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posted by janrinok on Saturday November 19 2016, @04:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the at-last! dept.

Something is wrong when asking for help leads to the police ransacking your home. Found on techdirt is this story for our times: Appeals Court To Cops: If You 'Don't Have Time' For 'Constitutional Bullshit,' You Don't Get Immunity:

A disabled vet with PTSD accidentally called a suicide prevention hotline when intending to dial the Veterans Crisis Line. Within hours, he was dealing with DC Metro's finest, dispatched to handle an attempted suicide. This brief quote from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals opinion [PDF] -- part of veteran Matthew Corrigan's first conversation with responding officers -- sets the tone for the next several hours of Constitutional violations.

The officer who had asked for his key told him: "I don't have time to play this constitutional bullshit. We're going to break down your door. You're going to have to pay for a new door." Corrigan Dep. 94:15–18. Corrigan responded, "It looks like I'm paying for a new door, then. I'm not giving you consent to go into my place." Id. 94:19–21.

This is as much respect as the responding officers had for Corrigan's Constitutional rights. The rest of the opinion shows how they handled the supposed suicide case with the same level of care.

From there it gets worse, much worse.

[Continues...]

The opening of the opinion recounts just how dangerous it is to talk to nearly anyone linked to the government about your personal problems.

Matthew Corrigan is an Army Reservist and an Iraq war veteran who, in February 2010, was also an employee of the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the night of February 2, 2010, suffering from sleep deprivation, he inadvertently phoned the National Suicide Hotline when dialing a number he thought to be a Veterans Crisis Line. When he told the Hotline volunteer that he was a veteran diagnosed with PTSD, she asked whether he had been drinking or using drugs and whether he owned guns. Corrigan assured her that he was only using his prescribed medication and was not under the influence of any illicit drugs or alcohol; he admitted that he owned guns. The volunteer told him to "put [the guns] down," and Corrigan responded, "That's crazy, I don't have them out." Corrigan Dep. 56:2–5.

Despite Corrigan's assurances that his guns were safely stored, the volunteer repeatedly asked him to tell her "the guns are down." Id. 56:2–14. When asked if he intended to hurt himself or if he intended to "harm others," he responded "no" to both questions. Id. 69:6–18. Frustrated, Corrigan eventually hung up and turned off his phone, took his prescribed medication, and went to sleep. Id. 56:10–14; 70:6–7. The Hotline volunteer proceeded to notify the MPD.

The whole story is well-worth reading, but in a nutshell: The vet finally comes out of his home, locks the door, does not resist, is handcuffed, does not give permission for a search, and the police then proceed to knock down his door, perform a search without a warrant, and then come back five hours later to perform another search, still without a warrant, and thoroughly ransacks his home. The techdirt story concludes:

Better yet, the "screw your Constitution" officers have had their immunity stripped.

Because it was (and is) clearly established that law enforcement officers must have an objectively reasonable basis for believing an exigency justifies a warrantless search of a home, and because no reasonable officer could have concluded such a basis existed for the second more intrusive search, the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity across the board.

"Objectively reasonable" is not a high bar. But the MPD never had any intent of reaching it. The officer's statement that there was "no time" for the Constitution made that very clear. The failure to find anything in plain view during the first sweep was treated as an excuse to turn a cooperative man's (cooperative except for consent to search) upside down until officers could find something to excuse their steamrolling of the Fourth Amendment. They figured what they uncovered would save them after the fact. That's the ends justifying the means and that's precisely what the Fourth Amendment is there to protect against.

So, it seems that justice for the vet might finally win out in this case, but only after having his home upended and a long, drawn-out court case.

What [else] is a citizen to do?


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  • (Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Saturday November 19 2016, @04:04PM

    by Fnord666 (652) on Saturday November 19 2016, @04:04PM (#429432) Homepage

    Secondly, it was decided on November 8, 2016. It can still be appealed.

    Which brings up an interesting conundrum. Sure, the PD could appeal it, but the risk is that it could be affirmed at a higher level, making it a precedent in a broader range of jurisdictions.

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  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:23PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:23PM (#429514) Journal

    That is true and with the current court makeup, it's a real risk. It's a good thing Garland hasn't been appointed because he's usually pro-cop and that would change the calculus.