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Misconduct.
I
don’t know Temple University photojournalism major Ian Van Kuyk, despite his
enrollment in Temple’s Journalism Department, where I teach.
I
do know that dynamics embedded in the recent arrest of Van Kuyk by Philadelphia
police--an arrest now generating news coverage nationwide--provide yet another
snapshot of the systemic abuses I’ve reported and researched during three
decades spent documenting the lawlessness endemic among law enforcers.
Philadelphia
police roughed-up and arrested Van Kuyk for his photographing a police traffic
stop taking place in front of his apartment. The arrest of Van Kuyk violated
Philadelphia Police Department directives permitting such photographing as well
as court rulings and constitutional rights.
Police
harassing citizens lawfully documenting police activities taking place in
public is a “widespread and continuing” problem according to the ACLU.
“The
right of citizens to record the police is a critical check and balance,” an
ACLU analyst noted during a September 2011 speech where he referenced six
incidents in five cities of police arresting citizen photographers during just
the spring of last year.
Yes,
police attacking civilians for lawfully photographing public spaces, police
routinely employing unlawful excessive force and prosecutors too frequently turning
a blind eye to such police misconduct are all nationwide problems.
Systemic
abuses by police and the prosecutors that condone such misconduct corrode
public confidence in the justice system and cost taxpayers millions of dollars
spent on settling lawsuits alleging illegalities by police.
Ian Kuyk, arrested by Philly's Finest for
taking photos of them arresting someone
Historically,
abuses by police and particularly those by prosecutors receive short-shrift
from most elected officials.
Just
a few days before the alleged March 14, 2012 abuse of Van Kuyk, an artist filed
a federal lawsuit against a Philadelphia policeman for roughing her up when
arresting her less than two miles from the Van Kuyk incident. When arrested
that artist was lawfully creating an outdoor artwork.
In
January 2012, the City of Philadelphia settled another lawsuit filed against
the same artist-arresting policeman, with the City agreeing to pay a woman
$30,000. She alleged that the officer had “violently manhandled” her – breaking
her nose and spraining her wrist during a sidewalk encounter.
Abundant
evidence now implicates a police-prosecutor abuse angle in the Florida fatal
shooting of teen Trayvon Martin by 28-year-old George Zimmerman.
The
evidence is clear that Sanford, FL police officials acted in incomprehensible
variance with established procedures in their handling of that fatal incident,
seemingly proceeding in ways calculated to support Zimmerman’s self-defense
claim.
And
evidence indicates those police officials plus prosecutors rejected a Sanford
Police detective’s request to arrest Zimmerman for manslaughter – a management
decision that appears to demonstrate less concern for victim Martin than for
shooter Zimmerman, whom the evidence shows ignored police orders to not
confront Martin, only to have him then claim he shot Martin in self-defense.
That
incident producing the arrest of Van Kuyk and outrage from the general counsel
of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) about gross violations
of this young photojournalist’s First Amendment rights occurred in a section of
South Philadelphia.
Of
course there are two sides: in this case the account advanced by arresting
officers and accounts from Van Kuyk, his girlfriend (also arrested that night)
and a few of their neighbors who witnessed the events.
The
only points of agreement between the two versions are that police were
questioning one of Van Kuyk’s neighbors outside the South Philadelphia
apartment where Van Kuyk lived, and that the budding photojournalist began
photographing that encounter.
Philadelphia
police are now reinvestigating the incident in the wake of criticisms and
critical news coverage.
According
to Van Kuyk, Philly police, after demanding that he stop photographing them,
and after their dismissing his First Amendment protests, snatched Van Kuyk up,
slammed him to the ground, swept him off to a police station for a nearly
24-hour detention, and eventually slapped him with a slew of charges, including
disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstruction of justice.
How
was Van Kuyk ‘obstructing justice’ if as an NPPA letter to Philadelphia police
contends Van Kuyk “never came closer than ten feet” to the police? That letter
notes that Van Kuyk “voluntarily backed up” when ordered by police before a
policeman “approached [him] in an aggressive manner demanding that he stop
taking pictures.”
Police
also arrested Van Kuyk’s girlfriend, detaining her for 19-hours, also slamming
her with trumped-up charges. Her arrest arose from her trying to retrieve Van
Kuyk’s school-issued camera.
At
the core of this incident we see some Philadelphia police failing to follow
clearly stated department policy. A Philadelphia Police Department directive
issued in September 2011 bars officers from arresting people for “photographing,
videotaping or audibly recording police personnel [conducting] official
business…in any public space.”
The
“Purpose” listed on that policy, Memorandum (11-01), was to “remove any
confusion as to duties and responsibilities” when police find themselves
subjected to recording devices.
That
National Press Photographers Association letter to Philadelphia’s Police
Commissioner, raising the First Amendment, stated “It is truly abhorrent that
not only did your officers abrogate that right [they] chose to add insult to
injury by overcharging Mr. Van Kuyk with offenses he did not commit.”
Given
that red-line PPD policy directive, police supervisors and prosecutors should
have immediately pulled the plug on the charges against Van Kuyk and his
girlfriend, but they didn’t.
Prosecutors
pressed the flawed-arrest-related charges against Van Kuyk’s girlfriend,
extracting their pound of flesh by forcing her into a program requiring
12-hours of community service and paying a $200 fine in exchange for their
dismissing those flawed charges.
Van
Kuyk is awaiting his preliminary hearing and possible trial.
The
prosecution of Van Kuyk’s girlfriend and his pending charges are a stain on
both the ethical duty of prosecutors to seek justice and Pa Professional
Conduct rules for prosecutors restricting prosecutions “not supported by
probable cause.”
Someone
somewhere in Philly’s prosecutor’s office should have questioned questionable
if not totally bogus charges arising from arrests prompted by police violating
their department policy.
Philadelphia
police spokesmen proclaim that the arresting officers knew about that directive
protecting First Amendment activity, but contend that “other things
happened…that caused the officers to make an arrest,” according to widely
reported media accounts.
The
Philadelphia Police Department’s record of abusive misconduct, however, casts a
dark shadow on the department’s contention that “other things happened,” as do
eyewitness accounts.
This
incident involving Van Kuyk is hauntingly similar to an August 1972 incident
that occurred just ten blocks from Van Kuyk’s apartment.
In
that 1972 incident, a minister questioning police for pummeling a man outside
his house triggered a home-invasion, with police ransacking the minister’s home
and arresting him, his wife, his daughter and a house guest from Germany.
As
with the Van Kuyk case, the assaulting police hit Rev. Joseph Kirkland, his
family and house guest with a slew of charges, including disorderly conduct and
interfering with a police officer.
Philly
prosecutors pressed those charges, which police had concocted to cover-up their
criminal assault on Kirkland’s house, but a judge quickly dismissed them.
Philly’s
then top prosecutor, Arlen Specter, later a US Senator and top Senate Judicial
Committee member, rejected widespread demands to prosecute those offending
police officers for their criminal conduct against Rev. Kirkland and his
family.
Specter
recently released a book criticizing the dysfunction in contemporary partisan
politics – an ironic argument coming from someone who once shirked his ethical
and professional duties by ignoring outrageous misconduct and abusive behavior
by police and prosecutors.
Months
after that August 1972 incident, a federal judge in Philadelphia issued a
ruling in a class-action police brutality lawsuit in which he criticized
arrests without probable cause.
That
judge noted that those most likely to be targeted for police abuse are
individuals who had the audacity (but legal right) to challenge their initial
police contact.
I
guess certain abusive practices are just embedded in Philadelphia Police
Department culture.
So
are a 1972 incident and 1973 court ruling ancient history?
Well,
that ’72 incident and ’73 court ruling implicated issues animating the Van Kuyk
incident.
Meanwhile,
a Maryland man in 2010 avoided a possible 16-year prison term for posting a
video on YouTube showing a plainclothes state trooper brandishing a pistol when
he stops that man for an alleged speeding violation.
A
Maryland judge dismissed the criminal charges filed against that motorcyclist
wearing a helmet cam in a ruling reminding police and prosecutors that public
officials are “ultimately accountable to the public” and public servants should
not expect their action to be “shielded from public observation.”
Philadelphia
prosecutors need to drop the charges against Van Kuyk and reverse the
proceeding against his girlfriend.