In 1983, New York's high court struck down as unconstitutional a 1960s-era provision that made it illegal to cruise—that is, to hit on someone in a public place. And yet in the 26 years since, on thousands of occasions, the New York Police Department has continued to enforce the defunct law, historically used to target gay people.
The defendant in the 1983 case was a gay man arrested for striking up a conversation with a plainclothes police officer and asking him back to his house for sex. The court threw out the anti-cruising law, reasoning that the state couldn't criminalize an act anticipatory to sodomy when sodomy itself was constitutionally protected. (Two years earlier, the same court had found the state's anti-sodomy law unconstitutional.)
Whatever one may think of cruising and whether it should be prohibited, the court's ruling should have killed off the statute. Instead, in the 26 years of this law's odd posthumous career, district attorneys brought 4,750 prosecutions and judges convicted 2,550 defendants. For violating an imaginary law, these defendants paid a decidedly non-imaginary $70,000 in bail and $190,000 in court fees and fines. In the last 10 years, NYPD officers also issued 9,693 citations, forcing citizens to pay $71,000 in fees. The criminal records of these victims have never been expunged and the fees and fines have not been refunded.
http://bbs.freetalklive.com/index.php?topic=31056.0
http://www.slate.com/id/2233014/
Dead Law WalkingWhy are New York cops arresting gay people on charges ruled unconstitutional 26 years ago?
By Daniel RedmanPosted Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009, at 1:52 PM ET
In 1983, New York's high court struck down as unconstitutional a 1960s-era provision that made it illegal to cruise—that is, to hit on someone in a public place. And yet in the 26 years since, on thousands of occasions, the New York Police Department has continued to enforce the defunct law, historically used to target gay people.
The defendant in the 1983 case was a gay man arrested for striking up a conversation with a plainclothes police officer and asking him back to his house for sex. The court threw out the anti-cruising law, reasoning that the state couldn't criminalize an act anticipatory to sodomy when sodomy itself was constitutionally protected. (Two years earlier, the same court had found the state's anti-sodomy law unconstitutional.)
Whatever one may think of cruising and whether it should be prohibited, the court's ruling should have killed off the statute. Instead, in the 26 years of this law's odd posthumous career, district attorneys brought 4,750 prosecutions and judges convicted 2,550 defendants. For violating an imaginary law, these defendants paid a decidedly non-imaginary $70,000 in bail and $190,000 in court fees and fines. In the last 10 years, NYPD officers also issued 9,693 citations, forcing citizens to pay $71,000 in fees. The criminal records of these victims have never been expunged and the fees and fines have not been refunded.
In 2001, a gay man who refused to plead guilty got his case dismissed, but he did not win a broader remedy. Police arrested the man for telling a plainclothes officer in the Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park that he was there "to meet guys." When his attorney Michael Spiegel discovered that the anti-cruising law was invalid, he brought it to the court's attention. Four months later, the case was dismissed. Spiegel and the client considered a civil rights lawsuit, but the city offered a settlement that the client accepted. Despite the settlement, the case should have still put the cops, prosecutors, and the courts on notice. In 2003, Gay City News' Duncan Osborne wrote a story headlined "Gay man in 2001 arrested on soliciting law thrown out in 1983." Yet the NYPD continued to arrest and issue summonses, and district attorneys continued to prosecute.
In March 2008, civil rights lawyers brought a class action in federal court on behalf of the thousands of people unconstitutionally arrested, cited, and prosecuted under the defunct anti-cruising law. In May, Judge Shira Scheindlin ordered the City of New York to send letters to the police, district attorneys, and trial judges to remind them that the anti-cruising law was void and should no longer be enforced. NYPD brass sent out a bulletin to officers stating that in each officer's personal copy of the penal code, the law should be "stricken by drawing a line through it in black ink." (After 26 years, the law was still on the books because the legislature had never repealed it.)
Apparently, the NYPD ran out of black ink. From the day that the bulletin went out until now, 85 additional summonses for cruising have been issued.* Celeste Koeleveld, of the New York City Law Department, says that the NYPD has taken "many proactive steps to address the issuance of any summonses" under unconstitutional laws. [ADDENDUM: In a statement made available on the record only after publication, the city's law department also said: "The City's policy is, and always has been, not to enforce unconstitutional statutes. No system in a City as large as New York—where hundreds of thousands of criminal court summonses are issued each year— is going to function flawlessly, but the City is not arresting people or collecting fines under these statutes. Moreover, the City continues to take strong measures to address any ongoing enforcement issues."] But the most recent summons for violating the anti-cruising law was issued in September 2009—nearly a year and a half after the NYPD's bulletin went out. "It is truly shocking that after 26 years and multiple court orders, they just can't stop doing it," said McGregor Smyth, a lawyer at the Bronx Defenders who is counsel for the plaintiffs in the class action. The NYPD did not respond to several requests for comment.
How did this miscarriage of justice, involving thousands, evade notice all this time? One possible answer lies in the combination of intimidation and minimum deprivation of rights, at least in the short-run, which enforcement has entailed. People who were issued citations may have feared being exposed as gay or as out of line with the norms of sexual propriety. Many of these people paid the ticket, pled guilty by doing so, and—without a judge or defense lawyer to raise a question—tried to leave the whole thing behind them. Also, as the judge in the class action acknowledged, many of them probably pled guilty or accepted plea bargains without even knowing that the anti-cruising statute had been ruled unconstitutional.
In some cases, the citations may have had long-term and more serious consequences than simply paying a fine. More than 6,900 bench warrants were issued between 1983 and 2008 for people arrested or issued a citation who missed their court dates or failed to pay the fine after pleading guilty. A pending warrant can lead to a denial of citizenship for an immigrant, disqualification for public housing, or the loss of a job opportunity if an employer conducts a criminal background check. And when a charge for cruising is tacked on to another charge, as happened in half of the prosecutions, it can easily create additional pressure to plead guilty, says professor Erin Murphy of U.C.-Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. [ADDENDUM: The city's Law Department said after publication that to its knowlege, all warrants have been expunged.]
The anti-cruising law isn't the only unconstitutional statute wielded against New Yorkers. A law banning loitering in public transportation facilities was struck down in 1988—and then enforced against more than 500 people over the next decade. A law that criminalized begging has been enforced more than 7,000 times after being thrown out by a federal appeals court on free speech grounds. These statutes plus the anti-cruising provision—all the subject of pending federal lawsuits—have racked up more than 20,000 arrests and citations that had absolutely no legal basis. That's 20,000 too many. The courts buried these laws long ago, and it's time for the NYPD to let them rest in peace.
Correction, Oct. 22, 2009: The original sentence misstated the number of additional summonses as being in the hundreds. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Friday, October 23, 2009
No Flirting!
Man Arrested For Making Coffee In His Home, Naked
Man Charged After Making Coffee Naked
FOX 5 Exclusive
Updated: Wednesday, 21 Oct 2009, 7:41 PM EDT
Published : Tuesday, 20 Oct 2009, 12:10 AM EDT
* Will Thomas
Will
Thomas
By WILL THOMAS/myfoxdc
SPRINGFIELD, Va. - A Springfield, Virginia man is facing an indecent exposure charge after a passerby spotted the man naked in his kitchen and reported it to police.
Eric Williamson, 29, is a commercial diver who grew up in Hawaii and rents home with several co-workers. Williamson told FOX 5's Will Thomas his roommates were not home and he walked into the kitchen to make coffee about 5:30 a.m. Monday.
"Yes, I wasn't wearing any clothes but I was alone, in my own home and just got out of bed. It was dark and I had no idea anyone was outside looking in at me," Williamson said.
* FOR AN UPDATE ON THIS STORY, FOLLOW THIS LINK
The complaint came from an unidentified woman who was walking with a 7-year-old boy. A Fairfax County Police spokesman said officers arrested Williamson for indecent exposure because they believe he wanted to be seen naked by the public.
Officer Bud Walker said officers also consulted the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office and they were given the green light to proceed with the charge.
Williamson, who is father of a 5-year old girl, said he feels like the victim.
"I am a loving dad. Any of my friends and anyone knows that and there is not a chance on this planet I would ever, ever, ever do anything like that to a kid," he said.
Williamson is meeting with a lawyer to fight the charge and may attempt to seek damages from Fairfax County Police. If convicted on the misdemeanor charge, he would face up to one year in jail and a $2,000 fine.
Police: Others May Have Seen Naked Man
Man charged after he claims he made coffee in nude
Updated: Thursday, 22 Oct 2009, 7:50 AM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 21 Oct 2009, 7:31 PM EDT
* Will Thomas
Will
Thomas
By WILL THOMAS/myfoxdc
SPRINGFILED, Va. - A debate continues in Northern Virginia that is bringing the issue of civil liberties to the national stage. A 29-year-old Springfield man says he was making coffee in the nude was arrested after a neighbor saw him, and on Wednesday police were back out in his neighborhood looking for others who might have seen him.
Eric Williamson, 29, is a commercial diver who grew up in Hawaii and rents home with several co-workers. Williamson told FOX 5's Will Thomas his roommates were not home and he walked into the kitchen to make coffee about 8:30 a.m. Monday.
"Yes, I wasn't wearing any clothes but I was alone, in my own home and just got out of bed. It was dark and I had no idea anyone was outside looking in at me," Williamson said.
But at about 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning, a neighbor walking her son to school says he deliberately exposed himself-- not once, but twice. First, she says it happened as he was standing in the glass doorway in the kitchen, and then again at a front window.
"We've heard there may have been other people who had a similar incident," said Mary Ann Jennings, a Fairfax County Police spokesperson.
* CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE ORIGINAL STORY FROM FOX 5
The complaint came from an unidentified woman who was walking with a 7-year-old boy. A Fairfax County Police spokesperson said officers arrested Williamson for indecent exposure because they believe he wanted to be seen naked by the public.
On Wednesday, investigators told FOX 5 they have reason to believe there may have been another incident in which someone saw Williamson naked in front of his window. They're asking anyone who may have seen Williamson in the nude through his windows to come forward, even if it was at a different time.
Police are especially concerned because the house is located across the street from a bus stop for school children. So on Wednesday, officers canvassed the neighborhood with fliers, asking anyone who may have been subject to an exposure to come forward.
The department spokesperson says in a rare move, they're releasing more information about the case.
"Because this was being spun into a national story, and the idea you can't be naked in your own house-- we wanted to come forward and say in this case our officers believed there was probable cause the law had been violated," said Jennings.
Eric has since moved out of the rental house he shared with several diving buddies. And, by phone on Wednesday, the father of a 5-year-old girl maintained his innocence, as he did Monday in an exclusive interview with FOX 5.
"I'm a loving dad-- any of my friends would tell you that," Williamson said. "There is not a chance on this planet I would ever, ever do anything like that to a kid."
Police wouldn't release the incident report or the name of the mother who filed the complaint. FOX 5 has learned she is a respected member of the community, and just happens to be the wife of a Fairfax County Police officer.
FOX 5 also spoke with some of Williamson's roommates, and they said they believed Eric was drunk on Monday morning when they were all leaving for work around 5 a.m. The alleged exposure happened around 8:30 a.m. Williamson, however, says he was drinking on Sunday night, but was not drunk on Monday morning.
Woman Given Traffic Ticket For Not Speaking English
Dallas police chief: Dozens of tickets issued for not speaking English
04:09 PM CDT on Friday, October 23, 2009
By SCOTT GOLDSTEIN / The Dallas Morning News
sgoldstein@dallasnews.com
Editor's note: Comments have been disabled on this story.
Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle said this afternoon that his officers have written at least 39 citations to people over the past three years for not speaking English.
Apologizing publicly to the city's Spanish-speaking community, the chief said all officers and supervisors involved will be investigated for dereliction of duty. All pending citations will be dismissed, and people who paid fines will be reimbursed.
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Dallas officer tickets mom for not speaking English
October 23rd, 2009
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"I was stunned that this would happen," Kunkle said at a news conference.
The police chief added: "In my world, you would never tell someone not to speak Spanish."
The bogus citations – there is no law requiring Dallas residents to speak English – came to light after it was revealed that a rookie officer, Gary Bromley, had issued a citation on Oct. 2 to Ernestina Mondragon for being a non-English-speaking driver.
Bromley had stopped the 48-year-old woman for making an improper U-turn in the 500 block of Easton Road, near East Northwest Highway, according to the citation.
Police officials at first dismissed Bromley's action as the foolish error of an inexperienced cop.
"That's a charge that does not exist here in the city of Dallas," said Sgt. Warren Mitchell, a department spokesman.
"Although we believe it was a sincere mistake ... there's no excuse for it."
He said that charge and a charge of failure to present a driver's license were dropped.
Also Online
Crime blog: Read the citation
In all, about Dallas police write about 400,000 citations a year, department officials said.
Bromley, 33, is a trainee officer in the Northeast Patrol division. His trainer on the date the ticket was issued was Senior Cpl. Daniel Larkin, 53, said Deputy Chief Tom Lawrence, Northeast Patrol commander.
Under the Dallas City Code, taxi drivers must be able to communicate in English. Mitchell said there is also a federal statute that says commercial drivers must speak English, but it would not have applied in this case.
Mondragon's daughter Brenda Mondragon said her mother was rushing to take her younger sister to school that day and did not see the "no U-turn" sign. Records show Ernestina Mondragon has a driver's license, but her daughter said she had forgotten it. She said her mother, a native Spanish speaker, speaks limited English.
"She was very mad; she was very upset," Mondragon said of her mother's reaction. "We ended up taking her to the [emergency room] because she was nervous; she was just stressing over the ticket."
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sunday, November 16, 2008
IAN FREEMAN
http://93days.com/
http://georgedonnelly.com/
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tits
Topless Protesters on South Beach
Well, they drew lots of onlookers.
By Natalie O'Neill
Published on September 03, 2008 at 8:31am
A couple of Saturdays ago, Donna Newman was walking the Miami Beach shoreline when she noticed a pretty ponytailed gal in a tight bikini and waved at her.
-
Courtesy of Go Topless Miami
On cue, a troupe of topless female protesters behind her added, "Free your breasts! Free your mind!"
As the young woman reached to untie her suit, a T-shirted boyfriend grabbed her hand.
This is just the attitude Newman hopes to fix. She is a member of a cult called the Raelians, which follows a French prophet and former racecar driver who preaches that scientists from another planet created human life. (Riptide gives him creativity points.) The group boasts about 80,000 members in more than 150 countries.
In June 2007, the Raelians founded a group called GoTopless.org — a nude advocacy group. Newman, who's the regional president, describes the injustice this way: Men in Miami can go shirtless on the street but women can't. "Men have two breasts just like we do," she says. "Some have bigger ones than me."
So, on the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment (women's right to vote), she led her group onto the beach around noon on a sunny day. There was a fiery Venezuelan, a masseuse, a flower-child-type, and a few lucky men. At its peak, the march — or shall we say the frolic? — drew about 50 onlookers.
One of the activists held a photo of a tubby, pale gentleman going shirtless in public. Underneath his man-boobs, it read, "Allowed?" Others wore sets of butterfly wings and explained to passersby "a woman's constitutional right to be bare-chested."
On Miami Beach, topless sunbathing is socially acceptable but not technically legal. "We basically look the other way," says city public information officer Nanette Rodriguez.
Says Miami Internet personality Glenn61, who was at the demonstration: "Tits on SoBe are like squirrels in the park: fun to look at but no big deal."
Artist Taunts City Code Enforcers
Coconut Grove Artist Taunts City Code Enforcers
Having part of his brains blown out won't stop this war vet.
By Tim Elfrink
Published on October 22, 2008 at 9:10am
Eugene "Jobie" Steppe is an artist, but not the kind who wears a beret and paints watercolors by the river. He's the sort who makes a mural reading "Miami City Hall Nazi Party" and then parks it on Pan American Drive right under the mayor's nose for two months.
-
Whitney Roux
Eugene "Jobie" Steppe's art.
-
Whitney Roux
More of Eugene "Jobie" Steppe's art.
So Riptide was unsurprised recently when Jobie — as he likes to be called — said he wouldn't back down from city code enforcers who last week began fining him $250 a day for running an illegal art gallery out of his home. "Last time they came by, I said, 'You better call the police before you come again, because I'll fucking beat your ass,'" he says.
Early this year, he began displaying his colorful mosaics made of cracked, glazed tiles in driftwood frames in front of his home and studio on shady Gifford Lane in Coconut Grove. Code enforcers cited him in June after neighbors complained. They noted some of the murals said "Art by Jobie" and that a website of the same name offered similar pieces for sale at prices up to $395.
After he failed to pay the fine or remove the murals, the case was sent to the city's code enforcement board. Things became so heated at a September 10 meeting that cops escorted Jobie from city hall. "The fines are going to continue," code enforcement director Mariano Loret de Mola said, "until he moves everything from the area in front of his home."
Jobie asserts the city is infringing on his First Amendment rights, and says a recent federal court decision allows him to sell art on the public easement in front of his house. But Riptide points out that a half-dozen tabletops with tile murals are on his front lawn.
"Those are just patio furniture," he says, smiling.
City Leeches
Free-weekly scum-suckers: Tim Elfrink's October 23 story "The Art of War" needs a retraction. Yes, I sustained brain damage in 1963 in the Army, but not in Vietnam, and I'm not Rambo at the age of 66. I'm going to kick the City of Miami's f**kin' ass in a court of law because my art is on an easement, and the cowards placed code violations on my home.
There is a difference between an easement and private property. The art galleries in the Grove thought I would put them out of business, so they complained to code enforcement; my neighbors enjoy the art. There aren't six patio tables in my front yard; there are three, and they've been there for years.
Elfrink got my personality and mood correct. They linger from a sordid past; I'm now civilized, practicing art for therapy to compensate for the injury suffered while serving in the Army. Then along comes a bunch of cowardly, prejudiced transplants who do not understand our constitutional freedoms and behave like a pack of dogs attacking easy prey. They are parasitic, blood-sucking leeches.
Eugene J. Steppe
Coconut Grove
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2008-10-23/news/coconut-grove-artist-taunts-city-code-enforcers
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2008-10-30/news/letters-from-the-issue-of-october-30-2008
