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Court rules you don't have a constitutional right to tell cops how to handcuff you
By adamg on Thu, 12/11/2014 - 11:01am
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that police in Falmouth did nothing wrong when they handcuffed a man's arms behind his back when they arrested him for not paying a traffic ticket - which it turns out he had, only the city in question hadn't recorded the payment.
The man, arrested in his bedroom, had asked to be handcuffed in front because he was worried about the effect on an incision from recent stomach surgery. Officers refused his request; when he put his arms out in front anyway, they pushed him down to the bed and eventually to the floor and restrained him so they could cuff him from behind. As a result, he was also charged with assault and battery on a police officer and resisting arrest.
The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected a lower-court judge's ruling that the officers had exceeded their "qualified immunity" by using excessive force and so could be sued for the physical injury the man suffered during the arrest and the humiliation of having his name appear in a newspaper account of the arrest.
When defined at the appropriate level of specificity, the necessary question is whether Hunt had a clearly established right to have his hands cuffed in front of him due to an alleged injury despite the officers' judgment call to the contrary. There is no such clearly established right. Instead, First Circuit precedent makes clear that the officers' decision to handcuff an arrestee according to standard police practice is a judgment call that must be analyzed based on the totality of the circumstances. Based on the facts here, no reasonable officer would have believed that his or her decision to handcuff Hunt according to standard police practice violated the constitutional prohibition on excessive force.
The court noted that police had reason to be especially on alert when they went to arrest the man because he had been arrested two months earlier for involvement "in a major cocaine and heroin distribution ring in Cape Cod."
However, the ruling is not a complete victory for the police. The court did not rule on the man's claim of "malicious prosecution" for charging him with the extra crimes.
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Comments
So the guy didn't resist
So the guy didn't resist arrest, just put his arms out in front? And instead of forcing his arms behind his back, the pigs tackled him to the floor and charged him with assault and battery?
Here's your daily baton beating, citizen.
Pigs?
You wouldn't be saying that if you were in danger and needed the cops. What safe kind of job where you're at home every night while the police are out putting themselves in danger do you do?
But you might say it if you
But you might say it if you heard about someone being needlessly brutalized.
Police don't have it easy, but neither do a lot of workers
Police Officer doesn't even make the top 10 for most dangerous jobs.
I'm not saying their job is easy, but it's not fair to imply that they are the only ones with dangerous jobs.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/08/22/americas-10-deadli...
This has been talked about before...
In not about danger in terms of accidents, it's about other human beings trying to hurt you, and having to make a decision as to how to handle those situations. If a logger has his truck stolen by a man with a gun, he can just put his hands up and call someone else to chase them. If a tree is falling into some power lines, the police officer doesn't have to go up in the tree and untangle the wires right when he shows up, he can call someone else to do it.
There are still plenty of
There are still plenty of other dangerous jobs that don't have carte blanche to brutalize people. I used to work in a healthcare setting where I was regularly physically attacked by our (mentally ill) patients and ended up in urgent care after work more than once. We were still held to strict rules about when we could touch, hold, or restrain a patient, no matter how much they were verbally escalating or using threatening body language.
The fact that so many cops justify their immediate use of force with "I was scared" is such bullshit. Try being a 5'2" petite woman like many of my coworkers, being threatened with sexual assault by a 6" 200 lb patient you're alone in a room with with a malfunctioning walky talky. If you can't stay calm, assess, and attempt to deescalate the situation first, you shouldn't be a cop.
We sure as hell didn't make the wages cops do, either.
Right, and health care workers don't abuse people either....
No ones ever died in mental hospitals, nursing homes, or other health care facilities.....
And if you can't protect yourself, I don't want my health care costs going up because you end up in the hospital for not being trained properly on restraints, or your hospital for not staffing correctly around dangerous patients.
I never said that...
Way to make stuff up.
False dichotomy
It's entirely possible to be respectful of the police, to be appreciative of the job they do, to understand the risks they face on the job (while a police officer is not as likely to be killed on the job as a convenience store clerk or a taxi driver, being a police officer is still more dangerous than being a librarian or an Internet troll)....
... and, at the same time, to insist that the police be held to a very high standard of professionalism.
Tell that to all the kids
Tell that to all the kids shouting "Fuck the police" over and over.
Which came first....
... the chicken or the egg.
Who were disrespected first? civilians or police? Which has a legal obligation to act professionally to the other? Maybe the situation is not entirely symmetrical.
Some would argue both Michael....
Even in this Ferguson situation where a cop was allegedly punched in the face. Did he cop disrespect him first? Did brown disrespect his community by waking in the middle of the street and robbing a store? The conversation can go all sorts of ways in the most serious situations......
Ferguson
What I see there first is a black community victimized by a virtually all-white police force, acting under the authority of (or in coordination with) an all white municipal government and court system system.
You see it, but you never lived it....
Being black there and seeing what they (or Brown, more specifically since he allegedly did something that many other blacks did not do) nor have you ever seen what the police have seen there.
Having raised two kids...
I know that getting into "who started it," is a fool's errand.
One little thing
It looks like it happened in Falmouth, though the parking ticket was in New Bedford and the warrant was out of New Bedford court.
They sent four cops from New
They sent four cops from New Bedford to Falmouth to arrest someone over an upaid (but actually paid) ticket. I suppose they figured they had to get their money's worth.
No, the warrant was from New Bedford court.
The Falmouth police apparantly went to serve the warrant.
The southcoast and Cape
is flooded with heroin and liquor stores. I suppose it helps to deal with their high unemployment and bad local economy. Many people must travel up to Boston for work. Providence and R.I. are also in bad shape. R.I. is the only state to actually lose population during the latest census.
Something doesn't add up......
It says the Town of New Bedford accepted a payment? For what? Towns don't accept payments for criminal violations, so no warrant should have been issued.
For the traffic ticket
Which raises the question, would the town typically issue a warrant on an unpaid traffic ticket? Looks like they were actually going after him on the drug charges... which is what the "malicious prosecution" claim is about, right?
Style note for the federal courts
One is never "in" Cape Cod. One is "on" Cape Cod.
That is all.
Of course...
It is also possible to simultaneously be:
"down the Cape"
but no, never "in" it.
Right, it's a geologic entity, not a geographic region
So we would be on it like on a peninsula, or on an island, or on a mountain. Unless you were buried up to your neck in the sand. Maybe then you would be in it.
I've been thinking about this
I've been thinking about this recently. for instance, "Penguin Pizza is in Mission Hill" vs ON Mission Hill. Now, Mission Hill is a geographic location as well as a neighbourhood, and the former always sounded better than the latter. Which is correct?
Savin Hill is worse
Because at least most of Mission Hill is actually a hill, while a good part of Savin Hill is rather flat.
There's no authority that
There's no authority that says it has to be "in" or "on". Say it either way and people on this site know exactly what you're communicating. Isn't that the purpose of language, after all?
No, cape cod is like a chair,
You sit in it, not on....oh wait I have no idea what you do in a chair, or cape cod.
A chair from Assonet?
I always thought Assonet should have a chair factory.
Yes....
and Sagamore should have a lingerie shop.
OK, I'll get my hat and go now. Try the veal, and don't forget to tip your waitress.
First things first - nobody
First things first - nobody should ever be arrested over an unpaid ticket. This isn't feudal England, and we don't have debtors prisons.
Yet you can
A family member got taken down the station (after a traffic stop) because of unpaid tickets. Her kids were the ones who got the tickets, but on her car. You're defaultng on a fine. Theoretically, you can get jail based on the nonpayment of any fine or court judgement.
Let's be honest, though. Yes, there was the warrant, but he wasn't really arrested for that. It was to get him off the street for heroin, and for that I'm glad.
What about respect?
There was an interesting piece on NPR about the New Haven police. It covered many areas but one item stood out. At the end, the New Haven Chief of Police said something to the effect "our police must treat the citizens with respect AND the citizens must treat the police with respect". I think is lost from our society. Whether or not this man has prior arrests, the request to be hand cuffed in front seems reasonable enough and the man does not appear to have been violent by what is reported here. If the warrant was for a traffic violation as indicated, the actions of the police seem to be excessive. If the man has a history of violence, then maybe their actions are not excessive. But it does beg the question about someone being arrested making a seemingly reasonable request relative to physical health. Do the police have the training to determine if the request is appropriate or not? What if the person were in a wheel chair? Would the police force their hands behind their back to shackle them? I don't know the answers to any of this except that right now the whole situation is out of hand all over the place. According to what is reported in the press, the police act with impunity, the judicial system appears to fail to protect the citizens, and our citizens are afraid of the police. Although I am no anarchist or revolutionary, it does seem to casting a shadow of a police state. It seems as a society we have lost a sense of balance and a sense of consideration for the other person, whatever the circumstance.
Exactly
This is a dangerous precedent. What if someone has life-threatening health issues? People know their bodies better than a stranger does. Is it really so hard to be careful if someone is telling you something is hurting them? Do most people being arrested even need cuffs on at all? I say this having worked with violent offenders and people with acute mental illness or brain injuries in different types of locked facilities and having transported many patients out to destinations in the community. We only used restraints when absolutely necessary, and always told the person exactly what we were doing and why, as well as giving them the option of calming down and agreeing to be safe without needing the restraints. We always had one person monitoring the person's breathing and monitoring for any signs of pain. The second someone complained of discomfort, we would listen and do basic first aid assessment regarding their complaint, in just as professional of a manner as we did for a perfectly calm person who walked up to the nurse's station saying something hurt.
Is it that hard to just treat people you have power over like you would want your family members treated?
Do we want to live in a society where it's acceptable that the police restrain someone behind their back instead of in front because they're the police and they said so?
Arrest for unpaid tickets?
Despite the common refrain here, there is no right of arrest for unpaid parking tickets or even unpaid civil moving violations. For unpaid parking tickets, which should be paid to the municipality, the driver's license of the offender is flagged as non-renewable. If the offender fails to pay, doesn't renew his license and is caught driving, he may be arrested for operating without a license. For unpaid moving violations, there is no right of arrest but the driver's license will be suspended if there is no payment to the commonwealth or appeal within the specified time period. If the offender is caught driving on the suspended license, he may be arrested. Pete Nice is correct, this story doesn't make sense as written. No cop is arresting anyone for unpaid tickets and New Bedford would only accept receipt for parking violations occurring there.
Surprising...
I was expecting something about Ted Kennedy and the "gay flag" from you.
C'mon
Don't poke.
Please?
This was a traffic ticket
And some towns have historically gone after people for not paying them. Weymouth was known for this absurdity - I know people who were cuffed over it - but they might have backed off of it in recent years.
This was Bristol County, right? The sheriff has been in hot water down there over charging people fees for lots of things to do with court hearings and such (regardless of guilt) that aren't legitimate charges. There have also been a number of deaths in the lockup due to questionable practices. The Sheriff has also been vocal about wanting to be some sort of federal immigration agent, too - which would be carried out with the same standard of evidence and care, no doubt.
So I wouldn't be surprised if they now charged this guy fees for sending Falmouth police to assault him over their clerical error and bizarre zeal about traffic tickets.
You still can't arrest for unpaid tickets....
In guessing what happened is that the persons license was suspended for not paying tickets (see fish's explanation above), and when he went to New Bedford to pay the tickets, New Bedford screwed up and didn't notify the registry. A warrant is then issued for operating after suspension, and since he is an alleged drug dealer, it came up on the radar if the Falmouth warrant unit.
In terms if your weymouth story, I bet they were arrested for the same thing, but bright to the station and released if they paid the civil fines.
I doubt the sherrifs office was involved.
Come on Fish
I don't even have a connection to law enforcement and I know what happened.
This guy would appear to be bad news, with the heroin and all. The Falmouth cops wanted to get this guy off the street, so they scoured his record and found the ticket. Someone went up to New Bedford and convinced a judge to issue a warrant. Bingo, they guy is on ice for a while. Or, I've just watch too many crime movies.
They went to the guy's house over a parking ticket. I would Imagine that no police department, not even the Mayberry Sheriff's Office, has the spare time to do that.
Arrested for nothing in his house, injured in the process
And these useless tools in black robes side with the idiot cops and the lazy bureacrats. The judiciary in this country is essentially as worthless as the other two branches of government. Ensuring the worst possible outcome 90% of the time.
Like the judiciary
who threw out a drunk driving conviction because the person who was struck by said drunk and then prevented the drunk from fleeing in his car happened to be an off duty cop who was still in uniform.
Or like the judiciary who threw out gun evidence because they decided the cops "should have known" a warrant was no longer valid, even though the person was a suspect in another crime.
If I'm not mistaken ...
I thought that conviction was reinstated by a higher court (or there was a new trial)?
Yes, the conviction
was reinstated. But at a considerable waste of time and expense to the taxpayer because some judge made the wrong decision in the first place.
Define "wrong"
What is your external measure of objective validity by which you would determine what decision is "wrong"?
This is why we have judges - there is none, except other judges.
If you reread the original decision
in the case, you'll note that the judge noted that the cop's actions were considered inappropriate because the off-duty cop was still in uniform. Further, the judge also noted that if the off-duty cop had been in street clothes, his actions would have been acceptable.
As the saying goes - WTF?
Dropping a drunk driving charge because the actions of the person who was struck by the drunk happeded to be an off-duty cop still in uniform? That is a very wrong decision, as the SJC determined by properly overturning it.
Not "inappropriate" road man....
But illegal in terms of jurisdictional law in that judges opinion, and he wasn't technically wrong. Anoter judge ruled in favor if good faith/common sense/reality, and that's how most case law is decided either way.
Point taken.
However, perhaps we need to better train our judges in considering good faith/common sense/reality in making their decisions, instead of the Greg Brady approach (not my exact words).
Oh I agree, but in the end the right decision usually gets made
There was a case in the 1800s here in massachusetts where someone was making fake coins and putting them in cigarette machines and basically stealing all cigarettes.
The way the larceny stature was written, the person couldn't legally be charged with anything so the legislature had to make an entire new law to cover these types of thefts!
This would always have been....
... a serious violation of federal law.