Mayor Sarno stumbles with the new city council, the public and the police

When Ward Four City Councilor E. Henry Twiggs put out the call last week that his committee would be discussing proposals for a new Civilian  Police Review Board, I'm sure he had no idea that Mayor Domenic Sarno would release his own proposal by executive order the day before the meeting.  For some strange reason, the city council actually thought it would have some input into the proposal, given that nine police officers in two separate incidents are now under investigation and at least some councilor's phone have been quite busy with calls from constituents.

But the meeting still took place last night in Room 220, and members of the Civil Rights and Race Relations Committee-- E. Henry Twiggs, John Lysak and Keith Wright-- were joined by Melvin Edwards, Katari Walsh, Michael Fenton, Thomas Ashe, Zaida Luna and Timothy Rooke!  With James Ferrera and Tim Allen in the audience, the only city councilors who weren't in attendence were Clodo Concepcion and and Jose Tosado.

On one side of the room sat members of the Springfield Police Department.  On the other side sat about 40 community members.

The first part of the meeting was given over to a presentation by City Solicitor Edward Pikula, who had completed the thankless task of coming up with the civilian police commission plan.  He was closely questioned by council members about some fairly complicated elements that shaped the plan-- Police Commissioner Fitchet's contract, civil service requirements, charter change and the police union's contract.  Councilor Twiggs made it clear he was not happy that council members were not consulted in the drafting of the proposal.  Then the meeting was turned over to speakers.

Police Union President Joseph Gentile spoke first, and said that the union did not support Mayor Sarno's new civilian police commission.  He said he wanted very much to see race relations in between the police and the community improve, and thought that community policing, which we no longer have, would do it.  He reminded us that the original police commission, which was disbanded as a condition of Commissioner Edward Flynn's hire, had the power to seek funding, develop program, hire, fire, commend and discipline as well as other powers.  Gentile's solution was something close to the original commission.)

(I'm going to stop here for a moment to .remember Ed Flynn as one of the most arrogant and incompetent persons I've ever met.  He wanted to be Commissioner, not Chief; he wanted all the powers of the Police Commission, and he left for a job in Milwaukee only 19 months into a five year contract. In trying to his leaving, he said, "I am two things ... and they're both real. I am an idealist about this job, and I am ambitious. The gap between the two gets filled with guilt," said Flynn, a well-traveled, pedigreed executive in blue, whose presence in Springfield has been unwelcome by many among the rank-and-file of the department."  Republican.   Some of the problems we're facing right now belong on his shoulders.)

Most of the people who spoke next talked about their intense disappointment  in being excluded from the process of determining the form pf police oversight; some, such as Arise for Social Justice and Rev. Talbert Swan, had submitted written suggestions. Others spoke about the mistrust in the community and the need to make sure that allegations of police brutality were thoroughly investigated by a commission with real powers, lacking in Sarno's commiission. 

I spoke near the end.  The point I wanted to make is that people who voted for ward representation in Springfield did so with the expectation that their councilors would be able to participate in decisions that affected their neighborhoods.  But first, I mentioned that I had been arrested in that very room about five years before at a city auction of tax title property, and charged with disturbing the peace, which was true, seeing as I was speaking out of turn, and with assault and battery on a police officer, completely untrue, and that the charges had been dropped when the officer failed to appear in court..  At that point I inclined myself toward the police officers, and said, ruefully, "You know, guys, that's the kind of thing-- putting charges on people they don't deserve-- that breeds cynicism and mistrust and that has to stop."

After I sat down, I glanced over to the officers' side of the room. It happened so quickly that at first I wasn't sure what I saw, but what I saw was an officer with his hand in the shape of a gun, held low to his lap, and pointed directly at me.

How the issues of police management and accountability in this city will be resolved, I don't know, but it's clearly not over yet.  Councilor Ferrera will be introducing his own version of a police commission on Monday night, which Councilor Twiggs has already said he doesn't support, but as Ferrera said to me this morning, at least the council will have the opportunity to debate, amend, accept or reject his proposal, an opportunity they were denied with Sarno's executive order.   And although no councilor at the meeting overtly expressed anger at Mayor Sarno (Ed Pikula was the stand-in for that), relations certainly haven't been improved.  It was only this January 20 that City Council President Jose Tosado called the lack of communication between the mayor and city council "institutionalized disfunction."  Ward representation can't be effective if the council continues to be shut out of the government.

Drawing from Shell's Daily Drawing.

What role for police in keeping the peace?

Last night I was driving back from a Jobs with Justice meeting in Northampton, coming down Rt. 91, and going about 60 miles an hour in a 65 mile an hour zone. I noticed a car travelling quite close behind me for nearly a mile. Finally the car pulled into the left-hand lane to pass, but instead of passing, it exactly paced me. After a few seconds I risked a glance to the left and saw that it was a Massachusetts State Police cruiser. After my glance the cruiser dropped back and melded into into other traffic.

What the heck was that about? I wondered. The cruiser was behind me long enough to run my plates, which clearly came back clean; so why the side by side pacing? I have a lot of bumper stickers, but nothing mean or threatening , and no "Stop Police Brutality" stickers (I'm dumb but I'm not that dumb). Boredom? Intimidation? Just doing his job? (But wasn't his job done after my plates came back clean?)

Yesterday I had lunch with Betty Agin from the Health Disparities Project-- just checking in with each other. I gave her a copy of some notes an Arise member had given me from a meeting about how to stop youth violence because I knew youth violence had been the topic of her most recent forum.

I admit I haven't had a high level of enthusiasm for recent community efforts to end youth violence. I've seen many similar efforts through the years in Springfield and the impetus of the projects usually fades away, leaving little change. It's tough, I know: good strategies have to come out of identification of root causes, and that's so discouraging, it's easy to despair or to come up with strategies that are eight or nine steps away from the root cause.

But even with that as a given, I asked Betty why, if group organizers want people to use the police more to report the potential or actual crime, changing police attitudes toward the public never comes up as a strategy? How do we regain that "The police are your friends" mentality?

This summer I wrote about a 15 year old kid. Delano Walker, who backed away from police right into the path of a car which crushed him to death-- turns out he had a knife on him that he shouldn't have had and didn't want the police to find it. I never did hear any more about this, but it was a tragic and traumatic situation for all involved.

Of course half of the fear and suspicion people have for the police have nothing to do with the police at all; it's about what happens when people get entangled in a criminal justice system that can't tell a molehill from a mountain-- maybe I shouldn't say "can't" but instead "won't", not when there's money to be made and paranoia to be milked.

This March an Indiana grandmother bought two boxes of cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine in a one week period and found herself arrested (at her home, and then handcuffed) and convicted for violating Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period. Don't Tase Me, Bro. The same site reports that a Michigan woman who was willing to wait with neighborhood kids at the morning school bus stop if their parents had already left for work was threatened with fines and jail time for running an unauthorized day care.

This morning CNN reported on a Connecticut blogger who was arrested in 2007 after taking a picture of the Connecticut governor in a parade. Turns out he was being followed closely by one of the 72 Homeland Security fusion centers because he had criticized the governor, was politically active, and had been arrested for civil disobedience. (Jeez, all those things apply to me, too!) It's not up on CNN's website yet, but you can read the whole story at The 40 Year Plan.

I think it's time for a refresher course in the Bill of Rights .

Photo from Mark Sardella's photostream at Flickr.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrested for disorderly conduct in own home!

How can one of America's most influential citizens wind up getting arrested for disorderly contact in his own home?

Could being Black have anything to do with it? Or is it at least partly because a police officer didn't think he got the respect he deserved?

Last Thursday, Gates was returning to his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts after a trip to China when he found he couldn't get his front door open. He and his driver went to the back door and managed to get in. Then Gates called the real estate company to report the faulty door.

Meanwhile, someone called the police and said they suspected two men were trying to break into a house.

You can read the rest of the story at the Boston Globe.

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.

What do homeless people want from the police?

The Sacramento Police Department came in for some criticism this week when an officer towed the uninsured, unregistered car of a homeless woman. She was left on the curb with her belongings in the rain.

The SPD blog acknowledged that criticism but wanted to make sure the public knew that the officer involved tried to assist the woman in phoning friends to help her move her belongings.

The sentiments of readers who called to complain about the towing of Van Slate’s car are understandable. However, we doubt that anyone would want to find themselves in a collision with an uninsured motorist. The Sacramento Bee’s own recent article on February 6 (Road hazard: uninsured driver rates climb), stated that the numbers of uninsured motorists are rising nationwide. This also means that the frustration and expense incurred by insured motorists who find themselves in accidents with the uninsured can also be expected to rise.
According to the Insurance Research Council cited in the article, rising unemployment rates correlate to the rise in uninsured motorists (3 million more uninsured motorists than five years ago). More insured motorists in collisions with uninsured will be picking up the tab for auto repair, injuries and court costs after accidents. This also means police officers everywhere are going to increasingly be faced with difficult situations like the one on Friday, and will have to wrestle with the aftermath of negative public opinion in order to protect all of the drivers on the road.

The blog also calls attention to the larger societal issue of homelessness, and says society's efforts would be better spent solving that problem than blaming officers for enforcing the law.
These are all fair points. So what is it that homeless people really want and need from law enforcement.
First, they want to be treated with dignity. The police departments in various cities tend to reflect the attitudes toward homeless people that are held by their superiors and by the city's elected officials. When Edward Flynn was hired as police commissioner in Springfield, Massachusetts, my home city, his focus on "quality of life" issues led to officers being told to photograph homeless people, with or without their consent, ostensibly so they could be identified if found dead. Homeless people were frequently rousted and told to move on. Sometimes their tents were destroyed.Homeless complaints about the police have declined (thought not disappeared) under the new police commissioner William Fitchet, who is focusing, with some success, on reducing serious crime.

Second, homeless people want the police to use their discretion humanely when homeless people are technically violating laws which are rarely if ever enforced for other populations-- jaywalking, loitering, vagrancy-- as long as they are otherwise behaving.

Last but scarcely least, homeless people want the police to help keep them safe. When Steve Donohue, a homeless man, was murdered by another homeless man last summer, the Springfield police comforted his friends and moved swiftly to apprehend the killer. Those actions went a long way in closing the trust gap between the homeless community and the police. With the terrible increase of violence against homeless people, the homeless community needs the police as much if not more than the community at large.

Two dead dogs: the complete story of a SWAT raid gone wrong

Probably most people have heard about the SWAT raid last July of a mayor's home in Berwyn Heights, Maryland that led to the death of two dogs-- but no arrests, and no evidence other than the box of marijuana the SWAT Team brought with them.

April Witt of the Washington Post has a minute by minute account of the botched raid and its devastating impact on the mayor, his wife and his wife's mother. Read it at your peril if you want to keep your blood pressure under control.

The victims in this raid were white and one was an elected official, so their case received considerably more attention-- not than it deserved-- but than those of people of color or those lower on the socio-economic ladder.

SWAT Teams used to be used only in very special circumstances where violence could be expected, but have become more and more commonplace.

Last week, a SWAT Team raided a fraternity at Washington State University because of reports of underage drinking. Yes, you read that right. J.D. Tuccille of the Boston Examiner covers this raid and some other SWAT raids that never should have happened.

Photo from the Washington Post.

Bait and Arrest: New Orleans sleazy set-up of homeless people

I've been a little worried about the state of homeless organizing in New Orleans, although of course it's hard to tell from 1,500 miles away. One of the homeless blogs I track hasn't had a new post since February; another is very sporadic.

An article in yesterday's New Orleans City Business Blog has me shaking my head in disgust. I can only hope that community groups in New Orleans are able to bring this practice to an end.

Apparently the N.O. police are leading cigarettes, beer, and, for some reason, Boston Baked beans in unlocked cars with the windows rolled down, and then parking these vehicles near homeless encampments.

NOPD made its first arrests June 10. For stealing less than $6 in items, police charged two homeless men with simple burglary, a felony that can carry up to 12 years in prison. Neither suspect had any prior arrests in Orleans Parish.

It’s been more than a month since their arrests and the men are still sitting in Orleans Parish Prison, waiting on court dates.

Given the city's extraordinarily high murder and serious crime rate, some in New Orleans are wondering if this is a good use of the police department's resources.

This reminds me of something a former housemate of mine did twenty years ago that I have never gotten over. It certainly permanently changed our relationship.

She had an old beater of a car but it was fully insured. She was starting to have a little transmission trouble and when the garage told her she'sd need a new transmission, she cooked up a plan to have her cake and eat it, too.

She drove her car into Springfield's North End and left it unlocked with the keys in the ignition. Then to her surprise, it took five days for the vehicle to be stolen! She then reported the theft to her insurance company.

When she gleefully reported her actions to the rest of us, I was so shocked I was almost speechless.

"Don't you realize that your actions have set somebody up to be arrested?"

"Well, if it was an honest person, they wouldn't steal the car!" (Lots of people feel this way.)

"What if it was a kid who'd resisted every temptation so far...what if it was somebody behind in their rent...or sick a sick kid?"

"Oh, well," she said, a bit embarassed. After all, she was defrauding the insurance company. But she just didn't get it.

I've always thought it was part of my responsibility to help people be the best people they can be, not to set them up for a downfall. But i guess not everybody feels that way-- certainly not the New Orleans Police Department.

If you think their actions suck as much as I do, call

Mayor's Office of Public Advocacy (Social Services Needs and Referrals):

504-658-4015

(Nagin's direct line does not seem to be listed.)

Ex-officer involved in shooting death of 92 year old woman says he was forced to lie

Remember the 92 year old Atlanta woman shot 39 times in a botched no-knock drug raid? Check out this AP story about the trial of ex-officer Arthur Tester, who says he was forced to go along with a cover-up..

What scares me is the ones we don't hear about, where the victim is not a 92 year old grandmother...

No more tasers

Check out this Canadian site, No More Tasers, that keeps track of taser deaths around the world. I know tasers are supposed to reduce police injury and civilian deaths, but doesn't it seem to you that the police taser people they would be very unlikely to actually shoot?

This should make the Springfield Police happy...

On Friday the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court ruled that it is legal for an officer to frisk a pedestrian on the street if he/she thinks the pedestrian might be carrying a weapon or drugs. The ruling overturns a lower court's decision which threw out the conviction of a Mattapan man on weapons charges.

District attorneys and police are happy; civil libertarians are unhappy. And the everyday citizen?

We already know the U.S. is full of folks happy to give away their liberty in exchanged for perceived security.

Many other folks, though, would say, "What's new?" The court's ruling just confirms life as already experienced by people of color, young people, homeless, poor, working class or otherwise "wrong place, wrong time" residents of Springfield.

I found this great picture of a police officer. It's so much how we want the police to be. I think they'd say they have to be the way they are because of the way everybody else is. Police have a terrifically tough job. I wouldn't want to be one. Anyone whose chief job is enforcing the rules runs the risk of starting to believe that the rules exist in and of themselves, for themselves, and forget the big picture and their part in it.

Arise and the ACLU got Police Commissioner Flynn to agree to stop having his officers photograph the homeless. Of course it still happens to young people all the time.

Flynn has set a tone for his officers but it is not one that has promoted courtesy and compassion.

Brief News About Homelessness

A Charlotte, North Carolina woman takes in the homeless but the city wants to shut her down: The Charlotte Observer. The city of Fresno, CA has bought a lot to be used for a homeless encampment. BCS47.TV. A homeless Seattle man in a sleeping bag was killed by a brushcutter. NBC12.TV. Freemont CA is using its Project Connect to give homeless people voicemail. Maybe Springfield's Project Connect could do this? Grand Central.

St. Petersburg, FL cops cut up the tents of homeless people this week. Acting at the city's request, police cut about 25 tents down Friday afternoon.

"They came in in about four different vehicles, the police department did, and they immediately started cutting off the tops of the tents," a homeless man said. "They cut the tops off and left with them. They never said anything to us or anything." Anonymous 1%.

A fellow blogger also picked up on the amount of attention given to the mother and baby whales who'd gone astray and compared it to the media attention given to homeless people. Humanity for Homeless.

MEDIA: Thought-provoking photo essay in Time on what families around the world buy/grow and eat. Vegetables are abunant in some and lacking in others. Matt Silady has a new graphic novel, The Homeless Channel, about a producer's struggle with her conscience after she successfully launches a program of webcams of the homeless.

Some Homeless News

Tasered Homeless Woman Dies: 35 years old, mentally ill, handcuffed. Houston Chronicle

Tent Cities: A dozen homeless people in Edmonton, Alberta stood up to the police and refused to move from their encampment.. Corus Radio

Meanwhile, the city's plans to disrupt a tent city of about 100 people in Gainseville, Florida were brought to a temporary halt when homelessness advocates protested. There are only about 350 beds available for homeless residents in Alachua County on any given night, out of an estimated 950 homeless people in the county. Offtopicz

Now that a federal judge in Fresno, CA has ruled it is unconstitutional for city police to destroy the belongings of homeless people that they roust from encampments, advocates and city officials have to figure out who will store the belongings and how the belongings can be reuinited with their owners. Redding.com

Camp Quixote residents have settled in for a stay at the United Church of Olympia, WA. Olympian Online

Tent City News

Arcata, CA police arrested homeless advocates April 25, in an attempt to break up their People Project tent city encampment.

In Oregon, Thurston County officials visited Dignity Village, considered to be the only government-sponsored tent city in the country, to see if it was a potential model for a tent city that sprang up in downtown Olympia and which is currently housed-- at least till May 19-- at the Unitarian-Universalist church.