Judge Warns Of 'Lawlessness' In Trump's DC Policing Takeover

In dismissing a gun case due to an illegal search, the judge declared that “lawlessness cannot come from the government.”

WASHINGTON — A search so blatantly illegal that a “high school student” would know it violated the Constitution.

That’s how a federal magistrate judge described the search of a Washington, D.C., man who was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm last week during President Donald Trump’s takeover of the city’s police force. The man, Torez Riley, who is Black, was headed into a Trader Joe’s grocery store when local cops stopped him to look through his bag, backed by a group of federal law enforcement agents.

The judge, Zia M. Faruqui, said from the bench in D.C. federal court Monday that the police had no reason to stop Riley — except for the color of his skin. Faruqui said he was dismissing the case, calling it “absolutely maddening,” and had some savage words for the way Trump has taken over local law enforcement in the nation’s capital.

“The Sixth Amendment doesn’t get thrown out the window because the government has decided to make a show of arresting people,” said Faruqui, referring to the amendment that outlines basic rights in criminal proceedings.

Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C. on Aug. 11 and asserted control over the city’s Metropolitan Police Department, despite violent crime in the district recently hitting a 30-year low. Since then, agents from the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service, the FBI and other federal agencies have been teaming up with local police to make arrests and, in many cases, detain immigrants for deportation.