Don't Get Sued!

On Friday, the City of Washington D.C. settled a civil lawsuit.  A young man was following National Guardsmen around the city playing Star Wars music.  He didn't like them or want them there.  They, along with Metro Police Officers, made choices that led to a successful lawsuit.  

Don't open yourself up to ACLU scrutiny, federal lawsuits or termination!  Keep your house, car, and dog.

Enjoy!

-LEO

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Good morning. It's Leo and welcome to the week. It's Monday night. As I've been doing, I'm trying to do some modern current events releases. And on Friday, a lawsuit was settled that is very relevant to our line of work. It stems from an incident where the National Guard was walking its patrol in Washington, D.C. And while they were walking, some guy was following them around playing the Star Wars, you know, Imperial Death March theme song. So they're trying to walk their patrol, and they got this behind them. The guy's mocking them and doesn't think that they should be in D.C. So this is what he does. Following that, choices were made that led to a lawsuit. The goal of me inundating my listeners with Fourth Amendment material is that you follow it, you don't get fired, you don't get sued. If you've never been served with paperwork, that you're getting sued in federal court alongside your city for your actions, I hope you never do, but it sucks. And if you've worked in a jail or a prison or been a cop for a long time, you probably have. Mine was thrown out. This one was not. The city of DC settled on Friday and is paying the quote unquote victim probably a lot of money because of what took place, which, as you'll hear, was a fairly minor incident. So this guy's, you know, following them. The National Guard gets annoyed and tells him that they're going to call the D.C. police if he keeps doing this, keeps harassing them. He doesn't, he's unbothered by this. And they do what they said. They call the D.C. police for backup. Police get there. He gets handcuffed for 15 to 20 minutes. And then he's released because he didn't commit a crime. It's not a crime to play music and walk behind somebody. Is it obnoxious? Yes. There's a saying that applies to both police and citizens called lawful but awful. If you step in front of a moving car as a police officer and then shoot, there's a good chance that's lawful but awful. There's a good chance it's going to be a justified shoot, but it was a terrible decision. If you follow law enforcement or military playing obnoxious music, it's not a crime. It's lawful but awful. So that's what he did. And the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, a massive, powerful, well-funded group with lawyers and money and everything you don't want to deal with being pointed at you. And they just defend people's civil liberties, as their title says. They got involved. And next thing you know, everybody is named on a suit. The guardsmen, the police, the city, everybody and their mama. That's how they do it. And the city of DC settled out of court Friday, didn't even take it to trial. They knew they were licked. And they're paying this guy. And it's for violations of the First and Fourth Amendment. They violated his free speech. He could walk behind him and talk trash or play the music. And we think of Fourth Amendment as search, right? Search and seizure. And I think most cops think of the seizure part more along the lines of seizing somebody's stuff, like searching their pockets and seizing their crack rocks, seizing their harrow and seizing their pistol. That's the general mindset. But if you shoot somebody on duty, that is a seizure of them under the Fourth Amendment. If you put them in handcuffs, you are seizing their body. That's how the court looks at it. That's not Leo's opinion. That is Leo's regurgitation of the objective rules. So again, they didn't beat him up. They didn't take him to jail. None of the stuff that you usually see in lawsuits. They just handcuffed him for 15 to 20 minutes. That was enough to not only get sued, but lose the suit. So I just want you all to think about what the rules are. If you don't understand the first and fourth amendments, they're very important ones. And if you're it's in the 50s, I mean, not the 50s, because I was going to say slapping cell phones out of hands. That wasn't really a thing then. But as far as the view of cops versus citizens and the application of the Bill of Rights, it's not back then where it's like our cops are in charge and people need to comply. Now it's more like people know their rights and the internet is there and all these groups are there to support it. And the job has changed a lot. And so should you choose to do the job, just know if somebody's filming you and you slap their phone out of their hand, if somebody is being rude to you and, you know, they're not interfering with your stop, they're just being annoying. I mean, if they're interfering, by all means, keep yourself safe and protect the integrity of your stop or whatever you got going. But if they're not, they're just being annoying and you handcuff them for 15 minutes, you have just violated their Fourth Amendment. There's a good chance you're putting yourself and your agency financially, civilly in jeopardy. So just know the rules. If you don't, by all means, feel free to reach out. That Leo guy is on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. So feel free to shoot me a message. People do it all the time with questions, concerns, insults, trolls. I can't go handcuff a guy because he trolls that Leo guy Instagram and tells me that I'm just a bad dude because I'm a cop and I smell like bacon and all this crap. That I would be violating his rights if I did that. So just keep it in mind. I don't want you to fall victim to a suit because you had a bad moment or you mostly it happens, I think, because people just don't really understand the rules and largely don't understand the Fourth Amendment and the gravity of seizing someone, stopping their movement. Do you pull over a pretty girl in a car? There was just the whole thing that I just did an episode on with Eric Stubbs, the chief addressing his department, where I incorrectly said that he addressed the media. It was an internal video, which then obviously got to the media. He sent it to everybody at Ottawa's police department, so tons of cops. But they were using, you know, some kind of database to meet women. And he addressed that. But, you know, if you do that and then pull over a car with her in it, you just violated her Fourth Amendment. You seized her, you stopped her against her will with your blue lights without any just cause, without a reasonable suspicion of anything. So know the rules, follow the rules. Again, I've done episodes on everything from personal health to emotional health and interviews with people that have been close to suicide, had their careers end and all this terrible stuff. And I don't want that for you. I want you to be successful. So this comes from a place of love. And I definitely don't want you to get served with something that says you're being sued and you're on the news with the ACLU and your pictures up there and all this crap. So hopefully this helps some of you all to know the rules and just remember that, you know, if you've been getting away with it for a while, that doesn't mean tomorrow's not the day. So get in line. All right. Love you. Bye.