Court Orders Obtained

Court Orders Obtained:

  • RECURRENT TRAINING: Court-ordered training of all Atlanta police officers, every two years, regarding Fourth Amendment law.  (Previously APD training was so lax that dozens of Atlanta police officers lost their arrest powers due to lapses in training; one APD commander testified he had not received any constitutional law training in more than 5 years.)
  • RIGHT TO VIDEO/PHOTOGRAPH POLICE: Court-ordered revisions to the APD Standard Operating Procedure, prohibiting officers from interfering with the public’s right to make photographic, video, or audio recordings of police activity in public, and requiring the APD to fire any officer who interferes with the public’s right to record police activity.
  • POLICE DESTRUCTION OF VIDEO OR PHOTO RECORDINGS: Court-ordered revisions to the APD Standard Operating Procedure, prohibiting officers from deleting or destroying photographic, video, or audio recordings of police activity and requiring the APD to fire any officer who deletes or destroys any such recording.
  • SUSPICIONLESS DETENTIONS AND SEARCHES: Court-ordered revision of unconstitutional written APD policies regarding regarding warrantless searches without probable cause, investigatory detentions and frisks without reasonable articulable suspicion, and warrantless in-home arrests.
  • PUBLIC STRIP SEARCHES: Court-ordered revisions to the APD Standard Operating Procedure, prohibiting officers from conducting strip and body cavity searches in public, and requiring that such searches must be performed at a jail or other detention facility by appropriate personnel.
  • WARRANTLESS SEIZURES: Court-ordered requirement that APD officers must document certain types of warrantless seizures and ID checks, indicating the specific facts underlying probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
  • TIMELY INTERNAL AFFAIRS INVESTIGATIONS: Court-ordered requirement that all Internal Affairs investigations of complaints made by members of the public must be fully adjudicated within 180 days.  (Previously some investigations of misconduct were allowed to remain in “pending” status, and therefore unresolved and hidden from public review, for years.)

Please feel free to email me for additional information or for copies of any of these orders.