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SIEG HEIL!!!

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A video showing LMPD officers detaining and frisking customers at Cahoots, a bar on Bardstown Road, is making the Internet rounds.

The video -- shot Tuesday night by someone inside the bar -- allegedly shows a LMPD officer telling patrons and employees to sit down, stay there, and wait to be frisked. The video had more than 12,000 views on YouTube in less than 24 hours.

"Show of hands, who has something on them that they shouldn't have?" asked the officer, who then announced they were going to pat down every customer before they would be allowed to leave.

"We're going to start over here in this corner," he said. "We're going to work our way around, and if we go by, if you're clean, you get to go out the front door."

LMPD said they were assisting the Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) office of metro government, and that it isn't their case, but the raid had something to do with the establishment's liquor license. Calls to Alcoholic Beverage Control went unanswered.

Louisville attorney Thomas Clay is not associated with the case, but provided some legal insight into what is seen in the video. He says by frisking patrons without probable cause, officers broke the law.

"It appears the actions of one of the officers -- who clearly had the word "police" labeled across the back of his shirt -- were illegal and unconstitutional," said Clay.

Clay said that if the raid was an ABC case and liquor license related, all police could do is ask customers to show I.D. and prove they are of the legal age to drink. If police believed there was illegal activity taking place at the establishment, Clay says a search warrant would have been necessary.

"They would have to go to a judge and seek a search warrant, they would have to establish probable cause that criminal activity was going on at these premises," said Clay. "That's what should have been done if they wanted to search these patrons."

Police did not say how many arrests were made.

Copyright 2014 WDRB News. All Rights Reserved.

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Hell, every GI on Fort Knox knows to stay off of Bardstown Road. Back in the '70s, Bardstown Road was the Whorehouse Annex to Fort Knox and most of those places were off limits.

I don't know the law in Kentucky, but our ABC raids don't involve frisking, unless we feel the need to do a Terry frisk. Kentucky law might be different.

Louisville attorney Thomas Clay is not associated with the case

Clay ins't associated with the case, but her feels a need to run his mouth about something he's not associated with. Just another lawyer getting his name in the paper.

Clay said that if the raid was an ABC case and liquor license related, all police could do is ask customers to show I.D. and prove they are of the legal age to drink. If police believed there was illegal activity taking place at the establishment, Clay says a search warrant would have been necessary.

Does Clay know that they didn't have a search warrant? No, he doesn't, (he's not associated with the case, remember?) But, he knows that they need a warrant. Guess what, dumbass, when we did a bar raid, we always had a warrant, covering "all persons and property at the listed address". Of course, Clay doesn't know that. He's not associated with the case, remember? He's just another lawyer running his mouth about something that he knows nothing about.

And, of course, SKB will put it on the forum.

From further info not in this article, it appears there was no warrant. Bardstown Road is not what it was in the 70s or 80s. It is a hipster and tourist locale, these days. In other words, they are messing with "white people with money." I don't think this is going to end well for Metro.

skb12172 wrote:From further info not in this article, it appears there was no warrant. Bardstown Road is not what it was in the 70s or 80s. It is a hipster and tourist locale, these days. In other words, they are messing with "white people with money." I don't think this is going to end well for Metro.

In that case, they need their dicks whacked. It's too easy to get a warrant beforehand. The way you do that is simple. 1) ABC runs the operation. 2) ABC evolves information that illegal activity is going on in the bar. 3) ABC articulates said information on a warrant application and takes it to a friendly judge. 4) After the warrant is signed, ABC teams with local agencies to conduct the raid. Normally, we'd take local police, probation and parole officers, juvenile detectives, Military Police (in case you had to process GIs), the Fire Marshall, and the Health inspector. Maybe a couple of K-9 officers.

About a half-hour before the raid, everyone meets at a rally point. You send two plainclothes officers (a male and female) in the bar to find a place and get comfortable. Pay the cover, buy a drink. At H-hour, they move to the restrooms to lock them down as the raid team goes through the door. You don't want the patrons flushing contraband, and they'll try, Lord, how they'll try.

The lead ABC officer gives the barkeep a copy of the warrant. The local police control the crowd while the probation officers look for their clientele (who ain't supposed to be there), the health inspector does his thing, the K-9s look for dope, etc, etc. You'll normally find dope hear the bandstand. And, every gal in the place suddenly has an urge to urinate. Amazing.

After you've checked everything you leave. If the bar is reasonably clean, you remind the barkeep that closing time is 2:00 a.m. If the bar is being run wrongly, the Fire Marshall and ABC in cooperation with the Health Inspector, shut it down.

And that's the way you do a bar raid. Simple, no? The last one I was on, I was on the entry team, and when we came through the door, we noticed a three-year-old sitting a the bar, drinking Pepsi from a sippy cup and coloring in a coloring book. That was a very interesting raid. We took the dope out of there in a bushel basket, and we wrote over 200 juvenile citations. In a bar raid. Very interesting night.

Jesus H. Christ…did I say you should write a book? You should write several. Yeah, this wasn't that. In fact, now that the light of day is shining, nobody seems to know anything, nobody ordered anything, and no officers admit to being there. I just can't WAIT to find out which Barney Fife is behind this FUBAR.

It doesn't always work out like that raid I described above. Back in the 90s I went on one in a very rural area. Basic redneck bar. Gravel parking lot, and piney-woods behind it.

We sent in the pisser-team a male deputy and a female probation officer. They went in to get their drink. What we didn't know was that a young state trooper was in the band, playing bass guitar. He looks up from the band-stand and sees the pisser team come in. He was initially amused, thinking that the two of them were slipping off for a little adult entertainment, beyond the reach of their spouses. He told us later that when they got up and headed for the rest rooms, he knew what was really happening, and quietly played his bass guitar until the entry team came through the door.

What did we find? Not a damned thing. Bunch of 30-something rednecks out for a Saturday night of dancing. The food area was spotlessly clean, the bar was well run, and the fire marshal found all his fire extinguishers. No citations whatsoever. So, we all went out into the parking lot, divested ourselves of the duty gear and went back inside to have a drink. About half of us drove the county cars home drunk, but I believe that the statute of limitations has prescribed on that,, so we're safe. Nice clean, well run bar. It later became a police hangout, and the clientele suffered.

So, what was the PC for the raid on the redneck bar?

I'm a bit curious about being able to search a person, on the basis of his being in a business, as a customer.

If they'd bothered to establish PC, they'd likely have had the wits to go the rest of the way, run it by a judge, and get a Constitutional permission slip.

Perhaps everyone was sick the day they covered that in the academy.

As PawPaw outlined, doing it right is eminently doable, and not particularly hard to plan, provided you're actually making cases and trying to do the job, rather than just counting on the Reggie Hammond/Jack Cates school of redneck rousting to enable a fishing expedition.

Which one this case was will soon become apparent, and having been helpfully already YouTubed, somebody's spending some time at home thinking about things, at some point, if they came up short in the planning department.
And if there was no warrant, and no PC, just about anyone arrested or cited is going to walk, followed by filing a suit. So the taxpayers will pay at both ends of this, as usual, unless it turns out they did it right by the numbers.

A helpful solution would be if the raid planning supervisor(s) was put on half pay until his/her salary deductions matched the final compensatory damages paid, or give them the option to select being fired for cause right away.

And now, some appropriate music.

BDK wrote:So, what was the PC for the raid on the redneck bar?

I'm a bit curious about being able to search a person, on the basis of his being in a business, as a customer.

Did I mention that it was a rural area? Well, after we'd made some cases at the black bars in town (good cases, lots of violations), the local ACLU chapter complained to the judge that we were only hitting black bars, so the judge called ABC and told him we needed to hit some white bars.

So, the PC in this case wasn't so much Probable Cause as it was Politically Correct. We'd never search people, unless we independently evolved Probable Cause on the person. These raids were more a matter of licensing, fire codes, food health, etc. However, if we saw some dumbass emptying his pockets, we'd wander over and see what he was losing.

PawPaw wrote: Well, after we'd made some cases at the black bars in town (good cases, lots of violations), the local ACLU chapter complained to the judge that we were only hitting black bars, so the judge called ABC and told him we needed to hit some white bars.

So, the PC in this case wasn't so much Probable Cause as it was Politically Correct. We'd never search people, unless we independently evolved Probable Cause on the person. These raids were more a matter of licensing, fire codes, food health, etc. However, if we saw some dumbass emptying his pockets, we'd wander over and see what he was losing.

Reminds me of the time at the Blue Lite Inn in Natchez, LA, when all the reserve deputies showed up to a "man with a gun" call............
Dear God, I do love this bar.