Tag: Law Enforcement

The New Silver Platter: How Today’s Police Are Serving up Potentially Tainted Evidence Without Even Revealing the Search that Produced It to Defendants or to Courts

Micah Block

Imagine the following scenario: A police officer is investigating a major drug trafficking ring. She obtains a wiretap on the cell phone of the suspected kingpin of the organization. The wiretap enables her to overhear conversations between the top target of the wiretap and several other people in the drug… Read More »

Breaking the Law to Enforce It: Undercover Police Participation in Crime

Elizabeth E. Joh - UC Davis School of Law

Covert policing necessarily involves deception, which in turn often leads to participation in activity that appears to be criminal. In undercover operations, the police have introduced drugs into prison, undertaken assignments from Latin American drug cartels to launder money, established fencing businesses that paid cash for stolen goods and for… Read More »

Promoting Civil Rights Through Proactive Policing Reform

Rachel Harmon - University of Virginia School of Law

Preventing police misconduct often requires changing the department in which it arises, but police departments have proved largely resistant to legal efforts to reform them. A promising federal law, 42 U.S.C. § 14141, permits the Justice Department to sue police departments that are engaged in a “pattern or practice” of… Read More »