suck ass. Stop harassing students with bike tickets and arresting mothers and children.

Wow, this is a recurring pattern with the Stanford police. Current students and alumni alike should vow to withhold donations to the University until they clean up this persistent problem. We cannot be donating money to a university whose police force abuses and terrorizes its own students.

This sort of incident is without precedent. The story is riddled with untruths and we doubt many of the events ever took place. This liberal college rag is trying to pit the public against the law. The author and editors are nothing short of criminals themselves.

The Stanford Police have always been a joke. Back in my day (10+ years ago at this point) there were actually more bike thieves apprehended by students than the cops...

I've had bad experiences with Stanford cops as well, although nothing to this extent. The administration needs to step in here and bring about some institutional change.

Probable cause? Based on this report, there is question as to whether there was even reasonable suspicion. But that's that sad state of things these days: nervous Nellies make a call, a BOLO goes out, and LEO's arrive with a "revert to training" response rather than use good judgement.

Hope this family gets legal assistance.

Keystone Cops to the Rescue!

LEO supporter: First three sentences are spot on, but you blew your credibility completely with the rest of your post.

You're right. I would much rather be an individual who makes a living out of being harsher on people on the lower end of the socio-economic scale and using unnecessary measures to do my job. I would love the freedom to do anything I want (like unprofessionally grabbing women while performing a search or getting baton-happy on unarmed civilians) and know that the department I'm in would do anything to cover it up in order to protect me. Yes, it is a wonderful job and what was I possibly thinking when I said that it wasn't perfect. My deepest apologies.

Stanford has a history of hiring overzealous officers. This is not the first episode of over-reaction. Admittedly law enforcement on a college campus is problematic, but drawing weapons should only occur when deadly force is required and we do not seem to have had sufficient training to get that right in more cases than are reported in the press.

So here's the net:

No crime
No felony arrest
No alleged criminal in custody
Traumatized family
Negative press
Reduced community goodwill toward SUDPS and LE in general
Potential liability
Lots of people in damage control mode
Lots of wasted resources

A bit of judgment might have kept this operation from getting ugly.

so I guess they couldn't tell if it was a family with a small child or armed gang members.

A suspicous looking stroller gang walking was spotted down the street and stopped at gunpoint and handcuffed because a felony burglary may or may not have happened somewhere in the area.

"If one of them gets injured or killed, good riddance. Once less crooked cop out there to worry about"
Wow. you disgust me. How did you become a stanford student with that world view? You want to see crooked? I live in a country where bribery and extortion reign among the police - stanford cops are saints in comparison.
Hey Badger - at least we can have exotic erotic. the police could say no and not allow it to happen on campus, but they allow it. Given the ability of Stanford students to get themselves utterly wasted assault is a big possibility for the event, so don't go crying to the police if you get you skull knocked in by some drunk ass.
Most stanford students will never ever see a deputy on campus, and those that do probably did something terribly wrong. Follow the rules and you will never see them - don't and you pay the consequences. I bet half the bitter people here got themselves wasted one night and woke up in the county jail. Serves y'all right for not being RESPONSIBLE students. The law applies even in college... even at stanford - don't hate the cops cause they enforce it.

Sounds like something Junior and Garcia would do.

I want to add my voice to the chorus of students who are reporting having had negative experiences with the Stanford Police. In 2006 I was given a MIP (Minor in Possession of Alcohol) citation for holding a cup of beer at a Roble party. To give some background, in 2006 I could best be described as a shy, slightly-geeky freshman who hardly ever went to parties and rarely drank.
I had stepped outside through a side door in the Roble lounge, and the police were waiting directly outside that door for an unlucky minor to walk out holding alcohol. While I accept that I was technically breaking the law by possessing alcohol, I was almost completely sober, and my behavior was not disorderly in the slightest. Hiding outside party doors to arbitrarily arrest sober minors who happen to be holding alcohol has no possible grounds in ensuring the public safety.
Furthermore, the behavior of the arresting officers was horrible. The officers gave me hardly any information about what I was being charged with, refused to answer my questions, and in general treated me like a criminal.
Fortunately, my punishment was decided by a judge in a courthouse, and not by the overzealous police department. The judge dropped the MIP charges after I pleaded no contest, so no harm was done to my permanent record. Still, it is a somewhat jarring experience for a random freshman to be arrested (which included fingerprinting and having a mug shot taken) and have to appear in court for doing nothing more than drinking a beer at a party.

DPS has never solved a major crime? Really? Show some facts or go home...we're at Stanford and you're suppose to cite sources! (MLA format preferred)

Oh...looks like the people at the Daily didn't like my previous posts. Can't handle the truth?

Jay - Overzealous cops? Haha, you've got to be kidding me.

What? - "Just that the cops here are unnecessarily violent." Oh really? How many times have you seen the police here use their batons, OC spray, or any other weapons on anyone?

On its face, the incident not have been handled in the preferred manner. However, I'm sure the Daily does not have all the facts. Let the internal/external investigations follow it's course.

Law enforcement officers are not infallible, they make mistakes just like everyone else in every other profession. Even though they are society’s only true bearers of non-negotiable force, law enforcement is still constrained by the constitution and by the courts from overly intrusive behavior. With certain exceptions carved out by the courts, law enforcement officers are prohibited from unreasonable searches and seizures, the key word being “unreasonable.” And, law enforcement officers cannot deprive a person of their liberty interest in the form of an arrest absent probable cause, that being the reasonable belief that a crime is or has been committed and the person detained is a party to the criminal activity.

But, greater minds than ours realized that part of what police do is investigate possible criminal behavior and part of that investigation may require the detention of a potential suspect even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest. Hence, the United States Supreme Court in 1968 carved out an exception in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968) which allows law enforcement officers to detain subjects for purposes of investigation for a reasonable time and to use reasonable force to protect themselves and prevent the detainees from leaving the scene of the investigation. None other than the great Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the majority opinion, joined by Thurgood Marshall, Hugo Black, William Brennan, Potter Stewart and Abe Fortas. Concurring was Whizzer White and John Harlan. The only dissenter was William O. Douglas.

Reasonableness is the key, but the court noted in subsequent decisions that reasonableness in not conducive to precise definition or mechanical application. Bell v.Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 (1979). In U.S. v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 (1983) the court opined “...We understand the desirability of providing law enforcement authorities with a clear rule to guide their conduct. Nevertheless, we question the wisdom of a rigid limitation. Such a limit would undermine the equally important need to allow authorities to graduate their responses to the demands of any particular situation.”

Over the years, various court decisions have found that physical restraint, yelling at suspects, handcuffing, detention inside a police vehicle, and the display of weapons may be reasonable actions of law enforcement officers in detaining a subject for investigatory purposes. It is the humble opinion of the Shallow Alto Kid that the actions of the Stanford police, if challenged in this instance, will surely meet constitutional muster and be found reasonable.

Let us agree on at least a couple of things: First, neither the Shallow Alto Kid, nor the posters, nor the writer of the Daily article were present at the time of the detention. We know only of the information provided by the detainees and the statements made by the police public information officer. And second, we must acknowledge that the police arriving on the scene must have been disconcerting, even frightening, for the persons involved. Nonetheless, the fright or embarrassment or confusion felt by the parties involved doesn’t negate the right, or the duty, of the police to conduct their investigation of the possible vehicle burglaries along Stanford Avenue, and either charge the parties involved or eliminate them as suspects.

Oh, the Shallow Alto Kid knows that some of the posters are screaming about how the police were rude, pointed guns at the subjects, handcuffed them, made the baby cry, yelled at the subjects and made them lie down on the ground. But, one’s visceral reaction to the police tactics is of no moment here. As long as the actions of the police were objectively reasonable then there is no issue as to what they did in the field. The public information officer rightly noted that the officers were responding to an area rife with auto burglaries and that they didn’t know what they faced as they arrived at the scene. They acted appropriately knowing that those who are caught in the act of burglary normally attempt to flee. And, once they determined the persons detained were not the burglars, they were, according to the detainees, quickly released. Sometimes, a startling, but relatively minor inconvenience is the price we pay for living in a free society.

I think it also important though that the Shallow Alto Kid disabuses all of the notion that the police shouldn’t be aggressive because “theft isn’t a violent crime.” That is simply fallacious logic and had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of law enforcement officers over the years who engaged in that same type of delusional thinking. The sad fact is that at the very spot where this incident took place, a “mere thief,”a suspected auto burglar, attempted to murder a Palo Alto police officer by running her down with a vehicle he had carjacked the previous day. The suspect was shot and killed on Stanford Avenue; please tell me that incident didn’t weigh heavy on the minds of officers responding to the incident reported in the Daily. Theft? A non-violent crime? Indeed...

The Shallow Alto Kid encourages the scrutiny of law enforcement agencies for righteous violations of law and policy, but he predicts that this incident will be resolved in favor of the police simply because they acted reasonably under the circumstances and the disruption to the walkers was minimal. De minimis non curat lex.

The Shallow Alto Kid has a message for Wha.. Read the line of cases concerning investigative detention. You don’t need probable cause to make a felony stop, you do need it, though, to make an arrest. I guess you’ll learn that in law school...And for Soon to be Alumnus, money for blood? Extortion is so unflattering. Save your money and I’ll make the donations for you...the Shallow Alto Kid is proud to be a life member of the Stanford Alumni Association and urges all graduates to join...

Psssh-

I think that you and I would agree that law enforcement officers who exhibit bias while carrying out their commission, or those who use excessive force under color of authority deserve whatever retribution can be heaped upon them either in the courts or the court of public opinion. But, your bias here is palpable as you paint all law enforcement officers with a broad brush of bigotry.

The implication of your post is that all law enforcement officers are racist and their actions are motivated by their bias. But, it's the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, not the Jim Crow South of the 1950's and if it is your desire to believe that such bias still exists then there is going to be precious little that I can do to disuade you. One thing is patently obvious, though, if you read the modern literature. There is no societal institution that is subject to more scrutiny by the public, the press, the courts, the legislature and their peers then those who enforce our laws. And, there is no insitution that strives as diligently to incorporate minority employees into its workforce as does law enforcement. But, I digress...

As I noted in my previous post, neither you nor I were at the scene when this detention occurred. But, if not mistaken, both the Police flack and the detainees admitted that the detention was relatively short in time and when it was determined there was no threat everyone was unhandcuffed and released. The intrusion, although startling, was de minimis, but most important, it met constiutional muster. Chief Justice Earl Warren was one of our greatest jusists and his court was insturmental in the expansion of our civil rights. Warren, Marshall, Fortas, et al., great justices of the late 1960's, were pragmatic enough to realize that police would need to make investigative detentions and sometimes the police would find that those detained weren't involved. As long as the detention was reasonable the detention would meet the requirements of the constitution. Like it or not, that will be the ultimate holding in the insant case.

Oh, and the issue of the child here is merely a strawman (no pun intended). The child here was unfortunately caught up in the detention. But, the legal reporters are replete with cases in which infants and children have been used to hide or smuggle drugs, weapons, explosives and contraband in their diapers and stollers. In those cases the child is a pawn, the parents reprobates. Those immoral parents count on the police to ignore the child, a mistake which may prove fatal to an officer if they think that simply because of their status the child poses no danger.

You and I have the luxury of sitting at our laptops and analyzing a reporter's take on an incident where the facts are at issue. The one thing that I am not willing to do, though, is to view the incident through the lens of bigotry. I think in the Stanford Avenue case, pragmatism is the play.

P.S. I meant to also mention that the NYPD officers were exonerated in a court of law, so their actions must have been constitutional. I hope that they exercise their constitutional rights on shallow people as well next!