Hundreds of Arizona cops retire under scrutiny

Hundreds of officers across the Valley have handed in their badge - rather than face discipline.

CBS 5 Investigates found that in many cases, they took a full pension and benefits with them - seemingly retiring their troubles away.

"I served 23 years with absolutely no discipline," said former Phoenix Police Officer Philip Shores.

Shores is correct. Even though an internal audit found he mishandled nearly 80 percent of his child sex crime cases, he was never disciplined. Instead, he retired with a full pension.

"I've had no contact with the police department since I retired," Shores told CBS 5 News during an interview last week.

Shores is not alone.

"It's absolutely frustrating," said Chief Phoenix Police Chief Daniel Garcia.

He spoke candidly about the issue.

"We're in an atmosphere where we have to show transparency to our community and show accountability to our community," Garcia said.

The controversial practice of retiring to escape punishment extends across the state.

Take Goodyear Police Chief Mark Brown and commander Ralph McLaughlin - both were accused of covering up a hit-and-run that killed 18-year-old Jered Pendleton from Avondale. Both retired.

Lt. Col. Jack Hegerty with Arizona's Department of Public Safety accepted Arizona Diamondback tickets from an agency DPS regulates. Rather than face two days suspension for the conflict of interest violation, he retired.

This summer, Phoenix police Sgt. Arnold David got caught on surveillance allegedly pocketing several thousand dollars during a robbery call. He too, retired.

"I think the guy ought to go to prison," said Bill Louis, former Phoenix police assistant chief and IA investigator.

Louis spent years investigating officers that were accused of violating policies and even breaking the law.

These cases are not always a cut and dry situation.

State law requires that Arizona POST, which certifies police officers, be notified when an officer quits. And that officer can't get a another law enforcement job in-state - until the investigation is over. [Click here to read the Arizona POST report on all misconduct and criminal cases they've handled] 

Criminal cases have more clear-cut rules.

"We have pursued charges against an officer even after they quit," Louis said. "We've had goodness - we've had officers for bank robbery, for theft, for drugs, for stealing property - and they quit. And we still went after them criminally."

In the last decade, more than 1,700 police officers were investigated on criminal charges of: assault, drug use, sexual misconduct and the list goes on and on. Of those 1,700 officers, 617 lost their certification and will never be able to work as cops again in this state.

Even Chief Daniel Garcia said those criminal prosecutions are not good enough.

"We want to be able to hold our officers accountable from an administrative standpoint and criminal," Garcia said.

http://www.kpho.com/story/19193186/hundreds-of-arizona-cops-retire-under-scrutiny

Cruelty on the border: A hidden camera shows Border Patrol agents destroying water jugs left for migrants, and the abuse just gets worse

A hidden camera set up by the group No More Deaths shows Border Patrol agents destroying water left in the desert for migrants to drink. The video will be broadcast tonight on the PBS show "Need to Know." 
 
The bodies have been turning up for years, thousands of them, scattered across the borderlands in the American Southwest. Ever-stricter border enforcement has encouraged migrants to avoid cities like San Diego and El Paso and take their chances at remote desert crossings instead. As they trek across the vast, unfamiliar and scorching terrain, many get disoriented and run out of water, with devastating consequences. So far this year, 94 bodies have been recovered in Arizona alone.

Since 2004, a faith-based coalition called No More Deaths has been leaving gallon jugs of water near common migration routes in a desperate bid to save lives. But in May of this year, just as temperatures in the harsh Sonoran Desert climbed above 100 degrees, the group’s volunteers began to notice that their water bottles were being slashed, destroyed or emptied. With violence from ranchers and vigilantes a constant threat, No More Deaths installed hidden cameras. They were surprised at what they found: Border Patrol agents were purposely, even gleefully, destroying the life-saving jugs of water.

Visible on the tape, which will be broadcast for the first time tonight on the PBS show “Need to Know,” are three Border Patrol agents, two men and a woman, walking along a migrant trail and approaching half a dozen one-gallon jugs of water. The female agent stops in front of the containers and begins to kick them, with force, down a ravine. The bottles crash against rocks, bursting open. She’s smiling. One of the agents watching her smiles as well, seeming to take real pleasure in the spectacle. He says something under his breath, and the word “tonk” is clearly audible. “Tonk,” it turns out, is a bit of derogatory slang used by some Border Patrol agents to refer to undocumented immigrants. One agent told me it’s derived from the sound a flashlight makes when you hit someone over the head — tonk. After destroying the entire water supply, the three agents continue along the path.

(In response to specific questions about these events, Border Patrol officials replied only with a general statement emphasizing that misconduct would not be tolerated and that agents were trained to treat migrants with dignity and respect.)

The event was not an anomaly. A volunteer with No More Deaths had complained several months earlier to Lisa Reed, community liaison for the Tucson Sector Border Patrol, that water was being destroyed by agents. Reed responded then with an email saying, “I am preparing a memo from the Chief to all the agents directing them to leave water alone.” The agents on the tape apparently either never got the memo — or simply ignored it.

This attitude extends into the Border Patrol’s holding facilities.

I met Demetrio, a migrant in his early 20s from Veracruz, Mexico, after he was apprehended by the Border Patrol. At the time of his capture, he’d been lost in the Arizona desert without food or water for three days. When he arrived at the Border Patrol custody facility outside Tucson, he told agents he felt sick and was running a fever. “I asked to see a doctor … and they said no,” Demetrio said. “One of them said, ‘Put him in there and let him die.’” They shoved him into an overcrowded cell. He was vomiting blood and felt so faint he could barely stand. Yet, according to Demetrio, he was not given any food or water for at least six to seven hours.

Border Patrol protocol requires agents to provide detainees with food, drinking water and emergency medical services, to hold them under humane conditions, and to refrain from making degrading remarks, but this is rarely honored in practice, say human rights advocates. Over the past 15 years, reports documenting human rights abuses at the hands of Border Patrol agents have been published by Amnesty International, the ACLU, No More Deaths, even the United Nations. Contrary to their own protocols, Border Patrol agents have been accused of systematically denying food and water to migrants in custody, forcing them into overcrowded cells, stealing their money, confiscating medications, and denying them medical treatment. Migrants have described agents hurling verbal abuse, racial slurs and curses, and inflicting sexual assault, physical violence, even death. At least 14 migrants and border residents have died at the hands of Border Patrol agents over the past two years. These practices appear to be systemic, amounting to what No More Deaths calls “a culture of cruelty.”

The Department of Homeland Security claims that only three complaints were lodged against Border Patrol detention conditions for the entirety of 2010 (the most current data), a year when agents apprehended more than 463,000 individuals. Only 10 complaints were filed for “abuse of authority” that year and 13 for “discrimination.” A request to see a log of those complaints, as well as a record of any disciplinary actions taken by the Border Patrol, was denied; a Freedom of Information Act request filed last month has yet to elicit a response.

So I took a trip to Nogales, Mexico, to visit the Kino Border Initiative, a faith-based migrant-care facility. Sean Carroll, a Jesuit priest, heads the organization and oversees a shelter, a medical clinic and a soup kitchen that feeds up to 100 people each day. “Abuses are happening,” Carroll says. “It’s not every agent. But institutionally, there are problems. Migrants are being abused verbally, physically, sexually. And it violates their human dignity.”

In Nogales, we polled a group of about 75 migrants, almost all recent deportees, who had gathered for the 9 a.m. meal. I asked whether any of them had been denied food or water or had been forced into overcrowded cells. Were they physically or verbally abused? Had any of them been denied medical care? In each case, more than 50 people raised their hands. In a single morning, in one town along the border, there seemed to be more instances of abuse than in an entire year of complaints compiled by Homeland Security.

Doctors of the World and the International Red Cross each maintain facilities at strategic locations along the Mexican side of the border to provide medical assistance to deportees. Both organizations confirm that migrants are routinely denied medical attention while in the custody of the Border Patrol. They say migrants also have their prescription medication confiscated without any medical evaluation.

According to Norma Quijada Ibarra, a registered nurse with the Kino Border Initiative, “Every day we have someone that has been abused by the Border Patrol. I just saw a patient with a fracture detained for a few days. They didn’t give him any food, or medicine for the pain.”
In two days in Nogales, I heard firsthand accounts of young women being slapped on the rear as they were being searched. Other women said they were kicked and called whores or told they smelled worse than dogs. I listened to accounts of men being crammed into cells so overcrowded no one could sit or lie down. The only way to fit in the cell was to stand, shoulder to shoulder — for three days straight.

If the migrants complained of overcrowding, several of the men told me, the Border Patrol would add more people to the cell. If a migrant complained the cell was too cold, agents would crank up the AC; if detainees complained it was too hot, agents would turn up the heat. I heard numerous accounts of migrants having their personal belongings confiscated and never returned. Migrants told of being deported to Mexico without their cellphones or backpacks — without even their belts and shoelaces. I spoke to three men who told me they each had over $100 in cash and Mexican identification documents among their confiscated personal belongings. Their ID cards were destroyed and their money was never returned. When the men asked for their money back, the agents said, “It’s ours now.” All of these accounts, if true, would constitute serious violations of Border Patrol protocol and of international human rights standards.

Demetrio recounted one devastating incident he witnessed while he was in custody, the details of which were corroborated by another detainee. He saw a young migrant pulled from the cell where they were being held for failing to understand an order shouted at him in English. He was then forced to kneel on bottle caps with his arms extended. “They forced him to stay like that for more than three hours,” Demetrio said. If he lowered his arms from fatigue, agents shouted at him and prodded him to keep them up. Both witnesses say that agents covered surveillance cameras with cracker boxes during the incident — and uncovered them again once they returned the young man to his cell.

One former Border Patrol agent, Ephraim Cruz, also witnessed forms of abuse that he saw as tantamount to torture. Cruz describes agents, at the direction of their commanding officers, forcing detainees to remain in half-squat or “stress positions” until they could no longer stand. He says agents were trying to teach the migrants, “I’m the authority. Get in line. When I say move, you move.”

In his nine years working the border near Tucson, Ariz., and earning the rank of senior agent, Cruz says he frequently saw agents physically abusing detainees and denying food and water to those who were in obvious need. He also saw “individuals being crammed into cells twice beyond the posted capacity. Standing room only. I mean, you couldn’t even lie down on the floor.” This was done, he says, even when empty cells were available nearby. In 2003, he began warning his supervisors of this pattern of abuse. When his spoken complaints didn’t elicit a response, he began to write letters. “I started at the unit level,” Cruz says. “I went to the sector chief, office of inspector general — via phone calls and faxes of those memorandums. Went on to the commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection, who’s over the U.S. Border Patrol Agency. And then felt the need to move on to Congress.” Cruz left the force in 2007 without ever hearing a response.

We contacted Richard A. Barlow, sector chief for the Tucson Border Patrol, for a response to allegations of agent misconduct. He declined to be interviewed, instead issuing this response: “Border Patrol agents are required to treat all those they encounter with respect and dignity. This requirement is consistently addressed in training and consistently reinforced throughout an agent’s career. On a daily basis, agents make every effort to ensure that people in our custody are given food, water, and medical attention as needed. Mistreatment or agent misconduct will not be tolerated in any way. Any agent within our ranks who does not adhere to the highest standards of conduct will be identified and appropriate disciplinary action will be taken.”

Customs and Border Patrol in Washington responded in even more general terms: “CBP stresses honor and integrity in every aspect of our mission,” an agency spokesperson said by email. “We do not tolerate abuse within our ranks, and … we are fully committed to protecting the health, safety and human rights of all individuals with whom we interact.”

The right policies are evidently in place — if they were only enforced. We traveled to a rural mountain village high in the Sierra Madre in Sonora, Mexico, to track down one of the rare deportees who tried to file a formal complaint against the Border Patrol, which she did under the name Jane Doe. Doe, 27, was caught by the Border Patrol in 2009 when she was on a passenger bus that was stopped at a checkpoint near Las Cruces, N.M. Doe could produce only false residency documents and was escorted off the bus to a holding cell. That’s where Doe says she was sexually assaulted.
As Doe recalls, she was in the cell by herself when a Border Patrol agent entered and said he would have to search her. “This is when he put his hands under my blouse,” she says, her voice trembling.

As she describes it, the agent grabbed her from behind, pushed her up against a wall, and aggressively groped her chest. “He had me — my back was facing him, and he…”  She begins to weep. “So he was hugging me, and he had his hands under my blouse.” As he grabbed her violently from head to toe, he whispered words in English she couldn’t understand except one word, “Baby,” which he said over and over. She thought she was about to get raped. Photos taken shortly after the attack show long, deep scratches and red abrasions across her chest.

After the incident, Doe was deported to Juarez. But the sexual assault haunted her. She fell into a deep depression and sought counseling. Her therapist urged her to file a complaint against the agent, to help her recovery, and she eventually returned to a Border Patrol facility in El Paso, Texas, to look at a photo lineup and file the necessary paperwork. According to Tania Chozet, her ACLU attorney at the time, Doe was taken into a private room by two female Border Patrol agents wearing reflective sunglasses who harshly interrogated about the reason for her visit. They asked her the same questions again and again, warned her not to lie, patted her down, and searched her clothing and shoes. “When Ms. Doe finally emerged,” Chozet says, “tears were streaming down her face.”

By then, Jane Doe was too upset to proceed. She briefly looked at the photo lineup but couldn’t even focus on the faces. She failed to recognize her assailant and decided not to proceed with charges. “I can’t think of any other reason why they would have been so menacing, if they weren’t trying to intimidate her,” Chozet says. “My guess is that they were hoping that she would feel threatened enough to drop her complaint.”

Edward Rheinheimer is an Arizona Republican, an elected attorney in one of the most conservative counties in the United States. When, in 2007, he asked the federal government for help prosecuting an agent for killing a migrant, he learned just how difficult it can be to achieve accountability when it comes to Border Patrol abuse. Rheinheimer strongly suspected that the agent in question was lying to investigators, as his testimony openly contradicted the forensic evidence. “I called the U.S. attorney in Tucson and asked for assistance in helping us prosecute the case,” says Rheinheimer.

The U.S. attorney got back to him about a week later, Rheinheimer recalls: “These were his exact words: ‘Are you out of your mind?’” Months earlier, the Department of Justice had successfully prosecuted two Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, for shooting a marijuana smuggler in the back. But the political backlash was significant, souring relations between the Department of Justice and the Border Patrol. “At no time did anyone from the U.S. attorney’s office ever indicate to me that the reason they didn’t get involved was because they didn’t think this was an appropriate prosecution,” Rheinheimer says. DOJ, he was told, simply could not afford to prosecute another Border Patrol killing.

But the DOJ did order a U.S. attorney to prosecute another Border Patrol agent in 2005 — Ephraim Cruz.

“I found myself on the receiving end of felony charges being brought against me,” says Cruz, the Border Patrol whistle-blower, “accused of smuggling an illegal into the country.”

Just months after he filed the complaints regarding detainee abuse by fellow agents, Cruz gave the girlfriend of a fellow agent a ride across the border. “I was driving my vehicle. I had another agent in the car with me,” he recalls. “We saw her, we recognized her, offered her a ride. Came through the port of entry. Legally inspected, legally admitted.” When it was later discovered that the woman was an undocumented immigrant, Cruz was suspended without pay and prosecuted. He was ultimately exonerated, and during the course of his trial agents testified under oath that he had been targeted for retribution.

Cruz went two years without pay. He was labeled a traitor, asked repeatedly, “What side are you on?” and told he would never get his job back. He finally resigned in 2007, never having been questioned by Border Patrol authorities about the abuses he reported.

Just last week, news broke that a federal grand jury had been convened in the case of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, who was killed by Border Patrol agents in 2010. The agents involved in that killing, too, enjoyed impunity until surreptitious video of the event was broadcast on PBS’s “Need to Know” in April, showing that Hernandez had been beaten and shot with a stun gun while handcuffed and prone on the ground. The Border Patrol is the largest police force in the United States. But it lacks oversight, transparency and accountability.

Testimony of fear, anger at racial-profiling trial

Two citizens who believe Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies pulled them over because they are Hispanic gave the most emotional testimony so far in the 2-day-old trial involving allegations that Sheriff Joe Arpaio's agency engages in racial profiling.

Daniel Magos, 67, and Velia Meraz were stopped more than 18 months apart by sheriff's deputies, and neither have been pulled over since then. But both believe they remain targets of the Sheriff's Office because of their race

Attorneys for the Sheriff's Office have asked the same question of all the alleged profiling victims as they end their testimony: Have sheriff's deputies pulled you over since the traffic stop that led to the profiling allegation? The answer is universally "no," but Meraz, who was a passenger in an SUV that was pulled over in March 2008, said her fear remains.

Dana: 2008 video contradicts Arpaio testimony

"Sheriff Joe Arpaio keeps saying it on national TV that he's going to continue what he's doing and that means these sweeps, these stops," Meraz told the court. "I believe it could happen again."
The case alleges that the Sheriff's immigration-enforcement priorities have resulted in discrimination against Latinos residents. Over the past six years, Arpaio has made immigration enforcement his trademark, but those efforts have been also met by accusations -- by citizens, activists and the U.S. Justice Department -- that his agency has engaged in racial profiling and discrimination.

Deputy Michael Kikes, the sheriff's deputy who pulled over the SUV Meraz was riding in with her brother, Manuel Nieto, took the witness stand earlier Wednesday. Attorneys for the plaintiffs pointed out contradictions between deposition testimony that Kikes gave earlier and his statements in court on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow picked up on several of those apparent contradictions, questioning Kikes about his involvement with the Sheriff's saturation patrols and the instructions he might have been given before the operations began.

Kikes initially told the court that he recalled an instruction sheet for the March 2008 operation in the north Valley that included a specific warning against racial profiling.

"In bold letters, I remember," said Kikes, who was serving as a motorcycle officer during the operation.

Snow later had Kikes look at the instruction sheet, on which the deputy could find no such admonition. Kikes also claimed he was in a briefing before the operation began, but his name was not reflected on an attendance sheet that other deputies signed.

The contradictions in Kikes' testimony became more significant as Meraz and Nieto gave accounts of their stop and detention. Their recollections directly conflicted with Kikes' statements. Kikes claimed he never used force with Nieto after stopping the siblings' SUV at the request of another deputy. Kikes also said he never drew his weapon during the stop, but Meraz and Nieto testified that some deputies had their guns drawn.

Nieto and Meraz were stopped after they encountered a sheriff's deputy who had two men detained at a gas station in the north Valley during one of Arpaio's saturation patrols. The siblings claim they were about to enter the gas station when a sheriff's deputy ordered them to leave and threatened them with arrest for disorderly conduct. On their way out of the gas station, Meraz admitted to telling the detained men not to sign anything they did not understand.

Nieto admitted he initially refused to pull over when Kikes pulled behind his SUV, but said he was afraid of the sheriff's deputy and was on the phone with 911 operators expressing his concerns.
Nieto and Meraz were eventually released without receiving a citation.

Tim Casey, an attorney for the Sheriff's Office, asked Nieto if he had ever been pulled over again by Arpaio's deputies after that March 2008 stop.

"I have not," Nieto said. "But I do have fear."

Similar testimony emerged from a maintenance worker who was pulled over in south Phoenix in December 2009. He had been stopped because his work trailer obscured the license plate, according to the deputy who stopped Magos and his wife in a Ford pickup loaded up with landscaping equipment.

Magos, who has been a U.S. citizen for more than 45 years, was not cited for any violations. He believes the sheriff's deputy pulled his truck over for an entirely different reason.

"It made me feel angry ... worthless ... defenseless," Magos said, holding back tears on the witness stand as he described the stop. "After (the deputy's) apology (for the stop) he told me that stop had nothing to do with racial profiling. I told him that was exactly what it was."

Magos said he tried to report the incident to the Sheriff's Office, but never received a return call after family members left several messages. He said the complaint he filed with the American Civil Liberties Union was the first time anyone responded to his concerns. Magos said he has since spoken with investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice, which earlier this year filed a separate civil-rights lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office.

With no jury in the case, Snow will decide whether the Sheriff's Office participated in widespread discrimination against Latino residents, as the plaintiffs claim.

The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages. Instead, the plaintiffs want the kind of injunctive relief that the Sheriff's Office has resisted in the past -- a declaration that spells out what deputies may or may not do when stopping potential suspects, and a court-appointed monitor to make sure the agency lives by those rules.

The trial is scheduled to end on Aug. 2.

DPS officer "forgets" K-9 in hot patrol car

An Arizona Department of Public Safety K-9 was taken to a vet in life-threatening condition after his handler left the dog in his car for more than an hour on Wednesday when the officer responded to an emergency call.

The officer was distraught and immediately placed on administrative leave, according to a DPS spokesman.

The incident unfolded at the DPS headquarters near Tucson about noon on Wednesday when an officer was transferring gear from one patrol car to another, said Officer Carrick Cook, a DPS spokesman. As the officer was moving his gear, a call went over the radio about a serious accident on Interstate 19 in Tucson, Cook said, and the officer responded.

It wasn't until the officer was en route to the crash that he realized his K-9 partner, Jeg, was in the car, Cook said, and he immediately returned to the parking lot to tend to the animal.

The Tucson Fire Department took Jeg, a Malinois, to a vet, Cook said.

"We are extremely concerned about the dog and the officer," Cook said. "These K9s are an integral part of our agency and what we accomplish with our interdiction. We look at them as other officers; they are family members in our agency."

It is unclear how hot it was inside the patrol car, or if it was parked in the direct sun. The Tucson area had triple-digit temperatures Wednesday.

The agency's last K-9 death came in 2007 when a dog ran into Interstate 10 during a pursuit and was struck and killed by a semi.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/07/11/20120711arizona-officer-forgets-police-k9-dog-car.html

Phoenix officers back at work after photo inquiry

Six Phoenix police officers who were suspended for allegedly including photos of corpses that could have come from crime scenes in a holiday PowerPoint presentation have all been cleared of any criminal conduct and have returned to work, according to a Police Department spokesman.

The internal investigation that will determine whether the officers will be punished for violating department policies remains ongoing, said spokesman Sgt. Trent Crump.

The four detectives and two supervisors formerly worked in the investigations division but were reassigned to patrol duties while the internal investigation continues.

Police administrators suspended the officers after learning of the presentation, which was displayed at a holiday party late last year and allegedly included photos from crime scenes.

http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2012/02/29/20120229phoenix-officers-back-work-after-photo-inquiry.html

Seven Myths about the Police

From Crimethinc

(For practical tips on protecting you community from the police, click here.)

The police exercise legitimate authority. The average police officer is not a legal expert; he probably knows his department protocol, but very little about the actual laws. This means his enforcement involves a great deal of bluffing, improvisation, and dishonesty. Police lie on a regular basis: “I just got a report of someone of your description committing a crime around here. Want to show me some ID?”
This is not to say we should unthinkingly accept laws as legitimate, either. The entire judicial system protects the privileges of the wealthy and powerful. Obeying laws is not necessarily morally right—it may even be immoral. Slavery was legal, aiding escaped slaves illegal. The Nazis came to power in Germany via democratic elections and passed laws through the prescribed channels. We should aspire to the strength of conscience to do what we know is best, regardless of laws and police intimidation.

The police are ordinary workers just like us; they should be our allies. Unfortunately, there’s a big gap between “should be” and “are.” The role of the police is to serve the interests of the ruling class; anyone who has not had a bad experience with them is likely privileged, submissive, or both. Today’s police officers know exactly what they’re getting into when they join the force—people in uniform don’t just get cats out of trees. Yes, most take the job because of economic pressure, but needing a paycheck is no excuse for evicting families, harassing young people of color, or pepper-spraying demonstrators. Those whose consciences can be bought are everyone’s potential enemies, not allies.

This fairy tale is more persuasive when it is couched in strategic terms: for example, “Every revolution succeeds at the moment the armed forces refuse to make war on their fellows; therefore we should focus on seducing the police to our side.” But the police are not just any workers; they’re the ones who chose to base their livelihoods upon defending the prevailing order, thus the least likely to be sympathetic to those who wish to change it. In this context, it makes more sense to oppose the police as such than to seek solidarity with them. As long as they serve their masters, they cannot be our allies; by denouncing the institution of police and demoralizing individual officers, we encourage them to seek other livelihoods so we can one day find common cause with them.

Maybe there are some bad apples, but some police officers are good people. Perhaps some police officers have good intentions, but once again, insofar as they obey orders rather than their consciences, they cannot be trusted.

There’s something to be said for understanding the systematic nature of institutions, rather than attributing every injustice to the shortcomings of individuals. Remember the story of the man who, tormented by fleas, managed to catch one between his fingers? He scrutinized it for a long time before placing it back at the spot on his neck where had he caught it. His friends, confounded, inquired why on earth he would do such a thing. “That wasn’t the one that was biting me,” he explained.

Police can win any confrontation, so we shouldn’t antagonize them. With all their weapons, equipment, and surveillance, the police can seem invincible, but this is an illusion. They are limited by all sorts of invisible constraints—bureaucracy, public opinion, communication breakdowns, an overloaded judicial system. If they don’t have vehicles or facilities available to transport and process a great number of arrestees, for example, they can’t make mass arrests.

This is why a motley crowd armed only with the tear gas canisters shot at them can hold off a larger, more organized, better-equipped police force; contests between social unrest and military might don’t play out according to the rules of military engagement. Those who have studied police, who can predict what they are prepared for and what they can and cannot do, can often outsmart and outmaneuver them.

Such small victories are especially inspiring for those who chafe under the heel of police violence on a daily basis. In the collective unconscious of our society, the police are the ultimate bastion of reality, the force that ensures that things stay the way they are; taking them on and winning, however temporarily, shows that reality is negotiable.

Police are a mere distraction from the real enemy, not worth our wrath or attention. Alas, tyranny is not just a matter of politicians or executives; they would be powerless without those who do their bidding. When we contest their rule, we’re also contesting the submission that keeps them in power, and sooner or later we’re sure to come up against some of those who submit. That being said, it’s true that the police are no more integral to hierarchy than the oppressive dynamics in our own communities; they are simply the external manifestation, on a larger scale, of the same phenomena. If we are to contest domination everywhere, rather than specializing in combating certain forms of it while leaving others unchallenged, we have to be prepared to confront it both in the streets and in our own bedrooms; we can’t expect to win on one front without fighting on the other. We shouldn’t fetishize confrontations with uniformed foes, we shouldn’t forget the power imbalances in our own ranks—but neither should we be content merely to manage the details of our own oppression in a non-hierarchical manner.

We need police to protect us. According to this line of thinking, even if we might aspire to live in a society without police in the distant future, we need them today, for people are not ready to live together peacefully without armed enforcers. As if the social imbalances and fear maintained by police violence are peace! Those who argue that the police sometimes do good things bear the burden of proving that those same good things could not be accomplished at least as well by other means.

In any case, it’s not as if a police-free society is suddenly going to appear overnight just because someone spray-paints “Fuck the Police” on a wall. The protracted struggle it will take to free our communities from police repression will probably go on as long as it takes us to learn to coexist peacefully; a community that can’t sort out its own conflicts can’t expect to triumph against a more powerful occupying force. In the meantime, opposition to police should be seen as a rejection of one of the most egregious sources of oppressive violence, not an assertion that without police there would be none. But if we can ever defeat and disband the police, we will surely be able to defend ourselves against less organized threats.

Resisting the police is violent—it makes you no better than them. According to this line of thinking, violence is inherently a form of domination, and thus inconsistent with opposing domination. Those who engage in violence play the same game as their oppressors, thereby losing from the outset.

This is dangerously simplistic. Is a woman who defends herself against a rapist no better than a rapist? Were slaves who revolted no better than slave-holders? There is such a thing as self-defense. In some cases, violence enforces power imbalances; in other cases, it challenges them. For people who still have faith in an authoritarian system or God, following the rules—whether legal or moral—is the top priority, at whatever cost: they believe they will be rewarded for doing so, regardless of what happens to others as a result.

Whether such people call themselves conservatives or pacifists makes little difference in the end. On the other hand, for those of us who take responsibility for ourselves, the most important question is what will serve to make the world a better place. Sometimes this may include violence.

Police are people too, and deserve the same respect due all living things. The point is not that they deserve to suffer or that we should bring them to justice. The point is that, in purely pragmatic terms, they must not be allowed to brutalize people or impose an unjust social order. Though it can be empowering for those who have spent their lives under the heel of oppression to contemplate finally settling the score with their oppressors, liberation is not a matter of exacting revenge but of rendering it unnecessary. Therefore, while it may sometimes even be necessary to set police on fire, this should not be done out of a spirit of vengeful self-righteousness, but from a place of care and compassion—if not for the police themselves, at least for all who would otherwise suffer at their hands.

. . .

Delegitimizing the police is not only beneficial for those they target, but also for police officers’ families and police officers themselves. Not only do police officers have disproportionately high rates of domestic violence and child abuse, they’re also more likely to get killed, commit suicide, and struggle with addiction than most sectors of society. Anything that encourages police officers to quit their jobs is in their best interest, as well as the interest of their loved ones and society at large. Let’s create a world in which no one oppresses or is oppressed, in which no one has to live in fear.

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both.”
- Frederick Douglass

How to Fuck the Police

On the Streets:
Organizing a Copwatch Program

Copwatch groups seek to contest or at least limit police repression by directly monitoring police officers. Copwatch volunteers patrol the streets, observing police and recording their interactions with civilians. They often concentrate on areas of high police activity or to which known trouble-making cops are assigned. Copwatch groups also advise people of their rights and listen to their stories, and otherwise endeavor to undermine and thwart the police state.

Most radicals, not to mention many others, realize that the idea of policing itself needs to be completely rethought. In the meantime, people have to be protected from the brutality they face daily at the hands of the police.

Get a Group Together

Form a group. Put out calls for one everywhere, even on the bulletin boards of church groups and local grocers, not just in the activist community. Approach your neighbors—the best neighborhood watch includes a copwatch.

Educate people in your community and other communities, especially targeted ones, about their legal rights, and about how to carry out a copwatch. Hold classes everywhere in your city, at accessible places and times. These can be formal events, or informal teach-ins outside a movie theater or between performers at a show.

Hold regular, accessible, well-advertised meetings—don’t depend on the internet for all or even most of your communications. Many of those who need copwatch most are unlikely to have easy or regular computer access. Decide as a group what your goals are and how you will go about achieving them.
Find hotspots where police repression frequently takes place. Look for them in the police blotter in your local paper, or ask around in neighborhoods, or approach lawyers who do a lot of street work and request advice.

Establish patrols, and have them report on their observations on a regular basis. Your group will be more effective if it is well organized.

For a variety of reasons, it makes the most sense for people to do copwatch patrols in their own neighborhoods. If it is important that you patrol another neighborhood, make an effort to become familiar with it: get to know locals, and make sure you understand local issues and context. Canvas from door to door if necessary, introducing yourself and your group and announcing your intentions and motivations. Be open to input from locals; they are the ones who will experience the bulk of the repercussions from everything that happens in their neighborhood. Come through on your commitments: don’t just show up out of nowhere doing a copwatch program for a little while and then disappear, stick around until locals know who you are and that they can count on you.

When the cops are particularly brutal or kill someone, raise a ruckus about it. Put pressure on them and keep it on. Approach the survivors and follow their lead as to how to handle things. Offer to organize protests or benefit events, screenprint shirts, or play media liaison for them. If they’re into it, hold demonstrations, spray paint the names of the victims and murderers everywhere, smash out the windows of the offending police station.

Agitate for laws and regulations that enforce stricter controls on police. Try to get the worst police officers fired. If your community has a Citizen Review Board, make an effort to give it teeth. Police review boards should be elected by district, not appointed. They must be empowered to impose punishments and fire officers.

People from communities that are terrorized will often be understandably afraid to stand up for themselves. A copwatch program can be the first step towards solidarity with each other.

How to Copwatch

To copwatch effectively, all you need is your eyes and ears, and some means of recording incidents. A small notebook and pen or pencil are the most useful and least conspicuous. A camera or video camera can also be useful, as can a cell phone or an audio recording device.

Copwatching is generally safest and easiest if you make sure to follow the letter of the law. There should be no drugs, alcohol, or illegal weapons on your person or in your system. Be careful not to jaywalk. This author has friends who have done a perfect copwatch, then jaywalked almost immediately after leaving the scene, receiving a $50 ticket for their efforts. If you are driving, make sure that you and all of your passengers have on seat belts. Resist unnecessary horn honking or loud music as you drive away—violations of noise pollution laws and ordinances can be used as excuses to detain and arrest you. If you are not following the very letter of the law, you may end up doing more harm than good and could get yourself arrested. Don’t give them any excuse to bust you.

Copwatching is best done with two or three others—you are less likely to be arrested in a group. One cool-headed person can take the role of speaking to officers, getting their names, ranks, badge numbers, district designations, squad car numbers, license numbers, and general descriptions, thus making them aware of your being there as observers. The others should hang back, recording every detail of the encounter, being careful not to interfere, provoke, or draw attention. If you have the numbers, one person can pose as an individual onlooker with no connection to the rest of the group. Decide on your roles before the encounter, if possible.

Presumably, you are there to defuse the situation, not escalate it. Don’t goad the police into arresting people as a way of getting back at you because of your attitude. Reign in the hostility you feel towards them—be polite but firm. Remember, police are dangerous. Walk, don’t run, and avoid quick or sudden movements around them.

At the same time, don’t be so easily intimidated that you cannot accomplish your task. Police officers who feel threatened by your concern about the victims of their repression may well threaten you, shouting “Move on!” and puffing themselves up like territorial frogs. In the course of your interactions with them, you’ll develop a sense of what to expect from them and an instinct for exactly how seriously to take their threats.
Carry cards detailing legal rights, flyers with information about local copwatch programs, and other information with you to give to people subject to arrest or harassment. Inform people about their rights, and of any numbers, local services, or internet sites by means of which they can contact a lawyer or learn how and where to file a complaint. Citizen complaint review boards are often virtually useless as a way of dealing with police brutality, but they can be useful for documenting incidents. Be aware of local laws and limitations—for example, in some cities, in order to be able to file a lawsuit against the city, you must send a letter to the mayor announcing your intention to sue the district within six months of the incident in question. In such a case, you should emphasize to people who have suffered police brutality that they should keep their options open: “You don’t have to follow through with it, but you should secure your right to sue if the incident was severe enough for you even to think about doing so.”

When observing police officers’ interactions with civilians, try to get as much information as you can. Make note of the day, time, and exact location of the incident; the officer’s name, badge number, district, and physical description; where arrestees are being taken; the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of any witnesses; and vehicle or license numbers for any police vehicles involved in the incident. Use cameras or other recording devices to document the event from beginning to end. Take down complete descriptions of police actions and any resulting injuries. If there are injuries of any sort, even preexisting ones, be sure to detail what medical attention was or was not offered by the police—people have been let go by officers after copwatch members observed them being denied medical attention, even though the injuries had been not caused by the police.

If you feel it is warranted, you can call 911 and report that someone is being injured. Wait until the end of your statement to note that it is the police doing so, but don’t leave that out, and stick to the facts. As all 911 calls are recorded and are relatively hard for the justice system to “lose,” they can provide useful documentation for legal proceedings. You can also call a friend’s or your own answering machine and record what is happening as it happens, assuming the tape is long enough. The sound quality may not be as good as an on-site recording device would provide, but the police cannot confiscate the tape; this method can be particularly useful if everyone present is getting arrested. If you get arrested and the police don’t take your cell phone immediately, call a talk show or progressive radio station from the back of the police vehicle.
If you witness someone else being arrested, try to give the arrestee a way to contact you, and vice versa. This is not to say you should give your name or get their name in front of police. Give your name and contact information only if you are comfortable with the police getting it, unless there is another way.

If you are comfortable doing an assertive copwatch, introduce yourself when you approach the scene and explain that you are there doing a copwatch. Ask police why they are detaining or arresting people, but don’t ask arrestees for their names directly, as they might not wish the police to have it. If arrestees say their names and addresses to the police loud enough for you to hear, write them down. If the justification for the stop seems to be vague, ask officers to name the section of the law they are enforcing. Officers will lie and make mistakes—if you know the code do better or have a copy of it with you, speak up. Don’t approach or speak to the arrestee directly while he or she is being detained; if you do, you risk being arrested. Sometimes you’ll have to do just that, but know what you’re getting into.

If a detainee is let go or ticketed, make use of the opportunity to give your flyers and rights cards to them. If a detainee is arrested, you can fold a card in half and ask the officer to give it to him or her—fat chance, but miracles happen. You can’t speak to an arrestee directly without risking trouble, but you can loudly talk about what rights people have with the police or a bystander or your compatriot. These include the right to remain silent, the right to speak to an attorney, the right to refuse a search of your person, personal items, or car.

Stick around until the police have moved on. The Rodney King beating began with what seemed to be a routine traffic stop.

Make use of every opportunity to have educational conversations. Speak to onlookers about their rights, about what citizens can do about police brutality, about community alternatives to policing. When answering questions about legal matters, don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” This is always better then giving out wrong information.

Collect statements from other witnesses if you can. Many will not want to get involved. Try to persuade and educate them otherwise, and get statements from them even when you can’t get their names.

Keep the information you have gathered from your copwatching. If your copwatch group does not keep records, keep track of it yourself. It can be useful to submit copies of your records to government agencies, so they will have them documented and on file. Do not edit any videotapes you shoot, as this can render them useless as evidence in court.

If possible, carry with you the text of the laws most commonly used to justify harassment. In addition to being familiar with and ready to cite local laws, it can help to learn local police regulations, though it is often difficult to obtain copies of these. During your encounters with police, be forceful rather than tentative, but remain polite.

In extreme cases, police will smash or confiscate and “lose” your equipment to keep you from having evidence against them. If it seems like this might happen, a member of your group should swiftly leave the area with the evidence that has been gathered so far.

Be prepared to be arrested. Though copwatch is not illegal, police will trump up charges. Carry ID and at least $50 if you want to be able to get out of jail swiftly and easily.

Know what you will and will not do in extreme situations. Consider in advance what risks you are willing to take and what charges you are prepared to receive in order to intervene if someone is being beaten, injured, or killed by the police. Decide this ahead of time and talk about it within your group, so all of you know what to expect from one another. If you copwatch in some areas, you will eventually find yourself in this situation.
Be prepared to follow through on your work. If you couldn’t get an arrestee’s name and you feel that the situation was bad enough to warrant further investigation or that the abuse will continue after the arrest, go to the station to which he or she has been taken. Loudly and firmly ask what condition the arrestee is in and demand to know the charges he or she has received; explain what you saw during the arrest, and ask to make a complaint against the officers. This makes the police aware that people are concerned and will follow through; it may stop a back room beating.

Be careful leaving the area after a copwatch. Police have been known to follow, ticket, target, or beat copwatchers a few blocks from the site at which they were observed. Don’t let down your guard.
Report on what you have seen to your group, to whatever citizen review boards your area has, however ineffective, and to your community at large. Talk to city council members about police conduct, and show them your evidence. Tell them you want hearings and policy changes. Get your information to the National Lawyers Guild and or the ACLU. Tell community and church groups. Write up reports and spread them through local independent media outlets, both websites and papers.

If your copwatch group is ready, you could establish a copwatch hotline, a phone number people can call to report the activities of police officers; you could even have a response team ready to follow up calls. You could also start your own local copwatch paper or website, reporting on your observations, the conduct of local police, and the struggle in your community to survive and thwart police repression.

Copwatching Alone

Don’t copwatch alone if there are other options. You should not ignore those in exceptional danger just because you are alone, but be aware that lone copwatching entails taking extra risk. If you have been convicted of felonies, have a lengthy arrest record, or are not a citizen, you should probably not copwatch alone unless the circumstances are really exceptional. Be less assertive in engaging the police or the individual being detained or arrested than you would be if you were in a group. Police officers are much more likely to arrest or assault you if there are no other witnesses present.

Be especially careful to obey the letter of the law. If possible, remain at least twenty feet from the incident that you are watching; try to phone someone and let him or her know what’s happening. As always, take complete notes and, if possible, photos, audio, or videotape of the incident. If you take photos, make sure that they are taken at the last possible moment, to ensure the safety of you and your camera. Be especially careful leaving the area.

In Private and Community Spaces:
Handling a Police Raid

If police knock on your door, do not invite them inside; step outside and close the door before speaking to them, locking it behind you if need be. If there are other people in the house, make them aware that the police are present. Don’t address other people in the house by name; let them decide how they want to identify themselves. After saying clearly “I do not consent to this search,” stand aside and maintain silence. Do not answer any questions.

If you are arrested or detained in the course of a raid, do not resist unless it is absolutely imperative that you escape and there is a high likelihood that you will be able to do so; instead, calmly ask on what basis you are being held. Don’t volunteer any information or answer any questions except when you are asked to identify yourself. No matter what they tell you, speaking to the police can never accomplish anything except making things worse for you and those you care about. If you have a lawyer, upon interrogation—whether formal or informal, whether by federal agents or local officers—simply present your lawyer’s card and state, “You can speak with my lawyer.” If you don’t have a lawyer, assert and maintain that you will seek legal counsel before answering questions.

If the police say they have a warrant, ask to see it but do not at that point resist the search. A warrant is simply a piece of paper signed by a judge; it should have an address and some terms of the search. It is not valid without a judge’s signature. In most cases, the police cannot enter your residence legally without a warrant. To get a warrant, they must have probable cause and a judge must sign his or her name validating this; judges can be sneaky, but they also don’t want any heat to come back on them. This is why we often don’t see warrants used in activist raids: there simply isn’t the probable cause. If they can’t get a warrant, the police may try to use other pretexts to get in: fire code violations, health violations, looking for people who have warrants out for their arrest. Educate yourself on local laws and municipal code. If the police come by when there is someone inside who has a warrant, it may be best for that person to go outside so the police cannot use this as a justification for entering the building.

If your space may be raided, decide in advance how you will handle this. Except in a few specific cases—for example, if you are engaged in a political squatting action with widespread community support, and you intend to resist eviction by militant means—it will make the most sense to cooperate carefully with the police, and then take revenge later by legal or extra-legal means. Determine with everyone involved what image you will try to project—“nonviolent peace activists suffering unjust police harassment,” for example—and maintain it from the beginning of the process through the follow-up media and court campaigns. Hold discussions in advance, so everyone who may be affected by a police raid knows what to expect, how to conduct themselves, and what their role will be in your response. Make sure everyone is comfortable with the decisions made and understands each other’s needs.

Sometimes a police raid will come as a surprise. Other times, especially if they are planning a raid on a larger scale, such as at an infoshop, activist house, or convergence space during a mass mobilization, you may be able to see it coming. Stay aware: if they are escalating their surveillance of your building or your activities, this may culminate in a raid. This surveillance may take the form of infiltration by undercover agents, who may be easy to recognize as such—on account of poor acting, suspicious questions, or suddenly getting involved right before an action—or very difficult to detect.

If you are involved in any kind of activity that demands security, your collective should decide ahead of time how careful to be in working with others who desire to get involved in your group and in actions you plan. Do you need to have a vouching system to protect against loose-lipped liberals and undercover cops? Or do you want to work with large numbers of people to such an extent that it makes more sense to leave things wide open? Some collectives decide not to take on last-minute stragglers right before an action: police infiltrators usually show up late, because there isn’t enough funding to put them in earlier.

If you are on good terms with groups that are in dialogue with the authorities, they may be able to tip you off when a raid is nigh; likewise, locals familiar with the workings of the local police force might be able to provide useful insights. For a serious raid, the police will establish a staging area a couple blocks from the location, which may give away their plans at the last minute if nothing else has.

In preparing for a potential raid, be conscious of what you have on the premises and what can be found nearby in dumpsters and adjacent lots. Make sure nobody has any illegal drugs or paraphernalia, recognizably stolen items, or other material which authorities could use against you. Police officers will routinely confiscate such standard household items as paint thinner and PVC pipe and claim the possessors were using them to make bombs. Such ludicrous charges will not generally stand up in court, but they can enable the police to denounce your group to the public; they can also paralyze individuals, preventing them from participating in serious actions until their court cases are finished.

Knives, spray paint, gasoline, anarchist literature, bottles of urine, and other similarly dangerous articles will all be needless liabilities when the police show up, unless you’re actually planning to fight them off with the stuff. Be conscious of what can be seen even when your doors are shut and locked; the police can use items “in plain view” to look further, even without a warrant. In extreme cases, the courts have declared it permissible for the police to enter a home to investigate further after seeing something suspicious through a window. Be careful to follow the very letter of the law: police who can find nothing else to use against you may ticket you for parking more than ten inches from the curb, for example.

Have a phone tree in place, to be activated in the case of a raid: there should be a couple numbers you can call to reach people who can instantly call others, and so on, until a large number of people have been informed. It is important that there is always at least one person off-site who knows what to do if he or she is the only person not arrested.

Don’t leave phone lists or similar information accessible to the police; there’s no sense in doing their intelligence work for them. If those informed by the phone tree converge immediately upon the space being raided, this will force the police to restrain themselves, and show them and the community at large that this is an issue many take seriously; in a best case scenario, this can even transform the raid into a positive, community-building event. Have local media ready to come: don’t miss the chance to have the local alternative or pirate radio station report live from your raid, or to get sympathetic coverage in the alternative press. Plan in advance what spin you want to give the story, so the police play into your hands. Compose a press release ahead of time and have it ready to go out.

If you fear a police raid is possible or imminent, keep a video camera charged and equipped with a blank tape, ready for use in documenting police conduct. You can also hide secret cameras on the premises; these may prove especially important if the police break their own laws in the course of invading your space. Get every single badge number and license plate, and record every movement and action of each individual police officer; in court, it will be very much to your advantage if you can prove that, for example, a police officer who claims he remained outside during the raid was actually upstairs knocking over bookshelves and breaking things. Your camera people should be levelheaded; even if things are heating up, it may be more important in the long run for them to record events as they unfold, calmly and consistently, than to get involved.

Once you’ve got documentation, keep track of it. Don’t edit or adjust it in any way. Be able to prove that your footage has been in your “line of possession” from the time you recorded it to the time it appears in court; this means you should be able to document everywhere it has been, and show that it has been in the care of good, law-abiding citizens the whole time—and as few of these as possible. To this end, it can be wise to leave your material with someone’s conservative parents or responsible sister-in-law; this can also be a way to make sure it is not seized in a secondary raid. Keep an organized journal, with times and dates and signatures, detailing all your observations from the time you first begin to fear a raid might take place. After one occurs, compile written narratives, with signatures, from all witnesses and participants, while the events are still fresh in everyone’s minds.

If you’re in the middle of organizing an action or campaign from the space that may be raided, make sure it won’t be crippled by a raid. Keep important materials elsewhere, make sure that all the people in pivotal organizing positions are never in the space all at once, see to it that there are other spaces to which activities can be shifted. Establish a place to get back together after the raid or ways to reestablish contact with one another and make sure that everyone is accounted for.

When bringing suit against the city over a raid, work out the local chain of command and sue as high in the hierarchy as you can. Those who hold power will attempt to portray any misconduct as the anomalous incompetence of individual underlings; your job is to show that the raid was orchestrated from on high and that the people at the top of the pyramid are to blame, if not the system itself. Get the best lawyer you can—the American Civil Liberties Union is generally a better resource than the National Lawyers’ Guild when it comes to violations of 4th Amendment rights regarding search and seizure and 1st Amendment rights regarding freedom of speech. If you don’t own the space that was raided, make sure you have the cooperation of the landlords: emphasize that they too can get something out of the proceedings. Keep the media informed throughout the affair, and keep the pressure on.

Account

As we were organizing a convergence against a particularly ridiculous meeting of politicians, it became evident that our city’s Red Squad had its eyes on us. We continued our work, though we realized that, under the circumstances, we lacked the numbers to go forward with our original plans of turning the city into our playground. We narrowed our focus and message, deciding our best bet would be to embrace the image of pacifist peace activists: this would give us an advantage should the defenders of Power attempt a smear campaign against us. Having established this strategy, we decided that the weekend would go ahead as planned, with a festive street march and demonstrations outside the hotel where the politicians were meeting.
As the dates for the actions approached, we saw a steady increase in police traffic around our collective space, which was serving as a meeting and organizing point for the demonstrations. On multiple occasions, we experienced the unique pleasure of visits from undercover cops. Keeping tabs on liberal organizers we knew maintained ties with the police, we received additional clues that we were facing impending state repression, which was likely to take the form of a raid on our space.

We met as a collective and resolved to act preemptively in order to minimize any possible harm we would suffer and, if possible, humiliate and expose the police. We started by compiling a phone tree of our friends and supporters in the community, as well as a list of local media contacts. Drawing on the precedents established by the numerous police invasions of autonomous spaces that summer, we took a number of precautions, such as removing items that had justified earlier absurd charges against revolutionaries: for example, we removed all kitchen knives and Vitamin C pills, since cooking utensils and supplements had been considered weapons and drugs in other raids. We also cleaned the space and planted new flowers around the house, hoping this would make the police look even more ridiculous should they choose intrude on our space. We stockpiled photo and video cameras, tape recorders, note pads, and other recording devices, and spread them throughout the house, both openly and covertly. We made sure that at least one of the collective members was downstairs at all times, and that our door was always locked—though this was particularly difficult, with so many people coming in and out. People who could not risk arrest stayed at other locations.

Everyone who spent time in the space was briefed on the situation and developed an understanding of the collective’s rights. In a move that later proved to be of some importance, we painted the door with some “house rules,” including bans on weapons, animal products, and substances. This has since been used in both the media and in legal decisions as a further embarrassment to the police. We also prepared a press release, leaving only a few blank spaces for the details of the expected raid, and left it with an uninvolved family member in case the raid was accompanied by numerous arrests.

Busy as we were with organizing against the meetings, we were still able to keep our space open for concerts and other events. Two nights before the planned protests began, the police arrived during one of these shows, an apolitical folk performance. The raid caused quite a bit of alarm for the artists and visitors! At that time, some of us were leaving to work on the pirate ship puppets—described as “anarchist body armor” in police reports to the media—that we were planning to use for street theater. As we were loading the ships into a pickup truck, we noticed that police vehicles were assembling at every nearby intersection and decided to attempt to leave. As soon as we began driving, we were pulled over for the most minute of traffic violations. We called back to the space, where police were already knocking on the door. We set in motion our well-planned phone tree, calling our lawyers, leaving reports on answering machines, and informing scores of friends that we were in trouble. It turned out that the police had used supposed fire code violations to get into the house, because it is standard practice in our city for housing inspectors to be “protected” by police. Each cop and each inspector were followed everywhere by comrades from our ranks who documented everything. The police went through our book selection, our kitchen, our desks, our basement, our storage areas, even our bathroom, not to mention the personal belongings of those living upstairs. They searched our whole house and the squatted house next door. They towed our cars, on the ridiculous pretension that they were parked three inches too far from the curb! In the end, they didn’t use violence or arrests; they just hoped to scare us and reveal our supposedly violent machinations to the public.

The phone tree, however, paid off. The local media as well as a slam poetry group showed up immediately, along with about fifty of our friends. In conjunction with the drumming and the constant flash of still cameras, the slam poets created an atmosphere of festive defiance and creatively informed the media and curious passers-by about just how fucked up this situation was. While normally hostile to radicals, the local corporate media could not resist covering the obvious foolishness of the police, who wandered about the property en masse with bomb-sniffing dogs while obviously earnest and non-violent activists explained how the events of the evening were—can you believe it?—causing them to “lose faith in this society.”

Thanks to the thoroughness of our preparations, we were able to upstage law enforcement prior to the main event of the protests themselves; this coup gave us much-needed attention and credibility. Additionally, afterwards we were able to succeed in suing the city for tens of thousands of dollars. This enabled us to fund many new subversive projects, which the forces of order are even less equipped to deal with in the aftermath of their ill-thought-out raid.

Chandler assistant police chief under fire over outburst

A Chandler assistant police chief's behavior at his daughter's high school volleyball game last week in Tempe has triggered three investigations, angered parents and prompted a call for justice from a longtime activist.
The Tempe Police Department is investigating what witnesses described as Assistant Chief Dave Lind's temper-fueled verbal attack Sept. 29 on a teammate of his daughter's Perry High School volleyball team.

Witnesses said that Lind went into the stands at Tempe's Marcos De Niza High School, where the Perry High School team was competing, pointed a finger at the teammate's face, yelled and used the word "bullshit."

Lind, who supervises at least half of Chandler's police force, including the public information office, was intervening on his daughter's behalf in an argument about a three-way phone conversation in which his daughter was joked about, witnesses said.

"This is a deputy police chief of a city that is growing like Chandler," said longtime community activist The Rev. Oscar Tillman, the local president of the NAACP. He said he became involved because the teammate is an African-American. "He (Lind) goes to the point of verbally attacking a teenager . . . He goes after a kid at school . . .

How much respect can (they) teenagers have for law enforcement?" Tillman asked.

Lind, one of two assistant chiefs who report directly to Police Chief Sherry Kiyler, was reprimanded and suspended without pay for two weeks in 2010 after conducting an affair that included trysts in hotel rooms while on duty.

Parents said the teammate of Lind's daughter and her coach burst into tears at the Tempe game, parents said. The girl's mother has since asked Perry High School to ban Lind from future games, which high school officials will determine after conducting an investigation, Tillman said.

The girl's mother also requested, but did not receive, a court order protecting her daughter from Lind, Tillman said.

The Chandler Police Department has opened an internal affairs investigation into Lind's behavior, said Chandler Police Sgt. Joe Favazzo. Both Perry High School and the Chandler department are awaiting the results of Tempe's report before earnestly investigating, officials said.

Tempe police continue interviewing witnesses to the events of Sept. 29, said spokesman Steve Carbajal.
Meanwhile, the Tempe Police Department is investigating a former Tempe lieutenant. Lind, who among other Tempe jobs was a public information officer, was hired as an assistant Chandler chief in December 2008.
Lind's annual salary is more than $146,000. He is also collecting a public-safety retirement pension.

http://www.azcentral.com/community/chandler/articles/2011/10/06/20111006chandler-assistant-police-chief-outburst.html

Tempe Police "Party Patrol" Brutalize ASU Golfer, Harass His Friends on Facebook, According to Lawsuit

Next time you're partying at Arizona State University, consider Noah Frochtzwajg, ASU student and aspiring golfer.

He was enjoying the company of friends at 2 a.m. on Sunday August 29, 2010, when the Tempe Police came knocking at his apartment.

Frochtzwaig saw two officers and opened the door to let them in. Once he opened the door they stormed the room with three more officers and knocked him to the ground.

From there, they handcuffed him, forced his friends to leave "one by one," and laughed at him, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court against the Tempe Police Department yesterday.

After 30 minutes, the police officers uncuffed Frochtzwaig and released him without pressing charges. Frochtzwaig addressed a complaint to Tempe PD's Internal Affairs office -- but then the sergeant in charge of the investigation started harassing his friends on Facebook with "personal and embarrassing questions."

The complaint further alleges that Tempe Police employs a squad of police officers known as the "Party Patrol" whose job is to go around shutting down parties.

But, the complaint alleges, their job isn't "simply [to] disrupt parties whose noise, etc., exceeded legal boundaries, or where underaged drinking had been established."

It's to "raid any student social gathering."

The complaint calls the police's actions "heavy handed and needlessly forceful," claims numerous abrasions and injuries to Frochtzwajg's body, and damage to his golf career.

He was going to attend the PGA's qualifying school last year when this incident occurred, causing harm to his career, according to the complaint.

"Golf was Mr. Frochtzwajg's first love, and the injuries have caused significant loss of enjoyment of life," it reads.

The complaint alleges nine counts, including unlawful civil rights violations, assault, battery, and wrongful imprisonment. It seeks unspecified amounts in damages.

Tempe Police Department Sergeant Steve Carbajal declined to discuss the pending litigation, per department rules.

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/05/tempe_police_party_patrol_brut.php

Maricopa County Sheriff's Office mishandled sex cases, report says

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sex-crime cases, including dozens in El Mirage, over a two-year period because of poor oversight and former Chief Deputy David Hendershott's desire to protect a key investigator from bad publicity, according to documents pertaining to a recent internal investigation released by the Sheriff's Office.

The errors led to interminable delays for victims of serious crimes who waited years for the attackers to be brought to justice, if they were ever caught.

More than 50 El Mirage sex-crime cases, most involving young children reportedly victimized by friends or family, went uninvestigated after police took an initial report. The lack of oversight was so widespread in El Mirage that it affected other cases: roughly 15 death investigations, some of them homicides with workable leads, were never presented to prosecutors, and dozens of robberies and auto-theft cases never led to arrests.

Concern about the handling of the cases dates back several years. However, a recently concluded investigation by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu revealed that an internal probe to get to the root of the problem was blocked by Hendershott two years ago because it would have reflected poorly on an investigator he considered crucial to a separate case.

Hendershott, according to investigators, killed the internal probe to protect Sgt. Kim Seagraves, because she was potentially needed to testify in a corruption case he was pushing.

The Pinal County investigation not only found fault in the El Mirage case, but it illustrated a larger problem with agency investigations.

"It wasn't just El Mirage PD cases," Deputy Chief Scott Freeman told Pinal County investigators. "As they started to look into that, they found that there were a lot of cases that hadn't been worked properly, hundreds of cases."

The Sheriff's Office would not comment on the mishandled investigations, which are the subject of an ongoing internal probe that began after Hendershott was placed on administrative leave last fall.

Problems with El Mirage cases emerged in late 2007 after Phoenix police veterans were hired to rebuild the El Mirage Police Department. A sheriff's official provided the new leaders with copies of criminal cases. They were shocked to find investigations, particularly those involving sex crimes, often ended after an initial report. Most had been forwarded to a "Special Victims Unit" at the Sheriff's Office, but there was no evidence of any follow-up.

Victims included a 15-year-old girl who said she was raped by two men outside an El Mirage shopping center and a 9-year-old who told a school counselor her grandmother's boyfriend often came into her bedroom at night, performing sex acts as she tried to sleep.

The 15-year-old had run into a store, where she told the shop owner closing for the night that she had been raped. Police officers stood watch over the crime scene as the teen was taken away by ambulance to be treated for injuries. Reports on the incident ended with the arrival of a Sheriff's Office detective.

"The suspects weren't taken into custody, they weren't prosecuted, so how many more victims are out there?" now-retired El Mirage Assistant Police Chief Bill Louis asked.

Police also discovered dozens of lengthy investigations, including homicides, that appeared to have suspects or leads at the time. Yet, despite extensive interviews and detective work, they were never presented to prosecutors. Arrests were never made.

El Mirage police notified the Sheriff's Office. Though an official offered to have county detectives reinvestigate the cases, El Mirage police declined. Instead, El Mirage police spent months reviewing them.

Many victims had moved away. Some parents told police reopening investigations would bring back memories the victims had struggled to suppress.

One report, on the 2005 death of Rachel Rodriguez, stood out. Arturo Hernandez Jr. emerged as a suspect in his girlfriend's murder almost immediately after her body was found. Hernandez was not arrested until long afterward, however, leaving Rodriguez's three young sons fearful.

A Phoenix detective hired by El Mirage was assigned to the case more than two years after the murder. Hernandez was finally indicted on a charge of second-degree murder last spring. He is set to go to trial in August.

"It was solvable the day that it occurred. All they needed to do was connect the dots like we did years later," said Louis.

El Mirage officials hired the Sheriff's Office to help with its police work weeks after Rodriguez's murder, hoping to address problems with patrols, handling of evidence and shoddy investigations exposed by a city audit.

Arpaio's office provided commanders and about a dozen deputies, who were initially greeted as a stop-gap measure to help the city establish a more seasoned police force. Later, El Mirage signed a $3.6 million contract for patrol, supervision and investigative services, though some El Mirage officers continued to work in the city.

The Sheriff's Office provided 15 deputies, two detectives, three sergeants and administrative staff during the first year in El Mirage; six deputies, two detectives, five sergeants, two lieutenants and two captains in the second year.

El Mirage residents soon began to question the quality of Arpaio's police force. A group of parishioners at Santa Teresita Catholic Church became frustrated with hundreds of emergency calls placed to the Sheriff's Office that went unanswered or were dropped. They took the issue to the City Council in early 2007.

Sheriff's officials at the time blamed faulty equipment and staff shortages. While fielding complaints from El Mirage, sheriff's officials were also pushing the city to make the Sheriff's Office its full-time police force, a contract that could be worth millions of dollars annually.

Faced with an all-or-nothing ultimatum, El Mirage decided to re-form its own police agency in summer 2007. Arpaio's last act was to do an immigration sweep in a city where nearly half of the residents identify themselves as Hispanic.

That event, which sent nearly 100 deputies and posse members to El Mirage in October 2007, was likely the largest police presence Arpaio ever provided the city.

The agency's goal in helping El Mirage with its police force was to secure a long-term contract to patrol the city.

"That was, I think, our hope in going over there, to have El Mirage as a contract city," said Lisa Allen, a sheriff's spokeswoman. "It never came to fruition."

After the Sheriff's Office pulled out of El Mirage, former City Manager B.J. Cornwall wrote a letter to the Sheriff's Office thanking the agency for allowing El Mirage to rebuild its police force "into a professional organization."

When Mike Frazier took over as El Mirage police chief in October 2007, he contacted the Sheriff's Office with a message on the quality of the cases its investigators had left behind.

"What I got was a bunch of crap," Deputy Chief Freeman recalled Frazier telling him at a 2007 meeting shortly after the Sheriff's Office left.

Freeman told investigators that poor supervision in the unit had allowed detectives to clear cases by exceptional means when there was still investigative work to be done. Another detective transferred out of the unit and took "50 or 60 cases home with him in a garage and they sat there for a year," Freeman said.

The sheriff's probe to determine who will be held responsible for the shoddy police work is ongoing.

The Sheriff's Office confirmed that detectives reactivated 432 sex-crimes cases from throughout the Valley after concerns were raised, making 19 arrests. Of the remainder, 115 were determined to be unfounded, 67 were classified as "cold cases" and 221 were "exceptionally" cleared without arrest.

http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2011/05/21/20110521maricopa-county-sheriff-office-sex-case-investigations-mishandled.html

Phoenix police officer investigated over shove captured on video

A 6½-year veteran of the Phoenix Police Department is the subject of a criminal and internal investigation after a video surfaced on YouTube that shows him roughly shoving a girl during a police call, authorities said.

The officer, Patrick Larrison, has been put on administrative leave pending the investigations, Phoenix police officials said in a press release.

Sgt. Trent Crump, a department spokesman, said the incident occurred in January but that it did not come to police attention until Tuesday night when a department employee spotted the video on the Internet and notified a police supervisor.

The incident purportedly involved the girl in an altercation with a woman in a parking lot. The woman, apparently a parent, and the girl are seen on the ground for some time; the girl managed to get free and was walking away when an officer responding to the scene approaches her from behind and knocks her off her feet.

She's seen lying on the ground motionless for a short while; the officer then handcuffs her and walks her back toward a police vehicle.

The incident reportedly occurred near Ombudsman Charter School near 40th Street and Thomas Road.

"The video at face value is of great concern to the Department and we are taking the matter very seriously," Crump wrote in the press release.

Authorities said that in addition to the criminal and internal probes, Larrison was immediately placed on administrative leave and the juvenile division of the Maricopa County Attorney's Office was notified.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/05/04/20110504phoenix-police-officer-youtube-shove-brk04-ON.html

Mesa police: Officer used crime database to harass women

A Mesa police officer has been indicted on charges of misusing a law-enforcement database to date and harass women he met on duty.

One of the women was a theft victim, and others were suspects he had pulled over for traffic violations.

The indictment came just a week after another Mesa police officer and his wife were indicted on felony mortgage fraud charges in an unrelated case.

Mesa Police Chief Frank Milstead said he was "outraged" by the two cases and has placed both men on paid leave pending internal investigations.

Officer Todd Randall Duthie, an five-year veteran, was indicted on four felony counts of having unauthorized access to a state criminal history database and one misdemeanor count of harassment.

The charges stem from Duthie allegedly using his position to follow and score dates with four women, according to a police report.

Duthie's attorney Scott Halverson declined to comment on the case and Duthie did not return a message left at his Queen Creek home.

Mesa police initially opened an internal investigation last fall after one of the women complained, a police report states. But once an investigator found Duthie may have violated the law, a criminal investigation was opened, Wessing said.

Duthie contacted the first woman Sept. 15, 2009, after she reported a theft at the Las Palmas Carniceria at 7246 E. Main Street, the report states. The officer then began calling her and stopping by the store and the woman's residence.

A GPS system inside Duthie's squad car tracked his movements as he repeatedly parked outside another woman's house and as he continued to pull over two other women, who claim he tried to date them.

During a traffic stop with another woman July 8, 2010, Duthie reportedly said "I'm supposed to give you a ticket, but I won't. Since I'm not . . . let me have a date or something," the report states.

Duthie has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which came just a week after Officer Mark Anthony Escarcega and his wife Blanca were indicted on charges of mortgage fraud.

The charges stem from the purchase of a home in Mesa four years ago, authorities have stated.

Blanca Escarcega allegedly claimed she separated from her husband and received a mortgage loan modification from Bank of America stating the separation created a financial hardship, according to the Associated Press.

However, the couple never separated, and they purchased a new home and rented out the old one, court documents state.

Word of the Escarcegas' housing deal reached the department and, sensing a crime had been committed, the FBI was contacted, Mesa police spokesman Sgt. Ed Wessing said.

The Escarcegas have also pleaded not guilty.

Wessing said the department is trying to remain as transparent as possible with officer misconduct cases.

"The public doesn't need to worry that we have a corruption or misconduct issue. As an agency, we take these types of violation very seriously," he said.

Wessing added that Milstead was furious when he learned of the initial internal investigation into Duthie's activities.

"He was outraged that a member of our agency would conduct himself in that manner," Wessing said. "When an officer engages in misconduct like this, it impacts all of us. We are as outraged as the community is."

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/04/28/20110428mesa-police-officer-indicted-charges-harrassing-women0428.html

Maricopa County Sheriff deputies faulted in ID-theft case

Maricopa County sheriff's deputies violated the constitutional rights of two Hispanic men when they stopped and detained the men as part of a 2009 identity-theft investigation at a landscaping company, according to a federal judge's ruling Monday.

U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell ruled that Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputies had no reason to stop Julian and Julio Mora before dawn on Feb. 11, 2009, nor any reason to make a warrantless arrest when deputies detained the Moras for nearly three hours.

The only reason the arresting deputies had to detain the men, according to Campbell's ruling, was because Julian Mora told deputies that he worked at Handyman Maintenance Inc., where sheriff's deputies were searching for suspected identity thieves.

Sheriff's deputies arrested 60 employees during the raid on the business, out of 109 employees at the site, on suspicion of a variety of crimes, ranging from fraud and identity theft to immigration violations.

Julian Mora's admission that he worked someplace where deputies suspected wrongdoing was not enough for the deputies to believe Julian Mora committed a crime, Campbell wrote.

"Any mistakes on the part of the John Doe deputies, even if made in good faith, were not 'those of reasonable men, acting on facts leading sensibly to their conclusions of probability,' " Campbell wrote.

Tim Casey, an attorney representing the Sheriffs Office, said the sheriff's defense was hampered because sheriff's officials were never able to identify the deputies who stopped the Moras.

More than 100 deputies were on scene that day, but without those who stopped the Moras, the judge was left to rule on the Moras version of events, Casey said.

"Without that, there was no testimony on why they were stopped," Casey said. "It was lack of evidence. They won because there's no evidence on that."

As important as Campbell's ruling is to the Moras, it bears more significance for the future of Arpaio's work-site enforcement operations, said Dan Pochoda, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Arizona, which represented the Moras.

Campbell also ruled that the arrests were the result of Arpaio's enforcement policies and that Maricopa County is liable for how those policies are enforced.

"It's the first test of their workplace raid policy, a plan they repeated many times," said Pochoda, who added that the ruling could serve as a deterrent. "It's a very important win."

http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2011/04/25/20110425arpaio-deputies-ruling-id-theft.html

Former Glendale police sergeant arrested in Oregon

A former Glendale police sergeant is being held without bond in an Oregon jail after he reportedly assaulted his live-in girlfriend, records show.

Brent Thomas, who resigned last November amid an internal investigation, is also accused of continuing to possess firearms despite an order of protection filed by his estranged wife that bars him from doing so.

Last summer, an anonymous caller reported Thomas, 44, had abused his wife. The couple was in the midst of a divorce when the allegations surfaced. Thomas's wife said he had abused her for years, and shared pictures of her injuries.

The Maricopa County Attorney's Office decided earlier this year not to file charges against Thomas.

Thomas, who spent 14 years as a Glendale officer, recently moved to Oregon.

Lincoln City, Ore. police responded to Thomas's new home early Sunday after a caller reported he had assaulted his girlfriend. They arrived to find his 27-year-old girlfriend's face covered in blood and her eyes swollen, according to a probable cause statement filed in Lincoln County Circuit Court.

The woman said the two had been arguing when Thomas told her to leave because their "relationship was not going to work."

He reportedly grabbed the woman by the throat when she tried to get money from a safe and later punched her "multiple times in the face and head," according to court filings.

She was treated at a hospital and later released.

Police responding to the couple's home also discovered dozens of loaded firearms including AR-15 rifles and semiautomatic handguns.

A July 2010 order of protection bars Thomas from possessing guns. Police allege Thomas has continued to operate a website that sells firearms and accessories despite the order.

In the hours after the reported assault, police struggled to find Thomas. A gun was noted to be missing.

Police later arrested Thomas along a Benton County highway, about 75 miles away.

Officers found $400,000 cash in Thomas's trunk but not the handgun, according to a court filing.

Thomas was arrested on suspicion of 71 counts of contempt of court for possessing firearms in his home, as well as felony assault, menacing, strangulation and harassment.

On Monday, a Lincoln County judge denied bail for Thomas after prosecutors argued he had failed to abide by the rules of the protective order, fled his home after the alleged assault and removed a handgun before he left.

A Monday court filing by prosecutors also cited Thomas's training as Glendale SWAT officer.

An attorney representing Thomas has previously denied abuse allegations against him.

Thomas had no major disciplinary problems and good performance reviews before the July 2010 call which spurred a criminal and internal investigation of Thomas.

Glendale police have said Thomas was relieved of enforcement duties immediately after the abuse allegations surfaced. He was ordered to return his department weapons and told he would be reassigned to administrative tasks during the investigation.

He never returned to work and chose not to speak to police investigators, a spokesman said.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/04/12/20110412glendale-police-sergeant-arrested-oregon-brk.html