Addendum to a botched drug raid

Here is a link to the actual warrant for the botched drug raid. The article states that the warrant had been uplifted to Scribd, but when you check the link you will find that the warrant has been removed from the site. I guess there is a limit to Art Acevedo's transparency when the shit hits the fan.

According to the Houston Chronicle, the police seized 18 grams of marijuana and 1.5 grams of cocaine from the house. That's right, a little more than half-an-ounce of weed and little powder.

So here's my question, did the police kick in the wrong door or did they just flat out lie in the warrant application? It's one or the other.

What say you, Joe Gamaldi?

Anatomy of a botched drug raid

Last month five officers from the Houston Police Department were injured - four were shot - in a drug raid gone incredibly wrong. At the time we were barraged with statements from HPD that the police raided the house, shot the dogs and killed the residents, Donald Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, because a confidential informant told them the couple had heroin and guns in the house.

Joe Gamaldi, the head of the local police union, claimed the police had targets on their backs and that he was sick and tired of people claiming the police were the bad guys. He even threatened to keep tabs on those who criticized the police. Woo-hoo! Over here, Joe!

The local media - never ones to look too deeply into any story involving the police - ate it up. The local media never once questioned the reliability of the informant or the rationale behind a "dynamic" entry.

But there was a problem. There was no heroin in the house. There was a small amount of marijuana and cocaine. There were rifles and shotguns, but there was no evidence that they were obtained illegally.

Neighbors and relatives told anyone who would listen that neither Mr. Tuttle nor Ms. Nicholas were involved in the drug trade. Neither had any convictions for drug activity. Neither had any convictions for violent behavior.

Police Chief Art Acevedo (doing his best to play a prevent defense) told the media that police had received a tip from an anonymous called that there were guns and heroin inside the house. Police then sent their informant into the house to get some heroin. They claim he came out with the drug and a tale the house was a veritable Wal-Mart of heroin.

If anyone knows how this shit works in Houston, it should come as no surprise that the officers went to a judge in the municipal courthouse (where the primary business of the day is traffic court) to find a judge who would sign the warrant without asking any pesky questions about probable cause or the need for a "no-knock" warrant. Needless to say, they found a very pliant judge on Lubbock Street.

Since the jump-out boys were from narcotics, no one was wearing bodycams at the time of the raid. I get it. The last thing the police want the public to see is just how much of a shit show these raids turn into.

And now an unnamed officer involved in the raid has been relieved of duty pending an investigation into the botched raid.

For those of y'all keeping score on this, the search warrant said the police believed that heroin and handguns would be found in the house. Neither were.

If anyone out there has any delusion that the police follow a rigid procedure in obtaining evidence, drafting a warrant application and discussing with a judge why the warrant needs to be served, you may now put your glasses back on and witness just how this process works.

In reality the warrant applications filed by the police - and prosecutors - are fill-in-the-blank cookie-cutter forms where the affiant cuts and pastes the basis of his suspicion. This suspicion can rarely be backed up by anything resembling articulable facts. These affidavits are presented to judges who preside over traffic courts who sign them without raising any questions.

The result is what happened in Houston last month. This should be Exhibit A in a lesson as to why the war on drugs has been an abject failure.

See also:

Blakinger, Keri, et al. "Houston police officer connected to deadly raid, shootout relieved of duty," Houston Chronicle (2/8/2019)

Reigstad, Leif, "A no-knock raid in Houston led to deaths and police injuries. Should police rethink the process?" Texas Monthly (2/12019)

Blakinger, Keri and Stephen Tucker Paulson, "Police identify powder recovered in deadly drug raid" Houston Chronicle 2/2/2019)

Blaming the victim, Texas style

This is a video that Texas now requires all high school students to view. Its purpose is to "teach" students how to interact with the police.

But, in reality, it serves to give the police any number of excuses when they make the decision to pull their weapon and shoot someone.

And I don't want to hear that constant refrain that being a cop is a hard job. No one was forced to enter law enforcement. Everyone who attended the academy made the decision that's what they wanted to do.

The State of Texas has made the decision to side with the police when it comes to the shooting of unarmed black men. Texas has decided that the blame falls squarely on the victim of police violence because they didn't act in a certain manner. This mindset lets the police off the hook when they turn a situation confrontational. It lets them off the hook when they decide to draw their weapon.

It's the classic game of blame the victim.

Part of the problem is that law enforcement loves to play soldier. Local departments are dressing their officers in uniforms that look like fatigues. They are carrying military-style weapons. Departments are handed surplus military gear like it's candy.

And in this effort to have a War on Drugs - or whatever other evil is the flavor of the month - police officers adopt an "us v. them" attitude. The police are on patrol. The news media refers to ordinary citizens as civilians - so as to differentiate them from the police.

Now don't get me wrong. The police have always been used to enforce the social order. They were the front line defenders of Jim Crow in the South. The images of Bull Connor turning the police dogs on civil rights protesters can never be erased from the mind. The police have been used to bust strikes. They have been used to deny people their right to assemble peaceably and petition the government over their grievances.

I don't think we should be surprised that such a video becomes must-watch propaganda in Texas. There are more than enough wing nuts in the state legislature and Board of Education who love the idea of a police state (while telling their supporters how evil government is). Not surprisingly, the video left out the most important instruction in how to deal with the police -- not being black. Until we can sit down and discuss the racism at the core of policing, nothing will ever change.

Perhaps police officers should have to watch a video to teach them how to interact with people of color.

Dancing with the stars

Once upon a time there was a strip club on the North Freeway called Fantasy Plaza. Now, believe it or not, drugs were sold at the club and men paid dancers for sexual favors. Shocking, I know.

The city had enough after awhile and began trying to shut the club down. As an aside, the city made an agreement with some other topless clubs to allow them to violate certain rules in exchange for some donations to the city's human trafficking initiative.

Last June, officers were investigating claims that a 16-year-old had run away from home and, thanks to a fake ID, got herself a job as a dancer at Fantasy Plaza. They had to check it out.

On June 9, 2017, undercover officers entered the club and noticed a girl dancing on a side stage who met the description of the missing teen - and who matched photographs provided by her mother. One officer decided it was time to go above and beyond the call of duty to close the case.

He walked around to the other side of the club and plopped $40 on the table for a lap dance from the minor girl. At some point while she was gyrating on his pelvic region he noticed a mole on her shoulder blade which allowed him to make a positive identification.

Just let that sink in for a moment. An adult male police officer sat on a chair and allowed a minor to simulate sexual intercourse with him under the guise of trying to ID her.

Let's see, what other methods could he have used?

He could have asked the girl her name.

He could have told the girl he believed she was a runaway and needed to see some identification.

If she refused to answer he could have taken her to the station to "straighten out" the mess.

Not one of those alternatives, though, offered him the opportunity to have a minor girl grind on his lap.

Of split-second decisions

Whenever an unarmed person is shot and killed by police we hear the same old tropes about officers having to make split-second decisions. Grand jurors get to play around with a simulator in which they have to make a decision whether or not to shoot whenever cases involving police killings of unarmed people are to be heard.

In West Virginia, an officer made a split-second decision NOT to pull the trigger and it cost him his job.

On the evening of May 6, 2016, Officer Stephen Mader of the Weirton (W.Va) Police Department answered a domestic disturbance call. A visibly disturbed man named Ronald Williams was at the scene.  Officer Mader ordered Mr. Williams to show him his hands. Mr. Williams was holding an unloaded handgun.

Officer Mader ordered Mr. Williams to drop the weapon. Mr. Williams said he couldn't and asked Officer Mader to shoot him. As it turned out, the 911 caller was Mr. Williams' girlfriend. She called police and told the dispatcher that Mr. Williams had threatened her with a knife. Before the police arrived he retrieved the unloaded gun from his car and told his girlfriend that he was going to make the police kill him. Suicide by cop as we call it.

Officer Mader made the choice not to shoot Mr. Williams who was shot and killed moments later when he waved his gun at two officers who came to the scene after Officer Mader.

One month later Officer Mader was fired from the Weirton Police Department. The police department maintained that Officer Mader was fired because he failed to meet probationary standards and because he had difficulties in critical incident reasoning. Local officials claimed that the incident involving Mr. Williams had nothing to do with the firing.

Mr. Mader sued the city, alleging that he was fired in retaliation for his decision not to shoot Mr. Williams.

Yesterday, the ACLU announced that the city and Mr. Mader had reached a settlement agreement and that the city would pay Mr. Mader $175,000 in exchange for him dismissing his lawsuit.

And this highlights one of the problems with police culture. Instead of shooting Mr. Williams as the result of a split-second decision, Mr. Mader made the decision not to act rashly. He didn't know the gun was unloaded - that fact wasn't revealed to any of the officers at the scene. He made the decision not to escalate the situation in hopes that it could be resolved peacefully. For that he was called a coward by a fellow officer. For that decision not to escalate, he was fired.

Just think about that for a second.

What does that tell us about other police killings of unarmed black men? If someone had exercised the restraint that Mr. Mader did on that May night in 2016, there would have been fewer killings.

Sending in the stormtroopers to quell dissent

Back on August 9 of this year, Ferguson (MO) police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. The killing lit a powder keg of pent-up tensions in the St. Louis suburb. The world witnessed police paramilitary units patrolling the streets of Ferguson in riot gear and firing tear gas cannisters and rubber bullets into crowds.

Now, more than three months later, tensions are once again on the rise in Ferguson as everyone awaits the decision of a St. Louis County grand jury investigating the shooting. The local District Attorney refused to recuse himself and the governor resisted calls for a special prosecutor.

If our history is any guide, the grand jury will choose to no-bill the officer either because the DA made no effort to obtain an indictment or because Mr. Wilson wears a badge. Police officers just don't get indicted unless the evidence is undeniable as to what they did.

In anticipation of a no-bill, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has declared a state of emergency in St. Louis County. The reason given is the need to preserve law and order and to protect people and property. Of course, if you stop to think about it, sending in the paramilitaries when they are the ones responsible for the unrest in the first place makes absolutely no sense. But that hasn't stopped Gov. Nixon.

Nope. You know the last thing Mr. Nixon and his band of wealthy white supporters want to see is a bunch of black people marching and carrying signs reminding folks that racism and oppression are still alive and well in the Show Me State. His declaration is but an attempt to intimidate people into not exercising their right to seek redress of their grievances. By upping the ante with a bunch of black-clad Stormtroopers carrying the latest gear obtained from the US Defense Department and military contractors, Gov. Nixon has assured us of a confrontation.

Mr. Nixon has done nothing since the night Mr. Brown was murdered to address the concerns of the citizens of Ferguson. He has nothing to address the concerns of African-Americans living elsewhere in the state. He has done nothing to address the issue of police brutality. He has done nothing to address concerns over the militarization of the police.

Police officers are supposed to be members of the community. Their job is to serve and protect those around them. But, when you put riot gear on an officer and give him a helmet and a visor, those he's standing across from become the enemy. It's no longer everyone working together, now it's us against them. These paramilitaries are the last line of defense for the Establishment against those who aren't wealthy and/or white.

Wearing a badge does not give one carte blanche to kill people. Police officers are not above the law, they are subject to the same laws that the rest of us are. Maybe one day we'll realize that.

New toy for Wyoming police

Wyoming has a very low crime rate. It has one of the lowest murder rates in the country at 2.4 per 100,000 people. For comparison, the rate in Texas is 4.4 per 100,000 people.

But the relative absence of crime certainly didn't stand in the way of three sheriffs getting together and buying a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle. According to the Casper Star-Tribune, the MRAP is just another way in which law enforcement is keeping the public safe.

"Myself, Sheriff (Ken) Blackburn and Sheriff (Louis) Falgoust said, 'Let's get it,'" Rakness said. 

Big Horn County Sheriff's Office deputies traveled to Ft. Lewis, Wash., and drove it back. The cost of the vehicle as well as the cost to maintain it is going to be shared by the three counties. 

"That's the only cost we incurred," Rakness said. 

The reasoning behind getting the armored vehicle is because of the state being so isolated, especially in these three counties, he said. 

"We have to have it to nab the bad guys," Rakness said. "It's our hope we never have to use it. But it's free and we believe the taxpayers are getting some money back they invested in equipment."

Nabbing the bad guys. That's what it's all about. Sheriff Rakness brought up a shooting in Big Horn County from back in 1996 to justify the acquisition. I dare say that if you're having to go back 17 years to find an incident to justify the purchase of an armored vehicle you're reaching. Really reaching.

There are a couple of problems with police departments acquiring surplus military gear. First, the police aren't the military. The role of law enforcement is very different than the role of the military. Law enforcement is supposed to protect and serve the residents of a city, town or county while the job of the military is to kill people and destroy things. The police and residents aren't enemies. For the military, if you're not wearing the same uniform, you are the enemy. When police adopt military tactics they take this "us against them" attitude with them on the street. That attitude leads to routine events being escalated because someone didn't ask "how high?" when the officer told them to jump.

Second, these vehicles were designed with one purpose in mind - get troops safely into a place where they can kill anything that moves without fear of getting shot in return. I doubt you're going to find too many IED (improvised explosive devices) along the highway in Wyoming. One finger is probably one too many to count the number of mines that have been planted on the roads up there.

Third, once you've got your armored vehicle you have to use it to justify the expense of keeping it sitting around. I mean, if you're not going to use it, it's pretty damn silly to have out in the parking lot. Just having an MRAP around is going to encourage the police to find ways to use it. Military equipment has a funny way of finding itself being used in routine drug raids or when executing a search warrant.

Acquisitions of armored vehicles and surplus military gear shouldn't be fawned over by the press or the public. Such acquisitions should, instead, be questioned by all of us. As we continue the militarization of our police forces we create more and more of a siege mentality. This trend is dangerous and leads us further down the road toward a police state.

Book review: Rise of the Warrior Cop - The militarization of America's police forces

In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko takes a look at the current state of policing in these United States and asks "how did we get here?"

How did we come to a point in which police officers wear camouflage gear, carry assault-type weapons and raid houses in tanks? When did the police move from being a part of the community to being an occupation force within the community?

He starts out asking whether there is any Constitutional authority for the police as they exist today. You see, back in the early days of the Republic, there was no organized police force. Yes, there were constables who served process and sheriffs who might raise a posse of able-bodied men; but there were no police departments. And there certainly weren't professional police officers who dressed and acted like soldiers.

Mr. Balko points to the Castle Doctrine and the Third Amendment as two ideas that served to limit the authority of the police. The simplest way to look at the Castle Doctrine is to think of one's home as being inviolate. If the government wants inside your house, they must obtain a warrant from a judge after showing probable cause to believe you are breaking the law. The Third Amendment is a companion notion that says the government can't force you to allow troops to stay in your house or on your property. Oh, but such ideas do get in the way of the government getting its nose all up in your business. And the Right was ready to do something about in 1969.

The origins of the paramilitary forces that patrol our cities trace back to President Nixon and the first so-called War on Drugs. Nixon's proposals to legalize no-knock raids (up that point, with rare exception, when executing a warrant, the police had to knock and announce themselves and give the folks inside the house time to respond) and to suspend bail and suspended sentences marked the beginning of a decades long march to the occupation of our inner cities.

Mr. Balko chronicles the rise of SWAT units throughout the country as well as government garage sales of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. Much more disturbing is a look at how the police use force and intimidation to serve warrants in drug cases. Why go through the effort of tracking the suspect and arresting him outside his home when you can send in a tank full of paramilitaries to knock down the door, point guns indiscriminately and shoot the family pet all in the name of confiscating a few ounces of marijuana or cocaine? Of course doing some homework - rather than just relying on the words of informants - might prevent the police from busting down the wrong door and scaring the shit out of the wrong family.

We have seen the use of paramilitary police units to quell dissent at international conferences and national political party conventions. And who could ever forget the image of a Cal-Davis police officer wearing full riot gear discharging pepper spray in the faces of college students who were doing nothing more than sitting in front of an administration building during a protest?

By declaring war on this or that our political "leaders" have created a culture by which the police no longer see themselves as part of the community; instead they see themselves at war with the "bad" guys at large. This us-versus-them culture has created a situation in which the use of force is now the default response to a situation instead of a last resort.

We have allowed the occupation of America to thrive over the past four decades. It is time to stop the rising militarization of our law enforcement agencies. It won't be easy to undo what's been built up since the Nixon days but if we don't start now we will reach a point where it's too late.

NH police view Occupy protesters as terrorists

From the website Common Dreams comes this story of the increasing militarization of the police:

In a bid to bring armored vehicles to the small, capital city of Concord, New Hampshire, the local police department is trying to exploit peaceful activist groups such as Occupy New Hampshire and the libertarian Free State Project as "terror threats." 

Through a right to know request, the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union (NHCLU)—as part of an ongoing project against the militarization of local law enforcement agencies—obtained a grant filed by the Concord Police Department requesting $258,000 from the Department of Homeland Security for an armored BearCat vehicle. 

"The State of New Hampshire’s experience with terrorism slants primarily towards the domestic type," the grant states, adding that—with groups such as the "Free Staters" and Occupy NH active and presenting "daily challenges"—the "threat is real and here."

As the expression goes, if all you've got is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail. Or, to paraphrase, when you want your police department to get the same cool toys someone else has, soon everything looks like an existential threat.

The proposal also exposes the change in attitude of police departments across the country over the past three decades. Once upon a time, officers walked a beat. They got to know the neighborhood. Their job was to protect the citizens from criminal acts.

Now we have police officers who dress like soldiers, who carry automatic rifles and drive armored personnel carriers. With politicians increasingly wanting to declare war on something or other, a war mentality has overtaken police departments across the nation.

The mission has changed from protecting and serving to hunting down the bad guys. And, increasingly, it's an us-against-them mindset.

The characterization of the Occupy movement as a domestic terrorist group is a perfect demonstration of the view the government has taken of political dissent - particularly in the aftermath of the 9/11 over-reaction. Turning police departments into paramilitary outfits only serves to dissuade people from exercising their rights to assemble and petition the government for redress. It only serves to intimidate those who would defend the protections afforded under the Fourth Amendment.

The record of the Occupy movement is quite clear. The only time violence erupted during an Occupy event across the country was when the police initiated the use of force. Those protesters at UC-Davis weren't being violent. They were sitting on the ground. It was the police, wearing shields and covering their badges, who broke out the tear gas and fired in into the faces of college students. It was the police in Oakland who fired percussive grenades into a crowd of protesters who were exercising their First Amendment rights.

The threat to our social order doesn't come from peaceful protesters - the threat comes from the increasing militarization of our nation's police departments.

Warriors for a new tomorrow

No, that's not an armed invasion of the City of Houston. It's just the latest example of the increasing militarization of the police. There is no reason a Houston police officer should be decked out in full camouflage. He's not a soldier, he is a peace officer.

The mission of a police department is to protect and serve the citizenry. It's not to dress up like a soldier and carry an automatic rifle. It's not to get behind the wheel of an armored personnel carrier. These devices and artifices serve only to separate the police more and more from the rest of us.

As I drove around the city this morning listening to the Diane Rehm show. She and her guests were discussing the latest alleged (unspecified) terrorist plot. As usual, none of Ms. Rehm's guests were from outside the mainstream of opinion. The guests might tilt a little bit to the left or right but there is never anyone on the air who would argue that the questions missed the point.

While we have seen this same scenario played out many times before, not one guest on the show cast any skepticism about the veracity of the government's claims that they had uncovered information from listening to phone calls about the alleged plot. The very notion that the Obama administration would create an alleged terror threat out of whole cloth to distract attention from the NSA's internal surveillance programs was ridiculed by Ms. Rehm and her guests.

But most disturbing was the idea that, in a digital world, we need to come to the realization that the government is going to listen in to our phone calls, read our e-mails and peruse our internet searches. Not one guest questioned the premise that our privacy rights and civil liberties need to suffer in order for Big Brother to protect us.

If you follow their logic, the Fourth Amendment is but a quaint historical relic treasured by those of us who refuse to accept the new reality.

As an aside, none of the guests questioned the right of the United States to fly unmanned drones through the air space of a sovereign nation and fire missiles at their citizens. I guess murder is murder, unless the victim speaks a different language and practices a different set of superstitious rituals - but that's an argument for another day.

And as I listened to the conversation my mind kept being drawn back to the picture of HPD officers dressed in full camouflage carrying automatic rifles walking down a city street. Somewhere along the way we got so far off-track that most of us don't even think twice about the implications of turning the police into a paramilitary squad.

Police attack protesters in San Antonio

The Alamo? Forget about it.

Police in San Antonio shut down the Occupy! protest in HemisFair park on Monday, arresting at least five protesters and hitting a legal observer with a patrol car.

Unlike protesters in other cities, the protesters in San Antonio complied with the demands of the police and the city during the occupation, which began on October 6.

But, citing the default explanation - unsanitary conditions - the police gave protesters 15 minutes notice on Monday before shutting down the camp. Steven Baum, commander of the park police, first said protesters were being evicted because they violated the city's no camping ordinance, but later said the city had to prepare the park for a New Year's Eve celebration.

Baum said the group was asked to relocate so that preparations can be made for "Celebrate San Antonio", the city's annual New Year's Eve bash. 

"We have the fencing coming in today," he said. "We have other operations that are going to come in to build up toward the celebration."

Meanwhile, Carlos Villalobos, a legal observer with the National Lawyer Guild from Houston, was struck by a police car. Officers on the scene refused to call for help, identify the officer driving the car or take a report. Park police chief William McManus denied Mr. Villalobos had been struck and claimed that he had thrown himself in front of the police car.

Mr. Villalobos was transported by friends to a local San Antonio hospital for treatment.

The use heavy-handed police tactics on nonviolent protesters is an abomination. That local governments go along with, and sanction, the use of violence on the part of police is criminal. We may have the First Amendment to protect us, but the price of dissent is certainly not free. Just ask protesters in New York, Oakland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Houston...

Did an 82-year-old man really need to be tasered?

Tasermania is the new fad sweeping the English countryside these days.

According to the BBC, on June 28, 2011, police were called out to a disturbance. An 82-year-old man (whom the English press refers to as an "OAP" - old age pensioner) was arrested for possession of an offensive weapon and for criminal mischief. Now I have no idea what pissed off an 82-year-old man enough for him to vandalize someone's car - but I'm guessing it was pretty bad.

But then the story gets more bizarre as an officer pulled out his taser and "discharged" it. The 82-year-old man was taken to the hospital (or, as they say across the pond, "to hospital"), where he stayed for several days, complaining of pain.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is looking into whether the use of the taser was either appropriate or proportionate given the circumstances.

What would possess a police officer to unleash 50,000 volts of electricity into the body of an 82-year-old man? What "offensive weapon" could this man have been carrying to justify shooting him with a taser?

Scott Greenfield regularly points out that the first objective for any police officer is to make it home safely at the end of his shift. That objective sometimes causes officers to overreact to a situation and see it as more dangerous that it really is.

We can assume that the old man was not packing heat because he wasn't shot. I think it's also safe to assume that the old man wasn't threatening an officer with his "offensive weapon" because, once again, he wasn't shot. This would seem most likely to be a situation in which an officer tells someone to drop whatever's in his hands and drop to the ground; but the object of the officer's attention doesn't heed the command or doesn't move fast enough to satisfy the officer.

If an officer has to choose between using his gun or a billy club, chances are he will use his gun because it enables him to take command of the situation from a safer position. If a suspect has a knife or a pipe, moving in with the club exposes an officer to the risk of injury - but using a gun allows the officer to stay out of the line of fire. The taser gives the officer a third option - now he can stay at a distance and still bring a suspect to his knees without killing him.

Thus, an officer becomes more likely to rely on his taser as a first resort rather than as a last resort.

So much for the First Amendment

Cheap Trick sang about them two decades ago -- the Dream Police have invaded the Twin Cities. This past weekend, while everyone else was focused on Gustav and his assault on Nawlins, the Minneapolis police cracked down on anyone who had the gall to challenge the Bush/McCain illusion of America. Is this a glimpse into the crystal ball of how McCain intends to prevent 9/11 from happening again?

Media with Conscience reports that the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Task Force on Terrorism recruited informants to report on the activities of leftist groups in the area. The Minneapolis police and the FBI-led task force conducted pre-emptive assaults on groups exercising their right of free speech.

The Michigan Messenger reports that Ramsey county sheriff's officers conducted an armed raid at a St. Paul convergence space and handcuffed hundreds as they watched movies and ate a pot-luck dinner. Officers defended their actions by claiming they had search warrants -- though no one was allowed to see the warrants.

Despite the authoritarian tactics employed by the local police and the FBI, protesters turned out en masse on the opening day of the RNC.

The strength of this nation comes, not from our similarities, but from our wildly divergent origins, paths, views and philosophies. The United State's isn't a melting pot where disparate elements are melded together -- we are a pot of jambalaya, a rich stew made all the better by the mulitude of tastes.

Interrogation and false confessions

I came across some interesting articles on police interrogation methods and false confessions after my trial was continued this morning (see what The Innocence Project has to say about the matter).

There's this one from Grits for Breakfast. Stephen Gustitis wrote this piece on the psychology of confession. Charles Weisselberg, a professor at the University of California School of Law authored this article on police interrogation tactics in California.

The Reid Technique sets out 9 steps of interrogation. This method seeks to coerce a confession by use of moral justification. The interrogator limits the suspect's responses and presents him with a way out by offering him two choices -- one of which is less morally challenging than the other.

For a practical lesson in interrogation techniques, check out Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. Simon spent a year with the homicide detectives of the Baltimore, MD Police Department. The television series Homicide: Life on the Street was based on his book. There is a chilling interrogation scene in the book which, if you close your eyes, you can see Andre Braugher's character, Det. Frank Pembleton, conducting.

I tell friends, clients and potential clients that if they are being accused of committing a crime, NEVER talk to the police without consulting an attorney. I have had cases in which my client all but made the case against him because of what he said to the cops. Those who are actually innocent of the charge do themselves the most harm because they have nothing to hide -- and they hide nothing.