kryptonianCodeMonkey

I follow Paula Dean's advice when it comes to butter. And only that one subject.

You should remember that if you are in a similar situation, what the law says may or may not matter. If a law enforcement officer is going to break the law and his colleagues do not stop them right then and there, for your personal safety it is usually in your best interest to comply as minimally as possible, but protest loudly and often about it. Make it clear that you are complying only under threat of violence or arrest. If the justice system works as it should, you can hopefully get compensation for having your rights violated and hopefully consequences for the violator (though qualified immunity is a bitch, so... don't get your hopes up too high). But if you fail to comply and have your body permanently damaged or lose your life, there's no true compensation for that. Take care of yourself first.

The most important tip I have to ensure that your case is taken seriously in a case like this is to record absolutely everything you can. At your first possible opportunity, submit an official complaint against the officer with as many details as you can ACCURATELY recall (do not lie, exaggerate, or include any information that you arent certain about. If they have footage disputing your claims, that may be entirely damning to your case) and a FOIA request for all information and body camera footage from your interaction as well. If you were hurt, seek out medical treatment for any injuries you sustained, no matter how seemingly minor at the time, and have them thoroughly documented. Seek out legal representation (some legal organizations exist specifically to combat abuses of the state, like the ACLU. Contact them and others directly too), and actually sue. It will take up a lot of your time for months or years, but the only way you get justice is to put in the work. Spread the body came footage and your own as far and wide as possible. Contact the local news with your story, post the videos online, send the videos to police critical youtubers that have a following and can boost awareness, and generally make it impossible to ignore for the city. As bullshit as it is, you will probably have to have the backing of overwhelming evidence of police misconduct AND public outrage in order to actually receive justice.

And sometimes that doesnt matter anyway. You also have to remember that law enforcement are only limited by the law in as much as others hold them to the law. If their coworkers, leadership, and the justice system do not enforce the law against law enforcement, then nothing prevents them from breaking the law. Protect yourself accordingly. That is the most important thing.

Unfortunately, the police are often a lot of latitude on their conduct related to "officer safety". For example, there's a lot of what would otherwise be unlawful commands that have been carved out specifically in the name of officer safety. Such as asking a driver to "exit their vehicle", telling detainees to "keep hands visible and out of pockets", telling bystanders "do not approach my investigation" or "stands where I can see you", etc.

The latitude given is a recognition that they are ostensibly agents acting in the interests of the state and that their role comes with inherent risks in the course of performing their job that they and the state have an interest in mitigating. As such, they should be able to take minimally invasive measures to control the behavior of those involved with or near their active investigations to protect themselves. Given that, without them issuing an active threat of unreasonable violence (like "say that again and I'll kill you"), simply having their hands on their weapons, or unholtering them when approaching a residence with limited visibility that they otherwise don't have the authority to order everyone out of is probably well within the latitude given to law enforcement.

There is an exception for cases of "hot pursuit," like if they see somebody kill someone and run into a house, they don't need a warrant.

Just to clarify, the person doesn't have to have murdered someone. They just have to be a suspect of a felony. The officers have to have reasonable suspicion of the felony and have to have continuously chased them to the residence. This is called exigent circumstances, which allows for limited exceptions to the 4th amendment. Other such exigent circumstances include reasonable suspicion of imminent harm of an occupant of the residence, or destruction of evidence of a crime (does not have to be a felony crime).

The Harboring laws vary state to state, so know your local laws. In Minnesota where this happened, they were not at legitimate risk of a harboring charge. The only crime they had reason to think she was suspected of was illegal entry into the US (a misdemeanor, btw), and they had reason to believe that she was actually a legal resident as she provided her id to them. Without actual knowledge of a crime or reason to suspect a crime had been committed by her (which again, any initial suspicion was subsided by the ID), they could not be convicted of harboring. Given that, the 4th amendment holds sway and they would need a judicial warrant for the address she was occupying in order to enter without consent of the owners of the residence.

Everything that happened here was likely legal from all parties, even if the ICE agents were a bit passively threatening. The one exception may be if they actually entered their backyard, especially within the gated area without permission (the guy says they were going around back, but I didnt see any agents approaching or crossing their property from the back, so I cant confirm). That would still be criminal trespass on the agents then. They only have implicit permission to enter the curtilage of the property and approach via the most direct route to the publically accessible door to talk to the residents. This is the knocking doctrine. They have as much right to enter the property to knock on your door as any other private individual. But no more right than that without a warrant.

The report is especially scathing in its critique of agents who’ve stood in front of moving vehicles, recommending that they “get out of the way…as opposed to intentionally assuming a position in front of such vehicles.” The authors add:

It should be recognized that a half-ounce (200-grain) bullet is unlikely to stop a 4,000-pound moving vehicle, and if the driver…is disabled by a bullet, the vehicle will become a totally unguided threat… Obviously, shooting at a moving vehicle can pose a risk to bystanders including other agents.

That's the extra stupidness of this who "self-defense" claim. Even if the guy was actually in danger, even if it had actually been her intent to mow him down... the response was not defensive in the slightest. The danger was a moving vehicle that might be intended to hit him His response was to ensure that vehicle kept moving, and to now do so completely aimlessly and make it an even bigger threat, while making sure that at minimum one person died in the process. And that's beside the fact that he voluntarily walked right into the only path her vehicle could have taken before shooting her. What a masterful defensive strategist you are.

"Well I thought the guy was gonna shoot me with his revolver, so I shot him in the face first, then I took his revolver, gave the cylinder a spin, put the barrel to my temple and pulled the trigger. When that chamber proved to be unloaded, I started flipping the gun wildly and pulling the trigger more in random directions to make sure the rest of the chambers were cleared. Thank god for my quick thinking. Defense."

Moody wasn't trying to kill him. He'd been kidnapped and replaced by a Death Eater in order to infiltrate the school. At the end of book 4, the deception is revealed and the death eater is arrested by the Aurors.

The real Moody returns in book 5 and serves as a loyal companion and mentor through the end of the series.

Yes, I know all that. The guy he knew as Moody originally, the only one he'd met at that point, the one he was admiring that inspired him to be an Auror, was the imposter. That's what I was talking about.

Voldemort is just the latest in a long line of evil wizards. They're stubbornly common place.

Not really. I mean there are evil people who are wizards, sure. But not to the level that had Dumbledore felt the need to be involved anyway.

Grindelwald fell in 1945, and it wasn't until 1970 that Voldemort debuted himself to the world as the Dark Lord. He attempted to kill Harry 11 years later and lost his body in the process, comes fully back 13 years after that, and then is killed 3 years after coming back. We hear about no other person even attempting to rival the role that Grindelwald and Voldemort filled in that time. So from 1945 to 1997, 52 years, the only evil wizard that required a coordinated effort beyond the typical efforts of the Ministry that we ever hear of is Voldemort.

Ha. I actually enrolled in the wrong major when I went to college. Meant to do computer graphics, ended up in computer science (don't ask, I was just an idiot). My academic advisor told me that I would have to wait a semester to change majors, that it didnt really hurt much because most of the first semester classes were humanities that count for both anyway, but to go ahead and give my intro programming classes a try in the meantime, and see what I thought. And I fell in love with it and decided to keep the major. So yea... I guess that was even more dumb than Harry's situation.

Jesus fuck. Guys. This is the real reason. Yes, he wants the oil. Yes he wants to depose a leader that mocks him and wants to put in one that will kiss his ass. Yes it will make his political and big oil backers happy... But for real... I think this is what the motive for the entire Venezuela thing was actually about. Trump wants leverage to take the Novel Prize that he thinks should be his. That's it. The rest is just icing on the cake. He'd have wanted to do it even without any other reason. I just... this is the worst kind of fiction. Let me the fuck off this ride.

What the actual fuck is wrong with these ass kissing, brown nosing sycophants that just do everything possible to play into and boost Trump's ego. For the love of god, just suck his fucking dick already. You look hungry as hell. Gobble some Trump nuts and stop pretending like everyone else is weird for not craving the taste.

It totally is. While our awareness of such injustices has expanded, most of the time they arent happening anywhere near us because information travels so much more freely now. But that serves to desensitize us, to make responding with words in echochambers of anger a habit, and gives us more things to be concerned about so it is hard to focus on one thing. The net effect of that is that, when things actually happen in out backyards, we feel so overwhelmed, so disconnected (as everyone else in your echo chamber is physically far from you), and so habitually inactive that, for most, it makes answering the call to action slow at best.

I just generally disagree with "Fred and George were better contributors to the resistance than the Trio,"

Oh, that wasn't my argument at all. Definitely agree.

Well yeah, sure. But only because they didnt have the information to act on that the trio did. Had they been looped in, they'd have been right there. I'm not saying that they didnt primarily act as support. I'm saying that had they been offered the opportunity to be on the front lines with an actual mission like Harry, Hermione and Ron had, they wouldnt have hesitated. I think that would have been to the detriment of the overall cause in the end though, given the role they did take up was pretty damn useful and about as vital a role as they could have served under the circumstances.

Obviously none of that is to detract from the accomplishments and heroism of the Trio either.