tagged w/ misdemeanor
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The whole justification for police to get tasers in the first place was to subdue potentially violent suspects -- but it's gone way, way, past that.
May 5, 2010 |
Unless you've been living in a Waziristan cave for the last 24 years, you've heard about the unfortunate misdemeanor-breaking dude who got Tasered at a Philadelphia Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park Monday night. My computer screen here at the Philadelphia Daily News went all a-Twitter about it even before all the electrons had even stopped flowing through 17-year-old suburban high school senior Steve Consalvi.
My gut instinct when I first learned of it was the same as I feel about it a day later: That while it wasn't exactly a Rodney King affair, clearly the officer had used excessive force. I've been watching baseball games for more than 40 years, and the drills is always the same. The fan isn't trying to do harm, just get attention; it used to be that the TV cameras never even showed a field-jumper for exactly that reason, back before ESPN needed an endless stream of fodder for its "Top 10 Plays."
People forget that the whole justification for police to get Tasers in the first place was to subdue potentially violent suspects in cases in the past in which they might have been tempted to use lethal force. But the notion that the cops would have pulled a gun and shot 17-year-old field jumper Steve Consalvi is absurd, which means the rationale for tasing him is...what? There's something oddly funny about zapping a fellow human for some reason, but Tasers are no joke to the loved ones of the estimated 50 people who died because of their use.
Consalvi didn't have the risk factors of most of those killed or injured -- he is young, healthy, and wasn't drunk or on drugs. But he still -- while committing a misdemeanor, let's remember -- was subjected to the brief, intense pain of 50,000 volts of electricity. There was a simpler, quainter time when causing pain to another person was called...violence.
I guess that quaint time was America before 9/11 -- after which for some reason we lost all sense of proportionality on how to respond to various levels of wrongdoing. After my low-key blog suggestion that Tasering a mildly lawbreaking fan wasn't a great idea, I got an email from a reader. He said, in part: "Were you there last night? I was. Idiots like that are unpredictable at best! The days of "Morgana (sic) the kissing bandit" are gone. We live in a post 911 world." I don't mean to be harsh to the emailer -- he actually made some decent points about security entering Citizens Bank Park.
But I also had to wonder: Must we see every single act of wrongdoing, even minor ones, through the prism of 9/11? Is a fan running on a field in the same ballpark with killing nearly 3,000 people? What has happened to us in this country. Did anyone call for stun-gunning "Morganna the kissing bandit" in the 1970s because we lived in "a post-JFK assassination world" and that maybe she had a concealed weapon inside of those, um. concealed weapons. Of course not. Americans have changed ...and not for the better.
Make no mistake -- the 9/11 attacks were the most cowardly acts of pure evil ever committed on U.S. soil -- but the American ideals of civil liberties should be so sacrosanct they should not have been unduly violated even for the people who planned and executed 9/11, but of course they were at Guantanamo and with the John Yoo-justified torture regime that was expanded to many people who had nothing to do with 9/11 and eventually to people who were innocent of any crime altogether.
More at the link:The whole justification for police to get tasers in the first place was to subdue... more
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Eric Rachner sits in the back of a police car the night he was arrested for obstructing an officer. This image is taken from video footage recorded by a camera inside the vehicle -- footage that Seattle police long maintained had been erased.
A drunken street golf game with foam balls has led to a serious civil rights issue, pitting computer geeks against police practices.
Eric Rachner, a Seattle cyber security expert and one of the golf players, wasn't satisfied when the city dismissed charges against him after a possibly illegal arrest for refusing to provide identification.
Rachner discovered through sleuthing that police had withheld video-recorded evidence in his case.
Rachner also hired Seattle attorney Cleveland Stockmeyer to look at his case and probably others where arrests might have been illegal or where police claimed to have destroyed valuable arrest videos that weren't, in fact, erased.
"How many people are sitting in jail who asked for their tapes and were told no, they can't have them," says Stockmeyer. "I don't know. But I tell you we're going to freaking find out."
On a Saturday night in October 2008, Rachner was one of a sizeable group of "urban golfers" who were whacking the faux ball from bar to bar on city sidewalks, alleys and parking lots, imbibing more than keeping score.
Near the last "hole" a sliced shot hit a 22-year-old passerby in the face. The 1 ½-inch foam ball caused no harm other than a sting, but when the golfers laughed at and "heckled" the victim he called 9-1-1, the police report said. Seattle police responded in force.
While their colleagues would soon be investigating a shooting across town, the East Precinct sent four officers to spend an hour rounding up golfers.
"Twenty to thirty people are detained over a Styrofoam ball?" said Dan Kaminsky, an internationally famous Internet security expert himself, who was not arrested, but was among those detained for questioning. "This is ridiculous."
Rachner was wearing a faded t-shirt, jeans and leather jacket, and didn't remotely resemble the guy who misfired the ball, who wore English golfing duds, a Tattersall's hat and fake orange sideburns.
Confronted by officer Michele Letizia, Rachner politely declined to state his name. He also indicated where he kept his wallet with ID. The policeman removed the wallet from Rachner's pocket, but both men declined to open it. The officer expressed fear he could be accused of stealing cash.
Letizia threatened to arrest the 32-year-old Capitol Hill reveler for obstruction if he didn't provide his name as others had. The cop told Rachner that booking on a Saturday night could mean cell time until Monday. Rachner remained mum. Letizia arrested him, based on the refusal to provide ID, according to arrest and court documents.
With those facts, the arrest appears to have been illegal based on a 1982 Washington Supreme Court ruling, though a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court case makes the situation less clear-cut.
Custody for Rachner lasted two hours, not days, but a charge was leveled against him in Seattle Municipal Court for obstructing a public officer. Controversial laws known as obstruction, "stop and frisk" and "stop and identify" statutes have been abused in other cities like New York, studies and news stories show. An obstruction case cited in a 2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigation ended with a federal jury hitting Seattle police with a six-figure penalty.
Rachner's criminal defense attorney sought dismissal of his gross misdemeanor charge, citing the Washington State Supreme Court decision that says arresting a person for nothing more than withholding identification is unconstitutional. One reason cited by the court: This practice allows police too much discretion to pick targets and punish with arrest. Also, the state constitution is more protective of these rights than the U.S. constitution.
But then-city attorney Tom Carr's office kept the prosecution going for half a year. William Ross, the former assistant city attorney who handled part of the case, acknowledged that it is illegal to arrest someone for nothing more than failure to give ID, but declined to discuss case details other than to say the office didn't abuse its authority.
When the arresting officer was asked recently in an interview whether the ID issue was the only reason he took Rachner into custody, he said "no". But he declined to address why his arrest reported cited ID as the only reason, and refused further comment.
Inconsistent memories are why every Seattle officer has a video camera in the squad car and a microphone on their uniform. Expanding in use nationally, they provide an unblinking witness and are automatically activated when the patrol car's flashing lights are turned on. Cops are often more protected than citizens by these videos, but are the police willing to produce the recordings when they might be in the wrong?
Rachner repeatedly tested that question, asking for the video and audio recordings of that night's arrest as part of pre-trial discovery and, separately, in requests under state public disclosure law. That part of the discovery request wasn't fulfilled and the SPD denied the first disclosure request because the criminal charge was pending, records show.
On the day last May when the city attorney dropped the charges because of unexplained "proof" problems -- nearly six months and more than $3,500 in defendant legal expenses after the incident -- Rachner filed another disclosure request for the recordings.
The department responded: "These recordings are both past our retention period and can no longer be obtained. Please note that the majority of 911 calls and videos are retained for a period of ninety (90) days."
"They just flat out said they didn't have it," said Rachner.
Police were wrong. The recordings weren't destroyed and Rachner -- just starting the next round in his fight -- was the kind of person to discover that.
Using his skills as a computer security geek, Eric Rachner spent long hours at his latpop in his apartment sleuthing out what happened to the police video and audio recordings of his arrest.
Rachner didn't hack the police computers, but with attorney Stockmeyer's advice he spent several late nights starting in October poring line-by-line over technical aspects of the video and audio recording system. He examined the Houston-area manufacturer's contracts, specifications and procedures.
Why bother? With charges dropped, Rachner says a major incentive now is protecting his trust-sensitive career in which he is "frequently subject to background checks."
"In this business, even having an accusation on your record has concrete financial implications," said Kaminsky, who became internationally famous in 2008 when he discovered a security hole in the Internet -- the entire Internet -- and helped computer companies worldwide fix it.
Rachner hit pay dirt when a procurement contract and system specs revealed that a computerized log is kept permanently on every video and audio recording, showing when anyone uploads it, flags it for retention, plays it, copies it or deletes it.
In late November, Rachner filed a public disclosure request for the log of his video and audio recordings. His luck changed. He got the log in early January showing the videos had been flagged for retention after the arrest, viewed and kept. He also received a copy of the first video and audio recording. The second recording arrived in early March while a reporter was talking to him on the phone. No explanation was provided for the earlier SPD claim the tapes could not be obtained.
"Why wasn't this an abuse of authority?" asked Rachner.
More at the link:Eric Rachner sits in the back of a police car the night he was arrested for... more
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Warren Sapp, a University of Miami legend and former All-Pro lineman in town to provide TV commentary for the Super Bowl, was arrested by Miami Beach police Saturday after his girlfriend accused him of choking her and throwing her in the couple’s hotel room.
For the Full Story of Warren Sapp Choking His Girlfriend...VIDEO...http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/sapp-chokes-gf-ex-football-prodwts-warren-sapp-arrested-for-domestic-battery-busting-the-stereotype/
The alleged attack occurred about 5 a.m., after the couple had been partying at Miami Beach’s Shore Club hotel, 1901 Collins Ave., the police report said.
The woman — police did not identify her — called authorities at noon Saturday. Officers arrived at the hotel and met with the 37-year-old former NFL star before taking him to police headquarters, said police spokesman Detective Juan Sanchez.Warren Sapp, a University of Miami legend and former All-Pro lineman in town to... more
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"Less than two months into the school year, White Station High School Principal David Mansfield and 11th grade Principal Eric Harris have been charged with the misdemeanor offense. At the school Monday morning, they were each served with a summons to appear in Juvenile Court Nov. 3. Each charge carries a maximum fine of $2,500 but no jail time.
The charges stem from a Sept. 18 incident in which a 17-year-old White Station senior was beaten in the school by a group of girls who left her lying “on the floor in the fetal position.” The injured and bleeding girl was “crying too hard” to tell what had happened, according to an anonymous witness quoted in the criminal complaint.
But she later calmed down and was taken to a school nurse where her injuries, which were minor, were treated. No one at the school called police.""Less than two months into the school year, White Station High School Principal... more
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