A police officer who had a woman jailed for over two years on false charges in connection with a bogus sex-trafficking ring cannot be sued, a court confirmed last week, because she was acting under color of federal law—a puzzling reminder of the inverse relationship between power and accountability in government.
Hamdi Mohamud's legal woes stretch back quite a ways. As I wrote in 2021:
For years, St. Paul police officer Heather Weyker was swamped. She gathered evidence, cultivated witnesses, filled out the police reports, testified under oath—all in connection with an interstate sex trafficking ring run by Somali refugees. But perhaps most impressive is that she did all that while fabricating the same ring she was investigating, which resulted in 30 indictments, 9 trials, and 0 convictions.
