Month: July 2014

Fear no more that
heart-in-throat moment when a police officer knocks on your
driver’s side window and you think to yourself, “oh shit. Now
what?” Because the answer is to just put the car in gear and cruise
away—at least, if you live in Wisconsin. Earlier this month, the
state’s Supreme Court ruled that a tap on the glass does not in and
of itself give people reason to assume they’ve been detained, so
they’re free to go about their business.

Just don’t roll over the cop’s foot.

The decision actually came in a case that didn’t work out to the
defendant’s benefit. On Christmas morning in 2011, Deputy Matthew
Small of the Grant County Sheriff’s Department noticed a car with
its engine running in a parking lot. He found the vehicle’s
presence “suspicious.” He parked directly behind the car,
approached and knocked on the driver’s side, and asked driver
Daniel Vogt to roll down the window. The result was a blast of
booze breath which got Vogt busted for drunk driving.

Vogt argued that Small had no reason to conduct a traffic stop,
and that any evidence obtained by it should be suppressed. While
the appeals court agreed with him, a majority on the supreme court
reversed, saying that Vogt was under no duress and didn’t
have to interact with the deputy. Wrote
Justice David T. Prosser for the majority:

Although we acknowledge that this is a close case, we conclude
that a law enforcement officer’s knock on a car window does not by
itself constitute a show of authority sufficient to give rise to
the belief in a reasonable person that the person is not free to
leave.

Really?

The court adds, “The objective of law enforcement is to protect
and serve the community. Accordingly, an officer’s interactions
with people are not automatically adversarial.”

Do you ever get the impression that judges really don’t interact
with the same police officers the rest of us meet? Or at all?

For the record, Deputy Small told the court that if Vogt had
revved the engine and driven away, that would have been fine by him
because he “had nothing to stop him for.”

Uh huh.

Vogt apparently felt a little boxed in during the encounter, and
the appeals court agreed that “when a uniformed officer approaches
a vehicle at night and directs the driver to roll down his or her
window, a reasonable driver would not feel free to ignore the
officer.” But this is is a misinterpretation of “social instinct”
to defer to authority, says the Supreme Court.

All right, then.

That leaves Vogt screwed. But Wisconsin residents are free to
drive away from the cops. That’s what the court says.

Federal agents arrested six Philadelphia men for
stealing money from drug dealers, harassing and threatening to kill
them, and eventually selling their drugs themselves.

These six men were all current or former narcotics
officers. They used their law enforcement positions to gain
access to drug dealers and steal their loot.

The officers—John Speiser, Brian Reynolds, Michael Spicer, Perry
Betts, Thomas Liciardello, and Linwood Norman—will be charged with
kidnapping, robbery, extortion, and selling drugs. The extent
of their criminal activities is astonishing.
CBS Philly reports that the cops actually dangled a drug
suspect over the edge of a balcony and threatened to kill him
unless he gave up his stash. They also held a suspect hostage for
days while making threats against his family:

Sources previously confirmed that a federal grand jury has been
investigating allegations that Philadelphia narcotics officers
stole drugs and money and committed robberies of drug dealers, in
some cases allegedly using their guns to do it.

In one incident, officials say, the accused held one of the drug
suspects for days in a hotel while threatening him and making
threats against his family.

In another alleged incident, one victim was reportedly dangled
over the edge of an 18th-floor balcony in order to get
information.

The key witness in the case is Jeffrey Walker, another corrupt
cop who had knowledge of these crimes. Walker’s arrest last year
led to more than 50 overturned convictions—the cases he
participated in
were discredited due to his habit of planting drugs on
suspects. Walker’s lawyers told investigators that their client
knew more corrupt cops than he could count.

Unlike the rest of Walker’s police work, that seems to be
true.

Via The Des Moines Register,
your latest tale of our nanny culture gone nuts. This story
comes courtesy of an Ames, Iowa, Walmart, where a man named Jim
Davis was barred from buying a bottle of Smirnoff and two six-packs
of Budweiser. The reason? Because he had his 15-year-old daughter
with him. 

Nevermind that Davis himself is far above the legal drinking
age. A Walmart cashier refused to sell alcohol to the 57-year-old
after carding his teen daughter, who had no ID. In an email, a
customer service rep told him it was part of new efforts the chain
was testing to discourage underage drinking.

“In order to ensure that alcoholic beverages and tobacco are not
sold to minors, Walmart is testing point-of-sale age checks in some
locations across the country,” the customer service statement read.
“By testing this, we hope to discover the best methods for ensuring
that products are not sold illegally to minors. In addition, to
comply with federal laws, stores may ask for the ID from
individuals within a group other than the person making the
purchase.”

Not quite sure what the spokesperson means by “testing
point-of-sale age checks in some locations.” Isn’t checking ID for
alcohol sales is already a practice everywhere? Group ID checking
might make sense when you have a horde of young people. (As a bunch
of 19-year-old college kids, we knew better than to go into the
grocery store with the 21-year-old friend buying the beer.) But
when you have a parent buying alcohol with a teen in tow?
Absurd. 

The Register writer, Lee Rood, said he contacted
Walmart for a response but two spokespeople promised to answer his
questions “then did not respond for two weeks or return subsequent
messages.” After Rood’s article was published Monday, he was able

to get in touch with Brian Nick, Walmart’s director of national
media. “What happened is not consistent with the intent of our
policy,” Nick said.  

“The last thing you want to do is create an atmosphere where
people feel they can’t be in the store purchasing things with their
children.”

According to Nick, Walmart’s official policy for alcohol is
merely to check the ID of whomever’s doing the purchasing if they
appear under 40. He told Rood the policy would be clarified in Ames
and Des Moines, “where readers reported similar experiences.”
Apparently this isn’t just an isolated incident of employee
idiocy.

In the recent Reason-Rupe millennial poll, a majority (54
percent) said
policies aimed at preventing underage drinking are ineffective,
and 22 percent said these policies “create more problems than they
solve.”

Via The Des Moines Register,
your latest tale of our nanny culture gone nuts. This story
comes courtesy of an Ames, Iowa, Walmart, where a man named Jim
Davis was barred from buying a bottle of Smirnoff and two six-packs
of Budweiser. The reason? Because he had his 15-year-old daughter
with him. 

Nevermind that Davis himself is far above the legal drinking
age. A Walmart cashier refused to sell alcohol to the 57-year-old
after carding his teen daughter, who had no ID. In an email, a
customer service rep told him it was part of new efforts the chain
was testing to discourage underage drinking.

“In order to ensure that alcoholic beverages and tobacco are not
sold to minors, Walmart is testing point-of-sale age checks in some
locations across the country,” the customer service statement read.
“By testing this, we hope to discover the best methods for ensuring
that products are not sold illegally to minors. In addition, to
comply with federal laws, stores may ask for the ID from
individuals within a group other than the person making the
purchase.”

Not quite sure what the spokesperson means by “testing
point-of-sale age checks in some locations.” Isn’t checking ID for
alcohol sales is already a practice everywhere? Group ID checking
might make sense when you have a horde of young people. (As a bunch
of 19-year-old college kids, we knew better than to go into the
grocery store with the 21-year-old friend buying the beer.) But
when you have a parent buying alcohol with a teen in tow?
Absurd. 

The Register writer, Lee Rood, said he contacted
Walmart for a response but two spokespeople promised to answer his
questions “then did not respond for two weeks or return subsequent
messages.” After Rood’s article was published Monday, he was able

to get in touch with Brian Nick, Walmart’s director of national
media. “What happened is not consistent with the intent of our
policy,” Nick said.  

“The last thing you want to do is create an atmosphere where
people feel they can’t be in the store purchasing things with their
children.”

According to Nick, Walmart’s official policy for alcohol is
merely to check the ID of whomever’s doing the purchasing if they
appear under 40. He told Rood the policy would be clarified in Ames
and Des Moines, “where readers reported similar experiences.”
Apparently this isn’t just an isolated incident of employee
idiocy.

In the recent Reason-Rupe millennial poll, a majority (54
percent) said
policies aimed at preventing underage drinking are ineffective,
and 22 percent said these policies “create more problems than they
solve.”