Connecticut Elementary School Massacre

[MacCruiskeen]

c2w, you know it wasn't personal upthread. I may PM you in a day or two. (Busy right now, shouldn't be here at all.)

[compared2what?]

One thing's for sure, this "law-enforcement-official-speaking-off-the-record" crap needs to end. It's not just disastrous for the people involved in this particularly repulsive case, it's endemic throughout the US media.

And there's a very simple way to end it: Make it illegal for the media to do it. Not that this will ever happen, of course. Both the government and the media have strong vested interests in keeping the population routinely confused, unsettled and misinformed.

Homeland Insecurity.

Illegal is a problem wrt whistleblowers. And sometimes victims or those who have a reason to fear becoming one. And you can't really just specify law enforcement or government without losing some of those, unfortunately.

But if allowances could be made for anonymous sourcing for legitimate protection-from-reprisal purposes, I'd agree that it shouldn't ever happen.

[compared2what?]

c2w, you know it wasn't personal upthread. I may PM you in a day or two. (Busy right now, shouldn't be here at all.)

Of course. No worries. I'm sorry to have been a cause of distress to you, if I was.

[compared2what?]

But as far as winning a case, I'd say he has no chance.

Try picturing some cop on the stand being walked through every step in the Police Department Procedural Manual for identifying a dead body at a crime scene one by one and being asked: "Did you do x, Detective So-and-So? Did you do y, Detective So-and-So?"

Then same for all the steps on identifying suspects.

Then same for all the steps for notifying families of deaths.

Then same for all the steps and guidelines on talking to the media, which I'm sure include a prohibition on speaking not-for-attribution.
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I don't know. It really doesn't look ambiguous to me. They were not going by the book. He could have been killed. And has the Facebook screen-grabs to prove it. I think they'll settle. I would, in their shoes.
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ON EDIT: I just checked torts & cops law very briefly. They're liable for both intentional-infliction-of-distress and negligence, theoretically.

I imagine/speculate/think that the only real defense that would be left against those when there wasn't any question about whether it was an error would be that it was a good faith mistake. And for that to work, they would have to have been following good-practice guidelines. So. I don't know. If you think they have a hope of pretending that they named Ryan Lanza while using the methods they were taught back at the Academy, I guess they have a defense.

[MacCruiskeen]

c2w: point taken about whistleblowers, etc.

Re "distress": no worries. Sorry in return for any distress caused. Let's draw a line under it:
______________________________________________________________________________________

It's just a kind of crazy-making case.

[MacCruiskeen]

The moment the police located Ryan Lanza in Hoboken -- when was that exactly (to the minute)? -- they knew he was not the dead gunman in the school in Newtown. They knew it instantly and without the slightest doubt, because Ryan was alive and well and 78 miles from the scene of the crime, as opposed to dead on the floor of the school with three guns and someone else's ID on his person. Simple. And Ryan had tweeted that he was at work, so presumably he had a watertight and instantly-verifiable alibi for the whole morning of the 14th.

The point being (in this case): The Newtown gunman was already known to be dead. By 09:45 at the latest.

So I'm wondering why they kept on searching Ryan Lanza's house all day and into the night, harrassing his roommates, searching for his girlfriend, disrupting the entire neighborhood and blocking off the street. (That they would take him personally into custody, investigate his personal apartment and maybe confiscate his personal computer is kind-of understandable. But it went much, much further than that. And it went on all day.)

So, first of all, as a point of information for a non-American: What's police SOP in such situations these days? Is it normal or even legal for the police in the US to do that kind of thing to any relative of any (presumed) killer? To intervene so massively in the entire neighborhood? Even if that killer is dead? I'm also wondering if his father, and his father's neighborhood, got the same day-long-siege treatment.

Repeat: The Newtown gunman was already known to be dead, and dead in Newtown. So the police in Hoboken were, by definition, not looking for a dangerous killer-on-the-loose. And as soon as they found Ryan alive there, they knew immediately that they were dealing with a misidentified innocent suspect.

[barracuda]

I'm not speaking casually or colloquially when I say you can't defame the dead. You can't. Legal impossibility. So not only do I have some doubt as to whether he was defamed by the media who reported that the killer was called that while under the impression that the killer was, per reliable sources, dead, I am 100 percent positive that he wasn't. I don't know whether that would apply to the cops and other authorities who named him while under the same impression. But it's some kind of excuse, at least.

Malice (actually malicious intent) isn't literally a necessary element of defamation, which is, btw, the one and only tort I know anything about.

I accept that without reservation. I only got as far in my researches as this article on Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., in which both malice and mens rea were mentioned. And I was only talking about the police here.

There was fault on the part of the police and other officials beyond fucking doubt. Are you kidding?

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) issued a set of guidelines to the police on this subject. The guidelines stated that the police should not generally provide the names of people under investigation to the media. If they do not actually identify the suspect, the police are allowed to give some details such as age, occupation or where the suspect is from.

The ACPO guidelines also state that once an individual has been charged then the police can and will identify them to the media, usually providing name, age and occupation. There are certain exceptions; for instance this applies to adults (see other articles for juveniles). The official release of this information will include details of the charge and subsequent court appearances.

In what it terms ‘exceptional circumstances’, the ACPO guidelines accept that police may release the name of a suspect prior to a charge, if it is in the public interest to do so.

http://www.inbrief.co.uk/media-law/medi ... spects.htm

So I'm throwing out the possibility that a case could be made that the release of the suspect's name served the public interest in this situation, especially if there was the consideration at any point in the investigation at which it was thought that there were two shooters and only one Lanza at the scene. And if that occurred at any juncture, then...

Moreover, when a media organisation has already discovered the suspect’s name through investigative journalism and seek confirmation of it, the police are permitted to confirm the name.

[compared2what?]

So I'm throwing out the possibility that a case could be made that the release of the suspect's name served the public interest in this situation, especially if there was the consideration at any point in the investigation at which it was thought that there were two shooters and only one Lanza at the scene. And if that occurred at any juncture, then...

Moreover, when a media organisation has already discovered the suspect’s name through investigative journalism and seek confirmation of it, the police are permitted to confirm the name.

Well. I thought of the latter of those two points and mostly rejected it on the grounds that he was probably named too soon for investigative journalists to have learned anything they were asking to have confirmed from anybody except the police. But also because even though it's possible that, Yost got a name from (let's say) the FBI off-the-record (and one of the most classical ways that term is employed is precisely to designate something "not for use in print but okay to use in your inquiries as you carry them forward") and then confirmed with the cops in Newtown, the thing is: It was the wrong name. And they can't possibly have a defense for confirming it to Yost before they'd confirmed it. Which they hadn't. Obviously. .

I didn't think of the two-shooters angle. Good point. But I think it runs into a variation of the same problem. If they acted in good faith in publicizing his name while under the impression that there were two shooters, they'd have to have had a damn good reason to think there were at the time they talked to Yost. And that one of them, Ryan Lanza, was at large.

But he was at work, right? Nobody was trying to find or contact him at that point. So nobody was acting as one would hope the police should do when under the impression that an armed and dangerous mass killer of children is on the loose. They were being kind of negligent about it, in fact.

Maybe I have the timing wrong. But I think they just fucked up. I really don't see how not, practically. When you name a suspect in a case like that with that kind of media blitz happening, you have to get it right. Period. It would be too consequential for the innocent person named otherwise. They had to know that was a concern.

[compared2what?]

The moment the police located Ryan Lanza in Hoboken -- when was that exactly (to the minute)? -- they knew he was not the dead gunman in the school in Newtown. They knew it instantly and without the slightest doubt, because Ryan was alive and well and 78 miles from the scene of the crime, as opposed to dead on the floor of the school with three guns and someone else's ID on his person. Simple. And Ryan had tweeted that he was at work, so presumably he had a watertight and instantly-verifiable alibi for the whole morning of the 14th.

The point being (in this case): The Newtown gunman was already known to be dead. By 09:45 at the latest.

So I'm wondering why they kept on searching Ryan Lanza's house all day and into the night, harrassing his roommates, searching for his girlfriend, disrupting the entire neighborhood and blocking off the street. (That they would take him personally into custody, investigate his personal apartment and maybe confiscate his personal computer is kind-of understandable. But it went much, much further than that. And it went on all day.)

Yikes. barracuda's two shooters defense is beginning to look a little better.

So, first of all, as a point of information for a non-American: What's police SOP in such situations these days? Is it normal or even legal for the police in the US to do that kind of thing to any relative of any (presumed) killer? To intervene so massively in the entire neighborhood? Even if that killer is dead? I'm also wondering if his father, and his father's neighborhood, got the same day-long-siege treatment.

That's much more the kind of thing that leads people correctly to say that it's pointless to sue the cops. They can usually get away with virtually anything no matter how much they shouldn't have been doing it as long as they can come up with some halfway-feeble investigative or law-enforcement justification. I mean, including shooting people sometimes. So yes. I think it is kind of SOP, most of the time. Or might as well be.

Examples are not springing to mind, though. There was something a little like that in the OJ Simpson case that ended up backfiring on them. But that wasn't your average run-of-the-mill case, defense-wise, obviously.

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ON EDIT: It's basically the public-interest factor. They have way too much latitude to do whatever the fuck they please, then claim it as a brave and noble act undertaken in the public interest. It's pretty much because there's not any very obvious way that applies to naming Ryan Lanza that I think they have a problem.

Whatever else was going on, they had no reason to think having a vigilante mob out looking for the second shooter was in the public interest, at that point. And if they thought he was out there and was the second shooter, that's what naming him would have accomplished.

[barracuda]

barracuda's two shooters defense is beginning to look a little better.

Yay! I mean, booooo!

...the police in Hoboken were, by definition, not looking for a dangerous killer-on-the-loose. And as soon as they found Ryan alive there, they knew immediately that they were dealing with a misidentified innocent suspect.

Not sure about this. Ryan and Adam could have had a relationship that had bearing on the crime. They may have had communications regarding the crime. There are any number of possible reasons for questioning him in detail, questioning neighbors, and searching the apartment in order to discover what his role was in the events of the day. Add to that the presence of at least two investigative units, the Jersey City Police and the FBI, and you have all the makings of a fully cordoned six-hour siege.

[Luther Blissett]

They could have suspected a network of dirty-bomb terrorism with Ryan Lanza as ringleader. It's difficult to know what kind of fantasies play out in the minds of law enforcement officers in modern times.

[compared2what?]

They could have suspected a network of dirty-bomb terrorism with Ryan Lanza as ringleader. It's difficult to know what kind of fantasies play out in the minds of law enforcement officers in modern times.

That's a better way to put it than I did.

They get away with a lot.

[Iamwhomiam]

Too tired tonight to reply at length. Much to say about your comments. G'nite.

[MacCruiskeen]

Whatever else was going on, they had no reason to think having a vigilante mob out looking for the second shooter was in the public interest, at that point.

Nor did they have any justification for laying siege to the entire neighborhood all day and into the night (hours after he'd been completely cleared). Nor did their laying siege to the entire neighborhood all day and into the night (hours after he'd been completely cleared) do anything whatsoever to protect Ryan Lanza from a vigilante mob. On the contrary. At least a few people must have been much more pissed-off at Ryan Lanza than they otherwise would have been. After all, they couldn't access their home or workplace or street, or only with difficulty. By the time night fell and the entire building was still yellow-taped and full of cops, at least a few local people must have been thinking, "That guy must have been involved in some way, otherwise the cops wouldn't still be laying siege to the neighborhood."

As I explicitly said -- and this is a reply to barracuda too -- I can understand why they would want to interview Ryan Lanza and search his apartment and computer: they'd want to check his communications with Adam and make sure they hadn't conspired or collaborated in any way. That's quite quickly & easily & inconspicuously done, though, and it certainly doesn't require laying siege to the entire neighborhood all day and into the night (hours after he'd been completely cleared - i.e., by about 2pm at the latest). Temporary protective custody also makes some kind of sense. But not this.

Yikes. barracuda's two shooters defense is beginning to look a little better.

I have no idea what that sentence means, nor even if it's meant seriously.

[barracuda]

I can easily envision a scenario in which the police had quickly and quietly spoken to Ryan Lanza only to later hear people say their lack of gusto and thoroughness was evidence of complicity. The cordoning of the neighborhood likely had as much to do with media presence as anything else.

But I think we both know that cops do whatever the fuck they want for as long as they feel like doing it in just about any situation imaginable, unfortunately.