
Why the ‘wet tea leaves’ drug raid was outrageous - eric_h
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/01/11/why-the-wet-tea-leaves-drug-raid-was-outrageous/
======
hoodoof
All drug raids are outrageous. The stupid war on drugs is tearing society
apart, criminalising citizens, filling jails, ripping apart families, wasting
police and court resources, throwing away tax on enforcement, missing out on
tax revenue and funnelling billions to organised crime. All because people
want to get high, which is (for most drugs) a personal choice health issue.

~~~
Vexs
I think there's a difference between crimanal drug usage and illegal drug
usage. I mean, if it's a warehouse with massive ammounts of drugs in-out, then
yes, a raid makes sense. There are criminals doing illegal things in there.
However, a drug raid with the same tools preformed on an apartment is insane,
it's going to be a group of people doing illegal things.

I will confess an error in my thinking, in that it's really hard to legally
define what I describe, if not impossible. But, as the bible says
(paraphrased, and this is probably the first time I've ever quoted it..) "I
would not destroy the city if there is a single innocent inside of it." If you
can't make the law work, than maybe it shouldn't be there.

~~~
deciplex
> _I mean, if it 's a warehouse with massive ammounts of drugs in-out, then
> yes, a raid makes sense. There are criminals doing illegal things in there._

Let's rephrase this a bit:

> _I mean, if it 's a warehouse with criminals doing illegal things in there,
> then yes, a raid makes sense._

Currently much of the drug trade is managed by criminals, and once you're
breaking drug laws you might as well go ahead and break other laws e.g. human
trafficking, extortion, etc. But that need not be the case, and it's not hard
to imagine a warehouse with "massive ammounts [sic] of drugs in-out", where a
raid would be totally unjustified and illegal.

------
jimrandomh
This case centered around a field test, using a test kit which was highly
prone to false positives and conducted by someone who wasn't trained how to
use it. This was used to get a search warrant, which was executed by a SWAT
team. A judge ruled that the police were not liable for relying on the faulty
test.

However, I think it's important to consider this in context. There have been
multiple recent scandals in which US law enforcement was found to rely on
supposedly-scientific evidence which was, in fact, nothing more or less than
fraud upon the courts. (For example
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-
fo...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-
hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-
decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html) and
[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crimelab-
massachusetts...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crimelab-
massachusetts-idUSBREA242FK20140305)). These scandals would have been easily
prevented by the ordinary scientific practice of using control samples, so the
fact that they weren't prevented indicates systematic bad practices.

And there are widely-known deceptive practices still in use. For example,
police bring "drug-sniffing" dogs with them, which bark whenever an officer
cues them to, and courts accept this as though it were probable cause for a
search.

------
sp332
I think Kerr's article was pretty good, but he does undersell the scope of the
complaint. I thought the Hartes' were just trying to sue the officers
personally for the bad policy. But their complaint was a lot bigger. From the
judgement:

 _Plaintiffs filed this action against various defendants alleging violations
of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for unlawful search, unreasonable execution of the search
and excessive force in violation 2 of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Plaintiffs also assert a claim for municipal liability under Monell v.
Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978). Finally, plaintiffs assert
numerous state law claims against defendants, including trespass, assault,
false arrest, abuse of process, intentional infliction of emotional distress
and false light /invasion of privacy. This matter is presently before the
court on defendants’ motions for summary judgment on all of plaintiffs’
claims. As explained in more detail below, defendants’ motions are granted in
their entirety._

~~~
codyb
The article stated they spent 25,000 on legal fees I believe. Their lawyers
probably did the smart thing and tackled the issue on every front possible to
see what would stick.

As my dance instructor might have said... they seem to have taken a holistic
approach (to their lawsuit | to dance) in an effort to achieve better results.

~~~
jdmichal
That $25ooo actually went only to a court order so that they could receive a
copy of the documentation about the case leading up to the search. The cost of
the case to the Harte family was not mentioned, and I'm hoping it was done on
contingency.

> After spending $25,000 to get a judge to order the Johnson County Sheriff’s
> Department to turn over documents related to the search and investigation
> leading up to it...

------
krisdol
"Robert Harte, along with hundreds of other people, became a suspect when
Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Jim Wingo saw Harte, his son and his
daughter emerge in August 2011 from a hydroponic gardening store and wrote
down the Hartes’ license plate number"

How is this legal? I cannot believe that this is a satisfactory level of
probably cause needed for the police to start digging through people's trash
and raiding their homes. It's incredible. On that note, I don't believe for a
second that there even was marijuana in the trash before they searched for it.

~~~
abrodersen
This did not satisfy the probable cause. Police dug through the trash and
conducted a field test, and the field test incorrectly tested positive for
THC. The author criticized these field tests in the original piece as being
wildly inaccurate and too easy to coerce into positive results.

~~~
jandrese
Those test kits are sometimes called probable cause kits, since they produce
false positives so frequently. The conspiracy theory is that they're working
exactly as desired and that more accurate kits would be counterproductive to
their actual purpose.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Why would they do that? Why fake the test that will make you raid the empty
house and look bad?

~~~
chc
Police go on fishing expeditions all the time. Just because they don't
actually have proof of the thing they were looking for doesn't mean they can't
find anything to hang you. I once had a traffic stop evolve into the officer
telling me I could either let him search my car or he'd call in a dog to give
him probable cause. There really wasn't anything for him to find, but he
doesn't have any reason not to play the odds.

~~~
gingerrr
Luckily this particular practice is no longer legally sanctioned:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodriguez_v._United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodriguez_v._United_States)

~~~
gknoy
It would be nice to have a card that lists these landmark decisions, so that
when pulled over you have a way to quickly have handy the names of cases.

"If you don't let me search your car, I'm going to call in a dog ..."
"Officer, the Supreme Court ruled in People vs Rodriguez (2015) that a traffic
stop becomes unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required
to complete the mission of issuing a ticket for the violation."

Of course, making such an argument at the time might be unwise, but at least
you know that the law is on your side if you decide to decline the search.

~~~
biot
I've seen various apps for that, including an enumeration of your rights by
jurisdiction as to whether you're required to show an officer ID, stop & frisk
laws, etc.

------
bradleyjg
An excellent reply and elaboration to the original article. Although I had my
own qualms about Kerr's article (I commented here on HN when it was posted)
having read his blog posts for ten years now I have a lot of respect for his
erudition and even handedness. I look forward to his surreply which he
promises to start working on in the comments section to the linked article.

~~~
rqebmm
Man, I do love those few brief moments when the internet holds an actual
debate. Too bad these poor people had to go through all the trouble for it.

------
anon4
> They want to make 4/20 an annual drug raid event.

So just make it like Halloween. Have the kids dress in police uniforms and go
door to door with the actual officers searching every single house in the
county. Have the adults give out marijuana-shaped candy. Say "pot or arrest"
as you knock on the house. Have a competition at the end and declare the kid
with the weightiest bag of "pot" the winner and give him/her a medal. Go all
the way. It's good publicity you're after, not actual police work, after all.

------
hamiltonkibbe
"As the law sees it, an officer can’t be recklessly indifferent to truth if he
was never trained about, told about, or took the time to learn the truth in
the first place."

It's unfortunate that police are the only ones allowed to use the "ignorantia
juris" defense.

------
kelvin0
Nice, but going to a gun show and running guns across the border to Mexico
does not seem to gather the same attention from law enforcement.

[http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-j...](http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-
justice/firearms-trafficking-u-s-mexico-border)

[http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-
world/world/article24...](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-
world/world/article24746863.html)

------
eric_h
this is a good follow up to previous discussions of this case

------
guard-of-terra
I think you've got to be a reptiloid to defend "federal judges" and the
police. Of all the people in the world they're the least vulnerable from huma
perspective. We should probably check whether Orin Kerr has scales for skin.

Or exists.

~~~
kelvin0
What exactly do you mean by 'reptiloid'?

~~~
guard-of-terra
A person that we can't even begin to understand.

Philip Dick had an empathy test to detect androids - they did not show
compassion towards cute animals in trouble. We have a similar problem here, if
a person chooses to side with federal judges and the police versus public, we
have an alarming creature on our hands.

~~~
krapp
Most people side with law enforcement at least some of the time, and many
support the legal system and war on drugs on general principle.

If that point of view is incomprehensible to you, then perhaps you're the one
who needs a Voight-Kampff test.

