34 replies
18h54m
I hope that’s not the last charge levied. A police raid designed to retaliate against journalists for being journalists should result in more than one tangential prosecution.
12 replies
6h55m
I have always felt that any officer of the law charged with breaking the law should face a mandatory doubling of their sentence. They "know the law" and therefore have no excuse. The fact that only one person is being charged despite several others participating in this is just yet one more miscarriage of justice.
8 replies
6h29m
"They know the law"
No, they don't. They are police officers, not lawyers. Exactly this causes many problems when, sorry to speak this way, testosterone meets incompetence in law enforcement.
5 replies
6h25m
Replace with "should know the law" or "have a duty to know the law" or "know the law better than civilians."
1 replies
6h18m
Also not true. They have a duty to enforce the law as they understand it (noting that verification is just a phone call away), which may be better than average due to training and experience, or not.
Either way, your duty is to cooperate with law enforcement. If they are wrong, the only proper place to determine that is the courts. If they are right, you'll still have avoided a "resisting" charge
0 replies
3h52m
The police do not have a duty to enforce the law, as determined multiple times by the supreme court and other federal courts.
0 replies
4h44m
Officers are civilians. Never let them forget that.
0 replies
3h53m
If they don't even have a duty to uphold the law [1], why would they have a duty to know it?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
0 replies
6h17m
The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why?
https://www.amazon.de/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...
0 replies
2h24m
No, they don't. They are police officers, not lawyers.
How do you enforce laws that you don't know or understand?
Think about it. These guys mobilize themselves to use force to achieve their goal. How is step 0 of this whole process not "check if what we are about to do complies with the law"?
If they mobilize themselves to use force to achieve a goal through illegal and criminal means, they are not different than organized crime.
0 replies
2h39m
I know they don't thats why its in quotes.
1 replies
6h7m
The officers were specifically NOT charged for the raid because of their ignorance and incompetence
https://kansasreflector.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Speci... See pages 99 onward
“But the special prosecutors also concluded that police — despite their misunderstanding of evidence, a rushed investigation, and faulty and unlawful search warrants — didn’t commit any crimes by investigating a baseless suspicion of identity theft or carrying out the raid.“ https://kansasreflector.com/2024/08/05/special-prosecutors-p...
The changes against the chief are for asking a witness to delete text messages after the raid
0 replies
33m
It's funny how ignorance of the law isn't a valid excuse for me but it is for them.
0 replies
5h48m
This is true for almost anything. 99.9% of the people out there know, for example, that killing another person is illegal. Your logic makes no sense here
4 replies
17h58m
I'm honestly surprised this has led to charges. I eagerly await the qualified immunity argument against this.
Before we get too excited, there's lots of ways this can go wrong. People don't understand just how rigged the justice system is not to prosecute authority figures including the police. For example:
1. Manu jurisdictions require felony charges to first be approved by a grand jury. This is meant to protect citizens from spurious felony charges. The grand jury proces empanels a group of people, just like a jury, but they'll only hear evidence that the prosecutor presents. There is no defense counsel. The defendant is not present. Anyone interesting in pursuing a prosecution is not present.
So what can go wrong? A prosecutor can intentionally bring a weak case and then hang their hat on the grand jury denying to pursue charges. It happens all the time.
Why would a prosecutor do this? Because they rely on the police for prosecutions. If a prosecutor gets a reputation for locking up the police then their police witnesses start getting sick and missing court dates. And that prosecutor's conviction rate goes down, which ultimately is the only thing they care about.
2. Judges often either have a prosecution bias or they outright work for the benefit of the prosecution. There can be multiple reasons for this. Many judges are former prosecutors. Depending on your state, judges may be politicians effectively as they have to campaign for their position or their name is on the ballot to extend their term so narratives like "tough on crime" start appearing.
There are three big recent examples of this:
1. The YSL trial in Georgia. The judge had ex-parte meetings with witnesses and the prosecution with no defense cousel present during which a witness was coerced to testify for the prosecution by the judge. That judge was ultimately forced to recuse themselves because thsi was such an egregious breach of the rules;
2. The Karen Reed trial in Massachussetts. This wasn't on the news much but was covered heavily on social media, particularly Tiktok. The list of sins by the prosecutors and judges are really too great to enumerate.
3. Alec Baldwin's trial for the death of a crew member on the set of Rust. The prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense. They hid bullets in a file of another case so the defense would never see it. This led to the case being dismissed with prejudice, rightly so. This is what's called a Brady violation [1]. Now because that was a high-profile case that happened. But sometimes the Brady violation is ignored. In a famous Supreme Court case (Connick v. Thomson [2]), the Supreme Court ruled that if just one prosecutor in an office does a Brady violation then it's fine. It's not a systemic problem. Crazy.
Now we have had high profile cases where the police have been successfuly prosecuted, most notably Derek Chauvin. But those really are the exception. We're a long way from a conviction.
0 replies
13h44m
I eagerly await the qualified immunity argument against this.
As I understand it, there won't be any qualified immunity arguments made against these charges... qualified immunity is about civil lawsuits, not criminal charges.
0 replies
16h40m
It seems that people think you're hoping for this to be overturned, whereas I believe you're saying that you anticipate it could be given precedent.
0 replies
16h35m
My understanding is that there were no changes for the actual raid, but "with felony interference in the judicial process" due to actions taken after the raid.
"In Monday’s report, prosecutors highlight a section of state statutes indicating that charges against Cody might be related to statements made by former Marion restaurant owner Kari Newell that Cody urged her to destroy evidence of text messages the two had exchanged."
http://marionrecord.com. Paper cleared; ex-chief faces felony charge
https://kansasreflector.com/2024/08/13/former-marion-police-...
A conviction would likely only result in probation for a low level felony he is no longer in a position to repeat offend in.
https://www.kansas.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/dion-lefler... "We can safely assume the video recording is accidental for two reasons: 1) At the start of the conversation, Cody warns Newell, “We can’t write anything” to each other and she replies “Yeah, I know, I understand.” And 2) Immediately after he hangs up, Cody video-recorded himself taking a leak in the men’s room at a Casey’s General Store."
https://www.kake.com/features/special-content/untold-story-k... "The day after we completed this interview, Newell revealed the chief had asked her to delete text messages between them after rumors began that they were romantically involved. She says there's no truth to those rumors, but she deleted the texts anyway - then immediately regretted it."
0 replies
14h29m
There's a lot of unfounded speculation here. But I'll just address the one set of claims that have cited documentation, which turn out to be unfounded upon examination of the citations.
In a famous Supreme Court case (Connick v. Thomson [sic]), the Supreme Court ruled that if just one prosecutor in an office does a Brady violation then it's fine.
The first paragraph of that decision [0] contradicts the claim. Thompson had two convictions against him overturned because of a single Brady violation. The Brady violation was not fine, and the court system recognized that. After all, Brady itself is a SCOTUS decision that holds that the eponymous action by the prosecution is unconstitutional under Due Process. Thompson received his due process upon review.
On a topic unrelated to the constitutional question of the Brady violation, Connick v. Thompson asked whether Thompson was due civil damages because of a systematic failure of the DA's office to train its prosecutors, which he failed to show.
3 replies
16h35m
meanwhile in Australia, journalists get raided and nothing happens https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/17/federal-police...
1 replies
15h19m
Or get their house firebombed.
0 replies
14h49m
Or get the anti-terror squad put on them for asking a politician a question in the street.
0 replies
8h14m
God bless America
2 replies
18h3m
Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. The offense is punishable by a range of imprisonment up to a life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and the resulting injury, if any.
https://www.justice.gov/crt/deprivation-rights-under-color-l...
1 replies
14h51m
Never heard of this law before... Thanks!
0 replies
13h34m
This is essentially the Federal Government biggest single gun against local corruption - as I recall, it's what officers who beat Rodney King were eventually prosecuted under.
0 replies
19h1m
Related:
Kansas police chief who led the raid on the Marion County Record has resigned - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37757664 - Oct 2023 (8 comments)
Police chief who led raid of Marion County Record has been suspended - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37722438 - Oct 2023 (48 comments)
Marion County atty withdraws search warrant against Kansas paper, returns items - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37151697 - Aug 2023 (37 comments)
Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37120350 - Aug 2023 (146 comments)
Small Kansas newspaper says co-owner, 98, collapsed and died after police raid - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37120188 - Aug 2023 (43 comments)
Co-owner of Kansas newspaper dies after police raid - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37114892 - Aug 2023 (4 comments)
Illegal raids contribute to death of newspaper co-owner - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37105764 - Aug 2023 (103 comments)
A conversation with a newspaper owner raided by cops - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37102271 - Aug 2023 (118 comments)
Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37096015 - Aug 2023 (138 comments)
0 replies
13h17m
Make every prosecutor, ag, judge, and lawyer involved go to jail. A bunch of law school white collar imbeciles are going to wash their hands clean of this despite their participation.
I’m from Sedgwick county, nearby.
0 replies
15h10m
Go Kansas!
There was also a settlement, although civil litigation continues.
https://apnews.com/article/kansas-newspaper-raid-lawsuit-b0b...
Civil litigation basically means that the taxpayers are on the hook for any damages. I am betting if there were to be personal responsibility, these types are acts would be history.
Cops should shoulder responsibility and be insured individually. Like docs.
Should computer programmers also shoulder responsibility and be insured like doctors?
Computer programmers aren't authorized and licensed by the government to inflict violence like police officers. Computer programmers are not licensed by the government to prescribe dangerous medications or perform surgeries.
And yet many computer programmers and hardware developers, with or without any kind of license or certification, write or design systems that are critical to life and limb; everything including medical systems, airplane systems, automotive systems including drive-by-wire and 'self-driving, engineering systems for design of life critical structures, etc., etc., etc. It's not all low-consequence or recoverable like front end web dev or accounting software. And conversely, many actions of physicians and cops are inconsequential (while many are also life-or-death).
I have a note on my desk "If there is a bad tech option." It's a reminder not to get mad when my boss or their boss decides something stupid. Like using GraphQL to upload large amounts of data. Or deciding a 5 person team should be developing micro-services. Or moving everything to tailwinds.
As a developer I don't have the power to stop these bad decisions. I just have to stew in them. Holding me responsible for the bad code that gets written to kludge past the bad decisions.
Better I suppose than the company that had me build a rails app to move millions of records an hour, hosted on their personal windows laptop. (yeah rails on windows)
What’s wrong with Tailwind CSS?
To use a similar example, in my state, you can build your own custom car or airplane from scratch and get it approved, no mechanic or engineering license needed.
Also, if you aren't working as an engineer for another company but are self employed, it's not a bad idea to get some form of errors and omissions insurance, which is comparable to the malpractice insurance doctors get.
Another problem is how much companies exaggerate the effectiveness of their systems and don't share the false positive rate.
Ordinary developers are effectively just construction workers with a bit more creative freedom.
In al critical systems they are just one part of a chain and all their work has to be verified/validated by at least a few additional actors.
A policeman can just decide to randomly murder someone (and often face no repercussions). While a construction worker or a software developer can cause significant harm as well they almost never have near complete autonomy.
Computer programmers have ruined plenty of lives from the post office scandal to the gambling industry.
It’s almost like blaming Glock for police shootings…
It has nothing to do programmers and everything to do with Post Office’s management. If they bought buggy software they had years to seek recourse for that.
That's like saying the cleaning crew at the local police station have ruined plenty of lives due to police brutality.
Possibly, depending on the stakes of the applications they program.
Front end web dev? Nah, who gives a shit. Embedded system that's fail deadly? Um, yes.
More likely that a frayed power cord (or one of a thousand other things) on your laptop will catch fire while you're on the client premise, causing thousands in damages, or that same laptop has some sort of trojan/virus that you spread through the client network, and you're on the hook for remediation.
IME, most of the time that's why an independent consultant needs business insurance. The quality of the work is generally handled by the contract.
But YMMV.
This scenario seems borderline Palsgraph v. Long Island Rail Road [1].
There is liability / duty of care / grounds to sue for negligence only when the injury / damages were directly related to the nature of the business, not when there is an incidental freak accident which happens to occur on the premise.
What does front end dev work have to do with the statistical random chance that wires somewhere in the building are frayed?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palsgraf_v._Long_Island_Railro....
When I was programming as a consultant I had to have insurance for my LLC because some clients required it. It's not that weird an idea.
If they use “engineer” anywhere in their job title, then yes, they should shoulder that responsibility and liability.
At the plc level? Yes, and they should and they are. They are also suspects to criminal liability laws.
Medical costs and insurance are already absurdly high
Police force is the largest expense for local governments, doubling or tripping the costs seems like an unwise and inefficient thing to do for a society
You’re already paying for it via settlements.
Requiring officer-named insurance would create immediate pressure to weed out bad behavior and prevent bad cops from being re-hired one county over.
Or spend the money on police training instead. More training seems it produces a more competent police force. Not really surprising.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733
Like this?
https://abc7ny.com/police-training-new-jersey-street-cop-atl...
There's a similar case unfolding in Massachusetts as well. And Google "killology" if you really want to be disgusted.
Docs aren’t always insured, and when they are, they aren’t always insured individually.
If this country had any form of adversarial oversight of police departments, this would be history.
Was “ adversarial oversight” a typo? Why would you want an adversarial anything with a department as crucial as the police? A solid working relationship with faith and trust running both ways is maybe what you meant.
In this sense "adversarial" has the same meaning that it does with respect to the relationship between the defense and the prosecution in a courtroom setting -- the best outcome is going to be achieved from the equilibrium of distinct organizations with incentives balanced against each other.
It's precisely because of the importance of policing that we don't want the people responsible for oversight and discipline of the police to have a "solid working relationship with faith and trust running both ways" -- there needs to be an arm's length relationship, with the watchdogs incentivized to monitor for wrongdoing, and the police somewhat afraid of being called out by them, certainly not buddy-buddy with them.
The county’s insurance is on the hook. I’m sure premiums go up but are taxpayers really on the hook if insurance is paying the damages?
Does the defense pay for all the legal expenses incurred in addition to the settled amount? Lawsuits ain't cheap.
It depends. Often when a suit involves the government or the public interest then there’s a statute in place that awards fees to the winner.
Interesting way to reduce the value of the info and effort for the request. Send a copy to the paper's competition first/too
It's the only way that he can guarantee that the information is distributed in its original form and not through the victim's bias. So I'd argue that from his perspective, that was definitely the best (read as: most democratic) option.
If they're going to push to arrest peaceful marijuana users and ruin their lives with a drug charge then the people involved in this raid should see the inside of a cell at least as long as someone up on possession because what the raid plotters have done is more corrosive to a free society than anyone smoking weed at a concert.