Qualified immunity is a pox on justice.
The police are here to “protect and serve!”
Calls come in that a man is suicidal.
Naturally the police help him to achieve his objective!
Cue innumerable instances of the joke of “police get a cat out of a tree by shooting it”.
And yet it pales in egregiousness compared to Civil Asset Forfeiture
Surprising article from the Wall Street Journal (unpaywalled link):
Gina Via thought she saw an elk as she drove through the high desert of southern New Mexico one night last summer. As she drew closer, she realized it was a person walking dangerously close to the road. She decided to call 911. Jacob Diaz-Austin, one of a few sheriff’s deputies patrolling Otero County’s 6,627 square miles, took the dispatcher’s call for a welfare check on a possibly intoxicated pedestrian…
The deputy slowed, stopped, and focused his spotlight on Elijah Hadley, a 17-year-old walking along the median near his home on the Mescalero Apache reservation. Fearful after getting beaten up the day before, Hadley carried a BB gun. Within minutes, Diaz-Austin fired approximately 22 shots at Hadley. He shot four times just after Hadley dropped the BB gun.
The Rapid Rise of Killings by Police in Rural America
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-rapid-rise-of-killings-by-police-in-rural-america/ar-AA1IneJf
You left out the kicker, just after that paragraph
later, Diaz-Austin shot Hadley about 18 more times as he lay on the ground
This guy needs treatment of some sort. Probably involving scalpels.
I’m thinking something with an icepick.
33 Months for one of the cops involved in the Breonna Taylor murder:
This is the School Resource Officer that was caught filming a student changing her shirt.
On June 5, Kamolov was sentenced to one and a half years in prison and two years of extended supervision, but had the sentence stayed, according to online records, and the court placed Kamolov on probation for three years.
As part of the probation, Kamolov was ordered to serve nine months condition time (jail time served as part of probation), according to online court records. There will be no electronic monitoring, but he will be allowed Huber release for elder care.
He also had to pay the victim about $3200. Which, to me, seems absurdly low. IMO, he should have been paying something more in the twenty to fifty thousand dollar range, plus reimbursing her and her family for every nickle they spent as a result of this. Doctor’s appointments (physical and mental), missed work, lawyers etc.
I wonder if the victim will file some sort of civil suit against him.
Relatives of an unarmed man who died as he was being detained by police last year are disputing officers’ account of the incident, saying they recently viewed body-camera footage that showed Alabama officers knelt on the man’s neck while he repeated “I can’t breathe.”
Phillip Reeder, 52, was having a mental health episode when police in Irondale, Alabama, responded to calls that he was running in and out of traffic in the early hours of Aug. 6, 2024, according to the police report. In a statement Monday, the city of Irondale and its police department said officers only used their arms in restraining Reeder, and pointed to Reeder’s heart disease and drug use as key factors in his death.
Family says video shows Alabama man died after officer knelt on his neck
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/07/23/alabama-police-death-phillip-reeder/
Unpaywalled at:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/family-says-video-shows-alabama-man-died-after-officer-knelt-on-his-neck/ar-AA1J9jqr
Another case where it seems clear the police are often not adequately trained to deal with mental health problems..
Well, it depends on what one means by “dealing with” the problem. Because they seem perfectly well trained to gun down anyone who annoys them.
Should you call the police when the home you are in is being burglarized?
Maybe not.
Deputies were called to the rapper’s home at about 1:30 a.m. Sunday on reports of a burglary. Woods wasn’t present… Three suspects entered the home and were stealing items when an occupant of the house fired a weapon at the intruders. The suspects fled the scene and did not appear to have been injured, according to the sheriff’s office.
A drug task force secured a search warrant for the home after deputies noticed a “strong odor consistent with illegal narcotics” while investigating the burglary. The task force discovered marijuana “in plain view inside the master bedroom closet,” according to a statement from the sheriff’s office.
The police didn’t catch the burglars.
So marijuana is still illegal in Georgia? Community standards, I guess. Seems silly and regressive.
Most LEOs and LEAs are strongly opposed to cannabis legalization, because when it is legal, they have to work harder, on other stuff, to keep their arrest quotas up, not to mention department revenue streams. And also, won’t you think of the dogs.
I’m reminded of a billboard I saw in Rolla, Missouri c. 2014. It showed four or five roided up cops in full battle gear, and in bold letters, “Drugs Are Not Welcome In Our City,” with a pot leaf and the classic circle-with-a-slash-through-it. Now weed is legal in Missouri and, hand to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, there’s a dispensary right under where the sign used to stand.
The Rolla cops must have been absolutely pissed when Missouri legalized pot.
Maybe the should smoke some weed and chill out.
I’ve told this story before, maybe even in this thread. When I was on Grand Jury, between cases, the ADA chit chatted with us and we asked about the impending legalization of cannabis. She told us it was a bad idea because of illegal guns. You see, when a cop smells weed during a traffic stop, he can search the car very thoroughly, and occasionally discover an illegal weapon.
Yes, that’s true, but we shouldn’t keep things illegal because it gives cops the right to search cars for things that are actually bad.
As long ago as Prohibition if not earlier, the authorities discovered the usefulness of having things that were technically illegal but tacitly tolerated– until it was time for them not to be.
So, legalizing cannabis was a bad idea because illegal guns might be found? That is some seriously fucked logic right there.
Its typical lazy justification logic using huge assumptions and tenuous connections.
I think the logic was fine, if cops are granted the right to search cars and people, they’ll find illegal guns (and other stuff) sometimes.
Where it breaks down is that we have a right to privacy, and making relatively benign things illegal for the purpose of giving cops the right to search your stuff is, in and of itself, a violation of our rights.