They tell us over and over again that we should have no expectation of privacy or not being filmed in public. Well, IMO they should not have any expectation of privacy or not being filmed when on private property and conducting the work _that we pay for_. They work for us.
That is not just your opinion, that is the opinion of multiple United States Court of Appeals circuits in many many cases, and by its declining to overturn these cases, that is also the opinion of the United States Supreme Court. The United States is a common law country, so really what that means is that your opinion is actually not an opinion at all; you have simply stated the established law of the land.
and I imagine that if the INVERSE of this case had come up, the police suing for defamation would have been protected by qualified immunity so no lawsuit would have been possible.
The police being able to leverage civil law against citizens to control their behavior in ways that citizens cannot leverage against cannot to comment on the abuse of power is entirely unacceptable no matter what our laws and judiciary chose to allow.
Cynicism is very cooler-than-thou, but it's not because we don't know better.
It's because we do know how the system fails, and holding power accountable to those high aspirations is the only thing that pushes back the equilibrium.
Only insofar as those business interests align with the government's interests.
The police get paid by and do the bidding of the government. They work for the government.
While you can screech about the degree of overlap between government interests and big business interests, and it absolutely is something worth screeching about, acting as though they are one in the same is counterproductive to understanding either.
> In one of the music videos, “Will You Help Me Repair My Door,” surveillance footage shows officers swinging open a gate, kicking down a door, and roaming armed around a living room and a kitchen.
>The other, “Lemon Pound Cake,” shows one of the officers, gun in hand, pausing briefly in Mr. Foreman’s kitchen by a cake inside a glass cloche. “It made the sheriff want to put down his gun and cut him a slice,” Mr. Foreman sings in the song.
Seems like the Streisand effect to me. Suing him over this calls attention to the inappropriateness of police raiding his house. I hadn't heard this story and now I took away from it some embarrassing stories about the cops.
The lemon pound cake first features in the first video, "Will You Help Me Repair My Door" and seems to have become popular (a chubby sheriff deputy glancing at a lemon pound cake, gun in hand is a viral godsend!) so he made that second video about it [1] and it completely took off. I have watched videos outside the courthouse after the verdict and supporters were even handing free lemon pound cakes [2]. Has the apple pie got competition?
"Mr. Foreman was not at home during the 2002 police raid, but a security camera system and his wife, using her cellphone, recorded the “faces and bodies” of the officers while they were on the property, according to the lawsuit"
"2002"
New York Times, everyone.
Props to afroman for his perfect demeanor/attitude during all this.
They're implying "An establishment calling itself a 'newspaper of record' can be expected to have high standards, such as correctly reporting dates, and I'll hold them to that"
If you can spot a typo in the first few seconds of reading a piece, so can the editor and sub-editor before it's published.
Myself and most other programmers I know have at least once (more like 100 times) had the experience where you can't figure something out in some code you've been staring at for an hour, then another person comes along and immediately sees an obvious glaring error that you missed.
I can only imagine the same thing happens in newsrooms with text, especially when it is visibly very similar, like "2002" and "2022."
The process these days is more like publish then do editorial review. See it on major outlets all the time - break the story as early as possible, get the eyeballs and ad revenue, then get it cleaned up for posterity.
Sometimes this results in radical changes to a piece within hours of publication - yesterday for instance the BBC ran a piece headlined something like “I watched my father murder my mother”, and six hours later in slides an editorial correction saying “she did not, in fact, see her father murder her mother. She was asleep in another room at the time.”
They chose not to do so. And the courts are no help, because generally speaking, you can't sue the government unless there's a specific law allowing you to do so (sovereign immunity). The police as individuals are generally immune from civil suits unless they violated some clearly established right (qualified immunity).
Qualified immunity just protects the police, and other government officials personally. If there is grounds for a lawsuit then he could still sue the government that employs the police department.
I think in general, if it is a legit warrant, it is very difficult to win a lawsuit for damage. Though with that video, and how high profile this has been, he might be able to win something. though IANAL, and I'm just going off my gut.
The federal government and a most state governments in the US have laws that waive or partially waive sovereign immunity for tort claims against the government.
But these police don't work for the state government. They worked for the Adams County government. The immunity waiver you linked explicitly only applies to the state government.
> (A)(1) The state hereby waives its immunity from liability,
> (A) "State" means the state of Ohio, including, but not limited to, the general assembly, the supreme court, the offices of all elected state officers, and all departments, boards, offices, commissions, agencies, institutions, and other instrumentalities of the state. "State" does not include political subdivisions.
> (B) "Political subdivisions" means municipal corporations, townships, counties, school districts, and all other bodies corporate and politic responsible for governmental activities only in geographic areas smaller than that of the state to which the sovereign immunity of the state attaches.
Additionally even if the officers did work for the state, the immunity waiver still would not apply to the action of breaking down a door while executing a search warrant.
> (3)(a) Except as provided in division (A)(3)(b) of this section, the state is immune from liability in any civil action or proceeding involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty
and Ohio state law specifically authorizes breaking down doors to execute search warrants so this action would be one "involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty"
> (A) When making an arrest or executing an arrest warrant or summons in lieu of an arrest warrant, or when executing a search warrant, the peace officer, law enforcement officer, or other authorized individual making the arrest or executing the warrant or summons may break down an outer or inner door or window of a dwelling house or other building
I didn't know about sovereign immunity, but I just looked it up and there are exceptions to it. I think this one in particular could fall under a civil rights violation.
People routinely get money from excessive force used by police officers, and I believe that does extend to property too.
Qualified immunity means it is almost impossible to sue the officers directly, which is why so many people have a problem with it. Not only do taxpayers have to pay for the actions of a bad police officer, the officer themself isn't held responsible for their actions.
On the other hand, you don't want officers afraid to engage with a dangerous situation because they might bankrupt their family if they do the wrong thing in the heat of the moment. It is a sticky situation, and before smartphones and body cameras there was no real way to know if an officer crossed the line. As technology improves, I expect there to be more personal accountability, while also allowing the officers enough leeway to do their jobs without hesitation.
Police departments are sued constantly. Most major police departments even have dedicated divisions set up just to assess and respond to lawsuits. Oftentimes by just knocking on the door and handing over a check.
Making up details of the incident doesn't help either. They didn't eat anything, a cop just did a double-take at the lemon pound cake, and Afroman wrote a song about how they wanted to eat it.
He is a seasoned professional at this. He was respected in the diss track game in his day, he definitely understands the boundaries of defamation. And what has long been known in rap in newspapers: even if you're right it's not worth it to be on the stand defending defamation. "It's average size your honor."
They’re not liable to repair damage incurred from a raid or any other action. If the fire department has to chop your door open with an axe to gain entry to your home, they don’t pay for that either, you do.
If the police execute a search warrant on your home and kill your pet or a person, guess who is responsible for cleaning up the blood and mess? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the police.
There's even a legal case where police took a backhoe to a building and tore one wall completely out instead of negotiating during a hostage situation. The homeowner was unable to get compensation for their destroyed home.
His mistake was stopping when the lawsuit failed. Anyone can rent a backhoe. People forget that there is also a court of public opinion you can appeal to.
The police being able to leverage civil law against citizens to control their behavior in ways that citizens cannot leverage against cannot to comment on the abuse of power is entirely unacceptable no matter what our laws and judiciary chose to allow.
Ooh sweet summer child.
It's because we do know how the system fails, and holding power accountable to those high aspirations is the only thing that pushes back the equilibrium.
The police get paid by and do the bidding of the government. They work for the government.
While you can screech about the degree of overlap between government interests and big business interests, and it absolutely is something worth screeching about, acting as though they are one in the same is counterproductive to understanding either.
>The other, “Lemon Pound Cake,” shows one of the officers, gun in hand, pausing briefly in Mr. Foreman’s kitchen by a cake inside a glass cloche. “It made the sheriff want to put down his gun and cut him a slice,” Mr. Foreman sings in the song.
The man has a sense of humor.
[1] https://youtu.be/9xxK5yyecRo?si=rnz34IxCeFPRKQ4M
[2] https://youtu.be/pSEOiu0RvLk?si=xx2ZrN1rzEg3n1Ve
"2002" New York Times, everyone.
Props to afroman for his perfect demeanor/attitude during all this.
If you can spot a typo in the first few seconds of reading a piece, so can the editor and sub-editor before it's published.
I can only imagine the same thing happens in newsrooms with text, especially when it is visibly very similar, like "2002" and "2022."
Sometimes this results in radical changes to a piece within hours of publication - yesterday for instance the BBC ran a piece headlined something like “I watched my father murder my mother”, and six hours later in slides an editorial correction saying “she did not, in fact, see her father murder her mother. She was asleep in another room at the time.”
So yeah, sovereign immunity.
I think in general, if it is a legit warrant, it is very difficult to win a lawsuit for damage. Though with that video, and how high profile this has been, he might be able to win something. though IANAL, and I'm just going off my gut.
This raid was in Ohio. Here's their immunity waiver: https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2743.02
Here's a page that links to a PDF with a table given cites and details for all 50 states: https://www.mwl-law.com/resources/sovereign-immunity-tort-li...
> (A)(1) The state hereby waives its immunity from liability,
and then "state" is defined in https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2743.01
> (A) "State" means the state of Ohio, including, but not limited to, the general assembly, the supreme court, the offices of all elected state officers, and all departments, boards, offices, commissions, agencies, institutions, and other instrumentalities of the state. "State" does not include political subdivisions.
> (B) "Political subdivisions" means municipal corporations, townships, counties, school districts, and all other bodies corporate and politic responsible for governmental activities only in geographic areas smaller than that of the state to which the sovereign immunity of the state attaches.
Additionally even if the officers did work for the state, the immunity waiver still would not apply to the action of breaking down a door while executing a search warrant.
> (3)(a) Except as provided in division (A)(3)(b) of this section, the state is immune from liability in any civil action or proceeding involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty
and Ohio state law specifically authorizes breaking down doors to execute search warrants so this action would be one "involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty"
> (A) When making an arrest or executing an arrest warrant or summons in lieu of an arrest warrant, or when executing a search warrant, the peace officer, law enforcement officer, or other authorized individual making the arrest or executing the warrant or summons may break down an outer or inner door or window of a dwelling house or other building
https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2935.12
People routinely get money from excessive force used by police officers, and I believe that does extend to property too.
Qualified immunity means it is almost impossible to sue the officers directly, which is why so many people have a problem with it. Not only do taxpayers have to pay for the actions of a bad police officer, the officer themself isn't held responsible for their actions.
On the other hand, you don't want officers afraid to engage with a dangerous situation because they might bankrupt their family if they do the wrong thing in the heat of the moment. It is a sticky situation, and before smartphones and body cameras there was no real way to know if an officer crossed the line. As technology improves, I expect there to be more personal accountability, while also allowing the officers enough leeway to do their jobs without hesitation.
distrack as legal maneuver.
If the police execute a search warrant on your home and kill your pet or a person, guess who is responsible for cleaning up the blood and mess? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the police.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DV_7xmAEfq0/
Apologies, I wish I had a less cancerous link