Baltimore Cops Break into Home Without Warrant, to Arrest Those Inside… For Curfew violation

[ghostsinthemachine]

Baltimore, MD– As the media was corralled into a degrading staging area “for their own safety” (they must have meant from the police, who were threatening arrest and used chemical weapons on us days before), the show put on by riot police on North and Pennsylvania was not all that was happening in the city of Baltimore.

On Saturday evening, as the disgraced media was put in a pen on the corner of an intersection, the police decided to break into a home and arrest five gang members for breaking curfew. The problem is, the young men were already inside their home.  The officers reportedly did not have a warrant when they entered the residence, violating the Fourth amendment...
Read more:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-baltimore-break-home-without-warrant-arrest-inside-curfew-violation/#51P1IVUbESMwOU6S.01

[irisblue]

1. ummm, what?

they were off the street....so a better explication from the newspeople & police are needed.

[greyl]

2. Story is flimsy.

(The video does show a broken doorframe) Not saying it's unbelievable, just that the article's facts are few and appear to be solely based on the video.
Officers are generally allowed to pursue suspects into residences.

[JonLP24]

4. For curfew?

Seems a little extreme like busting down a door for a jaywalking fleeing though it usually becomes another crime "resisting arrest" or something similar, seems there would be charge. There was an athlete, if IIRC it was Adrian Peterson because it was in Houston, anyway he was charged with "resisting arrest" & nothing more. Eventually it was dismissed because on the face of it doesn't make sense.

Anyway, without video cops control all the facts such as video only showed cops dragging Freddie Gray with no charge.

[greyl]

5. That's a different issue.

People in the video say he was there the whole time, NOT violating curfew. That's the flimsy story, imo.

Edit: It happened Saturday, so seems like a little investigating and backup could have been done.
Especially if the story is totally true! Cops' names, please.

[JonLP24]

6. Flimsy only because they have a charge

Probable cause from a Baltimore police officer has always been a tenuous thing. It’s a tenuous thing anywhere, but in Baltimore, in these high crime, heavily policed areas, it was even worse. When I came on, there were jokes about, “You know what probable cause is on Edmondson Avenue? You roll by in your radio car and the guy looks at you for two seconds too long.” Probable cause was whatever you thought you could safely lie about when you got into district court.

Then at some point when cocaine hit and the city lost control of a lot of corners and the violence was ratcheted up, there was a real panic on the part of the government. And they basically decided that even that loose idea of what the Fourth Amendment was supposed to mean on a street level, even that was too much. Now all bets were off. Now you didn't even need probable cause. The city council actually passed an ordinance that declared a certain amount of real estate to be drug-free zones. They literally declared maybe a quarter to a third of inner city Baltimore off-limits to its residents, and said that if you were loitering in those areas you were subject to arrest and search. Think about that for a moment: It was a permission for the police to become truly random and arbitrary and to clear streets any way they damn well wanted.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-simon-on-baltimore-s-anguish

He mentions an addict waving a drug baggie later down which comes from a specific incident I read about from David Simon (a journalist with a long history of a Baltimore cop reporter) years ago where a judge (a story on the overloaded court dockets & the drug war) where the cops said after he bought the drugs he waved it out in front of them giving them probable cause so she asked the defendant yes or no did you wave it out for the world to see? He said no -- the judge dismissed the case.

We are talking about the Baltimore police department. We can't go from to doubting the suspects story to accepting the cops as if they wouldn't be unreasonable, arbitrary arrests are so common. 100,000 were arrested in one year under O'Malley's zero tolerance policing the ACLU filed suit and the courts ruled his policy violated civil liberties.

[greyl]

7. Yes, I think I agree with all that.

Points granted.

Why would cops go through the effort and risk to lie about someone breaking curfew only to charge them with breaking curfew? I wish the author of the OP article had done a better job.

[JonLP24]

8. I could tell personal intances of run ins

where they are lying but since I can't prove it but it doesn't matter because it doesn't change the truth. It isn't because I was doing something wrong, I have been in the wrong place at the wrong time or knocking on the wrong person's door when the cops get a call where they show up with arrogant certainty they know exactly & everything that happened. The "why would X lie" question is one I hate because I often have asked myself the same one from those who asked me why would they lie when the person lying harms me.

I can tell you "my word against his" gives cops significant power. You heard of "testilying&quot perjury) from the Mollen Commission in 1994 which found the unwillingness of the NYPD to police itself more troubling than the corruption itself. "Sewer tickets"? "Contempt of cop&quot not an actual law on the books -- these are cop terms)

[greyl]

10. I totally believe your personal instances. (But turns out I was on to something)

Malicious and stupid cops are no stranger to me, and I've lived in Baltimore at various times, most recently in the mid 90s.

I found a better article (written 7 hours earlier than the poor one in the OP), and Flex himself confirms my suspicions about what was heard on the video. He wasn't inside the whole time, but of course that does not rule out the cops being total assholes or breaking regulations.

Flex explained what happened to City Paper:

"Same day as the Mayweather fight we was being honored, they had a little party for us and everything, everybody knew. While we were on our way in the house there was a lot of individuals outside. Most of them that was across the street were Caucasian. They ((the police)) didn’t say nothing about that. It was after curfew. They never said nothing. They knew. They never said nothing to anyone about it. We walked in the house all of us went in the house and got comfortable. Me, I took my clothes off and got comfortable to lay down, in friends’ house, my family. And then we heard a big boom. They kicked the door down. They took me out in my long johns."

http://www.citypaper.com/news/freddiegray/bcpnews-bloods-apparently-arrested-for-curfew-violation-inside-home-highlighting-disparities-in-enforcement-20150504,0,5947281.story

[JonLP24]

3. This is why I take what the Police Commissioner says to the media with a grain of salt

Because I haven't seen things get better only worse since Freddie Gray. They had to clear out a floor to detain protestors & $500,000 bond holds.

[Cheese Sandwich]

9. I would take the gang members word over the cops because cops generally lie and harass black people

[JonLP24]

11. In the case of Baltimore

or in similar cities with concentrated poverty the reason why people are gang members is because drug organizations are the only ones hiring. The people at the further top depending on the amount of violence they order (which also compromises those below them because the threat of death if they don't follow orders) are usually the really bad guys who evade police detection & generally difficult to build a case because of a pyramid they set-up which the further you up go you see political connections (follow the money)

Timmirror Stanfield was a major drug trafficker in Baltimore in the 80's known for its ruthless violence. Marlo Stanfield from The Wire is based on him which I consider the character the greatest portrayal of sociopath behavior I have ever seen.

This is from a co-creater of The Wire

Stanfield and Boardley Investigations

Stanfield Investigation

The investigative process—incorporating controlled arrests, random interviews, and grand jury investigations—was developed during the 1986 Timmirror Stanfield homicide investigation. Stanfield, a classic gang leader, was 25 years old when he was indicted. He headed a drug gang of more than 50 members that controlled South Baltimore's Westport area and West Baltimore's Murphy Homes housing project. The gang was extremely violent and had grown so bold that it denied postal workers access to Westport on their daily rounds.

The gang was responsible for several murders, and the investigation focused on four of the murders that occurred at the 725 George Street highrise. Former Maryland State Attorney Kurt Schmoke authorized Assistant State Attorney Howard Gersh to use a special grand jury to investigate the gang. Approximately 40 gang members and other neighborhood witnesses testified before the panel. Within 5 months, the four cases were prepared for trial, with 15 gang members ready to testify against Stanfield. Three of the cases were presented for prosecution, and convictions were secured against the nucleus of the gang.

<snip>

Investigations' Conclusions

From the evidence gathered in the Stanfield and Boardley investigations, it appears that only a few members adopted the violent mentality of the core group. The majority of gang members appear to be trapped between their essentially good upbringing and their fear of the gang's violence. Those members who are uncertain and confused are the ones who the investigators target. The process proposes to resolve a subject's conflicts by offering a safe alternative to the gang—cooperation with government officials.

The investigative strategy achieves its primary goals. This process disempowers the leader, disrupts the integrity of the gang, and generates new evidence that leads to successful prosecutions of the gang's nucleus. The investigative process has a significant impact on both those who cooperate and those who are prosecuted. Based on 1998 data, the Murphy Homes area—formerly known as the Murder Homes—has not experienced new gang or gang-related murders. Drug dealing still exists in the neighborhood, but not with the degree of organization or violence imposed by the former gang.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/html/bja/gang/bja4.html

My long winded version of saying I agree. just adding comment on to those with the idea someone wouldn't believe what they say simply because they are gang members is ignorant when cops themselves depend on their testimony to convict the major players.