tvc184

The tolerant left…. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 [Hidden Content]

I remember it well and made a few social media posts about it. It also showed that Qualified Immunity didn’t stop the police officer from a 60 prison sentence for falsifying a probable cause affidavit. Obviously that long sentence was not for perjury but that the perjury led to a Felony Murder charge.

In both cases I believe that they are open to being charged in a crime. That is to say that they have no Qualified Immunity that protects them from criminal prosecution (as in all cases). Both cases resulted in intentionally or knowingly killing a person (Texas culpable mental states) so Murder unless under self defense which is the issue. Everyone knows who did it and the results. The only real question in my opinion is whether there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that it was clearly not a case of self defense. Without knowing Minnesota or federal laws on self defense, I will rely on Texas law only as a similar situation. The shooting of Good in my opinion clearly has reasonable doubt that it was not Murder. I don’t think the agent had the culpable mental state (as I have seen claimed numerous times) of, I know that I am not in danger but here’s a chance to take out a protester. If this incident happened locally, I would expect a No Bill from the grand jury. I have no clear opinion on Pretti but I lean toward the same results but not as clear. In Good the agent was alone and we could see what happened for the most part. In Pretti at the speed in which it happened and agents (possibly including the shooter) yelling gun and the continued struggle, I believe that it would take some definitive information that the agent knew that no one was in danger and merely chose to take out a demonstrator. Unlike Good, we have no clear video of what happened in the scrum as the one video called it. As you know that the burden is always on the government to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Only as an anecdote, I was the supervisor on scene of a homicide where two guys confronted each other outside of a club about a block away from the entrance. One guy pulled a gun and fired it, possibly to scare the other guy away. It worked and the other guy left. However….. He walked about a block away in the other direction, got a pistol out of his car, came back and confronted the guy who fired the shot and then shot and killed him. I said at the scene that it was clearly Murder because it wasn’t a stand your ground case in my opinion. The suspect had left the scene and was out of danger since the guy who fired the shot didn’t follow him. He came back to the scene, now armed, to continue the argument and ended up killing the other guy. The DA did not get an indictment from the grand jury. Obviously by law it’s the grand jury‘s opinion and not the DA’s but it was clearly a Murder under Texas law (intentionally or knowingly took another person‘s life) but with self defense as a defense to prosecution. Obviously the DA could likely have pushed for an indictment and let a trial jury make the call (a principle which I do not believe in) but apparently there was a reasonable doubt in the opinion of the DA that they could not overcome in front of a jury. It does not matter if the guy was guilty. What matters is the proof beyond a reasonable doubt. If a jury is 90% sure that a crime was committed, that to me is not guilty. It is the same standard everywhere. The elements might change depending on jurisdiction. It is the same in the Pretti case for now. Is there body cameras which show a clear picture of what happened and the agent knew that no one was in danger? That’s possible but I believe that is what it would take to bring criminal charges. So Good in my opinion should be a No Bill unless there’s evidence that hasn’t been made public which is always possible. Pretti is in limbo but that in my opinion means no case unless there is evidence that hasn’t been made public. The other agent grabbing Pretti’s pistol before the shots were fired will probably have no bearing unless it can be shown that the agent shooting knew that the danger had been removed and had time to respond. More in a layman’s terms, if an issue is debatable then there is no proof beyond a reasonable doubt. If it is beyond debate or the evidence clearly shows that there was no reasonable belief of possible serious bodily injury or death, it should be brought to trial. Notwithstanding that a defense will always claim there is a reasonable doubt. Do you think there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, in what is now public information, that the agent knew that there was no threat under split second decision making under the Supreme Court ruling in Graham v. Connor?

I am usually humored on social media on how many people believe that Qualified Immunity protects an officer/agent from being charged in a crime.

Imagine that, if you didn’t violate the law then you can’t be personally sued.

Just a passive and honorable VA nurse trying to help others.

That is a good article. He actually went into the incident and I tried to stick to the laws that I think apply to the situation.

Yes, 💯 percent in my opinion. One of the key issues that came out almost immediately is that one agent had already taken the pistol. First if the time issue. The second issue is, was the agent who fired the shots aware that the pistol had been removed? Put yourself in the position of the agent who fired the shots. If someone yells GUN!!, where are you going to look? Are you gonna start looking at the hands of the several agents or are you going to be looking at the suspect? I have been there. I was on the porch one time trying to take a man into custody and he started fighting and actually got my partners pistol out of the holster. There were three other officers there besides me. I can promise you that I was not looking at the other officers’ hands. I don’t know what the officer saw and I would like to see any body cam footage but those are sometimes extremely limited in what they show. The burden of proof in court is still, is there proof beyond a reasonable doubt that in this situation, the officer was not in fear and he knew that the suspect no longer had the pistol?

Yes, the totality of circumstances is how you arrive at the question, was the force lawful. You gave a concise answer in my opinion that is 100% correct. Don’t look at just the moment but look at ALL things without a definite time limit. Mic drop…. 💥 The Fifth Circuit literally said… we only looked at the last two seconds. Yes the officer was in grave danger in that two second timeframe so case closed. The Supreme Court said…. Uhhhh, no! But a bit of history. A problem for law enforcement was how to proceed with an anonymous tip. Think of the Crime Stoppers’s program today where an anonymous person can call a recorded line and leave a tip. What can the police do with this anonymous tip where they have no idea if it is true, a rumor or someone that hates someone else and just wants the police to harass that person? One of the major decisions was in 1964 in Aguilar v. Texas. The Supreme Court basically said that hearsay evidence was allowed, but the police had to demonstrate some manner of underlying circumstance that made the tip seem reasonable. An anonymous tip in itself has no reliability and cannot in itself be used as probable cause. In 1969 came Spinelli v. United States. In Spinelli the Supreme Court threw out the evidence from a tip because it was too vague. The FBI had gotten a tip on an illegal gambling operation but without specifics. The Supreme Court then came out with the Aguilar-Spinelli test for reliability. They combined the cases into a two prong test. The first was the basis of knowledge or how did the police know the means that the anonymous tipster got the information. The second part was the veracity of the information. How did the police know that the information was reliable? Sometimes the Aguilar -Spinelli test was called the Two Prongs of Aguilar. It was kind of a complicated set of hoops that the police had to jump through. So the police had to show some basis to believe that the person giving the anonymous tip had actually come across the information (not merely heard a rumor) and what information makes the police believe that the tip is reliable. Fast forward to 1983. The first use of the totality of circumstances was in the landmark Supreme Court case of Illinois v. Gates. A police department in Illinois got an anonymous tip that Mr. and Mrs. Gates were dealing big-time drugs from their home. This was from an anonymous letter to the local police. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that an anonymous tip in itself cannot be used as probable cause because there’s no way to verify the reliability of the tip as discussed in Aguilar-Spinelli. The police in this case went to DEA for help. The anonymous letter gave a detailed description of how the drug transactions happened and of an upcoming drug transaction. I don’t remember the exact details and don’t feel like looking up the case so I will ad lib the details but it’s fairly close to what happened. The tip gave a date on which Mrs. Gates was supposed to drive, I think, to Miami, FL or the hottest location for drugs entering the US at that time (I believe later to be replaced by Houston). She was supposed to pick up a substantial amount of drugs (probably close to half a million dollars in today’s money) and put it in the trunk of the car. A couple of days after she left her home in Illinois, her husband was supposed to fly down and meet her. They would then get in the car and drive back home. The DEA was contacted in FL and they conducted surveillance on the situation. Sure enough, Mr. Gates arrived at the airport as described in the anonymous tip on the date that was stated. He was then followed to a hotel room and spent the night (I think) with his wife. She actually registered the hotel room in her name. I guess back then they were not worried about covering their tracks. The agent got the license plate number of the car Mrs. Gates drove to Florida in and yep, it came back registered to Mr. Gates in Illinois at the address on the anonymous tip. All of this information was given to the police in Illinois. They got a warrant and busted the Gates on their arrival back in Illinois. So the anonymous letter gave the address and the names of the people involved. It gave the date that the woman was supposed to drive to Florida. It gave the date and I think the airline that her husband was supposed to fly down in and meet with his wifer. Police surveillance confirmed that the husband showed up on the date stated in the tip. He then met with his wife at the hotel and the registry showed that it was in her name, the same as in the anonymous tip. They were seen getting in a vehicle, which was registered to Mr. Gates and returned to the same address from the anonymous tip. How could anyone get all of those facts correct unless they had reliable information? But could they get past the Aguilar-Spinelli test? The Supreme Court used all of the information from this anonymous tip to come up with the landmark….. Totality of Circumstances. The somewhat complicated Aguilar-Spinelli test was replaced by the current, totality of circumstances test. So looking at everything we know from an anonymous tip, what makes us believe that it is true enough to rise to the level of probable causes? Here is an very important point. The totality of circumstances is not the result or what they are looking for. The issue is, does the information rise to the level of probable cause? The totality of circumstances is not probable cause and it did not change the definition. It is a method of looking at the information to determine IF Probable Cause exists. Probable cause is generally defined as facts and circumstances known to the officer at the time of a an arrest (or search) that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a crime is in the progress of being committed or has been committed. So the totality of circumstances does not undermine or add to probable cause. It doesn’t change the definition. It is merely a tool. The standard of justification for an arrest is still probable cause. So under the use of force by police officers, the standard the Supreme Court has set down (like probable cause has a standard) is objective reasonableness in Graham v. Connor. Did the officer act as a reasonable officer would under the same circumstances including “split second” decisions at the time. Barnes did not change that. The standard is still asking the question, how would a reasonable officer act under the same circumstances? The method to answer that question is by looking at what we learned in Gates. Looking at all of the information (totality of circumstances) that the officer had, was his decision objectively reasonable? So in my opinion your conclusion is spot on. Look at all things (totality of circumstances) with no time limit. Please forgive any typos or word usage. That’s a lot to put out on an iPhone…. 😎

The totality of circumstances is not a legal standard for determining a decision. The totality of circumstances is the means by which a decision is made. In short it means, did you look at everything. The totality of circumstances means that you have to look at all factors before making a decision. The totality of circumstances is not the decision but how you get there. To judge an officer’s use of force, you can’t simply look at the moment of threat which is something that the Fifth Circuit Court basically invented on their own. That meant, if an officer was in danger at any moment in time, he could lawfully respond to that threat. That is not what the Supreme Court said because the officer could have been committing a crime and that crime may have been the reason that the officer was in danger. For example, what if an officer had unlawfully stopped someone without the required reasonable suspicion? Then he jumped out for no reason and started beating on the person with a baton risking, serious injury or death to the innocent person. The innocent person then took the baton away to try and survive and the officer then shot the innocent person. Obviously at the moment the officer used deadly force, he was in danger. A person had an impact weapon and could seriously injure or kill the officer. That is why the moment of threat in itself doesn’t work. Sure the officer was an extreme danger at that moment but he caused himself to be in the extreme danger by committing a crime. In such cases (actually all cases) the totality of circumstances tells you “how” to arrive at a decision but it is not in itself the legal standard. It simply means to look at the entire situation before rendering an opinion. That standard is in the police use of force is “objective reasonableness” or what would a “reasonable” officer do under the same circumstances. Obviously, if an officer made an unlawful traffic stop like in my example and then jumped out and started using unlawful force, that is not what a reasonable officer would do. That loses in the objective reasonableness standard from Graham v. Connor. Again, how do we arrive at the objective reasonableness (legal) standard? By looking at the entire situation. That entire situation is the totality of circumstances which (again) is not the standard but the means. The totality of circumstances, when judging an officer’s use of force is meaningless without the standard of objective reasonableness. So we use the totality of circumstances to arrive at the Supreme Court legal standard for the use of force….. objective reasonableness. Since you cited the Supreme Court website, here is a quote from that site: “Held: A claim that a law enforcement officer used excessive force during a stop or arrest is analyzed under the Fourth Amendment, which requires that the force deployed be objectively reasonable from “the perspective of a reasonable officer at the scene.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U. S. 386, 396. The inquiry into the reasonableness of police force requires analyzing the “totality of the circumstances.” We can see from the words of the Supreme Court “Held” that the use of force “requires that the force be objectively reasonable” as ruled in Graham. That if the Supreme Court talking, not me. The Supreme Court goes on to say that we arrive at objectively reasonable by… “analyzing the ‘totality of circumstances’”. So the totality of circumstances which people get fixated on is not the standard for judging the police use of force. That standard is objective reasonableness as determined by looking at the entire incident and not just the last couple of seconds. The Supreme Court in Barnes did not even look at the situation involving Officer Felix and plainly said that they didn’t even look into the situation or answered any questions about the officer initiating the situation. The only conclusion was, look at the entire traffic stop and not merely the moment that shots were fired and determine if the officer’s actions were “reasonable”. The Fifth Circuit heard the case again almost immediately have said, Yep, we looked at the entire thing and came for the same conclusion. The officers’s actions were objectively reasonable.

If the city and county uphold the ICE warrants like they should, none of this would happen. There would be no need to apprehend people in the streets as they are likely already in custody. Imagine a system or a violent criminal is in the county jail and the federal government has a hold on them and the powers that be want to hurry up and get the violent criminal back out on the street again quickly….. so they can escape federal warrants. It’s the movie Idiocrasy playing out in real life.

That is 100% false. It is not a true standard, and Barnes did not say that either. The standard has been objective reasonableness, and Barnes only reaffirm that. I have read multiple opinions, including the one you posted, where people apparently are only reading headlines, which are written by other people who did not read the case.

Beaumont stepping up their game…. [Hidden Content]

No.

That is actually a well known way to carry, often called the SOB carry or Small of Back. They make holsters for specifically that purpose. It has probably lost some favor in recent years with the trend being more toward appendix carry. I used to carry a revolver in the SOB position years ago and only on some occasions. I still do on rare occasions for a situation and not as a preferred option.