Sunday, June 19: The A.D.D. Detective
NO FILM at 11
by Leigh Lundin
Government authorities want the right to spy on you, but they don’t want you to record them. Some officials claim public scrutiny is espionage, even hinting at terrorism and criminal mischief. Indeed, the Cook County State Attorney’s office now wraps itself in the cloak of homeland security for the most trivial of arrests.
75 Years for Recording Officials
Take Michael Allison, a backyard mechanic fighting Code Enforcement for the right to fix cars in his backyard. For his hearing, he asked for but was denied a court reporter. To obtain a permanent record, he informed the court he’d record it himself. Judge Kimbara Harrell ordered Allison arrested for violating her right to privacy.
If convicted, this man with no criminal record could be sentenced up to 75 years in prison, effectively a life sentence. He could have committed murder and been sentenced to a fraction of the time.
George Mason University’s Mercatus Center rates Illinois next to the bottom in personal freedom. In 2008 alone, the state arrested more than 2% of its population for victimless crimes.
It comes as no surprise Illinois leads the retreat in reversing constitutional liberties, twisting a law meant to safeguard the people against overreaching government, protecting the rotten heartwood of power from examination by its citizens. Illinois aggressively prosecutes citizens who attempt to record public servants in the supposed performance of duties. Little wonder the state with a police commander imprisoned for years of torturing suspects and a series of indicted governors detests transparency.
A University of Chicago Law School study found 10,000 complaints filed against Chicago police in a two-year period, 40% more than the national average. Of those 10,000 complaints, only 19 resulted in significant discipline and in 85% of the complaints, the police department cleared the accused officer without troubling to interview him. That year of the study, officers in the elite Special Operations Unit were convicted of a number of crimes including physical abuse, robbery and theft, and conspiracy and planning to murder. Meanwhile, the state arrests citizens who attempt to document abuses of authority.
Take Tiawanda Moore who, after being groped by a policeman, was arrested when she tried to report the sexual violation to Chicago Police Internal Affairs. As they tried to dissuade her from filing a report, in her frustration she began recording them. She’s now in jail with the possibility of a fifteen-year sentence while the person who groped her remains free.
More often, the state arrests and initiates prosecution of photojournalists and videographers, only to settle at the last moment in an apparent effort to avoid a Supreme Court challenge. This technique is used and abused in many ways, but the idea is to stop just short of a court ruling that might get the laws thrown out.
One Giant Step Back for Mankind
Video and cell phone cameras are credited with underpinning fledgling democracy movements in the Middle East and exposing government abuses. In the US and the UK, you find lawmakers, prosecuting attorneys, and law enforcement who want the opposite– they don’t want to be caught on film and they’re taking steps to see the public can’t record their actions.
| In our CB world, although crime literature may be rife with examples of cops who break the law, lawmen remain our heroes. Let me explain: I hope Lance Armstrong didn’t take drugs like his outed buddy claims. If it’s proved Armstrong used steroids and my respect drops to zero, that doesn’t mean I dislike the Tour de France, only cheaters. Likewise, a disdain of bad cops only increases respect for good officers forced to deal with adversity from within and without. |
Although I speak a lot about cops, this really isn’t about lawmen. It’s more about the failure of lawmakers. It’s about a failure to protect civil liberties. Many times an A/V record is the only way either police or citizens can prove what happened, and the ability to make one’s case shouldn’t reside solely with authorities. Often, police aren’t aware of laws regarding filming and recording. We can’t simply blame police, because citizens are just as unknowing or naïve.
These issues aren’t unique. Recently, Russia dismissed a quarter of its police forces during polygraphed corruption investigations while Mexico dismissed a tenth of its federal police force. It’s not clear how these numbers compare to Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, or Smudgepot, Florida, but corruption scandals occur in any city where public light fails to shine in the rat holes and dark corners of society. Just ask Philadelphia.
Some civil libertarians wish to push the issue into a test by the Supreme Court, believing the Court will rule in favor of the First Amendment. I’m not so sanguine. I cannot think of a single case in which the Scalia-Thomas-Alito trifecta has upheld individual liberties against the whims of the state. Even in the recent children-aren’t-miniature-adults Miranda ruling, Chief Justice Roberts joined the trio arguing children don’t deserve special consideration.
Decisions by the Supreme Court are difficult to reverse. Most people don’t realize Dred Scott is still on the books; SCOTUS has never repudiated let alone reversed its ruling. Good or bad, once they make a decision, it’s pretty much cast in stone.
As Memorial Day wound down, 22-year-old Raymond Herisse, who had a lengthy felony record, including fourteen arrests involving drug possession, driving without a valid license, and missing court dates, jumped the light at a traffic stop, striking although not injuring a police officer. Chase ensued and minutes later, the unarmed man was shot to death as police pumped more than a hundred rounds into his Hyundai. Four passers-by were wounded in the hail of gunfire and reports say three police officers may also have been injured in ‘friendly fire‘.
Even more startling, police turned their weapons on bystanders, smashing cameras and video phones, and locking several citizens in nylon cuffs. Police also seized the news camera of Channel 10 ABC affiliate, WPLG.
The public wouldn’t have any record of this incident except for Narces Benoit and his girlfriend, Ericka Davis. After they recorded the shootout, a police officer rushed their car, pointing a pistol at their heads, demanding they stop recording and exit their vehicle. Other police aimed weapons at the couple and threw them to the ground. One officer shouted “You want to be ƒ-ing paparazzi?” and smashed their cell phone on the pavement.
Police cuffed and photographed the couple before taking them to headquarters for interrogation. During a moment when police were distracted, Benoit, a car stereo technician, managed to extract the SIMM card from his ruined phone and secret it in his mouth throughout his ‘interview’. That hidden card contained this video. Miami Beach Police now demand Benoit and Davis turn the SIMM card over to them as evidence.
Three days after the fatal shooting, Police Chief Carlos Noriega announced investigators ‘found’ a pistol in the trunk of Herisse’s car, prompting a local radio wag to comment "A spokesman announced they will discover gunshot residue later this week." Video gadfly Carlos Miller agreed, "Perhaps police will find spent shell casings by the weekend."
Hard to believe Tom Cruise is still a box office draw, but the guy who killed Mission Impossible’s Mr. Phelps is in Fort Lauderdale filming the musical, Rock of Ages, based upon the 1980’s music scene starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, and Mary J. Blige. The film company hired off-duty police as enforcers to ‘protect their privacy’.
Without consulting Lauderdale officials or even a lawyer, police erected barriers and misspelled signs that referenced a non-applicable ordinance, and began writing tickets against photojournalists, even a photographer snapping photos from a public garage. “They’re rewriting the laws as they see fit,” said a photojournalist who asked to remain anonymous.
We like to think cops are the good guys and Plantation Police proved that when Broward County Deputy Paul Pletcher committed a sort of armed robbery. For reasons which aren’t clear, Pletcher activated his patrol car’s flashers and pulled over two women after giving them the finger, shouting racial slurs, and yelling at them to go back where they came from. Although armed and driving a Pompano Beach patrol car, Pletcher was not on duty.
During the stop, Pletcher noticed one of the women recording him. When he demanded her BlackBerry, she placed it in her purse, and the purse in the center console. Deputy Pletcher locked his forearm across her throat and snatched her purse from the vehicle. When the frightened women followed the officer’s orders to pull into a bank parking lot, Pletcher pulled away with her purse.
After a bank security guard dialed 911, Plantation Police responded. They found the phone broken but were able to download video, confirming the women’s story and the deputy’s identity. Broward State Attorney’s Office is investigating.
Elsewhere Across the Nation
Florida and Illinois are hardly alone.
Albuquerque, New Mexico. KOB-TV newswoman Cristina Rodda was in the parking lot of the Tumbleweed Club reporting on drug activity. Off-duty officer Stephanie Lopez, in the employ of the nightclub, confiscated the television camera. Instead of turning it into her precinct, which is normally required at end of an officer’s shift, Lopez kept the camera over the weekend, deleting relevant footage. Four weeks later, possibly because of a demand by the club, Lopez filed trespassing charges against the television reporter. (The link requires stepping through two pages to view the article.)
Boston, Massachusetts. Simon Glik was born in the Soviet Union but, thirsting for freedom, he immigrated to the US and became a Massachusetts-licensed lawyer. He witnessed and videotaped officers roughing up and then arresting a man in that cradle of American independence, Boston Common. Noticing that Glik was recording them, they charged him with disturbing the peace, felony wiretapping, and aiding the escape of a prisoner although the arrestee did not escape and Glik offered no resistance. Glik sued for false arrest and violation of his 1st and 4th Amendment rights. The officers moved to dismiss, arguing ‘qualified immunity’, implying they didn’t know public recording was legal, therefore saying ignorance of the law is an excuse.
Buffalo, New York. A K9 officer threatened "If you take my picture again, I’m going to ƒ-ing break your face. That’s not as a police officer, but as a person." Except that he wasn’t a ‘person’, but a fully armed police officer in a public plaza.
Las Vegas, Nevada. In separate incidents, police attempted to halt filming in public locations. Police detained a woman for one hour, less interested in her openly carried pistol and more concerned about her camera as she videotaped a traffic stop from a public sidewalk. Earlier, a Vegas policeman broke the nose and possibly ribs of a videographer in front of his own house, then charged the man with obstruction of justice and battery upon an officer, apparently with his nose. Fortunately, the district attorney realized the facts and dismissed charges. It’s unclear if Officer Derek Colling will be investigated.
Los Angeles, California. A security guard in a public park across from Union Station ordered professional photographer Neil Kremer not to film. Kremer specializes in high dynamic range imaging, and rather than risk further confrontation, he packed up and departed. Had he bothered to call, it’s entirely possible a police officer might have backed Kremer’s right to film.
SeaTac, Washington. South of Seattle, a couple reported their car stolen, not realizing their daughter and another girl were joyriding in it. The girls were arrested and taken to SeaTac jail. Perhaps already irritated by the girls’ "real lippy" attitude, 6’2 two-hundred pound Deputy Paul Schene beat the complainant’s daughter in a holding cell after she kicked off her tennis shoes upon his instruction. He kicked her, flung her into the concrete wall, threw her to the floor, and while he and another deputy sat on her, delivered two more "overhand blows" as she was being handcuffed. Attorney Anne Bremner argues the jailhouse video violates Deputy Schene’s privacy and only serves to "inflame public opinion." Schene sought treatment for a "blood filled pocket" at Auburn General Hospital, although video analysis by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer suggests his injury was caused by his shin striking the metal toilet as he shoved the girl into the wall.
Wailuku, Hawaii. A star-struck police officer struck a star reporter after the news writer was assaulted by Dog the Bounty Hunter‘s wife and Sonny Westbrook. Tommy Russo had left the Maui Times office and crossed the parking lot where he found the Dog’s entourage next to his car. Westbrook snatched Russo’s phone and slammed him in the teeth. When Russo tried to call 911, Beth Mrs. Dog Chapman began yelling, drowning out the call. When MPD officers arrived and Russo began filming again, Officer Nelson Johnson told him he was ‘antagonizing’ and seized Russo’s phone, hit him open-handed in the face, and painfully wrenched his arm behind his back. Johnson claimed Russo’s rights as a member of the press did not supersede his own demands to turn the camera off. Afterwards, Officer Johnson enjoyed a laugh and high five with Dog Chapman and his crew. Fortunately, they forgot about Russo’s video and to date, Chapman has refused to make his own film of the incident available. Funny, isn’t secret filming how he made the leap to television?
West Point, Georgia. Less clear cut is the situation of 17-year-old Ciara Flemister who tried filming the arrest of her cousin in West Point, a small town as far west in Georgia as you can get and still remain in the state. An officer ordered her to stop filming and when she refused he grabbed her. West Point Police Chief J.K. Cato seems a reasonable fellow and admits his officers used excessive force when officers slammed her face down on the hood of the car and one officer pounded her head with his elbow. What may not be clear is that Ciara wrestled with an officer, knocking off his glasses: A right to record became an assault. Perhaps our very sensible Chief Cato can put out this fire.
I like the spirit of what Florida calls ‘Sunshine Laws’, meaning that public officials and public meetings are supposed to be open to the light of day. It’s not perfectly enforced; I recall Orlando’s mayor ignored the Sunshine Law in his pursuit to tear down a historical building.
But the spirit is there and courts and legislators would serve the public well if they acknowledge that freedoms aren’t solely for people fighting for rights in Yemen, Egypt, Libya, and the Sudan. They need to clarify officials work for the public and the public has the right of accountability. Police and the public aren’t entirely clear regarding their civil liberties. It takes the law to make right what already isn’t.
Interesting article, Leigh!
You say: These issues aren’t unique. Recently, Russia dismissed a quarter of its police forces during polygraphed corruption investigations while Mexico dismissed a tenth of its federal police force. It’s not clear how these numbers compare to Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, or Smudgepot, Florida, but corruption scandals occur in any city where public light fails to shine in the rat holes and dark corners of society.
Russia and Mexico are developing countries. It would be more relevant to find out how the U.S. fares in comparison to other developed countries, like Canada, the UK and other (Western) European countries, Australia, Japan, South Korea, etc. One sincerely hopes that police brutality and corruption across the U.S. are not as rampant and widespread as they sometimes appear to be…
Hi Yoshinori!
The possibility of corruption resides anywhere its allowed to fester. The reams of detail may make the article look like an anti-cop rant– it isn’t. It’s an anti-corruption rant and warning about our ability to document public servants. Politicians and financiers usually have slicker methods of avoiding detection and responsibility. If they make the means to catch public crooks illegal, then illegality will flourish.
These days, professional police agencies try to weed out the wrong type of people who are drawn to law enforcement. It’s not perfect, but they try.
As I mentioned, I was raised without television and when my parents finally bought one, the one show I remember them watching was The Untouchables. Large parts were fictionalized, but the point was a small group of cops went after the political and crime machinery, which was pretty much the same thing in Chicago.
The FBI, the RCMP, the Met, and La Sûreté have had their scandals, but we don’t hear much about endemic corruption. It’s possible high professional standards help shield those agencies. It’s also possible that problems are more easily outed at least within the agencies.
Sadly, South Africa’s Scorpions was dissolved, but I suspect the problems more involved corruption without, not within. Otherwise, I have minute knowledge of policing in the Southern Hemisphere.
On our continent, Mexico is fighting the greatest challenge, rich and well-armed drug traffickers and a neighbor to the north with a thirst for drugs. Our political system has shown greater will to keep out cross-border housemaids and gardeners than it has cocaine, so I’m not sure that will be ending any time soon.
But back to the topic, video recording is a powerful tool in keeping corruption at bay. If we’re not allowed to use it, then we all suffer, just as Illinois is doing now.
All these incidents prove is that noir writers got it correct: the cops are just the other gang. There’s nothing there to respect or admire, only fear.
The culture of us against them (whoever them is) among local police forces hasn’t changed in years. The people who inhabit this culture are generally poorly educated (HS diploma only plus police academy) and psychologically suspect (social dominators). The local cops hatred of “f-ing liberals” is legendary, and anybody who cares about civil rights is an “f-ing liberal”.
What they fascists fail to understand is this: they will not be safe until they start acting from a sense of respect for the civilian. So long they continue to behave as stormtroopers above the law (we are the law) toward a community of people whom they despise as sheeple, they continued to be despised. After all, it’s so much easier to arrest/attack/brutalize the innocent than deal with crooks because the sheeple won’t fight back.
In this situation, the hostility between the civilians and fuzz/pigs/stormtroopers will only get worse. And that ain’t good.
During a high school career day, a police officer with a chest of ribbons spoke to us. He told us– a little sadly, I think– that there’s a fine line between cops and crooks, that they’re often drawn from the same pool. Dennis Lehane writes about this in such disturbing books as Mystic River. Likewise, the movie The Departed focuses on this schism in Boston’s PD.
The question is whether the public will be allowed to record and document abuses of any kind, especially when corruption traditionally extends to the highest reaches of government in a place like Illinois.
Good article, Leigh, and one that needs the widest exposure. One reason, I think, that such corruption does occur is the willingness of ‘we the people’ to sacrifice personal liberty in the name of safety – the end result being, of course, that we’ll be neither free nor safe.
Now, the Indiana Supreme Court has ruled that a citizen has ‘no right’ to resist a police officer’s entering his home, whether the officer has a warrant, probable cause, whatever. If the entry is patently illegal, the poor Indiana citizen has no right to resist.
When the courts don’t understand liberty, it’s little surprise the police don’t.
God help us ….
The Indiana Supreme Court threw out 800 years of hard-won civil liberties.
That’s stunning, Larry. I googled it and was flooded with a number of articles and opinions. All but the most extreme positions condemned this ruling.
By a majority of one, this split decision, starts with
The justice claims legal scholarship has criticized the law as outdated, "incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence", accepted by the majority of states, and says if a homeowner wants to complain, then do it in court. That’s ironic, because in the case that brought this ruling, the trial judge refused to allow the defendant to argue in court that he’d pushed back when authorities tried to enter his home and was tasered.
In other words, "Argue in court we were wrong… if the judge will let you." Doug Powers and Bruce McQuain writing for Michelle Malkin said “in the old days if an officer unlawfully entered your home and arrested you, you were pretty much screwed but now you have ways to prove your innocence and file a complaint against the officer, so just shut up and tolerate the initial injustice for the safety of everybody involved.”
Professor Ivan Bodensteiner of Valparaiso University School of Law (apparently one step up from a mail-order disploma) says you have no right to protest, but "your remedy is under law to bring a civil action." Indiana lawyer James Bopp Jr coincides.
How this addresses a criminal issue isn’t clarified. This ruling comes two days after the same court decided authorities may enter a home without knocking and without a court order if they conclude circumstances justify it.
The minority opinion quotes William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, on the occasion of a debate in Parliament:
The Scorpions (the Directorate of Special Operations) was a multidisciplinary agency set up in 1999 to investigate, pursue and prosecute high-profile cases of corruption and organised crime in South Africa.
After almost a decade of highly of successful operations (over 90% conviction rate) the Scorpions were disbanded in 2008 and absorbed into the SA Police as the Hawks, diluting and reducing their powers. [We are sure investigations involving numerous members of the ruling party, including the current president, in no way influenced this decision.]
Hugh Glenister, a private citizen, has spent more than R3.8million ($500 000+) opposing the disbanding of the Scorpions and eventually brought an application before the Constitutional Court. [One man can make a difference. I’m sure he would approve of this column.]
In March 2011, the Constitutional Court found parts of the legislation disbanding the Scorpions to be unconstitutional and has given Parliament 18 months in which to rectify matters. The outcome is awaited with interest.
An informative but scary article, Leigh. What is really scary is some in the legal and policing professions will push state legislatures to make laws against filming the police in action, except maybe when it makes the police look good.
Hi Louis! I thought the judge refusing to allow the hearing to be recorded was outrageous. She could learn from someone like Belvin Perry, who’s cool and controlled and not over-bearing.
I have some sympathy, having been burned by an unrecorded hearing. I had provided the contractor an attachment to a contract and in the original hearing when the other party denied there was an attachment, I pointed to the staple holes as evidence. Hey, I read mysteries, right!
The judge called a halt in the afternoon, saying the court had run out of time and he was moving to a new position, meaning we had to start the trial anew with a new judge. When the new hearing commenced and the other party produced the contract, the staple holes had been neatly trimmed away. Without a court record, I had no way of proving they ever existed.
ABA, I’m an admirer of the Scorpions. I’m glad to hear of efforts to reconstitute them. I hope they succeed.
….that there’s a fine line between cops and crooks, that they’re often drawn from the same pool…….
A great example of that in a movie is Heat with DiNiro and Pacino.
I have a hard time with the concept of cops are our enemies. Maybe that’s why I never understood the movie Thelma and Louise. I’d have gone immediately to the police…but then there wouldn’t have been a movie.
I’d never EVER have lost my money to a gigalo no matter who it was and lastly I’d never gone over a cliff with my “friend” (there are implications they were friends with benefits but I don’t know)….
It’s all in perspective I suppose.
I know there are crooked people in every profession from cops, to preachers…..to writers
As I recall, the ‘friends with benefits’ downplayed somewhat from the book to the play and again from the play to the film.
If it’s hard for us, the public, to sort out good cops from bad cops, think how difficult it is for the police. It’s one hell of a tough job.
And as you say, we find good and bad in every profession.
I’ve been in the U.S. many times and I have never been a victim of police brutality (on the contrary, the police officers I met struck me as highly professional and friendly), so it is probably largely dependent on where in the U.S. you happen to be. Still, these stories are disturbing to say the least.
Leigh, I hope you’ve never had an encounter with a bad cop yourself.
Actual brutality is rare. Generally, my experiences have been positive. I think one of the problems in Miami is that they invited hundreds of out-of-town cops to assist that Memorial Day weekend and somehow contributed to the mess. Miami PD has said they may never know who fired what.
As I said, most of my encounters have been positive. I was very impressed during a hearing when a cop could have easily said a small lie to win a case and he didn’t. That imbues a lot of confidence.
Keep in mind this story isn’t about law enforcement but about lawmakers’s failure to safeguard civil liberties. Why do we welcome street video in Khartoum, Sana’a, or Cairo, but condemn it in Chicago?
Unfortunately, there will always be bad cops; I had always hoped they were few and far between.
I would think any cop who didn’t want to be filmed on the job should be suspect by his superior (who hopefully is a good cop).
Afterall, if he’s doing his job well, according to the law, what does he have to hide.
I’d like to think that all the above mentioned camera-shy cops ‘got theirs’ eventually. I’d like to think…. One scary article, Leigh.
Prosecutors dismiss criminal charges against a Rochester woman who in her own front yard videotaped a traffic stop.