Prince George's Police Clear Mayor, Family (New Update)

The Washington Post ^ | August 9, 2008 | Aaron C. Davis

[An Old Man]

Good morning,

Responsibility is the key word. All are responsible for the actions of those chosen to represent us. If you choose not to vote for a candidate who will staunchly defend your rights, you have earned no immunity to the repercussions of his actions.

The recall process is always open to the citizens. In some jurisdictions it is well defined and often used. Should you have the misfortune of living in a place where there is no well defined process, you may as a last resort join with others and form your own vigilance committee.

[supercat]

The recall process is always open to the citizens.

What if the top 30% of productive citizens don't want a crook in office, and the bottom 70% (many of whom produce nothing) do? Should the top 30% have to pay for the actions of the other 70% (whose actions may well be predicated upon the fact that, for the most part, they don't have to pay for them?)

[An Old Man]

"One thing that would help a lot would be recognizing that if twelve ordinary people would consider a search unreasonable, that's a pretty good sign that it is."

That's how the system works. I would suggest that anyone going to the dance would be wise to learn something about the steps. Here the key word is "Mandamus" and this is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject.

"A writ of mandamus or simply mandamus, which means "we command" in Latin, is the name of one of the prerogative writs in the common law, and is issued by a superior court (appellate court) to compel a lower court or a government officer to perform mandatory or purely ministerial duties correctly."

"Mandamus is a judicial remedy which is in the form of an order from a superior court to any government, subordinate court, corporation or public authority to do or forbear from doing some specific act which that body is obliged under law to do or refrain from doing, as the case may be, and which is in the nature of public duty and in certain cases of a statutory duty. It cannot be issued to compel an authority to do something against statutory provision".

"Mandamus may be a command to do something or not to do a particular thing. Mandamus is supplemented by legal rights. It must be a judicially enforceable and legally protected right before one suffering a grievance can ask for a mandamus. A person can be said to be aggrieved only when he is denied a legal right by someone who has a legal duty to do something and abstains from doing it."

Note that there are restrictions to when this writ is applicable

You must first have a real grievance and the cure must be one where the grievance will be extinguished when the authorities perform their duties according to law.

This is where you will find what the US Department of Justice has to say about it in their Civil Resources Manual.

How does this apply to us?

First we need to find out if there are any laws that prohibit these no knock raids. If they are not prohibited entirely but are allowed under certain circumstances, find out what those circumstances are. When you find circumstances which are repugnant to the citizens of the community, form a committee and draft the legislation which will aleviate the objections. Once proper rules are in place, the police will be back in pandoras box and the citizens will again be free from terror.

[An Old Man]

You are on a roll today! "What if the top 30% of productive citizens don't want a crook in office"

Move! Up here in the "Gulch" productive citizens are always welcome.

[supercat]

"One thing that would help a lot would be recognizing that if twelve ordinary people would consider a search unreasonable, that's a pretty good sign that it is."

That's how the system works. I would suggest that anyone going to the dance would be wise to learn something about the steps. Here the key word is "Mandamus" and this is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject.

I think you missed my point. If the government were to allow juries to do their job, they would do a better job of holding the government's "searches" in check than any judge could possibly do.

If a judge writes rules saying what searches are reasonable, such rules are almost going to be written so that while most prohibited searches would be unreasonable, not all unreasonable searches would be prohibited. It's not possible for a judge to anticipate all the circumstances that may contribute to a particular search being reasonable or unreasonable. For a judge to declare that all searches meeting certain criteria are allowable is for the judge to make factual determinations relative to future cases before those cases are heard. Such a notion is preposterous.

To be sure, it's probably good for judges to put some absolute limits on what searches are reasonable, but judges should only be allowed to decide that certain searches may be reasonable; it should be up to a jury to determine definitively whether any particular search was reasonable, given the facts of that particular case.

To be sure, leaving matters up to juries would make such issues be something of a crap-shoot, but it would be an improvement over the present situation. Presently, cops are inclined to push the boundaries of what judges will allow; if juries were allowed to perform their legitimate duty, cops would be far less inclined. Among other things, if cops' tactics escalated to the point that jurors felt any personal fear of such tactics landing on them, that would reduce jurors' tolerance for such tactics even further.

[An Old Man]

I'll have to get back to you on that. They are serving Tapioca Pudding for dessert at the old folks home, and I don't want to miss out on seconds.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Maryland “Freak State” PING!

[dljordan]

“He’s not happy that DOJ is now looking at him, so I hope that he has to squirm a lot in the days ahead. “

I’m predicting that the DOJ softballs it. Birds of a feather and all that.

[dljordan]

“None of the officers can bend enough to lick themselves. “

Ouch! LOL!

[ellery]

Out of control! We all need to stop this crap NOw and stop the militarization of our police forces.

Yep! The feds are culpable here, as well. It's the feds who are selling all these local police departments discount military equipment, offering grants to outfit everyone with tasers, providing training in special ops (to be used against American citizens), etc. It seems to me to be a massive, unConstitutional endrun around Posse Comitatus.

Something is very wrong when our military is held to higher standards of behavior when fighting a war against enemies in a foreign land, than our local "peace officers" are when "protecting and serving" American citizens.

[commonguymd]

Sad thing is the amount of support for jack boot thug behavior and support for the growing militarization of police forces. Believe it or not, there are many right here that spend an inordinate amount of time promoting and supporting it. Constitutions be damned. They bow to the alter of government control over freedoms via violence.