(Derek Wood)- Police officers don’t have to conduct a reasonable investigation or have probable cause in order to arrest you, says the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
Apparently, if a person alleges you sexually assaulted them, cops, or in this particular case, SWAT, can storm your residence in the middle of the night, drag you out of your home in your underwear on a cold night, and arrest you based on circumstantial allegations.

Meet Kenneth Lahm. He sued the town of Tilton, and Police Officer Michael Farrington, for wrongfully arresting him on a charge of 2nd degree assault. Allegations of drugging a woman, who woke up naked with bruises and burns in his bed and possibly sexually assaulting her
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These charges were later dropped by prosecutors, once Lahm hired his own investigators, that proved him innocent of any wrong-doing.

Again, Kenneth, just didn’t get these charges dropped out of nowhere. He had to hire professionals, something that if this particular cop had actually conducted a reasonable investigation, would have found himself. But they didn’t.

Lahm’s investigators did actual police work and here’s what they found. According to the Union Leader:

Lahm hired investigators who talked with two employees at the Concord bar who saw both the woman and Lahm. They said, as always, Lahm had no alcohol to drink and the woman was not intoxicated.
A clerk at a convenience store where they stopped before going to Lahm’s house said both entered the store, were obviously comfortable with each other and that the woman bought condoms and said she and Lahm were going to have a “good night” or something similar

. Lahm’s neighbors saw the woman outside the house at least twice during the three days she was allegedly unconscious, once when Lahm and her set off fireworks, which the neighbors watched, and once when the woman went to the neighbor’s house to retrieve Lahm’s dog that had got loose.

A medical doctor friend of Lahm’s said he spoke with the woman by phone about her injuries and she told him she had accidentally fallen onto a wood stove

. And the woman’s prior boyfriend of two years described a volatile relationship that involved Concord police five or six times, and said the woman was “an habitual liar” who “tried to get him arrested, in Concord, several times.”

After being cleared in this matter, Kenneth wanted some justice. He was publicly humiliated, accumulated lawyer fees, and other defense costs. Kenneth had his day in court and here’s how the Supreme Court of New Hampshire ruled. Union Leader:

The court said if it were to extend the scope of a police officer’s duty to investigate beyond establishing probable cause prior to arrest, liability would be unduly and indefinitely extended for police officers.

“Such an extension of liability is at odds with the well-established doctrines of probable cause and official immunity,” the court said. The court said the U.S. Supreme Court has noted the standard of probable cause to arrest “like those for searches and seizures, represents a necessary accommodation between the individual’s right to liberty and the state’s duty to control crime.” The court, citing Everitt vs. General Electric Co., said the public cannot afford for law enforcement personnel to have their judgment shaded out of fear of subsequent lawsuits or to have their energies otherwise deflected by litigation.

“Because many situations which confront officers in the course of executing their duties are more or less ambiguous, room must be allowed for some mistakes on their part. But the mistakes must be those of reasonable men, acting on facts leading sensibly to their conclusions of probability. The rule of probable cause is a practical, nontechnical conception affording the best compromise that has been found for accommodating these often opposing interests. Requiring more would unduly hamper law enforcement. To allow less would be to leave law-abiding citizens at the mercy of the officers’ whim or caprice,” the court said.

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