Oregon Cop's Inability To Keep His Hands Off A Resident's Phone Costs Taxpayers $85,000 In Legal Fees
from the stop-touching-other-people's-stuff dept
Oregon residents will be opening up their wallets and handing out $85,000 to a citizen and her ACLU representation, thanks to a police officer being the only cop on the scene unable to handle being filmed while effecting an arrest.
Carrie Medina sued the city of Portland in early 2015 after an officer seized her camera and ended her livestream of an arrest two years earlier. The lawsuit [PDF], filed by the ACLU, contains the full conversation between Officer Taylor Letsis and Medina during the livestream's premature conclusion.
It contains some choice highlights in law enforcement overreach and the assertion of nonexistent authority. The confrontation starts with Officer Letsis claiming Medina's phone probably contains "evidence of a crime," and continues on through to Letsis claiming his seizure and search of the phone is neither a seizure or a search but is very definitely something he has the "legal jurisdiction" to do.
After some back and forth with Medina about his supposed "legal jurisdiction," Letsis decided to seize the phone and view the recording of the arrest. And by "seize," I mean "rip Medina's phone out of her hand."
According to the lawsuit, Medina had offered to provide the video footage to the officer if he gave her a subpoena. After he grabbed the phone, a prompt popped up on the Ustream app to archive the video. Medina, concerned the officer wasn't going to save the video, urged him to archive it. He did, and she then walked him through the process of posting it to a social media site, the suit says.
The officer handed the phone back to Medina and ordered her to show him the video and she complied, since he had posted it for her on social media.
Then he seized it again.
"As soon as Ms. Medina pressed 'play' to start the video, Officer Letsis grabbed the phone from her a second time,'' the suit says. "Officer Letsis did so without warning, and without the consent of Ms. Medina, despite the absence of any probable cause - or any reason at all - to suspect either that Ms. Medina had committed a crime, that the phone contained evidence of a crime, or that the evidence (which he himself had just archived to the Ustream web server) was in any danger of being destroyed.''
The lawsuit goes on to point out Gresham police officials dug their own hole with their post-incident statements, which claimed nothing illegal had occurred and no department policies had been violated.
On approximately February 15, 2013, KGW television published a report on the incident. During the report, a person identified as Gresham police spokesman Claudio Grandjean asserted that Officer Letsis' conduct during the encounter had been legal. Officer Grandjean stated:
“He wasn't doing something illegal. Now, was he inappropriate, or... or or a little rough, or officious or whatever? We can look at that, but that's not nearly as important as was he doing something illegal."
Thus, three days after the incident, the Gresham Police Department took a clear and public position that the actions of Officer Letsis were lawful.
And this, from the police chief, issued nearly a month after the incident:
In the March 5, 2013 memorandum, the Chief stated that "I highly discourage the seizing of property, or the arresting of persons, for simply recording your official actions without your knowledge."
In the March 5, 2013 memorandum, the Chief stated that "I support the reasonable actions of officers to seize cell phones when there is probable cause to believe the recording contains evidence of a crime and there are exigent circumstances to seize the cell phone to prevent the destruction or loss of the evidence," but went on to warn that "[i]f no exigent circumstances that place the property at risk of destruction, you must obtain a search warrant to download the video."
According to the ACLU, these statements indicated officers had not received proper training in respecting the First and Fourth Amendment rights of citizens. That pretty much nailed things down case-wise, as proving "failure to train" is a key element in lawsuits seeking to hold government agencies and employees accountable for their constitutional violations.
Understandably, the three entities being sued decided to settle [PDF] rather than see this debacle rack up even greater monetary losses in front of a jury.
The settlement agreement stipulated that Portland and Gresham must adopt new police policies and training regarding the public’s right to film police activities. The City of Gresham’s new policy under the settlement went into effect in May 2016 and the City of Portland’s new policy went into effect in October 2016. The City of Gresham was also required to pay $85,000 in legal fees to Medina.
The victim of police misconduct only asked for legal fees, which she has donated to the ACLU which represented her pro bono. More important to Medina (and the ACLU) was the establishment of department and city policies recognizing the public's right to hold their public servants accountable through public recordings.
The ACLU notes, however, that the new policies don't appear to have reached every officer covered by them.
Oregon law is now clear that the public has the right to record law enforcement doing their jobs in public, but dos Santos says the ACLU of Oregon still hears from people who have been hassled, detained, or arrested, or who have had their devices confiscated for filming the police, including an incident in Portland last November involving another local activist, Benjamin Kerensa.
“We still see arrests, detentions, and seizures simply for filming the police,” dos Santos said. “With this settlement, we hope that law enforcement across the state will finally respect the public’s right to record. Otherwise, we’ll see them in court again.”
Old habits die hard. And the oldest habits always seem to be the worst ones. The sooner these are broken (or, conversely, the sooner those who can't break them are forced out of jobs), the less expensive it will be for Oregon's taxpayers.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: carrie medina, civil liberties, filming police, oregon, phones, taylor letsis, warrant
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
From Portland
Even with the historical overreaching often associated with various Portland functions we have yet to actually claim jurisdiction over Gresham.
See Portland Water Dept for clarification regarding ham-fisted management of various ties with outlying cities/town/counties. It sure as Hell is weird.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: From Portland
The complaint was against one named officer and 3 unnamed ones that the complaint says were City of Portland police.
Trimet (the regional bus system) was named because one of the nearby vehicles was marked "Transit Police" (the name for Trimet's security force). Also, the suspect they were apprehending was put into the Transit Police car, so they (probably) had jurisdiction over the scene. Thus failure to instruct/control the other officers on the scene.
Unknown officers, therefore name everyone who could have been involved at the outset, or lose the opportunity. (You reasonably "could have named them", so the judge would look askance at you if you ask to amend the complaint later.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There's your problem!
"I highly discourage the seizing of property, or the arresting of persons, for simply recording your official actions without your knowledge."
What should have been said is "You cannot seize property or arrest people for filming your official actions without your knowledge. I have a word for officers that do this - 'CONVICTED!'".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No penalty for Cop
Oregon cop Taylor Letsis gets off totally free from any criminal penalty or personal civil penalty--- so that's a zero deterrent to future criminal behavior by him and his buddies. Cops are above the law, as usual .... and in no way feel or act as "public servants".
This is commonplace police behavior across the nation. Courts refuse to hold cops criminally accountable for criminal behavior. Those two Georgia cops that just got fired for beating a handcuffed black man on a public street... were not charged with Assault & Battery, or any crime at all ---- totally unjust. Their immediate firing was extremely rare ... cops (if caught in the act by non-police persons) are usually put on paid vacation while their crimes are "investigated"/whitewashed; ordinary citizens in similar circumstances are immediately arrested/jailed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No penalty for Cop
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No penalty for Cop
Since federal law considers the mere possession of a dangerous weapon while committing a crime to make that crime an armed crime (even if the victim never knows the criminal is armed), that makes any violation of 242 by an armed police officer a felony by default.
The doctrine of qualified immunity does not provide any shield whatsoever from criminal law consequences, it only protects against civil lawsuits.
When a police department declares that an officer's actions were in accordance with department policy, and a civil court later rules that 42 USC 1983 was violated, this exceeds the probable cause standard required to arrest the officer for the felony the rights violation represents.
Isn't it funny how cops can commit felonies -- which supposedly disqualify people from possessing firearms -- and continue to be cops, even though a firearms disqualification would also disqualify them from being a cop at all?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The one problem with that is that is the phone ever goes to sleep, you have to enter the unlock code, which is not a good idea while driving, even if the phone is mounted on your dashboard.
So it is a good idea to have your phone connected to Google services. If the phone is sezied, just get to the Internet ASAP and send the command to erase the phone, then that will be the end of it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
More relevant to this story (aside from the search aspects) is to use a recording app that functions while you have the phone locked. And better still if the service the recording is uploaded to requires an entered password in order to delete said recording.
I'd recommend seeking legal advice (like, from a lawyer, not from "LegalZoom" or anonymous commentators in a forum) before sending a kill command to the phone. If the police see that as "Tampering With Evidence" (or Spoilation), you could be in for a world of hurt if they subsequently get a warrant and search it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Krazy Klown Kops
Bottom line. Perhaps it is time to rethink what cops should be doing. It isn't as if their "mandate" was written in stone by someone's idea/perception of god.
Yes, there are bad dudes and dudettes out there, but shooting people for crooked license plates and moving an inch of a line somewhere ("I thought he had a gun") should be way beyond the job description.
Oh wait, that would assume a modicum of sanity. Well, it is a thought...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Krazy Klown Kops
we call them "hombres" these days...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]