Obviously sex and guns are things that tend to get a lot of attention in America, and when you combine the two in such a picture-perfect way – including, of course, the opportunity to run a gratuitous shot of a smiling blonde woman with an exposed midriff and tiny miniskirt and still calling it news – you’re likely to find a wire story with legs long enough that it’ll run in Kansas City. But this story of Midland County sheriff's deputies being fired and/or suspended without pay for handing a service weapon – an assault rifle, no less – to a waitress at a Round Rock restaurant and asking her to pose for a “Chicks Who Love Guns”-style photo was noteworthy to me for a reason that had less to do with the picture of the pretty lady in question, or even the potential public safety hazard that would be caused if it became standard operating procedure for sheriff’s deputies throughout the land to turn over their assault rifles to any woman unfortunate enough to find herself in an occupation that required her to flirt with them in order to make a living.

No, what I found noteworthy about this is that it’s pretty much the only time I can remember the police actually arresting each other.

I’ve been reading lately about cases like Daniel Lozano, who was exonerated of attempted murder charges thanks to the work of a private investigator who proved that the officer who arrested him lied about whether Lozano fired first. Or Dewey Pressley, the Florida officer who was caught lying on camera about the cause of an accident, and whose punishment, after weeks of public outcry that followed the video becoming a YouTube sensation and national news, was a brief paid suspension. Or the case in Philadelphia, where a police officer assaulted a woman in a convenience store – again on camera – and who then sent three fellow officers in to the store in an attempt to convince the store’s proprietor to hand the tape over to them. None of the officers who tried to retrieve the tape were found to have committed any wrongdoing, and punishment for the assaulting officer was left undetermined.

And then there’s this case in Round Rock.

Williamson County gets a tough rap for being particularly unyielding when it comes to crime, and that’s rarely something that we celebrate. From my observations and experience, that too often translates into kids who’re busted with a joint having the book thrown at ‘em, as they used to say.

But it is kind of refreshing to hear that these deputies, after requesting “some form of professional courtesy”, were instead told that it didn’t work that way, and arrested.

No charges were filed, but that’s reasonable – they didn’t actually commit a crime, just a major professional and ethical (not to mention public safety) violation. The punishments ranged from a letter of reprimand for the deputy who was part of the party, but who opted to stay inside rather than go out for the pictures, to short suspensions without pay for the ones who watched as it happened, to firing for the one who gave the assault rifle over to the waitress.

That seems more or less fair to me. The thing that seems to get lost in all of the thin blue line, “professional courtesy” concepts is that the people who are being policed need to trust the people charged with policing them. If we’re to accept that the police can shoot at us and fabricate a police report, or rear-end our cars and claim in a sworn affidavit that we hit them, and then face no punishment more severe than a brief paid vacation, respect for their authority diminishes. Witness this comment from the Statesman article about the PI in the Lozano case:

Last time I was called for jury duty I stated clearly and unequivocally that everything cops say, whether under oath or not, are very likely to be lies. Most of the other prospective jury members nodded in agreement when I said it. It’s clearly a majority opinion among the populace now. The police have totally lost credibility in this state. It’s going to take a very long time before the police regain any sort of credibility in Texas.

Now, I’ll admit that this case in particular is more or less a circus. Like I said – I don’t really care about the picture (though I do feel kinda icky about the inherent power imbalance of a group of police all joining in to convince a young woman to take a sexy photo for them) and I suspect that the woman, despite being handed an assault rifle as thou gh it were a toy, did not really represent much of a threat to public safety. (The presence of the three other deputies, who presumably had kept their weapons, probably negated any threat she may have posed if it had all been a clever ploy on her part to wreak havoc throughout the streets of Round Rock with a machine gun.) But it does help a bit to know that there are consequences – at least some of the time – for police who break the rules. If we can trust that the police are being held to a standard, it serves to restore some of the credibility they’re lacking. Circus or not, that’s a good thing.

Labels: abuse of power, cameras, police violence, recording, williamson county

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments

Every few days I make it a point to compile the news and commentary surrounding criminal defense issues, especially as they relate to Austin, and send it along to all of the attorneys in the firm as potential blog topics. Starting today, those links and discussions are also going to be posted here, as well.

Kristi Couvillon wrote recently on APD’s dash cam policy, which got me thinking about this story: Florida cops stop a young woman for DUI, and then proceed to rear-end her car. After she's arrested, with the dash cam still recording, they cook up a story that they all agree to in which they decide that it's her fault, and then charge her with DUI/property damage. "I don't make things up or lie ever, because it's wrong," says the cop on the tape, "but if I have to bend it a little to protect a cop, I'm gonna."

Austin defense attorney Jamie Spencer has a couple good posts up right now. On the APD prostitution stings, he asks how much money was spent dressing a whole bunch of female police officers like prostitutes and running a sting that netted 23 arrests. And he gets to one of the hearts of the taser issue (which I’ve written about briefly here) when he asks how potentially unconstitutional acts can be declared acceptable just by claiming that they’re not outside of department policy.

In case you haven’t heard yet about The Superglue Incident:  Four women superglued a guy's penis to his stomach after tricking him into a bondage scenario because he was screwing (and scamming) all of them. If only we were still running the “We Could Defend That” campaign. 

US Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech at the ABA convention where he says most of the same things that regarding reform and non-violent drug offenders, etc, that I’ve been learning since I started working with this firm.

In Kaufman County, the chief public defender/founder of the public defender's office is planning to run for DA. The link from Robert Guest, a Dallas-area defense attorney, talks about the difference between the roles, and what good can come from a PD becoming a prosecutor.

We have a bunch of old ads in a binder that equate DWI arrests with prohibition. I never really got those, but this bit from Politico, where MADD criticizes Obama for having Gates and Crowley over to the White House for beer, rather than milk and cookies, helps me understand it a little.

Also, California dropped charges against a guy who'd been arrested for DUI while riding a horse.

Finally, not to be all ACLU here, but this is video of a cop assaulting a woman from behind at a convenience store in Philadelphia because, half an hour earlier, his son had rear-ended her car.

Labels: abuse of power, APD, cameras, dwi, in the news, linkdump

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments

I read last week in the Statesman that APD officials are reviewing their patrol car camera policies in regards to when officers must turn on their devices. The paper claimed that the new policies will likely require officers to film any incident in which they detain or try to stop a suspect, and will also likely require backup officers to also record incidents.

Police officials are also reviewing whether an officer's failure to follow the policy should fall under disciplinary guidelines. (As an aside, I have never handled a DWI case on either side of the bench where an officer forgot to turn on his or her camera to record a person walking the imaginary line.)

This policy review comes after the fatal shooting of Nathaniel Sanders II by Senior Police Officer Leonardo Quintana, whose camera was not recording when he fired at Sanders. If I were an officer who found myself in a deadly situation and believed my actions were justified, I would definitely want that recorded as the video would serve to protect and exonerate me. And, if the shooting was not justified, Mr. Sanders' family and the rest of our community deserves to be told the truth.

I commend the APD top brass for reviewing these policies and hope that they do implement policy that requires all potential stops and detentions to be recorded.

Even better, I would like to see the cameras automatically activated as soon as their overhead lights or sirens are turned on or as soon as they respond to a dispatch. Or a type of rotating digital loop like security cameras use in which the camera is constantly recording. Surely we're technologically capable of that.

Labels: abuse of power, APD, cameras, leonardo quintana, nathaniel sanders II, police violence, policy, recording

posted by Kristi Couvillon   permalink   0 Comments