Cops Follow Up Officer-Involved Shooting By Heading To Funeral Home To Apply Dead Man's Fingers To His Locked Phone
from the you-can't-take-your-rights-with-you dept
When your fingerprint is your device's password, there's little you can do to prevent law enforcement from accessing its contents. In most cases, judges have sided with the government, opining that fingerprints are non-testimonial even if it results in the production of criminal evidence.
The Fifth Amendment offers little protection for those using fingerprints for device security. And the Fourth Amendment offers zero protection against law enforcement using your fingerprint to access locked devices after you've departed the corporeal plain.
"I just felt so disrespected and violated," said Victoria Armstrong, whose fiance, Linus F. Phillip, was shot and killed by a Largo police officer last month.
Armstrong, 28, happened to be at Sylvan Abbey Funeral Home in Clearwater the day two detectives showed up with Phillip’s phone, she said. They were taken to Phillip’s corpse. Then, they tried to unlock the phone by holding the body’s hands up to the phone’s fingerprint sensor.
Armstrong was killed by police officers following a quasi-traffic stop. He jumped back in his car and attempted to drive away when officers began searching him. The officers involved have since been cleared by the state attorney's investigation. For whatever reason, detectives decided they needed access to the dead man's device. Here's the excuse given for macabre undertaking.
Lt. Randall Chaney said it was an unsuccessful attempt to access and preserve data on the phone to aid in the investigation into Phillip’s death and a separate inquiry into drugs that involved Phillip, 30.
It's completely unclear as to how information on the dead man's phone would have aided an investigation into his being shot and killed by officers. The attachment of a vague "drug inquiry" doesn't do much to salvage the search and seizure.
But the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to dead people or their belongings. And the only reason the officers have to deal with this backlash is because their timing worked out badly. They retrieved the phone but the body had already been released to the funeral home. The seizure/search they would have performed at the morgue unfortunately now had to take place in public.
Since the Fourth Amendment isn't implicated, no warrant was needed, meaning no judge looked over an affidavit and decided unlocking a dead man's phone would somehow aid in an investigation into his death at the hands of the same law enforcement agency now attempting to crack open his phone.
This leads to another problematic aspect of the search: dead men can't be criminally charged. So what's the point in digging for more dirt on the dead man? Even if there's a "drug inquiry" underway, it seems the more honorable approach would be to at least ask the family's permission, if not avoid it entirely by focusing on other, less-dead suspects.
But honorable is the enemy of efficiency. And whatever the law doesn't explicitly forbid will be deployed by law enforcement, no matter how much it negatively affects its relationship with the community it serves.
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Filed Under: encryption, fingerprints, funeral, linus phillip, passwords, victoria armstrong
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It's been said many times before, but it bears repeating
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Re: It's been said many times before, but it bears repeating
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It's worse than that. Cops spend too much time around criminals ..... and amongst the street/criminal element, "respect" means "submission"
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Respect takes work, and requires that one give respect if you want to be given it back.
Fear on the other hand is easy, and can be attained simply by a show of force and/or making it clear that you're willing to make use of it.
Short-term both of these can be used to get people to do what you want, and the latter is far more enjoyable for those who get their kicks from throwing their weight around and abusing their authority. Long-term is another matter entirely, but if the cops were thinking long-term they wouldn't be going out of their way to poison the relationship they have with the public in the first place.
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A relevant moment in history...
In German-occupied France, it was not only considered acceptable, but one's patriotic duty to spit in or otherwise befoul dishware and food to be served to German enlisted and officers.
Already to many of us, we feel like the police are less a peacekeeping force of the people, but an occupying paramilitary force of somebody else's provisional government.
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1. Those who demand respect generally don't deserve it.
2. Those who deserve respect generally get it automatically.
And the unfortunate thing is, those people who fall into category #1 above will never ever understand category #2.
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I agree for the most part, though I take #1 a step farther and say that those who demand respect, by that very act, do not deserve to have it.
If someone is demanding respect then it's crystal clear to me at least that they do not deserve it. Respect is something you earn, it's not something you are owed.
'An honest person does not feel the need to tell you how honest they are. A liar on the other hand...'
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"Everyone deserves courtesy by default, until they show by their actions that they don't deserve it.
"No one deserves respect by default, until they show by their actions that they do deserve it."
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We deserve it!
As long as we keep refusing that the Constitution only grants government powers, and powers not listed are denied then this is the result.
Every nation gets the government is "Deserves"!
This time, the Victims ARE to blame!
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Re: We deserve it!
> grants government powers, and powers not listed are
> denied then this is the result.
Actually, the Constitution explicitly states in the 10th Amendment that all powers not explicitly granted in Article I, Section 8 are reserved to the state and local governments. They are not denied to the government altogether as you claim.
So basically, since the Constitution is silent on the power of the police to use a dead guy's fingerprints, that power belongs to the local cops. And guess who was using the fingerprints here? Yep, local cops.
This is all perfectly in line with the Constitution.
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The 14th Amendment...
"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
You need to read it. There is something peculiar about how the Constitution is written. It expects people to have a few basic understandings about things. Unfortunately you, along with many others severely lack that understanding.
Originally the Constitution did not apply between the states and the citizens, so historically, you are right that the states could reserved things for themselves, take your guns, keep slaves, and murder you with impunity. Not only that, your usage of Article 1, Section 8 to justify police doing whatever they want so long as nothing proscribes it is a farce. They still have to make laws that grant power because they still know that a power must be created and why you still see them calling press conferences asking congress to give law enforcement moar powa!
After the 14th, states lost the right to "reserve powers to the state" for certain things. Additionally, enumerating powers for legal purposes comes with the implicit detail that a power not listed is a power denied, otherwise there is no reason to list power, there would only be a reason to list the things they can't do. But they do both? Why is that?
Not only are you guys ignorant, you lack a basic functional understand of what gets implied when you are conversing with others.
For example... if I ask you can I go into your house, and you say yes... did you just give me permission to steal property from it... after all you didn't say I could not.
Power not explicitly granted is power denied that is the understanding or you would not have to enumerate powers to begin with! The idea that the government can do it because there is no law against it is a sign of very limited intelligence and bullshit logic!
We have a strong central government because the states have been cowed! If they want to be free of that, they need to secede.
And we don't even need to get into the other problems that he 14th cause that no one is even concerned about.
Lets just say "Political Expediency" is the death of the Constitution and why not a single word in that document is considered important any more. Every branch of government has already 100% ignored the Constitution and breached 100% of their powers and responsibilities.
it is no wonder America is a Police state, the logic you guys display are practically asking for it to be!
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First you say op is wrong and then later say he is right, you so funny.
"After the 14th, states lost the right to "reserve powers to the state" for certain things."
What might these things be?
Are you one of those who want to get rid of amendments 13 and up?
Yes, you get the police state you deserve. Because you guys are the cause of all police states ... but not the AC who told you - because the AC who told you that does not want a police state and has done nothing to encourage it like you all have.
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> things.
Nonsense. No court has ever held that the 14th Amendment repealed the 10th Amendment, or that the 10th Amendment no longer has any legal force or effect.
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Well…
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But dead men can assist with obtaining criminal charges for those still alive...
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corpse as a public resource
This brings up the question of "what rights does a dead person have?" and the answer is basically "none" if the authorities are the ones handling (or abusing) a corpse.
It's a common practice for a police shooting victim to be given a state-mandated autopsy, not for the normal reason of determining the cause of death (as if anyone might actually wonder why someone shot full of bullets might end up dead) but as a valuable if not irreplaceable research tool for helping police to develop more lethal weapons and tactics, since live-animal testing of police weapons is frowned upon by society at this time.
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Estate
> their belongings.
Seems to me that even though the guy is dead, his property is still part of his estate, which survives as a legal entity, and whomever is the beneficiary of that property either via will or intestate succession would now have standing to assert the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement.
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Need help
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And even then, it won't help. How much copyrighted material is on your phone that they want to copy? Do they care?
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unless you pay for the privledge
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CFAA violation
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Waxing Poetic
"Her fingers moved north from his gentleman's garden on to the smooth, corporeal plain of his abdomen."
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pHONE??
Where was the phone??
I dont think it was On the person..
I dont think it was in the car..
"The footage, from cameras at the Wawa gas station where the shooting occurred, show a man approaching the driver’s side of a black sedan parked at a pump. The car soon accelerates in reverse with its driver’s side door open and turns sharply.
A man can be seen getting up from the ground and running with another man toward the car as it slams backward into a pole, then inches forward into a vehicle parked at another pump. Police said Phillip tried to drive away with Steiner halfway in the car, which led the officer to fire his gun."
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"Steiner smelled marijuana coming from Phillip and the car. He asked Phillip why it smelled that way. Phillip said that it didn’t and that the officer could search the car. Steiner said he was going to search Phillip first, and Phillip grabbed two bulges in his gym shorts pockets."
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"Phillip then jumped back into the vehicle. Steiner, caught between the gas pump and the open driver’s side door, hopped halfway into the car with him. Phillip put it in reverse as Steiner yelled for him to stop.
Steiner pulled his gun, "thinking that that would get Phillip’s attention to stop the vehicle," the letter says. The Altima accelerated in reverse. Officer Prentice Ables, who was also at the scene and had moved out of the way, spotted Steiner hanging out of the car, about to get pulled underneath. Steiner fired his gun four times. Two bullets entered the left side of Phillip’s back, one his left arm, and the fourth grazed his left leg. Steiner fell out as the car rounded two gas pumps backward."
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"Police later found about 0.2 ounces each of marijuana and crack cocaine, about 0.4 ounces of powdered cocaine, an unspecified amount of hydromorphone pills and $1,632 in cash in Phillip’s pockets. That differed from the initial account from police, who said the drugs and cash were found inside the Altima. "
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Anyone wear Gym shorts and TRY to carry $1600?
How many initial cops there?? 4-6?? There are 3-4 names here.
So..A cop jumps into the Drivers side..A Cop Rolls out of the drivers side..After it reverses..
The driver gets the REAR smashed up, and then Crashes into another car..
AND the cops shoot him??
Cops are only shown how to Shoot PEOPLE?? not to disable the car?? and shoot tires??
Ok, Another officer saw another officer TRY to jump into the car, and Started shooting?? 4 shots?? 2 in the back, 2 on the driver left side.. OVER the head of the Other officer??
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They were most likely hoping they would find something they could use to demonize him in a press release, and pat themselves on the back for getting another "evil druggie" off the streets (and the earth).
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The "bad guy" implication is in the bullet.
If a police officer murders you, you were obviously guilty of something terrible. It's the poison on the bullet.
See also: law enforcement crypto backdoors which can only be used by good guys on bad-guy devices.
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That's not actually correct
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Not very classy.
The appropriate thing to do is have a nice tech come in to fingerprint the fallen (protocols for which I'm sure we've had since the 1920s) and then another tech constructs fingers by which to activate the phone back at the precinct lab.
It seems police are not just content to be able to murder with impunity, but to entirely disregard decency. They no longer have regard for the illusion that they serve the public.
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Re: Not very classy.
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Looking for a cause
The police are merely looking for a cause. People don't just get up one day and decide to be killed by a cop. There must be a reason why this event happened.
Maybe the deceased was a drug dealer. Maybe he was a thug, who had committed previous violent crimes. Maybe he had previous arrests.
Failing that, maybe he had a nasty temper, maybe he beat his wife/S.O. Maybe he wrote a manifesto espousing the overturn of world order. Maybe he associated with people who did, if he didn't himself.
Failing that, maybe he was suicidal (suicide by cop). Maybe he was dying of a terminal disease, maybe he recently lost a loved one. Maybe he lost his job; maybe his favorite political candidate lost an election.
There just has to be a reason for his causing his shooting that the public, the media, can accept. Anything other than that unacceptable answer, excessive force.
Maybe there's child porn on his phone, perhaps proof of drug dealing, pimping, associating with thugs, a picture of his manifesto, his medical history.
Of course they had to search his phone. Demonization requires it.
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When I die, I will be cremated right away.
One you have been cremated, the fuzz cannot do that.
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Once you've been cremated...
Yeah, once you've been cremated the fuzz can't be rude at your funeral, and exhuming your body won't do any good.
But they have your fingerprints or can get them they might still have time to unlock your phone.
It's really a good idea not to rely on biometrics to unlock your phone, at least on unless it's combined with another factor (say being within 100 meters of home).
Besides which, it's not a terrible thing to donate your body parts to science and or transplants if eligible. That could make for more peculiar investigatory impositions.
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And why would the cops want to look at his phone? Think maybe they were looking for information that would help them track down other criminals?
Some of you here are kind of twisted. I don't think all cops are good but some of you think that all cops are bad. You really are kind of fucked up. Most cops do what we want them to do.
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Yes. Why, do you think you should suddenly lose everything the moment you cease to live.
"Think maybe they were looking for information that would help them track down other criminals?"
There are procedures and rules surrounding the gathering of evidence for very good reasons. If they had a good enough reason, they should have followed them.
"Some of you here are kind of twisted."
Yes. Many of them post anonymously and kowtow to everything authority figures demand, whether or not it violates their own rights.
"Most cops do what we want them to do."
But, far from all of them, which is why the above rules are in place.
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"Most cops do what we want them to do."
as per Most cops are still good
[Citation needed.]
Enough law enforcement wrongdoing has surfaced to raise suspicion as to the intent of entire departments and agencies, and there is concern that precincts are environments in which violent, deceptive but loyal officers thrive where honest rule-following officers do not.
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