Am I unfair to cops?

This may be the most defensive post I've ever written, and I've thought more than twice about it, but after a number of recent accusations both on this blog and in Springfield/Northampton forums that I am a liar, filth, and damaging the lives (!!) of police and hospital personnel, I decided to go back and take a look at my previous posts to see: am I really too hard on law enforcement?

In the two years I've been writing this blog, I've posted 781 times. Fifteen of those posts have mentioned the police-- that's a bit under 2%.

In fact, I could have posted much more about the police than I do-- there are many items that catch my eye that I'd like to share. But I happen to have two very close family members in frontline law enforcement, and there are so many other things to write about-- why go out of my way to choose to write about things that might alienate my family? It's a balance I find myself weighing every time I post about the police.

Of those fifteen posts, I have never engaged in name-calling-- the closest I've come is calling the actions of the New Orleans Police Department in setting up homeless people by leaving valuable items in parked cars and waiting until a homeless person broke into the cars as "sleazy."

So: four of the posts were about police actions regarding homeless people-- cutting up their tents, arresting them at demonstrations-- facts not in dispute. One of the four was sympathetic to the position of the police.

Two were about people who died after being tasered. Facts not in dispute.

Two were about SWAT raid-- one where a 92 year old woman was killed in a botched drug raid where the ex-officer on trial said he was forced to lie to cover up the facts; one where a small town mayor's home was raided and his two dogs shot to death. Facts not in dispute.

Two were primarily about policy issues where the police were mentioned, one over police departments confusion over the new Massachusetts marijuana law, and one about the Mass. Supreme Court expanding the powers of the police to frisk people on the street. I did say I thought that would make the police happy.

Two of the posts were complimentary to the police, in particular about how swiftly they acted to catch the murderer of a local homeless man.

One was primarily about the rapes and beatings of sex workers in Springfield which quoted Sgt. Delaney of the Springfield Police Dept.

And five were personal.

Three of them were about friends and what I considered to be overzealousness on the part of Springfield Police when it came to finding their behavior suspicious. Guess those depend on who you believe.

And two were about my own experiences. One happened many years ago, when a police officer lied about how he obtained evidence when I was arrested for possession of marijuana. (The case was dismissed.) The other was about my being arrested at a protest where, besides being charged with disorderly conduct, I was also charged with assault and battery on a police officer. She had her hand on my arm, and supposedly I pulled myself out of her grasp and she sprained her wrist. It was entirely bullshit, and both charges were dropped when the officers failed to appear in court.

My recent post "Police Brutality in Northampton?" does seem to fall into a different category. What I did was repeat an entire email sent to me by someone who was at a Northampton rally about an alleged incident of police brutality. I've been trashed by a number of people and all I can say is that if I'm proved to be wrong, I'll admit it. But the truth is, I may never be able to be proved right. The truth may never come out.

The degree of institutional power held by law enforcement stacks the deck against the average person here in Western Mass. and everywhere. Last week Springfield's toothless Community Complaint Review Board was disappointed when only two people showed up at Springfield City Hall to hear the board's first annual report. Why should anyone have bothered? All the board can do is review the already completed decisions of Internal Affairs, and return them to IA if the board doesn't agree with IA's conclusions. This, however, mandates no action on the part of IA.

"Alejandro (board chair) said the board determined none of the 43 use-of-force complaints it dealt with merited being returned, though he said police officers in some of those cases were ordered to undergo additional training." Springfield Republican. Well, that makes me feel a whole lot better.

I remain as interested in the truth of the alleged brutality in Northampton as anyone else. Let's hope we get to find out.

According to Springfield police, you might be a gang member if...

According to the Springfield Police, you might be a gang member if you're a kid, ride a bike, and carry a backpack.

Here's what happened: Jeff, a friend of the family, 20 year old Puerto Rican kid, has been stopped twice by a Springfield MA police officer while riding his bike-- once late afternoon and once late evening; once by Allen and Plumtree, once in the North End. Both times the officer asked for identification and "asked" to look in his bag. Both times my friend complied. One officer was polite and one was verbally abusive.

My friend wanted to know if he had the right to refuse to open his backpack. I said that in general, he did have that right (at least one exception would be if the officer felt a weapon was present in the bag and he might be in danger) but that I couldn't guarantee him the outcome if he did.

Just for the hell of it, I called the squad room at the police department and asked for the duty officer. I gave him my name (which he did not) and described the situation with my friend.

The officer asked me where this had occurred and I told him.

"Well, you see, we have reported gang activity in those areas."

"On Plumtree Road?"

"Yes." Of course I had to wonder if my friend had been in an area without gang activity, if he would have been stopped because he looked out of place!

I told the officer my friend had asked me if he had the right to refuse to show the contents of his backpack.

"I told him that he did have that right, but that if he refused, the officer might very well find some other reason to arrest him."

He didn't contradict me. "If the kid's got nothing to hide, why not let the officer look?" he said.

Well, lots of people would agree with that statement. We do have a gang problem in Springfield, as the recent murder of Mario Hornsby Jr. reveals so clearly. Lots of people would say, Who cares how police officers act, Who cares if every young person is searched on sight? Of course the folks saying that are not usually the ones being stopped.

We have a new police commissioner, William Fitchet, the promise of 50 more police officers, and the re-establishment of the anti-gang task force. But one thing that hasn't changed-- and in fact, has gotten worse-- is the lack of oversight of the Springfield Police Department.

Once upon a time, we had a police chief, not commissioner, and we had an appointed police commission with a variety of duties including hearing civilian complaints against the police. This commission had some binding powers, although they very rarely found against a police officer.

When Edward Flynn was hired to replace Police Chief Paula Meara, one of his conditions was that he be commissioner-- the only commissioner. The existing police commission was disbanded. Flynn got then-Mayor Ryan to hire a firm to make recommendations about civilian oversight of the police. The firm's name escapes me now, but as I recall, their recommendation was not what was established under Flynn. We now have a nine member "Community Complaint Review Board."

This Review Board has met exactly twice since being established. So far, it has not reviewed a single complaint. (This doesn't mean there haven't been any, just that we know less about it than ever before.) Not only that, all the Review Board has the power to do is review decisions already made by Commissioner Fitchet-- they can't hear from complainants, witnesses or officers directly. And even if they decided Fitchet's decision was wrong, they have absolutely no power to change his decision.

The current process lacks transparency and accountability. It is under these circumstances that we are likely to find complainants turning to civil lawsuits, being awarded sums of money that can't be disclosed to the public.

But the situation is unlikely to change unless that's what the public wants.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times