Over at the Janesville Gazette, and The Week, Mike Heine reports that federal civil defendant Larry Meyer has offered settlement to Plaintiff, Steven Cvicker. The settlement involves Cvicker’s claim that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated at the time the Whitewater Police executed a search warrant of his business. Cvicker’s Fourth Amendment claim survived a summary judgment motion earlier in the year. I’ll summarize where the claim stands (settlement is not yet final).
Best quote from the Gazette:
UW-Whitewater Assistant Professor of Political Science Jolly Emrey said most harassment suits settle because it is the quickest and cheapest. Settling could also save the city embarrassment from what could happen at a jury trial, Emrey said.
Here is some — but perhaps not all — of the evidence regarding Meyer’s conduct in this matter, from published accounts:
“Expert Witness: Investigator Led Crusade Against Businessman.” (Meyer — named defendant in a federal civil suit.)
Former Assistant District Attorney Krueger signed an affidavit that Meyer destroyed evidence in the investigation of Cvicker’s business. (Krueger subsequently left for a position with the Attorney General in Madison.)
Larry Meyer’s career has been bad for the city, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Larry back together again. For every empty but strident defense from Chief Jim Coan, to all the support in the world from his friends in Elkhorn, one truth remains: Meyer is offering settlement on a federal lawsuit about a citizen’s Fourth Amendment rights. That’s no simple mistake — he’s settling on a constitutional claim. He will contend that he’s admitted no wrong-doing, but that’s whistling past the graveyard. Meyer would not likely have settled — not Meyer, nor any other excuse-making, self-justifying member of the Whitewater Police Department — if he’d been more confident of his conduct.
Wait — I thought that this was a completely, entirely, wholly, unquestionably professional force, etc., etc? That’s only a smattering of what Coan likely tells his officers — and insists to the world — about his department. He speaks about them the way a righteous man speaks about a saint. We’re a city of ordinary men and women, doing the best that we can in challenging times. Citizens are neither saints nor prophets; nor do I expect that ordinary people will turn water into wine. It’s shameful, risible, galling, and impious how Coan elevates his staff. Small wonder that they perform poorly: they’re unaccountable.
I come from a solid libertarian background, but I never imagined that I’d write about life in our small town. Watching and listening to Coan compelled me to write, as much as anything else. No morally serious, mature man could possibly accept Coan’s excuses, distortions, and rationalizations without exasperation. He rationalizes conduct the way a child does; a serious man or woman should not let that go by.
I have grown old in this beautiful city. I look at the family tradition behind me, and find myself astonished. My father, and paternal grandfather, read and wrote widely and well. The gap between those men and someone like Coan is a chasm. In the place of their skillful facility with Whitman and Whittier, Paine and Jefferson, Hayek and Friedman, Coan offers only unconvincing justifications in a poorly written newsletter. This city has conferred police power on a mendacious excuse-maker.
If Coan doesn’t like what I write, then he shouldn’t do what he does.
He’ll likely wash his hands of failed leadership again and again, but I’ll not refrain from pointing it out.
(Notes to reporter Mike Heine: Great work on these stories. You’re the only reporter willing to write seriously and professionally about these issues. Whitewater has no paper within the city willing to do the same. Otherwise, these stories would not have been in print, but only on FREE WHITEWATER. One minor quibble — The order of the federal magistrate in this case never said that Meyer conducted himself ‘appropriately.’ The magistrate said that Meyer had a qualified immunity regarding some claims, and possible liability under a Fourth Amendment claim. There is a difference between the basis for qualified immunity and ‘appropriate’ conduct; Meyer could be the beneficiary of the former without exhibiting the latter.)