4th Circuit Strips Immunity From Cops Who Engaged In An Insane Amount Of Unconstitutional Fuckery
from the doing-their-absolute-best-to-be-the-absolute-worst dept
I apologize in advance for the non-specific nature of this headline. But there’s too much going on here to be summed up pithily in a few hundred words or less. No one here gets paid by the word, but we’re going to need a whole lot of them to get to the bottom of this one, which details exactly what’s promised by the headline: tons of cop fuckery. (h/t Gabriel Malor)
Here’s how the ball of fuckery got rolling, as recounted in the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court decision [PDF]:
In January 2020, Brandon Williams was detained by Norfolk, Virginia, police officer John D. McClanahan on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. Williams recorded his interaction with McClanahan. At trial on the trespassing charge, McClanahan testified falsely and Williams was convicted. Williams appealed his conviction and used his recording to show that McClanahan had lied under oath. The appeals court heard Williams’ argument and dismissed the charges against him on September 15, 2020, recognizing that he never should have been prosecuted.
Lesson one: always record cops, especially when you’re the subject of their attention. Cops can’t be trusted to record themselves, even if they’re carrying the gear to do so. When it’s “your word against ours,” a camera might be the only thing standing between you and falsified criminal charges.
That should have been enough to warn Norfolk, Virginia police officers from engaging in misconduct and/or lying about it while on the stand. But some cops can’t be taught — which always means there’s no one above them who wishes to see them learn anything from experiences like these.
So, it happened again. And the way it happened is so utterly insane, it’s impossible to encapsulate in the 10-12 words that lend themselves to eye-grabbing headlines.
See, the cops that worked with Officer John McClanahan were less concerned with his perjury and more concerned with punishing the person who outed McClanahan’s lies. So, when Brandon Williams’ car was struck by a drunk driver, this is how things went for the victim of this crime:
On September 30, 2020, Williams was seriously injured in a car accident in Norfolk, Virginia. Williams was operating his vehicle carefully when he was hit by Rex Aman, who was driving over seventy-five miles per hour and swerving outside his lane. When various Norfolk police officers including McClanahan arrived at the scene to investigate the accident, they pointed at and talked about Williams. Officer Rodney Van Faussien said, while pointing to Williams, “[t]his is the guy that gave McClanahan a ration of shit,” referring to Williams’ defense of his trespassing charge. Aman’s blood alcohol level was .30––well above the legal limit––and the officers learned of Aman’s high speed from eyewitnesses.
Despite information from eyewitnesses, a debris field showing a high-impact accident, and Aman’s blood alcohol level, police officers falsely stated on the accident report that Aman was driving the speed limit, had not been drinking, and that his car had suffered a steering defect. This was allegedly done with the intent to deny Williams his rights by minimizing the accident and deflecting blame from Aman.
Hey, cops? This is what people mean when they say All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB). It’s not that all cops are. It’s that so many of them are that it hardly makes sense to treat each cop as a wholly divisible part of the Bastard whole.
These cops rolled up on a crime scene and did whatever they could to prevent the victim from pressing charges or even suing the drunk driver in civil court solely because he had previously exposed one of their own for lying in court. In normal jobs, people ostracize co-workers who lie to save their own asses. In Cop World, it’s the reverse: cops lie to cover up lies told by other cops and engage in vindictive actions against citizens who’ve done nothing more than defend themselves against bogus criminal charges.
In other words: fuck all of these cops. Fortunately, the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court agrees. Somehow, the lower court allowed this lawsuit to be dismissed, but the Appeals Court isn’t quite as willing to give this pack of lying cops a free ride.
Here’s how the Fourth sums up most of the pertinent allegations (emphasis in the original):
Here, there is a significant power imbalance in Williams’ relationship with the police, as he is a Black man who had recently exposed an officer’s perjury. We must also account for the additional context. The police had previously lied to charge and convict Williams with misdemeanor trespassing, and then at the accident scene, the officers allegedly pointed at him, talked about him, and lied again with the intent of depriving him of his rights, despite his being severely injured and traumatized in the immediate aftermath of a high-speed crash. Finally, we must also consider the nature of the retaliatory acts. The adverse action here is not the mere misrepresentation of facts on an accident report. It is the officers’ intentional misrepresentation––the falsity of the report plus the animus motivating it.
The key here is — beyond all the lying — the power imbalance. Any citizen getting railroaded by cops is expected to suffer through the railroading and sue after everything else in their lives disintegrates because a bunch of lying cops conspired to deprive them of their rights. At no point in this interaction are citizens free to grab lying cops and drag them into the station to be booked for violating constitutional rights. The consequences of their actions are so remote and so theoretical, cops feel extremely comfortable pulling this kind of shit, even while in front of other eyewitnesses.
What never should have happened in the lower court has now been undone. There’s enough in this pleading — especially when coupled with the plaintiff’s previous exposure of cop lies — to move this forward. Williams will hopefully be seeing a sizable settlement in the near future. If the state decides to appeal this, it’s basically arguing that cops should be able to lie with impunity, whether on the stand or in their accident reports. And if it goes to bat for these cops, it’s giving its explicit blessing of their multiple rights violations.
The end result is, at the very least, a win for Brandon Williams. All of his claims, ranging from First Amendment retaliation to intentional infliction of emotional distress, are back in play. With any luck, the settlement that’s almost inevitable will be followed by the Norfolk PD parting ways with the cops involved in this repeated violation of rights. No one involved in this deserves to be employed as a public servant, not when there are dozens of criminal enterprises seeking a goon or two completely devoid of a moral center.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, 4th circuit, 6th amendment, brandon williams, john mcclanahan, norfolk pd, police misconduct, rodney van faussien, testilying
Comments on “4th Circuit Strips Immunity From Cops Who Engaged In An Insane Amount Of Unconstitutional Fuckery”
Wait. Nowhere in that story do I see “and the police officers who falsely testified about the scene of a crime to exact revenge on the victim were blackballed from the police union and are serving 2 years for fabricating evidence with intent to harm.”
Shouldn’t THAT be the end of this story in any sane court of law?
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It should be. But it isn’t. Power will protect power as much as it possibly can.
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Luigi Mangione found a workaround.
Re: No surprise here
This happens at least five times a day in the United States. Hell 5 to 8 cops every month are charged with child sex crimes. Except September 2019 the number hit 20.
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You are mixing up your courts and laws. This court of law here is a civil court where private persons sue for relief. When you are talking about “serving time”, you are talking about a criminal court where public prosecutors sue.
Prosecutors are elected by majorities, and majorities often have a dim view towards treating minorities with the rights and respects they deserve like everyone else. And for a career as prosecutor, you usually want a resume with lots of convictions of people not wearing a uniform.
And police unions are collecting membership dues from officers for the purpose of representing their interests. Now with Qualified Immunity and a general law enforcement culture, those officers really needing that kind of protection are not the pleasant ones.
All of that cannot be faulted or even traced to the civil court you are complaining about with the words “Shouldn’t THAT be the end of this story in any sane court of law?”.
It is only the insane courts of law that will transgress beyond their responsibilities. The most this court can do here is to refer those officers to the district attorney.
Now they of course could also be fired. The problem is that we are talking about a whole team in cahoots, and any superior who is going to fire a whole team or even department will have a lot of work and explanations on their hands.
No matter how justified, this is going to end up so much trouble that it isn’t a career-advancing move either. So the most you can reasonably expect is some finger-slapping which is hard to distinguish from a high-five from the distance.
Again, this is not the fault of the “sane court of law” but rather in how the responsibilities and reward structures are distributed. And part of the problem is that you cannot expect majorities of voters to be interested in the problems of minorities. To make this more frustrating, the desire to fit in and join community standards means that you even have a problem getting minorities to vote as if they were interested in the problems directly affecting them.
Democratic structures tend to rely on a predominance of decent people who care. That’s a lousy work basis, but nothing better has been found so far.
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This is a lot of words to justify injustice.
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Here is the short version:
Private persons sue in civil court, criminal penalties are given in criminal court. Only idiots call it “injustice” when a civil court does not confer criminal penalties. Because it never does.
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Cool. The criminal court still exists. The system is still actively avoiding using it as it should be used here. Clear enough for you, dumbfuck?
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Try reading and understanding what you yourself wrote. The thing ending in “Shouldn’t THAT be the end of this story in any sane court of law?”.
By the way, it is marked as “insightful” by now, so you might want use your momentum to gather signatures for a reform of the justice system obliterating the distinction between criminal and civil courts.
You just need to figure out what role to assign to prosecutors in your new system.
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They’re not proposing using the civil courts, so why do you obtusely continue to reference them?
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While excessively pedantic (if accurately informative) and based on a misreading (OP did not suggest a civil court is a criminal court, or that the civil court refer criminal charges, or that a civil court is in charge of HR at a police department, or that a civil court create structures ex vacuo to permanently deny persons employment in police departments), the post did not in any way defend injustice.
By “dozens of criminal enterprises” seeking a goon or two completely devoid of a moral center you mean other police departments, right.
So all cops are liars and criminals.
Re: We're at a place where being trusting is just being stupid
The police’s dysfunctional imbalance of authority to accountability is so stark, and so well known, that it attracts abusers into their ranks.
At this point would be naive not to suspect that anyone wanting the job wants to abuse this eminently abusable system.
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Exactly how many dead bodies have to be surrounding that bowl of M&Ms before you decide that maybe the person who told you that they might not all be poisoned is full of it?
Re: So all cops are liars and criminals
“Hey, cops? This is what people mean when they say All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB). It’s not that all cops are. It’s that so many of them are that it hardly makes sense to treat each cop as a wholly divisible part of the Bastard whole.”
Reading the article a bit tricky for you?
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As Negasonic Teenage Warhead said in the first “Deadpool” movie: “Now there’s a stupid.”
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Correct.
Cops misbehaving badly
I’m glad that this one victim got some reward for his suffering at the hands of these very corrupt bad cops.
Just imagine how many have not and will never receive anything-Who are still in prison because of lying corrupt cops.
Too many to count. If you’re poor, or black or both, you’re fucked when it comes to the power imbalance.
And the worst part?
The cops KNOW it.
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Uh, do you have a reading comprehension problem? The appeals court ruled that coordinated perjury is not subject to a blanket excuse because of being standard police work. It sends the ruling back to the lower court that already ruled “nothing to be seen here”. The lower court will likely just find a different slightly less absurd reason to throw out the claim since it already demonstrated that it does not consider the actions here out of the ordinary.
And Williams will most likely need a lower court verdict about the officers’ perjuries to even be able to collect damages from being hit by a drunk driver. As long as no court puts the falsity of those statements on record, the insurance companies (and certainly the guilty driver) will not give an inch.
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Sadly, in this world, being able to pursue a civil lawsuit in the face of a corrupt system can be seen as a “reward” in itself. But yeah, i have the impression that someone thinks the civil suit was won.
The adverse action here is not the mere misrepresentation of facts on an accident report. It is the officers’ intentional misrepresentation––the falsity of the report plus the animus motivating it.
In other words, legal precedent in the Fourth Circuit is that it’s perfectly ok for cops to lie under oath, so long as you can’t prove they did it because of personal animus toward their victim.
Re: Evidence of intent.
Everyone can get details wrong when telling a narrative, so not every mistake in a declaration is perjury. However in the case where intent to falsify the main points in a report can be proven, the word [b]perjury[/b] pops up. In my country the “officers” from the story would be in criminal court, as defendants. (Doubtful they would ever pass the job application process.)
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FYI, Techdirt is not a bulletin board.
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Basically, anybody can get facts wrong on an accident report. It was the cops’ animus motivating the misrepresentation of the facts that proved that misrepresentation to be deliberate. Clear enough for you?
(Sigh…) Again, it becomes prudent and worthy to remind the Universe that Our Dear Respected And Beloved Leader fat trump has previously pledged to grant full immune indemnity to ALL overpaid, uniformed bullies known to some of us old-timers as “Pigs”, no matter what the situation or circumstances thereof. No one can accurately predict just how many years into the future that the fat orange dotard and his circus of incompetents will retain power over Amerika, but it’s a safe bet many of us will indeed see the day of living in a full-blown Police State. Countless people such as Mr. Williams face futures of life under Police State abuse, for the perceived crimes of Existing While Black, or others related. It’s a dark, dank, dour, dire, disturbing, dystopian future we all have, tonight here in fat trump’s very own Amerika!
And the future kicker is that the next time a court has something that isnt 99.7% similar to this, it will grant QI for the officer because “The exact rights violation has no exact precedent, and we aren’t willing to set said precedent so motion denied.”
Ground Rule
Any cop that allows another cop to act badly, is a bad cop.
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That’s pretty much every cop then.
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Ding ding ding
Hey lookit that, we made it back to ACAB from first principles in like record time
Now do the Catholic church!
Charges for perjury and official oppression when? Or would another Luigi be the only path to justice here?
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Wow. The headline alone should raise every red flag in existence. The author is clearly aiming to stir up outrage, and while it’s easy to be swept up in the emotional storm created by terms like “fuckery” and “insane,” let’s slow down and unpack the real issues here.
Sure, this case revolves around some serious police misconduct, but the way the article is written feels more like a sensationalist rant than a genuine discussion about the complexities of the legal system, qualified immunity, and the broader implications of this case. The author seems more interested in painting the police as a monolithic entity of evil-doers—every single cop, in every case, is out to get you—which, frankly, doesn’t help anyone. Let’s be clear: not all cops are bad. There are plenty of officers who genuinely serve and protect, who go above and beyond to ensure justice is done. It’s dangerous to continue pushing a narrative where all law enforcement are labeled as corrupt or as conspirators in some grand scheme. But somehow, in the author’s world, if a few bad cops do something reprehensible, it’s a license to tar the entire profession with the same brush.
Now, let’s talk about the actual legal issue at hand. Brandon Williams was wronged by Norfolk police, and yes, they behaved egregiously. Officers lied about a car accident report, made false claims, and even retaliated against him for exposing an officer’s previous lies. That’s absolutely wrong, and those cops should be held accountable for their actions. But the way the article frames this case as “insane amounts of unconstitutional fuckery” is an oversimplification of what’s actually going on here.
The Fourth Circuit Appeals Court ruling is a complicated matter of law, and yet, the author simplifies it to “cops bad, lawsuit good.” We need to be careful when we talk about legal immunity, especially qualified immunity. The case is about whether or not these officers acted in a way that was so blatantly unconstitutional that they should lose their protection from lawsuits. The ruling is significant, and rightly so—it sends a message that police officers can’t just lie and abuse their power without consequence. But what’s missing from this piece is any real analysis of the broader implications of the case.
For instance, the concept of qualified immunity is an important legal principle that protects officers from lawsuits unless they’ve violated “clearly established” law. It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card; it’s a balancing act to protect officers from frivolous lawsuits while ensuring they are held accountable when they cross the line. The author seems to want to ignore that nuance and treat the legal system as if it’s one giant conspiracy to protect bad cops, rather than a complex framework designed to ensure justice while respecting the rights of all involved.
What’s also frustrating about the tone of this piece is how it fuels an us-vs-them mentality. The police are not a monolithic group of “fuckers,” as the author would have you believe. Yes, bad cops do exist—absolutely. But just as there are rogue officers who abuse their power, there are also countless officers who risk their lives every day to protect citizens, often at great personal sacrifice. Treating all cops as inherently corrupt or as part of some vast “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards) conspiracy doesn’t advance meaningful discourse. In fact, it shuts down any opportunity for real change by undermining the integrity of law enforcement as a whole.
The author’s claim that this case somehow proves “All Cops Are Bastards” is deeply problematic. It’s not the cops who are the problem—it’s the bad cops who need to be held accountable. The entire criminal justice system isn’t broken because of this one incident; it’s broken because systemic problems with training, oversight, and accountability have allowed too many officers to act with impunity. But those problems are not solved by blanket, sweeping statements that paint all law enforcement officers as “evil.” In fact, that kind of rhetoric only makes it harder to have productive discussions about real reform. There’s a difference between criticizing the system and demonizing the people within it, and unfortunately, the tone of this article leans heavily toward the latter.
Moreover, the article’s framing of this case as a “win” for Williams completely misses the larger picture. Yes, the Fourth Circuit’s decision is a step forward in ensuring police accountability, but let’s not ignore the complexities involved in the case. The reality is that, as awful as this situation is, it’s still incredibly difficult for most citizens to take on police misconduct, especially in smaller jurisdictions where law enforcement holds immense power. The public response to this case should not just be cheering for one man’s victory, but also thinking critically about the broader systemic changes that need to happen so that situations like this one don’t repeat themselves.
So, yes, the police involved in this case need to be held accountable for their actions, but let’s not get swept up in the hysteria and oversimplification of the issues at hand. The real conversation should center around improving police oversight, holding bad officers to account without demonizing entire forces, and addressing the legal and institutional mechanisms that allow abuse of power to occur in the first place. The author’s snarky dismissal of the complexities of law and police accountability only detracts from this important conversation.
In short: let’s keep our eyes on the real issue here, and not get sidetracked by dramatic language and knee-jerk generalizations. Police misconduct is a serious problem that requires a nuanced, thoughtful approach—not one that boils down to an angry, oversimplified rant.
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That’s a lot of words to justify injustice.
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Oh, hey, I’m bored and there’s a wall of bullshit in front of me. Let’s go.
The story itself should stir up outrage. The headline draws attention to the story. Deal with it.
The “sure, this is unquestionably bad, but…” gambit isn’t going to help you here.
This site has plenty of articles about qualified immunity. Go read them.
Any cop that allows something like what happened in this case to happen and does nothing to either prevent it from happening or blow the whistle after it happened is, at a minimum, bad cop–adjacent. You don’t do good by letting evil happen—or by letting it go unpunished.
Rare is the day when a cop who does something “reprehensible” is jailed. Almost as rare? A cop who does that kind of shit and gets punished by the department by being fired and blackballed from law enforcement as a whole. Bad cops tend to either get desk duty for a while or find their way to another department without any trouble. You seem to believe in the “a few bad apples” axiom when it comes to policing. Did you conveniently forget the “spoils the whole bunch” part?
Again, the “it’s bad, but…” thing? Really not doing you any favors.
No, we don’t. Qualified immunity is bullshit that protects the cops from lawsuits that would rightfully destroy them (and their departments). The whole thing hinges on the idea that if a cop violates someone’s civil rights in a way that hasn’t yet been ruled by a court to be a violation, the cop effectively gets off scot-free. In theory, QI is about giving cops the legal leeway to operate without fear that every last decision they make will get them sued. In practice, QI is about giving cops cover to violate rights in ways that aren’t covered by prior rulings about QI. Hell, in this case, if all the cops had done was lie to Williams, they probably would’ve gotten QI because cops are allowed to lie without consequence.
Tit for tat, son. Lots of cops are trained under the notion that wherever they operate is a war zone and every citizen is a potential “enemy combatant”. They’re trained into an us-versus-them mentality that heightens paranoia, encourages violence, and leads to cops treating even the most innocent of interactions with the mindset of “I have to be ready to kill this person if they so much as twitch their arm the wrong way”.
Law enforcement has done that to itself. They protect corrupt cops. They shuffle “bad cops” between departments like the Catholic Church shuffles pedophile priests between churches. Police departments and (especially) police unions ultimately do more to undermine “the integrity of law enforcement” by defending cops who do shit like the unconstitutional fuckery described in this article.
And how do you think that happens? Bad cops intimidate good cops into silence and obedience, which drives good cops to either leave or become bad cops themselves. The courts routinely grant QI to cops because the details of their rights violations aren’t the exact same as this other rights violation that was deemed unconstitutional. Departments and unions defend cops even as they’re caught on-camera being corrupt and violent. Changing training and adding extra oversight are treatments of symptoms; the root of the disease is the inherently corrupt structure of American law enforcement and the perverse incentives created by that structure. Even this ruling won’t change anything in the long term because (A) cops will just get “better” at hiding their rights violations so they don’t match this exact set of facts and (B) the cops who did this shit won’t go to jail for it (or pay for the eventual out-of-court settlement).
And yet, you’re more than happy to pull all that “surely all these bad apples haven’t spoiled the bunch” shit to defend the police against ACAB rhetoric. You don’t seem to care that the structural issues of American policing have already been rotted to their core. At some point, wallpapering over those issues won’t cut it any more—the structure will need to be demolished and rebuilt in a smarter way.
I know it’s not always true, but the whole “anything said before ‘but’ is bullshit” axiom seems applicable to every time you’ve used that construction in your comment.
Police misconduct is a serious problem. It’s also one that gets harder to deal with because of “can’t we all just get along” bullshit like yours. You aren’t going to fix the structural problems of American policing by asking the victims of policing to be “more nuanced” about rights violations or praying to God that “good cops” suddenly start outnumbering and pushing out “bad cops”. Treating symptoms won’t cure the disease, and the disease in American policing is how lots of police officers are incentivized to be racist, sexist, violent, lazy, and corrupt by power structures that reward such behaviors and punish the cops who call that out. Cops who want a better reputation for themselves and the institution of policing need to earn it—and that starts with actually addressing the diseased core of American policing in ways that don’t turn “good cops” into former cops, corrupt cops, or dead cops.
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AI slop
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That would be the entire point, this is clearly a red flag issue.
And if those officers are also giving a pass to corrupt and abusive officers, and all evidence suggests most are, then they are just as much a part of the problem.
That’s a nice legal fantasy you’ve there, pity it’s not reflected in real-world results. Techdirt is stacked with stories of cops receiving QI for actions that are absolutely egregious but don’t perfectly align with a previous case. Nobody who suffers at the hands of cops who escape accountability is going to give a shit about your “important legal principle”.
The “fuel” provided by this article is the equivalent of throwing a cigarette lighter onto a bonfire lit by cops. They are literally taught that everyone is out to kill them, so it’s beyond ridiculous to complain about the natural resulting response from the general populace.
We’re well past the point where angry rants became entirely justified. The nuanced, thoughtful approach has been an absolute failure.
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Indeed it does, hence ACAB and 1312.
And any good cop ends up being complict or dead.
Wait a minute, I think there’s something fishy going on here. If the subject of the arrest could use his video on the appeal, why didn’t he use it during the TRIAL to get off on the charges???