This probably has nothing to do with Trump, but
Hey, it wasn’t as if he was stormed by jack-booted thugs.
Oh, wait ….
A journalist gets manhandled, while a mob boss gets a nightly tuck-in at the White House.
I suppose he should be thankful that it wasn’t a full swat team at 3 AM throwing flashbangs.
I don’t suppose that we should be too terribly shocked by cops behaving like cops. But we should be outraged by the judge or judges that facilitated their behavior by the issuance of the search warrant used to provide legal cover for their misconduct. California trial court judges must stand for re-election. It would be productive to identify the involved judge or judges, shine a bright light on them no matter how quickly they try to scurry away and and throw them out when the next opportunity is presented. Cop groupies on the bench are a plague. There’s a detailed affidavit in support of the issuance of the warrant on file with the court. Let us see who tries to suppress its details.
Seriously, he’s just lucky he didn’t have to get his lawyers to compose written answers to a set of questions on a topic of his choice!
There is a reason they call them pigs.
He should NEVER have said he’s only “butt-hurt”. He should sue the living hell out of the city, the cops individually and anyone else remotely involved. This is pure police state brutality. Kim Jong-un would be proud. No question that Trump is beaming about a journalist being rough up and violated.
Seriously, he is lucky he is not BLACK or he would be dead now for making a “threatening move” (while opening the door) when the “officers entered the home under a valid Search Warrant”.
Somehow, a knife from his kitchen would have been found “near the body” too…
Yep at one time respected police, that has long gone by the wayside as everyday you see things happen that should never. My journey to calling them pigs was in the early 80’s when I had a state trooper just laugh as I struggled out of the mud of a storm runoff retention pond. He never even attempted to stop the driver that while climbing a hill on a curve was also driving on the opposite shoulder so he could pass oncoming traffic nearly took me out me out from behind. Luckily for some reason I turned and looked behind me and then dove into the mud to avoid being struck. The trooper even stated he watched the whole thing as he awaited traffic to clear so that he could turn onto the road. Just laughed. Yea real funny.
Pigs gonna be pigs.
Sue the fucking judge into the ground.
Oh, they already have. The affidavit is under seal. This also looks blatantly illegal under CA’s shield law.
Yup. That shield law is gonna make this into a hell of a case. I want to know what’s in the affidavit, not necessarily because the judge was out of line, but because i’d like to know how he was identified - as a journalist, a casual blogger, or just some guy. I’m still trying to figure out why the police are protecting the reputation of the Public Defender. Typically, they are in opposite corners. And i’m curious about the reporter’s description of a rather innocuous story versus the salacious rumors flying around. Which version does the police report really support?
Something odd is going on and suppressing information is not going to be helpful. The SFPD has a history of being really lousy at keeping its dirty linen hidden.
Looks like the police may have been the ones to spread the initial smear and were found out when the actual police report was leaked by some one acting like a whistle blower.
Update - as of yesterday (1) the reporter filed a motion to get his stuff back – you know, all the stuff they took while they held him in cuffs for 6 hours and he watched them ransack his apartment, leaving him with absolutely no way to work, or even to make a phone call; and (2) a “coalition of First Amendment organizations” moved to unseal the search warrant affidavit. Both of these per local radio news.
They hated him, too. He was not just a public defender but very active and vocal about police misconduct. In addition, he floated some (imho) ill-advised “pension reform” initiatives in SF that pissed off public employee organizations and unions, including the police union. Not sure why an otherwise progressive guy would do that (although some reforms are needed, such as eliminating “pension spiking”, this one went waaaay further than that.)
Indeed, very good questions.
Ain’t that the truth – partly because there’s a lot of it, although that’s hardly out of the ordinary with PDs these days. Or maybe ever.
Could very well be. It would explain a lot. Local news orgs are definitely on this one.
Another question – perhaps discussed in the article – is how the search warrant was obtained in the first place. CA shield law generally prohibits serving search warrants on journalists, at least for journalistic work product. So one question is whether the issuing magistrate knew he was a journalist. If they didn’t, it means the cops didn’t tell them; if they did, then that would seem to be pretty serious judicial misconduct.
Yup. As I said, I wondered how he was identified in the warrant too. The docs all need to be out there. Something’s going on and someone needs to be called on it. Now. But I’m not holding my breath.
I’m watching that motion to unseal. That’s where we get the goods. I assume, but don’t know, that the movants are doing this on some kind of expedited basis. Shouldn’t be hard. Judge (different than issuing magistrate) reviews the affidavit in camera, determines whether Carmody was properly ID’d as a journalist. If not, shit hits the fan for the cops. If so, shit hits the fan for the magistrate, unless there’s some exception to the shield law that applies. As for making the affidavit public - I can imagine situations where maybe that shouldn’t happen, and that might have to be briefed. But it shouldn’t take long. A couple weeks.