imported post
Overtaxed wrote:
AnaxImperator wrote:
It appears that the informant who told the cops that Frederick had a grow operation going did so to; A: revenge upon Frederick for accusing him of stealing, and B: provide the cops a drug-bust to have a grand larceny charge dropped. Now the informant is a fugitive wanted by Chesapeake police, and Frederick was found to have only a misdemeanor amount of pot.
This seems to be a huge source of no-knock disasters - informants who give malicious and/or wrong information out to cops just to get some time knocked off their sentences.
Time for some letters to the judiciary that their standards (lack of)of reliability for tips justifying no-knock raidsis getting people killed?
The cops have no incentive to knock it off. Givinga better plea bargain is probably a great negotiating tool for them.
There is a little line in
Terry vs Ohio where the court quoted an earlier opinion from 1948. The courts understand there is a competitive aspect to policing--that getting bad guys is important to a police officer's career:
"...police officers whose judgment is necessarily colored by their primary involvement in "the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime."
Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14 (1948).
This is off on a tanget, but in looking up the above cite, I came across again in
Terry vs Ohio something that bears repeating.
For as this Court has always recognized,
No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law.
Union Pac. R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891). (Emphasis mine)
No right is held more sacred.
None. For the common law, this is
the most important right.
Keep that in mind the next time some police officer or other dissenter tries to persuade you why its OK to interfer with an OC'er in the absence of genuine reasonable suspicion.