Police Union Sues Kentucky City's Mayor, Claiming New No-Knock Warrant Ban Violates Its Bargaining Agreement

from the working-tirelessly-to-be-as-wrong-as-possible dept

The city of Lexington, Kentucky recently passed a ban on no-knock raids by the local police department. A long string of no-knock raids that have ended tragically likely contributed to this, but a recent high-profile raid in which a 26-year-old black ER technician was shot and killed by Louisville, Kentucky police officers probably hit closest to home.

In that raid, officers did not announce their presence. Bursting into the house, they were met by gunfire from one of the house's residents who thought he was being robbed. (He had called 911 prior to arming himself.) While the officers did knock, they apparently did not declare they were police officers before breaking down the door. The officers returned fire, killing Breonna Taylor. The entire thing was predicated on an drug investigation that appeared to be at least partially fabricated.

Lexington has its own experience with botched drug raids. A no-knock raid in 2015 terrorized the residents of the wrong house, most of whom thought they were being robbed. It wasn't until the residents were surrounded by officers pointing guns that the officers realized they had the wrong address. The push to end no-knock raids began then, prompting opposition from law enforcement.

Lexington police insist that no-knock warrants — that allow police to enter a residence without knocking or announcing — are used sparingly and are thoroughly vetted before they are carried out. Police Chief Lawrence Weathers said in a June presentation before the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council that no-knock warrants had been used four times in the last five years.

That's according to the police department, which did not release any documents that might have confirmed the chief's claims about the limited use of these raids. Following several months of anti-police violence protests -- along with more recent tragedies linked to no-knock raids, the city passed a ban on this form of warrant service. The new city ordinance mandates that police knock, announce their presence, and wait a "reasonable" amount of time before forcing entry.

Now the city and the mayor are being sued by the local police union.

The Fraternal Order of Police has filed a lawsuit against the mayor and the city over the recently passed no-knock warrant ban.

It was last Thursday when the city council approved the ban in a 10 to 5 vote. The lawsuit claims that the city violated its collective bargaining agreement with the FOP.

So, what is the legal footing the FOP hopes will overturn this ban? It's a very creative reading of the city's agreement with the police union. According to bylaws the city and PD agreed to, the PD is obliged to keep officers as safe as possible. After spending some time bitching about how city reps made no effort to "negotiate" with the union, it finally gets around to laying down its ridiculous argument [PDF]. Here it is:

Article 14, Section I of the Officer/Sergeant CBA [Collective Bargaining Agreement] stipulates, "The Department will take precautions to safeguard the health and safety of Members during their hours of work and maintain standards of safety and sanitation."

[...]

The No-Knock Ordinance seriously endangers the health and safety of LPD Officers.

The No-Knock Ordinance prohibits LPD officers from seeking a lawful no-knock warrant, even when they objectively establish probable cause that requiring law enforcement to knock and announce their presence would increase the danger to the officers involved in executing the warrant.

The No-Knock Ordinance creates an extrajudicial "knock and announce" policy for all arrest and search warrants, devoid of any "precautions to safeguard the health and safety of [LPD Officers]."

It's not much of an argument. First, let's look at the police chief's statement. If the PD is only using these warrants about once a year, the loss of this one opportunity to surprise occupants isn't going to significantly increase the risk to officers.

If the chief was being dishonest about the frequency of no-knock warrant deployment, there's literally no evidence available anywhere that shows no-knock warrants are safer (for occupants, officers, or the general public) than regular knock-and-announce warrants.

No studies have examined the impact of banning no-knock warrants on key outcomes such as reducing fatalities and injuries of officers and members of the public. But evaluations of the impact of police raids, which typically involve no-knock warrants, on crime include two rigorous experiments. One study assessed the impact of randomly assigning city blocks in Kansas City, MO, to receive forcible police raids involving dramatic, highly visible armed entry while other blocks were subject to routine policing practices. Researchers found no statistically significant impacts on violent crime. Another study assessed the impact of randomized deployment of police paramilitary units to raid known Buffalo, NY, drug houses over a two-week period in 2012. Evaluators detected slight increases in calls for service and drug arrests following the raids, but no significant impacts on serious violent or property crimes.

A third evaluation employed a less rigorous methodology, examining 9,000 law enforcement agencies along with all of those in Maryland to compare outcomes in crime and officer assaults between agencies that established or eliminated a SWAT team during a period of time in the 2000s. The study found no statistically significant impact of SWAT deployment on either crime or officer assaults.

That comes from the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), whose membership includes several current and former police officials. It is not a font of anti-police activism. And it recommends ending the use of no-knock warrants and the use of plainclothes officers and/or the use of military uniforms during warrant service… to increase officer safety.

Unless they are engaged in covert operations, officers should be in standard dress uniform when executing warrants, particularly at premises that are known to be occupied, in order to be clearly identifiable as law enforcement and remove the impression that the execution of search warrants is a burglary (in the case of plainclothes officers) or military exercise (in the case of officers wearing battle uniforms). This practice minimizes the potential for officer harm from occupants using deadly force against assumed intruders. When a threat assessment determines that it is appropriate for a SWAT team to execute the warrant, those suitably attired and equipped officers should execute the warrant.

There's nothing out there showing ending no-knock raids would make officers less safe. It certainly would make the residents of houses raided safer. Many of those inside houses being raided are suspected of no criminal activity. This includes children who just happen to live in homes targeted (sometimes mistakenly) by officers who appear to believe catching kids in the crossfire is just acceptable collateral damage in the War on Drugs.

According to a New York Times study, no-knock raids involving SWAT-style tactics have led to the deaths of at least 100 people since 2010. Some of these are deaths of children, like seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones in Detroit who was shot in the head by police during a SWAT raid while she was sleeping next to her grandmother

[...]

Reports of botched raids show that no-knock warrants are used for an array of activities that simply do not justify the level of intrusion and inherent risk involved. Indeed, they have been deployed on high school students, in simple drug possession cases, and even for unpaid utility bills.

When the FOP argues in favor of no-knock raids, it's arguing for continuing the escalating trend of police violence.

There has been more than a 1,400% increase in the total number of police paramilitary deployments, or callouts, between 1980 and 2000. Today, an estimated 45,000 SWAT-team deployments are conducted yearly among those departments surveyed; in the early 1980s there was an average of about 3,000 (Kraska, 2001). The trend-line demonstrated that this growth began during the drug war of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The city's ordinance is trying to slow that roll. And it should make officers safer, whether they believe it will or not. Just because everyone calls it the "war on drugs" doesn't mean PDs should erect paramilitary forces that treat regular warrant service like an assault on enemy territory. The FOP is suing because the cops its represents love the violence, the culture, and the opportunity to feel like they're fighting a battle, rather than serving and protecting. Hopefully the court will point out that the city has the power to impose rules like this that do not directly violate the bylaws of the bargaining agreement.

Filed Under: kentucky, lexington, lexington police department, no knock warrants, police union

New York Police Union Tells NYPD End Of Qualified Immunity Will Force Officers To... Act Lawfully

from the kind-of-an-anti-climax dept

One of the NYPD's unions -- the Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA) -- is feeling ways about stuff again. Last month, the New York City Council passed a number of police reforms which included taking away qualified immunity as a defense in civil lawsuits filed in local courts. The bill has yet to receive the governor's signature, but the SBA is already making its unhappiness known.

The SBA issued a statement (via its lawyers) about the supposed downsides of giving the public a fighting chance in civil rights lawsuits. And in doing so, it has inadvertently generated a few arguments against qualified immunity, as Jay Schweikart points out at Unlawful Shield.

What was written as a cautionary advisory about the changing legal atmosphere is instead an unforced error that shows how often cops are protected by this immunity even when it's clear they've violated rights. First, the SBA restates the doctrine's intent:

Qualified immunity means that government employees are immune from lawsuits if they acted reasonably and not in violation of a “clearly established statutory or constitutional right.” It is designed to protect all government employees and officials from lawsuits and liability when they perform their duties in good faith and within what one reasonably believes to be the scope of existing law.

But then it skips right past all the case law that shows the doctrine protects plenty of bad faith actions and unreasonable officers. As Schweikart notes, truly reasonable officers know where the Constitutional lines are drawn and have no need to worry about not being protected if sued.

Officers who are genuinely acting in good faith aren’t violating anyone’s rights in the first place, so by definition, they don’t need qualified immunity to protect them. By suggesting otherwise to their members, these unions are engaged in reckless, dishonest fearmongering.

And that's where the SBA letter veers into an unintended endorsement of ending qualified immunity. Cloaked in language that suggests law enforcement officers should do less law enforcement until the legal pendulum swings firmly back in their favor, the SBA explicitly tells officers how to avoid being sued. And it's a really simple fix that doesn't need to rely on deliberate work slowdowns or underenforcement.

As a direct result of the passage of this law, and the unavailability of the defense of qualified immunity under its provisions, we advise that you proceed with caution when taking any police action which could lead to physical engagement with any person, and avoid physical engagement to the greatest extent possible while also assuring your own safety and the safety of others. Also, you are strongly cautioned against engaging in any stop & frisk (unless doing so for your own or others’ safety), search of a car, residence, or person unless you are certain that you are clearly and unequivocally within the bounds of the law . . .

How hard is that to figure out? The Constitution has been around for a long time. While there are still some areas unexplored due to tech developments, it's been mostly clear for years how to police the public without violating citizens' rights. That officers still choose to operate outside the bounds so frequently makes it clear qualified immunity has shifted more power to the already-powerful, rather than shield the small minority of government employees who make mistakes while operating in legally-unclear areas.

Operating "clearly and unequivocally within the bounds of law" is not a difficult thing to do. Normal citizens do this all the time, despite being subject to far more unclear laws and ordinances than officers of the actual law. If an action seems brutal, vindictive, or not entirely justified, it's probably a violation of someone's rights. There's plenty of leeway given to officers to engage in their duties. Courts allow cops to lie to suspects during interrogations, take people's property with almost zero justification, draw them into reverse sting operations involving make believe contraband, and make up the law as they go along to engage in pretextual traffic stops.

And the courts have also taken a very expansive view of the term "reasonable," allowing all sorts of unreasonable violations to be waved away by innovations of qualified immunity. This is the only thing being removed by the proposed law. And it only affects cases brought in the city's courts. It's hardly the end of qualified immunity and it isn't the death knell to good policing the SBA pretends it is. If officers start exiting the force -- or refusing to do their jobs -- because QI is no longer available, it will merely indicate these officers are unable (or unwilling) to perform their duties lawfully.

Filed Under: civil rights, nypd, police union, qualified immunity
Companies: sergeants benevolent association

Police Union Boss Attacks New DA For Daring To Speak To Police Recruits About Deadly Force

from the 'based-on-misinformation-and-prejudices...' dept

The residents of Philadelphia elected new District Attorney Larry Krasner because he wasn't like the long line of police misconduct enablers that preceded him. Fed up with crumbling relationships between law enforcement officers and the people they served, Krasner secured the position by promising to clean house and start representing the people's best interests, rather than just law enforcement's.

Disruption ensued.

Just days after he asked 33 prosecutors and staff members to turn in their resignations, Krasner defended his actions saying this is no different than what others have done when taking over a ship that has been troubled and trying to right its course.

"The coach gets to pick the team. It doesn't necessarily mean the players who were traded are bad players. Some of them might be, some of them might be great players, but they simply do not fit into the strategy of the team," Krasner said.

If prosecutors aren't safe, then no one's safe. That's the message being sent, one that has trickled down to police brass and to the beat officers far below them. Krasner dropped all existing marijuana possession charges and stated his office would no longer pursue charges against people possessing minor amounts of the drug.

Cash bail was targeted, too.

Calling the current cash-bail system “imprisonment for poverty,” Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced Wednesday that the city’s prosecutors will no longer seek cash bail for nonviolent defendants while they await trial.

Krasner's options are limited on the bail front, as it would take legislation to completely overhaul the system. But it does promise some relief to those charged with minor crimes. As it stands now, one out of every five people incarcerated in Philadelphia have yet to be tried, much less convicted. The bail system keeps poor people locked up and puts them in an even worse position even if they're ultimately proven innocent.

Krasner has made no friends with longtime law enforcement officers. But if he's going to change police culture in Philadelphia, he's going to need the help of new blood. Change will still need to be made up top, but if he can reach those just entering the system, some helpful changes could also bubble up from the bottom.

So, Krasner addressed a class of police cadets, offering some insight and commentary on his office's place in police accountability. This resulted in the head of the local police union publicly blowing a gasket and sending all police union members a letter disparaging the DA and his conversation with cadets.

Krasner’s attempt to share practical information with the soon-to-be officers was “ridiculous and dangerous” and “intentionally sought to endanger your lives,” Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) leader John McNesby wrote in an open letter to the cadet class. He told them to “completely disregard any and all advice received from self-appointed ‘experts’ who seek to deceive or mislead you.”

What made McNesby apoplectic? I don't think McNesby can say for sure since he wasn't even present during the talk and hadn't seen the recording of the presentation made available by the DA's office. Instead -- based on nothing -- McNesby declared DA Krasner an enemy of the police force who wished to see officers injured or dead.

If he had bothered to see the presentation firsthand, he might not have been so quick to remove all doubt that he is a fool.

On Friday morning, Waxman played the video for a reporter. Krasner can be seen discussing several scenarios, including one in which officers fatally shoot an unarmed and mentally ill man who had reached for another officer’s gun and struggled with him over it.

The video shows Krasner referring to “some mistakes that were made” in that scenario, and saying the man could have survived had the officers not displayed “an eagerness to shoot center mass.”

But, the video also shows him saying: “That does not mean those officers committed any crime. That does not mean there’s any disciplinary violation. That means those officers acted with preliminary information, under a whole lot of time pressure with things developing quickly, [and] made an honest mistake. And this District Attorney’s Office is not going to second-guess that.”

All in all, the presentation was supportive of officers and the split-second decisions they make when deploying force. The only thing that might seem unsupportive -- and only in the fever dreams of union bosses who will defend the worst of the uniformed worst -- was his suggestion that officers try something other than "shoot to kill" tactics if at all possible.

He suggested training could help guide when officers choose to fire their weapons, and — in a line that likely riled police the most — whether every shot needs to be “center mass.” Police and military members have for decades been trained to shoot for a suspect’s chest or back, as opposed to arms or legs, to more effectively stop a threat.

A police force that kills fewer people is a good thing. There's no disputing this point. And that was the point implicit in his statements. Fewer deaths mean fewer lawsuits and better relationships with the public. Not everyone carrying a weapon needs to be killed. And those that aren't carrying weapons have a better chance of survival if "reasonably scared" cops try to neutralize the perceived threat, rather than banish it from existence.

The union boss' letter is an ugly testament to the natural state of police unions. When even slightly threatened by a small shift in the status quo, they lash out at everyone -- victims of police violence, political activists, local residents -- with unhinged arguments that assert their desire for zero law enforcement accountability. FOP president John McNesby is no exception. But he is one of the worst. Having already called Black Lives Matter protesters a "pack of rabid animals," he's following up this PR coup by claiming, sight unseen, the new DA doesn't care about "blue lives." It a garbage letter from a garbage human being with more power than wisdom.

Filed Under: fop, fraternal order of police, john mcnesby, larry krasner, philadelphia, police misconduct, police union

Police Union Sues Toy Gun Maker For Not Doing Enough To Keep Cleveland Cops From Killing 12-Year-Old Boys

from the who-will-it-sue-now-that-it's-shot-itself-in-the-foot? dept

In the world of law enforcement, there's very little more ridiculous than police unions. That's the unfortunate side effect of feeling compelled to defend every "bad apple," no matter how rotten they are. The Cleveland police union has reached the apotheosis of law enforcement spin -- this time taking the form of a lawsuit that looks like a punchline.

First, some backstory. In 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by a Cleveland police officer as he played with a toy gun in the park. A caller reported Rice, saying he was waving around a gun. The caller also said it was likely the person they saw was a juvenile and the gun was likely a toy. This information was not passed on to the responding officers, who boldly/stupidly raced across the park lawn to within feet of where Rice was standing and shot him two seconds after exiting their vehicle. The "gun" Rice had was an Airsoft replica with the bright "not a gun" tip removed.

Had the dispatcher passed on the mitigating factors, Tamir Rice might still be alive. Had the officers decided to approach this tactically, rather than like an out-of-control half of a buddy-cop movie cliche, Tamir Rice might still be alive. But, as the Cleveland Patrolmen's Association sees it, the problem wasn't bad communication and worse tactics. The real problem here is toy gun makers.

The Cleveland Patrolmen's Association announced it will soon be filing a lawsuit against toy gun manufacturers in federal court.

CPPA attorney Henry Hilow told News 5 the civil lawsuit will not seek financial damages, but rather seek to restrict the design of toy guns, so they don't look so realistic.

"These fake weapons put the community at risk, puts law enforcement at risk, something has to be done," Hilow said. "The remedy that we'd be looking for is that that gun could not replicate. That that gun would be of such a color have such a tip."

Airsoft guns do look realistic, minus the bright orange tip that comes standard. Anyone can remove the tip… just like anyone can create a real gun that looks fake. None of that matters, though, as attempts to create vicarious liability tend to fall apart under judicial scrutiny. And, notably, the Cleveland Police Union has never attempted to sue the manufacturers of real guns, despite them being involved in almost every situation where officers have shot at people or been shot by them.

As Popehat pointed out on Twitter, this is likely only the first of many police union lawsuits:

Next to be sued by police: Coach for making wallets and God for making black people's hands and waistbands

So far, the CPPA stands alone in its jackassery. But it has hopes that others similarly situated will beclown themselves for the dismayed amusement of the nation:

He said the CPPA is looking for support from other police unions in major cities like Columbus and Dallas.

I applaud the union's willingness to take a stand in court against the maker of an item held by a person one of its members killed. Anything that draws more attention (albeit inadvertently) to the trigger-happy tendencies of Cleveland police officers and the increasing ridiculousness of police union statements and actions is fine by me.

Filed Under: cleveland, police, police union, tamir rice, toy guns
Companies: cleveland patrolman's association

Police Union Joins Rights Groups In Criticizing Police Chief For Snooping On Journalists

from the biting-the-hand-that-feeds-its-dues-paying-members dept

Police unions are best known for creating distance. They carve out space between police officers and accountability. They widen the gap between fiction and reality. They often act like the loudmouthed relative with the missing brain/mouth filter you always hope won't insert themselves into discussions about current events.

On rare, rare occasions, they come across misconduct even they can't condone. Every so often, police union heads act like normal, decent human beings.

The head of the Montreal police union said police Chief Philippe Pichet should be fired for allowing his officers to spy on journalists, calling the decision to track the cellphones of La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé and at least three other reporters “unforgivable.”

“It was a serious error in judgment and it is unforgivable,” Yves Francoeur, head of La Fraternité des policiers et policières de Montréal told the Montreal Gazette Tuesday. “The SPVM is the second largest police service in Quebec and the fifth largest municipal force in North America, so we need a strong leader.”

The Montreal Police obtained 24 search warrants to surveil Lagacé, including one that allowed the surreptitious activation of his phone's GPS. At least three other journalists were subjected to the same scrutiny.

The union head pointed out that Chief Pichet was well aware existing laws made surveillance of journalists something to be done only as a last resort in the most serious cases of criminal activity. The Montreal Police, however, began surveilling Lagacé because it was trying to determine who was leaking information from an internal corruption investigation.

In the effort to protect the department from damaging revelations, the Montreal Police chief has managed to push the police union into coming down on the same side as many of its usual enemies: journalists, privacy activists, and civil rights groups.

Even in the midst of all this pushback, Chief Pichet believes the surveillance was justified because his department has a "responsibility to investigate all crimes involving officers." Apparently, this includes tracking journalists because they may have talked to police officers.

It's unknown why the warrants were approved by a judge, considering the protections members of the press are usually afforded. The warrants are due to be released later in November. Privacy Lab's Christopher Parsons suggests the answer may lie in a cyberbullying law that creates a brand new set of law enforcement loopholes. The law permits police to "track an object, person, or transmission of data if the authorities have the suspicion or belief that doing so could assist an investigation." But it's not solely limited to cyberbullying, which was how the bill was packaged. (h/t Reason)

Parsons said that Bill C-13 was "sold to the Canadian public as necessary to stop cyberbullying," but applies to the general public.

"These orders that were used to conduct surveillance on the journalist and his respective sources, those are all powers that can be used in ongoing investigations, so most Canadian citizens will be subject to them," he said.

How handy to have a law like this to exploit to search out journalists' sources. The release of warrants should clear up the legal authority apparently abused here. C-13 is abuse waiting to happen, so it's likely this broadly-written law is the culprit. If so, nothing really stands in the way of law enforcement surveilling those normally meant to be shielded by Canada's Constitutional protections.

Filed Under: journalists, montreal, patrick lagace, philippe pichet, police, police union, surveillance

Court Shuts Down Police Union's Attempt To Bury Reporting On Sheriff's Dept.'s Hiring Of Bad Cops, Thieves And Sex Offenders

from the shut-up,-they-motioned dept

Late in 2013, the LA Times published information from applications processed by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department that showed the agency was generally unconcerned by past misconduct and illegal behavior by applicants -- especially if those applicants were former police officers or prison guards. This is the government's other revolving door, one that ensures a bad cop won't stay jobless for long.

The local police union and members of the Sheriff's Department tried to get a court to agree to some prior restraint in hopes of preventing this information from being made public. According to the lawsuit, the documents were "stolen" and, as stolen property, the LA Times had no right to hold onto it, much less publish it.

Of course, this assertion is wrong on multiple levels, starting with the fact that it's not illegal for journalists to publish stolen documents. If it was, hundreds of journalists would be in jail. The law cited by the union only prevents law enforcement officers from stealing or disseminating this information. On top of that, while the lawsuit alleged the documents were stolen, no evidence was provided to back up this claim.

This attempt to prevent information of public interest from reaching the public was greeted with an anti-SLAPP motion from the LA Times. This was sustained by the lower court, which found the plaintiffs' arguments severely deficient.

The court noted the Doe declarations ALADS submitted “contain no personal details about the declarants that would relieve them of the obligation of identifying themselves, particularly when the declarations contain the hearsay statement of defendant Faturechi concerning when the article is going to be published and what it will contain -- the evidence most critical to the showing of irreparable harm or immediate danger that plaintiff must make to justify ex parte relief.” The court also observed, “The declarations are also very vague in their reference to the personal information that Faturechi told the declarants he would be publishing.” The court “decline[d] to issue a TRO imposing a prior restraint on defendants’ free speech based on the speculative hearsay testimony of anonymous witnesses.”

The court denied the application on the additional ground that ALADS -- by its own admission -- had known for weeks if not months that the Times had information from the OPS/LASD deputies’ files, that notwithstanding this knowledge it had not proceeded by noticed motion, and therefore that “any exigency appear[ed] to be of [ALADS’] own making . . . . ”

This, of course, led to an appeal.

The appeal, even if successful, would have been a lost cause. By the time it reached the California appeals court, the information had already been published. Once prior restraint was denied, the only thing left for the plaintiffs to do was find some way to punish the paper for its act of journalism.

The appeals court is similarly unmoved by the plaintiffs' post-publication arguments, which are pretty much mostly a repetition of its previous failed arguments, with the addition of the assertion that the LA Times shouldn't have been able to invoke anti-SLAPP laws because it was trafficking in "stolen" material. Again, the appeals court agrees with the finding of the lower court -- that the plaintiffs make a lot of accusations, but can't seem to be able to back them up.

ALADS asserts the trial court erred in finding the Times had met its burden on the first step of the analysis because the Times obtained the LASD files “through criminal means.” ALADS repeats the allegation from its complaint that the Times reporter “stole, received from someone else who stole, or otherwise unlawfully came into physical possession of the confidential background investigation files...” As the trial court correctly observed, ALADS has presented no admissible evidence that Faturechi or anyone else at the Times stole anything.

And even if the documents were indeed stolen, the LASD officers and police union can't seem to find anything that indicates a law was broken by the LA Times' publication of the material.

ALADS cites -- and miscites -- various statutes it contends are violated by Faturechi’s mere possession of the records. For example, ALADS asserts that section 6200 of the Government Code makes it a crime for “any person” to steal, remove, or secrete “official government documents.” But the statute does not say “any person.” It says “[e]very officer” who has custody of a record “deposited in any public office” shall not steal, remove, secrete, destroy, mutilate, deface, alter, or falsify the record or permit another person to do so. The section is entitled “Custodial officers; theft, destruction, alteration, falsification.” Similarly, ALADS claims Government Code section 3307.5 “makes it illegal, as a matter of law, for anyone” to release a photograph of a peace officer to the public. In fact, that statute concerns officers’ relationships with the agencies that employ them. It says officers shall not be “required as a condition of employment” to consent to the use of their photographs on the Internet.

The court also addresses the "privacy violation" arguments advanced by the police union and the anonymous Doe plaintiffs, finding them similarly weak.

The first problem with ALADS’ argument is that any privacy right in the information contained in deputies’ employment applications belongs to the deputies (and their employer, LASD), not to the deputies’ labor union. “It is well settled that the right of privacy is purely a personal one; it cannot be asserted by anyone other than the person whose privacy has been invaded, that is, plaintiff must plead and prove that his privacy has been invaded.”

Finally, the court takes on the union's claim that its attempted prior restraint wasn't really prior restraint.

[T]he injunction ALADS seeks would not be “content-neutral” at all. ALADS asks the court to enjoin the Times from publishing any article containing any information in 16 listed categories, including the names of any OPS/LASD deputies, their photographs, and their “non-public criminal history.”

In sum, ALADS has cited no case permitting the kind of injunction it seeks here, to restrain a newspaper from publishing news articles on a matter of public concern: the qualifications of applicants for jobs as law enforcement officers. ALADS has cited no case because there is no such case. For more than one hundred years, federal and state courts have refused to allow the subjects of potential news reports to stop journalists from publishing reports about them.

Which is all this actually is. The police union and the Doe officers, too concerned about their reputations to put their name on the lawsuit, wanted nothing more than to bury unflattering information. Neither the union nor the officers seemed to have any problem with former officers fired for misconduct or illegal behavior being allowed back into positions of authority and power, but they had a serious problem with the LA Times letting the public in on its dirty secrets. Fortunately, two consecutive courts refused to buy the plaintiffs' censorious, malformed arguments.

Filed Under: bad cops, first amendment, journalism, la sheriff's department, lasd, police union, prior restraint, reporting