excessive
and acceptable force.'"

[Admiral Yi]

Israel Leija Jr., an allegedly armed and intoxicated fugitive, was fleeing the police in a high-speed chase a few miles away.

Allegedly armed and allegedly intoxicated?  Didn't they search the car after he was killed?  Didn't they perform a postmortem bload analysis?

[garbon]

Israel Leija Jr., an allegedly armed and intoxicated fugitive, was fleeing the police in a high-speed chase a few miles away.

Allegedly armed and allegedly intoxicated?  Didn't they search the car after he was killed?  Didn't they perform a postmortem bload analysis?

I think the allegedly is just with the armed. Haven't seen anything yet that definitively says he had a gun (just that he told cops he had one and was going to shoot cops with it) but saw that he was determined to have alcohol and cocaine in his system.

[Admiral Yi]

I think the allegedly is just with the armed. Haven't seen anything yet that definitively says he had a gun (just that he told cops he had one and was going to shoot cops with it) but saw that he was determined to have alcohol and cocaine in his system.

If he said he had a gun then tossed it during the chase and it has not been found, then the article should say he was suspected of being armed.  An allegation is an as-yet unproven accusation.

[Razgovory]

I think the allegedly is just with the armed. Haven't seen anything yet that definitively says he had a gun (just that he told cops he had one and was going to shoot cops with it) but saw that he was determined to have alcohol and cocaine in his system.

If he said he had a gun then tossed it during the chase and it has not been found, then the article should say he was suspected of being armed.  An allegation is an as-yet unproven accusation.

I believe it's standard journalist procedure to refer to all crimes as "alleged" until that person has been convicted.  It does result in some odd moments such as a when a school shooter dies in a gun fight with the police but due to his lack of conviction he is always "the alleged shooter" even though it's blindly obvious that the he committed the crime.

[garbon]

It is also Slate, so I wouldn't get too hung up.

[Berkut]

Interesting that Slate calls out the comment by the officer about proactivity given that it also then notes in the quote that Sotomayor dismissed that comment as having any relevance to her legal analysis.

Wow, you really managed to miss the point, didn't you?

[garbon]

Interesting that Slate calls out the comment by the officer about proactivity given that it also then notes in the quote that Sotomayor dismissed that comment as having any relevance to her legal analysis.

Wow, you really managed to miss the point, didn't you?

I don't think so. But then I'm also not outraged...even really a bit bothered about what happened.

[Berkut]

Interesting that Slate calls out the comment by the officer about proactivity given that it also then notes in the quote that Sotomayor dismissed that comment as having any relevance to her legal analysis.

Wow, you really managed to miss the point, didn't you?

I don't think so. But then I'm also not outraged...even really a bit bothered about what happened.

Not even a bit?

The guys car was seconds away from being stopped anyway, his supervisor specifically told him NOT to shoot, and he killed a guy and then joked about it afterwards, and you "aren't even a bit bothered" by that?

[garbon]

No. Supervisors aren't infallible, so I don't think not listening to one is a problem. Should he have joked about it? Looks in bad taste but having never killed someone, I can't honestly say that I'd act in an entirely appropriate manner.

Also, while the Slate article later spins in that the car was definitely going to be stopped, from the outset that they note the supervisor wanted to see if they would be able to stop it first.

[Berkut]

OK.

[Syt]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/11/the-death-of-jeremy-mardis-and-trustworthy-police/415437/?utm_source=SFFB

The Death of Jeremy Mardis and the Honesty of the Police

The officers who shot and killed a 6-year-old in Louisiana had been sued multiple times, and officials have now accused them of lying about every relevant detail of the incident.

Any time police shoot and kill a 6-year-old, there are bound to be tough questions. And officers in Louisiana had answers about the death of Jeremy Mardis on November 3.

They said that Mardis's death was a tragic accident that occurred when police tried to serve a warrant on the boy's father, Chris Few. They said Few had resisted that warrant. When he'd been cornered on a dead-end road after a chase, they said, he had tried to reverse and hit the officers. Then there was an exchange of gunshots, and Jeremy—buckled into the front seat—was tragically caught in the crossfire.

Yet almost none of that turned out to be true.

There appear to have been no outstanding warrants for Few. No gun was found in his truck. Officials said while two of the officers had claimed Few reversed his SUV and tried to ram them, that wasn't actually true. When officials reviewed body-cam footage of the incident, they found Few actually had his arms in the air when the officers unloaded the barrage on the car. (Few survived the shooting that killed his son.)

"This was not a threatening situation for the police," said Mark Jeansonne, Few's attorney. Colonel Mike Edmonson, the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, affirmed that after watching the footage.

"I'm not gonna talk about it, but I'm gonna tell you this," he said. "It is the most disturbing thing I've seen and I will leave it at that .... As a father, much less the head of the State Police, [it was] extremely disturbing."

That's part of the reason, he said, they were charging the officers involved. Derrick Stafford and Norris Greenhouse Jr., who have been charged with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree, were working as city marshals; Stafford is also a Marksville police officer, while Greenhouse is a reserve officer. Two other marshals were also involved in the chase, and one of them was wearing the body camera that captured the shooting. That footage has not been released to the public.

The district attorney's decision to charge them, and Edmonson's comments, are an encouraging sign. Police are seldom charged in fatal shootings, and when they are, they are seldom convicted. There's been a slight increase in the number of police charged this year, though experts say it's too soon to tell whether that's a result of closer scrutiny of police or simply a statistical blip.

Much of the attention given to Mardis's death has been on the role of body cameras. Because the incident was caught on film, the officers' accounts were debunked, and it's clear from Edmonson's comments that reviewing the footage had a strong effect on his own decision. There's much that's still unknown about how body cameras will effect policing and justice, and while this case is a single incident, the fact real footage can take the place of unreliable witness testimony is positive.

That's an appropriate and important way to think about the story, but it's not the only one. Another is about the honesty and trustworthiness of the police. Since the nation grants the police a near-monopoly on the use of deadly force, it's important that officers be honest, reliable, and trustworthy. In the Mardis case, all signs so far suggest officers did not meet that standard.

Consider all the discrepancies in the case: the apparently nonexistent warrant, the story of Few resisting and trying to ram the marshals, the supposed threat to the officers, the suggestion that Few had hired a gun. The officers involved are alleged to have lied about the incident, and Edmonson also expressed concern about two of the officers' refusal to speak to police. "It's more concerning the longer it takes to talk to us," he said. "All we want to know is what happened." When The Guardian asked why they hadn't been interviewed, Edmonson replied: "You'd have to ask them. We are trying to talk with them." (It appears the shooting occurred amid a turf war between the city marshal and the police department, complicating matters.)

Both Stafford and Greenhouse had been subject to multiple prior complaints—what the Associated Press characterized as "a string of civil lawsuits." Stafford was sued for two incidents in 2012, one in which he allegedly shocked a woman with a stun gun while she was handcuffed and another in which he was accused of breaking a girl's arm while breaking up a fight on a school bus. In 2014, a jury awarded $50,000 to a man who said Stafford had arrested him as payback for filing a complaint against him. Stafford was indicted twice for rape in 2011. In one of those cases, he was charged with raping a 15-year-old in 2004. Both charges were dismissed, but it's not clear why.

Stafford and Greenhouse were also defendants together in two separate cases. In one, a man said they used excessive force while arresting him in 2014. In the second, they were accused of refusing to take action while a third officer assaulted a teenager.

Meanwhile, reports have noted there appears to have been a conflict between Few and Greenhouse before the incident. Greenhouse was a former classmate of Few's girlfriend, Megan Dixon. Dixon said Greenhouse had been sending her messages, and Few threatened Greenhouse. "I told Chris, and Chris confronted him about it and told him, 'Next time you come to my house I'm going to hurt you,'" Dixon said.

A judge has now placed a gag order on nearly everyone involved in the case, so further information may be sparing. But the information so far paints a bleak picture. The officers in Jeremy Mardis's shooting were subject to multiple complaints about their fitness for duty. One was allegedly in a personal conflict with Chris Few. And police officials have now said that they were lying about almost every relevant point of the pursuit and shooting.

"Nothing is more important than this badge that we wear on our uniform, the integrity of why we wear it," Edmonson said when Stafford and Greenhouse were arrested. "It's not a right, it's a privilege. And tonight that badge has been tarnished." It's hard to disagree.

[jimmy olsen]

^^^ Fucking sick. Bastards should be thrown to the gators.

Apparently the number of people killed by the police this year has reached 1000.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/16/the-counted-killed-by-police-1000