Officers had probable cause to stop and search defendant, including his cell phone which was being used to communicate with co-conspirators. United States v. Johnson, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141358 (D. Md. December 7, 2011).*

A FedEx employee opened a package on his own in California destined for Hawai’i and found a kilo of meth. This was purely a private search. A warrant was then used to install a tracking device for a delivery in Hawai’i. United States v. Faaita, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141549 (D. Haw. December 8, 2011).*

Defendant’s wife’s consent to seize and search a computer was voluntary on the totality. United States v. Mueller, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141185 (E.D. Ark. December 7, 2011).*

Defendants’ stop was not based on racial profiling, but two sales clerks spotting probable identity theft, and that was reasonable suspicion at the time of the stop. United States v. Campbell, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141469 (D. Me. December 6, 2011).*

A disbarred attorney lost any expectation of privacy in storage units he failed to pay for. The defendants included state bar conservators of his files. Howell v. Arizona Storage Inns, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140894 (D. Ariz. December 6, 2011).*

An informant provided information about defendant’s carrying cocaine, which was partially corroborated and added up to reasonable suspicion after the stop for speeding. United States v. De La Luz Perez, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141559 (W.D. Tex. December 8, 2011)*:

2. After the defendant was stopped for speeding, the officers’ questions and defendant’s detention were brief and reasonably related in scope to the circumstances that justified the stop. The totality of the circumstances which justify the detention and investigation include the following:
• the vehicle and its occupants matched the descriptions provided by the informant;
• the vehicle had made ten crossings into or out of Mexico in the previous two months;
• the occupants were initially asked for only basic information, including identification related documents, insurance, ownership of the vehicle and destination, which only one of the occupants could communicate;
• because only the occupant who had limited English proficiency could respond to the officer’s questions and because the officer was unable to communicate independently with the driver of the vehicle who did not speak English and verify the responses of the passenger, it was necessary to request a Spanish speaking officer assist;
• the officer observed no luggage or bags in the vehicle other than the driver and passenger’s purses;
• defendant agreed to the search of the car and exited carrying their purses;
• a canine “showed interest” in the passenger compartment of the car;
• defendant and her passenger were observed to be nervous as the investigation progressed;
• defendant and her passenger consented to the search of their purses; and
• a mere 45-60 minutes elapsed from the time the defendant was stopped to the time the cocaine was found and defendant was arrested.

Defendant did not testify at the suppression hearing, and the court concludes that he consented to an entry into his motel room after he was advised of his right to refuse and to a search of his pockets. United States v. Manor, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140377 (D. Vt. December 6, 2011).*

Officers had probable cause to believe that defendant was transporting a meth lab in his vehicle, and that justified its search under the automobile exception. Officers also had reason to believe there was a meth lab in a building to which defendant made no effort to show standing. United States v. Skoda, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140363 (D. Neb. November 23, 2011).*

Not knowing the owner of the vehicle, vague travel plans, and not looking the officer in the eye was reasonable suspicion for more. United States v. Sanchez, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140846 (D. Kan. December 7, 2011).*

HuffPo: GOP Jobs Bill Slashes Benefits, Allows States To Drug-Test The Unemployed:

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives unveiled legislation Friday that would cut 40 weeks from the duration of federal unemployment compensation and allow states to require the unemployed to pass drug tests in order to receive benefits.

Republicans have not cited any data suggesting that drug use contributes to joblessness or that there is an elevated rate of drug abuse among the unemployed. Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), said the measure is inspired by lawmakers’ conversations with businesses in their districts.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) cited a local business this week when he introduced a stand-alone drug testing proposal. “I had an employer tell me of an overwhelming response for job openings,” said Kingston. “There was just one problem: Half the people who applied could not even pass a drug test.”

So test the job applicants. That’s a private search. Finally, a GOP jobs bill, and it violates the Fourth Amendment.

Giving the officers executing a search warrant some minimal judgment as to what to seize does not make it overbroad. Here, it was papers relating to drug trafficking. United States v. Willoughby, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 139623 (N.D. Ohio November 15, 2011)*:

The categories outlined in the search warrant are no doubt broad, encompassing papers, computers, pictures, personal and business contacts, and other categories of evidence, but “‘[a] generalized seizure of business documents may be justified’ if it is demonstrated that ‘the government could not reasonably segregate … documents on the basis of whether or not they were likely to evidence criminal activity.’” United States v. Banks, 556 F.3d 967, 973 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting United States v. Kow, 58 F.3d 423 (9th Cir. 1995)). Here, it is not clear how officers could have made the categories any more particular. It appears from Defendant’s brief he wanted something similar to the phrase “in connection with prostitution and/or drug-related activity” to follow each category of evidence. However, such a recitation would be redundant in light of the list of specific crimes to which the search was related appearing on page two of the search warrant. Defendant also states the search warrant description would have allowed officers to collect anything located in his home. But officers executing the warrant are permitted to exercise some minimal judgment as to whether a particular document or item fell within a described category, and therefore, that fact alone does not warrant the relief Defendant seeks. See Blair, 214 F.3d at 697. In short, the search warrant is sufficiently particular and not overly broad.

WSJ: Marijuana arrests drop after NYPD order:

Arrests for low-level marijuana possession fell in the city in the weeks after Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly cautioned officers not to bust people for small amounts of the drug found in pockets or bags, according to department data released Wednesday.

Kelly issued the internal order Sept. 19 after claims that officers were wrongly arresting people. In New York, possessing a small amount of marijuana is punishable with a fine. But smoking the drug in public or having it visible remains a low-level crime that carries jail time.

There are more arrests on the pot charge — about 50,000 a year — than any other crime in New York City, accounting for about one of every seven cases that turn up in criminal courts. Critics say the numbers are driven in part by the department’s strategy of stopping and frisking people who meet crime suspects’ descriptions.

More than 450,000 people, mostly black and Hispanic men, were stopped so far this year, unfair targets, critics say. About 10 percent of stops result in arrests.

UPS Store employee opened a package that rattled because he feared an unfounded insurance claim. He was not acting as an agent of the police. United States v. Lawrence, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 139655 (D. Utah December 5, 2011)*:

In determining whether a private person has become an agent of the government, the Tenth Circuit uses a two-part inquiry: “1) whether the government knew of and acquiesced in the intrusive conduct, and 2) whether the party performing the search intended to assist law enforcement efforts or to further his own ends.” Pleasant v. Lovell, 876 F.2d 787, 797 (10th Cir. 1989). Both prongs must be met before the private search is deemed governmental conduct. United States v. Leffall, 82 F.3d 343, 347 (10th Cir. 1996).

Defendant abandoned CDs with child pornography on them by leaving them in a house foreclosed on that he moved out of and never tried to reclaim them. United States v. Larson, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 139566 (W.D. Mo. November 17, 2011)*:

Defendant’s subjective desire to someday retrieve the computer disks borders on the absurd. He no longer owned the house. He moved out of the house. Someone else bought the house and moved in. Defendant never contacted Fannie Mae, he never contacted the new owner. More than a year from the date of foreclosure had gone by before defendant learned the authorities had possession of those disks; nearly eight months had gone by since he vacated the premises. It is unclear to me exactly when defendant planned to try to retrieve these disks, and it is ridiculous to think that he had any privacy interest in these disks which were sitting in someone else’s house for this length of time.

Not surprisingly, there are no cases which support defendant’s theory on this point. However, United States v. Thomas, 451 F.3d 543 (8th Cir. 2006), cert. denied, 549 U.S. 1144, 127 S. Ct. 1010, 166 L. Ed. 2d 761 (2007), is similar in that the defendant in that case left mail in a mailbox at Mail Boxes, Etc. He failed to pay the rent on the box or come by to ask for the mail for about a year. Police obtained the mail from the Mail Boxes, Etc., establishment and opened it without a warrant. The court held that the mail was clearly abandoned.

Officers had a reasonable belief that the subject of an arrest warrant, plaintiff’s son, was at her home because he had given that address to the state court. When the officers got there, somebody looked out an upstairs window, but they couldn’t tell who it was. Considering the time of day, the entry was reasonable under Payton and Steagald, and the question of plaintiff’s consent was irrelevant. Williams v. City of Philadelphia, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 24092 (3d Cir. December 5, 2011) (unpublished)*:

The officers in this case were reasonable in their belief that Peno was present inside the house when they arrived. The record reveals that the officers obtained a valid residential address for Peno from the state court, an address Peno himself provided. This address was Williams’ home. Further, the officers arrived to serve the warrant at eight o’clock in the evening on a week night. After knocking, the officers saw an unidentified person peering through an upstairs window. They could not determine whether this person was Peno. A subsequent delay in opening the door and Williams’ hostility toward them reasonably raised the officers’ suspicions that Peno could have been hiding within the home. Other behavior–such as Williams abruptly fleeing upstairs–could reasonably have been taken as consistent with an attempt to prevent Peno’s apprehension.

Defendant consented to a drug search of his car in Arizona, and the officer searched a portable hard drive in a bag on the front seat for drug records, which he says he expected to find because they often do. Instead, he found child pornography, and that led to a warrant for the hard drive. The search was valid as a consent. United States v. Suing, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 139855 (D. Neb. December 5, 2011):

The court agrees with the magistrate judge’s implicit finding that the scope of Suing’s consent included the external hard drive and its contents. The court finds that even if, arguendo, the scope of Suing’s consent was limited to drugs, the search of the external hard drive still would have been legal because the Arizona deputies lawfully searched the external hard drive for evidence of illegal drug activity, and after they inadvertently discovered child pornography, they immediately ceased their search efforts and obtained a new warrant to search for evidence of child pornography.

. . .

Assuming, arguendo, Suing’s consent was limited in scope to only drugs, drug paraphernalia, guns, or any location where those items might be found, the court is persuaded that the search of the hard drive would still have been legal under the rule promulgated in United States v. Walser, 275 F.3d 981 (10th Cir. 2001). In Walser, an agent discovered evidence of child pornography on the defendant’s computer while the agent was executing a search warrant for evidence of drug activity. Id. at 983-85. In Walser, the Tenth Circuit determined the agent did not exceed the scope of the search warrant, because the agent discovered the child pornography inadvertently and the agent stopped his search immediately and obtained a new search warrant for evidence of child pornography. Id. at 986-87.

infoZine: Missouri County Sheriff Sentenced for Violating Civil Rights of Eight Women:

Jefferson City, MO – infoZine – Neal Wayne “Bear” Groom, former sheriff in Worth County, Mo., was sentenced in Kansas City, Mo., for violating the civil rights of eight women while he was working as a law enforcement officer. On Aug. 17, 2011, Groom pleaded guilty to coercing the women to expose parts of their bodies to him, in violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches. Magistrate Judge Sarah W. Hays sentenced Groom to 18 months in prison and one year of supervised release for the eight counts of conviction.

As part of the plea, Groom admitted that while he was sheriff of Worth County, he coerced the women into exposing unclothed parts of their bodies to him and that he photographed several of the women’s exposed or partially covered breasts. Groom mostly used the guise of checking the women for injuries related to domestic violence assaults or checking them for evidence of drug injections to coerce them into revealing different parts of their bodies to him. Groom admitted that he conducted the searches for no legitimate law enforcement purpose.

Search warrant authorized a search for “any and all vehicles involved with the property.” Defendant got into a car parked outside and left and was stopped by officers. The warrant was a general warrant as to vehicles for not requiring nexus to the property. Lee v. State, 956 N.E.2d 758 (Ind. App. 2011):

In this case, neither the warrant nor the affidavit in support thereof described the vehicles to be searched; detailed the vehicles’ connection to any criminal activity; or indicated the specific locations of the vehicles with any specificity to be searched. Given the vague language of the warrant, which clearly gave officers discretion in determining which vehicles to search, we find the portion of the warrant allowing for the search of vehicles to be invalid. Accordingly, all evidence seized pursuant to the invalid language, but only pursuant to the invalid language, must be suppressed. See Warren v. State, 760 N.E.2d 608, 610 (Ind. 2002) (holding that “catchall language does not doom the entire warrant, … but rather only requires the suppression of the evidence seized pursuant to that part of the warrant but not the suppression of the evidence obtained pursuant to the valid specific portions of the warrant”).

As in issue of first impression, Massachusetts holds that evicting a hotel occupant from his room for violating the basic rules of the hotel, even though he was prepaid for more days, extinguished his reasonable expectation of privacy in the room. Commonwealth v. Molina, 459 Mass. 819, 948 N.E.2d 402 (2011):

Although a guest may enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy in a hotel room, his privacy rights and reasonable expectations are limited by the unique and transient nature of his room occupancy. A hotel guest, for example, reasonably understands (or should) that hotel staff generally are able to enter his room to provide various guest services. See Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 112, 126 S. Ct. 1515, 164 L. Ed. 2d 208 (2006) (“a hotel guest customarily has no reason to expect the manager to allow anyone but his own employees into his room”). Also, it is well settled that a defendant’s reasonable expectation of privacy in a hotel room ends when he abandons the room or once his rental period expires. See Commonwealth v. Netto, 438 Mass. 686, 698, 783 N.E.2d 439 (2003); Commonwealth v. Paszko, supra. Whether a guest’s lawful eviction from a hotel room may cause his previous reasonable expectation of privacy to end is an issue on which we have not passed.

When a guest’s hotel rental period has been lawfully terminated, the guest no longer has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the hotel room. See United States v. Rahme, 813 F.2d 31, 34 (2d Cir. 1987), and cases cited. Several courts, including several circuit courts of the United States Court of Appeals, have concluded in this context that a lawful termination includes a lawful eviction from a hotel room based in part or wholly on a guest’s misconduct. See United States v. Molsbarger, 551 F.3d 809, 811 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 129 S. Ct. 2168, 173 L. Ed. 2d 1164 (2009) (hotel occupant’s reasonable expectation of privacy in room terminated when hotel manager with police assistance expelled occupant justifiably based on “raucous behavior”); United States v. Allen, 106 F.3d 695, 699 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1281, 117 S. Ct. 2467, 138 L. Ed. 2d 223 (1997) (concluding hotel manager had properly evicted guest “both because he was not allowed to store illegal drugs on the premises [but had] and because his pre-paid rental period had elapsed”; eviction extinguished guest’s privacy rights in room); 10 United States v. Haddad, 558 F.2d 968, 975 (9th Cir. 1977) (guest “ejected” for good cause, based on conduct including intoxication, disorderly conduct, and carrying gun in hotel; guest had no reasonable expectation of privacy in room); Johnson v. State, 285 Ga. 571, 572-574, 679 S.E.2d 340 (2009) (hotel guest had no reasonable expectation of privacy in room after hotel manager terminated his occupancy for selling drugs in room and creating disturbance in hotel); People v. Hardy, 77 A.D.3d 133, 139-140, 907 N.Y.S.2d 244 (N.Y. 2010) (hotel guest lost reasonable expectation of privacy in room after being ejected based on odors of marijuana and complaints of loud noise from room). The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit explained that once a guest is ejected “for good cause, the room revert[s] to the control of the management, and the former occupant [has] no continuing right to privacy in the room.” United States v. Haddad, supra. The court analogized the situation to one where a rental term expires: “a justified ejection is no different than a termination of the rental period, when ‘the guest has completely lost the right to use the room and any privacy associated with it.’” Id., quoting United States v. Croft, 429 F.2d 884, 887 (10th Cir. 1970).

Office of Foreign Asset Control’s blocking order of the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation’s assets issued without a warrant was a Fourth Amendment violation. Al Haramain Islamic Found. v. United States Dep’t of the Treasury, 660 F.3d 1019 (9th Cir. 2011):

Here, the domestic entity’s interest in being free from blocking orders is great. A blocking order effectively shuts down the private entity. Indeed, blocking orders do so by design. Unlike in the Court’s other cases, such as a one-time drug test, a search of files at a person’s office, a search of a home while on probation, or a brief traffic stop, there is no limited scope or scale to the effect of the blocking order. The only limit is temporal, and that limitation is quite small. Once OFAC concludes its investigation (which took more than half a year here), then the party has a right to very limited judicial review and a right to request administrative reconsideration. Both of those actions take considerable time, as the facts of this case and other cases, such as KindHearts, demonstrate. In the meantime, the entity’s doors are closed.

Additionally, OFAC’s potential reach is extensive. Unlike the Court’s cases, which concerned well-defined classes of persons such as probationers, public school students, public employees at work, drivers on the road, and so on, OFAC can issue a blocking order against any person within the United States or elsewhere. And, of course, OFAC does so without warning. There certainly is no “long history of judicial and public acceptance.” Camara, 387 U.S. at 537. Relatedly, unlike in the school and probation cases, in which those persons who conduct the search or seizure also are entrusted with protecting the targeted person’s interests, OFAC is not at all tasked with protecting the interests of the blocked entities.

On the other side of the scale, the government’s interest in preventing terrorism and the funding of terrorism is extremely high. But the sensitive subject matter is no excuse for the dispensing altogether with domestic persons’ constitutional rights. Cf. Hamdi, 542 U.S. 507 (holding that due process required that a United States citizen being held as an “enemy combatant” be given a meaningful opportunity to contest his detention). Rather, the dispositive question here is whether it is impracticable for OFAC to achieve its undeniably important aims without securing a warrant.

On this point, OFAC asserts that it does not and cannot know the location of the assets it seeks to block and must rely on property holders other than the blocked entity to identify such assets. OFAC also asserts that it would be impractical to update its warrants whenever it discovered additional assets owned by the entity. Finally, OFAC asserts that the timing of its blocking orders is coordinated with other governments, which makes it impractical to obtain a warrant.

We are not persuaded. As an initial matter, we reiterate that the number of designated persons located within the United States appears to be very small. The warrant requirement therefore will be relevant in only a few cases. In any event, we are puzzled by OFAC’s concerns related to the allegedly unknown location of the entity’s assets. In order to block assets effectively, OFAC must know which assets it is blocking.

A revocation warrant of supervised release is not required to be on “sworn facts” under the Fourth Amendment, noting a split in the circuits. United States v. Collazo-Castro, 660 F.3d 516 (1st Cir. 2011):

We conclude that the Fourth Amendment does not require a warrant based on an oath or affirmation to revoke an individual on supervised release. “An oath or affirmation ‘is designed to ensure that the truth will be told by insuring that the witness or affiant will be impressed with the solemnity and importance of his words.’” United States v. Brooks, 285 F.3d 1102, 1105 (8th Cir. 2002) (quoting United States v. Turner, 558 F.2d 46, 50 (2d Cir. 1977)). Probation officers, who notify district courts of alleged violations, are supervised by the courts. See United States v. York, 357 F.3d 14, 22 n.6 (1st Cir. 2004). Because probation officers “function as an ‘arm of the court’” they possess a unique role that does not require the same safeguards imposed on ordinary affiants by the Fourth Amendment. Id. (quoting United States v. Saxena, 229 F.3d 1, 5 n.1 (1st Cir. 2000)). Because a probation officer’s credibility is typically known by the district court, and because she is an officer of the court, an oath or affirmation is not required either to ensure credibility or to impress the officer with the consequences of failing to tell the truth. While it is now considered a best practice to seek a revocation warrant based on sworn facts, an oath or affirmation request is not constitutionally mandated. Because the warrant was valid, the district court had jurisdiction to revoke the appellant.

Defendant attempted to walk away from the officer twice, and the officer stopped him twice without reasonable suspicion. A reasonable person would not feel free to leave after that, and the motion to suppress should have been granted. United States v. Beauchamp, 659 F.3d 560 (6th Cir. 2011):

A reasonable person in Beauchamp’s position would not have felt free to leave when, after walking away from the police two times, an officer targeted Beauchamp by driving up to him, instructed him to stop, and then instructed him to turn around and walk toward the officer. Two features of the encounter compel this finding. First, a reasonable person in Beauchamp’s position would perceive the separate interactions with Officer Dees and then Officer Fain as connected and an indication that the officers were targeting him. There certainly could be situations in which a reasonable person would not perceive police interactions as connected; perhaps if there was a longer period of time between interactions or if they occurred in different locations. In this case, however, Beauchamp encountered Officer Dees and walked away, and then two streets over and presumably only a few minutes later, given the short distance, Officer Fain drove up to Beauchamp. Even though Officer Dees did not say anything to Beauchamp, a reasonable person would not dismiss the initial encounter with Officer Dees as merely coincidental when a second officer, almost immediately thereafter, sped up his patrol car, parked by Beauchamp, and exited his car to initiate contact.

While some of the defendant’s actions appeared innocent, on the totality it added up to reasonable suspicion. United States v. Jackson, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 123069 (E.D. Mo. September 27, 2011), adopted 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 122998 (E.D. Mo. October 25, 2011).*

Defendant was arrested on reasonable suspicion and taken to jail for a strip search. Because the arrest lacked probable cause, the motion to suppress is granted. Commonwealth v. Griffin, 79 Mass.App.Ct. 124, 2011 Mass. App. LEXIS 1334 (March 22, 2011).*

Crime Mapping and the Fourth Amendment: Redrawing “High-Crime Areas” by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, 63 Hast. L. J. 178 (2011):

Crime-mapping technology has the potential to reshape Fourth Amendment protections in designated “high-crime areas.” In Illinois v. Wardlow the Supreme Court held that presence in a high-crime area is one of only two factors necessary for creating reasonable suspicion to stop an individual. Since Wardlow, thousands of federal and state cases have used the term “high-crime area,” yet only a handful of courts have considered how to define it. New crime-mapping technologies can now address that definitional problem. Crime-mapping technologies can collect and analyze crime statistics so that police districts can produce almost perfect information about the level, rate, and geographic location of crimes in any given area. The result: police can define official “high-crime areas” for Fourth Amendment purposes.

Crime-mapping technology raises significant Fourth Amendment questions. Does crime-mapping technology alter the existing Fourth Amendment reasonable suspicion analysis? Will this technology create an implicit high-crime area exception to the Fourth Amendment? How will this technology effect police-citizen encounters and liberty interests in officially designated high-crime areas? This Article addresses these questions in an effort to reevaluate and rethink the concept of the high-crime area as understood by the courts. Tracing the history and practice of crime-mapping technology and its effect on Fourth Amendment doctrine, this Article proposes a new framework and redefinition of the term that is both informed by existing crimemapping technologies and consistent with Fourth Amendment principles.

Information in a wiretap application 2-3 months before the search and used in this search warrant application was not stale where the wiretap ran continuously for ten months. United States v. Mastendri, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 138661 (W.D. Pa. December 1, 2011)*:

Finally, defendant argues that because some of the information relied on dated from 2009, and had already been included in affidavits supporting an application for wiretap warrants, the information did not provide a substantial basis from which to infer that a search would yield evidence of a crime. He cites United States v. Williams, 124 F.3d 411 (3d Cir. 1997) for the proposition that stale information included in an affidavit may have limited value in showing that contraband could still be found at the premises. In Williams, information a decade old was held to be not stale given the “long and continuous operation” of the activity. Id. at 420-21.

In the instant case, the wiretaps were conducted in October and November 2009, only two to three months prior to the execution of the search warrant. The information that formed the basis of the wiretap affidavits was collected continuously beginning in January 2009, and was not stale. Further, the information established using the wiretaps contained sufficient facts to support a conclusion that the drug activity in question was continuous, and that there was probable cause to infer that the state of affairs described by the confidential source had not changed.

NYTimes.com: When the Police Go Military by Al Baker:

RIOT police officers tear-gassing protesters at the Occupy movement in Oakland. The surprising nighttime invasion of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, carried out with D-Day-like secrecy by officers deploying klieg lights and a military-style sound machine. And campus police officers in helmets and face shields dousing demonstrators at the University of California, Davis with pepper spray.

Is this the militarization of the American police?

. . .

Radley Balko, a journalist who has studied the issue, told a House subcommittee on crime in 2007 that one criminologist found a 1,500 percent increase in the use of SWAT (special weapons and tactics) teams in the United States in roughly the last two decades.

. . .

The more the police fail to defuse confrontations but instead help create them — be it with their equipment, tactics or demeanor — the more ties with community members are burned, he said. The effect is a loss of civility, and an erosion of constitutional rights, rather than a building of good will.

HuffPo: 85 year old “Lenore Zimmerman: TSA ‘Strip-Searched’ Me” with wheelchair and walker:

An 85-year-old Long Island woman is threatening to sue the TSA after what she claims was a bloody strip-search by the agency.

Lenore Zimmerman, of Long Beach, was on her way from JFK airport to Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday when she claims the TSA took her into a private room and began removing her clothes, the Daily News reports.

The retired receptionist, who uses a walker and stands 4 foot 11, said her son dropped her off at the airport for a 1pm flight. When she got to security, she asked if she could not go through the scanners–fearing it could interfere with her defibrillator–and instead be patted down, which she claims she normally does. Instead, she was taken by two female agents to a private room.

“I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she told the paper. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.”

Being from the government means never having to say you’re sorry.

Dumb legislators at it again, this time in Georgia. From the AJC.com blog: On the topic of drug-testing: We’ve been here before by jgalloway:

So we are back to talking about mandatory drug tests for those who receive government assistance. State Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, is one of those backing the measure.

A federal judge has blocked a similar measure in Florida on constitutional grounds. Fourth Amendment protection against search and seizure is alleged. But we are entering an election year, so the odds favor passage here in Georgia.

In reaction, state Rep. Scott Holcomb, D-Atlanta, on Friday dropped a measure to require that all members of the Legislature submit urine or blood samples so that they, too, can be screened for mind-altering substances.

If all this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. A well-informed reader reminded us of a particular April 15, 1997 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. [link added]

No sense of history? Never read a Supreme Court case? Did Rep. Holcomb get Sen. Albers’s attention? I doubt he understood the irony.