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San Jose appears to be settling litigation with a resident injured while trying to film police officers.

Last week in closed session, the San Jose City Council discussed a lawsuit brought by Nicholas Robinson, a security guard who records policeinteractions.Robinson was arrested while monitoring police conducting an arrest near Highway 101 in November 2018. He claimed in a lawsuit officers broke his arm whiledetaining him and violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

City Attorney Nora Frimann told San Jos Spotlight settlement negotiations conducted by the court are confidential. She addedthe city doesnt have a signed settlement agreement yet.

Robinsons attorneys told the courta settlement agreement has been reached, according to federal records. The attorneys, who did not respond to requests for comment, told Robinsonthe city approved the settlement, according to a screenshot of a text message.

Robinson told San Jos Spotlight hes upset with the settlement award, which he said amounts to roughly $30,000most of which will go toward attorney fees.

Thats not even going to cover my future surgery, Robinson said, notinghe has titanium rods and screws in his arms that will have to be replaced in several years.

The settlement is far from the $1.5 million Robinsons attorneys requested in September. In a court brief, they argued the short altercation resulted in a permanent disability.

Although defendants never told Mr. Robinson he was at least being detained, they tackled and broke his arm within a span of 12 seconds of meeting each other, the attorneys state in a court filing made in September.

His attorneys said in court briefs that Robinson sustained a broken arm that left him with permanent nerve damage. They claim the injury has cost Robinson approximately $75,000 in medical bills and at least $10,000 in lost wages.

Paying the price

San Joses city attorney said in a court brief that Robinson interfered with a felony warrant arrest at a homeless encampment by shining a flashlight at police officers, preventing them from continuing their operation.

Recordings from police body cameras show an officer demanding Robinson turn his flashlight off. After Robinson turned it off, he protestedhe had a right to be there and gestured with the end of his flashlight. This prompted the officers to grab Robinson and lift his arms above his head, which allegedly resulted in the injury.

Raj Jayadev, co-founder of Silicon Valley De-Buga community organizing group that focuses on the criminal justice systemtold San Jos Spotlight theres a long tradition of civilians monitoring police to prevent or at least witness misconduct.

Its an extremely important activity, and I think Nick should be applauded for it, Jayadev said. Hes actually had to pay the price with his body.

A recent audit of the San Jose Police Department founda quarter of officers received at least one complaint in 2020, and 23% of complaints contained allegations about use of force.

Attorney Robert Powell recently secured a $400,000 settlement for a San Jose couple allegedly injured by SJPD officers during a 2019 arrest. He told San Jos Spotlightnumerous factors may come into play when settling this kind of case, including the extent and severity of an injury, whether the plaintiff was resisting arrest and if there was missing body camera footage.

The problem with a number in a vacuum is its kind of meaningless, said Powell, referring to Robinsons lawsuit. Does it seem low? Thats fair to say. But thats about all one can say thats intellectually honest.

Robinson documents traffic stops in an effort to increase transparency around police activities, he said. Recording law enforcement officers in a public space is allowed under the First Amendment, but restrictions apply when it interferes with police worksomething several departmentsallege about Robinson.

Multiple law enforcement agencieshave restraining orders against Robinson, including the San Jose Police Department, Santa Clara Police Department, California Highway Patrol and the San Jose Police Officers Association. According to court records, Robinson has interfered with traffic stops by recording police officers with his cellphone, shining his flashlight at officers and sometimes shouting vulgarities.

Robinson said he supports law enforcement, but wants to create an additional layer of accountability for police. He notedbody cameras are supposed to fulfill this function, but he doesnt trust them.

We see time and time again, even when they do have the cameras on, it doesnt even hold them accountable, Robinson said.

Contact Eli Wolfe at[emailprotected]or@EliWolfe4on Twitter.

Visit link:
Cop watcher close to settlement with San Jose over broken arm - San Jos Spotlight

The government has started implementing the conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund for the revival of $6 billion extended fund facility programme as it has readied a bill that will allow it to levy new taxes amounting to Rs350 billion to Rs400 billion, sources divulged on Monday.

The sources further said government in its pursuit to fulfil the IMF conditions has prepared a bill permitting it to impose new taxes to the tune of Rs350-400 billion. They reveal that the Law Ministry has finalized the Fourth Amendment Bill to Taxation Law for levying new taxes and slashing development budget.

The government has decided to cut down developmental expenditures from Rs900 billion to Rs700 billion, they added.

According to sources, the bill also recommends abolition of all unnecessary tax exemptions. The Law Ministry has also tinkered with the Amendment to State Bank of Pakistan Act, sources concluded.

Read more:
Govt readies bill to levy new taxes of Rs400b - Pakistan Observer

My latest article, The Fourth Amendment Limits of Internet Content Preservation, was recently published in final form by the St. Louis University Law Journal. Here's the abstract:

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Internet accounts are copied and set aside by Internet providers on behalf of federal and state law enforcement. This process, known as preservation, ordinarily occurs without particularized suspicion. Any government agent can request preservation of any account at any time. Federal law requires the provider to set aside a copy of the account just in case the government later develops probable cause and returns with a warrant needed to compel the account's disclosure. The preservation process is largely secret. With rare exceptions, the account owner will never know the preservation occurred.

This Article argues that the Fourth Amendment imposes significant limits on the preservation of Internet account contents. Preservation triggers a Fourth Amendment seizure because the provider, acting as the government's agent, takes away the account holder's control of the account. To be constitutionally reasonable, the initial act of preservation must ordinarily be justified by probable causeand at the very least, in uncommon cases, by reasonable suspicion. The government can continue to use the Internet preservation statute in a limited way, such as to freeze an account while investigators draft a proper warrant application. But the current practice, in which investigators order the preservation of accounts with no particularized suspicion, violates the Fourth Amendment.

The article begins:

Imagine you are an FBI agent. One day you receive an anonymous tip that a particular person has committed a crime. You go online and search for the person's name, and your search reveals that, like most American adults, the person has a Facebook account. At this point, you only have an unverified tip. You lack reasonable suspicion, much less probable cause, to believe a crime was committed. And you have no particular reason to think the Facebook account was involved. But imagine federal law gave you the power to preserve and set aside the suspect's entire Facebook account nowincluding every private message and every saved photojust in case you later had the probable cause needed to access it.

Let me explain how this hypothetical law would work. At any time, you could command any Internet provider to save all of the contents of any account for up to 180 days. In response to your command, the provider would copy the entire account and set aside the copy for you without notifying the account holder. You would be unable to see the contents of the account unless you eventually develop probable cause and obtain a warrant. But you would have 180 days to develop probable cause. If no probable cause emerged, the preservation would end, and the provider would delete the saved copy without notifying the suspect. And if you developed probable cause during the 180-day period, you could get a warrant and compel the provider to hand over the contents of the account that had been previously preserved.

This hypothetical law would have obvious appeal for government investigators. A lot can happen in 180 days. The suspect might delete incriminating files. The suspect might get wise to the investigation and delete his online accounts to prevent the government from accessing them. By saving accounts at the beginning of a case, investigators could ensure that every record in existence at the outset is available if probable cause later develops. And it would all happen behind the scenes, as the provider would not disclose the preservation to the account holder. Even if the government eventually obtained a warrant and filed criminal charges, the preservation would not be disclosed during routine discovery. The entire process would remain secret.

As you might have guessed, this scenario is not just hypothetical. It describes a federal law, 18 U.S.C. 2703(f), as it is interpreted and used today.

Continue reading here:
Final Version, "The Fourth Amendment Limits of Internet Content Preservation" - Reason

from the striking-cold-irons-still-counterproductive dept

As courts seemingly have to remind school administrators (and their partners in unconstitutional crime, school police officers), students -- even minors -- still have constitutional rights. The First and Fourth Amendments are the most frequently violated, despite there being no lack of precedent upholding students' rights.

This latest rebuke of law enforcement overreach comes via the Colorado Court of Appeals (and via FourthAmendment.com). In this case, a Denver, Colorado student had his backpack warrantlessly searched by school security officers. This search resulted in the discovery of marijuana and paraphernalia, which led to juvenile charges against the minor, referred to in the opinion [PDF] as "C.C-S."

The reason the search was unconstitutional has a lot to do with how the school officers got it into their heads that C.C-S. should be detained and searched. The state of Colorado maintains an anonymous tip line called "Safe2Tell" which allows students and faculty to report suspicious activity or behavior to school officials.

The Safe2Tell tip that initiated this chain of unconstitutional events was old news by the time it was forwarded to DPS (Denver Public Schools) officials and, because of its origin, could not be corroborated.

A school security officer employed by Denver Public Schools (DPS) received a report that C.C-S., a student at a DPS high school, had been seen in a Snapchat video shooting a firearm out of a car window.

[...]

By the time the Snapchat video showing C.C-S. was reported to Safe2Tell on February 25, 2018, it was about one month old. At that point, no one was able to review the footage because videos posted on Snapchat automatically disappear from the platform after twenty-four hours, unless they are saved.

Nevertheless, school officials decided to act, relying on little more than this and another unsubstantiated (and unrelated) allegation.

Although unable to review the Snapchat video, the dean of C.C-S.s school told the school security officer that C.C-S. had a history of bringing things to school that he shouldnt, such as drugs and things like that.

"Drugs and things." Leaves a lot open to the imagination, which is what was exercised by school security officers, who took two uncorroborated reports and combined them into a search unsupported by probable cause.

At that point, the school security officer decided to search C.C-S., based on the Safe2Tell firearm tip, the deans comment, and the security officers policy of searching every student and their backpack when he received a Safe2Tell report that the student had either drugs or weapons. Once C.C-S. arrived at school, he was taken to an office for questioning by the school security officer, as well as a campus security officer, who was also employed by DPS but was stationed at C.C-S.s school. With the door closed, the DPS officers told C.C-S. about the information they had received from the Safe2Tell tip and told him they were going to search his backpack.

C.C-S. refused to consent to a search and, after further discussion, attempted to leave the office. The DPS officers would not allow him to leave, instead reiterating that they were going to search his backpack. After the campus security officer asked C.C-S. whether he was refusing to allow the search because he had drugs in his backpack, C.C-S. confessed that he had drugs in his backpack and handed it over to the officers to be searched.

That's not consent. That's the implication that a search is going to take place, with or without cooperation. Keeping someone in a room and refusing to let them leave pretty much takes consent out of the equation. That only makes things worse for the school officers and the case they thought they had built against C.C-S.

Rights are rights, and while they are limited on school campuses, they are not nonexistent. The officers needed at least reasonable suspicion to approach and search C.C-S. and they didn't even have that.

[W]e conclude that the Safe2Tell tip was insufficient to provide reasonable suspicion. We reach this conclusion for four reasons. First, as noted above, the tip was anonymous. Second, the information provided in the tip was stale. Third, because it was anonymous and stale, the limited information in the Safe2Tell tip did not provide reasonable suspicion that C.C-S. had committed or was about to commit a crime. And, fourth, the information about C.C-S.s past behavior at school did not corroborate the Safe2Tell weapons tip.

Information about someone seen on SnapChat a month ago isn't a good tip, or an actionable tip, or even a somewhat fresh tip. It may prompt some additional "keeping an eye on" by administrators but it cannot justify a seizure and a search, even on school grounds, and even with the district's apparently unconstitutional policy of searching every student that has been reported via a Safe2Tell tip.

The school dean's "tip" was no better and created no additional reasonable suspicion. The tip mentioned drugs, not weapons, and there was no information given that implied or stated the student had brought weapons onto campus before.

The state argued that this was asking too much from the Safe2Tell program, which guarantees students' anonymity. Au contraire, says the court. This program may be useful and aid in public safety efforts, but it cannot summarily revoke students' rights for these reasons or by its mere existence.

While we recognize the importance of Safe2Tells role in preventing school violence, investigations based on Safe2Tell tips by DPS security officers and other school officials must occur within the bounds of students Fourth Amendment rights.

As for the supposed "consent" to a search, the court says there was no consent.

[W]e conclude that the uncorroborated Safe2Tell tip did not justify detaining C.C-S. Because he was unreasonably detained, we may not rely on his admissions made during that unlawful detention to uphold the search of his backpack.

The state also argued that the exclusionary rule does not apply to juvenile cases or school security officers. Wrong again, says the court. The rule applies to government employees and their actions, which encompasses school administrators and school security officers.

We conclude that applying the exclusionary rule in school searches conducted by DPS security officers would deter Fourth Amendment violations. Those security officers perform quasi-law enforcement functions, inasmuch as the evidence they collect is often used in juvenile delinquency adjudications such as this one.

[...]

To apply the Fourth Amendments exclusionary rule to school searches is therefore a logical extension of Supreme Court precedent. Its application here is especially appropriate since school security officers, whether acting in concert with the police or not, are governmental actors.

There goes the evidence obtained during the illegal search which would be all of the evidence. Without it, all the government has is C.C-S., who may or may not have been the person seen by some student in some Snapchat video officers never viewed and which had vanished from the service long before the tip was sent in. The state has nothing to prosecute with. But maybe it has at least learned it can't treat students like detainees following extraordinary rendition. Students have rights and the government -- at least in this case -- gains nothing by ignoring them.

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Filed Under: 4th amendment, anonymous tips, backpack search, colorado, evidence, police, rights, school police, sro, students, tips

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Students Have Rights: Court Dumps Evidence After Cops Rely On A Month-Old Anonymous Tip To Search A Minor - Techdirt

A few days before the elections, a dozen law enforcement unions demanded an overhaul of New York state laws on bail and discovery.

The issue was prominent in the race for Nassau County district attorney, in which Republican Anne Donnelly defeated state Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat, who had voted for an overhaul of state bail laws that eliminated pretrial detention and monetary bail conditions for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.

The law enforcement unions argued that even though the state Legislature subsequently made changes in the law, it still was allowing dangerous criminals to be released.

At a news conference on Oct. 29, the representative of the law enforcement unions said a recent decision in Suffolk County Court that struck down part of the law showed that the entire bail reform package needed to be overhauled.

On Oct. 22, Suffolk County District Attorney Tim Sini said that a law that allows criminal defendants to move for a court order granting them access to crime scenes, including an individuals home, had been deemed unconstitutional.Sini said the victim in the case would have had Fourth Amendment rights, the expectation of privacy, violated.

At the news conference,John Wighaus, president of the Nassau County Detectives Association, said: The decision that has been reported recently regarding the unconstitutionality of a portion of the discovery law, points out the complete failure of the entire package of extreme bail and discovery laws that were passed in Albany. In particular, the cashless bail law has been disastrous for law abiding citizens.

Supporters of bail reform had argued that the system of cash bail fell heaviest on the poor and members of minority groups who could not afford to post bail.

But at the news conference, Brian Sullivan, president of the Nassau County Correction Officers Benevolent Association, said: Our judges are powerless to detain the majority of dangerous suspects because of the cashless bail law. The courts are forced to turn loose dangerous inmates who are free to wreak more havoc on the community after their release. Something has to be done.

The law enforcement unions endorsed Donnelly in the district attorney race.

Go here to read the rest:
Police union officials demand overhaul of New York bail laws - Williston Times - The Island Now