One of the American Criminal Justice system’s most cherished legal norms is the assumption that serious crime, like murder, will be thoroughly investigated and, regardless of the victim or alleged suspect/s, judiciously prosecuted and punished. That is to say, in theory.
But when police are accused of the law breaking, how do we ensure impartiality and minimize conflict of interest in the investigation and charging process? To this end, there are a number of safeguards at our disposal. The case can be taken over by a neighboring jurisdiction, by a law enforcement agency in a different part of the state, or even by a different state entirely. The state attorney general’s office can also do its own investigation, as can the Federal Bureau of Investigation (upon request) and especially if there is a possibility that the crime was one that is federal in nature.
A lack of expediency in situations where law enforcement are themselves the perpetrator causes the public to lose confidence not only in the police department, but the criminal justice system and the state as a whole. This situation has unfortunately become all too common in recent times.
We have seen this process play out with increasing regularity through a litany of cases of police use of excessive force: Eric Garner in New York City, Michael Brown in Ferguson, George Floyd in Minneapolis, and most recently with Breonna Taylor in Louisville.
In brief, right after midnight on March 13, 2020 (almost six months ago), three plainclothes Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers executed a no knock warrant on Taylor’s apartment. The Louisville PD initially claimed that officers identified themselves as police before entry; Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend and neighbors dispute this. Suspecting a break-in, (a plausible scenario in that part of town) Walker, opened fired once on the officers. The officers returned fire with 20 shots shooting both Walker, and killing Taylor.
It’s important to note that the warrant was neither for Walker nor Taylor. It was for Jamarcus Glover who was incidentally in custody, but the police did not know this at the time.
Other unsettling things to note in the context of this tragic incident: Taylor was not initially killed by the gunfire, she bled out after approximately 20 minutes, and officers neither attempted to save her nor call paramedics. Taylor’s mother was given a bureaucratic run around by the LMPD and not informed that her daughter had been killed for hours after the LMPD knew.
And the initial incident report indicated that Taylor did not have any injuries.
On May 20, 2020 the report of an investigation by the Louisville Police Department was handed over to State Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Three months have passed, daily protests have occurred, multiple protesters have been arrested, and still no charges against the officers have been laid. In June the Steve Conrad, LMPD chief of police under intense criticism resigned.
By any standard, the optics for this case are not great. Neither the state nor local prosecutors have filed charges against any of the officers, and the judge who signed off on the warrant has not been sanctioned. Meanwhile we have had two bills in congress one titled the Justice in Policing Act sponsored by the Democrats that has included a provision that police cannot use no knock raids, and another sponsored by Kentucky senator Rand Paul titled Justice for Breonna Taylor Act. Both have stalled.
Still no charges have been laid. It’s possible that the gears will turn and Taylor’s murder will find justice.
At the very least this incident is sloppy police work and judicial malfeasance, at its worst a state crime, a crime of the powerful.
In the meantime, for Taylor’s mother and loved ones, and the people who have come out to protest her killing, justice continues to be delayed, and that means justice is denied.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/50028231651_55934997a2_o-1-scaled.jpg16962560Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2020-08-09 04:45:382020-08-09 15:24:44Delaying Justice in the investigation and charges in connection with the murder of Breonna Taylor
The clock is ticking and maybe you are too late? But still there may be some time to make a better informed decision.
Like most undergraduate and graduate students, and some of their parents who are footing the bill, you have weighed the pros and cons of going back to classes this fall. You are trying to answer a bunch of questions connected to the quality of instruction and campus life: Should I go back full time? Can I go back part-time instead? Do I have enough money to pay for classes? Am I putting myself at risk of contracting COVID-19 if I return to campus? Will I put the health of my family and friends in danger? Are on-line classes worth the money? Will classes, if in person, remain in person for the entire semester? How many of my classmates/teachers will die from the virus? Should I sit the semester out?
Now that COVID-19 is enveloping the United States with alarming speed, universities are preparing, some better than others, to put into place safeguards for either face-to-face instruction or methods to enhance on-line instruction, that can will enable education in various formats, while at the same time ensuring the health of students, faculty, administrators, and other essential staff.
Some students argue that they want a “real” university experience, the one they had last year, or the one their parents or friends attending other universities had. This “real” experience might include an active Greek life, students socializing in circles on grass lawns, attending classes in person, and having fun outside of classrooms. This scenario, is no longer is possible. So what can we do?
What I do know is that unless you are familiar with on-line instruction and learning, from now on university instruction will not be the same.
Perhaps you don’t function well online. This may be because you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t learn unless the instruction is face-to-face, you prefer face-to-face instruction more, or the result of a learning disability. Again, I understand and empathize with you. But things have changed.
The presence of COVID-19 is the new normal, for now and you should get used to it. Maybe your experience last semester was less than ideal. Your instructor was not great on-line. But he or she is hopefully going to get better. It takes time for both instructors and students to shift over from face-to-face to online teaching and learning.
Maybe you are thinking that you will go back to campus in the spring semester, because, after all, a vaccine will have been developed by then. In a perfect world this might happen, but in reality we do not know when the vaccine will be invented, when you’ll finally end up receiving it, and how much adoption among the wider community there will be. In other words, it’s going to be a long time before typical face-to-face university classes resume to normal if there ever was such a thing.
Here is another downside to taking a semester or two off. You will be half a semester, or one year behind. Thus your lifetime earning power will have decreased. And you are taking a gap semester or year off to do what? Play videogames from the comfort of your bed?
Alternatively, maybe because of job loss or economic insecurity, you will have a tough time paying for next year‘s bills, and consider post-secondary education a luxury item. But you are forgetting that education, especially a college or university education from an accredited (e.g., Middle States) educational institution is one of the best assets that you can purchase that’s worth getting into debt for.
The take away is that there are lots of situations that are not ideal. If you want to succeed in life it’s important that you learn this lesson now. Good employees, freelancers, and entrepreneurs need to be flexible to adapt to new situations including challenges and crises. If the only way you can learn is through face-to- face instruction you are missing out on lots of opportunities to learn and to grow. Your ability to tough it out during these uncertain times should also bode well when your application comes in front of employers as it demonstrates that even though conditions were not ideal, you toughed it out. Employers like this sort of thing.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Pomona-campu-scaled.jpg25601707Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2020-08-01 16:36:212020-08-02 14:44:41A message to our students: If you are thinking about sitting out the fall semester, please reconsider
Portlandia, a satirical television series, makes fun of Portland’s often eccentric hipster community. It is fiction. But the deployment of heavily armed federal law enforcement officers (LEOs), coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security, many without organizational identification and dressed in military fatigues, is not.
Though allegedly dispatched to protect federal property such as monuments and court houses, these officers have confronted and intimidated protesters and over the past few weeks regularly used tear gas, stun grenades, and other less-than-lethal munitions to control and disperse peaceful crowds. This is in sure violation of the right to assembly and to free speech. More troubling, have been instances where these LEOs have grabbed protestors off the streets (away from Federal areas), often targeting journalists, and bundled them into unmarked vans.
Indeed the mayor of Portland and the governor of Oregon have publicly expressed their outrage with the federal government deploying these LEOs to police the protests. More specifically, “The attorney general of Oregon has filed suit against various federal agencies and officers involved and officers involved in one arrest” And some nongovernmental organizations such as the American Civil liberties Union have sued the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Marshals Service because they perceive that these action violate that constitutional rights of protesters.
Despite how immoral and legally questionable these tactics are, there are other serious concerns, which have received less attention.
To begin with from an operational standpoint, although the federal LEOs appear to be working in close proximity to the Portland PD, it does not seem like they coordinating their activities with them and this is leading to increased confrontations with protesters, and with the possibility of more violence, injuries, for both protesters and the police.
Also extremely problematic is the fact that there is no guarantee that the individuals in military fatigues are bonafide LEOs. Without discernible identification, how do you distinguish between a federal LEO and an alt/far-right paramilitary group, like so called Boogaloo Boys or the Proud Boys. There’s already credible evidence that agent provocateurs (with various political affiliations and motivations) are initiating violence at and engaging in property damage and physical violence at otherwise peaceful protests throughout the United States. Allowing heavily armed and unidentified people dressed in military attire to sweep up protesters also means that local public safety is failing to protect the safety of their citizens. This is a sure sign of authoritarianism, where people disappear and are kidnapped by unidentifiable agents.
Most importantly, although some federal LEOs may actively welcome the opportunity to participate in this type of assignment, it will ultimately backfire. The opportunity to the kick asses of protesters may temporarily get them out of their current work assignment and break up the monotony of their job. Perhaps they like the change of scenery or participating in riot control duties without being properly trained; it provides them with a little bit of “excitement.” One has to wonder, however, if this type of work detail was in the minds of the men (and by all accounts they appear to be men) who joined these organizations. By all accounts, what they are being asked to do is not real policing. It’s not really crime fighting and it’s not improving public safety where it is most needed. In most cases, riot control is not what they were primarily trained to do, nor is this their calling. History won’t forget these men and their actions. When and if there is a congressional inquiry, like there was with Waco, it’s going to be an embarrassing moment when these officers and their superiors are asked to testify. Moreover a decade or so from now when they look back at their careers in law enforcement, what are they going to say or feel when asked why they participated in this kind of operation? Will they feel shame?
Federal LEOs presence sparks increased confrontations and possible violence between protestors and local law enforcement. Quite simply, if neither the mayor nor the governor has invited them, the Federal LEOs don’t have jurisdiction (meaning legal authority) and local law enforcement should immediately arrest them and local prosecutors should charge them with impersonating a police officer, performing illegal arrests, detention, and kidnapping.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2020-07-24-at-3.24.57-PM.png492745Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2020-07-25 16:44:252020-07-25 23:32:27Porlandia Redux: How using uninvited federal LEOs to police public protest will backfire
Delaying Justice in the investigation and charges in connection with the murder of Breonna Taylor
/in Uncategorized /by Jeffrey Ian RossOne of the American Criminal Justice system’s most cherished legal norms is the assumption that serious crime, like murder, will be thoroughly investigated and, regardless of the victim or alleged suspect/s, judiciously prosecuted and punished. That is to say, in theory.
But when police are accused of the law breaking, how do we ensure impartiality and minimize conflict of interest in the investigation and charging process? To this end, there are a number of safeguards at our disposal. The case can be taken over by a neighboring jurisdiction, by a law enforcement agency in a different part of the state, or even by a different state entirely. The state attorney general’s office can also do its own investigation, as can the Federal Bureau of Investigation (upon request) and especially if there is a possibility that the crime was one that is federal in nature.
A lack of expediency in situations where law enforcement are themselves the perpetrator causes the public to lose confidence not only in the police department, but the criminal justice system and the state as a whole. This situation has unfortunately become all too common in recent times.
We have seen this process play out with increasing regularity through a litany of cases of police use of excessive force: Eric Garner in New York City, Michael Brown in Ferguson, George Floyd in Minneapolis, and most recently with Breonna Taylor in Louisville.
In brief, right after midnight on March 13, 2020 (almost six months ago), three plainclothes Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers executed a no knock warrant on Taylor’s apartment. The Louisville PD initially claimed that officers identified themselves as police before entry; Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend and neighbors dispute this. Suspecting a break-in, (a plausible scenario in that part of town) Walker, opened fired once on the officers. The officers returned fire with 20 shots shooting both Walker, and killing Taylor.
It’s important to note that the warrant was neither for Walker nor Taylor. It was for Jamarcus Glover who was incidentally in custody, but the police did not know this at the time.
Other unsettling things to note in the context of this tragic incident: Taylor was not initially killed by the gunfire, she bled out after approximately 20 minutes, and officers neither attempted to save her nor call paramedics. Taylor’s mother was given a bureaucratic run around by the LMPD and not informed that her daughter had been killed for hours after the LMPD knew.
And the initial incident report indicated that Taylor did not have any injuries.
On May 20, 2020 the report of an investigation by the Louisville Police Department was handed over to State Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Three months have passed, daily protests have occurred, multiple protesters have been arrested, and still no charges against the officers have been laid. In June the Steve Conrad, LMPD chief of police under intense criticism resigned.
In June the Mayor of Louisville announced that Brett Hankison, one of the three officers involved in the case had been terminated, while the other two have been placed on “administrative reassignment.” (
By any standard, the optics for this case are not great. Neither the state nor local prosecutors have filed charges against any of the officers, and the judge who signed off on the warrant has not been sanctioned. Meanwhile we have had two bills in congress one titled the Justice in Policing Act sponsored by the Democrats that has included a provision that police cannot use no knock raids, and another sponsored by Kentucky senator Rand Paul titled Justice for Breonna Taylor Act. Both have stalled.
Still no charges have been laid. It’s possible that the gears will turn and Taylor’s murder will find justice.
At the very least this incident is sloppy police work and judicial malfeasance, at its worst a state crime, a crime of the powerful.
In the meantime, for Taylor’s mother and loved ones, and the people who have come out to protest her killing, justice continues to be delayed, and that means justice is denied.
A message to our students: If you are thinking about sitting out the fall semester, please reconsider
/in Uncategorized /by Jeffrey Ian RossThe clock is ticking and maybe you are too late? But still there may be some time to make a better informed decision.
Like most undergraduate and graduate students, and some of their parents who are footing the bill, you have weighed the pros and cons of going back to classes this fall. You are trying to answer a bunch of questions connected to the quality of instruction and campus life: Should I go back full time? Can I go back part-time instead? Do I have enough money to pay for classes? Am I putting myself at risk of contracting COVID-19 if I return to campus? Will I put the health of my family and friends in danger? Are on-line classes worth the money? Will classes, if in person, remain in person for the entire semester? How many of my classmates/teachers will die from the virus? Should I sit the semester out?
Now that COVID-19 is enveloping the United States with alarming speed, universities are preparing, some better than others, to put into place safeguards for either face-to-face instruction or methods to enhance on-line instruction, that can will enable education in various formats, while at the same time ensuring the health of students, faculty, administrators, and other essential staff.
Some students argue that they want a “real” university experience, the one they had last year, or the one their parents or friends attending other universities had. This “real” experience might include an active Greek life, students socializing in circles on grass lawns, attending classes in person, and having fun outside of classrooms. This scenario, is no longer is possible. So what can we do?
What I do know is that unless you are familiar with on-line instruction and learning, from now on university instruction will not be the same.
Perhaps you don’t function well online. This may be because you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t learn unless the instruction is face-to-face, you prefer face-to-face instruction more, or the result of a learning disability. Again, I understand and empathize with you. But things have changed.
The presence of COVID-19 is the new normal, for now and you should get used to it. Maybe your experience last semester was less than ideal. Your instructor was not great on-line. But he or she is hopefully going to get better. It takes time for both instructors and students to shift over from face-to-face to online teaching and learning.
Maybe you are thinking that you will go back to campus in the spring semester, because, after all, a vaccine will have been developed by then. In a perfect world this might happen, but in reality we do not know when the vaccine will be invented, when you’ll finally end up receiving it, and how much adoption among the wider community there will be. In other words, it’s going to be a long time before typical face-to-face university classes resume to normal if there ever was such a thing.
Here is another downside to taking a semester or two off. You will be half a semester, or one year behind. Thus your lifetime earning power will have decreased. And you are taking a gap semester or year off to do what? Play videogames from the comfort of your bed?
Alternatively, maybe because of job loss or economic insecurity, you will have a tough time paying for next year‘s bills, and consider post-secondary education a luxury item. But you are forgetting that education, especially a college or university education from an accredited (e.g., Middle States) educational institution is one of the best assets that you can purchase that’s worth getting into debt for.
The take away is that there are lots of situations that are not ideal. If you want to succeed in life it’s important that you learn this lesson now. Good employees, freelancers, and entrepreneurs need to be flexible to adapt to new situations including challenges and crises. If the only way you can learn is through face-to- face instruction you are missing out on lots of opportunities to learn and to grow. Your ability to tough it out during these uncertain times should also bode well when your application comes in front of employers as it demonstrates that even though conditions were not ideal, you toughed it out. Employers like this sort of thing.
Porlandia Redux: How using uninvited federal LEOs to police public protest will backfire
/in Uncategorized /by Jeffrey Ian RossPortlandia, a satirical television series, makes fun of Portland’s often eccentric hipster community. It is fiction. But the deployment of heavily armed federal law enforcement officers (LEOs), coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security, many without organizational identification and dressed in military fatigues, is not.
Though allegedly dispatched to protect federal property such as monuments and court houses, these officers have confronted and intimidated protesters and over the past few weeks regularly used tear gas, stun grenades, and other less-than-lethal munitions to control and disperse peaceful crowds. This is in sure violation of the right to assembly and to free speech. More troubling, have been instances where these LEOs have grabbed protestors off the streets (away from Federal areas), often targeting journalists, and bundled them into unmarked vans.
Rightly so, protesters, local and state politicians, and members of the news media have expressed deep concern about these tactics and many criminal justice professionals (from practitioners to scholars) have rapidly changed their opinion from “hey this is unusual, to this is plain wrong.” The deployment of federal LEOs without the express permission of the mayor or the governor raises all sorts of moral, legal and civil rights concerns.
Indeed the mayor of Portland and the governor of Oregon have publicly expressed their outrage with the federal government deploying these LEOs to police the protests. More specifically, “The attorney general of Oregon has filed suit against various federal agencies and officers involved and officers involved in one arrest” And some nongovernmental organizations such as the American Civil liberties Union have sued the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Marshals Service because they perceive that these action violate that constitutional rights of protesters.
Despite how immoral and legally questionable these tactics are, there are other serious concerns, which have received less attention.
To begin with from an operational standpoint, although the federal LEOs appear to be working in close proximity to the Portland PD, it does not seem like they coordinating their activities with them and this is leading to increased confrontations with protesters, and with the possibility of more violence, injuries, for both protesters and the police.
Also extremely problematic is the fact that there is no guarantee that the individuals in military fatigues are bonafide LEOs. Without discernible identification, how do you distinguish between a federal LEO and an alt/far-right paramilitary group, like so called Boogaloo Boys or the Proud Boys. There’s already credible evidence that agent provocateurs (with various political affiliations and motivations) are initiating violence at and engaging in property damage and physical violence at otherwise peaceful protests throughout the United States. Allowing heavily armed and unidentified people dressed in military attire to sweep up protesters also means that local public safety is failing to protect the safety of their citizens. This is a sure sign of authoritarianism, where people disappear and are kidnapped by unidentifiable agents.
Most importantly, although some federal LEOs may actively welcome the opportunity to participate in this type of assignment, it will ultimately backfire. The opportunity to the kick asses of protesters may temporarily get them out of their current work assignment and break up the monotony of their job. Perhaps they like the change of scenery or participating in riot control duties without being properly trained; it provides them with a little bit of “excitement.” One has to wonder, however, if this type of work detail was in the minds of the men (and by all accounts they appear to be men) who joined these organizations. By all accounts, what they are being asked to do is not real policing. It’s not really crime fighting and it’s not improving public safety where it is most needed. In most cases, riot control is not what they were primarily trained to do, nor is this their calling. History won’t forget these men and their actions. When and if there is a congressional inquiry, like there was with Waco, it’s going to be an embarrassing moment when these officers and their superiors are asked to testify. Moreover a decade or so from now when they look back at their careers in law enforcement, what are they going to say or feel when asked why they participated in this kind of operation? Will they feel shame?
Federal LEOs presence sparks increased confrontations and possible violence between protestors and local law enforcement. Quite simply, if neither the mayor nor the governor has invited them, the Federal LEOs don’t have jurisdiction (meaning legal authority) and local law enforcement should immediately arrest them and local prosecutors should charge them with impersonating a police officer, performing illegal arrests, detention, and kidnapping.