Police Just Violating All The Constitutional Amendments Now

[TransitJohn]

This is from the first week of July, but reading GD lately, I felt like posting it. I don't remember it coming up before.
This one is crazy, because the cops literally thought they could just take someone's house because they wanted to.

A Nevada man is suing the city of Henderson and its police under the rarely-used Third Amendment, claiming that they unconstitutionally arrested him for obstruction of justice when he refused to let them commandeer his home.

Anthony Mitchell, a resident of a Las Vegas suburb, was arrested by Henderson Police in 2011 after he refused police requests to enter his home to "gain a tactical advantage" against the occupant of a neighboring house. The Third Amendment prohibits the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the homeowners' permission.

Mitchell says the violations began when police called him and told him they needed his home to respond to a nearby domestic violence call.

When Mitchell refused, police allegedly smashed open his front door with a metal ram, aimed guns at him, and shouted obscenities at him. According to his complaint, they forced him to lie down on his living room floor, and fired multiple "pepperball rounds" at him. Mitchell says that he was hit by at least of those three rounds. His dog Sam was also allegedly hit by the rounds and left outside in 100 degree weather with no food or shade for hours.

Rest at Gawker

[rhett o rick]

1. k&r thanks for posting.

[blkmusclmachine]

2. .

.

[MrScorpio]

3. Yay, Cops! They're the best.

I hope that these people sue the pants off of that town...

They could end even OWNING the whole gawd durn police department in the end.

[Dragonfli]

4. Thugs with badges, like most cops. /nt

[dkf]

5. Thank God he is suing or we wouldn't ever know about this.

[Poll_Blind]

6. K&R! This was posted back on July 3rd (it's worth the repost, IMO) and THAT...

...article is a crazy, crazy read. I haven't read this one. Amazingly fucked up situation!

Police Commandeer Homes, Get Sued

PB

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. the longer version of this story was posted in du a few weeks ago. his parents were mistreated also

[Historic NY]

8. What we have here is an out an out failure to properly train...........

these officers in Constitutional Law. Once again the militarization of the police depts. and like training tosses common sense out to the wind. WTF would they need this house after the ruckus they made compromised it anyway.

Who would have thought you need SWAT to handle a domestic? There doesn't seem to be any justification or evidence that people were in imminent danger of death that would even mildly request the use of the house.

[Nanjing to Seoul]

9. Okay, cue the badge sniffers telling us it's only a select few bad apples

Most are good. They have a tough job. We don't know the facts. We are second guessing trained professionals. You must obey all police instructions.

Come on, badge sniffers. . .defend this!

[X_Digger]

15. Quick, someone post the picture of the cop and the milk jugs!

[RainDog]

10. wtf

our constitution is under attack from various authoritarian organizations.

they need to back off.

let this case say that loud and clear. I hope this guy has great lawyers.

[LiberalElite]

12. Not for nothing are there legal observers

at the anti-war demos I've attended, courtesy of the National Lawyers Guild. http://www.nlg.org/about

[pasto76]

13. this is one of those things that let me know Im not a liberal

since liberals in this thread are trying to equate a police officer with a soldier.

last I checked, the Henderson PD are not on a federal payroll. Their pay does not go through DFAS (if you dont know what that is, you are in over your head)

but since a bunch of you are already buying into this, lets look at this from a 'soldiering' perspective. Sounds like the Henderson PD were trying to establish a hasty fighting position. Hasty. temporary. Quarters are where I live. Where I sleep. Where I store my stuff between missions.

This guy sounds like an anti government tea party nut. I dont think the police SHOULD be able to enter anyone's house without permission, and I sure as fuck dont think they should ever destroy private property without a really good reason. But the 3rd amendment? Quite a stretch.

admittedly, I dont know if the henderson PD officers take any oaths. To become a soldier I had to take one. This oath could arguably be the difference between a soldier and everyone else.

[Caretha]

17. Police officers

DO NOT ....I repeat ....DO NOT have the right to "commander" anyone's abode, much less enter it without a warrant issued by a Judge.

[Fearless]

19. The police are not allowed entrance to private property

Without expressed permission or a valid warrant. They had neither. Nor were they in hot pursuit of anyone who had entered the house.

Incidentally quartering of soldiers and the third amendment have nothing to do with whether it's permanent or not. Not a single person in US history our colonial history has been asked or required to permanently house soldiers. That's absolutely a ridiculous claim to make in regards to the limits of third amendment rights. Secondly when the constitution was written THERE WERE NO FEDERAL SOLDIERS just state led regiments. And finally the US constitution protects all Americans from having to quarter soldiers REGARDLESS of their politician affiliation.

[Jim Lane]

20. Third Amendment, no. Section 1983, yes.

I agree with you that I wouldn't consider this to be "quartering" (aside from the question of whether police are covered).

On the facts stated in the OP, though, the victim of the police has a good action for deprivation of civil rights. From Title 42, Section 1983 of the United States Code:

Every person who under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, Suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress....

That means that the City of Henderson and the individual police officers who engaged in this misconduct would have to pay money damages to the occupant of the house.

[Duval]

14. Damn!! :( n/t

[Tugboat]

18. The Law

The police officers of today think they can act above the Law and get away with it, I'm glad to see someone standing there ground. That uniform they wear ,well it represents the law , and some of those that wear that uniform does not know the first thing about law enforcement. Most of the time in the USA , some wealthy farmer's boy got to be mayor or police officer , not because he went to a police academy and earned his job but because the rich farmer payed someone to put him on the force. Some of them don't even know that EVERY LAW IS WRITTEN IN BLACK AND WHITE IN THE COURT HOUSE. and if you do something that has never been brought up and some laws made about it, you have not broken the law until it is made unlawful by the city council. And some of these modern day police officers act upon impulse and need anger management training. like Zimmerman he needed anger management, he acted on impulse.

[Taitertots]

16. Two simple changes that should be adopted...

1. Oversight of police actions should be absolutely separated from the police department. Democratically elected.

2. Require all police activities be recorded. 360 degree cameras on a helmet on every police officers head, a video camera on the end of every gun and tazer, 360 camera coverage on the top of police cars.... Put all the video on the internet.

A little harder to pass:
Make a law that says that when a police officer is breaking the law, that they are implicitly not acting as a police officer and therefore subject to the same legal standards as everyone else. So when Officer Henderson broke down the door, he was committing a litany of felonies.

It should also be illegal for an off duty or out of uniform police officer to do anything a non-police officer can't do. No mall ninja costumes, actual uniforms with their last name on the front and back.

[11 Bravo]

21. Just the other day a cop forced me to quarter a British soldier!

[VADem1980]

22. Simple solution-

take away their guns. No guns, batons, or tazers for regular patrol officers. Pepper spray, handcuffs, radio only. If they need any of those things, they must get express, written approval from high ranking member of their agency, and the incident must be recorded.

Won't stop brute squads from murdering minorities and people's dogs 100%, but it would knock off this type of nonsense quite a bit. Police would have to learn to talk to people, and they would have high ranking members judging them if they request any of the serious toys for an incident.

Without a gun to hide behind, they would be far amicable with people. And tazers are just so horribly abused, they should be illegal entirely.