On the plane ride back from Portland, I read a biography of the great Enrest Tubb that I picked up at Powell’s Books. So here’s a little Ernest Tubb.

• Cops raid poker game, shoot caterer.
• Ogden residents rally to for Matthew Stewart, call for an end to drug raids.
• Headline of the day.
• Runner-up.
• Lede of the day.
• Alan Dershowitz doesn’t think much of the Zimmerman indictment.
• Police chief, suspect, woman with suspect killed in a disastrous New Hampshire drug raid.

I gave up on having any sort of meaningful discourse with the Balloon Juice blog a good year ago or so. The noise over there is just too damned loud. But a post last night by front-page blogger Ann Laurie deserves some attention. It really goes above an beyond the usual ignorant Balloon Juice blathering.

Here’s what happened:

Earlier this week, I pointed you to the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project, a one-man project run by David Packman that, as the name indicates, catalogs police misconduct around the country. Packman understandably is having problems keeping the project going while also working a full-time job, and indicated he may have to shut the site down unless he can make other arrangements.

I was delighted to learn yesterday afternoon, then, that my old supervisor Tim Lynch is interested in bringing the project to the Cato Institute. Cato would provide a great platform for the project, bringing Packman’s work and the issue of police misconduct the sort of national exposure and broad institutional support both deserve.

As it turns out, Packman also received other offers to take over the project—a good indication that others have recognized the value of his work. So Packman decided to put the offers to a vote, and allow his readers to have a say in what happens next.

So yesterday afternoon I received an email from my friend Johnathan Blanks, who is Lynch’s research assistant, someone I happen to know is pretty passionate about these issues, and the guy who would likely be overseeing the project if it were to come to Cato. Blanks’ email, sent to a small circle of people he knew used Packman’s site regularly, explained what was going on, pointed us to the poll, and urged us to vote. Blanks also explicitly urged us not to post the poll on our blogs, Twirter accounts, or Facebook accounts. His thinking, which I think was appropriate, was that the fate of Packman’s site should be determined by the people who read it regularly. He didn’t want it to look like Cato was using its institutional might to overwhelm the poll with people who aren’t already familiar with what Packman has been doing.

Enter the idiots at Balloon Juice. A trolling twit from that site who goes by the name “Joey Maloney,” and whom I’ve banned from this site after repeated warnings, emailed Balloon Juice blogger Anne Laurie about Packman’s poll, asking her to direct the site’s hivemind to go skew the poll against Cato. And she complied, telling Balloon Juicers to go vote for “anyone but CATO [sic].” To top it off, Ann Laurie admits in the post that she has never read Packman’s site. Which means she really has no idea what the hell she’s writing about. But no matter. On any issue. No matter what. Anyone but Cato. And of course the Balloon Juicers then mindlessly carried out her command.

Here’s the thing. Cato published and promoted my paper on police militarization. In fact, Cato had already published another paper on the issue in 1999, one that noted how the trend was affecting poor and minority communities. This was a good 12 years before mainstream liberals really started giving a damn about this issue, which was once heavily militarized cops started beating middle class white kids at Occupy protests. Cato has also been maintaining an online map of botched SWAT raids since my paper came out in 2006. But you know, anyone but Cato.

Also, Anne, Cato has been filing amicus Supreme Court briefs on police and prosecutorial misconduct cases for years, now. They often team up with organizations like the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In recent years, Cato has hosted forums on asset forfeiture abuse, ending the drug war, and hosted a screening of a film directed at minority communities about how to protect their civil rights when dealing with cops. Cato scholars have recently written about police GPS tracking, the inequities of juvenile justice, the overuse and unfairness of plea bargaining, police militarization, New York City’s stop-and-frisk happy police commissioner Ray Kelly, the importance of preserving Miranda rights, the First Amendment right to record the police, and debunking the notion that immigrants are disproportionately prone to criminal behavior.

But sure, Anne. Anyone but Cato.

The thing is, Cato won’t be hurt in the least should Balloon Juice’s poll jacking send Packman’s project elsewhere. But you know what will happen? Packman’s great, systematic work exposing and documenting police misconduct will get less national attention than it otherwise would. Which means the issue of police misconduct itself will get less attention than it otherwise would. And Packman’s project will go to someone who lacks the budget and institutional support of a place like Cato. But hey. If the issue of police misconduct must get less attention so a petty Balloon Juicer blogger can casually register her loathing of libertarians by sending the blog’s sneering idiots to swarm a small poll put up by guy who’s just trying to preserve a worthy thing he started, well, I suppose that’s the price we all must pay. Good job, Anne!

Of course, in the end this is Packman’s project, and it’s his to do with as he pleases. My scorn here is for Laurie. Her casual, knee-jerk contempt for Cato is a tidy example of the depths to which the discourse at that site has sunk. Because she’s ignorant of Cato’s work on police abuse and criminal justice, she readily buys into Joey Maloney’s nefarious characterization of Cato. Because Cato supports lower taxes and less regulation, everything they do must be opposed, even if it’s stuff that a good liberal like Laurie ought to otherwise support. That principle extends out even to actively undermining causes liberals ought to support, if doing so in a particular instance might bring some small benefit or credit to a nasty bunch of Rand worshippers like Cato. I can only guess that in all her cunning, Laurie somehow sleuthed out Cato’s covert plan to contract the entire police misconduct project out to Haliburton. Also, something about Nick Gillespie’s leather jacket. And a bunch of Internet cliches. Butt-hurt. Derp!

Watch. I give it a month before a Balloon Juice blogger puts up yet another post about how libertarian organizations like Cato are just fronts for the Republican Party—because they never devote any real time or resources toward civil liberties issues.

(Side note: I know I’ve promised a post on the Koch vs. Cato controversy. That’s still coming.)

Assuming the details here are accurate, this case is an outrage.

It all began in early 2005, when McNeil and his wife, Anita, hired Brian Epp’s construction company to build a new house in Cobb County, Ga. The McNeils testified that Epp was difficult to work with, which led to heated confrontations. They eventually decided to close on the house early to rid their lives of Epp, whom they found increasingly threatening. At the closing, both parties agreed that Epp would have 10 days to complete the work, after which he would stay away from the property, but he failed to keep up his end of the bargain.

On Dec. 6, 2005, John McNeil’s 15-year-old son, La’Ron, notified his dad over the phone that a man he didn’t recognize was lurking in the backyard. When La’Ron told the man to leave, an argument broke out. McNeil was still on the phone and immediately recognized Epp’s voice. According to La’Ron’s testimony, Epp pointed a folding utility knife at La’Ron’s face and said, “[w]hy don’t you make me leave?” at which point McNeil told his son to go inside and wait while he called 911 and headed home.

According to McNeil’s testimony, when he pulled up to his house, Epp was next door grabbing something from his truck and stuffing it in his pocket. McNeil quickly grabbed his gun from the glove compartment in plain view of Epp who was coming at him “fast.” McNeil jumped out of the car and fired a warning shot at the ground insisting that Epp back off. Instead of retreating, Epp charged at McNeil while reaching for his pocket, so McNeil fired again, this time fatally striking Epp in the head. (Epp was found to have a folding knife in his pocket, although it was shut.)

Apparently, Epp had threatened others as well. Here’s the Georgia Supreme Court decision.

If the Trayvon Martin case causes more journalists to go looking for these sorts of outrages, that’s a good thing. But I really wish Salon hadn’t framed the story the way it did. The author uses the Trayvon Martin case as a hook, and tries to to use McNeil’s conviction to criticize Stand Your Ground laws. There are a couple of problems with that. First, Georgia’s Stand Your Ground law was passed in 2006. McNeil shot Epp in 2005. So I’m fairly sure the law wouldn’t have applied, although as I understand it, McNeil should still have had Georgia case law on his side. The subhead is also misleading. If he is ultimately convicted of second-degree murder, Zimmerman could be sentenced to life in prison, just as McNeil was.

But even if Georgia’s Stand Your Ground law had already been effect, if McNeil wasn’t granted that defense or a traditional self-defense claim because of his race, class, or some other unjust reason, none of that is a convincing critique of the law. It’s a convincing critique of the criminal justice system.

From the facts in the opinion, I’d say McNeil not only should have been acquitted on traditional self-defense laws, he should never have been charged in the first place. (That was also the opinion of the lead investigator.) But trying to shoehorn this case into a narrative that allows for comparisons to the Martin case doesn’t do John McNeil any favors. I’m not sure it really helps the cause of those calling for Zimmerman’s head, either. For example, the Salon piece suggests that McNeil’s prosecutor may have filed the murder charge after caving to public pressure. That’s what Zimmerman’s defenders say is also happening to him.* Epp’s prior history of threatening people plays into McNeil’s favor—but if we’re comparing the two cases, then it would also seem appropriate to look into Martin’s history, which Martin’s supporters have decried as smearing the victim.

The unfortunate framing aside, this is still a story that deserves more attention, and one that the gun rights crowd should be all over—and really should have been all over from the start.

(*Just to be clear, I don’t endorse or reject this view. I’m inclined to agree with Jonathan Turley that based on the information that has been made public, a second-degree murder is excessive. But we don’t yet know what evidence the special prosecutor has seen that hasn’t yet been made public. We’ll find out soon enough.)

• He may be an ass, but the federal prosecution of John Edwards is a complete farce. 
• The Pakistani culture battle over mustaches.
• Federal judge blasts mandatory minimums, scolds prosecutors for overcharging in low-level drug cases.
• William Grigg has more on the Mississippi woman who was arrested after traveling to Alabama to buy Sudafed.
• Upstart Internet provider guarantees privacy, promises to fight government information requests.
• The burgeoning gray-market Tide trade.
• Andrew Peyton Thomas, deputy stripped of their law licenses. Good riddance. My article on Thomas here.
• Connecticut repeals the death penalty.

• Headline of the day.
• Some unfortunate comments to this Police1 article about militarization. Also amusing: The argument that we shouldn’t worry about the militarization of American police departments because the American military is increasingly taking on the role of police.
• If nothing else, you have to admire this guy’s efficiency.
• Another good illustration of how the U.S. tax code is really one big honking subsidy for tax accountants.
• The Wall Street Journal on how federal prosecutors can always fall back on a vague “lying” charge when they can’t find evidence of any other crime.
• Disgruntled Fox News employee will write an anonymous column for Gawker. I don’t know for whom I’d cheer in a Gawker-Fox feud. But it will be fun to watch. And one can always hope both sides sustain heavy damage.

• California liberals worry that federal pot raids will make people distrustful of government. Let’s hope so!
• National Guard Units aiding state drug war efforts. And possibly in defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kyllo.
• This article on the Otto Zehm killing aptly demonstrates the many problems with police unions.
• Both Reuters and Walter Olson throw water on the notion that Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine laws are filling the streets with blood.
• The sponsors the 1978 California law that substantially expanded the state’s use of the death penalty are now arguing for its repeal.
• Clark County, Nevada DA won’t charge a cop who was caught on film repeatedly kicking a man in the head. The man was in diabetic shock at the time. The officer has a history of misconduct, which the DA apparently didn’t know about until it was uncovered by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
• Union claims it should be able to force anyone who wants to work in a particular field to join the union and pay dues, and that it should then be able to use a portion of those dues for political activities. And it claims that preventing it from doing so is a violation of the union’s free speech.
• How the pun changed world history.

I’m meeting some friends at a place called Bunk Bar this evening.

Come by if you’re in the area. Starting at around 5:30 pm.

Here’s Sandy, sent by her owner Les Milton, who writes:

We got Sandy last December from a rescue organization and it’s been amazing to see how she’s affected my 12-year-old son.  Besides the responsibilities of feeding and walking, he’s just been so affectionate with her.  It’s like she discovered a hidden reserve of love inside him. My wife, who always thought of dogs as nice, but kind of gross, thinks of her as the daughter she never had and sleeps with her every night (and she doesn’t think dogs are gross at all anymore).

She’s not a big dog, but she’s all dog.

Beautiful dog. Keep them coming!

You might remember that about this time last year, media outlets, police groups, even Attorney General Eric Holder were up in arms over an alleged “war on cops” taking place all across the fruited plains. In April of last year, on-the-job officer deaths were up 20 percent from the same point in 2010. The media went nuts, pointing an accusatory finger at anti-government rhetoric, a “don’t tread on me” mentality, anti-cop Internet sites, and gun ownership.

But some wise folks (ahem) didn’t buy into the hype. On-the-job cop deaths had been falling for 20 years. Those numbers couldn’t keep dropping forever. And the claims of some sort of surge in violent anti-cop, anti-government anger were belied by the fact that non-fatal assaults on police officers were also dropping.

In retrospect, those of us who were skeptical of the hysterical headlines look to have been correct. While January and February of last year saw a few unusual mass shootings of multiple police officers, those months appear to have been anomalies. Police deaths in the remaining months of 2011 were mostly on par with prior years.

So what about this year? Police officer deaths are down 48 percent from last year. Firearms deaths specifically are down 58 percent. And as the watchdog blog Clark County Criminal Cops points out, a significant number of  the firearms deaths were actually cops who were shot by other cops.

The police watchdog websites are still out there. The Tea Party and “Don’t Tread on Me” patriot movements are still going strong. You also now have the Occupy movements, which foment a lot of anti-police sentiment (in many cases, justifiably). Gun owners certainly haven’t been melting down their weapons en masse. And yet officer fatalities and violence against police officers have nosedived. In fact, if the current pace keeps up, we’ll actually hit an all-time low in police fatalities this year. And these are just the raw numbers. They aren’t percentages of the total police force (which has been growing), or police deaths in comparison to deaths in the larger population.

All worth keeping in mind should the numbers slightly tick up again—as any statistics pulled from a large population of people are bound to do from time to time—and the media and police groups again start placing blame, and calling for us to grant the police more powers, less oversight, and bigger guns.

David Packman, who has been tirelessly documenting police misconduct for three years at his Injustice Everywhere blog, writes that he may soon need to quit the project.

I’m not sure what can be done to save the site. It seems that more than just a round of donations (though I’m sure he’d appreciate if you donated), it looks as if he can really only continue the project if it can become a full time job for him.

I’m posting here because I think the site is valuable and the project should continue on. Maybe someone who reads this has some ideas on how to make sure that happens.

Whatever happens, he deserves a ton of praise for what he’s already done. Packman mostly just documents, but when he does editorialize, he usually does so with restraint, drawing on the incidents he has documented. On too many occasions to count, his site has helped me find and research stories.

If there’s some think tank or civil liberties group out there that might consider hosting and sponsoring what Packman does, it would do us all an important service.

My intern Jessica Greene has a great scoop on the continuing efforts of Nashville’s taxi cartels and their allies in city government to harass the city’s smaller driver services.

If you’ll remember, her first piece looked at the new protectionist regulations that imposed minimum fares on private car services. Now, she reports that the inspectors for the city regulatory agency that oversees both industries have been targeting the cars from the companies that are suing to overturn the regulations. They’re getting pulled over and hit with fines for petty offenses.

But it gets better from there:

During these stops, inspectors wore badges identifying themselves as members of the Nashville Police, according to a former TLC inspector and exclusively confirmed to HuffPost by Kris Mumford, spokeswoman for the Metro Nashville Police Department after months of queries. According to the former inspector, the police impostors also improperly used badges, sirens and flashing lights.

Under Tennessee law, impersonating a police officer for the purpose of “causing another to believe that the person is a law enforcement officer” constitutes a Class A misdemeanor, which can carry a penalty of up to 11 months in jail, fines of up to $2,500 or both.

“It just came to my attention on Tuesday that one of our officers actually saw an inspector wearing a badge that said ‘Inspector’ but also said ‘Nashville Police.’ Metro is not aware of exactly when or how they got those badges, but they were not authorized by Chief Steve Anderson,” Mumford told HuffPost. According to Mumford, the police have confiscated seven badges that identified TLC inspectors as members of Metro Police or Nashville Police.

According to the former inspector, who resigned in late 2011 and wishes to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, the commission had been making ample use of the spurious badges. TLC workers would conduct stakeouts in unmarked vehicles and use blue lights — permitted only for official police vehicles — to make traffic stops, the former inspector said. Undercover inspectors would specifically target smaller, independent private car services and give them specious citations, the former inspector said.

A nice scoop for her third article. Even though it was her dogged reporting that turned all of this up, I’m going to go ahead and pretend it was solely due to my excellent tutelage.

From a new Innocence Project study:

 . . . courts have confirmed that prosecutorial misconduct occurred in 91 Texas criminal cases between 2004 and 2008 . . .

These of course would only be the cases in which a Texas court called out the misconduct. Just a hunch, but in Texas, I’d imagine the misconduct would need to be pretty egregious for that to happen.

Want to guess how many of the prosecutors in those 91 cases faced disciplinary action of any kind?

Yes. It’s zero. The mere possibility of holding the prosecutor in the Morton case in some way accountable is what makes it a story.

One of the main arguments groups like the National District Attorneys Association always brings up in the briefs for these challenges to absolute immunity is that bar associations, courts, and professional organizations do a perfectly fine job of disciplining bad prosecutors. But study after study after study has shown that it just isn’t true.

Seems that Marylanders are getting a bit fed up with this problem.

A Frederick County Circuit Court jury in the civil case filed by a Taneytown couple whose dog was shot by a sheriff’s deputy found in favor of the plaintiffs Monday evening.

The six-person panel deliberated for more than 4 1/2 hours before returning a verdict to award Roger and Sandi Jenkins $620,000 in damages, according to plaintiff’s attorney Rebekah Lusk.

They found that–Deputy First Class Timothy Brooks violated the Jenkinses rights under the Maryland constitution when he shot their chocolate Labrador retriever, Brandi, on Jan. 9, 2010, while he and Deputy First Class Nathan Rector were at their Bullfrog Road home looking for their son, who was wanted on a civil warrant called a body attachment.

The jury also found that Brooks and Rector violated the couple’s rights by entering their home without permission.

The defense was . . . interesting.

[Defense attorneys] focused much of their attention on the actions of Roger Jenkins, who they said was largely responsible for the shooting of his dog. They said Jenkins could have told the deputies that his son wasn’t home, because he hadn’t lived there in several months since being kicked out, and that he could have taken more action to secure the dogs.

“He made certain decisions that led us to this sorry state,” Karp said of Roger Jenkins.

But Hansel said the Jenkinses knew their son sometimes sneaked back in the house, and that Roger Jenkins was being honest when he told them he wasn’t sure if his son was home.

Hansel said that by suggesting that Roger Jenkins’ actions led to the shooting of his dog, the defense was implying that citizens should fear for the safety of their dogs around law enforcement.

“What they’re suggesting is that Mr. Jenkins should have known that police officers will gun down your dog,” Hansel said.

Well on that question, the defense might have a point.

Here’s Nashville’s Griffin House:

• Update: After public outcry, the Minnesota waitress from the post below this one will get to keep the full $12,000.
• Headline of the day.
• Danziger bridge cops will spend decades in prison for murdering unarmed citizens after Katrina. I wonder if conservative columnist Deroy Murdock still considers the incident “a magnificent and morally pristine use of force.”
• DHS officials attempt to seize $35,000 from a family traveling to Ethiopia by tricking them into violating federal law.
• Federal civil rights investigation critical of another local police department.
• This hero pup would almost certainly have been described as “vicious” if it had been police who had mistakenly broken into the home.
• 7 Rules for Recording the Police.
• SpongePulp FictionPants (NSFW audio).
• Blood pressure-spiking story of the day.

Customers leave a struggling waitress a $12,000 tip. Thinking they may have accidentally left it behind, the waitress calls the police. When the deadline for someone to claim the money passes, the police then tell the waitress that, well, they’re going to keep the money, because it’s probably drug money. They do generously offer to giver her $1,000 for letting them seize her cash.

Of course, even if it was drug money, the waitress had nothing to do with the drug crimes behind the money. And once the cash was given to her, I think most reasonable people would agree she should be allowed to keep it (the exception would of course be if it had been stolen).

But the legal fiction underlying civil asset forfeiture is that the property is guilty of the crime. So if the money was used in a drug transaction (and some jurisdictions now even argue if the money will be used in a transaction at some point in the future), the money itself is at fault, and must be forfeited, no matter who happens to be in possession of it.

Once the cash is deemed guilty, the government gets to keep it. And spend it on government things.

I guess at that point the cash is no longer guilty.  It’s just dirty.

Cop runs license check on a suspicious vehicle. Although they apparently committed no traffic violation, cop insists that his decision to run a check had nothing to do with the fact that the occupants were black, and happened to be driving in an affluent, predominately white neighborhood. The cop’s partner apparently then enters the wrong license number, which returns a car that had been reported stolen. So cop follows car into driveway, which happens to be the home of the driver’s parents, where he lives. Cop approaches driver and occupant with his gun drawn. Driver’s parents come out to see what’s causing the commotion. Cop roughs up driver’s mother. Driver gets up from ground to tell cop to lay off of his mother. Cop shoots driver, a full 32 seconds after pulling into the driveway.

The driver, who was unarmed, will now carry a bullet in his liver for the rest of his life. The cop was charged with first degree aggravated assault. A jury acquitted him. Now this week, U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon dismissed the driver’s lawsuit against both the cop that fired his gun and the cop who entered the wrong license plate number, citing qualified immunity. According to Harmon, the officer acted “reasonably,” and moreover, wrongly accusing an unarmed man of stealing a car, pointing a gun at him, then shooting him in the liver, “did not violate [his] constitutional rights.”

Both cops are back on the force. The guy with the bullet in his liver? Tough luck. He’ll be paying his own medical bills.

I guess the lesson here is that if you don’t want to get shot in the liver by a police officer in Bellaire, Texas, don’t drive the car you own and haven’t stolen to your parents’ house, where you happen to live. Or maybe the lesson is to not voice your objections when a cop pushes your mother after she asks why he’s pointing a gun at you, who have done nothing wrong. Or maybe the lesson is to avoid having a cop imagine that you’re reaching toward your waistband for a weapon that doesn’t exist.

Or maybe the lesson is just don’t be black in Bellaire, Texas.

• Here’s a writeup of the talks I and other panelists gave at Ohio University last week.
• “All four telecom firms also offer so-called “tower dumps” that allow police to see the numbers of every user accessing a certain cell tower over a certain time at an hourly rate.”
• Cop shoots other cop while trying to kill dogs.
• Chicago police managed to “persuade” a man to confess to two murders that were committed while he was in the custody of Chicago police.
• Tape captures Alabama public school teachers verbally abusing a student with cerebral palsy.
• For those of you who, like me, have a thing for photos of abandoned places.
• (Attempted) puppycide: Woman calls police to report a burglary. Police respond, shoot and kill her dog, don’t catch the burglars.

Here’s a gripping piece by my former colleague Mike Riggs on his decision to donate a kidney to a complete stranger.

Add it to your long reads file.

I’ll be giving a talk on police militarization next week at Washington State University-Vancouver. Here are the details:

Cost:

Free

Who can participate:

Open to the public

Contact for more information:

Jimmy Kramer, manager@kougradio.com

• Let’s put the Yoga stuff aside, and just focus on the fact that New York City has a tax on “weight control or health salons.” How does this fit into Bloomberg’s fanatical healthism?
• “There should be no indictment of the system.” Incorrect. When a father is wrongly imprisoned for a decade raping his daughter, it most certainly is an indictment of the system.
• The ugliest buildings in the word. I would add the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. Just for the irony. Or maybe it isn’t so ironic. Of the FBI Building, another D.C. brutalist monstrosity.
• SCOTUS grants absolute immunity to investigators for prosecutor’s offices who give false testimony to grand juries.
• “I should not have to fight with my children every warm day on the playground just so someone can make a living!”
• Headline of the day.
• Things that seem pretty legit.

A two-judge panel has overturned (PDF) two of the three gun-related convictions against Brian Aitken. I wrote about the outrageous prosecution of Aitken for Reason a couple years ago. Basically, under New Jersey law, it is a crime to possess a gun of any kind outside your home anywhere in the state (unless you’re one of the very, very few able to obtain a permit). However, once you’ve been caught and charged, you can argue one of the exemptions to the law, and one of those is moving between residences. Aitken was moving between residences (it’s a bit more complicated than that — read my article for the full details). Inexplicably, Aitken’s trial judge refused to let him argue one of the exceptions. Even the jury appeared perplexed. He was given seven years in prison.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie commuted Aitken’s sentence, but Aitken and his attorney didn’t ask for a pardon so they could fight to get the absurd laws overturned. The appeals court dismissed the gun conviction and the conviction for possessing the magazine, but oddly left the conviction for possessing ammunition.

Aitken’s attorney’s response:

“It doesn’t make sense if you have a gun and an exemption that allows you to take it to your new residence and the exemption doesn’t apply toward ammunition,” he said. “Are you supposed to leave your ammunition behind like you do light fixtures and refrigerators?”

Leaving the final conviction intact means Aitken will still have a felony record, which bars him from doing quite a few things, including ever owning a gun anywhere in the U.S. The prosecution also says it is appealing the ruling and considering retrying Aitken on the other two charges.

NYPD’s civilian review board will finally get some teeth.

The civilian board that reviews complaints of NYPD misconduct will get the power to prosecute those allegations in departmental trials — except in certain cases, officials said Tuesday.

Currently, the Civilian Complaint Review Board investigates complaints it receives, but refers substantiated cases to the NYPD for prosecution.

The change covers cases ranging from excessive force and abuse of authority to foul language.

The CCRB will prosecute substantiated complaints before NYPD tribunals, and will have the power to plea bargain cases.

“I’ve heard a lot of complaints from New Yorkers that they feel the Civilian Complaint Review Board is a toothless tiger,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said. “This gives teeth to the CCRB.”

Quinn said the agreement involved extensive deliberations between Council leaders, NYPD brass and City Hall.

“We want the public to have confidence that police misconduct cases are being handled fairly and competently,” added Councilman Daniel Garodnick (D-Manhattan), who in 2010 introduced a bill to give CCRB prosecutorial power.

There are some exceptions, but this is a great step. The union is of course livid. This would be the same union that late last year organized a thuggish protest outside a city courtroom in which member officers harassed and assaulted journalists. They were upset that dozens of their brethren had been indicted on over 1,600 counts, ranging from fixing traffic tickets (all of the cops accused of fixing tickets were past or present union officials) to smuggling, brutality, and drug distribution.

The Supreme Court gives the thumbs-up (sorry) to strip searches for any arrest, including misdemeanors. Examples cited in the briefs included violations of leash laws and unpaid parking tickets.

The five conservative justices who made up the majority cited public safety and terrorism, among other justifications. That they don’t think this will be routinely abused as extra-judicial punishment for contempt-of-cop, having brown skin, or some other imaginary infraction is more evidence of how these decisions are continually undermined by the fact that only two justices on the current Court have any criminal law experience, and none have any experience in criminal defense. (The last Supreme Court justice who did any criminal defense work was Thurgood Marshall, who retired more than 20 years ago.)