Cops Are Suing a Teen for Invasion of Privacy After False Arrest Vid Goes Viral
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The right to record the police in public is well established now, and the claims the police are making (that technically Nathan Winter of the Newton Police Department is not a "convicted" domestic abuser, he's just an "accused" domestic abuser with a judge issuing a protective order against him) seem more likely to defame them than a brief caption in the teen's posted arrest video.
But those are only pending a court date, a few weeks at most. A "real" one is issued by a judge after interviewing both parties (or by default if one doesn't show up) and those are very reliably real. I don't know anything about the letterman thing. If it was an emergency one yeah you don't want to read too much into it. The real ones though are very reliable indicators that something fucked up went down.
A judge who doesn't want something bad to happen, under any circumstances. Therefore, they are extremely likely just to issue a PPO "just because."
> The real ones though are very reliable indicators that something fucked up went down.
TPOs/PPOs are absolutely not reliable: In most states, they are civil and issued subject to a preponderance of the evidence and not beyond a reasonable doubt. Evidence is not subject to any verification or real evidentiary standards: you could fake text message screenshots all day long and net a PPO before you ever had an issue with perjury.
FWIW: someone with ill/violent intent couldn't care less about a random status violation that would pale in comparative severity to whatever other crime they wanted to commit.
Violence in general and domestic violence especially are not always premeditated. What starts as an attempt by the abuser to hash things out can devolve into violence. A protective order can stop abusers from making the attempt in the first place, and when there is an attempt they can help the victim get more immediate help from law enforcement.
Convict and jail them, with the full rights and penalties that go with that. Not this halfass paper shield against an otherwise free person.
Absolutely, some murders do seem to be triggered by protection orders. Presumably those cases would also occur when they are charged with a crime with cooperation from the victim. Are we going to instead consider pretrial detention for all cases of accused DV? And wouldn't that have all of the same issues with a lower standard of evidence but infringe even more on their rights?
Edit: I should clarify, when charges are filed we should consider pretrial detention. Unfortunately there are tons of reasons why DV victims often end up not wanting to press charges, or when someone is charged, not wanting to cooperate with prosecutors. Creating a situation where their only avenue for safety is pressing charges and cooperating with authorities creates its own set of issues and I feel they still deserve some level of safety even if they don't cooperate with criminal charges.
I think we should.
The reason permanent orders are handed out like candy is because the judge wants to err on the side of caution. It's the same reason cops are more willing to use force when they have a taser than when they have a gun - there's no consequences for doing so.
Make there be real consequences for wrongly issuing a protection order, and you'll have fewer wrongly issued protection orders.
If someone is an abuser by all means take advantage of criminal justice system .
Note: not legal advice
Comparison of impulsive and premeditated perpetrators of intimate partner violence: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19039796/
Premeditated versus "passionate": patterns of homicide related to intimate partner violence: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30100045/
A quick graph analysis of the upvoters/downvoters on each comment and then clustering those across historical posts would probably elucidate this reason.
> No judge wants to read about somebody being killed after they denied the PO.
A judge or magistrate suffers no penalty for issuing a PPO but can suffer great ridicule when this exact situation happens: how is it not obvious that this would perversely inflate the numbers?
Why? Based on one party being able to tell a more convincing story than another?
You'd be hard pressed to find a person with less confidence in our "justice" system than I have. And as I mentioned in another comment, I have, unlike almost everyone else here, actually been on the receiving end of a misuse of this system. I still find it overall pretty reliable and the best mechanism we currently have for reducing intimate partner violence, one of the most common ways for women to be murdered.
> You'd be hard pressed to find a person with less confidence in our "justice" system than I have.
I was "mandated" into "optional" pretrial mediation by a District Court when my stepdaughter was in a car accident.
The mediator, who said she was a Family Court judge when introducing herself, among several other problematic things, attempted to write a mediation agreement where -I- was purportedly binding not just myself but my insurance carrier to several things, with language like "FireBeyond agrees that Insurer or himself will pay X by date Y. He agrees that he and insurer will be in default if they do not", etc. And when I stated that I had no authority to agree on behalf my insurance carrier to binding agreements, she was frustrated and exasperated that I was correcting her/objecting to her language.
I've also lived in a place where it was settled Family Court precedent that men could be (and were often found to be) liable for child support for children that were not theirs, in marriage or out, by virtue of the fact that they were in a relationship with the mother at the time of birth and beyond (regardless of awareness of progeny).
Please do not mistake this for a lack of sympathy for what I see as unacceptable levels of intimate partner violence and our poor handling of it, because as a paramedic who sees far more of it than I should, I am not. It is difficult at times to find a nuance with which to criticize the family court without coming across MRA/incel/redpilly.
I've witnessed 100+ of these hearings: they are a disgrace to our justice system. Evidentiary standards are a joke, and thankfully, get absolutely smoked upon appeal 9/10 times - instant suppression.
It's wonderful that they may have helped you at one point.
You keep citing this "intimate spousal murder" schtick with zero non-anecdotal citations (try proving a negative.) Can we please see some formal, peer-reviewed evidence to suggest that someone willing to commit murder is going to be deterred by a DUI-equivalent?
> Can we please see some formal, peer-reviewed evidence to suggest that someone willing to commit murder is going to be deterred by a DUI-equivalent?
Others have talked about how abusers don't always intend to commit murder, but there's also something to say about enforce-ability. Suppose someone yells and screams at you and threatens to hurt you. You call the police. Unless you've got injuries or recordings, what are the police going to do? Without hard evidence it's just a he said/she said and is unlikely to even end up with charges. Even if you have recordings, unless it's a specific threat that isn't a crime. But you then go to a court for a TPO. This person shows up again, screaming and yelling and threatening you. You call the police and they show up. Now all you have to do it point to the person standing in your front yard, and point to the TPO, and that's the case.
That's not what they said, you're misreading.
> Can we please see some formal, peer-reviewed evidence to suggest that someone willing to commit murder is going to be deterred by a DUI-equivalent?
I did a very quick search using neutral terms for studies on this. Here are the first three I found.
> PO victims had police incident rates that were more than double the matched group prior to the PO, but dropped to the level of the matched group during and after the order. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4151113/
> Results showed significant reductions in threats of assault, physical assault, stalking, and worksite harassment over time among all women, regardless of receipt or nonreceipt of a protection order. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448307/
> Permanent, but not temporary, protection orders are associated with a significant decrease in risk of police-reported violence against women by their male intimate partners. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/195163
That last one had a pretty good study size - 2691 women.
I don't think it's incredible that a protective order could stop an expanding pattern of abuse and violence before it becomes severe enough for a murder to occur. You say "someone willing to commit murder", and it's probably true that if the culprit is already very willing or actively intending to commit a murder, a protective order is useless. Abusers cannot be placed into permanent "murderous" and "non-murderous" groups, though.
Why are you holding other people to higher standards than yourself, when making equal if not stronger claims?
You don't need any of that. Allegations are enough.
Any numbers on how much more reliable they are after the initial order kicks you out of the spousal home and asks you to get a lawyer while navigating being homeless and losing access to assets in your house and any evidence inside? It's hard to believe the short hearing a couple weeks later with pretty low standard of evidence with you now at a severe disadvantage is that much more accurate.
I don't see how that makes them a reliable indicator that something went down. That could be true even if 99% of restraining orders were against innocent people.
By preventing the situation prior to the escalation, the more serious events don’t happen as often.
Convince someone that they'll never be the "other" and rights become a far away theoretical concept.
From the article, the judge has dismissed most of the claims but some have been allowed to be moved forward.
Well ... it surely isn't an isolated incident. Seems like this town has quite an authoritarian streak.
A man showed up at a Newton city council meeting to share his thoughts about Galanakis's arrest during a public comment period.
He criticized the town's mayor and police chief -- and they had him arrested!
Criticizing the government in a public forum expressly designed for public commentary is probably the most iron-clad protected of First Amendment speech, but the town must think they operate well above the Constitution:
https://news.yahoo.com/iowa-man-files-lawsuit-being-17554478...
Yes and no. I mean police are on a power trip even if you do everything they say but as soon as he called the cop out and called him stupid (in any encounter that wasn't with a cop I might have used harsher language to describe the person in question) I'm sure it didn't help. But that's the problem, it didn't help but I honestly don't think he could have said/not said/done/not done anything to placate the cops.
This kid is 19 years old, he gets pulled over later at night on his way home trying to follow the law the best he knows how (headlight out, using brights to have some light), the cops expect him to know the law about having your brights on when I've never heard of such a law (mind you cops don't need to know the law themselves as they prove more often than not but they expect a 19 year old kid to), then they shine bright lights in his face and expect him to know exactly where his registration is? And that's all within the first few minutes.
The rest of the video that I watched it's more of the same, a power tripping cop gives confusing and contradictory instructions to someone who has never done this before and expects the system to work since he has done nothing wrong. Good thing the cops set him straight at a young age so he won't make the mistake of thinking they are there to "serve and protect" (yes I know they don't actually have to do either) or that the system works in any way, shape, or form.
It's telling that this is what these bastions of society spend their time on instead of what should be slam dunk cases where someone's phone is stolen and they can tell the cops exactly where it is or similar solvable thefts that they don't bother with. What a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Since racial profiling is arguably a factor in police interactions with the public, let me just start with the fact that I'm a plain old white male. I was raised to show deference and respect to authority figures. I've had more than one teacher tell my parents, when I was in middle school and high school, that I was very polite.
All that said, I noticed a huge difference, once I got past about age 30, in how police treated me. When I was in my late teens and early to mid-twenties, cops — young cops, particularly — often seemed to want to try to see if they could rile me up and escalate. (Of course, I never took the bait.) I suspect there is some deep-seated primate behavior going on.
No, I definitely agree. And it makes me wonder what the endgame is here. Could Abuse of Process come into play?
Sunnyvale, California, has a combined police and fire department. They train their people for both and they move back and forth. Emergency medical services is in there, too. At one time, their cops wore red blazers with the city insignia.
I think George Floyd is a good case study for reform; Chauvin and all officers should be required to assess for medical emergencies at all times basically and take at least some level of medical action when necessary. So Chauvin should have been required to check for consciousness and then provide aid once finding Floyd to be in medical distress.
Organized crime (especially drug crime) is a quasi-military force. The police are threatening billions of dollars in illicit profit, and that will not go unchallenged easily.
Arguably that should be addressed by a different organisation than the folks who enforce traffic laws and investigate petty theft. The state guard, perhaps?
The danger level goes down when it's known that a cop's power is in their reinforcements. The individual cop would be little danger and doesn't need to be shot.
> Abstract
> FOLLOWING A DISCUSSION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS RELATED TO POLICE-COMMUNITY RELATIONS, THE AUTHOR DISCUSSES THE RATIONALE BEHIND, AND RESULTS OF THIS CALIFORNIA EXPERIMENT. IN 1969, THE MENLO PARK POLICE FORCE CHANGED FROM THE TRADITIONAL MILITARISTIC UNIFORM TO BLAZERS AND TIES, MORE IN KEEPING WITH CIVILIAN MODES OF DRESS. RANK WAS NOT EXHIBITED, NIGHTSTICKS WERE DISPENSED WITH, AND GUNS WERE WORN BENEATH THE BLAZER. RESULTS OF THIS NEW POLICE IDENTITY INCLUDE PEER GROUP ISOLATION, INCREASED INVOLVEMENT IN EDUCATION, INCREASED RECRUITMENT OF INDIVIDUALS WITH COLLEGE DEGREES, AND A DECREASE IN PERSONNEL TURNOVER. A 1971 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE MENLO PARK POLICE AND TWO OTHER DEPARTMENTS IN THE AREA INDICATED A DECREASED NEED FOR A SYMBOL OF AUTHORITY AND IMPROVED POLICE-COMMUNITY RELATIONS IN MENLO PARK. DESPITE ATTITUDINAL AND BEHAVIORAL DIFFERENCES, THERE WERE NO DIFFERENCES IN GENERAL PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT MEASUREMENTS. (AUTHOR ABSTRACT MODIFIED)
This also filters out ppl who don't have the attention span or the brain cells to do that, which is a good thing. We also have separate non police folks for parking violations and other more menial stuff.
Hello Kitty is popular enough that I worry it might encourage bad behavior
We might not like what I wrote, but's basic human phycology.
Edit: I think people are completely misunderstanding this post. I made a general statement about humans. Not about policing, not about a country. Just an observation that certain types of people only seem to understand/respect violence.
Not every statement needs to be "unpacked"
Respect isn't given to people who look movie-tough-guy-cool, it's given to people who know what they're doing.
When one of the earlier police commissioners was asked why the police don't carry guns, he replied that it would put too much distance between them and the public. The police in the U.S.A. seem to actively be going for that distance.
It's not just one person's opinion, either. The British police is (supposed to, it's stretching further from it under the endless cuts) adhere to Peelian principles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
> The Metropolitan Police officers were often referred to as 'Bobbies' after Sir Robert (Bobby) Peel
So _that's_ why! :D
Or really tacticool guys in general. They're pretty much always absolute assholes.
Escalation by whom, the police or the citizens?
And they will never be recorded, which means you should never talk to the FBI.
They have a long standing policy of refusing to allow any interview to be recorded. Instead, they fill out a 302 report after the interview with a “written record” of what was said.
Unless you’re comfortable with your freedom relying on the honesty of the agent sitting across from you, an agent whose incentives are to close cases, do not talk to the FBI.
Similarly, don't sign any papers or agree to anything without a lawyer present. You aren't smarter than the people whose job it is (on paper) to enforce the law (even if in practice, many police officers in the US don't seem to know or care to enforce it). Things you might be able to "coax" out of an individual officer get thrown in the bin anyway and your statements will be read in the worst possible light if given half the chance.
Your lawyer is paid to understand the law (and if they're any good, they'll do what they can to protect you).
That advice goes double if it's any three letter agency.
That hasn’t been true for nearly a decade.
Here is the DOJ’s policy on the electronic recording of statements: https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-9-13000-obtaining-evidence
Seems like the court is doing the reasonable thing.
Cops work in the public. If the cop was charged with beating his wife or even just had the cops called (how would calling the cops on a cop work when they are coworkers?), that would also be public. There’s no invasion of privacy then. If it’s not true, it’s libel not invasion of privacy.
It seems they were able to parse out all of the claims and readily dismissed the vast majority of the ridiculous stuff that the cops were claiming, while acknowledging that the assertion that the officer was a "wife abuser" could veer into defamation was plausible and merits a trial (where both sides are perfectly entitled to build their case). Seems reasonable!
But mostly, two armed men terrorized a 19 year old and are now attempting to sue this 19 year old for the meany-mean things that 19 year old said while being terrorized. Is that reasonable, really, to anyone?
If someone is robbing your house and you say they probably beat their wife, should the robber be allowed to sue you? Other than a badge, what's the difference between these two scenarios?
The law should work the same for and against everyone, regardless of how much you like them.
Juries and Judges are the real wildcard. How would they interpret this?
Studies have shown that 40% of cops beat their wives, and other research suggests that DV doesn't get reported at all roughly half of the time, so the number of police officers beating their wives is going to be much greater than 40%. For any random police officer you could claim they beat their wives and be right more often than not. It's not an entirely unfair assumption to start with. This officer's ex had a protective order against him granted by the district court which was then extended on at least three occasions. It might not be proof of abuse, but it's pretty strong evidence.
My guess is that this kid found information about the protective order and just got his terminology wrong, assuming that there was a conviction when there wasn't one. It's statistically likely that he wasn't wrong and abuse was taking place. Seems like the courts could give some slack to the teenager whose rights were violated by a corrupt cop who likely abused his ex even if there was never a conviction.
That is the same as going around calling every man who looks creepy a pedo. You might be right once in a while, but that doesn’t entitle you to smear people without facts.
He was clearly wrong about the conviction, there's a pretty good chance he wasn't wrong about the abuse. Maybe that's a good enough standard of evidence to demand from the youtube video of a justifiably pissed off 19 year old? It'd be best if he uploaded a correction, or even a corrected re-upload of his video, but I think it's fair to say that this kid has been screwed over by the legal system enough already. He should probably get a pass for getting the fact about the conviction wrong and not maintaining the highest levels of journalistic integrity in the youtube video documenting the violation of his rights.
It doesn’t. One is criminal, the other civil. Totally different standards.
That isn’t how free speech works.
Also, they weren’t generic insults. They were specific.
How about if publicly I claim: “ofslidingfeet was fired for embezzling money”? Is that covered under free speech?
[0] https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-day-ferguson-cops-were-cau...
Even if he loses, a video that simply quotes court documents and offers opinion could attract a lot of views and cause a lot of outrage towards the officers and the system.
You can’t have it both ways.
As much as i hate cops (qualified immunity), i hate this guilty until you are proven innocent in court but always guilty in court of public opinion about anything related to female directed domestic violence/r4p3/assault/red flags laws to take your property away without due proces etc even more.
Im not saying he didn't do it, im just saying these things need to be private until its likely true (quick determination), then posted.
Same way the asylum system in the us works where you can show a credible threat to cbp at the border than years later you get the actual court case to get the final approval.
But the claim is about the accompanying comments/captions, some of which talk about things that don't happen in the video and didn't happen during the interaction.
How ironic. That the opinions of someone on a YouTube video can cause someone as fortified as a police officer such anguish. Listening to them describe the damages you would think these officers were wrongfully arrested or something.
"Iowa man files lawsuit after being arrested twice for criticizing the police"
Same for cops.
Further, what is the situation for recent-use testing? I've heard that marijuana can be detected in blood for something like 90 days. Like, how would a test work for a job like an air-traffic controller?
Disclaimer: I'm not a smoker at all. Not trying to protect my job at the airport. Just curious, as more and more states are legalized recreational use.
A quick and very important slight tangent that there are two kinds of breath tests at play.
When the police pull someone over for suspicion of DUI, they're attempting to establish probable cause for an arrest. The preliminary breath test is one of these tools, and in most (possibly all?) states it is voluntary & not admissible as evidence. You can look your own state's laws up, but here's a deep dive from Wisconsin on their laws[1].
If the police establish probable cause of intoxication because you volunteered to take a field sobriety test / preliminary breath test, because of their description of your physical condition (bloodshot/glassy eyes) or circumstances (open container, scent of marijuana), you'll be arrested & compelled to perform an evidentiary breath test on a stationary machine in a police station, or provide a blood sample to test for intoxication. And this is not a voluntary test – your refusal to provide an evidentiary test is considered evidence that you committed a DUI and you will be penalized accordingly.
So in general: it's almost best to keep your interactions with the police limited & refuse any voluntary tests to prevent probable cause from being built.
[1]: https://www.wisbar.org/NewsPublications/WisconsinLawyer/Page...
I'm curious ^^^
I'm not sure either of those things would be very effective for marijuana. I think that they work fine for catching drunks, but maybe they simply aren't needed for other drugs. If you're driving is terrible enough, it shouldn't matter if you were on a drug, or over-tired, or texting when you should have been watching the road. If you're screwing up behind the wheel and the cops don't think you're safe to drive you should get a ticket and be driven home or arrested (depending on the circumstances).
I'm all for pulling dangerous drives off the roads, but it seems like a lot of people busted for DUI aren't pulled over because they were clearly a danger to others. They were pulled over for something like broken tail lights/headlights or outdated tags and only then do officers "smell" something or think someone's eyes are "red". I don't know if it's just harassment, power-tripping, or if police have quotas to meet, but it sometimes seems like once they have people pulled over, not matter the reason, they will look for any excuse to make an arrest.
Obviously as in the cop comes across as someone so naive as to have never seen a drunk or stoned person; and have plenty of unfounded biases as a result.
The fact of the matter is, the more cooperative, non-violent, honest and nice society is in general, the more viable it is to be a machiavellian, narcissistic and power-hungry parasite. These traits are innate parts of the personality of each of us from birth, and some of us get a lot more than others. It's generally not a very good thing for one's future prospects to have these traits. The risk of having everyone sniff you out and turn against you is high, and gets higher the less sophisticated you are.
But even relatively unsuccessful little tyrants (HOA presidents are the perfect example of this) are more than capable of inflicting actual damage on others. If you're someone like this, and you have a tendency for violence on top of it, becoming a cop is an attractive prospect because most of these traits aren't particularly punished in that profession and sometimes are actively beneficial to your career.
Perhaps unintuitively, the real solution to this problem is to attract normal people to fill these roles. This is particularly true for politics, where most normal people rightly evaluate that the risks of a career in politics are much higher than the reward. Normal people see the reward of a career in politics as essentially an interesting job and the ability to make things better for a community. This is motivating, but not as strong as the motivation of people who are in it for the power.
I happen to know someone that accurately fits this description. Fortunately, he galvanized the community into replacing him & reversing his policies.
The local police department is ticked at the guy too because concerned parents keep reporting him for photographing their little kids in the pool, “he is not a pedophile but he has been playing hall monitor too much, trying to gather evidence of townhouse community borderline rule breaking”.
Poor guy, he has so poisoned the discourse that no one will ever take action on his reports.
So because I wasn't born with it I can't become machiavellian tyrant? Surely there's management or police training that can grant people the necessary skills and credentials, no?
But someone like me who has a strong sense of guilt, it would take a LOT of training to not feel bad about being a machiavellian tyrant.
Taking it a step further: should police not be educated about corruption laws, or should corruption laws simply not exist?
Essentially, if you're in a small town in America, the question isn't whether you have rights. What is law and what will happen to you are distinct.
Cops being pricks to teenagers happens everywhere, from small towns to urban centers or suburbs.
This counts as extra-judicially maintaining the status quo.
This same exact thing could have happened in a town of any size. Cops harass teenagers everywhere.
This has no relation to the themes of that song which discusses how antisocial, illegal behavior like rioting, theft, assault, etc which is permitted in urban centers will not be tolerated in smaller communities.
Most important part of the article as far as I can tell. Everything else was dismissed.
These two cops are quite disgusting, especially Winters. I remember seeing this video when it originally went viral, and the 19-year-old seems calm and coherent. The only reason I think you could mistake him for drinking is his normal speech pattern has a kind of 'slur' to it. Nothing he did seemed wrong, just what they initially pulled him over for re: his headlights, which he had a consistent explanation for. They're just power hungry cops who wanted to fuck with someone.
I'm not sure if that's true, or if it would also apply to defamation.
Defamation of a non-public figure requires negligence of the truth.
Assuming the cop can be considered a non-public figure they would need to prove that the statement was made without a lot of consideration for the truth.
Given there is nuance here as to the details of the case it is going to be hard to win a defamation case here.
A layperson misunderstanding the difference between a court order and a conviction likely isn't enough to justify damages.
Smells of using the courts to punish someone by forcing them to lawyer up.
Though the publicity seems to be making it backfire for the police. I can imagine him getting a pro-bono lawyer based on the publicity. And the details of the protective order leaking out, etc. Streisand effect.
This is what that means, it's common for cops to punish people by simply forcing them to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to beat charges they know won't stick. DAs go along with it because they know cops can destroy their career if they stop providing cases/evidence.
Why would a DA want a case that can be beat or dismissed? At best it's more work taking away time for real cases, and it's possibly a defeat if it goes to far, which they definitely don't want. All to punish someone the DA has no reason to care about because it wasn't even anything to do with the DA's authority or the authority of their job?
A corrupt DA might knowingly prosecute an innocent person if they think they can make it stick because winning a car is good for thrm, but why would they go out of their way to do something possibly detrimental without reason?
I guess if the DA is worried about the police punishing them by not supplying you good cases, or whatever else, enough to give in to that then it's kind of irrelevant whether they would also want to do the favour anyway for a cop they liked (or just for the principle of supporting your crime-fighting sibling agency) or not. But it's possible that a DA who feels confident that the police wouldn't treat them differently in the future if they said no (or who didn't care about that threat) might still say yes for the different reason of thinking that police always need backing up / that if they disliked this guy enough to fuck with him then it must be because the guy deserves it.
That may seem pedantic, but I think it's very important when it comes to having useful and rational discussions. If anyone isn't seeing that, replace "DA" with a minority if your choice and "gratuitous punishment of citizens" with any other negative behavior, like theft or crime, and try to explain what the difference is between the statements. If we can't follow the same rational when assessing behavior of groups we have favorable or unfavorable predisposed opinions towards, then we can't even discuss effectively.
Actual malice in the legal sense has nothing to do with the regular meaning of those words in English. It instead requires that the defamer have seriously entertained doubts about the truth of the statements, and published them anyways.
In this case? I'd have a hard time finding them defamatory were I on the jury. One of the statements is alleging that the cop is a "convicted" domestic abuser, where the truth is that he has a protective order placed against him in relation to alleged domestic abuse yet has never been charged nor convicted. Another statement is alleging that the cop is "on the slow spectrum" on social media, which--honestly, I'm surprised the judge didn't toss that on motion to dismiss, it's pretty clearly typical hyperbolic puffery.
How is that different from the ordinary English meaning? Or does American English differ from British English in this regard?
From the Cambridge Dictionary[1]:
"the intention to do something wrong and esp. to cause injury: "
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/malice
It is a common tactic that women use in divorce to file false domestic abuse or child abuse claims. It's called a "silver bullet divorce". Unfortunately abuse of the legal system like this has made it necessary to be skeptical of claims of domestic abuse without evidence.
However, to demonstrate actual malice, you have to demonstrate that the defendant knew of just how different the two things were, which is frankly a pretty tall ask.
If I was a defendant in such a thing, I'd point to numerous cases where police departments have claimed, and courts have agreed, that police are not expected to be experts on the law.
"If law enforcement officers can be held by the court to not have to have a nuanced understanding of the law, how could I possibly?"
However, when you get to the point of specifically say the guy "beat the shit out of" his ex-girlfriend, you'd better have a good reason for believing that. Or if you have an iffy reason, you better say what the reason is, not just state the conclusion as fact. It sounds like the kid had no idea what was actually going on.
Exaggerating for emphasis doesn't usually qualify for negligence.
That may not be what's meant by "protective order", but at a minimum you should be able to get a protective order against somebody who, for example, threatened violence without actually doing it. That might be evidence of a bad temper or bad judgement or just general assholeism, but that is a long, long way from "beating the shit out of" somebody. Well out of "emphasis" range.
On edit: Oh, and really you could get the order just by saying that the person threatened you, whether they really did or not. So the order is really only proof that there was an allegation, not even so much as a nasty word.
Being wrong is not sufficient for a defamation case.
All of these mistakes make the statement wrong and not factual but that isn't enough for a defamation case.
My point is if it was a simple mistake or misunderstanding that is enough to prove it wasn't negligence.
Verifying a article about the thing existed while misrepresenting that thing is likely not negligence unless that misrepresentstion was extreme.
Certainly "killed his girlfriend" would be negligent but if you misunderstood the thing in a minor way that isn't negligence just because you are wrong.
(To be clear the statement was certainly objectively false for multiple reasons)
... and it's not a "minor" misunderstanding. The accusation is grave and the distinction is at the center of it.
Would you assume a viral video contained accurate descriptions of legal procedures?
Heck if he hadn't said convicted it would be protected speech. The US protects "I bet you X beats his wife".
And "accurate descriptions of legal procedures" have nothing at all to do with the most serious allegation. The serious allegation is the beating, not the conviction.
I don't know exactly what the kid said, and the case is probably going to turn on really close parsing of both his words and the manner and context in which he presented them.
If he baldly said "this guy beat the shit out of his girlfriend", then he made a statement of fact. Not a statement of opinion. Not "from what he did to me, he seems like the type". Fact. Even if the cop had truly been convicted of, say, battery as part of domestic abuse, the kid would have had no way of knowing exactly what that battery consisted of. Saying the cop had "beaten the shit out" of his girlfriend would still have been speculation on the kid's part, regardless of any conviction, let alone a protective order.
There are no complicated legal technicalities there. The kid had no knowledge of the detailed facts of the domestic abuse case, and he knew he had no knowledge of the detailed facts. He wasn't only ignorant of the legal finding. He was ignorant of what actually happened.
It is negligent to present your speculations as facts. Negligence means not exercising the care expected of a reasonable person in a similar situation. Pulling something out of your ass and presenting it as true is not reasonable care. It was done in a video after the fact. He had time to reflect, so there's no possibility of mistake "in the heat of the moment". And there's no "I did it because I'm an idiot" escape from being found negligent, either. People are often negligent because they're idiots.
Now, if he had said "the cop was convicted of domestic abuse, which I assume must mean that he beat the shit out of his girlfriend", then he would have been presenting a reason for his conclusion. In that case, so long as didn't suggest that that wasn't his only reason, the truth of the conclusion would cease to matter. He wouldn't be considered to be presenting "the cop beat his girlfriend" as fact; he'd be presenting it as an inference to be drawn from the fact of the conviction. Then the audience would be expected to be able to make their own determination about whether that inference followed from the presented fact.
At that point, the question would be whether the kid was negligent in claiming that there was a conviction, because that would be the actual statement of fact he'd be offering. You might get away with claiming that was a mistake, but before you get there you have to show that he made it clear to the audience that the "conviction" was the reason he said that the cop had "beaten the shit out of" his girlfriend.
Then you'd have to argue that he couldn't be expected to know the difference between a restraining order and a conviction. Which is still not exactly open and shut, because a reasonable person might go find out before publishing a video like that. Not taking that reasonable care might make the statement about the conviction negligent and therefore defamatory. Because in fact reasonable people a lot younger than 19 tend to know the difference. A complete moron is not a reasonable person.
Or he could have done both: "The cop beat the shit out of his girlfriend, and of course that led to his being convicted". In which case there'd be two statements of "fact", each of which could be considered separately.
Including the definition of reasonable person, negligence, as well as the tests involved in a defamation suit.
The article doesn't mention what she got the protective order for, and there are several possible reasons that do not involve any physical abuse. Even domestic abuse does not necessarily mean he beat her.
They were certainly wrong about the situation and I would agree by quite a bit.
My point is misunderstandings don't mean defamation alone.
https://www.iowacourts.gov/browse/files/1c1d1ecd62dc41a78794...
A TPO/EPO will be issued based on any believable story, a PPO will be issued if you can use Photoshop.
IANAL but there are certain criteria that must be met from what I understand. Knowing the statements to be false is one of them, but then there is intent and motivation as well as actual damages.
The reason that intent matters is that I could say something like: "Jeff Bezos is the type of guy that murders cats for fun."
The above is an opinion that is using colourful language. However, it COULD be construed as a statement of fact. So if Jeff Bezos* wanted to sue me for defamation, he would have to make the case that I was making a statement of fact which I not only knew to be untrue, but that I also knew was likely to cause reputational harm that would lead to financial damages.
* - And I'm asking to put aside the fact that Bezos is a public figure which raises the bar even higher, since people are more likely to talk about public figures and thus it is more likely and reasonable to get the facts wrong, to share personal opinions in ways that could be confused as factual statements and it is much less likely to cause the individual damages since most reasonable people kind of "get" this.
Private citizens need to prove actual malice to collect punitive damages, but mere negligence is enough for compensatory damages. That's for knowledge about the statement itself; I'm not sure what you have to know or intend about how much damage you'll do.
That's constitutional standards; there may be state-to-state variations that impose more conditions.
On edit: corrected; even for a non-public figure, it needs to be negligently false, so having taken reasonable steps to verify it should immunize you. But of course this kid clearly did not do this.
I also distinctly remember a story during the Portland protests of unidentified government agents (later revealed to be border patrol) throwing people into unmarked vehicles. I fail to see how that's any different than kidnapping. It's certainly how security services the world over 'disappear' their citizens.
I am usually 100% for peaceful protest over violent resistance, but in such a circumstance I don't think any jury in the land would convict someone of killing such an agent that refused to identify themselves.
I think you give juries too much credit, and maybe voir dire in general.
The prosecution would simply hammer on the fact that they "murdered a cop" and how they don't dispute the fact they killed them, they have the murder weapon, etc. They'd bring up crying relatives of the deceased. They'd bring up the defendant's prior criminal history if one exists, or find old social media posts critical of LE or the government. And they'd go right up to the line of perjury without crossing it, asking half a dozen people from the same department about "department policy" around identifying yourself.
Not to mention they'd almost certainly ask for a change of venue to a more LE-friendly area of the country. So you end up with some young kid from an urban area on the coast on trial for killing a cop in rural Colorado or Nevada or something. It's unlikely that goes well for them, especially if they don't have the funds for a bulldog defense attorney.
As far as I'm concerned plainclothes officers should not be allowed to make arrests outside exigent circumstances. The target is likely to feel they are under criminal attack and very well might respond with lethal force.
I am quite frankly shocked that there wasn't violence in response to that.
Anyone with knowledge in the area will tell you that if you're the subject of an attempting kidnapping (or carjacking or anything in that ballpark) your number one goal is to not get taken to another location. Whatever you have to do, don't get taken somewhere else because it's definitely going to be something more favorable to the assailant.
I too am shocked that this didn't end in violence and serious injury or worse.
And most trials aren't major. There were 5 or 6 trials at the courthouse that week, and only one was estimated to take more than 3 days. Ours took a full day but I still got home before my wife.
Would that mean all of Hawaii is within that 100 mile limit?
As a paramedic, I've routinely taken prisoners from our county jail (run by the Sheriff's Office) to hospital. One thing that always got me, when we were in the sally port, and wheeling our gurney into the receiving area, the big printed sign on the door in, telling officers to "Turn off all body cams and recording devices in this area."
Why?
My guess is that there may be different standards for release of jail footage versus officer body cam footage.
I'm sure their argument would be that it's a cost saving measure, "why pay for storage of body cam footage when the area is already camera covered", but to me that seems like a convenient side effect, more than a core rationale.
I suggest you actually read more about what happened before continuing to comment.
Police officers using a simple traffic infraction to abuse their power is more dangerous.
Youtuber is an absolute loser though. Imagine getting-off on distracting people from other jobs they could be doing.
> In two decisions in May and September, U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher dismissed almost all of the officers’ claims. Locher deemed most of Galanakis’s captions as “non-actionable statement[s] of opinion” or “rhetorical hyperbole,” which are both considered non-defamatory. This included the caption where Galanakis said he was “raped” by the police department, which Locher said was “distasteful,” but non-actionable.
False claim of rape is distasteful but non-actionable? I don't get that.
I think nobody would believe the claim in the context of xbox live, but many people are inclined to believe it in the context of an unlawful arrest. Even one of the replies to my first comment about this seems to believe the claim. (He's now been flagged for this. What guideline did he violate? I hope he wasn't flagged because his perspective lends credence to my perspective that accusing cops of raping you after a baseless arrest is not obvious hyperbole.)
This is a result of the 1st amendment. Sometimes it's both.
For example, what happens between 14:26 and 14:31 and 14:50-14:57, and 15:44-16:33?
Or, we might ask ourselves, why does this interaction seem incredibly one-sided? Before people say "nothing could possibly justify", consider what might have happened between 14:26 and 14:31 and 14:50-14:57, and 15:44-16:33, which is literally the entire premise of the arrest (and omitted from the video).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(Un...
It was more difficult to find that I remember without all the commentary, but here it is.