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In 2006 two police officers in
Hartford, Connecticut, received a tip from a local gang member who
said that illegal guns were being stashed in an abandoned Nissan
Maxima parked in the backyard of a particular house. Although the
informant never explained how he learned about this alleged hiding
place, the officers wasted no time in acting on the information.
They went straight to the house and straight into the backyard.
They did not stop to get a search warrant first.

Upon arrival the officers found no Nissan and no guns. What they
did find was a 3-year-old St. Bernard named Seven, who they
proceeded to shoot and kill in front of the 12-year-old girl who
was playing with her pet in the backyard at the time. According to
that girl, she watched one of the officers shoot the dog in the
head while it was lying wounded on the ground from two previous
shots.

The girl’s family filed suit over this warrantless home
invasion, but a jury ruled for the police. The jury said the
“exigent circumstances” exception to the Fourth Amendment permitted
a warrantless search in this particular case.

Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit rejected
that jury’s holding and ordered a new trial for the offending
officers. “There was simply insufficient evidence to warrant the
application of the exigent circumstances exception here,” the 2nd
Circuit declared in
Harris v. O’Hare. “Taken to its logical end, [the
officers’] argument would permit exigent circumstances anytime
there is a tip about illegal guns being located in a high-crime
neighborhood or city, and would allow the exception to swallow the
rule.”

Editor’s Note: This article originally misstated the
age of the dog’s young owner.

The Hells Angels, known for
their criminal activities, violent tactics, and abundant odors, are
perhaps the most notorious motorcycle gangs in the United States.
Hunter Thompson once described the group as “American as jazz.” And
that’s worth remembering; No matter what their reputation is, they
have the same rights as any other Americans. One member of the
group, Maurice Eunice, is fighting the federal government in court
for needlessly launching explosives through the front door of his
clubhouse.

From
Vice:

On August 2, 2011, Special Agent Patrick Ryan of the DEA
obtained a search warrant for the Hells Angels clubhouse in San
Diego county, California.

Instead of knocking, they opening the door by firing “breaching
charges and flashbangs” through it.

The raid in El Cajon was the result of a two-year investigation,
and agents were looking for specific Hells Angels members, but the
explosion revealed a building empty except for a terrified dog.
…

As the Angel who owned the clubhouse, Eunice says the government
conducted an unreasonable seizure and, once inside, intentionally
caused him emotional distress by stomping on pictures of his dead
friends.

“We found the pictures inside with footprints on the glass,”
says Julia Yoo, the civil rights attorney who wrote the complaint.
“And there’s a video of the incident that was filmed before any of
the other [members of the media] showed up. There was an agent
standing outside giving interviews. Somebody tipped them off.”

Eunice, who first filed his lawsuit back in 2012, believes the
feds wanted to create a media spectacle, and that if they wanted to
search his building, they could’ve asked him for a key instead of
bombing it and causing $130,000 worth of damage.

“A district judge granted a summary motion… that ruled in the
government’s favor” earlier this month, but Eunice plans to
appeal.

“The Hells Angels pose a criminal threat on six continents,”
according
to the Department of Justice. But, once again, that doesn’t mean
individual members don’t deserve their rights to be protected. The
scary thing is, they aren’t so different from the rest of us when
it comes to victimization by militarized police. In at least

one past case, a Hells Angel pulled a gun on a SWAT team
looking for drugs that busted into his house, because he thought
they were robbers. They killed him, and never found any drugs –
kind of like the case of
an 80-year-old who died in his bed due to a botched, fruitless
raid.
Or this guy who now faces the death penalty for shooting an
intruder who turned out to be a cop looking for drugs. 

If the police have nothing to hide, then they
have nothing to fear about being required to wear video cameras.
The Associated Press is
reporting that 36 police officers will begin wearing body
cameras next week. If they prove effective, then body cameras will
be issued to the entire department by the end of 2015. Requiring
police to wear video cameras should be universally adopted sooner
rather than later.

In my 2013 column, “Watched
Cops Are Polite Cops,” I reported:

Earlier this year, a 12-month study by Cambridge University
researchers revealed that when the city of Rialto, California,
required its cops to wear cameras, the number of
complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent and the
use of force by officers dropped by almost 60 percent.

People who know that they are on camera (unless it’s part of the
Real Housewives franchise) tend to act better. The Baltimore
Sun is
reporting that a city cop has been charged with assault and
perjury after his sucker punch attack on a citizen was revealed on
a video from a city surveillance camera. See below.

The fact that it took three months for the Baltimore
surveillance camera video to surface highlights the need to
establish speedy and secure chain-of-custody rules for video taken
by body-worn cameras. In my “Watched Cops Are Polite Cops” column,
I outlined some rules for the proper handling of cop videos
including that officers should notify people that they are being
recorded; officers should be subject to stiff disciplinary
sanctions if they fail to turn on their cameras each time they
interact with the public; failure to record an incident for which a
patrolman is accused of misconduct should create a presumption
against that officer; and videos should be retained for no more
than 30 to 60 days, unless flagged.

In its September series, “Undue
Force,” the Baltimore Sun reported that the city has
paid out $5.7 million in taxpayer funds since January 2011 over
lawsuits claiming that police brazenly beat up alleged suspects.
The newspaper noted that sum would cover the price of a
state-of-the-art rec center or renovations at more than 30
playgrounds. And that the payments didn’t count the $5.8 million
spent by the city on legal fees to defend these claims brought
against police. It seems to me that the city can’t afford not to
equip its officers with cameras.

To reiterate, requiring police officers to wear video
cameras…

…will accomplish an important democratic task as well: turning
the tables on the functionaries of the surveillance state. It gives
citizens better protection against police misconduct and against
violations of their constitutional rights. And it protects good
cops against unfair accusations, too.

No, I say in my column at The Week this morning.

RNC Chair Reince Priebus has been
promising the GOP faithful that if his party takes the Senate,
it will do everything in its power — “defunding, going to court,
injunction…you name it” — to stop Obama from declaring “executive
amnesty” with the aim of forcing him to back down. And some liberal
columnists such as Matt Yglesias and Brian Beutler are worried
(hoping?) he’ll do just that.

But that’ll be politically calamitous for Democrats in 2016. I
note:

Many Latinos are
disgusted by Obama’s midterm switcheroo on executive action —
he deferred action till after Nov. 4 for nakedly political reasons.
But cynical as his decision may have been, it did make a certain
amount of political sense. Of the 10 toss-ups that are in play next
week, only one — Colorado — has a significant Latino presence.
Deferring action will certainly
depress their turnout next week (although by how much is

debatable since Latinos don’t show up in huge numbers for the
midterms anyway). But forging ahead would have mobilized far more
whites in the other nine states, making next week even more of a
rout for Democrats, especially since the
gap is no more than a few percentage points in most of these
races.

But in the 2016 presidential election, this dynamic will
fundamentally change.

Go
here to read the whole thing.

Democratic partisans are probably concerned at
what might happen if the Republicans get over and get past its
anti-gay history (though they’ll never actually admit it). Just
think of the votes they might lose! Fortunately for them, a
political organization has been spending thousands to help out the
Democrats in San Diego and Massachusetts to try to stop a couple of
gay Republicans from getting voted into office. That group is the
well-known anti-gay National Organization for Marriage (NOM).

Desperate for some sort of win—any sort of win—as the entire
reason for their existence (stopping same-sex marriage recognition)
slips further and further out of their grasp, they are
spending thousands on robocalls in opposition to the
congressional candidacies of Carl DeMaio in San Diego and Richard
Tisei in Massachusetts. Mind you, both of the these men’s
Democratic opponents, Rep. Scott
Peters and
Seth Moulton, also support same-sex marriage recognition
(Moulton even has a gay brother), but at least they’re not a couple
of filthy homos, I guess is the message.

Actually, the message from NOM is that—given the
Republican control of the House of Representative (and there’s no
chance of that changing in this election)—voting DeMaio and Tisei
into office rather than pro-gay heterosexual Democrats is worse
because the Republicans actually will have power. Here’s
what NOM is saying when
it encourages voters to select traditional progressive Moulton over
business-friendly moderate Republican Tisei:

The Republican party states clearly in its platform that
marriage is the union of one man and one woman; Tisei, according to
the hopes of his supporters, would work to undermine and change
this platform conviction from within the party itself.

On the other hand, Tisei’s opponent, Seth Moulton, is no better
than Tisei on the issues. But as a Democrat in a House controlled
by Republicans, Moulton wouldn’t be able to impact anything.
Furthermore, we could defeat him in two years. Tisei, however,
as a Republican within a Republican-controlled House of
Representatives, would be in a position to do great damage to the
integrity of the party’s platform and the pro-life and pro-family
policies for which the party stands!

Italics in the original. Moulton is obviously
rejecting NOM’s support:

“Seth Moulton fundamentally disagrees with everything NOM stands
for and has long said that equality is the civil rights fight of
our generation,” said Carrie Rankin, Moulton’s communications
director. “Fighting against groups, like NOM, that deny equality as
a basic human right will be a priority of Seth’s in Congress.”
Rankin noted that Moulton has a gay brother and Moulton has said,
“It’s fundamentally wrong that he and I don’t share the same rights
just because of who he is.”

If Tisei and DeMaio help kick any anti-gay planks out of the
Republican Party’s national platform, NOM is going to end up
completely marginalized. Both races, though, are extremely close in
the polls.
DeMaio and
Tisei both barely have the edge in recent polls and both races
are classified as toss-ups. I’ll be keeping an eye out on these two
battles come Tuesday.

The headlines today are that
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel wrote a “memo
to the White House criticizing Syria strategy.” The nature of
that criticism is a bit on the vague side, though, given that it’s
a confidential document and all that seems to have leaked is an
unattributed comment to the effect that he thinks “we need to have
a sharper view of what to do about the Assad regime.”

Whoah. Scathing.

But if the memo reflects what Hagel said the other day at the
Washington Ideas Forum, his real criticism may be that U.S. foreign
policy hasn’t, of late, had enough war in it.

At The Atlantic,
David Graham notes the Defense Secretary’s remarks that “What
we’re seeing in the Middle East with ISIL is going to require a
steady, long-term effort. It’s going to require coalitions of
common interest.”

Beyond the world’s sandbox, he sees lots of fun stuff to keep
U.S. diplomats and Marines engaged. “Tyranny, terrorism, the
challenges and threats to our country … is going to be with us.
It’s a reality. I see these things continuing to stay out of
there.”

Strictly speaking, Hagel’s comments don’t seem like Teddy
Roosevelt-style saber rattling—there’s no specific country he wants
to overwhelm with American firepower in some perceived opportunity
for glory and medal ceremonies. Instead, it sounds like the foreign
policy equivalent of death by a thousand cuts. Without a specific
opponent or goal, there’s no endgame—there’s just a series of
brushfires alternating with crises intermingled with
confrontations.

Fairly, I think, Graham sums up Hagel’s comments as “Get used to
endless war.”

So, if Hagel is criticizing the Obama administration’s Syria
strategy, it’s probably a matter of emphasis rather than substance.
Because he sees an unending future of more of the same.

As predictably as falling leaves and longer
nights, the end of October brings children disguised as pretend
ghosts and goblins, and politicians whipping up fears of supposedly
real ones. Democrats air spooky commercials alleging a war on
women, on the poor, on teachers, on unions. Republicans speak of
Islamic extremists poised to achieve world domination, or
of terrorists wielding an Ebola weapon in the United States.
Both sides share the same message: the world is uniquely dangerous,
and we’re here to keep you safe, but, writes Christopher Preble, we
could all use a little perspective.

View this article.

On
Tuesday night’s episode of The
Independents, the beer-swilling, pot-smoking,
election-complicating Libertarian Party Senate candidate in North
Carolina Sean
Haugh came on for a second time to talk about his
candidacy:

Townhall.com Political Editor Guy Benson and progressive
strategist Richard Fowler also provided some color commentary on
some of the more striking campaign ads of the season:

And Kennedy took to the streets of midtown Manhattan to see if
anyone gives a rip about the midterms:

Other recent midterms-related Independents
content:

* Former Hillary Clinton aide Basil Smikle and GOP
strategist/Sun Sentinel columnist Noelle Nikpour on the

likelihood of a Republican-controlled Senate.

* FOX News contributor Deroy Murdock and Washington Free
Beacon writer Ellison Barber on voter fraud and the
potential impact of third parties and independents next
Tuesday.

* Guy Benson and Richard Fowler
make their cases for voting major-party on Tuesday.

For Halloween, here’s Au Secours!, a 90-year-old
horror-comedy from the French filmmaker Abel Gance. It takes a few
minutes for the story to get rolling, but once the chief character
enters the haunted house the film becomes a flurry of gags, camera
tricks, surrealist insertions, and generally goofy and/or creepy
strangeness.

Next up is another silent haunted-house comedy, Charley Bowers’
1928 movie There It Is—the picture that proved an American
can do surrealism as well as any Frenchman. Bowers is one of the
great forgotten filmmakers of the silent era, and this is probably
his funniest effort:

That version of the feature has a jazz soundtrack. Someone else
has posted it to YouTube with a more electronic score; to see that
version, go here.

Both Au Secours! and There It Is end with
“explanations” that do not, in fact, explain everything that has
happened. In the final flick of our triple feature, by contrast,
the audience always knows exactly what’s going on, even if the
characters don’t. It’s set on a haunted boat instead of a haunted
house, and it stars Laurel and Hardy, who in this outing are
basically a couple of thugs. From 1934, here’s The Live
Ghost:

(For past editions of the Friday A/V Club, go here.)

The kids from Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the
Dark? learn the true meaning of terror…election-year
rhetoric.

View this article.