Can You Detain Non-Suspects with No Reasonable Suspicion to Believe They Are Involved in a Crime?
Scenario: potential school shooting threat. Parents of possible suspect are uncooperative as to their son’s whereabouts. How much force can you employ to detain them? Are you protected with qualified immunity if it goes sideways? A Sacramento…
Appeals Decision Remands Case Against Deputy Charged with Filing False Report
Video evidence tells a very different story than what this deputy and his partner wrote in their reports of a suspect’s chase and arrest. An appeals court decision in February allows the case to proceed to trial on the charged offenses.
New Decision Rules on Constitutionality of Fixed-Camera Monitoring in Public
In a January appellate decision, the court compared the intrusiveness of fixed cameras throughout a city capturing public movements and cellphone and aerial surveillance compiled while tracking an individual’s movements over a length of time. Big…
New Case on Consent Searches When Tenants’ Wishes Conflict, and When a Suspect is “Present” to Object
A federal case decided in February delves into issues of conflicting consent to search a residence when tenants disagree, and perhaps more importantly, whether the one objecting is in the “immediate vicinity” of the residence for his objection to…
Detentions and Consent: When Do Legal Searches Turn Illegal, and Potential Evidence Suppressed? 
Officers park behind and approach a man talking on his phone in his car, illuminating him with their flashlights. After some casual conversation, they discover he’s on parole, search and find a gun. The trial court ruled one way, the appeals court…