GELFAND’S WORLD-Ray Bradbury's classic novel Fahrenheit 451 depicted a future in which the authorities kept the population under constant video surveillance. Now we are evolving into a society in which both sides tape each other. The authorities have installed surveillance cameras on the city streets and in police cars. On the other side, people pull out their cell phones at the slightest prompting and make video recordings. And those videos are, often enough, of police activity.
Things blew up the other day when a U.S. Marshal attacked a woman who was taking video of a police action in South Gate. He charged at her, grabbed her cell phone, threw it to the ground, and stomped on it. What the Marshal didn't count on was that a second person was doing video from across the street. Now, that second video has gone viral.
It's a fairly new thing, this ubiquitous capability for video coverage. The smart phone is a small object that is carried around in most peoples' pockets the way that cigarette lighters were carried in earlier times. The modest technological upgrade that provided photographic capability to cell phones, and then video capability, is creating what the pundits used to call an unintended consequence. In this case, that consequence is a significant modification of the relationship that we have had between the police and the public. That's a pretty major effect.
So what are the effects and where are they taking us?
We might start with an old observation. There have always been opposing aspects of police behavior. One consists of the official rules, or as they like to say on tv cop dramas, the book, as in "We did everything by the book." The other aspect is a complicated and sometimes contradictory set of unofficial traditions and boundaries. The 1982 essay Broken Windows deals with this other side of police activity. Broken Windows is about the not-so-official rules that the police enforce. For example, where and when can beggers panhandle and how far can they go in badgering the public? The essay explains what the unofficial rules were in Newark, NJ at that time:
Talking to, bothering, or begging from people waiting at the bus stop was strictly forbidden. If a dispute erupted between a businessman and a customer, the businessman was assumed to be right, especially if the customer was a stranger. If a stranger loitered, Kelly would ask him if he had any means of support and what his business was; if he gave unsatisfactory answers, he was sent on his way. Persons who broke the informal rules, especially those who bothered people waiting at bus stops, were arrested for vagrancy. Noisy teenagers were told to keep quiet.
These rules were defined and enforced in collaboration with the "regulars" on the street. Another neighborhood might have different rules, but these, everybody understood, were the rules for this neighborhood. If someone violated them, the regulars not only turned to Kelly for help but also ridiculed the violator. Sometimes what Kelly did could be described as "enforcing the law," but just as often it involved taking informal or extralegal steps to help protect what the neighborhood had decided was the appropriate level of public order. Some of the things he did probably would not withstand a legal challenge.
In 1982 Newark, as in other American cities, the police sometimes took the law into their own hands in order to maintain order. What kept the system going was that law breaking by the authorities was not usually exposed in the form of video evidence.
There are other unofficial traditions of police practice. In one of his early best-selling novels, Joseph Wambaugh fictionalized an encounter in which a loud mouthed civilian taunts a policeman, only to find himself arrested on a trumped up charge. When asked what the charge is, the police officer remarks, "Contempt of Cop."
It turns out that this wasn't just a bit of comedic fiction. A recent essay by a former LAPD officer complains of this police tradition in an essay named for that same Contempt of Cop.
What the police officers of Newark, New Jersey did as described in Broken Windows, other police departments did in their own jurisdictions. Some of the rules were very unofficial, to the point that they were all but invisible to the rest of us. After the Rodney King beating which ultimately led to a major riot, one former officer explained that it was normal practice for police to administer street level punishment on somebody such as King after a long and stressful chase.
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Here's another example. One evening, a police officer explained to me that they used to deal with teenage graffiti vandals by beating them up and then spraying them with their own paint. He complained that the police were no longer allowed to get away with doing this. He sounded disappointed.
Now things have changed because most everyone has the capability of capturing police activities on video. What once happened without being documented is now likely to end up on your computer screen and then on the 11 o'clock news.
This has had multiple effects on the police. For a while, some policemen tried to confiscate cell phones or, at minimum, tell people that they were not allowed to take video. The security concerns post 9/11 were a ready excuse. Some professional photographers resisted these strictures, and the courts have generally backed up your right to photograph and video in the public space, even if the object of your photography and video involves police engaging in their professional activities.
Now we come to that encounter in South Gate. The woman in question, Beatriz Paez (photo), says she was taking a walk when she saw police activity. She took out her cell phone and began taking video.
What she had encountered was a multi-agency action against a motorcycle club. There were members of the local police department and U.S. Marshals. Reason magazine, a libertarian forum, points out that South Gate brings in the Marshals because this allows the city to collect a substantial amount of money through use of asset forfeiture.
We can reconstruct an interesting story from watching two different videos taken from different positions. Paez was clearly asked by a couple of the local police to cross the street. They told her that she was in a dangerous place, but if she were to go across the street, she could video freely. She then argued with them that she was at a safe distance, that she had the right to do her video, and that they were making her feel unsafe due to their proximity to her.
Paez told the police that she felt threatened by them, and she requested that they step away from her. We get all this from her own phone's recording.
The other video was taken by someone from across the street. In the moments before Paez was assaulted, we see that the two local policemen were indeed several feet from Paez, and with their backs turned to her. There has been some internet commentary that they were blocking her ability to do her video, but whatever their motive, it is clear that they were not acting in a threatening way, not even a little. The most obvious explanation is that the two policemen gave her the space she asked for.
There is no evidence from the publicly available videos that the police ordered Paez to move back. They did suggest it. There was no remark that she would be arrested if she stayed. The police seem to have accommodated her request that they distance themselves. All of these inferences are not iron-clad, but they are the best I can do from going over the available evidence.
The rest of the video record of what happened, shot by another person from across the street, is entirely clear. From seemingly out of nowhere, a U.S. Marshal charged at Paez, grabbed her phone, threw it to the ground, and apparently stomped on it. He came from a distance and seems to have concentrated his actions on the existence of the phone itself rather than where Paez was positioned. There is no evidence that the Marshal was trying to protect Paez. It seems to have been more like an act of rage directed against her use of video, or perhaps the fact that she continued to talk to the other police in a complaining tone of voice.
Television reports put Paez at a distance of "half a football field" from the police activities. We can translate that to about 150 feet, or approximately a distance of 3 houses down the block for standard 50 foot lots.
Before cell phones, the police could have abused a bystander like Paez without having to worry about the consequences. She could complain, but they would just dispute her account. We can infer that the Marshal thought he was playing under the old rules. As long as he destroyed the phone and therefore its video capabilities, he would be home free. It was only the existence of another person doing a video of Paez that provided the evidence to the public.
So the first important lesson is that police should assume that they are on camera and behave accordingly. It may not always be the case that somebody is watching and recording, but for an incident such as this one, it is a major embarrassment to the U.S. Marshal service to get caught.
This suggests that some of the customs described in Broken Windows have been made obsolete. The police can no longer assume that they can act with impunity in the way they treat either suspects or the public.
The other lesson from this incident is provided by the hundreds (and then thousands) of comments that were made to internet news sites that covered this story. They reveal a public sentiment that might best be described as mixed emotions, revealing an evolution in the way that the public thinks of the police.
Even hard core police supporters found it difficult to defend the Marshal, even as they insulted and berated Beatriz Paez. The most common criticism was to call her stupid. The next most common was to suggest that she is not only a liberal, but that she is in it for the money.
Other commenters made clear that the Marshal was acting badly, and some commenters wrote legalistic arguments to the effect that the Marshal should be charged with assault or even armed robbery.
The lamest comment, by now a societal cliche, is the remark that goes like this: "When some thug attacks you, who are you going to call, the police or somebody with a cell phone?" The implication is that there are only two choices -- take the police as they are, including the bad apples, or do without police protection. Just writing this argument out is enough to demolish it.
There is one other point that needs to be made after viewing the various videos and interviews.
What is unmistakable is that when it comes to high intensity police activities that involve risk either to the police or to the public, there are going to be differences of opinion as to the safe distance that civilians have to be. In a situation where there is even a slight risk of gunshots, a 150 foot distance isn't safe. But what a safe distance is, that is going to be a matter of judgment. If we are to believe that the police are acting in good faith, then we should defer to their judgment, because it is clearly superior to our own due to their knowledge and experience.
The fact that a lot of people don't automatically accept police judgment, and insist on their right to do video, tells us something significant about the way civilians view the police presence. It may not always be fair, and it may not always be rational, but it is a fact. A lot of people don't trust the police at all. They defend their point of view based on their own experiences and the experiences of their relatives. That's how Paez described her own attitude. They now have a new tool that they are using to try to expose what they see as oppressive tactics by some of the police.
The more incidents we have such as the one that happened in South Gate, the more people will buy into this view.
Police representatives usually respond to video evidence by suggesting that most of their officers are good, and it is only a few bad apples that are getting caught doing bad things. That may be true, although it is also commonly understood (whether it is true or false) that the good cops don't reveal what the bad cops are doing unless compelled to do so.
It seems to me that the authorities, including police chiefs and District Attorneys, would best be advised to make public pronouncements to the effect that taking video of police activities is not only legally protected, it is welcomed.
Transparency should be their policy, since it will help them to weed out the bad apples. The corollary to this is that police -- and Marshals -- who try to impede public observation and recording of what they do should themselves be subject to sanctions.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for City Watch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 35
Pub: Apr 28, 2015
