Lawsuit Settlement Over Detainment Of A Journalist Will Force Denver Police Department To Admit The First Amendment Exists
from the being-deliberately-wrong-is-just-playing-the-odds dept
Last summer, Denver police officers decided the First Amendment didn't exist in the city, at least not while they were in the process of helping a naked black man get some medical attention by handcuffing him in the middle of the sidewalk.
Denver PD officers Adam Paulsen and James Brooks noticed journalist Susan Greene filming the incident and decided she needed some law enforcement herself. So they approached her and told her to stop filming by citing an inapplicable law. For whatever reason, they also told her to "act like a lady." Greene was handcuffed and placed in a squad car for 12 minutes before a less-stupid cop contacted these officers and told them to release her.
The whole incident was captured by officers' body cameras, including the repeated suggestion the journalist wasn't "acting like a lady" by contesting the officers' decision to cuff her and put her in the nearest squad car.
Here was the bullshit the cops used to try to shut Greene down:
As Greene detailed in a post the next day, and as the body-cam footage confirms, she approached the scene and was immediately blocked by Officer James Brooks.
He continues to block her as she tries to keep shooting, at one point raising the camera high above Brooks’s head.
Brooks is quickly joined by Officer Adam Paulsen, and the two advise her that she can not take photographs because doing so violates the HIPAA rights of the nearly naked man they have cuffed. HIPAA or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act outlines an individual’s rights to medical privacy.
To be clear, HIPAA isn't violated when officers perform an ultra-weird medical consultation in the middle of public street -- one that involves a strategically-draped towel and a pair of handcuffs. If this man was ultimately taken in for a medical/mental examination and those records were handed over to the reporter, that would be a HIPAA violation. Shooting footage of public servants on a public street performing their public duties doesn't violate the privacy of anyone, medical or otherwise.
The officers also claimed she was interfering with the non-arrest the officers claimed they were not making, apparently oblivious of the fact that they had approached the journalist, rather than the other way around. They also trotted out the "stop resisting" canard to pre-exonerate themselves for their aggressive handling of a person armed with a camera.
Throughout the entire thing -- at least all the way up till the settlement the city is planning to pay Susan Greene -- Denver PD brass acted with useless decorum. Shortly after the incident went public, Police Chief Paul Pazen said people were way too focused on officers ignoring the First Amendment, rather than expressing their concern for the naked person his officers had handcuffed in the middle of the sidewalk.
“It doesn’t appear that you’re asking any questions with regards to how an individual is treated who’s in crisis,” he said at one point in the interview. “That’s really what we all should be focusing in on.”
“In a situation like this, we should look at the whole picture, not just certain segments that could point one person in a bad light.”
Actually, it was two people, chief. And they put themselves in a "bad light" with their actions. The public shouldn't be deterred from asking why police officers are violating Constitutional rights, even if there are other issues at play.
More disheartening was the complaint process, in which one of the officer's supervisors pretty much said filing a complaint would be a waste of everyone's time.
I called Denver Police Department’s District 6 and spoke with Sgt. Shawn Saunders, who supervises Officer Brooks. He said he’d look into the incident and make sure the halo camera footage and other evidence are preserved for review. He gave me the option of filing a formal complaint against Officer Brooks. I told him I’d consider it, but that I don’t have a lot of confidence in Denver’s disciplinary system, which I’ve seen slap officers on the wrists for misconduct far more serious than this, only to have the Career Service Board side with the police union and overturn even the most meager disciplinary measures.
To that, Saunders offered a response that was at once striking yet maddening in its candor.
Yeah, he told me. “I don’t have a lot of confidence in it, either.”
Part of the system works. But it will still be citizens paying for it. Susan Greene is about to receive a payout from the city of Denver.
Denver’s Police Department has agreed to a $50,000 settlement with Colorado Independent Editor Susan Greene, whose First Amendment rights officers violated when they wrongfully handcuffed and detained her for photographing police last summer.
The officers who handcuffed and detained her were also punished… by losing two days of pay each.
Finally, the Denver PD will be forced to refresh itself on the contours of Constitutional protections -- basic stuff these officers were certainly aware of before they decided government might beats First Amendment rights.
As part of the settlement, Denver agrees to significantly strengthen First Amendment and sensitivity trainings for police through at least 2024. The department also will update its policies on police bias and search and seizure of recording devices.
We know officers aren't expected to know the intricacies of the laws they enforce. In fact, they're barely expected to know anything about the multiple statutes they use to detain and arrest people. But we should expect them to know just enough about Constitutional protections to realize they can't handcuff a person just for filming them. The thing is, they very likely do know this. Some officers just choose to ignore this knowledge because they think they might get away with it. They didn't here, and now citizens will be footing the bill for these officers and their unwillingness to respect the rights of the people they're supposed to protect.
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Filed Under: 1st amendment, adam paulsen, filming police, free speech, james brooks, journalist, susan greene
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Sure about that?
The thing is, they very likely do know this. Some officers just choose to ignore this knowledge because they think they might get away with it. They didn't here, and now citizens will be footing the bill for these officers and their unwillingness to respect the rights of the people they're supposed to protect.
...
The officers who handcuffed and detained her were also punished… by losing two days of pay each.
The taxpayers are out $50,000.
Those actually responsible are out two days worth of pay.
Unless Denver police are paid $12,500 per day(and if they are that probably needs looking into...) that certainly sounds like they 'got away with it' to me.
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Re: Sure about that?
This sort of thing is why I have been suggesting for years that while you can certainly sue after the fact, it does little or nothing to deter future misbehavior.
But here's the thing -- anything you could sue in federal court for under Title 42, Section 1983 and win, is also a criminal act (in the handcuffs, booking, jailing and posting bail sense) under Title 18, Sections 241 and 242.
You can make a completely binding, stands up in court citizen's arrest using words alone. The US Supreme Court ruled that if a citizen can make an arrest for a given type of state level crime (misdemeanor, breach of peace, felony, etc) they can also make a federal level citizen's arrest under similar circumstances.
So if you see a cop violating rights while in possession of a firearm, or two (or more) cops acting together to violate rights, use your words and inform them that you are arresting them. You don't even need to have a bystander do it -- being under arrest does not prevent you from making arrests, unless you are doing so as a form of resisting or escaping from arrest.
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Act like a civil servant and not an authoritarian asshole who doesn't know the law.
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They had no cause to mess with her and should pay the price.
She had no cause to be filming and should think that over next time.
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Re:
Why do you think she had no cause?
When police detain somebody, what do nearby people do?
Do they..
A) Search for the nearest table to hide under
B) Look and Observe
C) Pull out their AR-15s
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You contradict yourself
Why not? She's a reporter and they are public servants doing a job in public. To her credit, she wasn't waiting for the 'if it bleeds it leads' opportunity.
And, in simple fact, she caught those public servants doing things they shouldn't have been doing. The public has a right to know about those things.
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Re: You contradict yourself
And it does seem odd that the police were filming too and yet, our AC doesn't think she should be allowed to film public servants who are also filming.
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Re: Re: You contradict yourself
dude looks like a lady,
and should act like a lady
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Re: Re: Re: You contradict yourself
And what was unlady like about her?
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The police are public servants. The public should, and does, have the right to film active duty police officers for any reason at all. Such filming is (far too) often the only way officers will face accountability for their actions.
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Re:
And ignoring what the police are doing is how you end up with a very corrupt police force. Once they get the message that they can and likely are being filmed while in public, maybe they will start to behave as police officers, rather than thugs.
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Re: Found the badge bunny!
She had more cause to film than you have cause to comment.
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Re:
She had no cause to be filming and should think that over next time.
None of those involved had an expectation of privacy on a public fucking street. The filming is irrelevant.
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Re:
Stupid comment. She had every right and cause to film, if only to make sure the poor guy being "attended to" was treated in a fair way and not abused, as it seems SHE was!
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Re:
You are stupid. The journalist has EVERY Right to film. The cops had NO reason to even approach her. They did so thinking that that HIPAA crap that they spout would get her to stop. When it didn't they feloniously went hands-on.
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Well if you insist on bringing it up, leaving an apparently mentally ill person cuffed on the sidewalk for any length of time with only a towel attempting to protect his dignity doesn't make your people look that good either.
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'... wait, no, don't focus on that either.'
Yeah, as excuses go that one was rather counter-productive.
'Don't focus on how the cops on the scene reacted to someone filming them by making bad excuses and finally arresting them, focus on the fact that they ignored an almost naked person handcuffed and left in the middle of the street while they were harassing the person filming them.'
Because that makes them look so much better...
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Re: '... wait, no, don't focus on that either.'
Bah, typo, and a rather important one to mess up at that...
'... focus on the fact that they ignored an almost naked person handcuffed and left in the middle of the sidewalk while they were harassing the person filming them.'
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Re:
Yeah, I don’t see how that makes me see the cops in any better of a light seeing how they treat a naked black man with a medical problem by handcuffing him as opposed to detaining a female journalist filming the “non-arrest” from a distance while telling her to “act more ladylike”. Well, except that the former merely suggests that the cops may be bigots while the latter leaves little room to doubt.
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She did interfere
"She was interfering with the non-arrest the officers claimed they were not making."
They had to drop what they were doing to walk across the street to beat her ass.
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Re: She did interfere
The way you put it, it sounds more like she was aiding in their agenda, rather than interfering. Their walk across the street was wrong, as is their alleged agenda.
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Cops: worse than useless
In other words, acting just as they normally do. To state the obvious, these two thugs should pay the $50,000 out of their own pockets. AND be fired.
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Re: Cops: worse than useless
When even the anti-vaxxer can point out how full of shit you are, you know you done fucked up...
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The only statement I could find regarding how the particular "individual" involved was treated is from the Colorado Independent ...
So he wasn't ill enough or important enough for the police to identify. Nice wookie you have there, Chief Pazen.
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Re:
..are you implying that police should release the identity of any person they interact with all day long, even when that person was not accused nor convicted of any crime? That seems like an even worse idea than attempting to arrest journalists IMO.
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Training
"strengthen First Amendment and sensitivity trainings for police through at least 2024"
So someone told the police they need to improve their officer training, but it was fine to go back to this behavior after 5 years? I wonder if that would work for non-police officers that engage in criminal behavior.
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Not a punishment for the cops
Rogue cops will continue to be rogue as long as they are never personally punished. Taxpayers get punished, but not the cops. Take their pensions! Hit them in their own pockets. Sue the unions who protect bad cops. Strip them of everything they own. It is way past time to attack cops and their unions with RICO violations. They are worse than the MAFIA.
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