Tag: police accountability

DHS Says Recording or Following Law Enforcement ‘Sure Sounds Like Obstruction of Justice’

Posted on by Lone Candle

“”Observing, following, and recording law enforcement are unambiguously protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution,” Bier tells Reason. “They are not obstruction of justice. The right to record helps guarantee justice by ensuring accountability and an accurate record of events.”

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The guiding First Amendment principle behind these court decisions was most memorably expressed in the 1987 Supreme Court ruling in Houston v. Hill, which struck down a Houston ordinance that made it unlawful to oppose or interrupt a police officer: “The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state,” Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote.”

https://reason.com/2025/12/22/dhs-says-recording-or-following-law-enforcement-sure-sounds-like-obstruction-of-justice/

ICE Shot a 21-Year-Old in the Face and Blinded Him

Posted on by Lone Candle

ICE repeatedly exercises a gratuitous use of force.

Multiple ICE agents have threatened protestors by referring to the killing of Renee Good. These are threats to kill people by law enforcement, often for simply being annoying. The implications are more aggressive than simply, ‘hey, if you protest or/and don’t listen to my orders, we may possibly get into the situation where I have to kill you to defend myself.’ The implications are, ‘Keep annoying me or disobeying me, and I’ll fucking kill you like we did that woman.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnM8_4dFoCI

Video of the Minneapolis ICE Shooting Does Not Resolve the Issue of Whether It Was Legally Justified

Posted on by Lone Candle

Legally…”Under the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment precedents, the crucial question is not whether Good was actually trying to run Ross down but whether his avowed belief that she posed a threat to him was “objectively reasonable” given “the totality of the circumstances.”

The 1985 case Tennessee v. Garner involved a suspected burglar who was shot while fleeing police. The Supreme Court held that the use of deadly force is unconstitutional in such circumstances “unless it is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”

To assess whether a use of force is “objectively reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment, the Court explained four years later in Graham v. Connor, judges should consider “the totality of the circumstances,” paying “careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case.” The Court said relevant factors include “the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.”

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The Justice Department’s policy on the use of force jibes with what the Supreme Court has said. “Deadly force may not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect,” it notes, and “firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles.”

The Justice Department explains that “firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless: (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle; or (2) the vehicle is operated in a manner that threatens to cause death or serious physical injury to the officer or others, and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle.” The circumstances of the Minneapolis shooting suggest that Ross may have violated that policy.”

https://reason.com/2026/01/09/video-of-the-minneapolis-ice-shooting-does-not-resolve-the-issue-of-whether-it-was-legally-justified/

Minnesota officials, Trump administration battle over investigation into Minneapolis ICE shooting

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Minnesota officials said Thursday that federal law enforcement are freezing out state investigators from the investigation into the deadly ICE-related shooting of a 37-year-old woman.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/08/minnesota-ice-shooting-investigation-00716296

This Indiana City Doesn’t Have To Pay an Innocent Mom $16,000 After Police Wrecked Her Home, Court Rules

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Law enforcement launched 30 tear gas canisters into Amy Hadley’s home, smashed windows, ransacked furniture, destroyed security cameras, and more. The government gave her nothing.

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An Indiana woman whose home sustained severe damage during a police raid set in motion by a faulty investigation is not legally entitled to compensation, a federal court ruled this week, in yet another case that asked what innocent people are owed when the government destroys their property in pursuit of public safety.

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Such suits primarily hinge on one question: Does the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment—which promises that the government cannot take private property without providing “just compensation”—apply when the government is exercising its “police power”?

Several federal courts have answered in the negative.

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Cases with similarly situated plaintiffs have worked their way through the courts in recent years. Leo Lech’s $580,000 family home in Greenwood Village, Colorado, was condemned and demolished after police effectively destroyed it while pursuing a suspect who had broken in and barricaded himself inside. The city gave him $5,000. Los Angeles business owner Carlos Pena saw his printing shop and equipment ruined, and his livelihood crippled, in the same scenario: A fugitive, unrelated to Pena, broke in while trying to evade police. The government declined to pay him damages, which exceed $60,000; a ruling on the matter is forthcoming from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.”

https://reason.com/2025/10/10/this-indiana-city-doesnt-have-to-pay-an-innocent-mom-16000-after-police-wrecked-her-home-court-rules/?nab=1

Tennessee Man Arrested, Gets $2 Million Bond for Posting Facebook Meme

Posted on by Lone Candle

Thanks to Trump and Trump supporters, the United States is not currently a strong Constitutional Democracy.

“After the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September, many on the political right set out to punish anyone making light of the tragedy, or even simply being insufficiently upset. In one of the more brazen examples, a Tennessee man was arrested, accused of threatening a school shooting, and held on a $2 million bond, for posting a somewhat uncivil meme on Facebook.
Larry Bushart, a 61-year-old former police officer, posted the offending meme last month. In response to a Facebook post about an upcoming vigil for Kirk, Bushart shared an image of President Donald Trump with the quote, “We have to get over it,” which Trump said in January 2024 after a shooting at Iowa’s Perry High School. Text added to the image said, “This seems relevant today.”

Bushart did not elaborate, but the context seems clear: Why should I care about this shooting, when the sitting president said I should “get over” this other shooting?

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According to the Perry County Sheriff’s Office website, Bushart was arrested the following morning on a charge of Threats of Mass Violence on School Property and Activities—a class E felony punishable by between one and six years in prison and up to a $3,000 fine. Worse, Bushart’s bail is set at an astonishing $2 million.

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In its entirety, the post consists of a direct quote of a statement by the then-former president about a newsworthy event, with text providing context, plus a four-word phrase added. Bushart didn’t even create the meme: The Tennesseean’s Angele Latham noted it had been “posted numerous times across multiple social media platforms not connected to Bushart going back to 2024.”

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In context, it’s clear Bushart meant to suggest that since Trump previously said people should “get over” a school shooting, then they shouldn’t be expected to care about the murder of a conservative public figure. It’s quite a stretch to suggest this constituted a threat to shoot up a high school. Yes, a nearby high school happened to have a similar name, but that was clearly a coincidence, and there is nothing to suggest Bushart intended to carry out violence against the local school.

On social media, some have suggested the meme in question was part of a larger pattern indicating Bushart posed a threat. But in his statement to The Tennesseean, Weems specifically singled out the Trump meme as the offender, saying while the other posts were “hate memes,” they were “not against the law and would be recognized as free speech.”

Perhaps some teachers, parents, or students really did find Bushart’s post threatening—though since it was a reply on a Facebook page for local news, it’s not clear how many people even saw it. And even if people did see and interpret it as a threat of violence, that doesn’t mean it meets the standard for a “true threat,” in violation of the First Amendment.

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Bushart’s arrest would be humorous if it weren’t so serious. He now faces a potential years-long prison sentence for reposting a Facebook meme that doesn’t come anywhere close to qualifying as an exception to the First Amendment. Even if the case gets thrown out, he has already spent two weeks in jail and is set to spend two more months until his first hearing.”

https://reason.com/2025/10/10/tennessee-man-arrested-gets-2-million-bond-for-posting-facebook-meme/?nab=1

California Got This One Right: ICE Agents Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Wear Masks

Posted on by Lone Candle

“responsible political movements are embarrassed by hypocrisy, but MAGA displays it as a loyalty test. Vice President J.D. Vance berated the Brits for detaining people over social media posts, then called on Americans to report people to their employers for negative posts about Charlie Kirk. And Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed to crack down on “hate speech,” even though Republicans have long viewed such laws as speech controls.

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The clearest image is one of masked ICE agents emerging from unmarked cars, roughing up suspected illegal immigrants—and then “disappearing” them to an unknown location.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” That’s how George Orwell put it, but it doesn’t have to be forever if more Americans start caring about their constitutional birthright.

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author Sen. Scott Wiener (D–San Francisco) got it right: “The recent federal operations in California have created an environment of profound terror, with officers—or people who claim to be officers—wearing what are essentially ski masks, not identifying themselves, grabbing people, putting them in unmarked cars, and disappearing them. If we want the public to trust law enforcement, we cannot allow them to behave like secret police in an authoritarian state.”

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Practically speaking, there is no reason for law-enforcement agents to conceal their identities, wear face masks, and grab people off the street without identifying themselves. How is an ordinary person supposed to know whether their abductor is a legit government agent or kidnappers from a drug cartel? In the former, fighting back will land you in the morgue—in the latter, not fighting back will do so.

Trump supporters claim the masks protect agents from doxing, but that’s just an after-the-fact excuse. This shouldn’t be news to conservatives, but the Constitution is meant to protect ordinary people from their government rather than the other way around. The first concern is to protect our liberties, not to ensure that armed agents have an easier time of it. Doxing is illegal and should be punished, but that’s no excuse to green-light police-state tactics.

“The general public does not distinguish between federal agents and local law enforcement,” said my R Street Institute colleague Jillian Snider in a CNN interview. “So when federal agents go into local jurisdictions wearing masks and not making their identities known, that hinders the operations of local law enforcement because then that community fails to trust the local law enforcement that are trying to keep them safe.”

Then again, perhaps that’s MAGA’s point: to intimidate Americans into submission via a high-profile show of force. We should be shocked by this, but the right response is disgust rather than awe.”

https://reason.com/2025/09/26/california-got-this-one-right-ice-agents-shouldnt-be-allowed-to-wear-masks/