Very wrongly in this case.
Now I believe it's nessecary that cops be given more leeway, anyone who thinks otherwise is not living in reality land, the reality is that police work an unpredictable job and constitutional violations are rarely clear cut, courts rule conflicting things all the time, you can have a judge who will rule everything a cop does constitutional on one extreme, and another who recieves birthday cards from the ACLU on the other extreme.
Cops, in order to properly do the job that the majority of the public expects them to do, need reasonable leeway for actions made to protect the public in good faith.
HOWEVER
This officer was obviously not acting in good faith, she regularily arrested people despite them passing sobriety tests, she falsified reports, and she had validated excessive force complaints against her. you can see her on video tazing someone out of a car when he posed no violent danger to her. Other troopers repeatedly brought this to the attention of command where it was swept under the rug.
This officer does not deserve those greater protections, she clearly acted in violation of established law, and she really can't even argue acting in good faith.... keep in mind Detective Mark Fuhrman went down for lying about using the word "******" in an irrelevant question at a trial, surely Trooper Steed's actions hurt far more people then Det Furhman, she needs to be charged, and if pled out, pled out to a felony so she can't shuffle to some other department or own a gun.
in my humble opinion that is.
Oh, they're pretty clear cut. Its only fuzzy if one ignores a few sentences from
Union Pacific Rail Co. vs Botsford. "No right is held more sacred or more carefully guarded by the common law than the right of all individuals to the possession and control of their own persons. Free from all restraint and interference unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law."
A cop only has to know one thing: does he have
clear and unquestionable authority of law to act? If he has any doubt, any uncertainty, then he cannot possibly know whether he is acting within the law or violating someone's rights. He must know to a complete moral certainty that he has clear and unquestionable authority of law to take whatever action he is contemplating. This knocks out vast swaths of cute police tactics to stretch the case law.
Also, view that Botsford quote against the current standard for a civil rights violation: was the right well established and would/should a reasonable cop know about it. That was an erosion. If the right wasn't clearly established or the cop couldn't reasonably know, then he gets off on qualified immunity. Viewed in the light of
Botsford however, the cop doesn't have to know whether this-or-that little complexity or piece of a right exists. All he has to know is whether he has clear and unquestionable authority of law to act. If he cannot positively and correctly identify the exact piece of law that authorizes him to act, and his interpretation of it must be clear and unquestionable too, then he has not authority to act against another person.
Terry v Ohio is a classic example of the courts creating the fuzziness. In the first half of the opinion, the Terry court quotes that line from
Botsford. But, in the holding, approved the cop seizing Terry, saying the cop's actions were based on reasonable suspicion. This was the beginning of Terry Stops and RAS. Wait a second. If that was the beginning of Terry Stops and RAS, how did the cop have
clear and unquestionable authority of law to make that seizure? The case law didn't exist yet at the time of the seizure. From another angle, if the cop had clear and unquestionable authority of law to seize Terry and search him for the gun, then why did that case make it all the way to the US Supreme court to be sorted out on that exact point? It was precisely because the law was not clear and unquestionable that it was appealed to the Supreme Court.
Another piece of evidence that the cop didn't have clear and unquestionable authority to seize Terry is in the dissent of Terry. The dissenting justice pointed out that the majority were handing street cops more authority than a magistrate. Magistrate's must have probable cause before they can issue warrants to seize people; street cops get to seize people on mere RAS. The fact the judge brought up this point in the context of the court giving cops authority proves the cop did not already have the authority at the time he seized Terry.
The clear and unquestionable authority of law standard also fits nicely with our constitutional government: government only has the authority its given. Not whatever authority the street cop thinks he can "imply" by stretching or creative interpretation.
So, if a constitutional rights violation is not clear cut, then it necessarily is a violation--because any restraint or interference that is not done on clear and unquestionable authority of law violates one of the most fundamental rights of all. Its the government and courts that want people to accept/believe that there is any fogginess to the issue. The only fog is that which the government creates.
