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Old 12-18-2007, 10:34 AM   #19 (permalink)
snowy
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Location: Oregon
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jazz
The City of Minneapolis has sovereign immunity. They can't be sued for things like this, just like they can't be sued for car accidents involving their squad cars. Any forthcoming lawsuit is going to have to make a claim that falls outside of that immunity.
Municipalities aren't covered under sovereign immunity.
Quote:
Unlike a state, a county or municipality can't claim sovereign immunity even if they share some of the state's Constitutionally defined power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity

Furthermore, tort claims can be filed against the officers who were responsible for knocking the man's door down.

We've got a similar brouhaha going on here in my town, though much less violent. My city is going through a big review of its police department's practices in regards to pretexted traffic stops performed to catch DUI. One officer in particular had performed hundreds of pretext stops, with only about a 50% success rate. His name had become a byword in this town for DUI arrest; he even arrested a good friend of mine for not signaling quickly enough. The officer in question did the same last spring to a young man who was in fact sober and serving as the DD for his wife and friends. The officer still arrested him for DUI, under suspicion of marijuana use (same thing he did to my friend, btw). The city is now facing a tort claim filed by the wrongly arrested man, because DUI arrests, under Oregon law, cannot be expunged from a person's arrest record. Given that this officer had about a 50% success rate in his DUI arrests, that leaves a significant number of people with DUI permanently on their records. Needless to say, a lot of people came out of the woodwork very quickly, and the officer in question resigned.
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