The Volokh Conspiracy

Ha ha...

In its Fourth Amendment cases, the Supreme Court routinely refers to "invasion" of a home to mean any physical access, and I assumed Radley was using the word in the way the Supreme Court does, not to refer only to no-knock paramilitary raids.

An underhanded apology if I ever saw one! Good debate otherwise, though. Plus, I clicked through to TheAgitator for the first time...I appreciate the tip. Keep it up, fellas.

The overarching lessons: Don't live on the same block as any potentially suspected criminals and wear your bullet-proof vests to bed.

arrogant f***ing lawyers - jeesh. too rich to be killed by cops? live in a swank neighborhood? wrap yourself in constitutional arguments? let's be delicate and academic. wait till the come for YOU.

Well, that's about as balanced a response to an apology one expects to see, I suppose.

That's a heck of a lot classier a response than Balko gave me when he mischaracterized my position on a few things recently. When I pointed it out, I got a response that said, essentially, "whatever."

Patterico wrote:

That's a heck of a lot classier a response than Balko gave me when he mischaracterized my position on a few things recently. When I pointed it out, I got a response that said, essentially, "whatever."

Sincerely practicing good manners and thoughtfulness produces many classy results that pounding the table never will. Even when one is technically correct. Maybe especially when one is techically correct.

Thank you, Prof. Kerr. Your readers appreciate your honesty and like you all the more for it. Or at least this reader does.

Yet again another classy move by Prof Kerr. Would it were that the rest of the blogosphere would take note of such intellectual honesty.

"I regret the misunderstanding." Words to learn from.

Sincerely practicing good manners and thoughtfulness produces many classy results that pounding the table never will. Even when one is technically correct. Maybe especially when one is techically correct.

Well, the Balko post I was responding to called me "sleazy" . . .

Wow, Patterico, the sincerity of your "apology" is overwhelming.....especially when you come to other sites to air your grievances against Balko in three separate posts in one day.

Here's a hint: no one cares about your apology on this site.

Stop doing your best impression of a blog remora.

did in fact find illegal drugs in the home.

Yes. According to the police chief a small amount of marijuana. There is probably a "small amount of marijuna" in every other house in America (unbeknownst to Mom and Dad or to Grandma). In my state it's a petty misdemeanor (expressly not a "crime").

Hardly justification for the smash and bang raid.

It's actually starting to look bad for the Atlanta cops.

What I was saying at first was that we should reserve judgment until the facts came out.

They're starting to come out, and they're not pretty.

I wouldn't pay much attention to Tefnut. He actively tried to get banned at my site, and once he was banned, he came back to insult me under several different names. His IP address is one shared by comment spammers I have fought at my site, leading me to wonder whether he is a professional spammer himself. He certainly does have multiple IP addresses available to him, such that he can switch from one to another in minutes.

Yup. If what he's saying is true, the cops should go to prison. If what he's saying isn't true, then he doesn't sound very "reliable."

Incidentally, in another post we debated how hard it was to get a no-knock warrant, with our two law enforcement representatives here claiming it took extensive work to justify such a warrant, and that police had to demonstrate exigent circumstances. I pointed out that this was true on paper, but in real life, the mere recitation of the word 'drugs' would create exigent circumstances for the right magistrate.

Now that we've seen the affidavits, we know the complete evidence of 'exigent circumstances': an alleged $50 drug buy, and the allegation that the dealer had surveillance cameras at the house. (Note that this doesn't make sense, as a matter of logic. If they knocked-and-announced, the cameras would be superfluous. So, "he'll know we're coming, so we can't knock-and-announce"? Huh?)


Patterico:

News reports said they identified themselves before coming in.

But given the numerous contradictions to date, I'm not sure I believe anything this department says anymore.

Regardless of contradictions, that's obviously an LEO lie -- one of the more common ones, like 'it was a consent search.' It's not credible. Why would they obtain a no-knock and then vitiate the no-knock by announcing themselves in advance? They may have identified themselves as they were entering, but beforehand? Flunks the laugh test.