Let’s suppose the police stop you at a checkpoint in your year old F-150. You do not consent to a search. They bring a drug dog out and, after kicking the dog, conclude that drugs are in the vehicle.
They tear apart the truck and leave it as a pile of unbolted door panels and removed components. No drugs are found.
I’ve heard of stories where they can do this and they do not have to pay to reassemble your vehicle. How is this legal? Isn’t there a constitutional right involved here regarding seizure of property without compensation?
Sure, you still have the parts that went in the truck, but a pile of truck parts has less value than an assembled truck. It should be straightforward to prove in court that the cops owe you the difference, since you would have to hire a mechanic to reassemble it and replace any components that were damaged during the teardown. Not to mention the value of your time.
You have the right to protection against unreasonable searches and seizures - the key being unreasonable. If the police need to break something to get to it - then it isn’t unreasonable.
Also - many government officials get qualified immunity under the constitution - it’s been a while, but if memory serves this is usually state and federal, but not local - who would still have the defense mentioned above - plus other defenses as well.
I’ve read that drug runners buy the most expensive boats they can afford, and have hidden compartments built in by professionals. The DEA and Coast Guard are very reluctant to tear such a boat apart unless they are very, very sure they will find criminal evidence, because they are responsible for any damage in a fruitless search.
Cite:
Scott H. Decker and Margaret Townsend…“Drug Smugglers on Drug Smuggling”, based on interviews with dozens of convicted smugglers, written nas a text book for Law Enforcmenet curriculum…
If the police aren’t required to repair the damage done, can the home or car owner file an insurance claim for the damage? Or do insurance policies generally have an exclusion for this?
You may have a problem, in that the police are taking an adverse action against an inanimate piece of property, not against you.
In the case of actual seizures of private property (which have been a lot more in the news lately), that is always the gotcha. Their actions are directed (even in official documents) against the property, not against you. The property, being inanimate, has no rights. You, not being the target of the action, have little or no standing to care (officially anyway). The loss you take in the destruction or devaluation of the property you own seems to be of no legal consequence, according to many descriptions I have read.
Yet, people sometimes are able to sue for their losses and sometimes apparently manage to recover some damages. I don’t recall that I’ve ever seen a discussion of how this can happen, given the arguments of the above paragraph.
I believe, but am not sure, that most of the suits that recover damages are either:
Due to laws that state has passed that allows recovery
Due to public embarrassment that causes them to settle
If you have a high profile case where say the police take an elderly woman out of church and smash her walker on the curb looking for drugs - and this case makes the news - I’m gonna guess the police department is going to replace it - whether or not they are legally required to.
From what I have read - everything revolves around the legality of the search. If the search is legal - or they had reason to believe it was legal - generally the state and Feds are immune. You can sue the individual officers under what (at least used to be) is called a Bivens lawsuit - for a case - if memory serves - where the secret service allowed someone who wasn’t necessary to a search to come along. I believe the court held - at least initially - that the presence of the unneeded party was enough to claim an unreasonable search. This is all from memory - from like 20 years ago.
Generally you have to sue individuals (or maybe counties), and allege something that was illegal - enough so that anyone on their position had to KNOW it was wrong.
I did quite a bit of research on this 20 years ago, but you would believe the amount of leeway - especially prosecutors and judges are given. The only case I remember where a suit against a judge actually made it past summary judgement - was a case where the judge didn’t like his coffee and ordered the bailiff/sheriff to arrest the guy that sold him the coffee - berated him in court - and threatened him with jail or something else pretty awful.
There may have been others, but that one stuck out. The level of misconduct to be able to sue a prosecutor was a case where - again this is 20 years ago - so I may have some of the details wrong. A prosecutor wanted to convict this guy of something (maybe it was burglary) - anyway the only evidence they really had was a shoe print. He went through a bunch of experts before he found one who would lie and claim that you could actually match a shoe print to a person. I don’t mean like OJ Simpson wise where they match a shoe to a shoe print to a crime scene - and then matched OJ to that very model of shoe. I mean a case where the prosecutor claims he could match a person to a shoe print - without even having any evidence that the person ever owned or wore that shoe. The court held that no reasonable prosecutor could ever believe that was the case.
IIRC, “qualified immunity” means you can’t sue the individual agents of the state themselves (as opposed to the state) for simply doing their duty. The “qualified” means that the immunity only applies if they were doing their job properly. They are not exempt from claims for willful misbehaviour, serious negligence, etc.
Wikipedia says:
Taking apart a truck if the search warrant allows it is clearly not violating that test.
Whether the state itself is liable - good question.
That’s the frustrating part: the argument is transparent bullshit. If state agents (the police) disassemble your truck looking for drugs, you have been harmed. If it turns out that you were not breaking any laws, then basic principles of fairness dictate that the state should be responsible for making things right again, either by putting the truck back together or, more likely, paying to have a repair shop put the truck back together.
If a police car damages your truck inadvertently (while on a chase or whatever) they are liable to any damages. My guess would be that if the police damages your vehicle deliberately they are also liable.
But as a practical matter one is usually worse off doing this (the cost of lawyers, the cost of your time, the cost of the delay before you would get the money). [And if you are a criminal this might cause the police to cause you unwanted attention]
Whenever I hear stories like this, my mind boggles. Not just because of the actions taken by the main perpetrator of the misconduct, but by the enabling individuals around him/her.
Like the crazy judge, I don’t know about you, but if I were the bailiff and some crazy judge ordered me to arrest someone because he didn’t like the coffee he made him, I sure as hell wouldn’t do it. I’d give the judge a quizzical look and would tell him that I’ll ignore than insane order the first time, and if it’s repeated not only will I not carry it out, but I WILL report him to whoever I need to report him to.
So it’s not just a crazy judge, it’s also a crazy, enabling bailiff, and a crazy prosecutor, and crazy lawyers, and crazy anyone who didn’t say anything!
It’s gotta be some sort of psychological phenomena, right? Doing whatever your “superiors” tell you to do regardless of what’s right…