About a year ago the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that your response to a crooked cop barging into your home should be to roll over and play dead. 

This idea that police can go where they want, when they want, for good reason or ill -- or none at all -- could be tested in Iowa.

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In Des Moines, Cynthia King and Tavius King cohabited. No other relationship is noted. Cynthia and Tavius fell out, and she booted him from the apartment. Tavius called the cops, proved he once lived there,  and wanted them to help him get his clothes.  Cynthia came out, announced that this no-good ex-cohabiter was not coming back into her home, and slammed the door, giving one of the police officers an owie.

 The door hit Officer Greg Trimble’s hand and foot as he tried to keep it open and avoid it from hitting him, police said.


A little later she unlocked the door and was cuffed up, charged with interfering with official acts and assaulting a cop.


Sounds to me like the wrong person went to jail, but maybe that's just my notorious Fourth Amendment crankery. Sounds to me like Officer Greg got excited, assaulted the door and, by extension, Cynthia who was in intimate contact with it. Sounds to me like...


--The cops had no warrant to invade Cynthia's home.


--No "hot pursuit" exception to the Fourth Amendment existed because no crime had been committed, or even alleged.


--Some cop public relations REMF has a lot of trouble with kinetic concepts. Most of us will have trouble with the idea that Greg was trying to hold the door open without making contact with it.


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It's a ham-and-egg case, and perhaps Cynthia will pay the two dollars. If so, too bad. It would be nice to see this one hashed out in an atmosphere of Constitutional concern