In the beginning, the Bill of Rights only constrained federal power over Americans. States were largely left to their own devices when protecting their own citizens’ liberties. After the Civil War, Reconstruction’s overhaul of the founding charter also rewrote the balance of power in favor of federal protections. The Supreme Court has spent the last century using the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, amendment by amendment and clause by clause.

That process, known as selective incorporation, is now almost complete. The most recent advance came in 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment right to bear arms also applied to the states. Justice Samuel Alito noted in his majority opinion that the court had yet to weigh in on incorporating only two portions of the Bill of Rights: the Third Amendment’s ban on peacetime quartering of troops in private homes, and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of excessive fines.


The court has never heard a Third Amendment case. But the Excessive Fines Clause is ripe for consideration in the age of mass incarceration. Impoverished Americans often lack the resources to pay off the fines and fees that can come from even a casual brush with the criminal-justice system. In a cruel twist, the inability to pay these costs can result in jail time itself. Keeping oneself out of trouble is also no guarantee of immunity: A 2014 Washington Post investigation, for example, found that police in multiple states use “highway interdiction” to target thousands of motorists for seizures of cash and property.

Perhaps the most infamous case is that of Ferguson, Missouri, where the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown led to mass protests and a federal investigation. A Justice Department report in 2015 uncovered enthusiastic and systemic abuses of power by the city’s municipal officials, who had effectively converted the city government into a collection agency that targeted black residents for plunder to fill budgetary gaps.

“The City’s emphasis on revenue generation has a profound effect on [the Ferguson Police Department]’s approach to law enforcement,” the DOJ report found. “Partly as a consequence of City and FPD priorities, many officers appear to see some residents, especially those who live in Ferguson’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods, less as constituents to be protected than as potential offenders and sources of revenue.”

Civil-asset forfeiture, though still common, has come under increasing scrutiny across the political spectrum. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s push last year to revive the practice at the federal level drew harsh rebukes from the ACLU and congressional Republicans alike. Justice Clarence Thomas set off a signal flare of sorts last April suggesting he had doubts about the practice’s constitutionality.

The Indiana case revolves around different legal questions that the ones Thomas was asking last year, but the underlying injustices are the same. Taking up the issue would give the justices a chance to set new limits on excessive fines and forfeitures for cash-hungry counties and cities. For Timbs and thousands of other Americans, that intervention would be a welcome relief.

On Thursday, they also got an apology from Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, a black man who at first staunchly defended his officers' handling of the incident.

"I should have said the officers acted within the scope of the law, and not that they didn't do anything wrong," Ross said. "Words are very important."

At a news conference, a somber Ross said he "failed miserably" in addressing the arrests. He said that the issue of race is not lost on him and that he shouldn't be the person making things worse. "Shame on me if, in any way, I've done that," he said.

He also said the police department did not have a policy for dealing for such situations but does now, and it will be released soon.

Leaders of law enforcement organizations agree that if blue lives matter, so do police suicides. “There aren’t hard and fast stats, but we believe there’s at least one suicide every day in law enforcement,” said Chuck Canterbury, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, an organization of law enforcement officers with more than 330,000 members.

Third-party groups that collect statistics on police suicides don’t have numbers that are quite as extreme, but they do estimate that more than a hundred officers a year die by suicide. The Badge of Life and Blue H.E.L.P., nonprofits that advocate for programs and education that address police trauma and stress, reported 140 and 154 police suicides, respectively, in 2017.

Little Rock police have released video and audio recordings that detail the moments before an officer fatally shot a 28-year-old man as he sped toward a brick wall last fall.

The recordings reveal new information in the October death of James Hartsfield, who was shot by Little Rock officer Brittany Gunn before the 2004 Mercedes-Benz he was driving smashed through a brick wall outside the Prospect Building at 1501 N. University Ave.

Police said Gunn was working off-duty in the early hours of Oct. 7 when she encountered Hartsfield, who appeared to be drinking an alcoholic beverage while driving. According to the department, Hartsfield refused to follow Gunn’s orders, struggled with officers and then sped forward with Gunn still inside the car.

Dashboard camera video shows the struggle before the shooting and the immediate aftermath of the car crash.

A 12-year-old video showing a sheriff discussing the cost of inmate and suspect deaths has sparked controversy in Kern County, where he is facing re-election.

From NPR.org:  Sacramento police officers shot and killed 22-year-old Stephon Clark, a father of two who was unarmed, in the backyard of his grandparents’ home on Sunday night. “The only thing that I heard was pow, pow, pow, pow, and I got to the ground,” Sequita Thompson, Clark’s grandmother, told The Sacramento Bee. “I opened that curtain …

Menlo Park, California, Police Chief Robert Jonsen discussed how community policing strategies reduced violent crime and improved community relations.

TRENTON, Fla. — Two deputies in Trenton, Florida were killed in the line of duty on Thursday.

Around 3 p.m., two Gilchrist County Deputy Sheriffs were eating inside  Ace China restaurant in downtown Trenton, when a man walked up to the window and shot them through the window, from outside the establishment.

According to the Sheriff’s Office, when fellow deputies responded to the scene, they found the shooter deceased outside the business and Sgt. Noel Ramirez, 30, and Deputy Taylor Lindsey, 25, deceased inside. The suspect has not been identified at this time.

A federally-funded study into police brutality found that in over 1 million police calls, the “use of force” occurred in just 1 of 1,167 cases, or 0.086 percent.

The key finding: less than one in a million cases led to a fatality.

The review conducted with the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center studied 1.04 million calls from three police departments over two years and found 893 cases in which suspects were subjected to force.

University of Chicago students and faculty rallied on Thursday afternoon to protest actions by campus police and the availability of mental health services after a student allegedly suffering from a mental health crisis was shot as he approached an officer with a metal pipe.

Three officers from the University Police Department and two officers from the Chicago Police Department responded to calls of a burglary at approximately 10:12 p.m. Tuesday in the 5300 block of South Kimbark Avenue. A witness said 21-year-old Charles Thomas, a fourth-year student at the school, was yelling and smashing vehicles and apartment windows, reports ABC 7.

Body camera and police vehicle footage released Wednesday show Thomas wearing a mask, yellow gloves and wielding a metal pipe. An image of Thomas during the encounter is shown in the article.

A university police officer can be heard telling Thomas to drop the weapon as he continued to walk towards the officer, who is seen backing up.

Thomas then allegedly charged the officer, who fired one round, striking Thomas in the shoulder. Thomas was later taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital to be treated for the gunshot wound and a broken shoulder blade.

Student Suffered Mental Health Crisis, Parents Say
Thomas’ parents, Kathy and Wendell Thomas, say their son may have been in the midst of a mental crisis at the time of the incident.

“The voice he was using when he was yelling, I’ve never heard him use that voice. It was like it was coming from another place,” says Kathy Thomas.

Thomas’ parents say their son recently sought counseling from the university and was referred to services off-campus.

Kathy Thomas says she has been treated for bipolar disorder for decades and has been closely monitoring her son for symptoms.

The name of the officer involved in the shooting, Sgt. Daniel Cox, a 20-year Department of Public Safety veteran, was not released until Tuesday, which is in accordance with agency policy.

The department said Yakunin on Saturday afternoon had contacted a woman in violation of felony probation conditions. Trooper Luke Kumfer responded and at 7 p.m. reached a home in Nikolaevsk.

Authorities said Yakunin refused to cooperate and "become extremely threatening" toward the officer. Kumfer used his radio to call for assistance, fired his stun gun at Yakunin and followed that with pepper spray.

Troopers said Yakunin knocked Kumfer off the home's porch, injuring the officer. Yakunin then assaulted the injured trooper lying on the ground for about 20 minutes, troopers said. They did not indicate how they knew the assault lasted 20 minutes.

The release from troopers made no mention of possible weapons Yakunin used or whether other people were at the home.

When Cox arrived at the home he shot Yakunin, troopers said. Yakunin was pronounced dead at the scene.

Troopers released no information about any conversation between Cox and Yakunin before the shooting, or whether Kumfer lost consciousness during the assault.

Kumfer by Tuesday night had been released from hospital care but was still recovering from injuries.

"For his privacy, we are not releasing details of his injuries," said trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters by email.

The state medical examiner conducted an autopsy on Yakunin's body, Peters said, but it could take up to two months to receive results.

Peters said troopers routinely respond to incidents alone. Asked if Yakunin's history of violence should have prompted more troopers to respond initially, Peters said that if there was a perceived risk, the situation is reviewed to determine an appropriate way to respond.

Troopers have refused to answer other questions about the incident, citing an ongoing department investigation, including whether troopers were wearing body cameras.

The Department of Law's Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals investigates whether deadly force is justified by officers. The Department of Public Safety reviews the case to determine if an officer using deadly force followed department policy.

Nikolaevsk, according to the state community data base, was founded as a community of Russian Old Believers whose ancestors settled in Woodburn, Oregon, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 forced them out of Russia.

A Texas police officer responding to a high speed chase is getting a lot of attention after he was spotted wearing body armor and plaid shorts.

"I told the officers, ‘You guys are murderers,'” Stephan Clark's grandmother said after Clark was shot and killed by Sacramento police.