'See Something Say Something' Sends Philly Counter-Terrorism Unit After A Local Journalist Over A Harmless Facebook Post

from the citizens-need-to-learn-the-power/responsibility-adage dept

It's troubling how little is needed to trigger a police investigation and some ancillary damage to the First Amendment. Thanks to flagging tools provided by social media platforms, almost anything can be sent to local law enforcement for additional inspection, which results in the following sort of thing, in equal parts absurd and horrifying.

It all started Dec. 14, when local DJ and gay activist Matt Beierschmitt took to Facebook to chastise gays for patronizing a nightclub named ICandy at 254 S. 12th St. Its owner had made headlines in 2016 when he was recorded making disparaging remarks about black people. [Philadelphia journalist Ernest] Owens responded, echoing his sentiments and blasting both ICandy and the Mummers.

"I say, 'F– em,' they will be shown better than told," Owens wrote. "I will just leave it at that. A great reckoning is coming."

Four days later, Owens said, he got a phone call from Detective Lawrence Richardson Jr. of the Police Department's Dignitary Protection and Counter Terrorism Operations unit, informing him that he was being investigated because of his Facebook comment.

"I said, 'What?'" he recalled. "I'm thinking: 'They're calling me about something on Facebook?' Police shouldn't be engaging me over a Facebook post."

But they were. Philly police insisted on speaking personally to Owens about his post. He met them at the unit's headquarters the next day. Once there, the officers said stuff about "see something, say something" and proceeded to question Owens about gun ownership, bomb-making ability, and any plans he might have to harm anyone else. After answering these questions, the police told Owen he was "cleared" and free to go. The officers also told him this was standard procedure police follow when criminal activity is reported.

Except there was no criminal activity. There was only a single Facebook post helpfully forwarded to the police by another Facebook user.

During the interrogation, Owens said, he noticed paperwork listing the name of the man who had complained about his Facebook comment.

That man, James DePre, a saxophone player and leader of the Quaker City String Band, said Wednesday that he emailed Owens' comment to the police after someone sent it to him and after he'd attended a parade-safety planning meeting of officers from the Third and Fourth Districts and community members, including Mummers.

"At that meeting, the police said, 'If you see something, say something.' I don't even know who he is," DePre said of Owens. "'A day of reckoning is coming,'" that was the thing I reacted to. That's what prompted me to send it to the police. If you have a public event and you get a message like that, that stood out to me. So I said, 'Here it is, you can do whatever you want with it.'"

Well, they did what they wanted to with it. This should be a cautionary lesson to social media users. If you send something to law enforcement, they may decide to take away someone's freedom. If something goes wrong during this process, they may also take away someone's life. "Better safe than sorry" is a shitty platitude to deploy after some "see something, say something" do-gooding ends a fellow citizen's life. I don't expect social media users to be experts in sussing out true threats, but they should definitely be more careful about dragging men with guns into the mix over ambiguous words posted during heated discussions.

This doesn't necessarily mean the police are out of line. This is what we pay law enforcement to do: follow up on reported criminal activity. But everything about law enforcement is discretionary, which can result in rights violations or biased response rates. "See something, say something" very rarely results in actionable info, but police are just as invested in the "better safe than sorry" platitude and do what they can to encourage this unfortunate cycle of events.

There's no good fix for this. All that can be offered is an abundance of caution. People making complaints need to recognize the potential severity of a law enforcement response. And law enforcement needs to realize it doesn't need to disrupt a citizen's life just because some internet rando sent them a Facebook screenshot. All in all, this could have gone worse. But even when it goes well, it still has an adverse effect on people who committed no crime but still find themselves surrounded by cops demanding to know about the weapons they own (gun ownership: still legal) and their level of antipathy towards their fellow humans. Non-custodial interviews are bullshit because they often require proving negatives to law enforcement satisfaction while requiring almost nothing from the law enforcement officers asking the questions.

Ernest Owens has made more of this than is strictly necessary, but he's not completely wrong. He may be overstating the effect of this interaction with law enforcement, but he certainly will feel less free to post his thoughts in public forums, especially if those thoughts are critical of others.

Filed Under: ernest owens, free speech, philadelphia police, police, see something say something, social media
Companies: facebook

Philly PD Bows To Union Pressure, Guts Independent Officer-Involved-Shooting Board Ordered By The DOJ

from the model-of-servitude dept

The Philadelphia Police Department is one of many to be on the receiving end of a consent decree with the DOJ. Most PDs finding themselves in this position earn it through years of abusive policing and a consistent disregard for constitutional rights and civil liberties. The Philly PD is no exception.

This department has been trying to make the changes recommended by the Justice Department, but apparently found some of the DOJ's hurdles too high for it to jump… at least willingly. That hasn't stopped police officials from declaring their inability to live up to the DOJ's standards a success, however.

An Officer-Involved Shooting Investigation Unit was established within the Philadelphia Police Department Jan. 1, Commissioner Richard Ross announced Friday.

The creation of the unit was a result of a Department of Justice study that recommended departmental reforms focused on the use of deadly force by police officers.

[...]

"The Philadelphia Police Department will now be a model for departments across the country," said COPS director Ronald Davis.

Hold your applause…

However, one of the study's major recommendations - that an outside agency should investigate officer-involved shootings - could not be fulfilled, Davis said.

"Philadelphia tried many alternatives but it could not work," Davis said.

The COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) has an interesting definition of "could not." It could have worked, but the commissioner was unwilling to go up against the force behind the city's police force to do it. The federal government proclaims something must happen. The commissioner runs up against some resistance and decides it's impossible. Now, the city's residents can look forward to shootings by officers being handled completely internally, which will do little to deter the sort of activity that led to the DOJ's intercession in the first place.

The commissioner did at least obliquely address the obstacle he's unwilling to remove to better implement the DOJ's recommendation.

Finally, Ross said the "elephant in the room" was that the department faced opposition on the proposal from its union, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5.

This is why we can't have nice accountable things. The FOP managed to defang the OIS Board, turning it into an internal, opaque process where officers have a 72-hour "cooling off" period before having to face a series of lobbed softballs by the PD's internal review board.

As an alternative to an outside agency conducting investigations, Ross established the Officer-Involved Shooting Investigation Unit so the process is now bifurcated - the criminal aspect will be handled by the new unit, and the administrative aspect will continue to be handled by the department's Internal Affairs Unit.

And yet, it's being hailed by a federal COPS official as a "model" for the nation's police departments. Yeah, this is a model, alright -- a model for every police union faced with a DOJ consent decree. Flex enough muscle and police officials will blow off federal recommendations to ensure future cooperation in policymaking and labor negotiations.

Filed Under: civil liberties, doj, officer involved shooting, oversight, philadelphia police, philly police department

Philly PD Releases One Document About Its Fake Google Car: The Journalist's Own Open Records Request Email

from the a-twist-in-the-fabric-of-transparency-where-your-request-becomes-a-loop dept

Earlier this year, computer science professor and cryptography expert Matt Blaze happened across a Pennsylvania state-owned vehicle attempting to d/b/a a Google Street View… um, SUV. Taking that info, local reporter Dustin Slaughter dug deeper into the origins of that fake Google Street View vehicle.

Multiple state agencies were contacted by Motherboard for clarification, but the site only received the normal obstruction government officials provide when there's no logical explanation for a thing that has happened under their purview.

The Pennsylvania State Police denied the vehicle belonged to it, suggesting it might belong to a different agency. The placard in the window identified it as state vehicle whose use was governed by the state's fleet manager, who suggested it was actually a city vehicle, but wouldn't narrow down which city agency the vehicle belonged to.

Google denied any involvement, surprising no one, as it was perfectly clear the SUV looked nothing like the tiny, fuel-efficient vehicles Google normally uses -- which are covered from bumper-to-bumper with Google branding, rather than just a couple of badly-printed window stickers.

After some more phone/email tag, the Philly Police Department finally stepped up and admitted the vehicle was theirs, and that it did not condone the sort of thing it hadn't prevented from happening.

In an emailed statement, a department spokesperson confirmed:

“We have been informed that this unmarked vehicle belongs to the police department; however, the placing of any particular decal on the vehicle was not approved through any chain of command. With that being said, once this was brought to our attention, it was ordered that the decals be removed immediately.”

[lol. "Unmarked."]

Motherboard turned to the next weapon in its arsenal: a public records request. It sent one to the Philly Police Department, hoping to find out how this sort of Google trade dress-up might have happened. The Philly PD rooted around in its files and found one responsive document it was willing to release.

On Tuesday, and after several delays, the police department provided access to one document: The original email reporter Dustin Slaughter had sent asking the agency for comment.

In addition to giving Motherboard a copy of a document it already had, the Philly PD suggested there were other documents related to its faux-Googling, but that it wouldn't be releasing those.

One of the explanations cited for withholding those apparent emails was that they reflect the “internal predecisional deliberations of an agency, its members, employees or officials,” which are protected from release under the Pennsylvania Right-To-Know Act.

Reading between the lines of the second-hand copy of Dustin Slaughter's original email and the response letter accompanying it, Joseph Cox of Motherboard was able to obtain an inadvertent confession that no one had approved the use of Google stickers on police vehicles and that this disguise fell outside of existing PD guidelines. However, this information -- unofficially released in the PD's denial of additional documents -- does little more than confirm the statement given to it by the department a couple of months ago.

As it stands now, all Motherboard has is a copy of its own public records request, albeit one that has been processed by the government's favorite document processing service, Dutch Angle Scanning.

Filed Under: fake google car, foia, google maps, philadelphia, philadelphia police, public records, surveillance

Philly PD Declares All Drivers To Be 'Under Investigation' While Denying Request For License Plate Reader Data

from the the-REAL-wretched-hive-of-scum-and-villainy dept

We've all heard nasty things about the citizens of the apparently ironically-named "City of Brotherly Love." They'll boo Santa Claus. They throw batteries at opposing baseball players... and their own. And that's just the sports fans.

More bad news has just arrived on the "We're all not that terrible" PR front: according to Philly's police department, each and every car owner whose vehicle's license plate has had the misfortune of being scanned by the PD's license plate readers is some sort of criminal. Charges TBD.

The City of Philadelphia does not want you to know in which neighborhoods the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) is focusing their use of powerful automatic license plate readers (ALPR), nor do they want disclosed the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of this technology, as they continue to fight a Declaration public records request filed in January with MuckRock News.

City officials argue in their response that every metro driver is under investigation, in an effort to exempt so-called criminal investigatory records from release under PA’s Right-to-Know Act:

Moreover, records “relating to or resulting in a criminal investigation” are exempt from disclosure under the Act, in particular “[i]nvestigative materials, notes, correspondence, videos and reports.” 65 P.S. § 67.708(b)(16)(ii). Such individual license plate readings and accompanying information are investigative materials that relate to individual criminal investigations, and, as your request indicates, these investigations may result in vehicle stops, arrests, or other police actions. Therefore, the individual license plate reading data is exempt from disclosure under the Act.

Investigative reporter Dustin Slaughter and The Philly Declaration have been battling the city for access to two weeks of raw ALPR output and, after multiple appeals, have been told every scan is exempt because every scan is part of a criminal investigation. This bizarre claim echoes the Los Angeles Police Department's public records request-thwarting declaration: all scans are, and always will be, tied to investigations.

The Declaration is seeking this data to see if deployment patterns signal any sort of bias or prejudicial treatment. What it has managed to pry free from law enforcement are the following facts: At least 10 ALPRs are in steady use. Non-hit data is retained for a year. Data actually related to investigations is held indefinitely. (Which would mean -- if the PD's stated logic holds -- that all scans are held indefinitely...)

The PD did hand over some summary data "pertaining to the time period requested," but it must have grabbed the wrong figures or misread Dustin Slaughter's request. He asked for data for a two-week period (Jan. 1-14, 2015). These are the numbers the PD handed over.

Number of Tags Read: 22,810,687
Terror Watch Reads: 77
Stolen Autos Recovered: 420
Stolen Plates Recovered: 23
Felony Arrests Made: 19
Misdemeanor Arrests Made: 9
Total Read Hours ALPR Fleet: 81,197

While it's theoretically possible 22 million plates could be scanned in two weeks, there's no way the Philly PD racked up 81,197 read hours during that time period, even if distributed across multiple vehicles. If this is a two-week period summary, the PD would need 241 units running 24 hours a day to hit the quoted "read hours."

But even if these numbers are a lifetime summary of the the ALPR program, they're still pretty impressive… at least in terms of scanning efficiency.

The department launched its ALPR program in or around 2011, according to Newsworks’ reporter Tom MacDonald.

This means the department is raking in around 7 million scans per year. On the other hand, if 22 million scans have only generated 19 felony arrests, you have to start wondering about the return-on-investment -- something that doesn't exactly back up Commissioner Charles Ramsey's claim that the ALPRs are "highly effective crime fighting tools." While it's nice to see the department is recovering around 140 stolen vehicles every year, it's a bit more disheartening to hear that it's only led to 28 total arrests -- especially when it considers every single one of these 22 million scans to be part of criminal investigations.

Filed Under: alpr, investigations, license plate readers, license plates, philadelphia, philadelphia pd, philadelphia police, privacy

Government Pays Up To Settle With Traveler Who Was Detained By TSA For Trying To Learn Arabic

from the you-can't-put-a-price-on-freedom,-but-$25,000-is-a-nice-start dept

In 2009, Nick George was arrested in the Philadelphia airport because the TSA seems to equate certain First Amendment activity with terrorism. George, who was flying out to California to start his senior year at Pomona College, was carrying with him two items that caught the screeners' attention: Arabic-language flash cards and a book critical of the US government. It was as ridiculous as it sounds.

After a half-hour delay at the security line, the supervisor showed up, and things turned from annoying to surreal. After looking at the book and flashcards, the supervisor asked me: "Do you know who did 9/11?" Taken totally aback, I answered: "Osama Bin Laden." Then she asked me if I knew what language Osama Bin Laden spoke. "Arabic," I replied. "So do you see why these cards are suspicious?" she finished.

The other "suspicious" item, a book critical of US foreign policy, was written by a former Secretary of Commerce who served under President Reagan -- hardly "The Anarchist's Cookbook." But it isn't the TSA's job to deploy logic or critical thinking. It's here to pretend the skies are safer with it around. Instead, the TSA brought in the Philly police, who cuffed him in the airport for carrying Osama Bin Laden flashcards and subversive literature.

The police left George cuffed for hours and refused to inform him of its reasons for detaining him. The only police officer to respond to George's question ("Why am I being held?") shrugged and flipped his query into a presumption of guilt: "I don't know. What'd you do?" Between the TSA's presumption that Arabic = terrorism and the PD's willingness to continue the ignorant farce, George was stuck in a rights-less limbo. As he points out, there's an ugliness inherent to the government's long-running security theater, one that crosses over to the law enforcement agencies who are asked to detain travelers.

It's that attitude that is so problematic. Even after searching my luggage without probable cause of a crime and finding nothing out of the ordinary, TSA agents and the police felt they had the authority to detain and then arrest me, purely on ignorant assumptions about a language spoken by 295 million people worldwide.

You can't fix stupid. You can't even get it to talk to you.

Fortunately, George now has some closure on the 2009 incident. The government has settled George's lawsuit (filed with the assistance of the ACLU), paying him $25,000 for stripping him of his rights over some foreign language flashcards and a book on US foreign policy. In addition, the settlement [pdf link] includes instructions to be delivered to the Philadelphia Police in hopes of preventing a repeat of this debacle.

The City shall communicate to Philadelphia Police Department officers assigned to the Airport the following:

Investigative detentions may be made only on reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct and any arrest must be based on probable cause. A referral by TSA agents is not grounds for arrest unless an officer makes a judgment of probable cause; similarly, referral by TSA agents is not grounds for detention unless an officer makes a judgment that there is reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct. Any detentions or arrests should be documented on appropriate police paperwork consistent with PPD Directives.

The underlying message is that the US government's airport security force isn't a very good judge of threats or illegal behavior. Rather than just take the TSA's word that a traveler is a potential threat, the police will need to assess the situation on their own and actually come up with something resembling "probable cause" before effecting an arrest.

And, of course, as is the case with nearly every government settlement, the defendants are shelling out tax dollars while taking no responsibility for their actions.

This Stipulation is not, is in no way intended to be, and should not be construed as an admission of liability or fault on the part of the United States, OHS, TSA, DOJ, FBI, the City, or their principals, agents, servants, or employees, including William Rehiel and Edward Richards, Jr., and it is specifically denied that they are liable to Plaintiff.

Oh, but it will be "construed" as an "admission of liability." If these entities had done no wrong, they certainly had the (nearly limitless) means to continue fighting George in court.

Unfortunately, the lawsuit hasn't resulted in any mandated guidance directed at the TSA. In fact, it includes a declaration from Sarah Tauber, a deputy in the TSA's "Threat Assessment Division," that basically states, "Hey, the police don't need to arrest everyone we refer to them. This is all on the Philly PD." Between this declaration and the boilerplate "NO WRONGDOING HERE" paragraph, the government allows itself room to further abuse travelers' rights and hand over other people's money to make it all go away.

Filed Under: arabic, flashcards, nick george, philadelphia police, police, tsa