Source: https://reedlawfirm.wordpress.com/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 01:28:37+00:00

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The militarization of the police has been a hot topic recently due to terror attacks in Orlando and the shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge. The police response to Orlando and Dallas made the police no longer look like police, but soldiers. They look like soldiers on a battlefield equipped with body armor, Kevlar helmets, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, armored vehicles, and the list goes on and on. Their appearance is far from the modest, uniformed, friendly peace officer that comes to mind. This uneasy evolution in the appearance of the police is not driven by a sinister need to militarize and oppress the population; rather it’s driven by the need to deal with the evolution of the threats they face.
Law enforcement has to walk a very narrow road when it comes to the gear and equipment they use. When a police officer is responding to a call looking like a soldier in Afghanistan, it makes us uneasy. We want our police to be safe, but we want them to look like police. They have to balance appearance and safety, and that can be difficult in today’s environment.
It would be easy to discount and criticize the militarization of the police without putting it in context. Most police officers like their role as police officers and not as soldiers here to keep order. They recognize that we can mostly govern ourselves. But, there are segments of society that take advantage of the low profile, relatively friendly nature of the police. When this happens, we depend on the police to be able to deal with these threats. In the Pulse nightclub shooting the police went from dealing with an active shooter situation to a hostage situation to a terrorist attack in the span of a few short hours. The police needed multiple tools and options to deal with that situation to quickly resolve it. We expect them to be able to stop a terrorist attack. We want them to track suspects that target police officers and apprehend them. We want the bad guy to get caught. Our American sense of justice is offended when drug traffickers and cartel members can operate with impunity because they can fight the police. However, after they are caught, we want peace and calm to resume with our regular uniformed police officer minding the streets.
Perhaps then the balance doesn’t reside exclusively with the police. We as citizens need to balance our tolerances for how the police conduct themselves and how we want them to look while doing it. A mutual understanding is needed. We need the police to understand that they can’t roam the streets with M-16s and armored vehicles on a daily basis and the police need us to understand that if they are to do their job safely and efficiently, sometimes an M-16 and an armored vehicle does the trick. It is important to remember that our police are our neighbors, and they are like us. They do not want to live in a police state anymore than the rest of us.
John Kruse practices criminal defense at the Reed Law Firm in Clermont, Florida.
As you can imagine, our law firm is frequently called upon to give out helpful advice to consumers who are suffering from exposure to spam (unsolicited electronic communications, not the delicious deli treat….) We got the bright idea to collect the best free advice available on the web and pass it along to our readers. This information comes from so many sources on the web that we felt an individual credit was inadequate and so we simply thank all of the helpful bloggers out there who contributed to this blog; and you know who you are…So, here we go!
Never make a purchase from an unsolicited email. By making a purchase, you may be encouraging future spam. Spammers will sell and re-sell your email address to any others that wish to buy them. You may encourage even more junk email. Worse still, you might end up the victim of a fraud. If you do not know the sender of an unsolicited email, simply delete it.
Don’t use the preview mode in your email viewer. Many spammers can track when a message is viewed, even if you don’t click on the email. The preview setting effectively opens the email and lets spammers know that you are receiving their messages. When you check your email, try to decide whether a message is spam on the basis of the subject line only. Remember, spam may contain malware that damages or compromises your computer when the email is opened. Further, some malware will use your computer’s own collection of email addresses of your family, friends, and colleagues to send its code to them masking itself as an email from you. Make sure to use the bcc setting when adding the email addresses of people who have entrusted you with their email addresses to your emails.
Use email filtering software at your email gateway. You should run email filtering software at the email gateway to protect yourself from spam as well as email-borne spyware, viruses and worms.
The SCOTUS’ recent 5-4 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. has stirred up public outcry, but most reviewers feel that political ideologues have created this controversy to serve their own agendas. In the majority opinion, Justice Alito held that certain requirements imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) concerning contraceptives should not apply to “closely held” corporate entities whose owners’ religious affiliations prevent them from approving the purchase, existence, or use of same. So why do some pundits and lay people believe that the decision has hampered their rights to acquire these contraceptives on their own, outside of their employment? Why do some people view this decision as a slight against women by a paternalistic band of conservative justices?
The decision refers to “closely held” corporations, or corporate entities where more than half of the shares are owned by fewer than five individuals. This includes most start ups and small firms in the U.S., as well as Hobby Lobby. According to Justice Alito, requiring the owners of small corporations to obey the contraceptive mandate of the PPACA violates those owners’ rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (42 U.S.C. § 2000bb). Under this section, even laws that don’t specifically deal with religious matters may still possibly result in a violation of the right to the freedom of religious practice sanctified by the Bill of Rights, specifically Amendment I. For such laws, the state must provide a compelling reason for their necessity, and the resulting incursion on religious freedom, something which was not done by the PPACA. However, by restricting their ruling to small businesses, the SCOTUS has indirectly stated that larger employers, the so-called “corporations” that some feel run the country, are not exempt from the law as stated. So the impoverished employees of Wal Mart, for example, will still have access to employer provided healthcare that includes coverage of contraceptives.
For this reason, I find it hard to view this decision as a major infringement on women’s reproductive rights. If the Court had ruled that women should not be given access to contraceptives entirely, then I would object to the ruling as an unjustified overextension of state power. By calling this a slight against women and a step backwards in progressive politics, dissenters are in fact claiming that their perceived right to government subsidized healthcare trumps the right to the free practice of religion of their employers. Unfortunately for them, one is seen as derived from the hubris of the state and the other a natural and, dare I say, inalienable right protected by the Constitution.
The SCOTUS has entered its ruling in the cases of Riley and United States today. If you read our post from April, or are otherwise familiar with these cases, you know they have to do with whether law enforcement must obtain a warrant before searching the digital contents of an arrestee’s smart phone. In an overwhelming 9-0 vote, the SCOTUS answered with a resounding “yes”.
Despite claims by California and U.S. law enforcement, the SCOTUS found that digital data does not pose any risk to officer safety, and should not be considered justified under a trilogy of previously decided cases dealing with searches incident to arrest. Concerns raised about suspects’ ability to wipe or encrypt data were dismissed as well, and countermeasures such as powering off the phone or the use of Faraday bags until such time as a warrant could be obtained were encouraged. Just as a warrantless romp through the rooms and drawers of a private residence was found unconstitutional in California v. Chimel, so also must be a warrantless romp through the digital nooks and crannies of a smart phone.
The SCOTUS has just finished hearing arguments in the cases of Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie, two cases which both deal to varying degrees with the same question: Does a police search of cell phone records without a warrant constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment?
In United States the state has taken the position that, since the 18th-century, it has been standard practice for police officers to conduct full searches of arrestees “including the examination of objects, containers, and written material,” that the Court’s rulings since 1914 have supported categorical search authority, and that a potential danger exists that if unlocked smartphones are not searched right away officers may not be able to recover the information they contain.
The Petitioner in Riley argues against this line of reasoning stating that “smartphones contain truly massive quantities of information – ‘the equivalent of [carrying in one’s pocket] the cabinets, desks, bookshelves, and bureaus in an 18th-century home,’ Br. of ACLU 6, as well as one’s entire office, library…random thoughts and wonders, and collections of medical, financial, and consumer records.” Further, that the state has intentionally interpreted applicable case law in a way that expands its search authority in ways never intended by the Court, and that there exist other acceptable means whereby police can ensure the data on the smartphones they recover is preserved (e.g., Faraday bags, placing the phone in “airplane mode”, et al.).
Several interested parties have weighed in on these cases, most notably the Cato Institute, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
In its amicus briefs, the Cato Institute argues against the precedent of an “expectation of privacy” (Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967)) typically cited in these types of cases, and instead favors a close interpretation of the intention of the Founders and the specific wording of Amendment IV itself. Cato argues that the case law relevant to this issue often improperly conflates the meaning of the terms “search” and “seizure” when describing what law enforcement personnel do upon making an arrest, i.e., it views them as one and the same. Further, a smartphone is properly considered an “effect” under Amendment IV, and the files stored on them are “papers” distinct from the phone itself, which becomes a sort of digital filing cabinet.
In a similar fashion, the EFF has argued that because smartphones contain sensitive information that people formerly kept elsewhere (i.e., not on their person), the “search-incident-to-arrest exception” offered by the state is not applicable and cannot be used to support categorical search authority. The ACLU concurs that warrantless search of smartphones “undermines fundamental Fourth Amendment principles.” The ACLU demands a rule prohibiting such searches as opposed to previously accepted approaches which are considered vague and overreaching.
While the final outcome of Riley and United States remains unclear, what is clear is that these cases are a harbinger of the digital future that has arrived at our stoop and has, often without our knowledge or explicit consent, entered our lives in very invasive ways. But we should continue to have faith in the versatility of our founding documents and the profound minds wherein they originated, for while these individuals may not have been able to envision a world where many can conduct the business of everyday life—balancing their checking account, filing their taxes, updating their families about their current affairs, transferring money to friends, setting appointments with and transmitting medical information to physicians—all while riding a subway train to work, the promulgation of the Bill of Rights, and specifically Amendment IV, is evidence that they were certainly aware of the dangers present in allowing state authorities too much leeway in peering into citizens’ personal affairs.

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