Fantastic thread breaking down in plain language why the Portland detentions so fundamentally violate the 4th Amendment. Most striking is that it highlights fed officials giving the same unlawful explanations that Philly detectives have given for decades. https://twitter.com/AndrewMCrespo/status/1285738001004482561

In the 70s, 80s, 90s and even early 2000s, the Philly PD Homicide Division routinely detained people whom they thought were witnesses to murders. They kept them for hours, sometimes days.

It was hardly a secret. The Homicide Division headquarters was known to criminal defense and civil rights lawyers as the "Homicide Hotel."

The point, of course, was to coerce witnesses into giving statements identifying the detectives' main suspects.

It's bad policing, of course, and is a big part of the story underlying the @philadao's multiple recent exonerations of defendants who spent decades in prison based on the say-so of witnesses who had been essentially kidnapped by police.

But here's the thing: some of those Philly cops got prosecuted. By the FEDS.

And when I read @AndrewMCrespo's thread about the dystopian nightmare in Portland, that's what sticks in my mind. The FEDERAL government, which is supposed to vindicate FEDERAL constitutional rights in policing is here just throwing that all away. /end