Massachusetts Cop Block

The Standard-Times reports that city councilors in New Bedford are working on a new city ordinance that will allow police to arrest people simply for leaving their homes after dark. This law will not apply to all areas of New Bedford, however. Only people in areas the city government labels as “hot spots” will be subject to arrest.

The City Council voted Thursday night to draft an ordinance allowing police to enforce curfews in high-crime “hot spots,” even as some expressed reservations about whether the policy would be constitutional.

“I do question the constitutionality of this motion. We are creating a curfew, but for whom? For what neighborhood? What defines what a hot spot is?” asked Councilor-At-Large Debora Coelho.

Councilor-At-Large Brian K. Gomes proposed drafting the ordinance, which would create curfews in specific parts of the city. The curfews Gomes has described would run from dusk until dawn in “hot spots” where criminal activity has affected the quality of life for residents. The curfews would be implemented throughout the city as police need them and would not blanket all of New Bedford.

Gomes did not specify where those hot spots are but said “several areas from north to south” struggle with high crime.

So, the busybodies in the city government believe the best way to increase peoples’ “quality of life” is subjecting them to arbitrary harassment and arrest by the police simply for leaving their homes at night. After all, what possible reason could a person have for wanting to do that?

“I don’t support standing on the corner in the neighborhood, disrupting the neighborhood, making people feel unsafe “¦ nearly taking the neighborhood hostage,” Gomes said. “I want to give (police) a tool that can manage these areas.”

Gomes doesn’t want people “nearly taking the neighborhood hostage” by standing on street corners in the neighborhoods where they live and work. He would much rather that the police take these neighborhoods hostage, so he wants to give them “tools” to “manage” the lives of those people.

The council voted unanimously to have the Ordinance Committee draft the curfew ordinance, although two councilors acknowledged they doubted the proposal’s legality.

Coelho and Ward 5 Councilor Jane Gonsalves raised concerns about potential discrimination that could ensue if certain neighborhoods are forced to live under a curfew. Both, however, voted to have the Ordinance Committee draft the proposed curfew rule, saying it deserved to be discussed despite their reservations.

“I’m concerned about discriminating against certain groups of people, certain neighborhoods,” Gonsalves said, adding that meeting with neighbors to hear their concerns could provide authorities with other ways to tackle high-crime areas.

“Some may say constitutional, I say unconstitutional is what you’re doing to those neighborhoods. Unconstitutional is what you’re doing to those people,” Gomes said, later adding that “There will be no discrimination, there will be good neighborhoods.”

Coelho said the curfew zones could disproportionately fall on low-income, inner-city neighborhoods. Drug dealing, lewdness and other issues plague some of those neighborhoods but residents there need to work with police in keeping communities safe, she said.

“We have all that, there’s no question about it, but we also have a police system in place. “¦ You should be dialing 911 “¦” Coelho said. “I do not want New Bedford to be a police state. “¦ I don’t want the heavy hand coming down on these inner-city neighborhoods who will clearly be discriminated upon.”

Other councilors, however, said the curfews would not create a police state but would keep safe law-abiding residents fearful to leave their homes after dark.

“This is not to cause a police state but to preserve the happiness in those neighborhoods,” Council President Bruce Duarte Jr., who supported creating the curfews, said.

“Important to send a message and send it early to those factions that are disrupting quality of life in those neighborhoods,” Ward 1 Councilor James D. Oliveira said.

Gomes invited anyone who doubted the need for curfews to go out into the city with him at night. Pushing crime out of neighborhoods would give residents some peace of mind, he said.

“If they’re not (out), they’re not selling their drugs, they’re not doing their criminal activity,” he said. “I want those people out of our neighborhoods.”

The purpose of this “curfew” ordinance is not to stop any real crimes or make anyone safer. The purpose of this ordinance is to give police a green light to use arbitrary violence (their “tool”) against anyone they want from populations of low income people that the privileged members of the city government believe need to be “managed.”

These city councilors can’t bear the thought that one person in these “hot spots” might get away with a consensual “crime” like selling drugs, so they’re taking away everyone’s right to so much as stand on a street corner of the street where they live and have a conversation with someone — everyone except for the police, of course — in order to “send a message.”

Sure, it’s sad that these people have to give up basic liberties, the busybodies tell us, but they need to “work with” the police if they want to increase their “quality of life.”

A Northborough police officer has resigned after being accused of stealing approximately $25,000 from the police union which he was president of until recently. No criminal charges have been filed yet, but State Police are investigating (Source: The MetroWest Daily News).

Details here:

A six-year police officer resigned last week amid allegations that he stole as much as $25,000 of his colleagues’ money while he was union president, the Daily News has learned from officials.

Police Chief Mark Leahy confirmed Thursday that Nathan Fiske resigned last Friday at a disciplinary hearing in front of selectmen.

Fiske, 33, of Holden, is currently under investigation by Massachusetts State Police assigned to Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr.’s office, Leahy confirmed, following allegations that funds are missing from the Northborough police union’s bank account.

Fiske was hired full time as an officer in 2007 after serving as a dispatcher for several years. He grew up locally, and in 2010 was given the department’s life-saving award after he restored a 78-year-old woman’s heartbeat with a defribillator.

“Everyone’s shocked,” said Detective Jeff Noel, president of Massachusetts Coalition of Police, or Mass. C.O.P. Local 165, the town patrolmen’s union. “I had all the trust in the world in the kid.”

Noel said Fiske served as president of Local 165 from September 2008 to May 2012, when he was voted out because members felt a change was needed.

Noel said that when he took over as union president, he asked for the union’s checkbook last summer, but never received it. When the new union officials had the bank account switched over from Fiske’s name into theirs this spring, they noticed that money was missing, Noel said.

The bank account accepts union dues from the patrolmen’s union, the sergeants’ union and dispatchers’ union, Noel said. The account is mainly used is to pay union dues to the state as well as to withdraw money to pay for attendance at Mass. C.O.P. annual events, Noel said.

He said it was clear from reviewing the activity on the account that approximately $25,000 was missing. When Noel called the Mass. C.O.P. to check the status of the Northborough union local’s dues, he said he was informed that Local 165 was “significantly behind.”

Noel said he was friends with Fiske before discovering the missing money.

“We were shocked and blindsided,” said Noel, who, along with his fellow officers, pays $12 a week in dues to the bank account.

Noel said it appears the thefts had been occurring for some time. He said Fiske is known for having expensive tastes, but beyond that didn’t know what motive Fiske may have had.

“I don’t think anyone would have expected he would have done this,” Noel said.

Leahy said Fiske, who is divorced with two sons, is not suspected to have stolen anything from the town.

“I can confirm that there are no town funds or town property that’s unaccounted for,” he said. Leahy said the department’s evidence room was checked as well and that no money or other items of evidence were missing.

Fiske did not return a phone message requesting comment Thursday evening. In 2010, he told the online publication The Northborough Daily Voice that he had always wanted to be a police officer in his hometown.

“Some cops may be bad and may not treat you well, but that’s not me,” the Daily Voice quoted Fiske as saying.

Noel said he does not know when charges would be filed, since that would be up to the DA’s office.

The Waltham police chief was convicted of two counts of assault and battery after attacking his wife in 2012 (Source: Boston.com).

Details here:

A Concord District Court jury on Wednesday found suspended Waltham police Chief Thomas LaCroix guilty of twice assaulting his wife, Andrea in fits of anger on June 12 last year at the couple’s Maynard home.

The jury convicted LaCroix on two assault and battery counts—one in which he picked up his wife and threw her in the couple’s garage and another which left her with a bloody, swollen lip.

He was acquitted on charges that he assaulted his wife by slamming her head on to a kitchen counter top, that he attacked his wife’s friend Shannon Policano and that he threatened to kill both of them if they went to police.

According to the Associated Press, LaCroix was given a paid vacation (“paid leave”) after he was arrested last June. I wish my job would give me a year-long paid vacation if I was charged with a crime.

Here’s an old video about this case from CBS Boston:

A Hanover police officer was fired after he was caught on video stealing a packet of tanning lotion from a salon (Source: The Boston Globe).

Details here:

William Bostic, 51, was dismissed Friday after an investigation and subsequent civil service hearing held earlier this week, Hanover officials said.

The officials said they could not comment on the case because it is a personnel issue, other than to say that Bostic’s dismissal was “in response to an incident and subsequent communications related to an event at the Soleil Tanning Salon in Kingston on April 26.” A man alleged to be Bostic is seen on surveillance video slipping the packet of lotion into the left front pocket of his jeans.

Bostic, who lives in Pembroke, was a member of the Hanover Police Department for 27 years. He had been on paid administrative leave since May 1. Attempts to reach him for comment Friday were unsuccessful.

Sarah Nagle, owner of the Soleil Tanning Salon, said that Bostic and his girlfriend were frequent customers. Nagle said she was tipped off by an employee, Kenzie Reale, that a customer may have stolen something, so she watched surveillance video taken at the time. She said she saw a man she recognized as Bostic put the item, which retails for $6 to $10, into his pocket.

Bostic was summoned to Plymouth District Court for a probable cause hearing May 31; he had not been charged Friday.

New video in Reason TV’s “Don’t Cops Have Better Things to Do?” series:

Boston cops are so eager to bust DIY indie-rock shows that they won’t simply wait to respond to noise complaints that might arise. Instead they’re going online posing as punk rockers to bust bands before they perform. It’s part of a citywide effort to crack down on basement and warehouse shows spurred by a recently passed nuisance control ordinance.

Slate’s Luke O’Neil sets the stage: “Almost everyone in the DIY scene has had an experience with phony police emails, direct messages on Twitter, and interactions on social media. For some it’s become just another part of the promotion business—a game of spot-the-narc in which the loser gets his show shut down. According to one local musician who asked not to be named, the day before a show this past weekend, police showed up at a house in the Allston neighborhood, home of many of these house shows, claiming that they already knew the bands scheduled to play. The cops told the residents of the house that they found out about the show through email, and they bragged about their phony Facebook accounts.”

“This week the St. Louis band Spelling Bee posted a screencap of emails from an account that they believe was used by the police in a sting before their recent Boston show. It reads like an amazing parody of what you might imagine a cop trying to pose as a young punk would look like.”

“‘Too bad you were not here this weekend,’ ‘Joe Sly’ wrote. ‘Patty’s day is a mad house I am still pissing green beer. The cops do break balls something wicked here. What’s the address for Saturday Night, love DIY concerts.’”

Don’t cops have better things to do? Well, yes, especially in a city with more pressing problems, like, say, unsolved murders. The Boston Globe calls the “painfully slow rate at which most killings are solved” one of Beantown’s most “intractable problems.”

So instead of playing pretend online, maybe cops could spend more time in the real world catching real criminals.

While a recent survey shows that many Bay Staters do not support the NSA’s massive surveillance programs, Attorney General Martha Coakley has proposed a bill that would amend the state’s wiretapping statute to allow police in Massachusetts to conduct surveillance using basically the same methods as the NSA.

Alex Marthews of Digital Forth writes that the bill — which is called the “An Act Updating The Wire Interception Law” — would do the following:

1) Remove the requirement that an electronic wiretapping warrant be connected with organized crime, or indeed with serious crimes more generally. Potentially, even minor crimes like marijuana possession could become eligible for wiretapping by state authorities.

2) Double the length of an authorized wiretap, from 15 to 30 days.

3) Legalize mass interception of communications at telecommunications switching stations, rather than through individual wiretaps on individual phone numbers.

According to Brad Puffer, a spokesman for Coakley, Marthews’ summary of the bill “includes inaccuracies that are highly misleading about the changes our office has proposed.”

Puffer insists that the bill “does not legalize mass interception of telecommunication switching stations. Each wiretap must be applied for and authorized individually by a Superior Court judge.”

Furthermore, according to Puffer, “Marijuana possession is not eligible for a wiretap. Only serious designated felonies in the statute would be covered. According to federal law, only crimes with a minimum one year prison sentence are eligible for a wiretap.”

Marthews shows that both of these claims are false.

With respect to the mass interception of communications at telecommunications switching stations, Marthews observes the following:

Undoubtedly, each wiretap must be applied for and authorized individually. However, the bill seems to envision interception of communications on a mass basis, at phone company switching stations. An appropriate analogy here is with the recently disclosed FISC order to Verizon to disclose metadata on all calls to the NSA. It was one wiretap, “applied for and authorized” by a federal judge, but it covered every Verizon user’s calls.

…

Why does the bill contain language specifically revising the definition of a “wire communication” eligible for a wiretap order to include a “connection in a switching station, furnished or operated by any person engaged in providing or operating such facilities”, if not to allow specifically this kind of interception? To say, Oh, it’s not mass interception because there would only be one wiretap order, in the light of recent revelations, is deeply misleading. We’d like to see a guarantee that a single wiretap order would not be used to collect data relating to multiple people’s communications passing through a switching station.

With respect to claims that the bill would allow police to wiretap people suspected of marijuana possession, Marthews quotes a reader who points out the following:

As I read the bill, it does make possession of marijuana eligible for a wiretap. Section 4 expands the definition of “designated offenses” to “any violation of chapter 94C”. It does not require that they even be a crime. So as long as marijuana possession violates 94C, even as a technical violation, wiretapping is allowed. Federal restrictions on wiretaps are irrelevant because marijuana possession is still a felony under federal law.

So, does marijuana possession violate 94C? Yes. Even under the decriminalization statute, section 32L of 94C, possessing an ounce or less of marijuana is a civil offense. Thus, still a violation of 94C. And possession larger amounts is still a criminal violation of 94C.

Furthermore, as Marthews points out, “it’s common for prosecutors to attempt to charge marijuana possession as possession with intent to distribute, which is a charge that would be covered even if what Mr. Puffer says is true.”

The bill is scheduled to have a hearing before the Judiciary Committee of the Massachusetts legislature on July 9.

Digital Fourth, the ACLU of Massachusetts, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have launched a petition to oppose the bill which can be signed here.

What stands out most about this is that even as the government in Massachusetts seeks to expand its surveillance powers, it’s still possible in this state to be prosecuted — under the same wiretapping statute that Coakley is trying to expand — for recording one’s interactions with the police. The recent ruling in Glik v. Cunniffe confirmed that people have the right to openly record the police, but secretly recording the police is still considered unlawful.

In the case Commonwealth v. Hyde, a musician’s felony wiretapping conviction was upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court after he recorded police during a traffic stop with a hidden tape recorder and brought the tape to police headquarters to file a complaint.

“The problem here could have been avoided if, at the outset of the traffic stop, [Hyde] had simply informed the police of his intention to tape record the encounter, or even held the tape recorder in plain sight,” wrote the court. “Had he done so, his recording would not have been secret, and so would not have violated” the wiretapping statute.

Justice Margaret Marshall was not convinced by the majority’s logic. In her dissent, she expressed concern that the court’s ruling would “allow police officers to conceal possible misconduct behind a cloak of privacy.”

During the past few years, there have been at least three cases quite similar to Hyde which have been reported on by media.

In 2011, Robert Mansfield was arrested and charged with wiretapping by Whitman police after he went to the police station with a recording of a traffic stop to ask for a citation to be dropped.

That same year, Chelsea Orr, the daughter-in-law of former Bruins player Bobby Orr, was charged with felony wiretapping for recording her conversations with Cohasset police officers after she was allegedly involved in an OUI-related accident.

In 2012, Irving Espinosa-Rodrigue was stopped by Shrewsbury police for allegedly speeding (he denied the accusation). After a video of the traffic stop — which reportedly showed Espinosa-Rodrigue instructing a female passenger to record the stop — was uploaded to YouTube, police raided charged Espinosa-Rodrigue with wiretapping.

I haven’t been able to find follow-up reports about any of these cases, so I’m not sure if or how they’ve been resolved. However, the Hyde decision makes it clear that people can be convicted of wiretapping in Massachusetts simply for recording their own interactions with the police if a prosecutor can convince a judge and jury that the recording was “secret.”

I hope it’s obvious why this is a problem. If a police officer is willing to commit a crime or engage in some other form of misconduct, what’s to stop the officer from trying to cover up evidence? A recent incident in which California deputies have been accused of seizing phones from witnesses who recorded them beating a man to death shows how important it can be to record the police without their knowledge.

It’s quite infuriating to see government officials push to increase their surveillance of the public even as they use try to stop the public from gathering and disseminating information about the government.

The state’s wiretapping statute need is certainly in need of reform, but not the kind of reforms Martha Coakley envisions.