Academic

How to gain . . . and lose sympathy when mistreated by the police

By Tung Yin

This story about a police drug raid gone wrong involves a Hastings law professor:

In his search warrant, Officer Scott Biggs of the SFPD's narcotics unit says that prior to the raid, he spent two days and two nights casing the address looking for Mahmoud Larizadeh, the property's owner. Larizadeh also owns a 13th Street warehouse, a part of which he rents to Bruce Rossignol, a licensed medical cannabis patient who now faces three felony charges for growing pot there.

Biggs describes 243 Diamond as a "two-story, one-unit" building in the warrant. There's no mention of [Hastings law prof Clark] Freshman or Larizadeh's son-in-law or seven-months pregnant daughter who were detained in the downstairs unit that morning. But property records ? and a quick visual scan of the property ? reveal it to be a three-story, two-unit building. That mistake alone may be enough to invalidate the search warrant.

It sounds pretty awful.  The police handcuffed Freshman -- who was dressed only in a bathrobe -- while they conducted the search, even though Freshman pointed out problems with the warrant.  Freshman says that he plans to sue the DEA and SFPD, and up to that point in the news account, I was totally on his side.

But then I got to the end of the story, which, while not impacting his legal position, makes him seem considerably less sympathetic to me in terms of his attitude:

"I've been on the fence for years about the legalization of drugs ... and now I'm a victim of this crazy war on drugs," says Freshman, who pledged to sue until "I see [the agents'] houses sold at auction and their kids' college tuitions taken away from them. There will not be a better litigated case this century."

Their kids' college tuitions taken away from them?  Really?  I can only imagine the anger and humiliation and frustration at undergoing the search, which is why I was totally sympathetic to Freshman's idea of the lawsuit, but to state as your goal, the impoverishment of not just the alleged wrongdoing agents, but also their children?  I don't have any sympathy for that.

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on February 21, 2011 (boomark / email).