The Georgia officer responsible for killing a 1-year-old miniature donkey, HeeHaw, has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against him, claiming the body camera footage proves he "reasonably believed the donkey posed an imminent threat to a fellow officer." But even if it doesn't, the officer argues he is immune from liability. 

In the early morning hours of August 30, Hannah Michelle Israel was at her Cedartown home in western Georgia when she received a distressing phone call. A supervisor with the Cedartown Police Department "tersely informed [Israel] that a donkey on her property had been 'dispatched,'" according to her federal lawsuit. After some clarification, she learned that police had not only entered her enclosed private property in the middle of the night without permission while looking for a missing person, but also shot and killed her miniature donkey in the process. 

Israel immediately set out to search for her beloved pet, HeeHaw, only to find her bottle-raised donkey's lifeless body alone in her field. Israel told ABC7 News the incident has left her "traumatized and shocked." She continued, "I honestly can't even believe he's not here…There's no words."

Demanding accountability, Israel filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in September against the shooting officer, Officer Trenton Ryan Garner, for violating her Fourth Amendment rights and submitted a separate demand for $1 million from the City of Cedartown.  

Last week, Garner responded by asking the court to dismiss the case, arguing in part that he did not violate Israel's constitutional rights when he entered her property. Under the open fields doctrine, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in one's pastureland, even if enclosed. Further, the motion argues, exigent circumstances existed in the search for a missing 12-year-old girl. 

As far as HeeHaw is concerned, Garner claims he acted reasonably by using deadly force and argues the footage clearly shows HeeHaw "charging" and posing an "imminent threat to a fellow officer." 

However, the footage, posted by the Civil Rights Lawyer Raw, may not be so clear-cut. Garner's body camera was off at the time of the shooting but had a "rolling buffer of video," a recording without audio of the 30 seconds preceding activation of the camera, according to court documents. During the silent portion, two officers and a bloodhound are in front of Garner with flashlights in a dark field. A small donkey, roughly 3 feet tall, appears and slowly moves toward one of the officers. The officer backs away slowly, but the donkey moves closer and picks up speed. Garner pulls his gun and fires. The donkey turns and runs before falling over.

Whether Garner reasonably believed HeeHaw posed an imminent threat to his fellow officer may be up for debate.

When the audio kicks in, a fellow officer asks, "Why'd you shoot it up?" "I don't know," Garner responds rather nonchalantly before telling dispatch he had to shoot a donkey because "it was trying to attack." If another officer on the scene wasn't sure why Garner used deadly force, perhaps the decision wasn't so reasonable after all. 

In her lawsuit, Israel accuses Garner of needlessly killing HeeHaw "maliciously…and recklessly, with deliberate indifference…for [Israel's] constitutional rights." The suit continues: "No reasonable officer in…Garner's position would have believed that such force was necessary or justified." 

But whether Garner acted reasonably or not by shooting HeeHaw, qualified immunity may still shield him from accountability. Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that protects government actors from lawsuits alleging rights violations, unless the right is clearly established. In practice, that means plaintiffs must be able to point to a previous court ruling in a case with the same circumstances to show that the right was obvious to government officials. 

The bar can be quite high to show a right is clearly established. For example, in March, the Supreme Court reversed a 2nd Circuit decision in a case involving an officer who was sued for using a rear wristlock to arrest a protester. The 2nd Circuit denied qualified immunity, reasoning that a previous case from 2004 clearly established that rear wristlocks used to arrest anti-abortion protesters constitute excessive force. But the Court disagreed, stressing that "principles stated generally, such as that 'an officer may not use reasonable and excessive force,' do not suffice." 

And while there may be ample cases involving officers shooting pet dogs, cases involving miniature donkeys are in short supply. If the court finds that there is no clearly established rule that specifically prohibits officers from shooting a miniature donkey moving toward a fellow officer in the dark, the court may end up dismissing the case and sidestepping both the reasonableness and constitutional questions entirely.

The post Georgia Cop Who Shot a Miniature Donkey Says Body Camera Footage Shows an 'Imminent Threat' appeared first on Reason Magazine.

​Three Charlotte cops have resigned and three more are facing termination after a Flock probe uncovered a text chain littered with racist messages, religious and sexual bias and a reported competition over who could arrest the most black people.

The group chat came to light after Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) officer Seth Elliott was caught using Flock's database to out an undercover cop to his drug dealer friend, which sparked an investigation by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (NCSBI).

When questioned by the NCSBI, Elliott, who has since resigned, admitted he ran the plate but denied knowing that it belonged to an undercover officer. He told agents that his friend had reached out to ask if Elliott could help identify a strange person hanging out around his father's business, so Elliott ran the plate through Flock's database.​ According to reporting from the Watauga Democrat, the NCSBI arrested Elliott in July and charged him with " illegally accessing a government computer, a Class 1 misdemeanor."

During its investigation into Elliott, the NCSBI downloaded data from his phone, which it turned over to the CMPD, where a subsequent review uncovered the racist text thread. ​According to anonymous sources who spoke to Charlotte's WBTV, the group chat included "numerous uses of the 'n-word' related to use of force and discharging firearms at black residents," and a competition to see who could arrest the most black people. In one text reportedly written by a member of the group, an officer said, "Our texts sound like a clan [sic] rally," according to a message reviewed by WCNC Charlotte, a local NBC affiliate. At a press conference on Thursday, CMPD Police Chief Estella Patterson said that an independent chain-of-command board unanimously voted for the officers' termination. Three have already resigned and the other three she "hopes to refer to as former employees."

The fallout won't end there. Every case these officers touched could now be called into question, and for good reason. In Giglio v. United States (1972), the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors must disclose information that could undermine the credibility of a government witness or law enforcement officer. Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather will have to examine the messages and determine whether their word as witnesses can still be trusted. Depending on his decision, this could lead to dropped cases and challenges to prior convictions.

Defense attorney Tim Emery weighed in, telling WBTV that the officers' "credibility is severely questioned and compromised," and that the district attorney's office should consider halting cases in which the officers were heavily involved.

Police abuse of Flock and other automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) is not new. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, has cataloged over 200 instances of ALPR abuse at the hands of the police since 2018. In the last year alone, officers have been caught using ALPRs for everything from pursuing personal grudges to stalking exes and romantic interests. This time, the victim of Flock misuse was an undercover officer rather than a civilian.

The post 3 Charlotte Cops Resign After Group Chat Reveals Competition To Arrest the Most Black People appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Imagine getting a bill from your local government for $900,000 because they see a greenhouse on your property and just assume you're growing marijuana without a permit.

Imagine government demanding $400,000 because you didn't know to fill out a single-page form.

Or you get slapped with a $100,000 fine for parking your car on your own property.

It sounds absurd, but as my newest video shows, that's really happening.

How can that be? Doesn't America's Constitution say government may not impose "excessive fines"?

It happens because some bureaucrats, savoring their power, act like tyrants.

At least now there is hope for a remedy. One of these excessive fine cases has reached the Supreme Court.

Ken Jouppi worked as a pilot in Alaska for 30 years, until one day, state troopers stopped his plane before takeoff.

"I didn't think we had anything to hide," he says. "They searched the airplane, opened up this lady's boxes of groceries and found beer."

Transporting beer. That was his crime.

"Isn't beer legal in America?" I ask Jouppi's lawyer, Mike Greenberg.

"In most places," he replies. But some towns in Alaska ban beer.

Jouppi was convicted of bootlegging.

Every pilot must know which town has what rule, and search everybody?

"They think pilots should search people's luggage," says Jouppi. "It was such a terrible thing to do to another individual, invade their privacy, and assault their dignity….I just didn't feel right about doing that."

Alaskan officials say the beer was visible, so Jouppi should have known about it. They jailed him for three days and seized his plane.

"That airplane was my primary source of income," says Jouppi. "Without it, I didn't have a business anymore."

I assumed such excessive punishment would be dismissed quickly by a court. But it wasn't.

"Jouppi has been fighting to keep his plane for 14 years," says Greenberg. "The plane is still sitting on a tarmac….It's a ludicrous situation where the state has every interest in going after valuable assets rather than actually fighting supposed harms of alcohol."

Greenberg's law firm, the Institute for Justice, took Jouppi's case, and now the U.S. Supreme Court will hear it.

I hope he wins. It's just wrong when governments destroy lives for small mistakes.

They're also doing that to Tuncay Saydam, a retired professor.

The IRS demands he pay $400,000 because he didn't know to fill out a one-page form about an old bank account in his native Turkey.

"The fines," says Saydam, "will destroy my life….We have never been rich."

His unpaid tax is less than $30,000. But the IRS demands he pay them more than $400,000. A California court upheld that penalty. Northern Californian Chief Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu wrote, "Government suffered a significant tax loss."

Finally, bureaucrats in Humboldt County, California, took aerial photos of people's property to search for unlicensed marijuana farms.

When they saw greenhouses, they fined property owners.

Blu Graham was fined $900,000, "$30,000 a day, when all I've ever done is grow vegetables in my greenhouses."

"There actually was no marijuana on the property!" says Greenberg. "They were just guessing that if you built a greenhouse, this must be connected to marijuana."

Finally, a lawsuit got the county to promise to end its ruinous fine system.

But it took four years.

Why do governments fight to keep outrageous fines that punish largely innocent people?

"Unlike other forms of punishment," says Greenberg, "fines make the government money. The prosecutor's office, state troopers, they get to keep the proceeds. It's an abusive system because they have every incentive to continue to prosecute."

I invited the heavy-fining judges and government lawyers to appear in my video to explain these fines. None would agree to talk about it.

Bureaucrats always want more money. It's a reason the Constitution prohibits excessive fines.

I trust that the Supreme Court will put a stop to these abuses.

COPYRIGHT 2026 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

The post How Local Governments Turn Minor Violations Into Financial Ruin appeared first on Reason Magazine.