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By Fabrizio Gowdy

This week, we marked twenty years since 9/11. With each passing year, an uncomfortable truth becomes more obvious: the terrorists won, not because of what they did on September 11, 2001, but rather as a result of the United States response in the months and years after the attack. We plunged into costly, prolonged military intervention in the Middle East.

Domestically, we quickly surrendered our liberty and privacy rights for the promise of security. And on the most fundamental level, we seem to have accepted a new permanent status quo of surveillance and paranoia that represents a departure from the American cultural identity and way of life. Our response to 9/11 has made us weaker, poorer, and less free.

On September 10, 2001, America stood atop the world, a lone superpower still basking in its triumph over the USSR. September 11th should be considered the beginning of our decline from the height of our global power. We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that to date have cost American taxpayers $2 trillion and $2.3 trillion respectively. An estimated 801,000 Afghans and Iraqis perished in these wars, 335,000 of whom were civilians.

In the end, what did we achieve? We handed Afghanistan back to the Taliban, only now they have billions of dollars worth of state-of-the-art military equipment.

We also rarely consider the possibility that our constant meddling in the Middle East is the cause of much of the anti-American sentiment in the region. We cant expect to strip people of their sovereignty and control other nations domestic affairs without experiencing massive blowback. In 1953, the U.S. engineered a coup and installed the Shah in Iran; 26 years later angry Iranians took our embassy and 66 hostages.

Our failed invasion and occupation of Afghanistan will be remembered for its hubris, especially in regards to our ill-advised attempt to install a Western-style democracy. How arrogant is the U.S. to think that it can defy all historical precedent? Why did the U.S. Military think it could march into the graveyard of empires, politically unify a country that has consisted of feuding warlords for virtually all its history, and establish a democracy where one has never existed?

Democracies cannot be willed into existence; they develop painstakingly slowly along with cultural attitudes and views on individual rights and human liberty. Britains democracy is healthy and functioning because it has 800 year-old roots going back to the Magna Carta.

Afghanistan has no such history. Furthermore, why is it our role to go around forcing democracy on people who do not want it? Many undemocratic countries exist today; we dont possibly have the money or manpower to invade and occupy them all for decades on end until Western democracy flourishes. Empires die when they overextend and spread themselves too thin militarily, incurring massive debt in the process and neglecting domestic issues.

Ironically, as we were busy trying to secure freedom and democracy for the people of Afghanistan, our government was actively restricting American citizens freedoms. The 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul dubbed it, quietly authorized unconstitutional operations of mass surveillance against the general American populace and allowed for bulk data collection.

The act was an assault on the Fourth Amendment; if widespread, indiscriminate surveillance and collection of Americans activities and records is not unreasonable search and seizure, then what is? Rather than prosecuting whistleblower Edward Snowden, we should give him a pardon and a medal of freedom for defending Americans constitutional rights.

The FISA courts meant to check the surveillance state have proved to be a rubber stamp, denying just 12 warrants out of over 33,000 requested. The framers specifically included the 4th amendment because of the British writs of assistance, essentially generalized search warrants. The British officials who broke down colonists doors and trifled through their papers would be envious of the ease with which the NSA can monitor millions of Americans.

On a deep, cultural level, 9/11 caused a shift in the way Americans view and assess risk. Since 2001 the balance between freedom and security has slanted heavily in the direction of security. Weve become a far more paranoid and risk-averse society, which runs contrary to Americas notorious history of pioneers, risk-takers, and daredevils.

Weve accepted heightened security measures at airports, concerts, and sporting events. Weve accepted a stringent new regime of anti-money laundering laws meant to prevent financing of terrorism, laws that have hurt American banks and compromised our financial privacy. Even the Statue of Liberty, one of Americas most iconic and recognizable monuments, did not escape this cultural shift. Following the 9/11 attacks, the National Park Service permanently closed the statues crown to visitors, citing security concerns.

Now two decades out from 9/11, we are in need of a course correction, both domestically and with regards to our foreign policy. Lets stop deploying troops all over the world and consolidate our attention on true national security threats, like the rising Peoples Republic of China. Lets protect the Fourth Amendment by rolling back the powers of the NSA. Rather than living in fear and embracing the surveillance state, the best way to honor the legacy of those killed on 9/11 is to defend the American way of life and the freedoms our country was founded upon.

More:
The Terrorists Won - Catholic University of America The Tower

By TCR Staff | September 16, 2021

Experts and advocates have raised concerns about a growing trend among law enforcement agencies to use Geofence location warrants, reverse search warrants, and keyword search warrants to target and track individuals based on their data usage, often making them suspects in crimes they have nothing to do with, reports The Guardian. Google revealed for the first time in August that it received 11,554 geofence location warrants from law enforcement agencies in 2020, up from 8,396 in 2019 and 982 in 2018.

Experts argue that geofence and other broad warrants such as those that ask companies to sift through keywords people searched for are akin to a general warrant, made illegal by the fourth amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. Unlike other kinds of search warrants, which are targeted and seek information about people who law enforcement has probable cause to believe has committed a specific crime, these warrants dont have a particular person in mind. While there is legislation in the works that would impose safeguards on other means of getting hold of vast swaths of sensitive location data, such as cell site simulators and the outright sale of that information, there isnt currently a publicly known congressional effort to do the same for geofence warrants.

Read the original post:
Privacy Experts Alarmed By Police Use of Google Locating and Search History - Crime Report

Atatiana Jefferson

The family of Atatiana Jefferson, the Texas woman who in late 2019 was shot and killed at 28 by police in her own home, is suing the city and the officer who fired his weapon over the emotional trauma inflicted on Jeffersons young nephew, who was in the same room as his aunt at the time she was killed.

The complaint was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas by one of Jeffersons older sisters, Amber Carr, on behalf of her minor son, Zion Carr. In addition to former Fort Worth Police Officer Aaron Dean, who shot Jefferson, the named defendants to the action are the city of Fort Worth, former Police Chief Ed Kraus, and the citys former Mayor Betsy Price.

Carrs mother alleged multiple violations of her sons Fourth Amendment rights resulted in him suffering extreme and severe mental and emotional distress, anxiety, terror and agony.

As previously reported by Law&Crime, in October 2019, Jefferson was watching Zion at the home shared by her and her mother because Amber had been hospitalized due to medical issues. Jefferson and her nephew had stayed up late and were playing video games in the living room and left the front door to the house opened to allow a cool breeze into the home, according to the complaint.

At approximately 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2019, a neighbor called the Fort Worth Police Departments non-emergency line to report that Jeffersons door had been left open (the doorwas usually closed at that hour). Responding to the call, Dean and his partner parked around the corner, then opened a closed fence leading to Jeffersons backyard and began peering into the windows.

Ms. Jefferson became aware that someone was lurking outside, but had no way of knowing who or why was someone was outside, the complaint said. Ms. Jefferson went to the window to investigate. When Ms. Jefferson looked out the window, Officer Dean immediately flashed a light on her, shot her, and killed her.

The allegations in the filed complaint appear to coincide withbodycam footage released in the wake of the shooting. The tape showed Dean searching the perimeter of the home then moving to the backyard. Seconds later, he can be seen shining his flashlight through the window and yelling, Put your hands up! Show me your hands! He then fired a fatal shot through the windowpane.

At the age of 8, [Zion] was forced to watch the murder of his aunt, Atatiana Jefferson, at the hands of Fort Worth Police, the complaint claimed.After Officer Dean shot Ms. Jefferson, he and his partner entered the house and attempted to give CPR to her as she bled on the floor of her own home in front of [Zion]. [Zion] was forced to watch his aunt die in front of him.

The suit additionally alleged that, following the shooting, Zion was threatened by Officer Dean and then unconstitutionally interrogated by police without parental consent.

Defendant Officer Dean engaged in a course of conduct that violated Plaintiffs Fourth Amendment rights which began with his unlawful entry onto the property and culminated with him murdering Ms. Jefferson in front of [Zion] and assaulting [Zion] by threatening him with a deadly weapon, a firearm, the suit stated.

Dean, who had been on the force since 2018, was arrested and charged with murder days after shooting Jefferson. He was released after posting bond of $200,000. A trial date has not yet been scheduled.

The police department, and the public officials in charge at the time of the shooting are culpable for displaying a consistent and systematic failure to properly train and supervise its officers on the proper use of force, and techniques and principles of de-escalation. Such failures have resulted in numerous incidents of officers unnecessarily using force resulting in serious bodily injury and death, particularly against people of color, the complaint alleged.

Policymakers Chief Kraus and/or Mayor Price knew of the failures of the Fort Worth Police Department as discussed herein but failed to take the necessary steps to rectify the failures and adequately protect the constitutional rights of the people of Fort Worth, the complaint added. These failures and the refusal to rectify them were the moving force behind the deprivation of [Zions] constitutional rights.

The suit seeks a judgment for an untold amount in damages as well as medical bills and attorneys fees.

Jeffersons relatives in November filed a separate wrongful death suit against former Officer Dean.

Read the full lawsuit below.

[image via Inside Edition screengrab]

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Originally posted here:
8-Year-Old Boy Was Forced to Watch the Murder of His Aunt by Police in Texas, Lawsuit Alleges - Law & Crime

T

he Kalispel Tribe of Indians of Washington State received approval on Wednesday to allow sports wagering on tribal grounds, effective as of September 15.

According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Fourth Amendment in the Tribal-State Compact between the Tribe, which runs the Northern Quest Casino, and Washington state was approved at the tribes gaming facilities.

The amendment applies to Class III Gaming, which according to the Washington State Gambling Commission includes lotteries, casino games, house-banked card games, machine gaming, and other forms of gambling. With sports wagering now available, bettors will be able to bet on professional sports, the Olympics as well as other international events, however, they cant wager on in-state college teams.

The Tribe reached a tentative agreement with the gambling commission earlier this year to add sports betting. However, it had to go through the legal steps before bets could be placed. Northern Quest has been revamping its Turf Club to welcome sports gamblers, reports the KXLY.

See more here:
Washington State tribe granted approval to offer sports betting - Yogonet International

U.S. Supreme Court

Following the death of George Floyd, the nation focused attention on the enormous problems of police violence and racism in law enforcement, but there is a failure to put blame where much belongs: on the United States Supreme Court.

Many provisions of the Constitution exist to limit what police can do and to protect the rights of all of us, including those suspected and accused of crimes. Yet the court has done an ineffective, and indeed a poor job, of enforcing provisions of the Constitution intended to constrain the police. The Supreme Court has historically and consistently empowered the police to engage in racialized policing that especially harms people of color.

That is the thesis of my new book, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights. There are many provisions of the Constitution meant to limit police behavior. The Fourth Amendment restricts the ability of the police to seize people and to search them. The Fifth Amendment protects the privilege against self-incrimination and constrains police questioning. The due process clauses of the Fifth and 14th Amendments impose many restrictions, including preventing suggestive police identification procedures, such as lineups.

Yet through almost all of American history, the Supreme Court has done little to enforce these provisions and to constrain the police. For the first century after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the court virtually never decided a case about them, leaving the police unchecked by the Constitution. Except for a brief time during the Warren Court, particularly from 1961-1969, the court has narrowly interpreted these constitutional protections and instead has consistently ruled in favor of the police.

It is not hyperbole to say that under current law, as developed by the Supreme Court, the police can stop any person at any time and frisk the person, a power that is disproportionately used against Black and brown people. There is little protection of individuals from coercion in police interrogations, so long as the police dont use physical force. The court has virtually ignored the problem of false eyewitness identifications that have led to convictions of many innocent people, especially when a person is identifying someone of a different race. The court has made it difficult for victims of police abuse to successfully sue, even when an officer used egregious excessive force leading to serious injuries or death. In fact, the court has weakened, or gutted, all of the remedies that might be used to challenge police misconduct.

In empowering law enforcement, the courts decisions have led to enormous racial disparities in policing. In 2016, Black males aged 15-34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers, according to the Guardian. They were also killed at four times the rate of young white men, a study in the American Journal of Public Health found. It also showed Hispanic men are nearly twice as likely to be killed by police as white men. The United States Civil Rights Commission concluded that while people of color make up fewer than 38% of the population, they make up almost 63% of unarmed people killed by police. Overall, civilian deaths from shootings and other police actions are vastly higher in the United States than in other developed nations.

And even when death does not result, there is a serious problem of excessive police force, especially directed at racial minorities, that causes physical and psychological injuries. There are seemingly endless accounts of police unnecessarily striking suspects, especially men of color, with batons, using tasers, applying chokeholds, and employing far more force than needed under the circumstances. The Center for Policing Equity found that 1 in 5 Americans interacts with law enforcement yearly. Of those encounters, 1 million result in use of force. And if youre Black, you are 2-4 times more likely to have force used than if you are white.

Discussions about the problems with policing usually do not focus on the Supreme Court, which does not hire or train or supervise or discipline police officers. It does not set budgets for police departments or manage their operations. As people focus on what police do on the streets, the connection to Supreme Court rulings is not apparent and seems remote. But the Constitution contains crucial provisions limiting how policing is to be done and what the Supreme Court says about them, or more importantly does not say, has an enormous effect on what police do every day. Without enforcement of the Constitutions constraints on police, all too often the rights of criminal suspects and defendants become illusory.

To take one example, under the Supreme Courts decisions, police can stop and frisk virtually any person at any time. Studies in many cities show that police disproportionately use this power against people of color.

The court opened the door to this practice in Terry v. Ohio, in 1968, under the liberal Warren Court. Notwithstanding the language of the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause for a police stop or search, the court said that only a lesser standardreasonable suspicionneeded to be met. To this day, the court never has defined reasonable suspicion other than to say that it requires more than a hunch and less than probable cause.

In subsequent decisions, the court made it easy for the police to find reasonable suspicion in almost any situation. Whren v. United States, from 1996, is particularly important. Undercover officers in Washington, D.C., became suspicious when a car stopped at a stop sign for about 30 seconds. They followed the car until the driver committed a minor infraction, turning without a signal. Even though undercover officers in D.C. were not allowed to enforce traffic laws, the police pulled the car over, ordered the driver and passenger out of the vehicle and searched the area of the car where they were sitting. They found illegal drugs.

The traffic stop clearly was a pretext; the officers had no authority to enforce traffic laws and no interest in doing so. The court said that does not matter. The actual motivation of the officers is irrelevant. The court said that the decision to stop an automobile is reasonable where the police have probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred. So long as the officer has probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion, that a traffic law has been violated, the officer may stop the vehicle.

If police officers follow anyone long enough, they will observe a driver changing lanes, turning without a signal, exceeding the speed limit by a mile or two an hour, orand this is the easiest for policethe car not stopping long enough, or too long, at a stop sign. It is irrelevant for Fourth Amendment purposes that the officers actual motivation for the stop had nothing to do with traffic enforcement. And studies show that this power is used disproportionately against people of color. Emma Pierson and the Stanford Open Policing Project analyzed data on vehicle stops from 21 state patrol agencies and 35 city police departments from 2011 to 2018. They found that Black drivers were stopped 43% more often than white drivers relative to their share of the population.

This is just one example of how the Supreme Court has empowered the police and how it has led to highly racialized policing. But what can be done about it?

In light of the political composition of the Supreme Court, now and for the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that it will interpret the Constitution to control the police. If the court continues to fail, and I fear it will given that a majority of the justices have shown no concern or awareness of the problems with policing in the United States, then we must turn to other institutions to control the police, check police abuses and end racist policing in the United States. Congress, state legislatures and city councils can enact new laws to reform policing. After the tragic death of George Floyd, bills were introduced into Congress and into state legislatures to impose crucial new checks on the police. Unfortunately, these have stalled; even the progressive California legislature failed to enact new laws last year.

State courts can interpret state constitutions to protect rights and to impose limits on state and local police departments. State constitutions always can provide more protection of rights than the United States Constitution. For example, some state courts, such as in Arkansas and Washington, have rejected Whren and prohibited pretextual police stops.

The U.S. Department of Justice can aggressively enforce existing laws to reform police departments. A federal law, 42 U.S.C. 14141, authorizes the DOJ to sue police departments when there is a pattern and practice of civil rights violations. This has been used to reform many major police departments, such as in Los Angeles, Seattle, Baltimore and Cincinnati. The Trump administration expressly refused to use this authority, but Attorney General Merrick Garland has said that once more the Justice Department will be bringing suits under it.

All of these actions can make a big difference in how policing is done in the United States. And perhaps someday, the court will fulfill its duty of enforcing the parts of the Constitution that are meant to control the police and ensure equal justice under the law.

Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. He is an expert in constitutional law, federal practice, civil rights and civil liberties, and appellate litigation. Hes the author of several books, including The Case Against the Supreme Court (Viking, 2014) and The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State, written with Howard Gillman (Oxford University Press, 2020). His latest book is Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights (Liveright, 2021).

Link:
Chemerinsky: The Supreme Court has done a poor job protecting against police abuse of power and racism - ABA Journal