Real Life - Lawsuits, Guns, Drugs and How to Apply the 4th

I've spent countless hours in State, Superior and Federal Court defending my actions.  I've been sued (unreasonably, I might add) by a career criminal on Federal Release.  I've chased people into houses and been told by judges and lawyers that my actions were not allowed.

Today I will go into some of these true stories.  Real successes, real mistakes, and most importantly, why? 

If you don't know the boundaries, you open yourself up to committing criminal and civil violations by mistake against the community you swore to protect.  Screw that.

Stay cool!

-LEO

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Good morning. It's Leo and welcome back. Today I want to get into a few stories of experiences that I've had, issues with the application of the Fourth Amendment that ended in me getting sued in federal court, and generally how to keep your evidence from getting suppressed, and I would say more importantly, from violating people's rights in general. None of us want to do that. So I'll give some stories, a couple of third-hand ones and a bunch of firsthand ones, you know, that over the last several decades I've seen. And these are real things, and these are real things that happen. So you need to think about how you would react to protect yourself personally, to protect your case and protect the integrity of your case, and you know, keep from getting sued and keep your case holding up. Because, you know, you may have been on 15 years at this point, and you haven't had a case go through federal court. And man, they pick through it with a fine-toothed comb. And even the federal public defenders are generally very good. I got my back put against the wall by one that I know personally, and he went to like Yale and Harvard for undergrad and law school or something like that. So like he's smarter than the listeners, generally, right? So some of these guys are very good at their job. And, you know, if you've had 100 weed cases or crack cases or heroin cases go through the city court and people have been pleading guilty, and then suddenly they pick it apart in federal court, or just it uh, you know, the dude's looking at a lot of years and he gets a decent attorney, they might knock that thing apart. And we don't want that. We all know, you know, if you're a decent cop, you know who the arch fucking criminals are in your area and who are just out victimizing people all day long. And we we don't want to catch these guys and then have them go free because we didn't know a rule and we fumbled it. I personally had the experience of hearing a defense attorney say, Your Honor, this is a bright line rule, is when I I chased a dude, which I'll get into a per a different personal experience of this, but I chased a dude for a misdemeanor and he ran into a house and locked the door. I kicked the door in and got him. He had some crack rocks, he was selling crack. I got him with some crack rocks, so I was chasing him for misdemeanors. He was banned from that porch. There was a ban for him. He was not allowed to be on it. He ran into the house and locked it. I kicked the door, went in, got him. He was in a back room with some girls. I was like, where'd he put it? And they were like, behind the TV. And I went back there and there was a bag of crack rocks. Those crack rocks got suppressed. The defense attorney said, You're on, there's a bright line rule. He was chasing someone fleeing for a misdemeanor. Can't kick the door. So I learned something that day. Let's get into some other things. Hot topic for me because I've seen it misdone badly in several different ways, and that's going to be drug field test kits. Man, I have multiple, multiple, multiple times seen people do the cocaine field test kit wrong. First of all, you need to be using field test kits. There are people that make drug arrests and don't field test. And that's stupid because you are taking people's freedom based on what it looks like. Hopefully, you're not sniffing it or rubbing it inside your lip to see if your lip goes numb or anything like that. But you're eyeballing these different drugs saying that is a drug. And there's just too many variants of different things for you to for anyone to speak with that confidence. I can look at meth, heroin, cocaine, crack, whatever, weed, and generally be like, yeah, that's crack. But I could be wrong. We used to do reversals where we would have a guy posing as a crack dealer and catch the customers. I have been, uh I've posed as a customer for another agent, another drug agent who was trying to get in with an organization, and he has sold me fake crack right in front of our targets in a bar. I went in, he had like, I can't remember what kind of nut it was. I want to say walnuts or or pecans or something. But if you skin them, like if you shave them down and chop them up, they look just like crack rocks. And he wanted to, we wanted to get into this organization. They weren't really interested. He was trying to kind of hang around the bar that they were selling crack out of. And finally it was like, hey, let's send Leo in and he can buy some fake crack from these guys. So that's what we did. It worked out. The point being, some drug dealers saw it and they thought it was crack. I've purchased fake crack once or twice. That looked totally real. They brought me into the shadows, they made the deal, and it was fake. I remember one where the dude also had a fake gun on him. He had like a black BB gun with the tip spray-painted black, trying to get himself killed by the police or whoever he's robbing or whatever he's doing. But back to field test kits. Please don't let me ADHD off topic. Use them. There was a case, I believe it was 2019 in South Carolina. The Georgia Southern quarterback got pulled over and he had some bird shit on his car. And this cop, holy shit, don't be like this guy, scraped some of the bird shit. Thought it was cocaine. I think he took the guy to jail. So imagine the personal and agency liability if that guy loses his scholarship, his chance at the NFL, his freedom. Imagine if he gets sexually assaulted in jail. Like, this is a lot of stuff that can happen because you didn't have a test kit and you're scraping bird shit off the hood. It doesn't even make sense, but it's what they did. It really happened. They really needed a voice of reason out there. I don't know how that could happen. But I've seen a lot of test kits misused. And reading is fundamental. We're gonna need to do this. Says on the test kit or on the box how to do it. Uh, the cocaine one, it's like the blue and the purple separate. You crack the different little nodules in there, you put a little bit of the cocaine in, you agitate it, you crack the nodules, you follow the directions. And they're very simple. It's like a three-step process. But I've seen countless times cops being like, uh, it's cocaine, it turned blue. And I'd be like, and I'm sure people just sit there silently, like, all right, you're confident. Like, they're like, it's cocaine, it's blue. And I'd be like, nah, that's not. You gotta read the package, bro. It's you need blue and purple separation. You need to agitate it and then turn it at an angle, and there should be blue and purple with a clear separation between the colors. That's an indicator of cocaine. You just bought some sham from a drug dealer who ripped off your informant. It's not actually cocaine. Don't write field test positive in your report because you're wrong. I've seen drug agents test grandma's ashes before. And I'll I'll lead into another Fourth Amendment thing dealing with ruses here involving that, because it was it was the same group of narcotics guys. But they, they, there was a little box. It wasn't a normal-looking urn. It was like a small box, very small. And they were like, What is this? The guy was like, That's my grandma. And they like, they tested it. Sure, it was not drugs. I think it turned blue. I don't really remember, but I think they were like, that's cocaine. I'm like, dude, it's not cocaine. Don't lock this dude up for his grandma, please, brother. Don't put me in this situation. That's not that's not showing cocaine. But if you're locking people up based on how the shit looks, because you're so good you know meth, and you're charging him with possession of meth, and you were wrong, and it goes to the lab and you were fucking wrong, and they lose their job and their family, and they get divorced and they get assaulted in jail or get killed, or their car gets seized and their money gets taken, and all this shit that happens when you go to jail and you cause that when you seized them and you were you seized them because you don't know your fucking job, that's not good. So have field test kits, know how to use the field test kits. Please don't put some up-and-coming quarterback in prison for bird shit. And if you don't have them, a lot of times the state investigative agencies they can provide them. So you can give them a call and be like, hey, can you send us some boxes? If your agency is small and doesn't want to order them or big and just runs out all the time and people like hoard them in their car. Seen that plenty of times, probably been guilty of that a couple times. I always carried some test kits. I wasn't waiting for the property room. Because then what? I took them to jail and then I went and tested it negative. No, I need some in the car, bro. So that's enough about field test kits, but have them, know where to get them if you don't have them. If and if you don't have them, tell your supervisor, like, hey Sarge, can we pass up? We need field test kits for every what do you need it for?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Everything, every drug, at least meth, coke, heroin, you know, the big ones, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

The stuff that you find all the time. So let's get into some Fourth Amendment things. And again, these are all going to be firsthand situations that I've experienced and just kind of how it played out. And the whole point of this recording that I'm doing is that I want your cases to hold up. I want them to be successful. I don't want them to be suppressed. I don't want the prosecutor, you know, I don't want you to get 10 kilos out of a house and you go to the federal prosecutor and they'd be like, You this is illegal. Like the way you got this will not hold up under scrutiny at all. I don't want you to experience that because that's that sucks. Or they charge it federally, and then once they start getting discovery, that's when they're like, this case is shit. We cannot put this in front of a federal judge at a suppression hearing. It's going to get wiped. And I don't want you to end up in US versus Jones or Alabama versus Jones, where, you know, you're making state supreme court case law because something of yours either got suppressed or you went really fucking far into the gray to where it went through the appeals court all the way up. We don't want to make case law. Okay. So let's get into some things. First, let's get into do a quick on the stop and frisk. This was always a quick transition for me. If I was dealing with people on the street, whether they're just on the corner or I get dispatched to deal with a guy, whatever. I'm dealing with somebody as a cop, right? I I usually want to pat them down, and I'd I'd like to search them oftentimes, depending on what they're doing. If I'm dealing with them, I've I often want to know what they got going. So you need to read Terry versus Ohio, but I'll give you a quick synopsis here. This isn't legal advice. Don't sue Leo if you fuck this up and you know get in trouble. You need to read a book. But I will give you my version of how I apply it. Terry vs Ohio, stop and frisk. You can pat somebody down for weapons if you have to, if you have reason to believe they are armed and dangerous. Not or dangerous. If you pull over four guys in a car and they look tough, you don't really have reason to believe they're armed. They may be dangerous because they're scary to you. So you can't fight. All right, I'm done picking on you. Love you, listener. But armed and dangerous. Terry verse Ohio, the dude could see like an L-shaped print. He'd been watching this dude casing a store. So he believed there was about to be a robbery, and then he could see a print of a gun. So that's much different than I was in a high crime neighborhood and I was outnumbered. So I started frisking people. That's not really the rule at all. So put that out of your mind. You're much better off saying, hey, you mind if I pat you down real quick for weapons? And if they say yes, all right, put your hands on the car while I'll pat you down, please. That's much better than grab the car and patting you down. And then you write in your report that you, under Terry Verse, Ohio, you frisk them, and that is not the rule. Always consent just overrides everything. So if you can get that, hey, you mind if I pat you down? You mind if I pat you real quick? Most of these dudes, if you're dealing with them, they've been patted down a hundred million times. They've dealt with the cops. And then I would transition while I was patting them. I'm feeling the waistline, I'm feeling the pockets, anyway, you know, all the places you might find a gun or a big knife or something, but usually a gun. I'm feeling the pockets, feeling what's in there, because the rule is if you can feel it and it's clearly contraband, like if you feel a big bag of coke or whatever, and you can articulate that based on your training and experience, that was drugs, you can go ahead and take it out. Okay. But you need to be able to explain that. You cannot just feel something in their pocket and go and just pull it out. Because you better know what it was. Uh you can't just start dumping pockets. That would require consent or them to be under arrest, one or the other. But if we're still before arrest, the easiest way for me was always, hey, you mind if I pat you down real quick? Like, yeah, I ain't got nothing on me. I'll be like, all right, turn, put your hands on the car. I start patting them, I'm checking them, and I go, hey, you mind if I check your pockets while I'm while I'm patting you? And usually they go, Yeah, that's fine. And boom, I do that. But what you can't do is just start digging in because then, you know, if you find a handful of child porn photos, them jokers are tossed out. And we don't want that. So know your stop and frisk rules. Know your rules for stopping people. It is articulable, reasonable suspicion, not probable cause. Go ahead and Google me. Look in your talk to your supervisor if you think I'm I'm the one actually smoking crack. Check that. An articulable, reasonable suspicion. They don't have to be actively engaged in a crime, such as speeding, to stop them. Has to be an articulable, reasonable suspicion, such as grandma just got punched in the mouth by her 15-year-old grandson. He's a white male, red shorts, black shirt, and a Yankees hat walking away northbound. And you see somebody matching that walking northbound. That is an articulable, reasonable suspicion. It could be somebody else, but that'd probably be probable cause. But whatever. It's a slightly lower standard to stop and make contact with somebody, detain and communicate, to put it into cop talk. So know your stop and frisk rule and know how you're going to get consent to search or whatever you're going to do. But I have seen a lot of step out of the car, put your hands on the car and pat you down for weapons. And that's all cool till it's not, till you're either in an incident and you are the one breaking the rules, or you just get some evidence that gets tossed. We don't want any of that. So let's go into a few of my personal incidents finally. I had one where I was doing an arrest warrant on a guy. I knew he was, I knew where his girlfriend lived, and I had a ping warrant on his phone. So I knew his phone was over there. I knew where his girlfriend was, third-party resident. So I didn't really have enough to ram the door. I didn't have a search warrant. So I wanted to grab him when he came outside. I don't remember exactly how it went. I think she came out or something. So, but we end up in contact with her, and turned out he was like hiding in the attic. And so we get him out and get him in handcuffs, and it was drizzling a little bit. And so there was an apartment next door. And I wanted to get consent to search the apartment. He was a shooter. He was involved in some shootings. I knew he'd have a gun. And while I was looking for him, she gave consent to look through the apartment for him. She originally said he wasn't there. And then she ended up telling me where he was. I think I said something like, Hey, I know he's here. And if one of us gets killed, I'm you're eating the murder charge for sure. She was like, Yeah, he's in the attic. So we while I was searching, there was like a couple bullets, and there I could see a magazine sticking out of a hole in the bottom of the box spring in the bedroom. So I didn't see if there was a gun. I was looking for a person. So I looked under the bed, I saw a magazine, and I was like, all right, moving on. There's probably a gun or there's a gun close. And there was some loose ammo in various places around. So there was like some 556 and some 9mm. So I'm like, all right, progress. So we get Buddy out of the attic, and the girlfriend and the kids go next door, and it's kind of rainy out. So we get them in like the apartment next door. She had friends over there while we talked to the guy in the apartment asking him for consent. And it was me and a partner, and the guy was kind of hem-hawed. He was wanting to know his rights, which he can ask. You know, I'm asking for consent of voluntary legal consent. And he was asked some questions about it. And so I'm answering, and my partner that was in there said something along the lines of, hey, those kids are out there in the rain, and you know, he's going to get a search warrant anyway. So you can either do it now or we can do it later. And I immediately, oh, and I was recording this. We didn't have body cams at the time, but I had a recorder running in my pocket. And I was like, well, hold on. Uh, she's not in the rain. She's in the apartment next door. The babies are warm and dry. And I will, he's right that I will be applying for a search warrant, but that'll be up to the judge as to if I actually get it. And that sounds like a really minor interaction, but it was really major because it would have been coercive had we been basically threatening him with making his family sick by saying, hey, they're out there in the rain. So this recording was played in federal court at a suppression hearing. And the in the judge's ruling, it said, yes, this was being handled improperly, but the appropriate remedy was to inform the defendant, because he did have a gun, uh, was to inform the defendant that uh of of what I said. And that's what the judge cared about. And they listened to all of that. So had I just left it, it's very easy when your buddies start saying things like that to just roll with it and either be like, yeah, or just ignore it and continue. But had I ignored, that judge made it very clear that that remedy was needed to get that evidence in, because otherwise it would have it would not have been a voluntary consent to search.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Moving on, gonna take a drink of water.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

I had this is another Fourth Amendment situation where I ended up getting sued that I mentioned you earlier. The only time I've been the not plaintiff, the defendant on a 1983 lawsuit. I was named with my city and a bunch of other people. I had the city attorney representing me, and then the case got thrown out later when the guy went back to federal prison because he's an arch criminal. So I got a complaint when I was working narcotics for the city that this guy had just gotten out of federal prison. And they said he's driving a big, huge dude. They gave me his name. Uh, his informant told me about it. They're like, man, he just got out. I can't buy from him. He's above my level. But he's this big, huge dude. He's got long dreads. He drives this big silver Toyota tundra. Here's his name and all his info. Here's where he's laying his head. Blah, blah. They gave me a really good rundown on. So I was like, all right, I'm gonna go put surveillance on this. So I go set up on the house. I see a silver Toyota tundra over there. I'm not out there 10 minutes. I was planning to just go watch for a little bit and kind of see if there's any activity. This dude comes walking out, gets in the truck, drives away. I'm like, okay, let's follow him. Have my buddy with me. So we follow him. He rides up in the hood and then he goes behind this car wash. Not car wash, I'm sorry, a laundromat. And pulls right back out, and he's got this other guy with him in the front passenger seat. And I'm like, why did he go behind a laundromat? Like there's nothing back there. If you know Savannah, Georgia, it's like 54th in Montgomery. There's nothing really behind it. Like Madison apartments are back there, but they're not right there. Like it just didn't make any sense where he had pulled in and scooped this dude. Looked nefarious to me. So I was like, man, let's move things forward. So I I was on a narcotics unit, but we had like a street crime unit. So I get on the radio, I switch to their channel. I'm like, hey, are y'all in this area? And they Roger up. They're like, yeah, we're free. I was like, hell yeah. So I'd been following it for a little bit. So, you know, one man surveillance can be tough. So I passed it off to one of them. And I was like, hey, I want to see if we can get a violation. So we're following it in unmarked cars, seeing if we can get a reason to pull it over. I can't just violate his Fourth Amendment. It's not a police state. I can't just stop him on a hunch, which is all I had. But a hunch is enough to watch and see if they do something else. So I break off, start driving parallel. One of the guys from Street Crime starts following, and he says, hey, he just went straight from a left turn only lane at Gwinnett Street. So I'm like, cool, you can't do that. Let's get him pulled over. So he goes all the way up to the river. We finally get him stopped downtown. I stayed in sight. They ended up with like two marked units with two people each going up, making contact with this guy and his passenger. It was who the CI had told me. I hadn't confirmed it, but it looked like it was a very large man with dreads. It looked like him. So they ended up getting off the driver, my guy that I was looking at. He had like a hundred bags of ecstasy, like powder MDMA, and he had like a hundred bags of wheat. And then his passenger had like a hundred bags of weed on him. So they were going to make some sales, and they were all the weed was all stuffed or the dope was all stuffed down in their crotches and stuff. Well, everything went smooth. I'm like, cool, he's on federal release. We'll send him back to prison. He's selling drugs again, just like my guy said. Give my CI a little couple bucks for give me the good info and move along. That was quick and easy. Well, there was a suppression hearing, and I wasn't concerned because I'm like, we did it by the book. Well, the officer who had spotted the violation for me that I got on the radio, he had gotten in trouble between my incident and the court hearing. And I'd heard about it, but I didn't know all the details, but I knew he was on like unpaid admin leave. Something about lying in a report. Basically, he'd had some kind of use of force incident that he didn't report. He said somebody was arrested without incident, and there was a camera. And I think it was a good use of force by all accounts. It was fine, except that he didn't report it. So he lied in a report. He said, uneventful, it was eventful. He like got in a fight. So old school stuff where, you know, the guy's being cool and it just goes away, it's gone. You get caught on a ring camera, you're suspended pending termination. So I get to the suppression hearing, that officer's not there, but two internal affairs sergeants that I know are in the hallway. And I just went, fuck. And they got called before me. I was just in the hall waiting because they invoked the rule of sequestration where witnesses cannot hear other witnesses talk. So I'm sitting in the hall, IA goes in, IA comes out, case dismissed. Next thing I know, I'm getting served as the defendant on a lawsuit, alleging that it was illegal start to finish. It was an illegal surveillance. The violation didn't happen. The evidence was planted. It was just this conspiracy to just get this dude. So, I mean, I knew I didn't do anything, but it's not something you want to go through. I was sued for civil rights violations. It's generally what they always do. Civil rights violations, his Fourth Amendment was violated when he was searched and incarcerated for doing absolutely nothing. That was the allegation. And that brings up an interesting thing about civil lawsuits. The way the city attorney phrased it to me is they can just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. Because I was reading through it and I was like, dude, this stuff can all be proven false. This is lies. And he was like, Yeah, that's how civil suits work. If they have one thing stick, they gotcha. So they can say whatever they want. It doesn't have to be based in reality. So that kind of blew my mind that because they they were saying some wild, frivolous stuff. And I was like, holy shit, can't we just prove this stuff wrong and prove that they're lying? And he was like, no, we we have to prove everything wrong. They proved one of these, you're toast, uh, which didn't happen. He ended up getting caught with some dope, some big dope not long later, and went back to federal prison and the suit went away. But the point is, know who's involved in your case because yeah, that case got tall as it had nothing to do with me, but it had a lot to do with his integrity. They put internal affairs up and said, Has he ever lied in a police report? I'm sure this is how it went. I wasn't in the room. Has he been proven to lie in a police report? And they said, yes. And they probably said, Is there any chance he lied in this police report? I mean, what do you even say there? Yeah, there is a chance. You can soldier up and go, no, he wouldn't have lied in this one, but then you're putting your own integrity on the line. So, excuse me, I don't know what happened to him. I'm sure he got put on the giglio list, which means you can't testify because your credibility is shot. I don't know if he got fired. He was he was a very good cop, but he messed up.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

And that's how it goes. That's all it takes. Let's talk ruses.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

I like using ruses. I've discussed ruses in the past. I've conned many people into handcuffs because I'm not very good at fighting. I don't want to get my ass kicked. I would much rather get them to go willingly into handcuffs than get in some kind of fist fight, foot chase, jumping fences, scraping hands, twisting ankles, blowing out knees, seeing them throw guns, all the bullshit that comes with it, I don't want. So I'm all for a ruse tricking them. You gotta know when to stop, man. You can't just ruse your way through your damn career. I'll give you a couple examples. And this all relate all this back to the Fourth Amendment because that's that's what I'm talking about here. I'll give you a couple scenarios. Let's say you're investigating a drug dealer in an apartment. Let's say you're not. Let's say you're just a cop and you're a patrol cop, you work some apartments, and the maintenance man comes up to you and goes, Hey, I was just in 17B, and those boys got it, got it. And you say, What do you mean, got it, got it? He's like, Man, I was in there to fix the AC. They got like seven dudes in there. They're all smoking weed. They had at least a kilo of Coke on the table. And I've I've had a very similar situation. Just as an investigator, not a patrol cop. You could get this as a patrol cop, absolutely. They're like, there's like a kilo on the table, there's AKs everywhere, they got rifles, they got choppers all over the place. It's just nothing but dope and gangbanging in there. That's what they're doing. They're in there right now. So, can you tell that maintenance man? I mean, should you even send him back into the lions den? I mean, what if they feel weird about it and do his ass? But can you send a maintenance man in? Let's say he tells you a couple days later. Let's say he tells you three weeks later. So now it's pretty stale, right? It's been a while. You can't really get a search warrant off a random maintenance man statement. So you're a you're a proactive little cop and you're like, I'm gonna put him back in there. So you're like, can you go in there and like, is there any other work you need to do in there? And he might be eager, a little wannabe cop, a little rent a cop, little top flight security. So he's like, Yeah, I could get in there. I could go, I could make a work order and go back in there. And you're like, cool, go back in and see what you see. And if you still, if you still see that stuff, I'm gonna go ahead and move on. The first time he reported it to you, you're good. He just, he's just a dude reporting some crime. When you send him back in, take notes here, as an agent of the government, you're not good. He becomes your agent when you send him back in as a maintenance man. He's not an informant. He doesn't know these guys. He's rusing in to look at him. They're not letting him in. There's no consent to let him in. They need, he's saying, I need to fix your air conditioner again. It's acting up. They're all acting up all over this dumpy complex. They're acting up. I gotta fix it, bro.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Don't do that. He is an agent of the government.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Take what he told you and do your job. If he goes back in on his own, can you give him your number and say, hey, don't go back in there on account of me. But if you happen to be up there and it's still going on, can you let me know? Not while you're in there, don't be whispering in the bathroom and all that. Sorry, this cough is not great. I'll tell you a couple examples where this was being done badly. And yeah, you gotta speak up, man. One of them I worked with a couple people, and they were discussing something similar to this, where their plan, one of them was a rookie, the other one was a 15 to 20 year rookie who clearly didn't know or understand the Fourth Amendment, but was throwing weight around and misguiding this promising young officer. Their plan was to get maintenance uniforms and go to this complex and knock on the door and go in in the hood and try to do some some fake maintenance and get into the apartment that way.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

And look around. Have a little look around, have a little sneak and peek. Guys, that's illegal. It's a violation of the Fourth Amendment. You can't just put on different clothes and go in the house. So don't do that. I told them that.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

I was like, you can't do that. They were like putting it together. I was like, you can't do that. Yeah, it's dumb. No. Sorry. That's not gonna hold up. Another one that was similar. They were scheming something like that when I was in narcotics. We would use ruses. Very similar idea. It was like, let's go up and say we're maintenance. Actually, I was there on this one. And this has been like 15 years ago, so cut me some slack. But I was there and they kept the ruse going. And I remember just thinking, like, when are you gonna tell them? Because they knocked on the door and were like, hey, we're with the maintenance, which is okay to get them to open the door. I'm fine with that. Like, housekeeping, like, I'm fine with that. You're not really, you're not entering the house. But once they open it, don't be like, hey, can I come check your AC? Fuck no. You need to come off it. Hey, I'm Officer Jones with Atlanta PD, blah, blah, blah, whatever you choose to say. Drop the ruse. Don't go through their house on a ruse. I'll tell you time that I used a ruse that I think it was fine. You can judge me if you want to, but this was to age myself a little bit. I was on the Marshall Task Force, and this is back when Netflix was not online. You could get like one or two DVDs at a time in the mail. They mailed them to you in these little red cases, and you would watch your movie and your DVD player. Some of you assholes don't know what that is. Screw you. But you would watch your movie and then you would mail it back and you would have a list and they'd send you the next one on the list. And I was cheap, so I had like one DVD at a time, but you get like four at a time, five at a time, or something. So you're getting all these movies and you're setting them back. So I was watching this fugitive's house. I don't know what he was wanted for. He was in the state streets. I remember, you know, Alaska, Virginia, blah, blah. All the streets were named after states. I was over there. I think I was on Alaska, 2000 block. Memories I don't need, but have. And I'm watching the house, and I saw this lady leave, and she left the storm door closed. It was like a glass storm door. It wasn't a security door. She let it close, but the interior door was open. And this neighborhood, it's not great. Like you don't really leave your doors unlocked. It looked like she left it unlocked. She left. And it was right around the time school was getting out. And I was like, huh, I think my fugitive might be there because that's like his girlfriend. And there's no kids around. Like it's school time. She's probably going to get them, but she left the door open inside. It's risky over here. So I was like, I'm going to rouse this dude to see if he's in there. So, and he knew he was wanted. Warrant was stepped on. Like he was on the run. He wasn't just wanted and like didn't know. Like those warrants are boring. I like the ones where like they're ducking and dodging, they're hiding from police all this. So I saw a Netflix, or maybe it was a red box, but I'm pretty sure it was Netflix, like laying in a driveway down the street, like the little red case. So I hop out of my truck. I'm parked a couple blocks away. I grab the little plastic case out of the driveway that's laying there. And I walk up, knock on the door. You know, I'm not in uniform right now. We're doing fugitive, huh? I'm in regular clothes. I knock on the door, and I always stay kind of scraggly. Like, I think I look like kind of a normal dude. So knock on the glass. Sure enough, the interior door's open. I was right. So I knock, there's no answer. I knock again, and I see my fugitive, I think it's my fugitive, like look at me from down the hall. And I like hold up this Netflix. And so the dude comes out and he's like kind of hostile. He's not like aggressive, but he's like, he's kind of like, he's just gruff. He's like, what? He opens the door, it stares at me. And I was like, hey man, this was in your driveway. It wasn't in his driveway, it was like two driveways down. But I was like, this was in your driveway. Is this this y'all? And I remember because it was a movie, but he didn't even look at it. He was like, nah, my kids don't even play games. And I was like, oh, all right, I'm gonna throw it back in the driveway then. And so I like walk off and he's just glaring at me. Like he watches me walk off, and I like toss it in his driveway as I leave and walk back to my truck. Well, I get back to my truck and he's kind of watching me, but then I, you know, I was pretty far away, so whatever. I get back in the truck and I didn't have a team out there ready, but I call the team. I was like, hey, my fugitives here. Like I just went face to face with him at the door. So we went out and got him. And then, of course, you know, when we get on, he's like, I knew that was some bullshit. I knew you were the police. I'm like, man, no, you didn't. You didn't know. You'd have ran off. Like, you didn't know anything. Quit trying to be cocky. But that was a ruse where I stop. Like, I probably shouldn't have like tried to grab him and arrest him right there. I could sure I could have been like police and pulled my badge out and tried to grab him. Would have been a fight, like one-on-one in his doorway. Like, what's he gonna do? He's gonna try to lock that door, right? Obviously. He's gonna try to slam and lock, or I'm gonna chase him into his house where he's got a gun. Like, none of that's great. So I just kept up the ruse and left and then came back as the police. Last one, last little anecdote regarding the Fourth Amendment, kind of bringing it full circle back to early on. I mentioned when I chased a dude into a house at 32nd and Jefferson and might have been 302 West 32nd. I don't know for my Savannah listeners, but Buddy ran in the house, blah, blah, blah, and turned out that you can't kick doors in Georgia for misdemeanors, for trespassing, which is what I was chasing him for. I knew he was solid crack. I knew there was a felony. That's why he hangs out on that porch. I know who this dude is. I knew him well enough that when I saw his little face, I was like, you're banned from that porch. You're not even allowed to be up there. But rules are rules, and it got tossed. So another time I was in roll call and the radios were all jacked up. I had this dude on my ship Bert. And I remember Bert saying in roll call, he's like, these radios are gonna fucking get somebody killed. Because we try to talk and they'd be like, it would just be the like, you know, when somebody else is talking on the radio and you press it and it goes, whank, like you can't talk because it's in use. It was just doing that, but nobody was talking. So the radios were just having some malfunction. And he's like, these are gonna fucking kill somebody today. Oh well, let's go to work. So we all hit the street. It was off and on. It was spotty. We were hoping it'd get better. So it was a Sunday, it's like seven in the morning. You know, we get on shift at 6:30. So I ride to this neighborhood and there's this dude walking down the street. Long story short, I tried to stop. I was a rookie, man. I was brand new. Didn't really know how to control situations. He was stronger than me, short stocky, just out of prison. Tried to stop him and talk to him. Uh, he was like walking down the middle of the street, you know, some rookie, like pedestrian policing stuff. And he took off and we ended up going to this house. He put his key in the lock. I like smashed his hand into it, and all the keys broke. The one that was in it bent. And so he like uh somebody on the inside opened it. I think it was his brother. They opened the door, they undeadbolt it. Boom, he goes in and darts left. I go in and follow him, and the dude shuts and deadbolts the door behind me. And it was just, it was a mess. There were a bunch of people in there. There were some kids. I there was a kid that was way too old. He's like seven or eight, and he's wearing a diaper, and they're all sitting around smoking weed, playing Madden at like playing PlayStation at like seven in the morning. And like there's these old kids and diapers, and there's just too many people there, and I'm locked in, and dude just ran off down the hall. So, Fourth Amendment wise, if I'm not oh, and the radio's not working. I couldn't call out the foot chase. Like, I'm running, it's going while I'm running. Can't call out the address. I see the address, I'm like, So, okay. Like, what are you even supposed to do? I was a rookie, so I was like, I'm going in after him. I'm gonna get him. Fucking stupid. Don't be like me. That was stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. So please don't do that. If it's 1v1, or in this case, like 1v6, you're just as likely to die. They ended up putting out a signal 13 officer down on me. I couldn't hear any radio traffic. I was not down. I just stood right inside the door. The other precinct started showing up because everybody and their mom comes when they call that. I don't going back out, couldn't get him. I don't know what he had on him, but I didn't get him. And so I went back out and I saw a cop driving by. I was like, hey, they were like, Are you Leo?

SPEAKER_00 41:08

I'm like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

They're like, man, they got a signal 13 on you. I was like, no, I'm straight. My radio doesn't work. Like this dude just ran from me. He's in this house. I think the last thing they heard is like running southbound on fair. And that was it. So, long story short, make good choices, but know the Fourth Amendment. Like, if I chased him in that house illegally, and let's say he had a gun on him, because he was just out of prison. We ended up going up and arresting. My sergeant got there. He was super cool. He was like 6'8, Sergeant Sauer, and was like, What do you want to do? I was like, I want to arrest him. So, okay, let's go get him. We went up and knocked on the door. He's like, Where's he at? Bring him out. And the dude came. They like brought the dude out. And I was like, okay, so that's that's what command presence looks like, I guess. And he was just out of prison. So did he have a gun? I don't know. But had I chased him in there and it turned into a shooting and I was in there illegally, would my family get a paycheck? I mean, would I be covered if I won the gunfight? You know, that's if I was killed. If I won the gunfight, would I be civilly liable because I entered that house illegally? I mean, I would say there's a reasonable possibility, probability that, yeah, I was in there illegally. I didn't know that chasing for something minor like this, I couldn't scuffle in the door with him. So just make sure you know the rules of the Fourth Amendment, know how to work your field test kits, have field test kits, test the drugs, read the box, and if you see something being messed up as far as the Fourth Amendment, fix it. You cannot force a consent, be that a consensual encounter, a consent search, consensual sex. Guys, by no means no, period. You can just apply that all the way across your whole life.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

By no means no. If you live by that, you'll probably be fine.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

And you can't make them say yes through threats of rain and colds and violence and stupid stuff. Just be a good cop and be a good person. Thank you. I hope this helps somebody and keeps you from frisking everybody you meet illegally. Have a great August. Stay cool.