by Kent Scheidegger · Dec 6, 2021 9:56 am
Not too much criminal law action in the U.S. Supreme Court today. No new cases were accepted for full review, and there are no opinions of the Court.
There is one case on qualified immunity in the Opinions Relating to Orders bin. The case indicates little appetite on the part of the Court to make any major changes in this area. Continue reading . . .
by Michael Rushford · Nov 12, 2021 3:13 pm
Voters in New York City elected Eric Adams, a former police captain who promised to restore law and order in the big apple, as Mayor earlier this month. Rebecca Rosenberg and Bryan Lleans of Fox News report that Adams plans to restore the city’s Anti-Crime Unit, a plaincloths team targeting gangs and illegal guns. The unit was disbanded in 2020 after years of complaints that it was racially biased. In a recent interview, Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder Hawk Newsome told reporters that if Adams brings back the unit “there will be riots, there will be fire, and there will be bloodshed.” After claiming that his statement was not a threat, Newsome said that Adams would lead the city to another George Floyd incident. The elections of Virginia’s Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General, all of whom promised to restore law and order, along with the rejection of the BLM demand to disband the police department in Minneapolis and the election of a pro-law enforcement Mayor, City Attorney and key City Council member in the progressive city of Seattle, suggest that the people from both political parties have had enough of woke policing policies and BLM threats.
by Bill Otis · Nov 9, 2021 7:57 am
The Washington Post is a predictably liberal newspaper very slightly to the right of the New York Times (in other words, not Maoist). It woodenly goes along with whatever the liberal position du jour is, including opposition to the death penalty and an unfriendly skepticism toward the police and policing.
A week ago today, however, there was an election. As has widely been reported, more liberal candidates took a pasting, running from 12 to 16 percentage points behind what Joe Biden won in 2020. Crime and policing were issues across the country, including although not limited to Northern Virginia, just across the Potomac from the WaPo — which dutifully took note.
by Michael Rushford · Nov 4, 2021 2:44 pm
As Kent reported Tuesday, voters in Minneapolis rejected a ballot measure proposing to eliminate the police department and replace it with social workers. In a New York Post article Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald reports that Charter Amendment 4, which would address crime with a “comprehensive public health approach” received major support from progressives including $500,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center. “Minneapolis voters didn’t need to imagine the results of Amendment 4’s utopian scheme: they have been living though a preview of police abolition…..Traffic and pedestrian stops dropped at least 75 percent following the George Floyd riots, in response to the charge that police were racists for investigating suspicious activity in high-crime neighborhoods.”
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 3, 2021 10:53 am
Voters in the famously left-leaning city of Seattle rejected the defund/woke candidates by wide margins in yesterday’s local election. Alec Regimbal has this story for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
In the race to become Seattle’s next mayor, former Seattle City Council President Bruce Harrell is triumphing over M. Lorena González, the council’s current president.
Harrell’s decision to appeal to residents who are fed up with homelessness, as well as the way he distanced himself from a city council that vowed to cut the police budget in half last year, appears to have paid off. Harrell has secured 84,975 votes — 65% — while González has won 46,046 votes, just 35%.
Wow. A 2-to-1 landslide in a bastion of progressiveness. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Nov 1, 2021 3:06 pm
“Issue one, two, three in this election is crime and violence,” said former and possibly future Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, quoted in this article in the WSJ by Cameron McWhirter. As Bill noted yesterday, we are seeing shifts in public opinion and political campaigns as the country slowly sheds its “woke” delusions and recognizes the reality that softness on crime means more crime. Continue reading . . .
by Bill Otis · Oct 30, 2021 6:14 pm
The headline in today’s Washington Post story is: “In a setback for Black Lives Matter, mayoral campaigns shift to ‘law and order’.”
Yes, it’s all true. When violent crime surges, the public demands protection. Who woulda thunk it?
by Kent Scheidegger · Oct 28, 2021 3:00 pm
When the complaining party in a lawsuit must clear multiple hurdles in order to obtain relief, does the judge need to decide them in any particular order? The answer is “sometimes.” See pages 20-23 of CJLF’s brief in Brown v. Davenport, presently pending in the U.S. Supreme Court.
In cases where a public employee (very often a police officer) is claimed to have violated someone’s rights and asserts qualified immunity, there was for eight years a “rigid order of battle rule.” The Supreme Court decided in Saucier v. Katz (2001) that judges must decide whether the plaintiffs’ allegations, if true, would amount to a constitutional violation before deciding whether that rule was “clearly established” so as to defeat the claim of qualified immunity. In Pearson v. Callahan (2009), the Court decided unanimously that the rule was a bad idea and dumped it. See this post.
John Ketchum has this article in the City Journal calling for the return of the Saucier rule. Though I supported dumping the rule, Ketchum does make some interesting points. Continue reading . . .
by Michael Rushford · Oct 21, 2021 10:24 am
Violence against police officers has accelerated over the past several years. Rick Sobey of the Boston Herald reports that so far this year, 59 police officers have been murdered in the line of duty, a 51% increase from over the same period in 2020. For all of last year, 46 police officers were murdered. Most of the officers were killed while responding to domestic calls (29.6%), while over 16% died while attempting an arrest and 8.4% died during traffic stops or pursuits. FBI data indicate that murders of police over the first three quarters of 2021 are more than for the four full years since 2016, and are on pace to exceed the 72 officers murdered in 2011. The FBI Special Agent in Charge in Boston told reporters, “the percent of unprovoked attacks (on officers) has significantly risen…The unprovoked attacks, combined with pursuits, tactical situations and ambushes, have been the cause for 74% of the felonious deaths so far this year. In 2020, those four circumstances represented 28% of the deaths.” More than 60,000 officers were assaulted last year which is over 4,000 more assaults than in 2019. Of that number 18,568 were injured. Protecting the public with a target on your back is increasingly dangerous for those willing to risk their lives on our behalf.
by Bill Otis · Oct 18, 2021 7:57 am
There has been a loud campaign for years now, led by a number of libertarians and some liberals, to end qualified immunity for the police. The gist of their argument is that police who behave properly don’t need it, and the others shouldn’t have it. Their legal hook is that QI is a “judge-created doctrine” with no anchor in the text of the Constitution (that the Left gets that one out without choking has to be a source of no little wonderment).
Kent has briefly and persuasively dispatched this argument before, and the Supreme Court was having none of it today, reversing two lower court cases that had refused to grant QI to police. When, as in these cases, the anti-police side can’t even get Justice Sotomayor, you know it’s time for them to move on (which they’re not about to anyway).
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