Monday June 23, 2008
Amid news of Carlos Miller being found guilty of resisting arrest in his police-photographing case, we have this: Artist Momoko Sudo harassed and intimidated by Coral Gables police for looking funny and photographing their motorcycle. (via Artblog)
Thursday April 24, 2008
John Timoney update: still our police chief. Stunning. Latest development: the Florida Commission on Ethics has preliminarily found him to be guilty of violations of the State’s ethics laws. Comes next: a formal finding, and a recommendation as to punishment. What the hell is Pete Hernandez thinking?
Thursday March 27, 2008
Michael Lewis writes a plaintive appeal to Chief Timoney to testify before the CIP, which he has been refusing to do on the cynical “principle” that he can’t testify before them because they report to him (a notion that Lewis expertly refutes).
Monday March 24, 2008
The West Palm Beach sheriff’s department sent in 100 deputies to break up a fight at the Sunshine Flea Market yesterday. That’s how you do it, folks: nothing beats a small army.
Wednesday March 19, 2008
So, you want to know why South Florida has crappy drivers? Well, I managed to pull the answer out of this seemingly innocuous article about DUI checkpoints. Peep: “One out of every four people stopped by a [Florida Highway Patrol] trooper has a suspended license,” BUT “when you make an arrest, you’re taking a police officer off the road for a couple of hours.” Those are quotes from FHP spokescop Lt. Pat Santangelo, and what he’s telling you, folks, is that when they pull over someone with a suspended license, they let them get right back on the road.
Wednesday March 12, 2008
Jesus Christ, the fucking police in Palm Beach. I mean, really? (via) Update: Carlos deleted the post. Here’s why. The gist was that he was on assignment to photograph a mansion, cops were called in and told him he couldn’t stand on the sidewalk and photograph the house, and issued him a written warning.
Monday March 10, 2008
Update on the Edison Case: the school police are so disgusted with the way the situation was handled they’re holding a vote of no confidence in the chief. In other news, the arrest records from the brawl are a mess, which will make it almost impossible to try any of the students. To me, the latter news suggests the police arrested way more people then they should have — had they cuffed only those they knew had done something violent the records would be easy to produce correctly.
Monday March 3, 2008
“The tenth grader said a pizza was thrown over his head at an officer and that he was then told by an officer he was not getting out of the way fast enough. He said an officer slammed him off a table.” — Incident at Edison High School. A confrontation between a vice-principal and a student on Thursday led to a sit-in protest by many students in the lunch hall Friday, for which over 60 police were called in, resulting in a violent melee. Update: Does this look like “nothing more than a classic example of kids fabricating a story to justify their own misdeeds”?
Friday February 15, 2008
A directory of spots in Florida where there are frequently speed traps, organized by city.
Friday February 1, 2008
Things not looking so hot for our pal John Timoney. Docked a week’s pay ($4,348, which if you’re all mathematical means his yearly salary is $226,000) plus a little extra, and he’s been persuaded to testify before the citizen’s panel, which makes recommendations to the city commission. Update: Actually, he didn’t testify. Can you believe this asshole?!
Wednesday January 16, 2008
Last Friday, a guy got rowdy at a UM house party. The police were called, and they tased him to death.
Monday January 14, 2008
You know how Miami Police Chief John Timoney was driving that free SUV around for like a year? Well, the city’s Citizen Investigative Panel asked him to come before them and testify, and he was all “no thanks,” so they subpoenaed his ass, and he still refused to come, so they went to a judge, who ordered him to show up, and guess what? He still refuses. Dear Mr. Mayor: why does this fucktard still have a job?
Tuesday November 13, 2007
All charges against Jeff Weinsier have been unceremoniously dropped. It is now this guy’s responsibility as a journalist to sue the police for false arrest. Update: Bob’s got the full text of the SA Maggie Gerson’s memo. I love her for her common sense (Rick should read this twice): “As to the . . . Failing to Obey a lawful command charge, the arrest may have been lawful had there been a lawful command. However, the command does not appear to be lawful in this case since being on the sidewalk in and of itself is not illegal.”
Wednesday November 7, 2007
Incident at Whole Foods and followup. A woman is arrested in the parking lot (apparently somewhat roughly) after a food fight(!) inside the store. Our own Genius of Despair reports, and is told off by a WF manager for taking pictures in front of the store.
Monday October 29, 2007
The Jeff Weinsier incident
Last week, Channel 10 reporter Jeff Weinsier was arrested in front of Miami Central Senior High. By now everyone knows what happened, but let’s recap: 1) Weinsier and his cameraman, while shooting from the sidewalk, are ordered, and more or less forced, by police to go across the street; 2) Weinsier calls his station, who calls the police department, and they’re “given permission” to go back; 3) upon returning to the sidewalk on the school’s side, another confrontation with the police ensues, and Weinsier is arrested; 4) upon being searched, he is found to be carrying a concealed weapon, which is illegal on school grounds.
Well, WPLG 10 has now released the raw video of the incident, and C.L. Jahn breaks it down. C.L. Points out the obvious — that the video doesn’t show Weinsier ever setting foot on the school’s property. This misses the rather obvious point that we don’t know what happened before the camera started rolling. Video footage and photography are like that: our brain is tricked into thinking we’re seeing all there is to see. It’s completely possible that Weinsier was standing on the grass before the video we see was shot. And if he wasn’t, the police can certainly claim so, which may give some legal standing to their “lawful order” for him to stay across the street.
The law here is murky: schools are surrounded by a 500 foot “school safety zone,” and in some regards this zone is considered an extension of school grounds. Carlos Miller addresses the various laws that come into play here and here. It seems clear that Weinsier violated the law by carrying the gun near a school. But if that’s the only thing he ends up guilty of, it may very well overshadow the much larger issue: whether the police were right in ordering him off the sidewalk, and in arresting him. Carlos says:
According to Florida Statute 810.0975, which defines trespassing in “school safety zones”, a person is committing an unlawful act if he loiters in the school safety zone, but “does not have legitimate business in the school safety zone”.
The emphasis is his, and with good reason: a possible hinge-point is whether television reporting constitutes “legitimate business.” The common-sense answer would be ‘yes,’ but of course common sense is irrelevant. What’s relevant is how all the various facts of the case, and the relevant laws, are going to be interperted here. If the officer had a legitimate reason for ordering the reporters to leave (despite the fact that he doesn’t give one on camera, he of course had a reason — TV reporters file reports from schools all the time with no trouble), does disobeying the order actually constitute trespassing? Will they continue to insist that Weinsier stepped on the grass? Is it legally relevant that the Police Department’s own Public Information Officer told the station that it was OK for Weinsier to be on the sidewalk?
Perhaps most important: will the WPLG stick up for their reporter, and fight this case hard? On Friday, the station suspended Weinsier for two weeks for carrying the concealed weapon, a violation of their company policy. Fine; they may just be erring on the side of caution in preparation for the fight to come. But barring more information, this is a clear first-amendment issue, and the station — we all — need to pursue it to make sure it’s resolved properly. If the police were not right, there needs to be a major counter-suit. And remember: if the only charge that sticks is the concealed weapons violation, the police were wrong. In this case, that constitutes a technicality, because it wasn’t discovered until after the arrest. We’ve all seen how well police reports can spin police behavior even when it is obviously and clearly wrong. Let’s not stand for that this time around.
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Thursday October 25, 2007
Boyton Beach police to reporters: shave your heads and we’ll give you special scoops. Did I miss a memo about this officially being a police state?
Wednesday October 24, 2007
Jeff Weinsier, a reporter for Channel 10 news, was arrested for “trespassing” while standing on the sidewalk in front of Miami Central High. After the arrest, police found a gun on him, so charged him with possession of a firearm on school property. Police say he had previously stepped on the grass, but the video clearly shows them arresting him on the sidewalk (“which is usually considered public property,” as the report incredulously puts it) after he refuses to cross the street. (Via Carlos Miller, who unpacks some of the law around this.)
Wednesday October 10, 2007
Now I’m getting all verklempft: two Broward Sherrif’s officers bought a bicycle for a boy who had his stolen and broken. I’m glad the BSO has a blog to keep us up to date on their deeds. No mention of the rubber bullets incident, but you can get a kick out of those who think this excuses any future police abuse. That’s right Rick, you remind us about this incident every time a cop tases someone for hogging a microphone or beats up a kid for riding a skateboard.
Friday October 5, 2007
The City of Miami will pay $160,000 and the county $300,000, in a settlement with 20 victims of police brutality/abuse during the 2003 FTAA protests. Our pal Tamara even throws in a few choice Chief Timoney quotes from back then, like calling protesters “pussies.”
Tuesday September 18, 2007
Student tasered for asking John Kerry questions at UF
More, um, very nice police officers acting very nice in this story and video from a John Kerry speech at U/F yesterday. Student Andrew Meyer gets on the microphone and accosts Kerry for not contesting the 2004 elections, asks if he’s a member of Skull and Bones, and generally tries to get all loud and protesty. At this point campus police try to arrest him, and he sort of waves them off and continues his questioning. More police arrive and try to arrest him, and Meyer questions them, yelling “what did I do, what did I do?”
Eventually they get him down, and the, um, six of them have trouble getting his hands behind his back, and I guess they’re pissed that he still hasn’t shut the fuck up, because another cop calmly walks over with a taser. “Don’t tase me, bro!” we hear Meyer yelling, as he’s held down by a bunch of the cops, but bro goes ahead and gives him a good jolt anyway, and we hear Meyer howling in pain.
OK, so a few things.
- What’s most remarkable about this is that somehow Meyer is on the microphone during the whole thing — we hear him clearly, and so does the whole room. Without that this whole incident would have looked very different.
- Is it a crime to “disturb” public events (where “disturb” = not shutting the fuck up when told to do so)? I guess, but this is at best a marginal case.
- We’re pretty numb to seeing absurd police cruelty and violence directed at anyone getting uppity, but campus police? You’d think they’d see this stuff all the time, and shrug it off. Nope.
- What’s up with the rest of the students? They sit there like a bunch of obedient little sheep. Why aren’t they all standing and yelling at the cops?
- And what’s up with dude Kerry? Clearly he sees what’s going on, and he tries to act like nothing’s happing, telling the crowd to calm down, that it’s a good question and . . . WTF, he’s got people’s attention, how about “LET THAT GUY GO, HE’S ASKING IMPORTANT QUESTIONS QUESTIONS!” How about getting off the stage and intervening in the situation (maybe he’s afraid they’ll taser him, too)? What a coward; thank god we didn’t elect this guy president. Geez.
(thanks, Gabriel)
Update: A different video of the same incident.
Much more at EKBTV: 1, 2, including the following:
Please call to express your concerns about this horrific incident:
University of Florida Police Department: (352) 329-1111
University of Florida main switchboard: (352) 392-3261
Update: Andrew Meyer’s website (via Bob, who is exactly right)
Update: I’ve no idea why the moron editors at the Gainesville Sun took down the story at the original link, but their reporters have been all over this, issuing several stories a day on various angles of the story. They’re pretty easy to find on the website (search “Andrew Meyer taser”), but here’s an overall follow-up.
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Thursday August 30, 2007
“With a few more words it would have been an appropriate letter of resignation.” – an anonymous commenter on Timoney’s letter of appology.
Wednesday August 29, 2007
Michael Lewis is disturbed by the surveillance cameras that are going up all over downtown. I’m with you, Michael, but as far as the cameras go, I think that battle is lost.