Big Whoppie. Police in the United States are not account­able to any­one but them­selves. Qualified immu­ni­ty, a pol­i­cy craft­ed by the Supreme Court, not an act of Congress or direc­tive of the Executive Branch of the Government, has giv­en police blan­ket immu­ni­ty. As a result of that immu­ni­ty, they act with total impuni­ty. They are the law.
America’s police Departments con­tin­ue to seek out new ways to vio­late the US Constitution and the rights of ordi­nary Americans dai­ly. Unfortunately, the love affair that America has with the con­cept of polic­ing that keeps eth­nic minori­ties sub­ju­gat­ed under white suprema­cy, the nation’s lead­ers will con­tin­ue to twist them­selves into pret­zels to cir­cum­vent the US Constitution and cit­i­zens’ rights in order not just to main­tain con­trol but keep the mass­es subjugated.
Perhaps the great­est threat to the civ­il order in the coun­try is the lack of jus­tice per­pet­u­at­ed by Prosecutors and Judges who are in the pock­ets of Police Unions and there­fore con­strained from cit­ing in the inter­est of jus­tice for all citizens.
Police depart­ments have no rea­son to change their behav­ior. There are enough racist Republican politi­cians and some Democrats who will con­tin­ue to pour resources into these morass swamps of racism on ginned-up fears of esca­lat­ing crime sta­tis­tics. Instituted into some depart­ments are so-called Office of Professional Standards, which are oxy­morons, in sim­ple terms, bull­shit (mb)

The Kansas Highway Patrol “has waged war on motorists,” a fed­er­al judge wrote in a scathing rul­ing against the agency’s prac­tice of extend­ing car stops in hopes of dis­cov­er­ing drugs. In the order filed Friday, U.S. District Judge Kathryn H. Vratil wrote that the patrol’s tac­tics in traf­fic stops vio­lat­ed the Constitution.
The prac­tice called the “Kansas two-step” is a maneu­ver in which troop­ers at the end of a traf­fic stop take a cou­ple of steps toward their patrol car before turn­ing around to ini­ti­ate a vol­un­tary inter­ac­tion with the driver.
The strat­e­gy would buy the patrol extra time to probe for incrim­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion or get a drug-sniff­ing dog to a location.
“As wars go, this one is rel­a­tive­ly easy,” Vratil wrote. “It’s sim­ple and cheap, and for motorists, it’s not a fair fight. The war is basi­cal­ly a ques­tion of num­bers: stop enough cars, and you’re bound to dis­cov­er drugs. And what’s the harm if a few con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are tram­pled along the way?”

The Kansas Highway Patrol did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to The Star’s request for com­ment. In 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the patrol on behalf of sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als who were sub­ject­ed to the “two-step” strategy.
Sharon Brett, legal direc­tor for the ACLU of Kansas, called the rul­ing a “huge win” for those dri­ving on Kansas’ highways.
“Today’s deci­sion val­i­dates that motorists’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights can­not be cast aside under the guise of a ‘war on drugs’. It also demon­strates that courts will not tol­er­ate the cow­boy men­tal­i­ty of polic­ing that sub­jects our cit­i­zens to con­di­tions of humil­i­a­tion, degra­da­tion, and, in some trag­ic cas­es, vio­lence,” Brett said in a statement.
The ACLU had argued the “two-step” vio­lat­ed dri­vers’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights pro­tect­ing them from unrea­son­able search and seizure and alleged. They argued the tac­tic was used to tar­get dri­vers com­ing from or head­ing to states where mar­i­jua­na is legal, despite pre­vi­ous court rul­ings lim­it­ing how police can use infor­ma­tion about a vehicle’s ori­gin and destination.

Kansas is one of just three states with no form of legal mar­i­jua­na or THC. Possession of the drug remains a Class B mis­de­meanor even as the state is sur­round­ed on three sides by states that either allow recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na or have an exten­sive med­i­c­i­nal pro­gram. “As a result, all dri­vers on I‑70 have mov­ing tar­gets on their backs,” Vratil said, adding that troop­ers tar­get­ed out-of-state dri­vers and sub­ject­ed them to a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of search­es based on where they were trav­el­ing to or from. She also con­clud­ed that a few sec­onds of dis­en­gage­ment was insuf­fi­cient “for rea­son­able dri­vers to feel free to leave.” Earlier this year, two juries found that indi­vid­ual troop­ers employ­ing the strat­e­gy had vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. This is the first rul­ing to hold the agency itself, specif­i­cal­ly for­mer Superintendent Herman Jones, cul­pa­ble for the prac­tice. Testifying in this case in May, Jones said the two troop­ers who were found to have vio­lat­ed rates had not yet faced dis­ci­pline. He could not recall whether the trooper’s super­vi­sors had been dis­ci­plined. He said at the time that troop­ers had no incen­tive to search vehi­cles illegally.

Jones retired from the patrol last month after a tenure marked by alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al harass­ment and gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion. This week, a fed­er­al judge ruled in favor of Jones in a sex­u­al harass­ment law­suit brought by sev­er­al cur­rent and for­mer female employ­ees. While the judge did not rule on the alle­ga­tions them­selves, she said Jones had qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty and that the alle­ga­tions against him were not severe enough to mer­it legal action. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly appoint­ed Erik Smith, a for­mer top offi­cial at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, to take over for Jones lead­ing the agency. The Kansas State Senate will vote on his con­fir­ma­tion next year. The lawsuit’s par­ties have until Aug. 14 to respond to the terms of a pos­si­ble injunc­tion. The injunc­tion would require troop­ers to doc­u­ment all stops, deten­tions, and search­es. That report would require troop­ers to include infor­ma­tion about the dura­tion of the stop and how it concluded. 
Troopers would also have to noti­fy and get approval from a super­vi­sor for con­sen­su­al search­es and let the dri­ver know they can revoke con­sent at any time. Troopers would have to under­go 24 hours of annu­al train­ing on inves­ti­ga­to­ry stops. The injunc­tion would remain in effect for four years unless KHP met the require­ments sooner.

Teen left in ‘excruciating pain’ by officer during traffic stop, California suit says.

Lubbock Police Department offi­cials placed an offi­cer on admin­is­tra­tive leave Thursday as they inves­ti­gate a video cir­cu­lat­ing on social media that appears to show the offi­cer drag­ging a woman across the ground dur­ing an arrest Wednesday morning.
A video was post­ed on the Facebook page Lubbock County Mugshots Wednesday after­noon that shows an LPD patrol offi­cer drag­ging a woman by her arms to his patrol car while she screams. LPD said in a news release Thursday the depart­ment became aware of the video Wednesday evening and placed the offi­cer — who was not iden­ti­fied — on leave Thursday morn­ing while the Office of Professional Standards inves­ti­gates. The arrest stems from a 7:33 a.m. check sub­ject call report­ed to Lubbock police for a per­son act­ing sus­pi­cious­ly in the 1600 block of 24^th Street, accord­ing to the news release. A police report obtained by the Avalanche-Journal states the offi­cer was not dis­patched to the call until more than an hour lat­er, and he found 48-year-old Mary Ramirez report­ed­ly rolling in the grass at Hood Park, near 24^th Street and Avenue Q. The report states the offi­cer believed Ramirez was the sus­pi­cious sub­ject ref­er­enced in the check sub­ject call.

According to the report, the offi­cer attempt­ed to ask Ramirez about her behav­ior but she report­ed­ly ignored him and tried to crawl away from him. The offi­cer wrote in his report that he sus­pect­ed Ramirez “was intox­i­cat­ed on some type of stim­u­lant” and “undoubt­ed­ly under the influ­ence of some drug dur­ing this event.” The offi­cer wrote, “I believed her to be a dan­ger to (her­self), unable to defend her­self, and with no option before me, I placed her under arrest.” The report states the offi­cer hand­cuffed Ramirez, who report­ed­ly tried to fight and kick the offi­cer and refused to walk to the police car. The offi­cer said he “pulled her in the soft grass” to the patrol car, but Ramirez report­ed­ly “bar­rel-rolled” down a hill and the offi­cer “had to drag her back to the vehi­cle again.”

“Finally, as I was drag­ging her, her pants came off so she was embar­rassed enough to get into my patrol vehi­cle, where she put her clothes back on,” the offi­cer wrote. “The Lubbock Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards is cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the video and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the arrest to deter­mine if there were any pol­i­cy vio­la­tions,” the department’s news release states. Ramirez was booked into the Lubbock County Detention Center on charges of pub­lic intox­i­ca­tion and resist­ing arrest, both mis­de­meanors. No injuries were report­ed in the inci­dent, LPD said. The A‑J request­ed footage from the officer’s body-worn cam­era, but offi­cials denied the request, cit­ing an ongo­ing investigation.