Source: https://steeringlaw.com/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 05:25:16+00:00

Document:
“A trial is an exercise in placing blame”. When the police use unreasonable force on civilians or otherwise violate their constitutional rights they almost always arrest them for some “resistance offense”; crimes that are so vague that almost any conduct by one can be twisted into the innocent of having somehow “resisted” or “delayed” or “obstructed” a police officer. In other words, . . . .
You don’t have to be a gangster to get arrested for a “Resistance Offense” in America. Plenty of non-criminal good citizens are confronted by police these days, on little or no evidence to suspect them of criminal activity. Sometimes they think that you are someone who you are not or are just at the wrong place and time. So, when an innocent civilian gets accosted by a police officer and told to prone themselves . . . .
Arrests and prosecutions for violations of Cal. Penal Code § 69 (resisting / dissuading pubic officer by threatening or using violence) is the latest tool in the government's defensive arsenal to prevent you from obtaining justice and redress for government outrages perpetrated against you. Section 69 is the resistance offense de jour. . . .
“A trial is an exercise in placing blame”. Nowhere is that concept more acute than in criminal and civil actions that involve issues of whether the police violated your constitutional rights. After all, whether you’re being criminally prosecuted for some “resistance offense”, or you’re suing the police in court, Modern Police Officers often falsely arrest and maliciously procure the false prosecution of the very victims . . . .
Malicious criminal prosecutions of the victims of police beatings and false “Contempt of Cop” arrests are rampant. When the police beat you and falsely arrest you, they attempt to procure your bogus criminal prosecution to shift the blame from them to you, and to preclude you from being able to sue them. Under California state law a police officer is absolutely immune for attempting to frame you for a crime. Cal. Gov't Code § 821.6. The question of whether one can sue . . . .
The Police State Isn’t Just The Police. It’s The body politic. It’s those of us who get to sit on juries, and either condone or disapprove police actions. It’s the Judges and Justices who make the law (and don’t think for one second that it’s not all made up by the Courts). It’s Congress and state legislatures. It’s the media. It’s the politicians. It’s Hollywood. It’s any way and any form of shaping our belief system, to accept, as not only common or normal, but even as reasonable, what . . . .
The Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The Ninth Amendment explicitly commands that unenumerated rights are not to be denied or disparaged by virtue of their lack of textual location in the federal Constitution. The concept of disparagement is grounded in equal treatment or parity between the items . . . .
Almost always when a County District Attorney presents a criminal case to a Grand Jury involving unlawful duty related activities by a peace officer, the District Attorney is making the case go away. The District Attorney has no desire to prosecute police officers, and if they do file a criminal case it is usually one against the civilian victim of the police outrages; something thousands of times more common that the violating police officer being criminally prosecuted . . . .
The “Contempt of Cop Game” is one of those type of games, where one side, the police and prosecutor, know the game, its rules and how to play, and the other side, you, have no clue how to play. Hopefully, an experienced police misconduct lawyer can play your hand; successfully. For example, if the police arrested you for robbing a liquor store and they wanted to obtain a custodial statement from you . . . .
In years gone by, we, as a society, had a whole lot more respect for each other. People were simply more polite and respectful toward each other. So were the police. They didn’t dress like they were dressed for combat The police officers that we grew up with walked a beat, carried .38 caliber revolver and wasn't trained to kill you if you posed any potential danger to them. This all changed with the "Wars on Drugs", the SWAT TV show of the . . . .
42 U.S.C. § 1983 is the statute that we use to sue state and local officials, like police officers, for violating our federal constitutional rights. Section 1983 is not itself a source of substantive Constitutional rights, but merely provides a method for vindicating federal rights conferred in the federal Constitution itself. In other words, Section 1983 is a federal statute that doesn’t define any Constitutional . . . .
In a very real sense, there is no such thing as “the law.” There is no real live “formula” or precise wording of statutes or ballot propositions, that the voters or the legislature, either do, or could, be made to do justice in any given situation. Things change, and the drafters of the statutes and ballot propositions aren’t all knowing and can’t envision every possible situation that their “law” would . . . .
People who believe the Courts are a bunch of “liberal judges” who let the criminals go free for the slightest technicality, have no concept of reality. They are watching too much TV. In fact, most people don’t have a clue as to what Constitutional rights they either have, or used to have . . . .
To attack the jury system is to attack an institution that has been the primary barrier between oppression and freedom in the English speaking world since 1215 (the issuance of the Magna Carta.) This is not an attack on the jury system. It is merely a reflection as to why in false arrest, unreasonable force and malicious prosecution cases, the way that a jury decides these type of cases is as much of a political decision as it is a factual one. Juries usually will vote in favor of the police based on their belief systems about the police; that police officers don't do bad things to people who don't deserve it . . . .
Although the wording of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution only permits searches and seizures of persons, places and things "but upon probable cause", over the past 35 years or so, "Officer's Safety" has replaced that requirement of "probable cause" or even "reasonable suspicion" to believe that the person seized has committed a crime in now permitting such warrantless searches and seizures. Appellate court decisions in criminal case evidence suppression motions has also chopped-away at the tree of liberty. . . .
If you ask any Risk Management Officer with a public entity about the their police agency even being equipped with Patrol Video Recording Systems, they will tell you (off the record) that they are vehemently opposed to any such recording. Although when some police officer does something terrible to a civilian, the politicians call for “transparency”, Risk Management people with the public agency know that the numbers of false claims against police officers will be greatly exceeded by the number of police outrages against the public that does get recorded. . . .
Police officers usually don’t go “hands on” any more unless the person is handcuffed, or there are multiple officers to beat the person, “in concert”. These days they usually don’t even use their batons. They either tase you or just shoot you. There are no real world consequences for police officers to even murder an innocent; that is so long as no one is lurking in the shadows with a cell phone who video recorded the murder in sufficient detail to not allow the police to make up some phony justification as to why the officer properly shot another. . . .
Do I Have A Right To Record The Police?
California enacted Cal. Penal Code § 148(g) that specifies that recording the police is not a crime. Almost all of the federal courts also have ruled that it is not a crime to record the police. However, if you live within territorial jurisdiction of the the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas), you presently do not really have a First Amendment right to record the police. That issue will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court in 2018 as there is now a Petition for Certiorari filed with the U.S. Supreme Court from the Eight Circuit's Opinion in Matthew Stephen Akins v. Daniel K. Knight, et al., No. 17-6992 to finally decide whether the First Amendment protects the public's right to record the police. . . .
Contrary to what most California police officers might believe or tell you when they are putting the handcuffs on you, it is not a crime in California to refuse to identify yourself to a police officer, save a lawful traffic stop or when you are being booked at a jail. The confusion emanates from a Supreme Court case out of Nevada named Hibbel v. Six Judicial District, in which the Supreme Court held that under Nevada law if the police have legal grounds to detain you that they can arrest you for failing to identify yourself to them. . . .
Jimenez v. County of San Diego, U.S. District Court (San Diego) 2016; $500,000.00 settlement for excessive force.
VNT Property 1 LLC, et al. v. City of Buena Park, et al.; U.S. District Court (Santa Ana) 2017; $350,000.00 for wrongful seizure of property.
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Jerry L. Steering was born in 1955 in Buffalo and graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1984.
Brenton Whitney Aitken Hands is an Orange County, California native, and a great up and coming young lawyer.
Police Misconduct litigation is very complicated. The law in this area is complex, confusing and takes many years of litigation and appellate experience to ferret out which cases are likely to prevail in court, and which ones probably will not. The law is not what the average citizen might expect, and new and expanded immunities for police officers and other government officials are growing exponentially.
We are not fortune tellers but our three plus decades of experience in this area may help you in your quest for justice.

References: § 69
 § 821
 § 1983
 § 148
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