New Orleans PD Finally Admits It Uses Facial Recognition Tech After Denying It For Years

from the cracks-open-COP-TO-ENGLISH-dictionary dept

Another large American law enforcement organization has belatedly admitted it uses facial recognition tech after spending years denying it.

Last month, it was the Los Angeles Police Department, which had denied using the tech all the way up until 2019. But records obtained by the Los Angeles Times showed the department had used it 30,000 times over the past decade. When confronted, the LAPD's assistant chief claimed the last two denials issued by him and his department were "mistakes."

Welcome to the "I guess we'll come clean" club, New Orleans.

The New Orleans Police Department has confirmed that it is utilizing facial recognition for its investigations, despite years of assurances that the city wasn’t employing the technology.

That runs contrary to what's been stated publicly and what's been told to public records requesters. This 2016 report notes the NOPD's response to a request for records was a flat denial: "no responsive records." This 2019 Appeal report contains yet another denial from city officials.

Mayor Cantrell has been adamant that the city does not use facial recognition, but last year New Orleans announced a deal with Briefcam, a program that can recognize certain attributes captured on camera and track them throughout the city.

It also contains a "but…" -- one that was followed by a refusal to discuss the issue any further.

Norton, the mayor’s spokesperson, told The Appeal that the Real Time Crime Center does not use facial recognition technology. However, Norton said that “relevant video can be shared with public safety agencies as requested for a legitimate public safety purpose.” When asked if the city is aware of any other law enforcement agencies running the footage through facial recognition technology, Norton declined to answer.

And this report by The Tenth Amendment Center makes the NOPD's relationship with the tech more explicit. The NOPD may not have the tech, but it certainly makes use of it.

The City of New Orleans adamantly insists it “does not use facial recognition software.” It even has a line in the privacy policy of its Real-Time Crime Center surveillance hub claiming, “Facial recognition is not utilized by the System.”

And yet the New Orleans Police Department identified a suspect in a 2018 mugging based on facial recognition. How did this happen if the NOPD doesn’t use facial recognition?

As an article published by OneZero put it, “the NOPD has back-channel access to the state’s facial recognition program.” According to the report, the police department relied on technology operated by the Louisiana State Police after local investigators sent a wanted poster with a photo of the suspect to the state fusion center.

And that's how the NOPD is going to pretend its previous denials weren't misleading. Here's how it responded to The Lens when contacted about its apparent years of misdirection.

In a statement to The Lens last week, a department spokesperson said that although it didn’t own facial recognition software itself, it was granted access to the technology through “state and federal partners.”

That's the layer of plausible deniability the police department figure will save it from accusations of lying. As recently as earlier this month, the NOPD was still claiming it did not use facial recognition. Its response to an ACLU public records request stated "The Police Department does not employ facial recognition software."

Technically correct, I guess? But only in the sense that the PD does not own the tech. Not in the sense that the PD does not use the tech. It clearly does use it. It just outsources that work to other agencies -- including federal law enforcement -- that do own the tech. And it uses the output from its second-hand searches to engage in investigations and identify suspects. That's pretty much the definition of "employ."

The PD argues the word "employ" means something else when it's misleading the public. Here's NOPD spokesman Kenneth Jones:

“The term employ used in the [public records request] response might’ve referred to ownership of the tool itself, which we don’t,” Jones said. “I apologize for any misunderstanding. … Again, the word ‘employ’ was used in the context of ownership."

The PD also claims it only uses the tech it doesn't "employ" to investigate "violent cases." This assertion was backed by the production of zero (0) documents detailing the PD's second-hand tech use and/or the cases it has been used for.

And there's an additional wrinkle. The city is considering a facial recognition ban. But this admission the PD outsources its facial recognition work means it won't be enough to simply forbid the PD from buying and utilizing its own tech. The proposal would need to be rewritten to prevent the PD from sending its photos to state or federal agencies for proxy searching.

The vote on the proposed ban has been delayed as city council members process the NOPD's lies about its facial recognition use and decide what to do with this new information. Clearly the NOPD would like some of this tech for itself but has recognized it might be tough to sell that idea in this surveillance-weary economy. So it has done the next best thing: it has its friends hook it up. But now the city knows it can't trust its own police department to be honest with it. And this dishonesty should factor heavily into any future agreements the city makes with the NOPD.

Filed Under: facial recognition, new orleans, new orleans police department, police, privacy, surveillance

Appeals Court Revisits Its Terrible New Orleans Protest Decision, Changes Nothing About Its Rejection Of First Amendment Protections

from the where-is-the-1st-amendment? dept

Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court inexplicably allowed an anonymous police officer to continue suing activist DeRay McKesson for the injuries he sustained when someone (not DeRay McKesson) threw a chunk of concrete at him during a protest in New Orleans.

Never mind the First Amendment, said the court. What about the duty of care McKesson somehow inherited when he chose to organize a protest? Since the protest deliberately broke the law by blocking traffic, the court decided McKesson was at least indirectly responsible for any violence resulting from the inevitable clash between protesters and law enforcement.

Given the intentional lawlessness of this aspect of the demonstration, Mckesson should have known that leading the demonstrators onto a busy highway was most nearly certain to provoke a confrontation between police and the mass of demonstrators, yet he ignored the foreseeable danger to officers, bystanders, and demonstrators, and notwithstanding, did so anyway. By ignoring the foreseeable risk of violence that his actions created, Mckesson failed to exercise reasonable care in conducting his demonstration.

If a protest results in unlawful actions, the people organizing the protest bear the collective guilt of every unlawful action engaged in by other protesters. It's an authoritarian's wet dream come true, courtesy of one of the most conservative appellate courts in the land.

The Appeals Court has revisited this decision. Don't bother holding your breath. The retake [PDF] changes nothing in the majority opinion. The replacement opinion is the same opinion, restating the things the court said last time when it decided McKesson's "negligence" makes him responsible for the injuries sustained by a cop attacked by another protester.

By ignoring the foreseeable risk of violence that his actions created, Mckesson failed to exercise reasonable care in conducting his demonstration.

The table is pounded once more for emphasis:

We iterate what we have previously noted: Our ruling at this point is not to say that a finding of liability will ultimately be appropriate. At the motion to dismiss stage, however, we are simply required to decide whether Officer Doe’s claim for relief is sufficiently plausible to allow him to proceed to discovery. We find that it is.

McKesson may ultimately be cleared, but it's going to cost him even more time and money. This isn't the way this should have worked out. The only thing worth reading in this opinion is Judge Don Willett's addition. In it, Willett reverses his original position, which agreed with the majority's conclusion that the First Amendment didn't cover McKesson's actions. It opens with an apology of sorts:

I originally agreed with denying Mckesson’s First Amendment defense. But I have had a judicial change of heart. Further reflection has led me to see this case differently, as explained below. Admittedly, judges aren’t naturals at backtracking or about-facing. But I do so forthrightly. Consistency is a cardinal judicial virtue, but not the only virtue. In my judgment, earnest rethinking should underscore, rather than undermine, faith in the judicial process. As Justice Frankfurter elegantly put it 70 years ago, “Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.”

Willett says the case should be remanded to Louisiana's Supreme Court for it to decide whether there is actually a "duty of care" present in situations like these, and if so, is it still recognized when there is no direct relationship between McKesson and the protester who assaulted the unnamed police officer? Willett points out that if there's no "duty of care," there's no case. And if there's no case, the First Amendment escapes unscathed.

The appeals court's decision, however, does do damage to free speech rights.

Even assuming that Mckesson could be sued under Louisiana law for “negligently” leading a protest at which someone became violent, the First Amendment “imposes restraints” on what (and whom) state tort law may punish. Just as there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, “negligent” speech is also constitutionally protected.

Willett says the facts of the case shouldn't allow it to proceed any further. There's no "there" there and it seems highly unlikely Officer Doe could sufficiently amend his complaint to clear this initial hurdle.

Doe strings together various unadorned contentions—that Mckesson was “present during the protest,” “did nothing to calm the crowd,” “directed” protestors to gather on the public street in front of police headquarters, and “knew or should have known . . . that violence would result” from the protest that Mckesson “staged.” Even taking these impermissibly conclusory allegations as true, the complaint lacks sufficient factual detail to state a claim for negligence, much less to overcome Mckesson’s First Amendment defense.

At best, the officer's allegations are still the worst.

Indeed, the lone “inciteful” speech quoted in Doe’s complaint is something Mckesson said not to a fired-up protestor but to a mic’ed-up reporter—the day following the protest: “The police want protestors to be too afraid to protest.” Tellingly, not a single word even obliquely references violence, much less advocates it. Temporally, words spoken after the protest cannot possibly have incited violence during the protest. And tacitly, the majority opinion seems to discard the suggestion that Mckesson uttered anything to incite violence against Officer Doe.

Willett notes the Supreme Court of the United States has recognized First Amendment protections for speech far more inciting than anything McKesson uttered. Bypassing this precedent in favor of vague state-level law is the wrong call, especially if the Appeals Court isn't going to let the state's highest court weigh in on the issue.

This second take is being appealed by McKesson. That's more money and time being spent to defend against a lawsuit composed mostly of boilerplate cribbed from one of Larry Klayman's more outlandish efforts. And yet the case still lives and still threatens to undermine the First Amendment. As Garrett Epps points out for The Atlantic, time is of the essence and only the nation's top court can stop the bleeding.

Earlier this month, Mckesson, represented by the ACLU, asked the Supreme Court to review the case. If the Court is serious about its First Amendment jurisprudence, it should grant the petition and, in a one-line opinion, summarily reverse the Fifth Circuit. If it’s unwilling to do that, it should stay the trial below and hear the case now.

What it should not do is deny the petition and allow a civil trial against Mckesson, then review the First Amendment issue if Mckesson loses. The danger of cases like this is not simply the possibility of local juries turning their ire on unpopular defendants; it is the certainty that this type of lawsuit will impose crippling litigation costs on those defendants. Appellate vindication years later will be of little use; they will likely be bankrupt by then.

Until (or if) SCOTUS takes this up, the ruling stands. Being at the same protest as people who attack law enforcement is now the problem of protest organizers, at least in the state of Louisiana. Officer Doe may not ultimately prevail, but someone engaged in supposedly-protected activity still has to defend himself against the cop's ridiculous claims.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 5th circuit, black lives matter, deray mckesson, free speech, new orleans, protests

Court Says Lawsuit Over Fake Subpoenas Issued By Louisiana DA's Office Can Proceed

from the fake-it-til-you-break-it dept

There's a very slim chance some New Orleans prosecutors might have to pay for their threats and lies. But a slim chance is better than none. The Orleans Parish DA's office was caught using fake subpoenas to coerce cooperation from witnesses and victims of crimes -- a practice it had engaged in for decades before being hit with multiple complaints and lawsuits.

Prosecutors sent out bogus subpoenas -- all bearing the threats of fines and imprisonment -- to hundreds of witnesses over the past several years. None of these were approved by courts overseeing ongoing prosecutions. None of the subpoenas were issued by the Clerk of Courts. The DA's office was simply cranking out fake subpoenas and hoping recipients would be too intimidated by the threat of jail time to question the veracity of the documents.

Lawsuits followed the public exposure of this underhanded tactic. One of the lawsuits, filed by a number of crime victims who'd been served the bogus subpoenas, has received the green light to proceed from a federal court in Louisiana. (h/t CJ Ciaramella)

Unfortunately, there's a ton of hurdles that need to be overcome by the plaintiffs. If you think qualified immunity shields too much official wrongdoing, just wait until you run up against absolute immunity, which tends to protect those operating above law enforcement's pay grade: prosecutors and judges.

Fortunately for the plaintiffs, the crap the DA's office pulled with its fake subpoenas is shady enough to strip away some of this protective layer. As the court notes in its opinion [PDF], the DA's office has never had the power to issue its own subpoenas. That it has been doing exactly this is a serious problem.

Allegations that the Individual Defendants purported to subpoena witnesses without court approval, therefore, describe more than a mere procedural error or expansion of authority. Rather, they describe the usurpation of the power of another branch of government.

"Ends justifies the means" is rarely a successful defense. But that's what the DA's office has offered. The judge rejects it:

Furthermore, that the alleged activity by the Individual Defendants took place as a means to a prosecutorial end is not dispositive of the issue. Under that logic, virtually all activity engaged in by a prosecutor would be absolutely immune from civil liability.

And with that, one layer of immunity disappears.

This Court finds that granting the Individual Defendants absolute immunity for allegations of systematic fraud that bypassed a court meant to check powerful prosecutors would not protect the proper functioning of a district attorney’s office. It would instead grant prosecutors a license to bypass the most basic legal checks on their authority. The law does not grant prosecutors such a license.

Unfortunately, the prosecutors are covered by absolute immunity for threatening witnesses with arrest to ensure they gave testimony or attended hearings. As screwed up as this sounds, victims of crimes can be thrown in jail to make sure prosecutors can speak to them. Totally legal. All just part of our judicial sympathy for zealous prosecutions. Threatening someone with jail time in person is perfectly fine. It's only the use of fake paperwork -- and bypassing the court system -- that's not protected.

Although the distinction is an admittedly fine one, threatening to imprison a witness to compel cooperation in a criminal prosecution while possessing the lawful means to follow through on that threat is not the same as manufacturing documents in violation of the lawful process for obtaining court-approved subpoenas for witnesses. Threatening witnesses—particularly verbally—with imprisonment to further witness cooperation in an active criminal prosecution seems to this Court to fall into the category of “pursuing a criminal prosecution” as an “advocate for the state.” Holding that such conduct fell outside the protections of absolute immunity would, in fact, potentially subject prosecutors to civil liability for exercising authority they lawfully possess under the law of Louisiana and many other states.

Just as unfortunately, the same behavior the court found couldn't be protected by absolute immunity can be shielded by qualified immunity, at least as far as the plaintiffs' violation of due process claims.

Plaintiffs’ allegations that prosecutors manufactured “subpoenas,” deliberately side-stepping judicial oversight of the subpoena process, appears to this Court to represent a breed of official misconduct. Claims that the practice was not only condoned but directed by top prosecutors and the DA himself only make the allegations more disturbing. This Court believes that Plaintiffs’ claims sufficiently shock the conscience such that they allege a constitutional violation.

Nevertheless, the Individual Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity on these claims. Plaintiffs fail to cite to any case law suggesting that the Defendants’ violated a clearly established right of Plaintiffs.

The court clearly thinks the manufacture of subpoenas is reprehensible, but can't find precedent to make it stick. And since it can't craft a bright line itself, prosecutors can continue to abuse subpoenas until a higher court decides enough abuse is enough.

A few more claims survive the layers of protective immunity. Four plaintiffs are able to show at this point that the DA's office also fudged the truth on "material witness" warrant affidavits. A few plaintiffs can also move ahead with First Amendment claims -- allegations that the combination of fake subpoenas and actual material witness arrest warrants resulted in compelled speech: testimony extracted by prosecutors using these tools as leverage. Those claims will move forward along with the narrowed allegations of abuse of process the court said can't be shielded by absolute immunity.

It's a very limited win for some of the plaintiffs. And it's not even a real victory yet. This opinion allows certain claims to move forward and removes a little immunity. It gives the plaintiffs a small chance to hold some of the Orleans Parish DA's Office personally responsible for abusing the court system and the public's trust for decades.

Filed Under: fake subpoenas, louisiana, new orleans, orleans parish da, prosecutors

Actors Hired To Play Consumers In Bid To Thwart Renewable Energy in New Orleans

from the fake-it-'til-you-make-it dept

The nation's largest, incumbent utilities continue to engage in some pretty shady behavior to try and stop the unstoppable renewable energy (r)evolution. In Florida, for example, we noted how one utility created an entirely bogus consumer group with one purpose: to hamstring solar competition. The group, "Consumers For Smart Solar," was built specifically by utilities to try and push legislation that claimed to support solar energy, but actually applied all manner of backward and obnoxious restrictions to the alternative energy industry.

As these companies work to craft legislation that makes it harder on renewable competitors, they've ramped up the use of astroturfing to provide the illusion of broad consumer support for their efforts. Not to be outdone by their colleagues in Florida, one Louisiana utility appears to have hired a bunch of actors to express their enthusiastic support for the construction of a gas-based power plant that had been struggling with public approval. Locals had opposed the construction, arguing that claims that the plant was needed to shore up lagging capacity didn't hold up, and the utility should instead focus on modernization of existing lines.

Local utilities didn't like that, so they hired a bunch of actors to cheer the plant's construction, and jeer any conversation about renewable energy alternatives at a meeting in New Orleans:

"At least four of the people in orange shirts were professional actors. One actor said he recognized 10 to 15 others who work in the local film industry. They were paid $60 each time they wore the orange shirts to meetings in October and February. Some got $200 for a “speaking role,” which required them to deliver a prewritten speech, according to interviews with the actors and screenshots of Facebook messages provided to The Lens.

“They paid us to sit through the meeting and clap every time someone said something against wind and solar power,” said Keith Keough, who heard about the opportunity through a friend.

"Astroturfing," or the act of generating bogus grass roots public support for arguably unpopular policies, was a concept perfected by the broadband industry years ago. Whether it was paying people to attend meetings or the creation of bogus consumer groups to attack net neutrality, creating the illusion of support is a longstanding American tradition. It tends to be confusing to the general public, so by and large it's something traditional press outlets don't deem worthy of covering. But it routinely pollutes public discourse, and directly and routinely results in crap policy and law that doesn't reflect the will of the (actual) public.

In this case, locals believe the actors were likely hired by a utility company by the name of Entergy through a company creatively named Crowds on Demand (there's a long list of companies that do this, though most like to operate under the radar). But Entergy denies the claim, and promises it will look into it and take "appropriate action if warranted":

"“While we reiterate that Entergy did not pay, nor did we authorize any other person or entity to pay supporters to attend or speak at Council meetings, we recognize that our interactions with our stakeholders must always be based on honesty and integrity,” the company said. The company said it’s finalizing an investigation “to determine if anyone retained by the company has acted in any way inconsistent with these values. We will take swift and appropriate action if warranted."

Because it's not illegal for companies to hire actors to actively mislead the public and corrupt the democratic process, nothing much comes of these revelations. And while these kinds of efforts obviously can't stop natural market evolutions like the shift toward renewable, lower-pollution alternative energy options, they certainly do a great job making meaningful evolutionary progress that much slower and cumbersome.

Filed Under: actors, alternative energy, new orleans, public support

New Orleans' Secret Predictive Policing Software Challenged In Court

from the you-might-be-a-gang-member-if... dept

Predictive policing software -- developed by Palantir and deployed secretly by the New Orleans Police Department for nearly six years -- is at the center of a criminal prosecution. The Verge first reported the NOPD's secret use of Palantir's software a few weeks ago, something only the department and the mayor knew anything about.

The relationship between New Orleans and Palantir was finalized on February 23rd, 2012, when Mayor Landrieu signed an agreement granting New Orleans free access to the firm’s public sector data integration platform. Licenses and tech support for Palantir’s law enforcement platform can run to millions of dollars annually, according to an audit of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

In January 2013, New Orleans would also allow Palantir to use its law enforcement account for LexisNexis’ Accurint product, which is comprised of millions of searchable public records, court filings, licenses, addresses, phone numbers, and social media data. The firm also got free access to city criminal and non-criminal data in order to train its software for crime forecasting. Neither the residents of New Orleans nor key city council members whose job it is to oversee the use of municipal data were aware of Palantir’s access to reams of their data.

Suspects being tried didn't know anything about it either. While the NOPD turned over 60,000 pages of documents to Evans "Easy" Lewis during his trial for conspiracy and murder charges, not a single one of them referenced the software the police were using to sniff out suspects. This was mainly due to Palantir giving the city the software for free, which allowed both the city and the PD to cut the public out of the equation by eliminating bidding processes and budgetary reporting requirements.

The mayor ended the program two weeks after the Verge report, choosing not to continue working with the contractor. It appears this decision was made to limit negative coverage of the secret software deployment, rather than out of any concern for the millions of New Orleans residents swept up in Palantir's dragnet.

Yesterday, outgoing New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s press office told the Times-Picayune that his office would not renew its pro bono contract with Palantir, which has been extended three times since 2012. The remarks were the first from Landrieu’s office concerning Palantir’s work with the NOPD. The mayor did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Verge for the February 28th article, done in partnership with Investigative Fund, or from local media since news of the partnership broke.

Now that the city's secret is no longer secret, defense attorneys are demanding the NOPD start handing over Palantir-generated evidence. A man challenging his conviction on gang-related charges in New Orleans is asking for everything Palantir has on him, under the theory the dragnet also swept up plenty of exculpatory info.

In the first courtroom challenge to the New Orleans Police Department’s use of sophisticated crime-fighting software, a judge on Wednesday granted a convicted Central City gang lord a chance to try to prove his allegation that a Palantir Technologies program spat out exculpatory information on him that was never revealed to his attorneys.

Criminal District Court Judge Camille Buras set an April 3 court date to rule on subpoenas that attorneys for Kentrell "Black" Hickerson will be seeking in order to learn how Palantir's program, called "Gotham," has been used in New Orleans — and particularly in the case against Hickerson and 19 other suspected "3NG" gang members.

Buras said that Hickerson's lead attorney, Kevin Vogeltanz, could add the argument to Hickerson's pending motion for a new trial.

Prosecutors are arguing the Palantir documents will add nothing new. They claim the only thing the software does is aggregate info from multiple law enforcement databases to make it easier to search. But that's not how the software is described in the Verge report. It's predictive policing software -- something that turns people into suspects based on their relationships with people in law enforcement databases or their location in the city. That's far more than "aggregation." It creates criminals who haven't committed crimes and encourages officers to view certain areas of the city as inherently suspicious.

This dovetails directly into the defense's theory about Palantir's attenuated associations and quasi-geofencing of suspected gang members: what Palantir "sees" isn't necessarily what's actually happening.

Hickerson, 38, was convicted of racketeering and drug conspiracy counts after a 10-day trial in Buras’ courtroom two years ago. Prosecutors and former gang allies said he committed or directed a series of killings in a battle over turf rights around Third and Galvez streets.

At the trial and afterward, however, Vogeltanz argued that authorities had created the idea that 3NG was a gang. He pointed to testimony from a key cooperating witness, Tyrone Knockum, who cast doubt on the gang’s cohesiveness.

“Is it a bona fide gang, or is it a group of people that grew up around each other and hang around with each other?” Vogeltanz asked.

“It’s a group of people that grew up around each other,” Knockum said.

That's what happens when algorithms decide people in the general vicinity of each other must all engage in the same activities. If some of them engage in criminal activities, then everyone the software declares to be risky -- based on law enforcement databases and math companies aren't willing to share with the accused -- faces the possibility of being swept up and charged with conspiracy, if nothing else. And criminal conspiracy charges result in real years in real prisons, based on little more than calculated assumptions about a person's relationship to those around them.

Filed Under: new orleans, nopd, police, surveillance
Companies: palantir

Prosecutor Shuts Down New Orleans Cop's Attempt To Charge Arrestee With Hate Crime For Insulting Responding Officers

from the blue-lives-so-frail dept

The Louisiana legislature decided to help out its most underprivileged constituents -- law enforcement officers -- by making it a felony to "attack" them using nothing more than words.

When New Orleans police officers arrived at the scene of a disturbance to arrest an intoxicated man for banging on a hotel's windows and harassing the employees, the situation devolved into the totally expected.

According to arrest documents, Delatoba was drunk and banging on a window at the Royal Sonesta Hotel, 300 Bourbon St. around 5:15 a.m. Monday, when a witness who heard the banging told him to stop. Delatoba's warrant says he yelled at the witness, "calling him a n-----."

That witness, a security guard who works at a nearby building's mezzanine, along with a security supervisor for the Royal Sonesta, flagged down two Louisiana State Troopers who then escorted Delatoba to NOPD's 8th District station, the warrant states. Once at the station, the warrant states, Delatoba began to verbally "attack members of the New Orleans Police Dept." The warrant states Delatoba called one female officer a "dumb a-- c---" and another officer a "dumb a-- n-----."

In a shocking twist, an intoxicated man was rude and uncooperative while being arrested. (Have these cops never watched "COPS?") So of course the New Orleans police took it upon themselves to be legally offended by the sort of invective they hear from arrestees all the time. The state's hate crime law expansion allowed them to tack on additional charge after the arrest -- a felony with a potential five-year prison sentence.

Fortunately, the district attorney isn't nearly as thin-skinned as the overprotected cops. This decision was probably preceded by some heartfelt eye rolling and several rewritten statements to eliminate every last trace of derision.

Assistant District Attorney Christopher Bowman, a spokesman for Cannizzaro's office, said Monday (Oct. 24) the police officers Raul Delatoba cursed at were not victims of the crime that prompted his arrest initially. Rather, the "disparaging remarks" to officers were made during or after he was apprehended. The office officially refused the charges about two weeks ago.

After a bit of hindsight, the police department officially agrees with the DA's decision.

Additionally, NOPD spokesman Tyler Gamble said Sept. 8 that after reviewing the case, it was "clear that the responding officer incorrectly applied" the hate crime law.

But it's important to note that wasn't always the case. When the "incorrectly applied law" first came up, the NOPD shrugged and said it was up to the DA to figure out how much bullshit was contained in the bullshit charge.

This is exactly the sort of ridiculousness everyone but the supporters of the bill saw coming. Give law enforcement a law to abuse and they'll abuse it. The New Orleans police can now arrest people for calling them names -- not really the sort of thing the power of law enforcement should be used for. What they can't do is tack a charge on if they feel insulted in the process of arresting someone for unrelated offenses. At least not in New Orleans. The law is effective statewide, and there's no guarantee every government prosecutor will view it the way Cannizzaro's office did.

Hate crime laws are generally vaguely written and overbroad, but ones that append "blue lives matter" wording are even worse. They extend protection to historically privileged and powerful people and make it that much easier to slap "disrespectful" arrestees with felony charges. It's nothing more than a vehicle for abuse and does absolutely nothing to foster a healthy relationship between police officers and the communities they serve.

Filed Under: blue lives matter, first amendment, free speech, hate crime, new orleans, police

Body Cam Footage Of Cop Hitting Handcuffed Man Leads To Firing Of Three New Orleans Police Officers

from the the-accountability-unicorn-makes-a-rare-appearance dept

Body-worn cameras as a tool of accountability is an idea whose time has come, but so far, the implementation has been less than ideal. Lawmakers -- pressured by law enforcement agencies and unions -- have frequently pushed legislation that makes it almost impossible for the public to get their hands on recorded footage.

In other cases it's been shown that camera placement results in highly-subjective footage -- where the "first-person" perspective can obscure what's really happening. One notable case resulted in two sets of footage. The body-worn camera footage gave the impression that officers were dealing with a highly-combative arrestee. A nearby surveillance camera showed something completely different: several cops beating a non-resisting suspect.

So, it's somewhat a surprise to hear that body camera footage has resulted in the firing of police officers. For one, officers generally don't get fired. They get suspended. Or, if the misconduct is egregious enough, they're allowed to resign.

In this case, however, multiple officers were fired in connection with the same incident. (h/t Techdirt reader Nathan F)

Three New Orleans police officers were fired Wednesday (June 15), and a fourth suspended, for their roles in a September 2015 incident in which a handcuffed man was hit several times while seated inside the department's French Quarter station.

Officer Alfred Moran's body-worn camera showed him using his hands to strike the man, who had been arrested for public intoxication shortly before midnight on Sept. 30, NOPD said.

[Worth noting here is the fact that the writer has chosen to use police lingo and exonerative passive phrasing while writing about the incident. Officer Moran hit a handcuffed man multiple times. An "incident" didn't just occur wherein a man "was hit." Furthermore, "using his hands to strike the man" is needlessly descriptive and gives the impression that there still might be some legal use of force contained in Moran's actions -- which were, let's not forget, hitting an unarmed, handcuffed man multiple times while in the presence of other officers who did nothing.

The writer then goes on to point out that the beaten man had "argued" with Moran earlier, again skewing the narrative slightly towards the police end of the spectrum. I don't believe these are even conscious decisions on the part of the writer. I think this sort of exonerative reporting is just as ingrained in some journalists as the blithe acceptance of misconduct is ingrained in some police organizations.

These firings are notable. This is something that just doesn't happen. When it does, it's usually only after an extended period of deflection where police spokespeople say things about "ongoing investigations" and "wanting to get all the facts first," while berating the media for reporting on the incident in a "one-sided" fashion and causing the public to "rush to judgment."

Also notable is the fact that this agency proactively reviews body cam footage, rather than simply uploading it and hoping it's overwritten before anyone files a complaint against an officer.

The incident came to light the following day during a supervisor's routine review of body-worn camera footage, said NOPD spokesman Tyler Gamble.

Even better, it wasn't just the abusive cop who was fired/punished. It was also those around him who not only did not intervene, but lied to cover up the misconduct.

NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau launched criminal and administrative investigations. But Moran, Simmons and Jennings were "untruthful" during the investigation, Gamble said. Tyler, meanwhile, answered honestly when questioned.

This is a very good -- and very rare -- thing. Law enforcement agencies tend to encourage bad behavior by delivering minimal punishment and allowing other officers present at the scene -- who didn't intervene and/or participated in the cover-up -- to walk away from it completely unscathed.

The inadvertently hilarious response to these firings comes from the police union -- which believes officers' testimony should outweigh video footage that directly contradicts their statements.

"Among many others, we have warned numerous times that video evidence only has value in context of the officer's perception of events and other measurable factors," [police union attorney Donovan] Livaccari said. "In this case, the video evidence, which was inconclusive, was relied on entirely in spite of testimonial evidence to the contrary..."

In other words, don't believe your eyes. Believe what you're told. Video footage should only be viewed in the "context" of assertions made by officers seeking to avoid punishment for wrongdoing. And only a police union rep could make the assertion that "officer's perception" is a "measurable factor" with a straight face. Yes, there's nothing more quantifiable than subjectivity, especially when it conflicts directly with more objectively-obtained evidence of wrongdoing.

Filed Under: accountability, bodycams, new orleans, police

New Orleans Cab Company Owner Calls Uber A 'Cyber-Terrorist Group'

from the like-Anonymous-on-wheels dept

Cab companies are still fighting Uber and Lyft, and each turf war seems to drag out the worst rhetorical devices and statements from these companies which have enjoyed long, monopolistic runs. Most have gone running to city legislators, hoping to add further regulatory hurdles to the upstart companies, asking for anything from limits on number of vehicles in service to rates considerably higher than cab companies charge.

But because you can only do so much arguing on behalf of an entrenched incumbent before you start sound like you truly loathe the public, taxi defenders are also finding creative ways to attack the new services in hopes of making them seem sketchier than cab companies themselves. In New Orleans, the argument took the form of a bunch of words tumbling out of a flustered cab company owner's mouth.

Owner of Liberty Bell Cabs in New Orleans, Tony Makhoul, called Uber a “cyber terrorist organization.”

Based on…? Well, the report at WDSU doesn't specify. [CAUTION: Autoplay in effect.] Apparently the fact that's its an app-based ride service was enough for Makhoul to float this claim during the city council's discussion. Presumably, Makhoul was using this metaphorically, presenting the company as a cyber-threat (because it's from the internet) to poor, downtrodden cab companies who have enjoyed years of uninterrupted success thanks to protective walls of regulation.

Makhoul previously showed his propensity for using words without regard for clarity or meaning in a statement made in July.

“It’s hypocritical, preposterous and indeed disgusting that we are entertaining Uber in our market today."

Those words may mean something subjectively to Makhoul but they don't make much sense to anyone else listening in. There's nothing "hypocritical" about considering a new entrant into a market, and the only thing that's preposterous and disgusting is the amount of resistance being deployed by incumbent service providers. But this is the same cab company owner that pushed back against the deputy director of the city's Taxi Cab Bureau for enforcing existing regulations -- like requiring credit card readers in all cabs and setting a limit on how many years the same vehicle could be in service.

But this one tops his previous wordsplosions. Uber -- which will be forced to charge the highest minimum fee in the nation ($15) as a concession to New Orleans' cab companies -- is here to destroy computers… by driving people in cars. Or destroy Makhoul's business… by providing customers with a competing service. Competition is the new terrorism. Inform the NSA.

Filed Under: competition, disruption, new orleans, taxis, tony makhoul
Companies: liberty bell cabs, lyft, uber

New Orleans Cops Caught Filling Their Pockets With Red Light Camera Cash

from the that's-uptown,-throw-a-stack-at-'em dept

Red light cameras have proven popular in certain communities (mainly the "law enforcement community"). They're a rather painless way to generate cash, both for the city itself and for the private contractors chosen to install and maintain the system. This influx of cash tends to pervert incentives, leading to questionable tactics being deployed, like shortening yellow lights to increase the "take," while doing little to nothing to increase public safety.

While law enforcement usually benefits indirectly from this new revenue stream, the officers themselves rarely benefit directly from red light tickets. But where there's a will (and a lack of oversight), there's a way. Some enterprising police officers in New Orleans decided the incentives weren't perverse enough, and formed their own company to review photo citations.

Police officers in New Orleans, Louisiana filled their own pockets with red light camera cash by setting up a private company to "review" photo citations off the official clock. The city's inspector general, E. R. Quatrevaux, on Friday released a report documenting how Edwin Hosli, the New Orleans Police Department's (NOPD) 8th District commander, formed his own limited liability company called Anytime Solutions to take advantage of the lucrative business opportunity.

Over a four-and-a-half month period in 2010, Hosli pulled down $7420 from the arrangement for himself. The inspector general released documents not included in the report that show Hosli and several other officers overbilled ACS by $9075. Hosli's share of that was $2055, according to the documents.

The Inspector General noted it's illegal for law enforcement members to form an LLC in order to "manage a detail." Not only that, but the officers' actions violated ethics policies. The low-level corruption began when American Traffic Solutions subcontracted its photo reviews to Affiliated Computer Services, which oddly enough, already handled parking tickets for the city. The then-chief of police, Warren Riley, declared he couldn't spare on-duty officers to review the photo citations. A workaround presented itself when ATS subcontracted review duty to ACS, which then hired off-duty officers to review the collected photos. Robert Mendoza, head of the public works department, greased the wheels.

Soon a handful of hand-picked officers ("Hosli's detail officers") were making money on the side, performing a task that was meant to be part of their normal on-duty workday. The officials involved with illegally enriching off-duty officers then went one step further, attempting to add another criminal charge to their rap sheets.

Officials meeting about the issue decided payments for the detail should be laundered through the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, a tax-exempt organization that describes itself as "dedicated to supporting the people and processes of the criminal justice system in New Orleans."

Unfortunately for the involved personnel, ACS decided to pay them in a more straightforward (and implicating) fashion.

Instead, ACS paid Hosli's company directly. After investigators got wind of what happened, the kickbacks were terminated.

The report notes that as soon as the officers were caught, they went back to doing it the right way.

"It should be noted that immediately upon notification, the NOPD placed the responsibility of the red light camera image review with on-duty traffic division officers," Quatrevaux concluded.

Well, I suppose that makes everything OK. Wrongs righted by way of business as usual. Other than the "loss" of extra income, no further punishment has been dealt out to those involved. New Orleans will apparently continue to be policed by a combination of opportunists and their deputized cameras. The approval process is back in the hands of on-duty officers, which is an almost imperceptible tilt of the scale back towards "right." The perverse incentives remain, but those reaping the benefits will have to settle for routing it through official channels.

Filed Under: corruption, new orleans, red light cameras

More Intellectual Property Fights Over Who Gets To Do What In New Orleans And Mardi Gras

from the 'tit-rex? dept

I've never been to New Orleans, though, it's definitely on the list of places I'd like to check out one day. However, every time I hear a story about an intellectual property dispute involving New Orleans, it makes me wonder if that place is just different than pretty much the rest of the world. We've written in the past about the "Mardi Gras Indians" -- a group of guys who dress up in elaborate costumes during Mardi Gras -- and their attempts to copyright their costumes and stop people from photographing them, using some dubious theories.

Recently, Eric Goldman pointed us to a case involving a legal fight over a copied drink between two bars in the French Quarter in New Orleans. We've discussed in the past how some bartenders want more intellectual property on their drink recipes, and now we have an ongoing case that will explore exactly that.

But perhaps more ridiculous is this other story, sent in by Bill, about a legal dispute between Mardi Gras "krewes." Not being all that familiar with how all of this works, it took me a few reads to get this, but it appears that there's one famous "krewe" called Rex, which "crowns the king of New Orleans Carnival each Mardi Gras." Rex being Latin for "king." Get it? Then there's another "krewe" which appears to be a lot less well known, but which puts on miniature parades of "toy-like" shoebox floats. It goes by the name 'tit Rex, which is a shortening of "Petit Rex," meaning "little king" -- which is fitting for a parade of miniatures... while also being a sound-alike of the dinosaur T-Rex.

Apparently a lawyer representing "Rex" is claiming that 'tit Rex infringes on their trade name and are demanding the other group change its name. Honestly, the whole thing sounds pretty silly. It doesn't sound like anyone is particularly confused here. Either way, it's pretty amazing that there's so much focus on intellectual property where it's not clear any such thing is needed. Was there really some concern that the ability of "Rex" to crown a "king" was somehow limited by this other group?

Filed Under: 'tit rex, copyright, mardi gras, new orleans, rex, trade dress, trademark