source: orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-cops2907aug29,0,2980295.story
OrlandoSentinel.com
Violent attacks against Orlando-area cops soaring this year
Violent attacks on cops are on the rise this year, and officials don't know why.
Walter Pacheco
Sentinel Staff Writer
(published) August 29, 2007
More police officers are being kicked, punched and beaten across Central Florida this year, and local and state law-enforcement officials expect the numbers to keep rising.
Opinions differ on the reasons -- an increasing crime rate, a focus on thwarting violent criminals and even just having more law officers on the street. But officers and deputies agree on one thing: They're frustrated with the trend.
"A lot of people think that in our line of work getting beat up or attacked is part of our job," Leesburg police Lt. Rob Hicks said. "It is not. It should never be tolerated."
Orlando Police Department records show that criminals have battered 239 police officers since Jan. 1 -- a 22 percent increase from the same period last year, when OPD reported 196 battered officers, spokesman Officer Jim Young said.
According to the Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office, 400 deputies have been attacked in Orange County this year -- up 8 percent from the same period last year. Osceola has had a 43 percent jump from last year, with 80 deputies being battered so far.
"It feels like they [criminals] have a lack of respect for the criminal-justice system, as if it makes no difference if they batter a law-enforcement officer," Lake County sheriff's spokeswoman Sgt. Christie Mysinger said. Her agency reported the greatest percentage increase in attacks -- with the number almost tripling from six in 2006 to 17 so far this year.
The most recent known attack occurred Tuesday, when authorities said George E. Lawson, 25, jumped an Orlando police officer who was trying to handcuff him on a disorderly intoxication charge in downtown Orlando. Lawson was tackled by four officers and shocked several times with a Taser before surrendering to police. The arresting officer -- whose name has not yet been released -- was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center with minor head injuries.
Just a few days earlier, Orlando Officer Shane Overfield responded to a domestic-violence call in Pine Hills. Alinton H. John -- a 6-foot-3-inch, 210-pound armed man -- punched Overfield several times in the face with both fists before another officer deployed his Taser to subdue the suspect, according to the agency's charging affidavit.
One of the most violent attacks happened in May. Two Orange County deputies were shot and wounded by suspected car burglars in the parking lot of the Caribe Royale Resort on World Center Drive while educators, law-enforcement officials and social workers gathered at the hotel for a national conference on crime.
"We get punched, kicked, spit on," Leesburg's Hicks said. "We get attacked with weapons. Anything violators can get their hands on. We're getting run over. We're getting shot."
Still, a few area police agencies have fared better this year.
Police in Oviedo, Casselberry and Winter Springs report a combined 19 battered officers since the beginning of the year, compared with 27 in 2006.
The Volusia County Sheriff's Office had a decline in attacks. It reported 47 since Jan. 1. In 2006, 51 deputies had been attacked.
In Seminole County, 27 deputies have been battered so far this year. That's the same number reported to this point in 2006.
Seminole Lt. Dennis Lemma said it's difficult to pinpoint reasons for the rise. "The increase in attacks might be because law-enforcement officers are charging people more accurately or because there are more deputies on the street," Lemma said.
Orange County authorities agree that the fight against crime has put more deputies in jeopardy.
"We saw these figures start to go up when the Orlando Police Department and the Sheriff's Office began their initiative against violent crime," division Chief Steve Jones of the Orange County Sheriff's Office said. "It's been an overall attack on crime. We've thrown more deputies into violent-crime areas, which has caused arrests to go up, but deputies are also more exposed."
Jones, an almost 30-year Sheriff's Office veteran, recalls being kicked in the face in 1981 responding to a call on Curry Ford Road and Conway Drive.
"I got six stitches on my eyebrow," Jones said. "The guy just got probation and no jail time."
Spokesman Randy Means of the Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office says the numbers may not paint an accurate picture.
"I'd say 99 percent of the charges are legitimate battery against an officer, but sometimes they fail to meet the criteria," Means said. But he said he is surprised that the number of battered officers reported in the area isn't higher. He fears the number will continue to increase.
"Law-enforcement agencies are putting more police on the street because of the gigantic increase in crime. The number [of battered officers] will probably be higher next year," Means said. "Unfortunately, part of the process of being a police officer is that you risk getting battered."
Still, Orange County's Jones said, things could be worse.
"In the old days, we trained officers on 'verbal judo.' In other words, how to talk the criminal down from a possible attack on the officer," Jones said. "Now, having more than one deputy respond to a violent crime and carrying Tasers has helped cut down on injuries, not only to civilians, but also to our own deputies."
Katie Fretland, Kristen Reed and Rene Stutzman of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Walter Pacheco can be reached at 407-420-6262 or wpacheco@orlandosentinel.com.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Weekly publishes letter
Orlando Weekly published the letter by Orlando CopWatch member Ben Markeson in its Aug. 16 issue. The material in brackets was not published by the Weekly.
How interesting that Orlando Police Department Lt. William H. Wood, in his response to comments made by George Crossley in Orlando Weekly's article on Orlando CopWatch, expended so much effort correcting Mr. Crossley's apparent mistake about the number of sworn officers employed by the department. It seems that Lt. Wood wants to deflect attention away from the broader implications of CopWatch; namely, that a significant number of local citizens don't trust many of the police and sheriff's deputies who are supposed to protect them to do their jobs in a professional and unbiased manner, and to use force, whether lethal or non-lethal, as a last resort.
[Partly out of desperation and partly out of self-empowerment,] those citizens are taking to the streets legally and peacefully to monitor the local constabulary. They
believe the police should be accountable to those who pay their salaries and who can
suffer [and even die] when they act improperly.
It's irrelevant whether on any given night, all 1,100 or 700 or however many sworn OPD officers, or however many Orange County Sheriff's Deputies, know that Orlando CopWatch is on the streets. What matters is that they are aware that Orlando CopWatch
may be out there, and they, by their own accounts, are adjusting their behavior accordingly, to the mutual benefit of the public and their careers.
If Lt. Wood has "yet to see even a hint of systemic or organizational corruption or brutality" in the OPD or other local law enforcement agencies, perhaps he's willfully overlooking problems or simply can't understand what it's like to be on the powerless side of an encounter with law enforcement, particularly if you live in a poor community of color. Orlando CopWatch continues to receive a steady trickle of complaints from citizens residing in certain areas about harassment, racial profiling and excessive force, and patrols those areas so that citizens there may begin to feel a small measure of peace and safety.
[As for OPD's Internal Affairs Unit, the fact that OPD officers are not "enamored by" it (as Lt. Wood so quaintly put it) is irrelevant to the issues at hand. The basic premise of an IA unit, that the police can and should be trusted to police their own ranks and to mete out sanctions to errant officers when appropriate, is dubious at best. However, what little credibility that idea may have is totally undermined by OPD's failure to effectively publicize its IA unit so that citizens may avail themselves of it.
For the record, participants in Orlando CopWatch are not Mr. Crossley's or anyone else's "minions." What a demeaning and insulting characterization. Lt. Wood just doesn't get it. CopWatch exists not because some "leader" is somehow manipulating people into supporting it (an imaginative although grossly inaccurate implication), but because of large festering problems with how local law enforcement interacts with citizens and communities.
CopWatch activists are concerned citizens from all walks of life who through CopWatch attempt to make democracy a meaningful concept. By that we mean citizens being able to control their own lives and their own communities. This includes demanding accountability of government agencies that are supposed to serve the people rather than instilling fear and contempt in them while demanding servitude and blind obedience.
Also, for the record, Mr. Crossley, while a welcome and active participant in Orlando CopWatch, is not its leader. Nor is Orlando CopWatch a creature of the Central Florida ACLU or any other organization. It is a wholly independent, non-hierarchical group that arose from the community and its members collectively make decisions about how it operates.]
Ben Markeson,
participant,
Orlando CopWatch
How interesting that Orlando Police Department Lt. William H. Wood, in his response to comments made by George Crossley in Orlando Weekly's article on Orlando CopWatch, expended so much effort correcting Mr. Crossley's apparent mistake about the number of sworn officers employed by the department. It seems that Lt. Wood wants to deflect attention away from the broader implications of CopWatch; namely, that a significant number of local citizens don't trust many of the police and sheriff's deputies who are supposed to protect them to do their jobs in a professional and unbiased manner, and to use force, whether lethal or non-lethal, as a last resort.
[Partly out of desperation and partly out of self-empowerment,] those citizens are taking to the streets legally and peacefully to monitor the local constabulary. They
believe the police should be accountable to those who pay their salaries and who can
suffer [and even die] when they act improperly.
It's irrelevant whether on any given night, all 1,100 or 700 or however many sworn OPD officers, or however many Orange County Sheriff's Deputies, know that Orlando CopWatch is on the streets. What matters is that they are aware that Orlando CopWatch
may be out there, and they, by their own accounts, are adjusting their behavior accordingly, to the mutual benefit of the public and their careers.
If Lt. Wood has "yet to see even a hint of systemic or organizational corruption or brutality" in the OPD or other local law enforcement agencies, perhaps he's willfully overlooking problems or simply can't understand what it's like to be on the powerless side of an encounter with law enforcement, particularly if you live in a poor community of color. Orlando CopWatch continues to receive a steady trickle of complaints from citizens residing in certain areas about harassment, racial profiling and excessive force, and patrols those areas so that citizens there may begin to feel a small measure of peace and safety.
[As for OPD's Internal Affairs Unit, the fact that OPD officers are not "enamored by" it (as Lt. Wood so quaintly put it) is irrelevant to the issues at hand. The basic premise of an IA unit, that the police can and should be trusted to police their own ranks and to mete out sanctions to errant officers when appropriate, is dubious at best. However, what little credibility that idea may have is totally undermined by OPD's failure to effectively publicize its IA unit so that citizens may avail themselves of it.
For the record, participants in Orlando CopWatch are not Mr. Crossley's or anyone else's "minions." What a demeaning and insulting characterization. Lt. Wood just doesn't get it. CopWatch exists not because some "leader" is somehow manipulating people into supporting it (an imaginative although grossly inaccurate implication), but because of large festering problems with how local law enforcement interacts with citizens and communities.
CopWatch activists are concerned citizens from all walks of life who through CopWatch attempt to make democracy a meaningful concept. By that we mean citizens being able to control their own lives and their own communities. This includes demanding accountability of government agencies that are supposed to serve the people rather than instilling fear and contempt in them while demanding servitude and blind obedience.
Also, for the record, Mr. Crossley, while a welcome and active participant in Orlando CopWatch, is not its leader. Nor is Orlando CopWatch a creature of the Central Florida ACLU or any other organization. It is a wholly independent, non-hierarchical group that arose from the community and its members collectively make decisions about how it operates.]
Ben Markeson,
participant,
Orlando CopWatch
Weekly: Orlando Citizens Police Review Board is 'a toothless body that the police can ignore whenever they want'
Published 8/16/2007 in Orlando Weekly
Commentary: Posting of this article is not an endorsement of the idea that the Orlando Citizens Police Review Board should be ignored. Citizen advocates should still monitor its activities and those who have been abused by police should still avail themselves of it: both to establish an official record of their complaints and to show how ineffective and weighted in favor of the police is the Citizens Police Review Board process.
HAPPYTOWN
Say you’re the Orlando Police Department, and the Citizens Police Review Board that oversees your internal affairs investigations asks you to reopen a case because you half-assed it the first time. What do you do?
Not a goddamn thing. In December, the CPRB asked OPD to re-examine allegations against James Carlies and James McGriff, two undercover agents accused of misbehaving during the course of an investigation into Cleo’s adult nightclub in 2004 (see “Operation Overexposed,” Sept. 22, 2005). Two strippers ultimately arrested in the sting, Celeste Hall and Olivia Foster, filed a complaint. As proof, they offered the results of lie detector tests they’d passed.
But OPD said those tests were administered incorrectly and discarded the results. So the women made themselves available for another lie detector test conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The FDLE agreed to perform the test, but only if OPD asked for it. OPD never did. The complaints against the two cops were dismissed (see “Something’s fishy,” Nov. 9, 2006). Even after the CPRB kicked the case back to the department, nothing happened.
On July 19, Cleo’s attorney Steve Mason wrote OPD a letter asking, basically, if the cops ever planned on reinvestigating. The answer came on Aug. 2 via a letter from assistant city attorney Shannon Gridley Hetz: No.
“The Citizens Police Review Board is only advisory to the chief of police,” Hetz wrote. In other words, it’s a toothless body that the police can ignore whenever they want. How’s that for accountability?
Commentary: Posting of this article is not an endorsement of the idea that the Orlando Citizens Police Review Board should be ignored. Citizen advocates should still monitor its activities and those who have been abused by police should still avail themselves of it: both to establish an official record of their complaints and to show how ineffective and weighted in favor of the police is the Citizens Police Review Board process.
HAPPYTOWN
Say you’re the Orlando Police Department, and the Citizens Police Review Board that oversees your internal affairs investigations asks you to reopen a case because you half-assed it the first time. What do you do?
Not a goddamn thing. In December, the CPRB asked OPD to re-examine allegations against James Carlies and James McGriff, two undercover agents accused of misbehaving during the course of an investigation into Cleo’s adult nightclub in 2004 (see “Operation Overexposed,” Sept. 22, 2005). Two strippers ultimately arrested in the sting, Celeste Hall and Olivia Foster, filed a complaint. As proof, they offered the results of lie detector tests they’d passed.
But OPD said those tests were administered incorrectly and discarded the results. So the women made themselves available for another lie detector test conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The FDLE agreed to perform the test, but only if OPD asked for it. OPD never did. The complaints against the two cops were dismissed (see “Something’s fishy,” Nov. 9, 2006). Even after the CPRB kicked the case back to the department, nothing happened.
On July 19, Cleo’s attorney Steve Mason wrote OPD a letter asking, basically, if the cops ever planned on reinvestigating. The answer came on Aug. 2 via a letter from assistant city attorney Shannon Gridley Hetz: No.
“The Citizens Police Review Board is only advisory to the chief of police,” Hetz wrote. In other words, it’s a toothless body that the police can ignore whenever they want. How’s that for accountability?
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Off-Duty Cop Tasers Man Holding Baby
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070815/ap_on_re_us/tasered_dad;_ylt=AlbiUXqGMcTQTXX.gyN8yJGs0NUE
Guard uses Taser on man holding newborn
By JUAN A. LOZANO, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago
HOUSTON - In a confrontation captured on videotape, a hospital security guard fired a stun gun to stop a defiant father from taking home his newborn, sending both man and child crashing to the floor. Now William Lewis says his baby girl suffers from head trauma because she was dropped.
"I've got to wonder what kind of moron would Tase an adult holding a baby," said George Kirkham, a former police officer and criminologist at Florida State University. "It doesn't take rocket science to realize the baby is going to fall."
Lewis, 30, said the April 13 episode began after he and his wife felt mistreated by staff at the Woman's Hospital of Texas and they decided to leave. Hospital employees told him doctors would not allow it, but Lewis picked up the baby and strode to a bank of elevators.
The elevators would not move because wristband sensors on each baby shut them off if anyone takes an infant without permission.
Lewis, who gave the video to The Associated Press, said his daughter landed on her head, but it cannot be seen on the video. He said the baby continues to suffer ill effects from the fall.
"She shakes a lot and cries a lot," Lewis said, noting doctors have performed several MRIs on the child, Karla. "She's not real responsive. Something is definitely wrong with my daughter."
It was not clear whether the baby received any electrical jolt.
Child Protective Services has custody of the baby because of a history of domestic violence between Lewis and his wife, Jacqueline Gray. Agency spokeswoman Estella Olguin said the infant does not appear to be suffering any health problems from the fall.
David Boling, an off-duty Houston police officer working security at the hospital, and another security guard can be seen on the surveillance video arriving at the elevators and trying to talk with Lewis. Lewis appears agitated as he walks around the elevators holding his daughter in his right arm.
Within 40 seconds of arriving, Boling is holding the Taser. He walks around Lewis and whispers to the other guard, who moves to Lewis' right side.
About a minute later, Boling can be seen casually standing near Lewis, not looking in his direction, when he suddenly raises the Taser and fires it at Lewis, who was still holding his daughter.
Lewis drops to the floor. The other guard, who has not been identified, scoops up the baby and gives her to the child's mother, who was standing nearby in a hospital gown.
The guard then pulls Lewis to his feet with his arms locked behind him. Lewis' T-shirt has two holes under the left side of his chest where the Taser prongs hit him.
Lewis said he did not see the stun gun.
"My wife said `we want to leave' and then he just Tasered me," Lewis said. "He caused me to drop the child."
In a statement, the hospital said Lewis was hostile and uncooperative toward staff members who were trying to find out his relationship to the infant when they saw him trying to leave. Neither Lewis or Gray had indicated they wanted a discharge, according to the statement.
"Mr. Lewis became verbally abusive by using vulgar expletives. When Mr. Lewis' behavior became threatening, endangering the infant and employees, licensed law enforcement officers followed their professional standards to protect those involved," the statement said.
Lewis was arrested and charged with endangering a child. A grand jury in May declined to indict him on that charge, but charged him with retaliation, accusing him of making threats against Boling.
Lewis also has been charged with a second count of retaliation alleging he made a threatening call to Boling at his home.
Lewis denies both charges. He said he is considering suing the hospital but has not filed any legal papers.
Houston police spokesman Gabe Ortiz said the department did not investigate the officer's role, and he declined to elaborate. Boling did not immediately respond to a request for comment given to the police department.
Some 11,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies use Tasers, which some experts say are increasingly being used as a convenient labor-saving device to control uncooperative people.
"The Taser itself is a legitimate law-enforcement tool," said Kirkham, the criminologist. "The problem is the abusive use of them. They're supposed to be only used to protect yourself or another person from imminent aggression and physical harm. They're overused now."
___
Associated Press writers Chris Duncan and Monica Rhor contributed to this report.
Guard uses Taser on man holding newborn
By JUAN A. LOZANO, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago
HOUSTON - In a confrontation captured on videotape, a hospital security guard fired a stun gun to stop a defiant father from taking home his newborn, sending both man and child crashing to the floor. Now William Lewis says his baby girl suffers from head trauma because she was dropped.
"I've got to wonder what kind of moron would Tase an adult holding a baby," said George Kirkham, a former police officer and criminologist at Florida State University. "It doesn't take rocket science to realize the baby is going to fall."
Lewis, 30, said the April 13 episode began after he and his wife felt mistreated by staff at the Woman's Hospital of Texas and they decided to leave. Hospital employees told him doctors would not allow it, but Lewis picked up the baby and strode to a bank of elevators.
The elevators would not move because wristband sensors on each baby shut them off if anyone takes an infant without permission.
Lewis, who gave the video to The Associated Press, said his daughter landed on her head, but it cannot be seen on the video. He said the baby continues to suffer ill effects from the fall.
"She shakes a lot and cries a lot," Lewis said, noting doctors have performed several MRIs on the child, Karla. "She's not real responsive. Something is definitely wrong with my daughter."
It was not clear whether the baby received any electrical jolt.
Child Protective Services has custody of the baby because of a history of domestic violence between Lewis and his wife, Jacqueline Gray. Agency spokeswoman Estella Olguin said the infant does not appear to be suffering any health problems from the fall.
David Boling, an off-duty Houston police officer working security at the hospital, and another security guard can be seen on the surveillance video arriving at the elevators and trying to talk with Lewis. Lewis appears agitated as he walks around the elevators holding his daughter in his right arm.
Within 40 seconds of arriving, Boling is holding the Taser. He walks around Lewis and whispers to the other guard, who moves to Lewis' right side.
About a minute later, Boling can be seen casually standing near Lewis, not looking in his direction, when he suddenly raises the Taser and fires it at Lewis, who was still holding his daughter.
Lewis drops to the floor. The other guard, who has not been identified, scoops up the baby and gives her to the child's mother, who was standing nearby in a hospital gown.
The guard then pulls Lewis to his feet with his arms locked behind him. Lewis' T-shirt has two holes under the left side of his chest where the Taser prongs hit him.
Lewis said he did not see the stun gun.
"My wife said `we want to leave' and then he just Tasered me," Lewis said. "He caused me to drop the child."
In a statement, the hospital said Lewis was hostile and uncooperative toward staff members who were trying to find out his relationship to the infant when they saw him trying to leave. Neither Lewis or Gray had indicated they wanted a discharge, according to the statement.
"Mr. Lewis became verbally abusive by using vulgar expletives. When Mr. Lewis' behavior became threatening, endangering the infant and employees, licensed law enforcement officers followed their professional standards to protect those involved," the statement said.
Lewis was arrested and charged with endangering a child. A grand jury in May declined to indict him on that charge, but charged him with retaliation, accusing him of making threats against Boling.
Lewis also has been charged with a second count of retaliation alleging he made a threatening call to Boling at his home.
Lewis denies both charges. He said he is considering suing the hospital but has not filed any legal papers.
Houston police spokesman Gabe Ortiz said the department did not investigate the officer's role, and he declined to elaborate. Boling did not immediately respond to a request for comment given to the police department.
Some 11,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies use Tasers, which some experts say are increasingly being used as a convenient labor-saving device to control uncooperative people.
"The Taser itself is a legitimate law-enforcement tool," said Kirkham, the criminologist. "The problem is the abusive use of them. They're supposed to be only used to protect yourself or another person from imminent aggression and physical harm. They're overused now."
___
Associated Press writers Chris Duncan and Monica Rhor contributed to this report.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Letter to the Orlando Weekly
The following letter was sent to the Orlando Weekly on Aug. 10 in response to a letter published in the Aug. 9 edition (see below).
Dear Editor:
How interesting that Orlando Police Department Lt. William H. Wood, in his response to comments made by George Crossley in Orlando Weekly's article on Orlando CopWatch, expended so much effort correcting Mr. Crossley's apparent mistake about the number of sworn officers employed by the department. It seems that Lt. Wood wants to deflect attention away from the broader implications of CopWatch; namely, that a significant number of local citizens don't trust many of the police and sheriff's deputies who are supposed to protect them to do their jobs in a professional and unbiased manner, and to use force, whether lethal or non-lethal, as a last resort.
Partly out of desperation and partly out of self-empowerment, those citizens are taking to the streets legally and peacefully to monitor the local constabulary. They
believe the police should be accountable to those who pay their salaries and who can
suffer and even die when they act improperly.
It's irrelevant whether on any given night, all 1,100 or 700 or however many sworn OPD officers, or however many Orange County Sheriff's Deputies, know that Orlando CopWatch is on the streets. What matters is that they are aware that Orlando CopWatch
may be out there, and they, by their own accounts, are adjusting their behavior accordingly, to the mutual benefit of the public and their careers.
If Lt. Wood has "yet to see even a hint of systemic or organizational corruption or brutality" in the OPD or other local law enforcement agencies, perhaps he's willfully overlooking problems or simply can't understand what it's like to be on the powerless side of an encounter with law enforcement, particularly if you live in a poor community of color. Orlando CopWatch continues to receive a steady trickle of complaints from citizens residing in certain areas about harassment, racial profiling and excessive force, and patrols those areas so that citizens there may begin to feel a small measure of peace and safety.
As for OPD's Internal Affairs Unit, the fact that OPD officers are not "enamored by" it (as Lt. Wood so quaintly put it) is irrelevant to the issues at hand. The basic premise of an IA unit, that the police can and should be trusted to police their own ranks and to mete out sanctions to errant officers when appropriate, is dubious at best. However, what little credibility that idea may have is totally undermined by OPD's failure to effectively publicize its IA unit so that citizens may avail themselves of it.
For the record, participants in Orlando CopWatch are not Mr. Crossley's or anyone else's "minions." What a demeaning and insulting characterization. Lt. Wood just doesn't get it. CopWatch exists not because some "leader" is somehow manipulating people into supporting it (an imaginative although grossly inaccurate implication), but because of large festering problems with how local law enforcement interacts with citizens and communities.
CopWatch activists are concerned citizens from all walks of life who through CopWatch attempt to make democracy a meaningful concept. By that we mean citizens being able to control their own lives and their own communities. This includes demanding accountability of government agencies that are supposed to serve the people rather than instilling fear and contempt in them while demanding servitude and blind obedience.
Also, for the record, Mr. Crossley, while a welcome and active participant in Orlando CopWatch, is not its leader. Nor is Orlando CopWatch a creature of the Central Florida ACLU or any other organization. It is a wholly independent, non-hierarchical group that arose from the community and its members collectively make decisions about how it operates.
Ben Markeson,
participant,
Orlando CopWatch
From the Aug. 9 Orlando Weekly:
COP: CROSSLEY'S FULL OF IT
Your article [“Watching the watchers,” Aug. 2], contained several gross inaccuracies that may be a disservice to your readership. While I sincerely wish the Orlando Police Department was 1,100 officers strong as George Crossley affirms, the truth of the matter is that we currently employ slightly more than 700 sworn officers.
In addition to Crossley’s U.S. Park Police-like estimation of our force, chances are that if word spreads that CopWatch is out and about, maybe 10 or 20 officers downtown may hear about it on any given night – not the “1,100” as Crossley asserts more than once in the article. And most officers could care less about CopWatch’s presence as they have nothing to hide.
The Orlando Police Department has always been an agency of openness and inclusion that welcomes community input into how Orlando is policed. In the 25 1/2 years since I’ve been on board, I’ve yet to see even a hint of systemic or organizational corruption or brutality.
Our Internal Affairs unit, while not exactly enamored by our officers, will never turn a blind eye toward any citizen inquiry or allegation. Crossley seems to imply that we are some super-secret organization that needs to be policed by his minions … and again, contrary to Crossley, there is no ticket quota system at OPD. Not on Tuesday, Thursday or any other day of the week.
Crossley is quoted as saying, “It’s like digging into warm sticky male bovine feces. The more you dig, the more you find.” A similar analogy could be drawn in the flippant statements made by Crossley throughout your article: They’re basically laden with B.S.
Lt. William H. Wood,
Orlando Police Department
Dear Editor:
How interesting that Orlando Police Department Lt. William H. Wood, in his response to comments made by George Crossley in Orlando Weekly's article on Orlando CopWatch, expended so much effort correcting Mr. Crossley's apparent mistake about the number of sworn officers employed by the department. It seems that Lt. Wood wants to deflect attention away from the broader implications of CopWatch; namely, that a significant number of local citizens don't trust many of the police and sheriff's deputies who are supposed to protect them to do their jobs in a professional and unbiased manner, and to use force, whether lethal or non-lethal, as a last resort.
Partly out of desperation and partly out of self-empowerment, those citizens are taking to the streets legally and peacefully to monitor the local constabulary. They
believe the police should be accountable to those who pay their salaries and who can
suffer and even die when they act improperly.
It's irrelevant whether on any given night, all 1,100 or 700 or however many sworn OPD officers, or however many Orange County Sheriff's Deputies, know that Orlando CopWatch is on the streets. What matters is that they are aware that Orlando CopWatch
may be out there, and they, by their own accounts, are adjusting their behavior accordingly, to the mutual benefit of the public and their careers.
If Lt. Wood has "yet to see even a hint of systemic or organizational corruption or brutality" in the OPD or other local law enforcement agencies, perhaps he's willfully overlooking problems or simply can't understand what it's like to be on the powerless side of an encounter with law enforcement, particularly if you live in a poor community of color. Orlando CopWatch continues to receive a steady trickle of complaints from citizens residing in certain areas about harassment, racial profiling and excessive force, and patrols those areas so that citizens there may begin to feel a small measure of peace and safety.
As for OPD's Internal Affairs Unit, the fact that OPD officers are not "enamored by" it (as Lt. Wood so quaintly put it) is irrelevant to the issues at hand. The basic premise of an IA unit, that the police can and should be trusted to police their own ranks and to mete out sanctions to errant officers when appropriate, is dubious at best. However, what little credibility that idea may have is totally undermined by OPD's failure to effectively publicize its IA unit so that citizens may avail themselves of it.
For the record, participants in Orlando CopWatch are not Mr. Crossley's or anyone else's "minions." What a demeaning and insulting characterization. Lt. Wood just doesn't get it. CopWatch exists not because some "leader" is somehow manipulating people into supporting it (an imaginative although grossly inaccurate implication), but because of large festering problems with how local law enforcement interacts with citizens and communities.
CopWatch activists are concerned citizens from all walks of life who through CopWatch attempt to make democracy a meaningful concept. By that we mean citizens being able to control their own lives and their own communities. This includes demanding accountability of government agencies that are supposed to serve the people rather than instilling fear and contempt in them while demanding servitude and blind obedience.
Also, for the record, Mr. Crossley, while a welcome and active participant in Orlando CopWatch, is not its leader. Nor is Orlando CopWatch a creature of the Central Florida ACLU or any other organization. It is a wholly independent, non-hierarchical group that arose from the community and its members collectively make decisions about how it operates.
Ben Markeson,
participant,
Orlando CopWatch
From the Aug. 9 Orlando Weekly:
COP: CROSSLEY'S FULL OF IT
Your article [“Watching the watchers,” Aug. 2], contained several gross inaccuracies that may be a disservice to your readership. While I sincerely wish the Orlando Police Department was 1,100 officers strong as George Crossley affirms, the truth of the matter is that we currently employ slightly more than 700 sworn officers.
In addition to Crossley’s U.S. Park Police-like estimation of our force, chances are that if word spreads that CopWatch is out and about, maybe 10 or 20 officers downtown may hear about it on any given night – not the “1,100” as Crossley asserts more than once in the article. And most officers could care less about CopWatch’s presence as they have nothing to hide.
The Orlando Police Department has always been an agency of openness and inclusion that welcomes community input into how Orlando is policed. In the 25 1/2 years since I’ve been on board, I’ve yet to see even a hint of systemic or organizational corruption or brutality.
Our Internal Affairs unit, while not exactly enamored by our officers, will never turn a blind eye toward any citizen inquiry or allegation. Crossley seems to imply that we are some super-secret organization that needs to be policed by his minions … and again, contrary to Crossley, there is no ticket quota system at OPD. Not on Tuesday, Thursday or any other day of the week.
Crossley is quoted as saying, “It’s like digging into warm sticky male bovine feces. The more you dig, the more you find.” A similar analogy could be drawn in the flippant statements made by Crossley throughout your article: They’re basically laden with B.S.
Lt. William H. Wood,
Orlando Police Department
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
WDBO-AM Report on Orlando CopWatch (pt. 2)
source: http://580wdbo.com/includes/news/indepth/01535_Reporter-Rides-With-Cop-Watch_064523.html
Reporter Rides With Cop Watch
Mike Synan
posted: 08/07/2007 06:45:22
"There's no reason for an Orlando police officer to be afraid of Cop Watch, as long as that police officer is doing his job properly."
Cop Watch is an ACLU-led group that films law enforcement in action to check for wrong doing. We told you Monday Orange County deputies had no problem with that, but OPD had a much different reaction.
[NOTE: ORLANDO COPWATCH IS AN INDEPENDENT GROUP; IT IS NOT LED OR CONTROLLED BY THE ACLU IN ANY WAY, although it does have the involvement of some ACLU members. However, they are involved as individuals, not in any official capacity on behalf of the ACLU.]
"If they want to film us, there's nothing wrong with that."
OPD Chief Mike McCoy says they have no problem with Cop Watch.
"We welcome it. We assume we're on tape anyway."
That's not the reaction WDBO's Mike Synan got on the street. An OPD officer instructed another officer to block their view with his vehicle. Mike moved to get a better look, and that's where Cop Watch's George Crossley picks up the story.
"You were about to get a ticket for jaywalking, Mike, until they realized that you were who you are."
In response, Chief McCoy said, "He's one officer out of many, and I don't know what the circumstances were."
The officer backed down and left the group alone, and they didn't see the police doing anything wrong. That bust was good one. Two guns were found, one of them stolen, and two felony arrests were made.
The ACLU and Chief McCoy do agree on one thing.
"As long as the Orlando Police Department does its job properly, they have nothing to fear from us," said Crossley.
Reporter Rides With Cop Watch
Mike Synan
posted: 08/07/2007 06:45:22
"There's no reason for an Orlando police officer to be afraid of Cop Watch, as long as that police officer is doing his job properly."
Cop Watch is an ACLU-led group that films law enforcement in action to check for wrong doing. We told you Monday Orange County deputies had no problem with that, but OPD had a much different reaction.
[NOTE: ORLANDO COPWATCH IS AN INDEPENDENT GROUP; IT IS NOT LED OR CONTROLLED BY THE ACLU IN ANY WAY, although it does have the involvement of some ACLU members. However, they are involved as individuals, not in any official capacity on behalf of the ACLU.]
"If they want to film us, there's nothing wrong with that."
OPD Chief Mike McCoy says they have no problem with Cop Watch.
"We welcome it. We assume we're on tape anyway."
That's not the reaction WDBO's Mike Synan got on the street. An OPD officer instructed another officer to block their view with his vehicle. Mike moved to get a better look, and that's where Cop Watch's George Crossley picks up the story.
"You were about to get a ticket for jaywalking, Mike, until they realized that you were who you are."
In response, Chief McCoy said, "He's one officer out of many, and I don't know what the circumstances were."
The officer backed down and left the group alone, and they didn't see the police doing anything wrong. That bust was good one. Two guns were found, one of them stolen, and two felony arrests were made.
The ACLU and Chief McCoy do agree on one thing.
"As long as the Orlando Police Department does its job properly, they have nothing to fear from us," said Crossley.
Monday, August 6, 2007
WDBO-AM Report on Orlando CopWatch (pt. 1)
source: http://580wdbo.com/includes/news/indepth/01490_WDBO-Rides-With-Cop-Watch_082810.html
WDBO Rides With Cop Watch
Mike Synan
posted 08/06/2007 08:28:10
In July, WDBO rode along with cops on a night shift. This month, we went with a group that watches the police.
The ACLU's George Crossley runs Cop Watch "to make sure that law enforcement does its job properly without...overdoing it."
"We've gotten a lot of complaints specifically from the black community about law enforcement and how they're approaching that particular community."
Stop one on our evening involved Orange County deputies searching a black teenager who made a U-turn on his bike on OBT.
Crossley says, "He was riding a bicycle while black."
Deputy Chief Brad Margeson says we don't know enough about the stop to say that.
"There's a whole lot of variables that really need to be taken into consideration...It's so easy to take things out of context. It's so easy to describe them in a way that's not accurate."
We didn't see Orange County deputies do anything wrong on the stops, and they didn't say a word to us. The situation was different in Orlando, and it nearly got our reporter ticketed or arrested. We'll tell you how OPD reacted to Cop Watch Tuesday on Central Florida's Morning News.
WDBO Rides With Cop Watch
Mike Synan
posted 08/06/2007 08:28:10
In July, WDBO rode along with cops on a night shift. This month, we went with a group that watches the police.
The ACLU's George Crossley runs Cop Watch "to make sure that law enforcement does its job properly without...overdoing it."
"We've gotten a lot of complaints specifically from the black community about law enforcement and how they're approaching that particular community."
Stop one on our evening involved Orange County deputies searching a black teenager who made a U-turn on his bike on OBT.
Crossley says, "He was riding a bicycle while black."
Deputy Chief Brad Margeson says we don't know enough about the stop to say that.
"There's a whole lot of variables that really need to be taken into consideration...It's so easy to take things out of context. It's so easy to describe them in a way that's not accurate."
We didn't see Orange County deputies do anything wrong on the stops, and they didn't say a word to us. The situation was different in Orlando, and it nearly got our reporter ticketed or arrested. We'll tell you how OPD reacted to Cop Watch Tuesday on Central Florida's Morning News.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Article on Orlando CopWatch from Orlando Weekly
Source: http://orlandoweekly.com/features/story.asp?id=11722
Published Aug. 2, 2007
WATCHING THE WATCHERS
Keeping an eye on the police with Orlando CopWatch
By Billy Manes
Four months ago, ACLU Central Chapter president George Crossley went public with his intentions to monitor the local police with hand-held video cameras. He, along with activists Ben Markeson and Josh Leclair, launched CopWatch largely to address perceived racial profiling by the police in an era and an area of escalating criminal behavior. CopWatch has now been out several times, gaining uncomfortable recognition from the local news media and the Orlando Police Department. We rode along July 27 to get a better sense of what’s really going on outside of Orlando’s comfort zone.
7 p.m.: “We’re with CopWatch,” George Crossley approaches a transient walking down the street Friday night, handing him a flier. “We’re here to make sure the police don’t overdo it. If you see the police overdo it, let me know.”
We’re on Hicks Avenue, just off of South Street, assembling tonight’s conscientious observers. The plan is to spend a couple of hours handing out fliers in predominantly black areas of the city and west Orlando, then take to the streets in cars looking for flashing red-and-blue lights. The group is equipped with clipboards for taking down scene details and officers’ names when possible, and video cameras for recording incidents and preventing bad police behavior. There’s a palpable sense of activism in the air.
On board tonight are Crossley, Leclair, Mark Shipley (who used to work a similar program in Washington, D.C.) and his neighbor, Richard Bolling. It’s a skeleton crew, but according to Crossley, it doesn’t take much.
“The first stop we make, [the officer] will get on the radio and 1,100 OPD officers will know,” he says. “When we get to the county, the same thing will happen. The point is, they don’t know if it’s 10 or 100 of us out here, and we want to keep it that way.”
They started going out once a month, but have escalated to twice a week. Crossley says Tuesday and Thursday are important because “that’s the day OPD meets their ticket quota.”
“CopWatch” T-shirts donned, we head over to West Church Street to start the evening.
7:39 p.m.: “So you guys against the cops?” a teenage girl asks Crossley.
“Don’t even say that,” he says. “They watch you. We watch them.”
Outside of City View, which feels more like a ghost town than a burgeoning metropolis, the crew passes out the fliers and explains the cause. One black couple leaving Gossip’s Caribbean Restaurant takes great interest, even giving their phone numbers for future involvement. They’ve seen the problem, they say, and they want to get involved.
Crossley pops out of a Quizno’s with a message that the woman working there would be thrilled to receive more information, although a follow-up visit produces only cautious interest. A patron, a young black woman, seems unimpressed. “They work really hard,” she says of the cops.
Back on the sidewalk, Crossley explains that one of the purposes of CopWatch is to track the behavior of repeat offenders. He says there are three sheriff’s deputies and one OPD officer of interest, and that he collects the information so that he might later take official action.
“Certain officers are at odds with the black community,” he says. “They should be assigned elsewhere.”
In the last month, he’s received 17 complaints, almost all of them from within the black community. “It’s like digging into warm sticky male bovine feces,” he says. “The more you dig, the more you find.”
On South Street, near the Coalition for the Homeless, a transient offers this observation, “You just walkin’ down the road and they arrest you.”
8:25 p.m.: We arrive at 1488 Mercy Drive – Palms Apartments – an area where Crossley says police infractions are rampant. (One tenant, he says, is being evicted just for knowing a criminal.) The scene is dire, a post-apocalyptic projects wasteland with small gatherings of kids and adults in outside hallways and broken-down playgrounds.
Just as we pull up, OPD car No. 7423 pulls in and the officer gets out. He approaches Crossley, who explains our intentions.
“He has somebody upstairs he wants to talk to,” Crossley reports.
We follow Leclair around the immense apartment complex and find resounding support. The goal, says Leclair, is to establish CopWatch chapters within communities, complete with cameras. Some of the excitable kids talk of problems well beyond their years. That is, until a notepad shows up.
“Which one of you saw a police officer beating someone up?” asks Crossley, who’s summoned us over to another group of children. Silence.
“Reportedly, a cop beat up somebody and left the scene,” Crossley tells me, and then motions to the police car in the distance. “The problem is parked 100 feet away.”
A group of girls sitting on a green power-transformer is more forthcoming. “I saw something today that I didn’t like,” she says. “A cop was swerving down the road coming up close to the curb while we were sitting here.”
9 p.m.: “I like fliering and talking but I’m ready to get out and start doing what we do,” Leclair says, as we drive past a “No Dumping of Rubbish” sign on the way out of the Palms.
In the car, Leclair and Shipley talk about the complacency inherent in activism, how it’s not about the limelight or the reporters but about actually getting out and doing something.
“Some people think they want to do this,” Leclair says. “Then they come out here and they don’t want to do it anymore.”
9:05 p.m.: The chase is on. We spot two police cars speeding east down Washington Street into Parramore and park at a church two blocks away from the scene. (The intention is not to have your car “tagged” by the police.) At the one-story, multiple-unit residence, a black man with dreads is sitting on the hood of police car No. 7396, with four other police cars behind it, each with their lights on.
A child’s screams fill the air, eventually drowned out by a fire truck and an ambulance. The man, whose bare chest appears to have been cut open, calls the screaming girl over and puts her on his lap, trying to comfort her.
The actual incident is unknown, but our cameras are out. Crossley is filming from behind and Leclair from up front. There are officers in the residence and officers – one black man, one white female and two white men – taking a report from the man, who himself is pantomiming some fight maneuvers with his arms. A stretcher comes but is refused.
“We knew Friday night was going to be hell on wheels, but we didn’t expect it to be this early!” Crossley says.
By 9:30, a woman from within the residence is arrested and driven away.
“Eleven-hundred OPD now know we’re here,” Crossley smiles.
9:45 p.m.: “How many people can you find that are crazy enough to do this on a Friday night?” Crossley asks while chewing on a giant chili dog outside of the downtown 7-Eleven at 83 E. Colonial Drive.
A bit like the police themselves, then, as our humble group gathers for a junk-food intermission. Crossley talks about his vision for the ACLU, which is heavy on pound-the-pavement activism and light on “talking about what’s wrong” while sitting in offices. He speaks of Leclair’s involvement with the Young Communist League, and how in the 1940s the ACLU went staunchly anti-communist, firing Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from their ranks. Not on his watch, he says.
Leclair recalls the first night of CopWatch, when he approached an out-of-control officer with his camera. The officer responded, “What are you recording for? So you can take it to WFTV?” That’s exactly what Leclair did.
An apparent vagrant bikes by and shouts, “You’re an asshole!”
10:05 p.m.: Crossley and Bolling head off to Pine Hills, while Shipley, Leclair and I go in the direction of South Orange Blossom Trail. There, the county sheriff’s department probably hasn’t heard anything about us yet tonight.
We spot a prostitute getting into somebody’s car near Gore Street. I ask Leclair if he ever feels like he’s seeing crimes that the police are missing.
“All the time,” he says.
10:27 p.m.: We swing into the Premier Adult Factory Outlet parking lot after spotting something in a field nearby. At first, it’s just two Florida Highway Patrol cars and several SUVs gathered around a Ford sedan. Soon the Orange County Sheriff cars arrive.
Leclair takes out his camera as we walk over to the scene. At first it’s hard to make out exactly what’s going on. A young Hispanic man appears to be getting a field sobriety test – his arms are stretching out and back in again – while in the SUVs, undercover cops in shorts and T-shirts are typing on laptops.
Five of them approach us and say we have to back up behind a fence. One of them says, “You’ll get nothing here. It’s just a traffic accident.”
Shipley informs the officer that by law we are allowed to be as close as 20 feet, although later he’ll tell me that he’s uncertain of that law in Florida. Another officer from the FHP plays nice and lets us linger. The Ford’s bumper is bashed in with one of its headlights cracked, and officers are taking photos of the back of one of the SUVs. It appears that the hapless offender rear-ended an undercover unit. Tough break.
Nothing unusual happens. If you don’t count an overabundance of authorities, that is.
11 p.m.: Cruising past Holden Heights, the group assures me that some nights are more eventful than others, and that just our presence at these incidents can be a deterrent to police misconduct.
“You must sometimes feel like you’re just getting in the way. So what makes you go out and do this?” I ask Leclair.
“ I do it so that they know that they can’t just get away with anything,” he says.
bmanes@orlandoweekly.com
Published Aug. 2, 2007
WATCHING THE WATCHERS
Keeping an eye on the police with Orlando CopWatch
By Billy Manes
Four months ago, ACLU Central Chapter president George Crossley went public with his intentions to monitor the local police with hand-held video cameras. He, along with activists Ben Markeson and Josh Leclair, launched CopWatch largely to address perceived racial profiling by the police in an era and an area of escalating criminal behavior. CopWatch has now been out several times, gaining uncomfortable recognition from the local news media and the Orlando Police Department. We rode along July 27 to get a better sense of what’s really going on outside of Orlando’s comfort zone.
7 p.m.: “We’re with CopWatch,” George Crossley approaches a transient walking down the street Friday night, handing him a flier. “We’re here to make sure the police don’t overdo it. If you see the police overdo it, let me know.”
We’re on Hicks Avenue, just off of South Street, assembling tonight’s conscientious observers. The plan is to spend a couple of hours handing out fliers in predominantly black areas of the city and west Orlando, then take to the streets in cars looking for flashing red-and-blue lights. The group is equipped with clipboards for taking down scene details and officers’ names when possible, and video cameras for recording incidents and preventing bad police behavior. There’s a palpable sense of activism in the air.
On board tonight are Crossley, Leclair, Mark Shipley (who used to work a similar program in Washington, D.C.) and his neighbor, Richard Bolling. It’s a skeleton crew, but according to Crossley, it doesn’t take much.
“The first stop we make, [the officer] will get on the radio and 1,100 OPD officers will know,” he says. “When we get to the county, the same thing will happen. The point is, they don’t know if it’s 10 or 100 of us out here, and we want to keep it that way.”
They started going out once a month, but have escalated to twice a week. Crossley says Tuesday and Thursday are important because “that’s the day OPD meets their ticket quota.”
“CopWatch” T-shirts donned, we head over to West Church Street to start the evening.
7:39 p.m.: “So you guys against the cops?” a teenage girl asks Crossley.
“Don’t even say that,” he says. “They watch you. We watch them.”
Outside of City View, which feels more like a ghost town than a burgeoning metropolis, the crew passes out the fliers and explains the cause. One black couple leaving Gossip’s Caribbean Restaurant takes great interest, even giving their phone numbers for future involvement. They’ve seen the problem, they say, and they want to get involved.
Crossley pops out of a Quizno’s with a message that the woman working there would be thrilled to receive more information, although a follow-up visit produces only cautious interest. A patron, a young black woman, seems unimpressed. “They work really hard,” she says of the cops.
Back on the sidewalk, Crossley explains that one of the purposes of CopWatch is to track the behavior of repeat offenders. He says there are three sheriff’s deputies and one OPD officer of interest, and that he collects the information so that he might later take official action.
“Certain officers are at odds with the black community,” he says. “They should be assigned elsewhere.”
In the last month, he’s received 17 complaints, almost all of them from within the black community. “It’s like digging into warm sticky male bovine feces,” he says. “The more you dig, the more you find.”
On South Street, near the Coalition for the Homeless, a transient offers this observation, “You just walkin’ down the road and they arrest you.”
8:25 p.m.: We arrive at 1488 Mercy Drive – Palms Apartments – an area where Crossley says police infractions are rampant. (One tenant, he says, is being evicted just for knowing a criminal.) The scene is dire, a post-apocalyptic projects wasteland with small gatherings of kids and adults in outside hallways and broken-down playgrounds.
Just as we pull up, OPD car No. 7423 pulls in and the officer gets out. He approaches Crossley, who explains our intentions.
“He has somebody upstairs he wants to talk to,” Crossley reports.
We follow Leclair around the immense apartment complex and find resounding support. The goal, says Leclair, is to establish CopWatch chapters within communities, complete with cameras. Some of the excitable kids talk of problems well beyond their years. That is, until a notepad shows up.
“Which one of you saw a police officer beating someone up?” asks Crossley, who’s summoned us over to another group of children. Silence.
“Reportedly, a cop beat up somebody and left the scene,” Crossley tells me, and then motions to the police car in the distance. “The problem is parked 100 feet away.”
A group of girls sitting on a green power-transformer is more forthcoming. “I saw something today that I didn’t like,” she says. “A cop was swerving down the road coming up close to the curb while we were sitting here.”
9 p.m.: “I like fliering and talking but I’m ready to get out and start doing what we do,” Leclair says, as we drive past a “No Dumping of Rubbish” sign on the way out of the Palms.
In the car, Leclair and Shipley talk about the complacency inherent in activism, how it’s not about the limelight or the reporters but about actually getting out and doing something.
“Some people think they want to do this,” Leclair says. “Then they come out here and they don’t want to do it anymore.”
9:05 p.m.: The chase is on. We spot two police cars speeding east down Washington Street into Parramore and park at a church two blocks away from the scene. (The intention is not to have your car “tagged” by the police.) At the one-story, multiple-unit residence, a black man with dreads is sitting on the hood of police car No. 7396, with four other police cars behind it, each with their lights on.
A child’s screams fill the air, eventually drowned out by a fire truck and an ambulance. The man, whose bare chest appears to have been cut open, calls the screaming girl over and puts her on his lap, trying to comfort her.
The actual incident is unknown, but our cameras are out. Crossley is filming from behind and Leclair from up front. There are officers in the residence and officers – one black man, one white female and two white men – taking a report from the man, who himself is pantomiming some fight maneuvers with his arms. A stretcher comes but is refused.
“We knew Friday night was going to be hell on wheels, but we didn’t expect it to be this early!” Crossley says.
By 9:30, a woman from within the residence is arrested and driven away.
“Eleven-hundred OPD now know we’re here,” Crossley smiles.
9:45 p.m.: “How many people can you find that are crazy enough to do this on a Friday night?” Crossley asks while chewing on a giant chili dog outside of the downtown 7-Eleven at 83 E. Colonial Drive.
A bit like the police themselves, then, as our humble group gathers for a junk-food intermission. Crossley talks about his vision for the ACLU, which is heavy on pound-the-pavement activism and light on “talking about what’s wrong” while sitting in offices. He speaks of Leclair’s involvement with the Young Communist League, and how in the 1940s the ACLU went staunchly anti-communist, firing Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from their ranks. Not on his watch, he says.
Leclair recalls the first night of CopWatch, when he approached an out-of-control officer with his camera. The officer responded, “What are you recording for? So you can take it to WFTV?” That’s exactly what Leclair did.
An apparent vagrant bikes by and shouts, “You’re an asshole!”
10:05 p.m.: Crossley and Bolling head off to Pine Hills, while Shipley, Leclair and I go in the direction of South Orange Blossom Trail. There, the county sheriff’s department probably hasn’t heard anything about us yet tonight.
We spot a prostitute getting into somebody’s car near Gore Street. I ask Leclair if he ever feels like he’s seeing crimes that the police are missing.
“All the time,” he says.
10:27 p.m.: We swing into the Premier Adult Factory Outlet parking lot after spotting something in a field nearby. At first, it’s just two Florida Highway Patrol cars and several SUVs gathered around a Ford sedan. Soon the Orange County Sheriff cars arrive.
Leclair takes out his camera as we walk over to the scene. At first it’s hard to make out exactly what’s going on. A young Hispanic man appears to be getting a field sobriety test – his arms are stretching out and back in again – while in the SUVs, undercover cops in shorts and T-shirts are typing on laptops.
Five of them approach us and say we have to back up behind a fence. One of them says, “You’ll get nothing here. It’s just a traffic accident.”
Shipley informs the officer that by law we are allowed to be as close as 20 feet, although later he’ll tell me that he’s uncertain of that law in Florida. Another officer from the FHP plays nice and lets us linger. The Ford’s bumper is bashed in with one of its headlights cracked, and officers are taking photos of the back of one of the SUVs. It appears that the hapless offender rear-ended an undercover unit. Tough break.
Nothing unusual happens. If you don’t count an overabundance of authorities, that is.
11 p.m.: Cruising past Holden Heights, the group assures me that some nights are more eventful than others, and that just our presence at these incidents can be a deterrent to police misconduct.
“You must sometimes feel like you’re just getting in the way. So what makes you go out and do this?” I ask Leclair.
“ I do it so that they know that they can’t just get away with anything,” he says.
bmanes@orlandoweekly.com
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