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Bishop J. Drew Sheard, presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ.(Photo: Stephen Savage,Savage Graphics,LLC)

A Detroit pastor, J. Drew Sheard,has been elected to leadChurch of God in Christ (COGIC), a growing denomination with millions of members, the latest example of clergy from Michigan becoming national leaders of faith groups.

Sheard, 62, who leadsGreater Emmanuel Institutional Church in Detroit, was elected Saturday by delegates with COGIC at their national assembly, which was held online, to be COGIC's presiding bishop, its highest ranking leader.

To be elected to serve as the Presiding Bishop for the Church in which I was born, raised, and have learned and served all my life, is a dream and desire that can only be fulfilled by Gods loving grace and guidance," Sheard said in a news release. "The opportunity to serve such an extraordinary organization at our highest recognized level of priesthood is beyond humbling."

Another local pastor, Bishop Michael Hill ofKingdom International in Dearborn, was elected to be one of 12 members of COGIC's board, which includes Sheard.COGIC is reportedly the 5th largest Christian denomination in the U.S. as of 2012, according to the National Council of Churches.

Sheard's election was celebrated by faith and political leaders in Michigan, where COGIC, a predominantly Black and Pentecostal denomination,has a strong presence. Bishop P.A. Brooks, an influential faith leader in Detroit who died last year at 88, was a member of COGIC's national board.

"I am absolutely ecstatic,"Bishop Edgar Vann of Second EbenezerChurch in Detroit, who has been afriend of Sheard for decades since they were teenage preachers, told the Free Press on Monday."He represents in his denomination a whole new refreshing generation of leadership. ... It's a very crucial post in Christiandom right now. It is one of the highest denominational posts in the African American community. And he will lead that denomination with distinction ... with innovation and creativity."

Sheard becoming leader of COGIC is "a great distinction for Detroit and it makes Detroit really the epicenter for this particular denomination," Vann said.

COGIC's national leaders are generally older, and so having Sheardbecomepresiding bishop at a younger agemeans "he's going to, by the grace of God, be there a long time to give a whole new, fresh look at that denomination, to enhance the faith community internationally."

Sheard's father is also a COGIC pastor, Bishop John Sheard, who leadsGreater Mitchell Temple Church of God in Christ in Detroit. His mother, Willie Mae Sheard, died last year of COVID-19 at 84. Sheard's wife,Karen Clark-Sheard, is known nationally for her gospel music along with her sisters.

BET (Black Entertainment Television) once had a reality TV show, The Sheards, about their family.

Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones also praised Sheard becoming presiding bishop, writing on Twitter: "You have worked hard, helped many & deserve this honor."

The Rev. Charles Williams, pastor of Historic King Solomon Baptist Church of Detroit and Chair of the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network, the civil rights group led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, said on Twitter: "Congrats to Bishop J. Drew Sheard! Keep standing with the people! Looking forward to seeing the future ofCOGIC."

Sheard is the latest Detroit pastor to become a national faith leader. In 2010, Bishop Charles Ellis III of Greater Grace Temple in Detroit became the national head of Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, a positionhe served in for several years.

Bishop Edgar Vann gives a sermon at Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit, 2012.(Photo: Monica Farrior)

Sheard has previously served on the general board and led its Michigan branch.

The Church of God in Christ isa Pentecostaldenomination that its leaders say has 6.5 million members. Although headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, its reach is global.

The position of the presiding bishop became open after the previous presiding bishop,Charles Blake Sr., announced hewould not seek reelection and requestedemeritus status.

Here are the other 11 members elected to COGIC's general board, itshighest executive board:

Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress.com or 313-223-4792. Twitter @nwarikoo

Read or Share this story: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/03/22/detroit-pastor-j-drew-sheard-cogic-presiding-bishop/4802425001/

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Detroit pastor J. Drew Sheard elected as national head of COGIC denomination, Dearborn pastor elected to board - Detroit Free Press

By Kurt Bardella

Sunday, March 21, 2021 | 2 a.m.

Anew report released by Stop AAPI Hate revealed that since March 19, 2020, there have been 3,795 hate incidents targeting Asian Americans. That figure barely scratches the surface, as most hate crimes go unreported. The rash of violence is becoming a daily event.

The most recent occurred Tuesday in the Atlanta area, where a white man is suspected of shooting and killing six Asian women.

A few days ago, Nancy Toh, an 83-year-old grandmother, was assaulted by a man who spit in her face and then punched her in the nose in Westchester, N.Y.

This month, a woman was charged with a crime for spitting at an Asian American man and yelling an ethnic slur at him as he dined outdoors in Silicon Valley.

On Monday, a white woman in New York City verbally assaulted an Asian American couple, yelling from a cab, Go back to (expletive) communist China, you (expletive).

I remember being made fun of when I was a kid in elementary school for looking different. For the shape and slant of my eyes. I remember the taunts, the ching and chong refrains. It affected me so that for so many years after, I effectively rejected my South Korean heritage. It was something I felt ashamed about. Something I hid from. Something I wanted nothing to do with it. Something that confused me.

What I didnt know then which I do now was that those taunts to make me feel inferior because of my physical appearance were acts of hate, and they were learned behaviors the kids picked up from their parents. What kind of person teaches another that its OK to attack someone in this way?

I never imagined back then that such hate would be so openly triggered by the leader of a political party, but thats where we are today.

In 1854, the California Supreme Court ruled that testimony from Chinese Americans was inadmissible because they were a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior, and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point.

That kind of thinking seems to be alive and well today, egged on by the Republican Party. Last September, 164 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against a resolution authored by Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., to condemn racism against Asian Americans. It was a sobering reminder of how mainstream bigotry against the Asian American Pacific Islander community has become in the Republican Party. Meng reintroduced the resolution in late February.

Just last week, former President Donald Trump issued a statement once again using the phrase China virus, which has inflamed hatred toward Asian Americans since the pandemic began. In their effort to find a scapegoat for the coronavirus, Republicans effectively put a bulls-eye on the backs of our community. The result is this torrent of violence.

If you look like me, youve almost certainly been told to go back to China by a white person at some point in your life. I think Ive been told that so many times throughout my life that on some level Ive become numb to it. But the more I think about that, the angrier I get. What does it say about this country that in the year 2021, a person can become so conditioned to outward displays of racism that he stops reacting to it?

Not anymore.

No more suffering in silence. No more waiting our turn. Were speaking out. Were mobilizing. No matter who you are, where youre from, we need you to be part of the #StopAsianHate movement. As the Rev. Al Sharpton put it the other day, You cant stop hate against anyone unless you fight hate against everyone.

Kurt Bardella, a Korean American, is a contributing writer to Opinion. He was spokesperson and senior advisor for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee from 2009 to 2013. This column originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

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Trump, GOP put a bull's-eye on the backs of Asian Americans - Las Vegas Sun

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a case that asks whether the Fourth Amendment's usual warrant requirement should be waived when the police conduct a warrantless home search while carrying out a so-called "community caretaker" function, such as when the cops perform a "wellness check" on a potentially troubled or injured person. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the Court's biggest Fourth Amendment hawks, raised a few objections to giving the cops that much leeway to enter the home without a warrant.

The case is Caniglia v. Strom. In 2015, Rhode Island police paid a "well call" on 68-year-old Edward Caniglia after his wife reported to authorities that he might be suicidal. The couple had gotten into a fight the night before and she had left to sleep elsewhere. When she couldn't reach him the next morning, she called the cops. The officers who visited the house had Caniglia taken to the hospital in an ambulance, where he was examined by a nurse and a social worker and discharged the same day. In the meantime, the police entered Caniglia's home without a warrant and seized his handguns. The case centers on Caniglia's claim that the warrantless search and seizure violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit ruled in the favor of the officers in 2020, holding that the "community caretaking" exception to the Fourth Amendment was sufficient to cover the matter at issue. The community caretaking doctrine, the 1st Circuit maintained, "is designed to give police elbow room to take appropriate action."

Sotomayor took issue with the lower court's judgment. "I am deeply concerned about the 1st Circuit's claim that there is no requirement that officers must select the least intrusive means of fulfilling community caretaking responsibilities," she told Marc Desisto, the attorney representing the Rhode Island officers and their superiors. For example, "why couldn't they ask the wife" for permission before entering the house? Why didn't the officers speak to a social worker or a psychiatrist? "How do we limit [the police] from substituting their own" judgment in such matters? Sotomayor demanded. "In this situation, there was no immediate danger," she said, yet the police "decided on their own to go in and seize the gun."

Sotomayor returned to those concerns later during an exchange with Morgan Ratner, an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general. "I don't have a problem with them having removed this gentleman and taken him to the hospital," Sotomayor said. That's a valid seizure under Fourth Amendment case law "because they had reason to believe that he was threatening suicide." Taking someone like Caniglia for a "psychiatric examination is very much an exigent circumstance."

The problem "is the next step" the officers took, Sotomayor maintained, "which is going into the home without attempt to secure consent from the wife and seizing the gun and then keeping it indefinitely until a lawsuit is filed."

"The wife tried to get [the gun] back," Sotomayor noted. "He tried to get it back. Weeks and weeks went by. When we permit police to search and seize without some standard, we run the risk of situations like this one repeating themselves."

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Sonia Sotomayor Questions Warrantless Gun Seizure in Big ...

The Supreme Court has handed down a new Fourth Amendment case, Torres v. Madrid, ruling that "the application of physical force to the body of a person with intent to restrain is a seizure, even if the force does not succeed in subduing the person." I thought it might be useful to get a sense of how far the new case goes, and how Fourth Amendment "seizure" doctrine might now look.

I. Prior Definitions of Fourth Amendment Seizures

First, some context. Although the law of Fourth Amendment "searches" gets tons of attention, the law of Fourth Amendment "seizures" has traditionally been passed over because it has been pretty simple to understand. The basic idea of a Fourth Amendment seizure, I have explained, has been a government taking of control. This plays out somewhat differently for seizures of property and people because the government takes control of people and property differently.

Here's the blackletter law as I have understood it before Torres. Let's start with property. The government seizes property when it meaningfully interferes with the possessory interest in that property, a test offered in United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984). Also, the acquisition of physical control must be intentional under Brower v. City of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593 (1989).

When it comes to a person, the seizure test is phrased differently. A person is seized when a government agent, "by means of physical force or show of authority, terminates or restrains his freedom of movement through means intentionally applied." See Brendlin v. California, 551 U.S. 249, 254 (2007) (cleaned up). When a person responds to a show of authority, as opposed to physical force, the test is that a seizure occurs if "in view of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave." Id. at 255.

At first blush the property-seizure and person-seizure tests sound different, as one is about interfering with possession and the other is about restraining freedom of movement and what a reasonable person would think. But I think they're really the same thing. The government takes control of property by taking possession of it (as having possession, in the law, is just having knowing control). The government takes control of a person by either restraining them through physical force or by making a show of force sufficient to make a reasonable person think they can't leave. Either way, it's all about control.

II. The Framework After Torres

Torres involves a seizure claim from a woman who was shot by police while driving away from them. She was injured but kept driving, escaping, and therefore she did not come under police control. She brought a civil action against the officers claiming that she was shot in violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. But was she "seized"? The Tenth Circuit said she was not, as she was never brought under police control.

Torres resolves uncertainty from dicta in a prior case, California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621 (1991), about whether there was a different approach for applications of physical force to a person. In particular, Hodari D. suggested that there was a common law rule that an arrest occurredconstituting a Fourth Amendment seizurewhen a person was actually touched in an effort to detain them even if they were not actually detained. That common law rule might be the correct interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.

Torres makes that dicta a holding, concluding that this indeed the common law rule and that is also the Fourth Amendment rule. The vote was 5-3, with Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority and Justice Gorsuch dissenting.

There's lots to say about the Torres case, but here I just want to focus on the post-Torres blackletter law. As I understand the law now, there are three or four distinct kinds of seizures, depending on how you classify them. Here I'll go with four different kinds:

The first three kinds of seizures are about taking control. The fourth kind of seizure, a seizure of a person by physical force, is about touching with an intent to take control but does not require taking control.

What does Torres say about the requirement of "physical force"? If I am reading the opinion correctly, "physical force" includes both "laying hands" and "touching [the person] with an object," covering "methods of apprehension old and new." A bullet shot from a gun counts as a touching with an object. The seizure occurs only for the time of the touching, so in the case of a shooting the seizure will last only the instant the bullet strikes. But it is still a touching using an object.

What about the "intent to restrain" requirement? According to Torres, the question is whether the objective facts show a subjective purpose to apprehend the person. That is, what happened needs to establish that the officer was trying to restrain the individual. (The Court leaves open that some other intents beyond intent to restrain may also satisfy the intent requirement, but it focuses on intent to restrain here.). If the touching is a light touching, for example, that likely won't be enough to show actual intent to restrain and the act won't be a seizure.

III. Three Hypotheticals

These distinctions make me think of some hypotheticals that test the line among these categories. There may be answers to these questions, but they struck me as interesting questions on which reasonable people might disagree. Here are three scenarios:

A) The officer is chasing after a suspect on foot who is carrying a bag in his hand. The officer reaches out to stop the suspect but can only grab the bag, which easily slips out of the suspect's fingers. The officer now has the bag, but the suspect never slows down and is not apprehended.

The seizure of the bag is clearly a Type 1 seizurethat is, a seizure of property. But was the suspect himself seized? It can't be a Type 2 or Type 3 seizure of the suspect, as he never stopped. But was this a Type 4 Torres seizure? The officer had intent to restrain the person, but he only grabbed the bag. Is grabbing the bag laying hands on the person or touching the person via an object (the bag)? Does that objectively show intent to restrain, or does grabbing the bag only objectively show intent to seize the bag?

B. An officer believes that a suspect in a car is armed and dangerous. He sees the suspect reach into his jacket and pull out something that he thinks is a gun. Believing that his life is in danger, the officer shoots the suspect in self-defense to prevent himself from being shot. The suspect is shot and wounded, but he manages to drive away. It turns out the suspect was not armed, but was just pulling out his cell phone.

Was the suspect seized? Clearly this is a Type 4 application of physical force to the body of a person. But is there "intent to restrain"? In the hypothetical, the officer was not trying to apprehend the person with the gun. He was not trying to bring the person into custody. Rather, he was trying to stop the person from shooting him. Does that count as "intent to restrain"? Perhaps it does, on the theory that the officer are trained that if they fire their weapon, they should shoot to killand that if the person had been killed, the killing would have effectively restrained the person. But perhaps it doesn't, on the theory that the officer's goal was stopping the suspect from aiming a gun and shooting him, not stopping his movement.

C. Officer tries to end a high-speed chase by running the suspect's car off the road by force. The officer pushes his car's bumpers against the suspect's bumpers, running the car off the road where it crashes into a ditch. The suspect immediately frees himself from the crashed car and continues to run, escaping on foot from the officer.

Was there a seizure, of either the driver or the car or both? I assume it was a Type 1 seizure of the suspect's car, as the officer interfered with the suspect's control of it. But was there a seizure of the person? Type 2 is clearly inapplicable. But was there a brief Type 3 seizure, on the ground that there was a temporary stop of the car when it crashed? Was there a Type 4 seizure? On the Type 4 question, did pushing his bumper into the suspect's bumper that then led to the crash amount to application of physical force to the person using an object? Or was was that not an application of physical force to the body, as it was instead an application of physical force to the car?

Interesting case.

Link:
What is a Fourth Amendment Seizure After Torres v ...

The Fourth Amendment is among the most sacred safeguards of individual liberty embedded in our Constitution.

The amendment reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In just 54 words, the Fourth Amendment packs a lot of significance, and interpreting their meaning has kept judges and lawyers busy for centuries.

The basic premise of this amendment is to protect Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures of their property by the government. (Keep an eye on the word unreasonable, because its going to be important.)

It is for this reason that a police officer cannot stop you while youre walking down the street and arbitrarily search your purse or pockets.

These protections did not just come about spontaneously. Like all amendments included in the Bill of Rights, the Framers learned from their experience as royal subjects and added safeguards against the abuses they routinely endured by British agents.

To better understand why the ratification of the Fourth Amendment was so important to our Framers requires a deep dive into the historical context of 18th-century colonial America.

The colonists, still under the thumb of the British king, were subject to arbitrary and invasive searches under the Writs of Assistance, which allowed British troops and government officials to search homes and private property looking for goods that were imported illegally or on which a tax had not been paid. Needless to say, such abuses were a sore point for the aggrieved colonists.

A particularly notable figure of the colonial revolutionary era is James Otis, a Massachusetts lawyer and political activist who has been described as the Founding Father of the Fourth Amendment.

In a famed 1761 oration against the Writs of Assistance, Otis painted a vivid portrait of how unlimited government search powers were a threat to the liberty and tranquility of the people:

Now one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of ones house. A mans house is his castle; and while he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle.

This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient. This wanton exercise of this power is not a chimerical suggestion of a heated brain

In making the case against the wanton exercise of this power over the American colonists by agents of the British crown, Otis articulated the intellectual and moral principles that would later come to undergird the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights. He thus laid the groundwork to ensure that such abuses of power would not be allowed to continue, should America earn its independence.

A young John Adams was in the audience when Otis gave this speech and later wrote then and there the child independence was born.

The principles passionately supported by Otis would come to serve as the foundation of individual liberty, private property protection, and privacy law.

So next time you see a television cop taking time to secure a search warrant from a judge to allow him to pursue an investigation against a criminal suspect, youre watching the Fourth Amendment in actionand you can thank James Otis for that.

Over the past century, the Fourth Amendment has grown in importance, owing to the expansion of government powers and the rapid pace of technological change. During that time, the courts have paid increasing attention to Fourth Amendment issues.

A particularly important landmark was the Supreme Courts decision in Weeks v. United States (1914), which established that evidence obtained through unconstitutional means was inadmissible in court. This is known as the exclusionary rule, which is important because it provides an incentive for law enforcement personnel and other government agents to be scrupulous in respecting Fourth Amendment protections.

Another seminal case in 20th-century Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was Katz v. United States (1967). Charles Katz was a sports gambler known for his skill at handicapping college basketball games. Unfortunately for Katz, his gifts brought him to the attention of federal investigators. Seeking to avoid law enforcement scrutiny, Katz often used a public phone booth near his Los Angeles apartment to conduct his less-than-legal business affairs. To build the case against him, the FBI tapped the phone booth, which resulted in criminal charges and a conviction against Katz.

Katz appealed his case, but the 9thCircuit upheld the search because it did not penetrate the telephone booths walls. However, the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts call, throwing out the FBIs wiretap evidence and overturning Katz conviction based on the new doctrine of a reasonable expectation of privacy.

This was a landmark moment for privacy law: by divorcing the FourthAmendment from concepts of property invasion, the Court fundamentally altered the jurisprudential landscape surrounding government searches and seizures.

While in some respects this decision expanded individual protections against government snooping, in other respects it weakened the protection against incursions on private property. Moreover, no one has ever been able to come up with a good explanation of exactly what a reasonable expectation of privacy is supposed to mean.

In reaction to the imprecision of the reasonableness standard, lawyers and scholars with an interest in property law have sought to rejuvenate Fourth Amendment jurisprudence with a renewed focus on incursions on private property rights. Along those lines, key Fourth Amendment cases from the past couple of decades include the following:

As noted above, the growth of governments enforcement powers and the proliferation of technological changes have opened up new frontiers for potential Fourth Amendment violations that challenge traditional understandings of search and seizure.

For example, PLFs has written about the questions surrounding digital privacy with regard to potentially intrusive technologies like surveillance and digital tracking, urging greater protections for individuals against potential violations of privacy.

Many digital privacy cases working their way through the courts now are incredibly important in defining what types of digital privacy the Fourth Amendment protects, Woislaw notes. The Fourth Amendment is our best line of defense against the pervasive surveillance stateso now is the time for judges to clarify with greater precision how the Constitution protects digital privacy.

Likewise, there are also issues dealing with administrative searches that permit government to search the physical sites of highly regulated industries with minimal warrant protections. These include gun shops, liquor stores, bars, industrial facilities, and the like. Its another area where courts should look to rein in potential government abuses of Fourth Amendment rights.

Such challenges only underscore the fact that protection of private property from government search is a key to securing individual liberty for all Americans.

The Fourth Amendment is much more than a matter of criminal procedureby limiting the power of government to target citizens through unreasonable searches and seizures, its one of our most important bulwarks in defense of privacy and individual liberty. It is essential, therefore, that the protections to private property granted by the Constitutions Fourth Amendment (and its close neighbor, the Fifth Amendment) be zealously guarded.

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The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution: A Primer ...