Now, one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient.

—James Otis, Against Writs of Assistance, Superior Court of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, February 24, 1761.

There is, at the moment, an amazing trial going on in Baltimore. It is being covered very well by a Baltimore Sun reporter named Justin Fenton. It involves that city’s police force and something called the Gun Trace Task Force, which is another one of those “special squads” that are set up in urban police forces and that usually go very badly sideways. According to what’s coming out in the trial, the GTTF went very badly sideways.

The video opens with a group of Baltimore police officers prying open a safe, revealing thick stacks of cash held together by two rubber bands each. They call to their sergeant, Wayne Jenkins, who instructs the group not to touch anything and to keep the camera rolling — he wanted this one done by the book. Except, Detective Maurice Ward testified Tuesday, the officers already had pocketed half the $200,000 they found inside the safe before the recording started, after taking a man’s keys during a traffic stop and entering his home without a warrant. It was one of many illegal tactics Ward said the officers used as they chased guns and drugs across the city while skimming proceeds for themselves.

Ward is one of four detectives from the police department’s defunct Gun Trace Task Force who have pleaded guilty and are expected to testify at the trial of two fellow officers, Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor, which began with opening statements Tuesday. Ward’s testimony outlined astonishing, everyday misconduct: The officers would drive up on groups of men, slam on the brakes and pop open their doors, for no reason other than to see if anyone would run. Those who fled were pursued, detained and searched. Jenkins profiled so-called “dope boy cars” — cars he believed were likely to be driven by drug dealers — and pulled them over under invented circumstances. “The Gun Trace Task Force wasn’t a unit that went rogue,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise told jurors Tuesday morning. “It was a unit of officers who had already gone rogue.”

Remember when “criminal justice reform” was going to be the big bipartisan issue through which the country’s politics was going to solve the problem of its deep polarization? It was going to be the issue that brought libertarian conservatives and civil-liberties liberals together to do some good. A lot of the momentum behind the issue came from the organizing around the killing of black children by white police officers. It was a heady time. I think it lasted at least a month, and then ambitious politicians—most notably, the last Republican presidential candidate—remembered that it’s always easier to gin up The Base with fear.

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The Black Lives Matter movement was demonized. The Obama regulation against peddling military hardware to every police chief in East Jesus was rolled back. And, instead of a long, important conversation about police work in a race-marred democracy, we ended up right back with the Nixon “law and order” fanboy cheerleading again. The police were not asked to think. They were simply unleashed. Again.

As a squad, they roamed the city conducting “door pops,” which involved driving at groups to see who would run, Ward testified. Jenkins drove the wrong way down one-way streets, hoping to catch people off guard, and instructed officers to stop men over the age of 18 who had backpacks. Ward said Jenkins surmised that men that age were likely to have no reason to carry a backpack other than to transport illicit items.

Ask yourself how calm you would be if, every day, corrupt cops came up and rousted you because they didn’t think you had a legitimate reason … for owning a backpack. We’ve gone backwards on all these issues, like we have on so many others. The ground we have to make up is about the width of a continent now. And that’s just to get back to 1789.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Old James Otis may be permanently out of reach.

This post has been updated to correct the spelling of the name of the Baltimore Sun reporter, Justin Fenton. We regret the error.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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