Court Denies Immunity To Law Enforcement Officer Who Arrested Crew Sent To Clean Out His Foreclosed House
from the when-all-you-have-is-an-inflated-sense-of-power... dept
Lieutenant Timothy Filbeck of the Butts County Sheriff's Department found himself in a not-at-all unusual situation: his home was being foreclosed upon. Like many others who have undergone this process, Filbeck was served with a variety of notices explaining the steps of the process and warning him of the consequences of not complying.
Filbeck moved out of the doomed home and into a family member's. This would apparently be the last rational thing he would do in response to the foreclosure. The insurance company for the bank inspected the home four times before coming to the conclusion it had been abandoned by Filbeck. The utilties had been turned off and "cobwebs extended from wall to wall in every room."
When the company began preparing the house for auction, things started to get interesting. Employees spent a day cleaning the house out and removing any abandoned property inside it. At some point, Filbeck apparently decided to drop by his old house and noticed the things he had left behind were missing. He could have contacted any of the companies involved in the foreclosure proceedings. He could have done nothing after realizing that leaving a foreclosed house abandoned tends to result in the removal of property also considered abandoned. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals notes that Lieutenant Filbeck chose "none of the above."
Instead, Filbeck boarded up the windows, nailed the doors shut, and placed four signs reading “KEEP OUT” on the Property. Filbeck also prepared and filed a police report using fellow deputy Kenneth Mundy’s name and submitted a claim to Liberty Mutual Insurance for the missing property.Handwritten signs and boards on the windows aren't going to keep legally-entitled persons from accessing the property, especially when the doors are still intact.
Preparing a police report in someone else's name, however… that's a problem. Especially when the person whose name you've used finds out about it.
When Mundy later discovered the police report, he demanded that his name be removed from it and insisted that he had not prepared it, authorized it, or known anything about it at the time that it was submitted.When MD Maintenance (the company preparing the house for auction) returned to the property, it called the property management company to report the boards and signs. The property manager told MDM's employees to report it to the police.
This, of course, led to MDM employees calling the same Sheriff's Department where Filbeck was employed. A deputy visited the property and confirmed no one was, in fact, still living there. He discussed his visit with Filbeck, which apparently motivated him to escalate his efforts.
A few weeks later, on the morning of February 22, 2011, Plaintiffs went to the Property. The “KEEP OUT” signs were still there. Because the doors remained nailed shut, Graham and Webster entered the Property through a bathroom window.The two employees resumed the task of removing stuff Filbeck had left behind from the property. Filbeck decided to use his position as a law enforcement officer to intimidate them into leaving the property.
While Plaintiffs were working, Filbeck learned they were there and caused Lieutenant Matthew Vaughan to go to the Property and confront them. When Vaughan arrived, Plaintiffs told him that they were cleaning out a “foreclosure home.” David Carter gave Vaughan and other deputies who joined Vaughan on the scene, documentation showing that the Property had been foreclosed upon and that Plaintiffs were legally authorized to work there.Possibly concerned that the other officers might reach the conclusion that there was no law enforcement purpose for being at Filbeck's former home, Filbeck himself arrived on the scene and "assumed control" of the "investigation."
Upon Filbeck’s arrival, Vaughn handed him a piece of documentation. David also attempted to show Filbeck an authorization letter on his phone, but Filbeck refused to review it and retorted that the authorization letter “and the rest of this paperwork don’t [sic] mean a damn thing.”Filbeck then went on to say all the documentation was worth even less than a "damn" on the scale of profanities.
Filbeck insisted that he owned the house, that MDM had no right to be there, and that the foreclosure was “illegal.” He also rejected Plaintiffs’ documentation and the MDM Notices posted at the Property, characterizing them as not worth “shit.”With that being said, Filbeck flexed his legal muscles.
Finally, despite Tina’s continuing attempts to reason with Filbeck, Filbeck rejoined, “Your boys are going to jail and are staying there until I get my stuff back.” He also threatened to arrest Tina.Filbeck then called up courthouse reps to see if there were any eviction notices pending against him. There were not, because the property had been deemed abandoned and Filbeck was obviously no longer living at the home. But those facts didn't stop Filbeck from carrying through on his threat.
After both agencies told Filbeck that no eviction notices had been filed, Filbeck ordered the arrests of Carter, Graham, and Webster for burglary. The officers handcuffed and took Plaintiffs to the Butts County Detention Center. There, they remained incarcerated for roughly 24 hours before they were released without any charges filed.Filbeck then decided he wasn't done violating their rights.
When the officers carted Plaintiffs off to jail, the Butts County Sheriff’s Office confiscated two cameras, silverware, and $20.00 in cash.Filbeck was sued, along with the Sheriff's Department. All defendants moved for summary judgment, asserting qualified immunity. The other defendants walk away from this debacle. Filbeck, however, will have to stand on his own. Both claims of immunity raised by Filbeck have been eliminated by the court's examination of the event. And the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court gives Filbeck a full blast of its disdain in its opening paragraph.
Filbeck later admitted that he had accessed MDM’s impounded vehicle, retrieved a camera, and downloaded pictures onto his computer without a warrant or authorization while the men were stuck in jail. The cameras, silverware, and $20.00 in cash were never returned, despite demands for return of the property.
Defendant-Appellant Timothy Filbeck was a lieutenant with the Butts County Sheriff’s Office. When his house was foreclosed upon, he, like anyone else who has been through foreclosure, had certain options available to him. But arresting the new owner’s agents, Plaintiffs-Appellees David Carter, Clayton Graham, Jr., and Mitchell Webster (collectively, “Plaintiffs”), who were lawfully performing their jobs, was not one of them. And neither was ordering Plaintiffs handcuffed and thrown in jail overnight. We think that should go without saying. Yet Filbeck did these things, anyway. Now Filbeck tries to convince us that he is immune from suit. We are not persuaded. Being a law-enforcement officer is not a license to break the law. And it is certainly not a shield behind which Filbeck may abuse his power with impunity.The thing is, Filbeck certainly saw his position as both: a permission slip for abusing citizens and a shield to hide behind when they complained. The court couldn't prevent the abuse, but at least it took Filbeck's unearned shield away from him.
That being said, this lawsuit seems to be doing nothing to hold back Filbeck's run for Sheriff of Benton County, AR, where he promises to "bring ethics and integrity back to the Sheriff's Office." (I assume he's having some shipped in...) Not only that, but there's no mention of this debacle in former Butts County Sheriff Gene Pope's letter of recommendation. So, while the court may have stripped away the shield of immunity, his supervisor seems all too willing to ensure Filbeck -- who's been proven to abuse power -- gets even more of it.
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Filed Under: butts county sheriff's department, conflict of interest, eviction, foreclosure, law enforcement
Reader Comments
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I'll take my coat.
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1. Filbeck refused to review it and retorted that the authorization letter “and the rest of this paperwork don’t [sic] mean a damn thing.”
2. He also rejected Plaintiffs’ documentation and the MDM Notices posted at the Property, characterizing them as not worth “shit.”
This is Butts County, Georgia. The '[sic]' in the first quote has been placed in error. "Doesn't" is considered archaic and is not to be used in any context, from the most casual sheriff-thret'nin's to the most formal government documents. It simply don't work nowhere.
In the case of the second quote, well... Judge R., you poor, sweet lil thing, how did you manage to misspell "sheeit"?
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Another Friday, another astroturfer supporting police criminality
First, Techdirt publishes articles discussing police criminal behavior -- like brutality -- daily. (Yesterday in fact there was a piece on Fox Network not wanting to show the end of a police chase that end with a man surrendering on the ground, and the criminal cops battered him.)
Second, if police weren't committing gross acts of criminal behavior -- like falsely arresting the people cleaning out the scumbag deadbeat cop's abandoned house -- there wouldn't be reports of this, some of which you find in Techdirt.
Yes, far easier to "blame the media" for reporting about criminal cops, than to take criminal cops to task, remove them from the street, or put them in prisons.
If cops held cops to the same standards as they hold everyone else, there would be more cops in prison than junkies.
There's no such thing as a good cop. There are bad cops... and those who look the other way or support them.
E
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Re: Another Friday, another astroturfer supporting police criminality
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Small wonder you post this shit when you're not logged in...
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How did the other defendants get immunity?
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Re: Another Friday, another astroturfer supporting police criminality
The parent is an AC posing as Whatever. Whatever has a profile. Why would he post under his own name but not logged in? Makes no sense. This is just a troll.
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Re: Re: Another Friday, another astroturfer supporting police criminality
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Hell, we almost ran over two of their deputies a few years back, they were running a license check on GA36 between I75/death row and Jackson, at 11pm, and had NO lights at all on their vehicles except for a corner marker on the side of the road, when we pulled to the center to give the parked cruiser the space the law demands, thats when the officers flashlights appeared, so we slammed on the brakes. they were... argumentative, but were finally persuaded to put their cars blue lights on to avoid being creamed by a car or semi looking to cut the corner to I20.
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Elect Timothy Filbeck for Sheriff
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A New Standard?
We do have a clear indication, though, of just what levels a cop will have to stoop to before his/her 'qualified' immunity will go away: it has to be personal with the cop.
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Since when?? That's SOP in most LEO organizations, including the alphabet soup collection in D.C.
There oughtta be a law!
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Re: A New Standard?
There are still procedures to follow. Even assuming that we are talking about a crowd of con artists, it's for a judge to determine this. And since Filbeck was a party with a vested interest here, he most certainly cannot claim qualified immunity like he did. The amount of his involvement as an (over?)-zealous law enforcement officer and as someone instigating law enforcement action is certainly something that needs to be disentangled by the court. I am not so sure about his colleagues' qualified immunity either. They might claim to have been acting in good faith (and that's what qualified immunity is supposed to cover) but I'm not convinced that it wasn't too good to be true faith. It's reasonable to focus on the elephant in the room, but there may be a few rhinos left in the china shop.
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There's quite a lot of typos in it, such as "Why do you want to work for central control?" (pg6) is answered "I AM NOT WANT TO WORK FOR CENTCOMM".
Page 7 says he worked as a 'CORPROAL' (and not a 'Corporal') for a police department that's just a PO box on a highway, with no town or state listed.
Finally some other goodies on Page 7.
He was a LT, in charge of SWAT, their Criminal Investigative Division, AND the Dive Team (Butts county is bordered tot he east by Lake jackson, caused by the Lloyd Shoals hydro dam to produce the Ocmulgee river. Right by the dam is the Sack-o-Suds from the movie [and legal education tool] My Cousin Vinny, filmed mostly in neighbouring Jasper county) for a county of about 25,000 (Jackson has a population of 5,000) which also has a stretch of I75 (with Truck stop) and the Georgia Diagnostic Prison and Death Row.
From there he became a 'corproal' in Siloam Springs, AR. A town with a population of 15k, and one of the small towns in a county dominated by Bentonville. This job he left after 'irreconcilable differences with the chief of police', and so gives his superior as a Sergeant.
His NEXT job is a 'part time patrolman' in 'TONTITOWM' (sic). The police departments are literally 18.1 miles apart on the same road (Tontitown is east of Siloam Springs) but now he's been demoted again, and in a town of 2,400 at that. Also, he's listing the Chief as his superior again, not a Sergeant or similar immediate supervisor.
Also, it seems that his Job here in GA didn't include "enforce the laws of the State of Georgia'
Finally, bottom of page 9 asks for his former residences. He lists 191 Qual [sic] trail, but lists he exited October 2010, and that the landlord was OCWEN. He filed this on April 15th, but the appeal court ruling didn't come out until May 3rd - so he'd admitted the facts to deny the immunity claim before the appeal court ruled on it.
Stupid.
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Re: A New Standard?
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Ironic that a county named Butts employed an ass.
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October I, 2001 IGKOOG ETHICS AND PROFESSIONALISM
That was his last ethics class. And it was just 4 hours long. As long as his most recent training
October 25, 2011 IFIQ48G SOVEREIGN CITIZEN MOVEMENT
and also the same length as
March 13, 2006 NLM290 MUSICNIDEO PIRACY
(I can forsee a FOIA filing now)
More interesting though is that he took this 8 hour course AFTER the incidents here
October 18, 2011 ILQ000 SEARCH AND SEIZURE
That was the same month he left the BCSO.
Wonder if Pope made him take the course in relation to the lawsuit, and if that was the straw that broke the camels back.
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'just a georgia boy.'
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On one hand, what he said about the foreclosure order being worthless was more likely to be true than false. In this post-2008 world, that should be the default attitude of anyone who's been paying attention, and it's good to see LE standing up to foreclosure fraud and going after the real criminals.
On the other hand... it would have a lot less of a skeezy "conflict of interest" feel to it had the victim not been himself.
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It took five seconds to find some relevant information.
The plaintiffs (foreclosure employees) were hired by a loan servicing company to clean out Filbeck’s home after it foreclosed.
On Jan. 31, 2011 the employees returned and found the home boarded up, so they called their employer. The employer called the Butts County Sheriff’s Department, who dispatched an officer.
The document states the officer wouldn’t let the workers enter the property, but he did not make an arrest because he didn’t think a crime was being committed. He recorded the encounter in his daily activity report.
After the arrests, Sergeant Mundy found his name on the Jan. 30 report and demanded it be removed, the document states. Filbeck allegedly altered the report by listing his name as the reporting officer, and removing himself from the report’s narrative.
Source: http://5newsonline.com/2016/04/20/candidate-for-interim-benton-county-sheriff-has-charges-pending-fr om-georgia-according-to-court-docs/
Tim, Google is a wonderful search tool for researching for your articles.
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I don't usually believe in "guilty until proven innocent" but in the case of foreclosures I am willing to make a much-needed exception.
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The good news...
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Rationale: In any case involving the attempted taking of property, the law must, by necessity, initially presume one party to be in the wrong before any legal proceedings have been initiated, much less resolved. Either the person doing the taking gets to keep the property by default, or they don't by default.
Considering both the stakes--if you initially presume the foreclosure to be valid, then someone ends up out on the streets, whereas if you initially presume it to be invalid, no harm is done to anyone, not even the bank because they're still having trouble selling off foreclosed houses--and the precedents, (a well-established history of rampant foreclosure fraud over the last decade and probably longer, which I assume you already know about,) both common sense and basic human decency fall squarely on the side of the homeowner.
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Re: A New Standard?
It is ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT about the loan, the note, late payments, etc. All that gets handled with phone calls and letters to the bank.
No, this was far along after that and the officer has no "excuse" for falsely arresting these people.
Your attempt to give him one by bringing up "but how did we get here" is absurd.
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1. If you're not a cop, you're guilty even if proven innocent because you're not a cop so we simply didn't provide enough evidence.
2. I'm a cop. I'm innocent.
What goes around, comes around.
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Re: Another Friday, another astroturfer supporting police criminality
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Saw that one coming
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The FBI says:
"Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:
Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.
I guess that makes the FBI stooges that goad people into "terror plots" terrorists as well.
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Re: A New Standard?
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Re: How did the other defendants get immunity?
'Cause freedom and Officer Safety.
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How people use tech is heavily influenced by their environment. When that environment includes cops beating the crap out of people for the crime of using sign language, assaulting women for the crime of being nervous about talking to cops, or cops committing grand theft for the crime of carrying cash just because "the law" says they can, that has a great deal of influence on everything else people do.
Including technology. Look up an app for the iPhone called Mobile Justice, which would not even exist but for events like the ones cited above.
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Because trolls would say one thing and then edit their post to say something else.
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(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNXpA0WbRAoLPsi8EsEgtIA)
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incriminated themselves by going along with his crime?
Extremely unlikely, and even less likely to stand up in court.
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I can think of a few other approaches, but you get the idea. This is a cat that has been skinned many different ways.
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RE: cops posts in general, one measure of freedom is the degree to which we can call authority figures to account. The day Tim stops writing blog posts about bad cop behaviour, be afraid. Be very afraid.
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You can actually foreclose on the bank, etc., if they've got their information wrong.
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They will, however, read their own comment and want to edit it after it gets posted. So some sites take the stronger method of "posting" it so that only the commenter sees it, along with an editing timeout that tells you when everyone else will see it as well. That is orders of magnitude more effective than a preview button.
I should add what I do on my own sites. I implement the same thing I marked as my favorite above, but without the timeout. You can come back and edit your comment no matter how old it is, unless someone has replied to it.
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Re: Elect Timothy Filbeck for Sheriff
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When cops are eagerly tearing it down, it's worth mentioning on a technology blog.
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Re: Saw that one coming
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How did the case come out
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