Orlando, FL (6/15/11) — Six more activist arrested in Orlando for Sharing food with the hungry. Two young children are being served as close to 20 police officers swarm in and arrest the food servers. This brings the total number of arrest for this horrendous crime up to 21 people within a two week time period!

[Editor’s Note: The cameraman gratuitously taunts the police in this clip instead of narrating the facts dispassionately and letting viewers draw their own conclusions. A stronger journalistic style is not to remove the viewer/reader from the equation.]

Does freedom of the Press belong only to those who own one?

The US Senate Is Creating a Privileged Club for ‘Official’ Journalists.

It  is skirting the substantial investigative role served by independent journalists, bloggers, and nontraditional media held by federal courts to be coextensive with traditional journalism before the era of digital publication.

by Carey Shenkman

On September 12, 2013, the U.S. Senate Judiciary committee narrowly defined who the law should consider to be a journalist, by amending the proposed Free Flow of Information Act (“FFIA”). The FFIA is a “shield law” that protects journalists from having to reveal their confidential sources when confronted with court subpoenas. The amendment changed the language of the bill from protecting the activity of journalism to protecting the profession. Journalists are now limited to those employed by, recently employed by, or substantially contributing to media organizations for certain minimum durations.

This maneuver skirts the substantial investigative role served by independent journalists, bloggers, and nontraditional media, who are left unprotected by the statute. It also expressly excludes whistleblower organizations. By not extending protection to a vital segment of investigative newsgatherers, the amended FFIA falls short of providing real benefits. More fundamentally, the distinctions created by the bill reinforce a privileged club for professional (mainstream) journalists. In essence, the government is licensing the press, and treading down a path that courts have for decades cautioned “present[s] practical and conceptual difficulties of a high order.”

The Supreme Court, in 1972 in Branzburg v. Hayes, held that the First Amendment provides no separate privilege for reporters. This was largely due to the practical difficulty, even before the Internet, of defining who is or is not a journalist. Justice White in his concurring opinion discussed that “[t]he informative function asserted by representatives of the organized press in the present cases is also performed by lecturers, political pollsters, novelists, academic researchers, and dramatists. Almost any author may quite accurately assert that he is contributing to the flow of information to the public.”

More recently, in the 2011 case Glik v. Cunniffe, which involved a man videotaping police using his cell phone, the First Circuit Court of Appeals stated “Changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw [and] news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.”

This open view of journalists is shared by academics like UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh. He has argued that “[f]reedom of the press should apply to people equally, regardless of who they are, why they write or how popular they are.” After all, the First Amendment was designed to escape the official licensing system for press that existed in England in the seventeenth century. The right of the press is as much a right of  lone pamphleteers as it is of institutionally-backed journalists.

The original FFIA, which took a functional view of journalists, adhered much more closely to the current academic trend—that journalism is an activity, not a profession. Some like Professor Paul Horwitz propose alternate theories such as varying the rules from medium to medium to reflect different standards in different fields. These theories, while not perfect, are significantly less controversial than narrowly defining rights in ways that courts have consistently held run afoul of the First Amendment.

Another logical pitfall of the law is its explicit exclusion of whistle blower organizations, like WikiLeaks, from its narrow definition of journalism. It “does not include any person or entity . . . whose principal function . . . is to publish primary source documents that have been disclosed to such person or entity without authorization.” Why exclude these? One possibility is “protecting national security”—but the logic behind this is dangerous. It is the same as forcing reporters to reveal their sources when stories inconveniently expose wrongdoing. Claiming that document-sharing organizations must reveal sources is fundamentally indistinguishable from forcing investigative reporters to do the same. And if any form of investigative journalism (including publishing documents) presents a clear and imminent danger to U.S. security, it can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

An alternative reason for excluding leaks organizations and nontraditional media is their perceived lack of editorial standards. Without a formal editorial process, the argument goes, these actors cannot be trusted. Adherents to this tack ignore the multitude of WikiLeaks releases that are redacted, selectively published, expose matters of great public interest (i.e. corruption, war crimes), and catalyze substantial public debate. These elements certainly constitute editorial discretion over timing, quantity, and content, and capture the essence of investigative reporting. The argument also ignores that bloggers and other independent journalists possess identifiable methodologies for their reporting—for instance, the frequent use of hyperlinks for substantiation and attribution.

The issue then is not so much that nontraditional media entities lack editorial standards, but that Congress disapproves of these standards. It is the same logic that leads the FFIA to exclude a good number of bloggers and independent journalists who may not adhere to traditional institutional editorial standards. It is the same logic that perhaps caused The New York Times to pejoratively call Glenn Greenwald (who broke Edward Snowden’s leaks) a blogger and Alexa O’Brien (whose detailed coverage of the Chelsea Manning trial was quoted extensively by the rest of the press) an ‘activist’, instead of calling them ‘journalists’. Greenwald Tweeted in response “Once a “blogger,” always a blogger – I love the NYT.”

The contradictory logic of the FFIA amendment is exposed considering that major news organizations released many of the same documents as WikiLeaks. The Afghan and Iraq War Logs of WikiLeaks were also distributed by The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel. The bill creates a double standard in the face of a subpoena—WikiLeaks would have to divulge its sources, while the latter would be protected. WikiLeaks would be denied protection despite engaging in similar activity as the publication of the “Top Secret” Pentagon Papers by The New York Times more than thirty years ago.

Indeed, the whole FFIA amendment is permeated by an undertone of institutional elitism and a rejection of new media. This rejection of new media boasts some unexpected followers. Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment litigator who defended The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, does not consider WikiLeaks to be journalism. He represents large press corporations and is also highly skeptical of extending shield laws to new media. Judge Sentelle of the D.C. Circuit, in a concurring opinion in a journalist subpoena case, wrote of the “stereotypical blogger sitting in his pajamas.”Other legal scholars identify the perception that new media is somehow a “less noble pursuit than traditional journalism.”

Biases of lawmakers should not become law. Courts, since decades before the advent of the Internet, have avoided creating classes for journalists. It creates unsustainable logical contradictions and is ultimately bad for investigative reporting. In the words of Professor Linda Berger, “[N]o patriot printer or colonial pamphleteer had a journalism degree. Certification by a government agency or by a professional group carries the possibility of de-certification based on value judgments or viewpoints.” Legislation like FFIA teeters this country closer to a future where journalism bears the government’s stamp of approval.

“Never trust a cop–you can never tell when he might go straight!” -NYC street adage-

The NYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuy’s 81st Precinct

by Graham Rayman Tuesday, May 4 2010

(At 1.7 square miles, the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant is one of the smallest in the city, but the densely populated neighborhood is also a rough place to work. One cop there recently told us, “It keeps you from getting bored is about all you can say.”)

Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors.

He recorded precinct roll calls. He recorded his precinct commander and other supervisors. He recorded street encounters. He recorded small talk and stationhouse banter. In all, he surreptitiously collected hundreds of hours of cops talking about their jobs.

Made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD, the tapes—made between June 1, 2008, and October 31, 2009, in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant and obtained exclusively by the Voice—provide an unprecedented portrait of what it’s like to work as a cop in this city.

They reveal that precinct bosses threaten street cops if they don’t make their quotas of arrests and stop-and-frisks, but also tell them not to take certain robbery reports in order to manipulate crime statistics. The tapes also refer to command officers calling crime victims directly to intimidate them about their complaints.

As a result, the tapes show, the rank-and-file NYPD street cop experiences enormous pressure in a strange catch-22: He or she is expected to maintain high “activity”—including stop-and-frisks—but, paradoxically, to record fewer actual crimes.

This pressure was accompanied by paranoia—from the precinct commander to the lieutenants to the sergeants to the line officers—of violating any of the seemingly endless bureaucratic rules and regulations that would bring in outside supervision.

The tapes also reveal the locker-room environment at the precinct. On a recording made in September, the subject being discussed at roll call is stationhouse graffiti (done by the cops themselves) and something called “cocking the memo book,” a practical joke in which officers draw penises in each other’s daily notebooks.

“As far as the defacing of department property—all right, the shit on the side of the building . . . and on people’s lockers, and drawing penises in people’s memo books, and whatever else is going on—just knock it off, all right?” a Sergeant A. can be heard saying. “If the wrong person sees this stuff coming in here, then IAB [the Internal Affairs Bureau] is going to be all over this place, all right? . . . You want to draw penises, draw them in your own memo book. . . And don’t actually draw on the wall.” He then adds that just before an inspection, a supervisor had to walk around the stationhouse and paint over all the graffiti.

The Voice is releasing portions of the tapes in batches on our website, villagevoice.com, and is also publishing several stories to deal with the issues that the recordings present. In this week’s installment, we look at the roll calls at the Bed-Stuy precinct and the conflicting instructions given to street cops, who must look busy at all times, while actually suppressing crime reports. (Repeated attempts to get an official response from the police department have been met by silence.)

The Voice obtained the digital audio recordings from Police Officer Adrian Schoolcraft, an eight-year veteran of the NYPD. (The Voice has identified the NYPD bosses speaking at roll calls, but is using initials—different from their names—for most of them.)

Schoolcraft first made headlines in February, when the Daily News reported that he was speaking out about manipulation of crime reports at the 81st. His complaints, the Daily News wrote, had sparked an investigation that had put even the precinct’s commander, Deputy Inspector Steven Mauriello, under suspicion. Those stories, however, gave no indication that Schoolcraft was also in possession of the remarkable audiotapes.

Schoolcraft tells the Voice he carried the audio recorder initially to protect himself from the civilian complaints that can result from street encounters. But then he began to document things happening in the precinct that bothered him. After he ran afoul of precinct politics, he recorded what he viewed as retaliation by his bosses.

“How else would you present the fraud being committed on the public?” he asks.

ON JANUARY 28, 2009, PATROL OFFICERS on the evening tour at the 81st Precinct gathered in the utilitarian muster room at the 30 Ralph Avenue stationhouse. They stood on white floors in ranks. The blue-and-white walls are decorated with old Wanted posters, two glass cupboards with crime maps, posters with warnings about sexual harassment and retaliation, and a flat-screen television. There are two tables, three chairs, and a podium used by supervisors to address the cops.

A roll call is the key moment in the workday of any police officer. Think Hill Street Blues and “Let’s be careful out there.” The sergeants, lieutenants, and, sometimes, the precinct commander relay orders to the rank-and-file. The officers are told about recent crimes and trouble spots in the neighborhood. Officers are subject to inspection and are given training. The language, naturally, is a mix of quasi-military jargon, street slang, rough epithets, and a fair bit of gallows humor—in other words, cop-speak.

The 81st Precinct covers Bedford-Stuyvesant, a densely populated, multiracial patchwork of low-income areas, public housing projects, and blocks going through gentrification. At just 1.7 square miles, Bed-Stuy is geographically small, but a place that, according to the tapes, the officers view as a “heavy precinct.”

“You’re not working in Midtown Manhattan, where people are walking around, smiling and being happy,” a lieutenant tells officers in a November 1, 2008, roll call. “You’re working in Bed-Stuy, where everyone’s probably got a warrant.”

On this particular day, the precinct commander, Deputy Inspector Steven Mauriello, a Lieutenant B., and a Sergeant C. are leading the session.

After attendance has been taken and assignments handed out, Mauriello, a hard-charging boss given to colorful language, exhorts the officers to disperse crowds away from certain buildings, and stop and question people.

(Clipboards containing the all-important statistics and crime reports line a wall inside Brooklyn’s 81st Precinct station house. On a recent evening, patrol officers with the 81st made a routine traffic stop.)

“Listen, if it’s micromanaging, it’s micromanaging,” he says. “Just do your job. If you see a large crowd, get out [of your car]. Just do what you gotta do. You know them, you stop them. Go somewhere else. Stay off the radar.”

Mauriello then relates how a three-star chief, Michael Scagnelli, closely questioned him on the number of tickets the officers write, and warns them to make their numbers. “He says, ‘How many superstars and how many losers do you have?’ ” Mauriello says. “And then he goes down and says, ‘How many summonses does your squad write?’ I want everyone to step up and be accountable and work. Don’t get caught out there.”

He then mentions the patrol borough commander, Marino, who is apparently examining the “activity” of every cop in the 10 precincts he oversees. “If you don’t want to work, then, you know what, just do the old go-through-the-motions and get your numbers anyway,” he says. “He’s taking this very seriously, looking at everyone’s evaluations. And he’s yelling at every CO [commanding officer] about ‘Who gave this guy points?’ or ‘This girl’s no good.’ ”

Sergeant C. then says the cops should be able to hit their numbers’ targets. “I told you guys last month: They are looking at these numbers, and people are going to get moved,” he says. “It ain’t about losing your job. They can make your job real uncomfortable, and we all know what that means.”

Next, Lieutenant B. cites the declining numbers of officers in the department. “A lot of people are leaving the job,” he says. “They aren’t getting new recruits. Patrol is not getting new people. It’s more accountability, it’s less people. They got this catchphrase, ‘Do more with less,’ right? And they’re looking at the numbers.”

He adds that the top bosses are pressuring the precinct commander, who is pressuring his supervisors, who then have to pressure the cops.

“Unfortunately, at this level in your career, you’re on the lowest level, so you’re going to get some orders that you may not like,” he says. “You’re gonna get instructions. You’re gonna get disciplinary action. You gotta just pick up your work. I don’t wanna get my ass chewed out, in straight words. I’m sick of getting yelled at.”

THE SAME THEMES—of shit rolling downhill, and that constant pressure to do more with less—appear again and again throughout the tapes dating back to June 1, 2008.

Bosses spend more time in the roll calls haranguing the officers for “activity”—or “paying the rent,” as it was known—than anything else. In other words, writing summonses, doing stop-and-frisks (known as “250s”), doing community visits, and making arrests. Or else.

Officers were under constant pressure to keep those numbers high to prove that they were doing their jobs, even when there was little justification for it. Like a drumbeat, this mandate was hammered home again and again in almost every roll call.

“Again, it’s all about the numbers,” a Sergeant D. tells his officers on October 18, 2009.

Command often set up special summons duty to artificially increase the numbers of tickets issued. On December 13, 2008, there was this from a Sergeant E.: “In order to increase the amount of C summonses patrol is writing, they are going to try to, when they can, put out a quality-of-life auto. Your goal is to write C summonses, all right?”

A “C summons” requires a warrant check and covers a wide range of offenses, like public drinking, disorderly conduct, littering, blocking the sidewalk, and graffiti. An “A summons” is for illegal parking, and a “B summons” is for traffic violations like running a red light or using a cell phone while driving.

Certainly, there’s enforcement value to issuing tickets and stopping people on the street, but the true value of this “activity,” the tapes indicate, was that it offered proof that the precinct commander and his officers were doing their jobs. With those numbers, the precinct boss could go to police headquarters with ammunition. Low numbers meant criticism and demotion; high numbers meant praise and promotion.

The NYPD has always claimed that there are no specific numerical targets or quotas. Most recently, police spokesman Paul Browne denied the existence of quotas in early March, but said that “police officers, like others who receive compensation, are provided productivity goals, and they are expected to work.”

The tapes show, however, that, of course, quotas exist.

On June 12, 2008, Lieutenant B. relayed the summons target: “The XO [second-in-command] was in the other day. He actually laid down a number. He wants at least three seat belts, one cell phone, and 11 others. All right, so if I was on patrol, I would be sure to get three seat belts, one cell phone, and 11 others.

“Pick it up a lot, if you have to,” he says. “The CO gave me some names. I spoke to you.”

While the NYPD can set “productivity targets,” the department cannot tie those targets to disciplinary action: “What turns it into an illegal quota is when there is a punishment attached to not achieving, like a transfer or loss of assignment,” says Al O’Leary, a spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

In the 81st Precinct, however, the tapes indicate that “activity” was routinely tied to direct and implied threats of discipline. The message, relayed down the chain from headquarters, is repeated over and over again in the roll calls by the precinct commander, the lieutenants, and the sergeants.

On October 28, 2008, for example, the precinct commander, Mauriello, tells officers he will change their shifts if they don’t make their numbers: “If I hear about disgruntled people moaning about getting thrown off their tours, it is what it is. Mess up, bring heat on the precinct—you know what, I’ll give you tough love, but it doesn’t mean you can’t work your way back into good graces and get back to the detail and platoon you want.”

He adds: “If you don’t work, and I get the same names back again, I’m moving you. You’re going to go to another platoon. I’m done. I don’t want to be embarrassed no more.”

On July 15, 2008, he says, “I don’t want to see anyone get hurt. This job is all about hurting. Someone has to go. Step on a landmine, someone has to get hurt.”

On December 8, 2008, he excoriates officers who failed to write enough tickets for double-parking, running red lights, and disorderly conduct, and who failed to stop-and-frisk enough people.

“I see eight fucking summonses for a 20-day period or a month,” he says. “If you mess up, how the hell do you want me to do the right thing by you? You come in, five parkers, three A’s, no C’s, and the only 250 you do is when I force you to do overtime? I mean it’s a two-way street out here.”

Later, he adds, “In the end, I hate to say it—you need me more than I need you because I’m what separates the wolves from coming in here and chewing on your bones.”

In the same roll call, Sergeant C. adds: “When I tell you to get your activity up, it’s for a reason, because they are looking to move people, and he’s serious. . . . There’s people in here that may not be here next month.”

The pressure is the worst at the end of the month and at the end of every quarter, because that’s when the precinct has to file activity reports on each officer with the borough command and police headquarters. (Put another way: If you want to avoid getting a ticket, stay away from police officers during the last few days of the month, when the pressure for numbers is the highest.)

From the tapes, it’s not hard to imagine an officer desperately driving to the precinct, looking for someone smoking pot on a stoop or double-parking to fill some gap in their productivity.

In a roll call from September 26, a Sergeant F. notes that the quarter is coming to an end, and a deadline is nearing for applying to take the sergeants’ exam. “If your activity’s been down, the last quarter is a good time to bring it up, because that’s when your evaluation is going to be done,” he says. “We all know this job is, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ ”

He goes on to lay on the pressure for more numbers. “This is crunch time,” he says. “This is Game Seven of the World Series, the bases are loaded, and you’re at bat right now. . . . It’s all a game, ladies and gentlemen. We do what we’re supposed to, the negative attention goes somewhere else. That’s what we want.”

And take August 31, 2009. Sergeant Rogers tells his officers, “Today is the last day of the month. Get what you need to get.”

Or as Sergeant F. says just a few days before that: “It’s the 26th. If you don’t have your activity, it would be a really good time to get it. . . . If I don’t have to hear about it from a white shirt [a superior officer], that’s the name of the game.”

IT’S ALSO CLEAR FROM THE recordings that supervisors viewed the constant pressure for numbers as an annoyance, busy work to fill the demand from downtown. “We had a shooting on midnight on Chauncey, so do some community visits, C summonses over there, the usual bullshit,” Sergeant A. says in an August 22, 2009, roll call.

The obsession with statistics at police headquarters bleeds out into the borough commands as well. In early 2009, the Brooklyn North patrol command started holding its own CompStat meetings, reviewing everything from crime stats to the number of tickets written by each officer to sick reports.

The move was seen in the precinct as yet another layer of unnecessary oversight. “This job is just getting tighter and tighter with accountability,” Lieutenant B. says on January 13, 2009. “So there are certain things I’d like to get away with, but I can’t anymore. It just goes down the line and, eventually, it falls on you.”

Eight days later, he offers his view of these so-called Boro Stat meetings, on January 21, 2009: “Robbery spikes, crime spikes, on and on and on. It’s a lot of horseshit I gotta sit through, but it’s accountability, all right?”

As a result of this outside pressure, the precinct was constantly worried about violating bureaucratic rules that would result in even more scrutiny, and result in Command Disciplines (CDs), a penalty that could carry a loss of vacation days.

Take one example: A sergeant spends a roll call upbraiding his officers for not having the proper equipment. “Nobody’s got your whistle holder, and half of you don’t have your whistle,” he says. “That’s unacceptable. When I fall down the mine shaft, I’m the only one that’s going to be able to call for help. The rest of you are going to have to fire off your gun, and they’ll give you a CD for that.”

The officers in Bed-Stuy viewed a unit called Brooklyn North Inspections with a particular measure of contempt. Inspections, known as “the hounds,” would slip into the precinct, look for rules violations, and then hit officers with CDs.

“Inspections—they pull you over like a perp, and you know it’s disrespectful to us, but this is what they’re doing,” Lieutenant B. says on June 12, 2008. “So Inspections is not really our friend. Let’s leave it at that.”

On November 12, 2008: “Brooklyn North Inspections is not our friend. I’m just going to lay it out there right on the line,” he says. “If you see they’re here, they’re probably here to hurt someone.”

Hurting someone means issuing a CD for, say, not having your shirt tucked in, or reading the newspaper on duty. In one instance, in October 2008, four officers were given CDs for leaving the precinct to have lunch. (81st Precinct officers seemed to believe there weren’t any decent restaurants in the precinct itself.)

During a roll call on October 30, 2008, Sergeant C. upbraids the officers for their appearance. “It keeps the hounds off,” he says, adding, “That includes smirks. One smirk cost the whole borough 13 CDs last week.”

ONE OF THE MOST BASIC THINGS a police officer does is take crime complaints from victims. But that very simple edict evolved into something substantially different in the 81st Precinct.

Usually, an officer arrives at a crime scene and begins taking information. Then, either on the scene or at the precinct, the officer fills out a report known as a “61” and presents it to the desk officer, a sergeant, for his signature.

After the sergeant classifies the crime, the 61 is then entered into a computer system, making it official, and it’s passed on to the detective squad for investigation. Police veterans say their standard was always, “Refer the complaint, not the complainant.” In other words, if someone wants to make a report, you take it, and let the squad check it out. It was the squad’s job to determine whether the complainant’s story was worth checking further.

In the 81st Precinct, that traditional discretion of a street cop was being taken away from them, the tapes indicate. There was constant second-guessing and questioning of crime complaints and crime victims before cases were ever entered into the computer. The message to street cops was to exercise extreme skepticism with crime victims—unless you didn’t mind getting yelled at.

Officers were told that, unlike in the past, their bosses would need to be present at the scene of a possible robbery, for example, to look over their shoulders. “There are certain jobs that I must be present on,” Sergeant C. says on October 13, 2008. “If I’m not present, you gotta call me up. You can’t come in here with a robbery, and I don’t know anything about it.”

Rank-and-file cops don’t like the change, which is reflected on Internet bulletin boards, where they leave messages like this recent posting: “It used to be that a radio car turned out and two partners went from job to job making decisions, applying common (uncommon) sense to solve problems,” an officer writes. “A Sgt. or Lt. was not called to the scene unless there was a death or serious incident. Patrol officers now have been indoctrinated that they are not qualified to make any decisions about anything.”

During a September 12, 2009, roll call, a fellow cop tells Schoolcraft: “A lot of 61s—if it’s a robbery, they’ll make it a petty larceny. I saw a 61, at T/P/O [time and place of occurrence], a civilian punched in the face, menaced with a gun, and his wallet was removed, and they wrote ‘lost property.’ ”

The practice of downgrading crimes has been the NYPD’s scandal-in-waiting for years. The NYPD claims that downgrading happens only rarely, but in the course of reporting this story, the Voice was told anecdotally of burglaries rejected if the victim didn’t have receipts for the items stolen; of felony thefts turned into misdemeanor thefts by lowballing the value of the property; of robberies turned into assaults; of assaults turned into harassments.

How widespread that kind of thing was in the 81st Precinct is unclear just from the recordings, but Schoolcraft claims it was common. Of course, caution in taking a complaint is prudent. But the fact that the precinct commander discourages the taking of robbery complaints has to influence other decisions down the chain.

So officers get marching orders like the following, which was recorded October 4: “If it’s a little old lady, and I got my bag stolen, then she’s probably telling the truth, all right?” Sergeant D. says. “If it’s some young guy who looks strong and healthy and can maybe defend himself, and he got yoked up, and he’s not injured, he’s perfectly fine—question that. It’s not about squashing numbers. You all know if it is what it is—if it smells like a rotten fish—then that’s what it is. But question it. On the burglaries as well.”

LAST OCTOBER 11, TWO PATROL officers made a terrible mistake: They took a robbery complaint. A man reported that some suspects had forcibly taken his cell phone, but the victim didn’t want to immediately accompany officers to the precinct to talk to the detective squad. The victim, the tapes show, told the officers he didn’t want to go back with them because he didn’t want to be seen getting into a marked police car.

The next day, Mauriello took out his anger on what the officers had done on their sergeant, the tapes show. And she, in turn, took it out on the officers.

“OK, so he [Mauriello] was flippin’ on me yesterday because they wrote a 61, and the guy talking about he not coming in to speak to nobody,” says a Sergeant G. in the October 12 roll call. “He don’t want nobody see him getting in the car.”

While one of the core duties of a police officer is to take crime complaints, the 81st Precinct had a controversial policy that held that if a victim refused to come to the stationhouse and speak to the detective squad, officers should refuse to take the complaint.

“You know, we be popping up with these robberies out of nowhere, or whatever,” Sergeant G. tells her officers in the roll call. “If the complainant does not want to go back and speak to the squad, then there is no 61 taken. That’s it. They have to go back and speak to the squad.”

In effect, under this policy, a robbery complaint would be rejected if the victim was unable to come to the stationhouse. It didn’t matter if a victim was unable to come down because he or she had to work or take care of kids. Perhaps not coincidentally, that would also be one less robbery to count against the precinct’s crime statistics.

The sergeant went on to suggest that the victim was lying: “How do we know this guy really got robbed?” she asked. “He said he had no description. Sometimes they just want a complaint number—you know what I’m saying?—so if he don’t wanna come back and talk to the squad, then that’s it.”

This policy was mentioned repeatedly starting last August. The sergeant repeated the directive on October 24. “If the complainant says, ‘I don’t want to go to the squad, I don’t want to go to the squad,’ then there’s no 61, right?” she says. “We not going to take it, and then they say they’re going to come in later on, and then the squad speaks to them and usually they don’t want to come in.”

She repeats the admonition again on October 27, and this time, a Lieutenant K. adds, “Don’t take that report. That’s it. It’s over.”

There’s no reference to this policy in the NYPD Patrol Guide, the department bible of practices and procedures.

Retired detectives tell the Voice that the practice is highly questionable: “I’ve never heard of something like that,” says Greg Modica, who retired in 2002 as a Detective First Grade after 20 years with the Manhattan Robbery Squad. “And I don’t think the commissioner would care for it. If the complainant couldn’t come in on the spot, patrol would take the complaint, turn it over to us, and we’d follow up.

“If the victim can’t come in for some reason—maybe they have a babysitter at home or they have to work—you take the report and tell them the detectives will make an appointment to see them,” he adds.

Modica and other ex-detectives say it simply isn’t patrol’s job to determine whether or not a victim is lying. Their job is merely to take the report and turn it over to the detective squad.

“You might get a feeling on the street, but that doesn’t mean you don’t take it,” he says. “It’s the detective’s job to determine that. And anyway, [a false report] didn’t happen that many times. Robbery is a very serious crime.”

ALL OF WHICH BRINGS UP something known as a “callback”—which occurs when an officer or a detective makes a follow-up call to a crime victim, usually when he needs another piece of information or has to check his information. That’s the traditional definition.

In the 81st Precinct, it meant something substantially different, Schoolcraft says. It meant calling a crime victim and questioning them closely on the details of their complaint with an eye toward downgrading it or scrapping it.

“It’s, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ ” Schoolcraft says, describing the practice. “Sometimes, it’s, ‘Have you ever been arrested?’ or ‘We’re going to know if you’re lying or not.’ ”

Mauriello himself and at least two of his lieutenants were doing their own callbacks.

Mauriello’s involvement in callbacks is confirmed in an October 4, 2009, roll call, during which Lieutenant K. tells the officers, “Whether it’s CO, Lieutenant L., or [Sergeant] M., they always do callbacks. So a lot of time, we get early information and they do callbacks.”

“And then we look silly,” Sergeant D. adds. “A woman says, ‘Hey, my boyfriend stole my phone.’ He didn’t really steal the phone. It’s his phone, and he was taking it. Did he snatch it out of her hand? Yeah. Is it a grand larceny? No, because I’m telling you right now the D.A. is not going to entertain that.”

Modica and other retired detectives say they’re stunned that a precinct commander and his aides would be calling crime victims directly and asking about their complaints. “I don’t think he should be doing it,” Modica says. “It’s the detectives’ job. If the captain comes up and says, ‘It’s not a robbery,’ I say, ‘That’s OK, but we have a case, and it’s up to us to investigate it now.’ It makes you wonder whether they are doing it to cut down on statistics.”

It’s also unclear why a patrol sergeant would worry about what a prosecutor would do with a complaint, unless he was looking for a reason to reject it before it reached the prosecutor’s desk.

“Whether a district attorney decides to take a case or not is not something for a precinct supervisor to worry about,” says John Eterno, a retired NYPD captain who is now a professor of criminal justice at Molloy College. “He is making a judgment call based on what he thinks the D.A. will do. But the person made a complaint. That complaint needs to be taken.”

THE NYPD HAS A UNIT THAT audits precinct crime stats, known as the Quality Assurance Division (QAD). The unit operates something like Internal Affairs, but is actually attached to the management and planning office.

On October 7, Schoolcraft was ordered downtown by QAD for a nearly-three-hour formal, on-the-record interview with an inspector, a lieutenant, and three sergeants.

Schoolcraft was advised that he could have an attorney represent him in the meeting, but he chose not to. It’s also important to note that if he had lied during the interview, he could have been brought up on department or criminal charges. Plus, he was laying his career on the line by discussing misconduct he claimed to witness. He also supplied documentation of his claims. And the interview took place prior to his controversial suspension, and months before he spoke to the media. In short, he had little to gain and a lot to lose by speaking with the investigators.

Once again, Schoolcraft had brought along his audio recorder, and recorded the meeting without the knowledge of the others in the room. During the meeting, the QAD officers make some interesting off-handed observations about the extent of crime statistic manipulation in the precincts.

After a long description of how he does investigations, one of the supervisors says, “You know, I’ve been doing this over eight years. I’ve seen a lot. The lengths people will go to try not to take a report, or not take a report for a seven major [crime]. So nothing surprises me anymore.”

The supervisor notes such instances can be criminal [falsification of business records], but district attorneys typically “don’t want to touch” cases of officers manipulating statistics. “They’ll give it back to the department to handle it internally,” he says.

He goes on to note that, yes, precincts do downgrade reports: “We look at grand larceny because, as you know, they don’t want to take the robbery,” he says. “They punch a lady in the face, and they took her pocketbook, but they don’t want to take that robbery, so they’ll make that a grand larceny.”

Schoolcraft tells the QAD officers that sergeants and lieutenants were berated for taking major crime reports. “Just about all of them, if they work patrol,” he says. “When they come out, they say, ‘It is what it is. It was a robbery—what could I do about it?’ ”

During the meeting, Schoolcraft provides documentation on an incident from December 5, 2008, that was initially taken as an attempted robbery—a teen reported that he was attacked by a gang of thugs who beat him and tried to take his portable video game—and later downgraded by a sergeant to an misdemeanor assault.

In the meeting, the QAD officers check their computer files and find that, indeed, the incident was classified as a misdemeanor assault.

Schoolcraft also provides documents from a June 29, 2009, auto theft report, in which the victim came in to obtain the report number, but no report existed. A sergeant told Schoolcraft to do a new report.

Schoolcraft tells the QAD officers that Mauriello came to the desk and told him, “I’m not taking this. Have the guy come in. I’ve gotta talk to him.”

A couple of days later, the man arrived and was ushered into Mauriello’s office. Mauriello interrogated the victim and his cousin. “There was yelling,” Schoolcraft says. “They were in there for about 40 minutes. The cousin stormed out of the office yelling and screaming.”

The stolen car complaint became an unlawful use of a motor vehicle, Schoolcraft said.

In another incident, an elderly man walked in off the street to report that someone had broken the lock on the cash box in his apartment and had stolen $22,000. When he reported the incident at another precinct, he was told that it was a “civil matter” and to call 3-1-1, the city’s complaint hotline.

The desk sergeant told Schoolcraft to send the victim back to the other precinct because he was “loopy.”

The Voice asked a retired detective about this incident. If it had been handled properly, he replied, someone would have checked his apartment for signs of a burglary. “Even if they don’t believe the guy, it’s still a crime,” the ex-detective says. “You take the report. The detectives investigate it. They determine whether he was lying.”

Among many other incidents Schoolcraft discussed were:

* A man walked in to report that he was choked unconscious and robbed of his wallet. He left with a slip that would allow him to renew his driver’s license. Then, a detective came down and said, “If that guy comes back, don’t let him upstairs.”

* Another downgraded robbery from October 23, 2008: Two officers responded to a robbery and found a guy beaten up and bleeding. A lieutenant responded to the scene and said, “We can’t take this robbery.” It came in as a lost property.

Schoolcraft says he contacted the victim, who sent him a written statement detailing what had happened.

By the end of the meeting, Schoolcraft seems to have their attention. “I’m not looking to burn anyone,” he tells the investigators. “What this is doing is it’s messing with the officers. They’re losing track of what’s real and what’s not real, what their duties are and what their duties aren’t.”

The investigators are heard pledging a thorough examination of the precinct’s crime reports. “We’re very serious about this, and we will do a thorough investigation,” an Inspector H. says. “That, I can promise you.” Later, he adds, “Personally, I appreciate you coming in and bringing this to our attention. I know it’s not an easy thing to do.”

After the meeting ends, a supervisor makes a couple of other off-handed comments to Schoolcraft, noting that the pressure to artificially lower crime statistics is fueled by the bosses downtown. “The mayor’s looking for it, the police commissioner’s looking for it . . . every commanding officer wants to show it,” he says. “So there’s motivation not to classify the reports for the seven major crimes. Sometimes, people get agendas and try to do what they can to avoid taking the seven major crimes.”

It is unclear what direction the QAD investigation has headed, but a law enforcement source assured the Voice that it is ongoing. The source declined to detail any findings.

Curiously, after questions were raised earlier this year about the 81st Precinct statistics, crime there jumped by 13 percent.

That increase has remained steady, fueled chiefly by a huge 76 percent jump in felony assaults. That jump in assaults is far ahead of the citywide increase of 4.6 percent.

In the 81st Precinct, at least, it appears that assaults are no longer being downgraded since Schoolcraft blew the whistle.

Schoolcraft decided to give the tapes to the Voice out of frustration that his attempts to report questionable activities went largely ignored within the NYPD. Instead of the department acting on his complaints, he says, he was subjected to retaliation by precinct and borough superiors.

Three weeks after his meeting with QAD investigators, on October 31, Schoolcraft felt sick and went home from work. Hours later, a dozen police supervisors came to his house and demanded that he return to work. He declined, on health grounds. Eventually, Deputy Chief Michael Marino, the commander of Patrol Borough Brooklyn North, which covers 10 precincts, ordered that Schoolcraft be dragged from his apartment in handcuffs and forcibly placed in a Queens mental ward for six days.

Today, he lives upstate, north of Albany, and is still hoping that the department will take his concerns seriously.

THE VOICE SHOWED TRANSCRIPTS OF the roll calls to Eterno, the Molloy College professor who has, in the past, testified for the NYPD as an expert witness, and Eli Silverman, a John Jay College professor who wrote a 1999 book on NYPD crime fighting strategies that was well received in the department.

Earlier this year, Eterno and Silverman published a survey of retired NYPD supervisors, more than 100 of whom said the intense pressure to show crime declines led to manipulation of crime statistics. (That survey was roundly attacked by the NYPD, the mayor’s office, and some commentators.)

“These tapes are an independent source of data that supports just about everything we found,” Eterno said, speaking for both professors. “You’re seeing relentless pressure, questionable activities, unethical manipulation of statistics. We’ve lost the understanding that policing is not just about crime numbers, it’s about service. And they don’t feel like they’re on the same team. They are fighting each other. It’s, ‘How do I get through this tour, making a number, without rocking the boat?’ ”

“The pressure comes from the commanding officer, because of CompStat, and you’re seeing the sergeants and lieutenants trying to deal with it and translate it into actionable terms.”

And the police said Adrian Schoolcraft was crazy.

They whisked him off for psychiatric evaluation against his will. But the tapes reveal crazy behavior by the bosses of the nation’s largest police force.

In the next “NYPD Tapes” article, the Voice will examine the effects of these behaviors on the community—particularly the campaign by the precinct commander to “clear” corners and buildings in the precinct, as well as staffing shortages, why stop-and-frisk numbers have skyrocketed, and how training requirements were fudged.

And, in another installment, we’ll look at what happened to the whistle blower himself, Schoolcraft, when he dared to question what was going on around him.

Follow continuing coverage of the NYPD Tapes here at the Runnin’ Scared blog.

 

by Corine Fairbanks / Unsettling America

Since the first “American history” book was written, there has been, still is, a systematic and effective cover up locked in to place that perpetuate the fallacies and myths of Christopher Columbus and the assumed “divinity” of the fated voyage.[1] “Christopher Columbus’ reputation has not survived the scrutiny of history, and today we know that he was no more the discoverer of America than Pocahontas was the discoverer of Great Britain.”

Some academics consider Columbus one of the first instigators of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and set in motion, one of the largest intentional efforts of ethnic cleansing known in history- and also the one of the least known. By some accounts, over 95 million, Indigenous peoples throughout the Western hemisphere were enslaved, mutilated and massacred.   Go down to your local public school and peruse the American History section and tell me if there has been any formal accountability for this American Holocaust.  Columbus, Cortez, Father Junipero Sierra, and hundreds of others are still celebrated as our countries brave nautical explorers and finest heroes, not as perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

Obviously, Columbus’s atrocities are rarely discussed in the public school system.  Recently, Roberta Weighill, Chumash, shared that her third grade son disagreed with his teacher about the Columbus discovery story and added that he knew Columbus to be responsible for the deaths of many Native people.  The public teacher corrected him: “No. Columbus was just a slave trader.” Hmmm, just a slave trader? Oh! Is that all?

On October 12, 1492, Columbus wrote in his journal:

“They should be good servants …. I, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses.” These captives were later paraded through the streets of Barcelona and Seville when Columbus returned to Spain.”[2] 

Soon, there was evidence showing that this was fast becoming a profitable business, yet, did these “Savages” deserve to go into bondage and slavery? According to Columbus:

“they are artless and generous with what they have, to such a degree as no one would believe but him who had seen it. Of anything they have, if it be asked for, they never say no, but do rather invite the person to accept it, and show as much lovingness as though they would give their hearts.” [3]

In a short time, Columbus seized 1,200 Taino Natives from the island of Hispaniola,[4] tearing families apart by abduction and killing the ones that resisted going.  On board Columbus’ slave ships, hundreds died; and as “Christian” as those sailors were, they callously tossed the Natives bodies into the Atlantic.

Being the nice guy that history would like us to believe, Columbus felt required at least to inform the natives of the terms by which they would be treated from now on in the “New World” ;

“I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their highnesses; we shall take you, and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him; and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us..”[5]

(ask yourself how many Taino people understood what Columbus was saying)

Within four years of Columbus’ arrival on Hispaniola, his men had killed or exported one-third of the original Indian population of 300,000.

The History of Columbus Day has been as erratic as Christopher Columbus himself.  Since 1971 Columbus Day has been celebrated in the U.S. as federal holiday.  Then, Columbus Day was terminated as a national holiday in the 1990′s.  However, October 9, 2002, President George W. Bush (why should we not be surprised it was George W.?) issued a presidential proclamation celebrating:

“Columbus’ bold expedition [and] pioneering achievements, … the flag of the United States be displayed on all public buildings on the appointed day in honor of Christopher Columbus.”

Then six years later, On Oct 11, 2008 Indigenous Peoples Day was established as the new holiday replacing Columbus Day.   How often do your children bring notices home from school on that?  November is Native American History Month, but it is NEVER celebrated with as much zealousness and vigor as our African American Awareness Month of February-  go figure, oversight? Mishap? Uh, no, I think not.

So why is there this instance of celebrating such a horrible person in history?  Is there an Adolf Hitler day? Well why not? There are some similarities here.  Ethnic cleansing, slavery, concentration camps, and annihilation.

And here we are in 2011, where there is an effort to “erase” Native people; literally & historically, and replace it with a watered down romanticized one.  “As a student in the public school district, I’ve noticed that my teachers have been leaving out gaps in their teachings,”  said 12-year-old Starr GreenSky, a Native student in the Santa Barbara School District. “For instance, my teachers have told me that a whole nation, filed by tribes, inhabited a continent. Well if that’s true, then why are there only two-to-three Native American children at my school out of the hundreds? What happened to all of us?”

Turn on your television and check out the commercials and imagery that saturate prime time hours around this time and through Thanksgiving.  Teri Di Gregorio, long time Native rights activist states;

“People are oblivious that negative stereotypes of Native people and the myth of Columbus and colonizers as “hero” are strategic as product placement. I would come across recipes for children to make “Columbus fruit boats bowls” to “commemorate” “Columbus Day” in a Fisher Price cookbook for young children, “fun” crafts for “Columbus Day” in family oriented magazines written for all those homogeneous patriotic drones out there, and of course the list goes on and on. Every single grocery, department, big box, retail, book, warehouse, furniture, electronics store in ‘merica has a sale for “Columbus Day.”

Pay attention to what your kids are being taught in their schools. Walk around the school and check out the signs, the symbols, and the imagery being used in this twisted contorted “discovery” story. ”He who controls the past, controls the future; and he who controls the present, controls the past.”[6]

Our schools have a responsibility to teach the truth, and we have a responsibility to demand it.

[1] Jack Weatherford is an anthropologist at Macalaster College in St. Paul, Minn. His most recent book is “Indian Givers.” He wrote this article for the Baltimore Evening Sun.

[2] http://www.americanindiansource.com/columbusday.html , Bourne, pp. 111-112; Page 18 of Hanke, L. (1949). The Spanish struggle for justice in the conquest of America. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press

[3] Bourne, pp. 265-266

[4] Hispaniola (Spanish: La Española) is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west, and Puerto Rico to the east,

[5] Text quoted from: “El Requerimiento” in Wilcomb Washburn, ed. The Indian and the White Man

[6] George Orwell

“I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their highnesses; we shall take you, and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him; and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us..”- Christopher Columbus

from Democracy Now with Amy Goodman & Juan González

Police Criminalize Dissent, Assert New Powers in Crackdown on Protests

GUESTS
Anthony Romero, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union. He is the author of In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror.

Hossam Bahgat, Egyptian human rights activist and the founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Abby Deshman, lawyer and program director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. She is co-editor of the report, “Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World.”

In a major new report, the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations details a global crackdown on peaceful protests through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report, “Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World,” warns of a growing tendency to perceive individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right — the right to protest — as a threat requiring a forceful government response. The case studies detailed in this report show how governments have reacted to peaceful protests in the United States, Israel, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, Kenya, South Africa and Britain. The report’s name comes from a police report filed in June 2010 when hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets of Toronto to nonviolently protest the G-20 summit. A senior Toronto police commander responded to the protests by issuing an order to “take back the streets.” Within a span of 36 hours, more than 1,000 people — peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights monitors and downtown residents — were arrested and placed in detention. We are joined by three guests: the report’s co-editor, Abby Deshman, a lawyer and program director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union; and Hossam Bahgat, an Egyptian human rights activist and the founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to a major new report detailing the global crackdown on peaceful protests, both through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report is called “Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World.” It was put out by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations. The name of the report, “Take Back the Streets,” comes from a police report filed in June 2010, when hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets of Toronto to nonviolently protest the G-20 summit. A senior Toronto police commander responded to the protests by issuing an order to, quote, “take back the streets.” Within a span of 36 hours, over a thousand people—peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights monitors and downtown residents—were arrested and placed in detention.

AMY GOODMAN: According to the report, what happened in Canada is emblematic of government conduct in the face of protest around the world: the tendency to perceive individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right—the right to protest—as a threat requiring a forceful government response. The case studies detailed in this report show how governments have reacted to peaceful protests in the United States, in Israel, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, Kenya, South Africa and Britain.

For more, we’re joined by co-editor of the report, Abby Deshman, a lawyer and program director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. We’re also joined by Anthony Romero. He is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, author of the book In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror. And still with us, Hossam Bahgat—he is the founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Abby, talk about the report.

ABBY DESHMAN: Sure. This is a collaboration between multiple domestic human rights and civil liberties organizations, that we’ve really come together to group our domestic work, group our national work and identify trends in how we feel the governments are responding to democratic dissent and protest in the streets. And, you know, gathering together this number of practitioners to really provide practitioners’ notes shows that there are very disturbing trends. People are taking to the streets across the world, and governments are responding with excessive use of force, criminalization and repression.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, when you say “disturbing trends,” governments have never looked kindly on dissent within their borders or by their own citizens. What do you see as new about what is occurring now? Because I remember years back when we at Democracy Now! covered the Seattle World Trade Organization protests live, there clearly were some new tactics by both the nonviolent protesters as well as the government response.

ABBY DESHMAN: Well, partly what’s new—I mean, at least for me; I’m young in this game—but partly what’s new is massive uprising in the streets. I think we are seeing, in the past three, five years, record numbers of people, in recent memory, taking to the streets. And we are seeing new police tactics—the numbers of arrests, the massive, hundreds of people rounded up at a time. There are new policing weapons: long-range acoustic devices, sonic cannon, excessive amounts of tear gas being used in Egypt. These are trends that are currently surfacing in multiple countries.

AMY GOODMAN: Anthony Romero, talk about the United States.

ANTHONY ROMERO: Well, it’s important to put the United States in the global context. And normally when we think about protest and freedom of speech, we think that’s been a right that’s been well established and well respected. And yet, you point out the difficulties we’ve seen with the WTO protesters, the protesters with the Occupy movement and, in particular, this case study that we highlight in Puerto Rico, a place where most Americans don’t think of Puerto Rico as part of the United States, but it is. The Constitution applies. Over four—close to four million American citizens live there. And yet, you have the second-largest police department in the nation, only second to New York City Police Department, and the massive levels of repression and shutdown of—of arrests, of tear-gassing, of beating of students, of labor leaders, the level of impunity that lasted for years, until the ACLU filed a report, lobbied our Justice Department, filed a lawsuit, and then the Justice Department stepped in, only recently, to try to put the Puerto Rico Police Department under better control of rule of law.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole tactic of picking people up en masse and then holding them, supposedly while protests continue, basically pulling them out without any real charges just to get them off the streets?

ANTHONY ROMERO: We saw that New York, right? I mean, that’s how they—that’s how they dealt with many of the protests here in New York, especially after the conventions—during the conventions, where they corralled record numbers of people, arrested them in record time, in ways that were just astonishing, held them often incommunicado for 24, 36, 48 hours—a form of preventive detention, if you will.

And I think one of the things we have to bear in mind is like, look, our government is shut down. Our government is not working. People are frustrated. People may take to the streets as an important part of demonstrating their unrest, their unhappiness with our government. And so, how we protect the rights of individuals to protest and to dissent is critically important, especially in our democracy, that’s so fundamentally broken down and at loggerheads at the moment. The people—it’s the government of the people, by the people and for the people. And when the government doesn’t respond to the people, the people have to take the government back.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But to follow up on this, because what the police departments do is they don’t mind having to deal with lawsuits later on. You know, years later they end up paying these settlements to protesters who had their civil liberties violated, but at that moment they’re able to effectively shut down the dissent. So, I’m wondering how can you, as a civil liberties lawyer, find—what ways can the courts be utilized to prevent these kinds of occurrences from repeating themselves over and over again?

ANTHONY ROMERO: I think part of it, you have to—even in cases where they infringe on civil liberties and freedom of speech and expression, you have to sue, to use that as a deterrent for further police departments, to shame them, to cost taxpayers money. We have to work with police departments, those that are open to it, to hear what their concerns are for public safety. They have real concerns around public safety; they can be addressed.

We also have to make sure that we don’t allow the excessive use of less lethal force. I mean, one of the things we’ve seen in the reports on Puerto Rico, as much in Egypt and Canada and Argentina, has been the increased use of police of certain weapons, of certain tactics, which they say is less lethal, but they end up in deaths. We have deaths in the arrests in Puerto Rico. We have deaths in Argentina. We certainly have deaths in places like Egypt. And so we have to make sure that we hold the police accountable for those—for those actions.

AMY GOODMAN: And then the issue of surveillance, like our last headline today—

ANTHONY ROMERO: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —this undercover officer in the infamous West Side Highway videotape of the motorcycle gang and the guy with the SUV, that one of these officers, it turns out, was—one of these motorcycle riders was an officer, undercover, and he was undercover in Occupy Wall Street, as well—

ANTHONY ROMERO: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —picked up at Grand Central.

ANTHONY ROMERO: When you look at the fact that it’s not just what they do at the protest itself, but prior to the protests the surveillance, prior to the protests the infiltration. We have police departments who brazenly brag about sending in undercover cops to pretend they’re part of the protest movements as a way to derail them or to shape them in the ways they want. All of this, in the context after 9/11, where any activity that disagrees with the government is—often vehemently, is seen as potential terrorist activity or a potential terrorist plot, the powers of the government to use of surveillance, infiltration, the police tactics, they all have to be seen as one part of an effort to shut down and to dispel dissent. We see it. We see the fact that there’s a quell on public dissent. Muslims are less likely to express themselves now. We hear that from our clients. We hear that from our—some of the litigation we bring. And so, it’s a very pernicious part that’s very, very real and often not uncovered until we put out reports like this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Abby, the Canadian example of the G-20 summit, what most surprised you in terms of as you were unearthing what happened there and the civil liberties violations?

ABBY DESHMAN: Well, actually, how high the police orders went. You know, we thought that this was a coordinated response. We saw that there was consistency, a really defined point in time when the policing turned during the G-20. We then had confirmation that there were orders all the way from the top, that these were not random acts by individual commanders panicking under situations, that these really were decisions that were taken by very senior police leaders to violate not only the rights of citizens, but their own policies and procedures about how to deal with protests, and really that they were taking notes from an international scene where this had happened before. We had not seen this technique in Canada. It was clear that it had happened at previous G-20 summits, and they were importing these policies.

AMY GOODMAN: Hossam Bahgat, we were just talking about the level of repression in Egypt, but fit this into this global context.

HOSSAM BAHGAT: Yes. While Egypt might be an extreme case, of course, because we have sort of crossed the threshold from just the violent repression of protests to mass and deliberate killings, really the trend in Egypt fits with the trend identified by the report in all of these case studies. We see, as Abby and Anthony mentioned, that the mass protests are not, of course, a new phenomenon, but they are taking new shapes. And whether it’s the Arab uprisings, the protests in Turkey and Brazil, the anti-austerity mass protests in Europe, the Occupy movement here, they are going to continue.

And we see the right to protest publicly and the right to dissent as an essential part of democracy. There is an attempt on the other side, by governments, to reduce the democratic rights of individuals to just voting, to being called in once every few years to cast a vote and then be sent home and leave the governance to the people that have been elected. The people refuse. The people see that, in many countries, the democratic institutions—and we’re talking in the United States here, but the democratic institutions around the world are not working and are not necessarily reflecting the wills of the people. And the people are going to continue to take their demands, yes, through channels like the media and civil society and labor unions and others, but they are going to go on the street, and they are going to protest publicly. And states need to know that they have a responsibility not just to protect this right, but to even enable people to express these rights, because the only other alternative—the killings that we’re seeing in Egypt or the killings that even started in Syria as just violence in the face of peaceful protests and turned into civil wars—these are recipes for only pushing the situation into very, very dangerous directions. And the violent response only leads to even violent protests.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and, Abby, I wanted to ask you—much was made, obviously, in Egypt and during the Arab Spring of the impact of social media and the use of the Internet by dissidents to mobilize, to communicate. In your report, did you dwell into the responses of government officials in terms of how they responded to the change in tactics of the popular movements?

ABBY DESHMAN: Yeah, absolutely. Police do say that they need new tactics because people can mobilize more quickly. Things are going out on Twitter, and then a large crowd forms. Things are very mobile on the ground. But the truth is, in my experience, during the G-20, we knew exactly what was going to happen, because it was on the Internet, it was on social media. The protesters themselves had classified their protests in terms of levels of risk. So I actually am very skeptical of those claims that they need new powers in order to try to police these new forms of protest. We knew exactly what was going to happen during the G-20 protests. They followed that pattern. The police simply weren’t prepared and then violated rights as their reaction.

AMY GOODMAN: And how should the state deal with violence?

ABBY DESHMAN: Well, the state does need to respond to violence. But I would say the state overresponds to violence, particularly in protests. So, there may be one or two or even 10 or 30 people [(A)narchists?]  in a crowd of thousands, tens of thousands, that commit property damage, that commit violent acts. The state often takes that as an authority to abrogate the rights of every single person in that crowd. They need to respond to violence. They need to protect the rights of all the other people in that crowd who are peacefully protesting and exercising their democratic rights. Their role is to facilitate protest, not to find excuses to shut it down.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the U.S. cutting military aid to Egypt, Hossam? How does that play into what the military government does with the protesters? Does it change?

HOSSAM BAHGAT: I mean, in Egypt, especially after the massacres, of course, our position was that there should be investigations, there should be an independent fact finding, and there should be accountability. And until that takes place and until the government also accepts responsibility for these killings, there should be a suspension of the provision of any arms or tools of repression from any country in the world. We’re not just talking about the U.S. military assistance. And any resumption of the sale of weapons or the provision of weapons or tools of repression to the Egyptian government must be conditioned on accepting the retraining and provision of, you know, new tools for riot control, but that business should not continue just as usual when it comes to Egypt.

Especially when—exactly like Abby said, the problem is now, in all of these demonstrations that we are seeing, in the report, all around the world, there is—there is always a few protesters [(A)narchists?] that are going to use violence. The trend we’re seeing now is that governments use this to dub the entire protest—20,000, 30,000—as non-peaceful or as violent. And that leads to two things: One, the peaceful participants that are not using violence are, again, lumped together with the others and are deprived of their rights as peaceful protesters; and even those that do engage in stone throwing or other violence are robbed of all their other rights, including their right to life, of course. And the states are just using this as an excuse, sometimes through infiltration by provocateurs into these protests, in order to just remove entire protests outside the realm of protection of law.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to get back to Anthony Romero in terms of this whole idea of the Obama administration finally doing something in Egypt to cut off some of the military aid to the—to the coup leaders. How has the Obama administration dealt with the increasing repression by local police on public protesters? Has there been any—any actions by the Justice Department to try to rein this in, or have they basically been supportive?

ANTHONY ROMERO: They’ve basically been supportive. I mean, to be clear, the ACLU doesn’t take positions on foreign policy or the U.S. aid to Egypt, but we do look very closely about how our government, federal government, works with state and local governments. And the level of collusion between the federal agents, the FBI, and local police departments has become very troubling, the way they track and the way they monitor and do surveillance on Muslims. So, one of the key cases we have now is in New York City with the New York City Police Department, but it involves the FBI and the federal government. You see it in the immigration context, if you pull the camera back a little further back, where you find the FBI and the DOJ and Department of Homeland Security working with local sheriffs and police.

AMY GOODMAN: You have a case against Arpaio in Arizona.

ANTHONY ROMERO: Oh, it’s exactly that.

AMY GOODMAN: The sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

ANTHONY ROMERO: The sheriff, Arpaio, who resists a federal order from a federal judge to have a monitor and to have any type of accountability. But Arpaio was created by the policies of Janet Napolitano. I mean, Arpaio is not just a one—

AMY GOODMAN: When she was governor or head of the Department of Homeland Security?

ANTHONY ROMERO: Well, I would say more in the Department of Homeland Security, because it’s exactly that type of collusion that she encouraged—the 287(g) programs, the Secure Communities programs, that insisted that federal government officials work with local law enforcement officials. Now, Sheriff Arpaio has gone off the farm, but the fact is that there are too many local police departments that are working with the federal government on things like surveillance, on immigration, on dissent, on protest. And so, I think actually part of the responsibility does come from the federal government.

Warning: Some of the language is graphic.

By: Julie Montanaro
September 10, 2013

Tallahassee, FL – A Tallahassee woman claims Tallahassee Police Officers slammed her against a patrol car and then to the pavement when she was arrested for DUI.

Christina West’s Brutal DUI Arrest Police Brutality Tallahassee Cops:

Dash cam video of the arrest was released today. Her attorney calls it “brutal.”

44-year-old Christina West was arrested August 10th after she ran off the road and struck a house in Killearn.

The state attorney calls the dash cam video of the arrest one of the most disturbing videos he’s ever seen.

Christina West was arrested for drunk driving and assaulting an officer on August 10th.

West says officers slammed her face into the patrol car and threw her onto the ground … breaking her cheek bone, bloodying her nose and more. She’s had two surgeries so far.

The video shows officers getting Christina West out of the patrol car and then an officer yelling “Don’t ****ing touch me.” The video shows officers then pushing West onto the back of a patrol car and then to the ground. The video shows officers putting a knee to her neck and proceeding to handcuff her. You can hear West screaming for the men to stop.

“I had a physical reaction to that tape the first time I saw that video. It’s bad,” West’s attorney Fred Conrad said.

Christina West was ultimately put back in the patrol car and taken to the hospital. Her injuries were photographed there. West was brusied on her shoulders, legs and back. Photos show she had a black eye that was swollen shut.

“I don’t care if she was drunker than cooter brown and took a breath test and blew through the moon … that’s not warranted. That’s not okay,” Conrad said.

It happened just after 3am on August 10th. Arrest reports say West plowed through the front wall of a house in Killearn – at the corner of Kilkenny West and Limerick Drive.

The Sawner’s say luckily they were not home that weekend, because the SUV came right through the wall of their bedroom.

“It pushed our bed all the way to the back side of the house…and tore it all to pieces,” homeowner Bobbie Sawner said. She said she’s glad to be alive and glad the woman and the teens with her survived the crash too.

When officers Ormerod and Smidt arrived on scene, they put West through a series of field sobriety tests. They say she was slurring her words and had trouble keeping her balance. The video was all captured by a camera in Officer Smidt’s car.

The confrontation started when officers asked West to get out of the car to sign a breath test consent form. You can hear her say “Yes,sir” on the tape, but she continued to ask about her husband and her childrens’ car seats.

Here’s how Officer Chris Ormerod described what happened when he tried to place her in handcuffs.

He wrote in his incident report: “West was placed on the ground where she began to thrash and kick wildly. West kicked me in the groin area and kicked officer Schmidt in the leg.” He goes on to write, “West was placed in a thigh lock on the ground as I secured her hands. While handcuffing West’s hands, she continued to violently make attempts to grab for my groin area with her hands.”

West was charged with driving under the influence, battery on a law enforcement offier and aggravated assault on an officer.

“It was a very disturbing video to me,” State Attorney Willie Meggs said.

Meggs says the DUI case is still pending, but he has dropped the battery and assault charges and is still trying to figure out what to do next.

“I didn’t see anything in the video that would cause me to believe that this woman needed anybody to use any type of force or restraint on her,” Meggs said.

We have asked both Tallahassee Police and the city attorney for comment. They have not yet responded.

The video shows West did consent to a breathalyzer test on scene, but it never happened because of the scuffle. In their reports, officers say, she refused a blood test at the hospital.

Meanwhile, in another State,

Dana Holmes was drunk, naked and being recorded on video.

The 33-year-old was facedown on the floor of a LaSalle County jail cell while cameras captured images of her nude body on the facility’s video system. Minutes earlier, four deputies — three men and a woman — had pulled her to the ground and carried her into the cell, where they quickly and forcibly stripped Holmes and walked out with her clothes.

“There was no excuse or anything to give them a reason to put their hands on me,” said Holmes, who filed a federal lawsuit against LaSalle County authorities Monday. “I was just scared. I didn’t want them to have any reason to come back inside.”

RELATED

Holmes, whose blood-alcohol level registered nearly three times the legal limit when she was arrested for drunken driving earlier in the night, said she lay on the floor crying. After a few minutes, the cell door opened, and a deputy tossed in a pile of blankets and what authorities describe as a “padded suit.”

More than an hour later, when deputies fingerprinted and photographed Holmes, she was covered only in one of the blankets wrapped around her body, the jail video showed. It was provided to the Tribune by Holmes’ attorneys. The images show several male officers entering the room as a still-inebriated Holmes struggles to keep the blanket around her shoulders while being fingerprinted.

Holmes, who lives in Coal City and works at a local convenience store, alleges the LaSalle County sheriff’s department and four deputies violated her civil rights after her May arrest and caused her emotional harm by stripping her naked without legal justification for such a search.

Her lawyer, Terry Ekl, said he planned to seek a meeting with the LaSalle County state’s attorney to contend the officers committed official misconduct by deliberately strip-searching Holmes without justification.

“It’s not only a violation of her civil rights. It’s also a crime,” said Ekl, who provided the Tribune with copies of the video as well as written reports filed by sheriff’s officers and Marseilles police. The lawyer said the video and documents were produced by authorities in court as part of her DUI case.

LaSalle County Sheriff Thomas Templeton said he had not seen the video or the reports, and was not even aware of the incident when the Tribune contacted him. He said the county would be unlikely to comment on an incident involving litigation. In the written incident report sheriff’s officers filed, they said Holmes was uncooperative while being searched. She was informed she would remain in the padded cell “until she sobers up and was willing to cooperate and not fight with deputies,” according to the report.

Sheriff’s officers did not note any justification for removing her clothes, nor did they note any suspicion that she was hiding a weapon or drugs. She had already been searched by Marseilles police officers who arrested her, according to their report. She also was monitored by a female Marseilles officer while she used the bathroom at the police station there.

Under Illinois law, a strip-search is permitted only when officers have a “reasonable belief” that the subject is hiding a weapon or a controlled substance on their body. The law also requires that the strip-search be done by an officer of the same sex as the subject and cannot be observed by people not conducting the search.

An expert on criminal procedure said it was hard to see what legal justification sheriff’s officers may have believed they had for a strip-search, regardless of Holmes’ demeanor.

“Nothing in the statute says resisting arrest is justification for a strip-search,” said Len Cavise, who teaches criminal law at the DePaul University College of Law.

The incident began about 10:50 p.m. May 18, when a Marseilles police officer spotted a 2008 silver Ford Focus speeding through town, according to the arrest report. Holmes was driving. The arresting officer noted that she apologized for speeding and said she was not familiar with the area and had just come from a wedding with her boyfriend, who appeared to be too drunk to drive.

On the video and audio recording from the police car’s camera, Holmes appeared to be cooperative as she failed a field sobriety test and was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving. She volunteered to take an alcohol breath test, which registered 0.226, far over the 0.08 legal limit. The DUI report filed two days later by the Marseilles officer stated that Holmes “seemed confused” about her car being impounded but otherwise did not describe her demeanor during the car ride to the jail.

But in their report filed a couple of hours after Holmes was released early May 19, sheriff’s officers said the Marseilles police officer who arrested and transported her told LaSalle County officials that Holmes was “being mouthy and causing problems.”

[And, for those violent street elements, see the following clip:]

Armed Carjacker meets Armed Citizen

Armed Robbery on videotape goes wrong in Venezuela

from Montesano Today

by Tom Fredriksen

Grays Harbor, WA — The autopsy over the recent attempt by the Port of Grays Harbor, and it’s attempt to ram both coal and oil trains into our county,  is beginning.  With the recent ruling that both the Port and related agencies must begin the permit process….properly…..the questions many of us have been asking for two years may begin to be answered.

The stonewalling and keeping as much of the process in the dark as possible – almost worked.   When I personally started to look at the situation and take pictures of local infrastructure, I was met with a threat of arrest for daring to try and take a look at it. That is what concerns me.

This entire process, start to finish was designed about taking care of the right people,  not to benefit the harbor or county as a whole.  The Port would have done well, the rest of us….not so much, considering the consequences of the increased traffic and lowered property values.

The twenty five to fifty jobs would have gone to relatives and friends of the right people, the right people in positions of power properly greased…as it always is here in Grays Harbor.  Again, it almost worked.

The problem for the right people today is the mass communication available.  Individual opinion and information now travels across the county at lightening speed.  It is very difficult to keep things in the dark anymore.

Here in Montesano we are embroiled in a similar situation where over forty acres of Chehalis river waterfront property was sold in the dark to a wealthy developer …the public shut out of the process–for the grand sum of $23,000.  More will be coming on this shortly.  The right people taken care of.

The above are just two recent examples of what can happen when the right people decide to feather their nests at the expense of all of us.

WILD OLYMPICS

Up until about a year or so ago I was one of those guys holding up the STOP WILD OLYMPICS  signs.  “Those whacked out tree hugging liberals are at it again…”  I was saying.  I believed it.  I suppose I should also say that I still believe there are some whacked out liberals pushing the agenda.  But that is another posting.

My own seeds of doubt began to creep in after observing the actions of our Port Commissioners and their vassals along with a few local Montesano City Council members, who with the stroke of a pen…in the dark……tried to give away our land and way of life…..taking care of the right people.

If such a small group of people can give away our prime waterfront, and as was the case of the port…our health and safety over oil trains…..what is to stop a similar smoke filled back room of the right people from doing the same to the entire Olympic Peninsula.  In my opinion….they have no shame and I wouldn’t put it past them.

I’m not ready to put out a WILD OLYMPICS sign yet, but I’m not saying I wouldn’t either.  Before we can even begin to address the problems of unemployment and where we want the county to go in the future, we have to begin to address the real problem standing in the way of all of us–

The right people!

Photos from Inside a Recent ALF Target in Wisconsin

from The North American Animal Liberation Press Office

After the ALF targets the home of an executive, rare photos give a glimpse inside North American Fur Auctions.

In August, the Animal Liberation Front took credit for flooding the home of Brian L. MacMillan, head of North American Fur Auctions (NAFA)’s trapped animal division. Every year, NAFA sells the skins of millions of wild-trapped animals at its auction house in Toronto, Canada.

Animal Liberation Frontline has obtained several photos taken inside this auction, showing the skins of the trapped animals Brian MacMillan is responsible for bringing to market.

These photos were not intended to be seen publicly.

After viewing, there should be no question as to why Brian MacMillan was chosen as the target of the ALF’s first action against NAFA – one that will hopefully be the first of many.

Albuquerque, NM (12-4-12) — A City of Albuquerque security guard attacked and beat a Hispanic man for filming him. It’s all on tape in this exclusive story from Police Complaints. When a law-abiding witness started filming an arrest, things got ugly, fast. See the whole story at http://goo.gl/ggBRu

[Editor’s Note: Any distinction between this uniformed New Mexico thug and Olympia’s violent (A)narchists who assault/threaten/bully/intimidate/rob photojournalists is one without a difference. They, along with the authority figures they rail against, are corrupt.]

The above story is quite reminiscent of the 12-23-07 arrest of this reporter at the Belfair FEMA field office after being beaten by one of their private security guard (Thomas J. Doyle) for criticizing the competence of FEMA staff. Road Deputy Rhodes (now Detective) responded and treated the victim in much the same manner as the responding police officer seen in the video clip above except he went further, trumping up an imagined felony charge that was so baseless Judge Sheldon refused to find probable cause and dismissed the case after seeing the defendant’s appearance after being treated at the local hospital for his injuries. Deputy Rhodes, having be ordered to transport the victim to the hospital, lied about having they key to his handcuffs when hospital staff asked him to remove them so they could take X-rays.

The Hispanic man who was assaulted would have been convicted of some trumped up offense if he had not had a video record WITH audio of the incident. Others present were aligned with the offending guard and willing to dissemble/lie about what actually happened. Olympia area (A)narchists are equally as unscrupulous. Those wishing to document police officials or radical street elements are well advised to protect themselves by making a record, both visually and audio.

Surveillance Video Reveals Cop (Michael Hart) Hurling Woman, Face First, Into Concrete Cell, Permanently Injuring Her; Lawsuit Follows

by Ed Krayewski (10-10-13)

Earlier this month, an Illinois woman filed suit against LaSalle County, alleging she was aggressively strip searched by three male deputies and a female in the jail after a DUI arrest and left naked in a cell. This week, her attorney said he has five more women who have come forward with similar complaints.

Now, a separate lawsuit against the Skokie Police Department in Illinois was filed by a Chicago woman, Cassandra Feuerstein, alleging the use of excessive force after her DUI arrest. Surveillance video shows the 110-pound woman talking to an officer off-screen, then walking out of the cell, followed by two cops, and about 30 seconds later being thrown head first toward a concrete bench in her cell, causing bleeding. Feuerstein’s lawyer says she required reconstructive surgery and a titanium plate in her cheek. Cops claimed she wasn’t looking into the camera during processing and tried to charge her with resisting arrest. The state’s attorney dropped those charges and Feuerstein copped a guilty plea to the DUI.

Her attorney says she’s suing because charges weren’t pressed against the officers involved. Watch a short clip of the surveillance video with Feuerstein’s attorney narrating here, or the raw surveillance video, which includes an angle showing her allegedly resisting while having her photo taken, below. Feuerstein walks out of the cell about 1:20 in: