License plate readers: A useful tool for police comes with privacy concerns

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License plate readers: A useful tool for police comes with privacy concerns

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...acy-concerns/2011/11/18/gIQAuEApcN_story.html

An armed robber burst into a Northeast Washington market, scuffled with the cashier, and then shot him and the clerk’s father, who also owned the store. The killer sped off in a silver Pontiac, but a witness was able to write down the license plate number.
Police figured out the name of the suspect very quickly. But locating and arresting him took a little-known investigative tool: a vast system that tracks the comings and goings of anyone driving around the District.

Scores of cameras across the city capture 1,800 images a minute and download the information into a rapidly expanding archive that can pinpoint people’s movements all over town.
Police entered the suspect’s license plate number into that database and learned that the Pontiac was on a street in Southeast. Police soon arrested Christian Taylor, who had been staying at a friend’s home, and charged him with two counts of first-degree murder. His trial is set for January.
More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.
With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.
“It never stops,” said Capt. Kevin Reardon, who runs Arlington County’s plate reader program. “It just gobbles up tag information. One of the big questions is, what do we do with the information?”
Police departments are grappling with how long to store the information and how to balance privacy concerns against the value the data provide to investigators. The data are kept for three years in the District, two years in Alexandria, a year in Prince George’s County and a Maryland state database, and about a month in many other suburban areas.
“That’s quite a large database of innocent people’s comings and goings,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union’s technology and liberty program. “The government has no business collecting that kind of information on people without a warrant.”
But police say the tag readers can give them a critical jump on a child abductor, information about when a vehicle left — or entered — a crime scene, and the ability to quickly identify a suspected terrorist’s vehicle as it speeds down the highway, perhaps to an intended target.
Having the technology during the Washington area sniper shootings in 2002 might have stopped the attacks sooner, detectives said, because police could have checked whether any particular car was showing up at each of the shooting sites.
“It’s a perfect example of how they’d be useful,” said Lt. T.J. Rogers, who is responsible for the 26 tag readers maintained by the Fairfax County police. “We see a lot of potential in it.”
The plate readers are different from red-light or speed cameras, which issue traffic tickets and are tools for deterrence and enforcement. The readers are an investigative tool, capturing a picture of every license plate that passes by and instantly analyzing them against a database filled with cars wanted by police.
Police can also plug any license plate number into the database and, as long as it passed a camera, determine where that vehicle has been and when. Detectives also can enter a be-on-the-lookout into the database, and the moment that license plate passes a detector, they get an alert.
It’s that precision and the growing ubiquity of the technology that has libertarians worried.
In Northern Virginia recently, a man reported his wife missing, prompting police to enter her plate number into the system.
They got a hit at an apartment complex, and when they got there, officers spotted her car and a note on her windshield that said, in essence, “Don’t tow, I’m visiting apartment 3C.” Officers knocked on the door of that apartment, and she came out of the bedroom. They advised her to call her husband.:p:p:p:p

A new tool in the arsenal
Even though they are relatively new, the tag readers, which cost about $20,000 each, are now as widely used as other high-tech tools police employ to prevent and solve crimes, including surveillance cameras, gunshot recognition sensors and mobile finger­print scanners.
License plate readers can capture numbers across four lanes of traffic on cars zooming up to 150 mph.
“The new technology makes our job a lot easier and the bad guys’ job a lot harder,” said D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier.
The technology first was used by the postal service to sort letters. Units consist of two cameras — one that snaps digital photographs and another that uses an optical infrared sensor to decipher the numbers and letters. The camera captures a color image of the vehicle while the sensor “reads” the license plate and transfers the data to a computer.
When stored over time, the collected data can be used instantaneously or can help with complex analysis, such as whether a car appears to have been followed by another car or if cars are traveling in a convoy.
Police also have begun using them as a tool to prevent crime. By positioning them in nightclub parking lots, for example, police can collect information about who is there. If members of rival gangs appear at a club, police can send patrol cars there to squelch any flare-ups before they turn violent. After a crime, police can gather a list of potential witnesses in seconds.
“It’s such a valuable tool, it’s hard not to jump on it and explore all the things it can do for law enforcement,” said Kevin Davis, assistant chief of police in Prince George’s County.
The readers have been used across the country for several years, but the program is far more sophisticated in the Washington region. The District has 73 readers; 38 of them sit stationary and the rest are attached to police cars. D.C. officials say every police car will have one some day.
The District’s license plate cameras gather more than a million data points a month, and officers make an average of an arrest a day directly from the plate readers, said Tom Wilkins, executive director of the D.C. police department’s intelligence fusion division, which oversees the plate reader program. Between June and September, police found 51 stolen cars using the technology.
Police do not publicly disclose the locations of the readers. And while D.C. law requires that the footage on crime surveillance cameras be deleted after 10 days unless there’s an investigative reason to keep it, there are no laws governing how or when Washington area police can use the tag reader technology. The only rule is that it be used for law enforcement purposes.
“That’s typical with any emerging technology,” Wilkins said. “Even though it’s a tool we’ve had for five years, as it becomes more apparent and widely used and more relied upon, people will begin to scrutinize it.”

Legal concerns
Such scrutiny is happening now at the U.S. Supreme Court with a related technology: GPS surveillance. At issue is whether police can track an individual vehicle with an attached GPS device.
Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who has been closely watching the Supreme Court case, said the license plate technology probably would pass constitutional muster because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on public streets.
But, Kerr said, the technology’s silent expansion has allowed the government to know things it couldn’t possibly know before and that the use of such massive amounts of data needs safeguards.
“It’s big brother, and the question is, is it big brother we want, or big brother that we don’t want?” Kerr said. “This technology could be used for good and it could be used for bad. I think we need a conversation about whether and how this technology is used. Who gets the information and when? How long before the information is deleted? All those questions need scrutiny.”
Should someone access the database for something other than a criminal investigation, they could track people doing legal but private things. Having a comprehensive database could mean government access to information about who attended a political event, visited a medical clinic, or went to Alcoholics Anonymous or Planned Parenthood.
Maryland and Virginia police departments are expanding their tag reader programs and by the end of the year expect to have every major entry and exit point to the District covered.
“We’re putting fixed sites up in the capital area,” said Sgt. Julio Valcarcel, who runs the Maryland State Police’s program, which now has 19 mobile units and one fixed unit along a major highway, capturing roughly 27 million reads per year. “Several sites are going online over the winter.”
Some jurisdictions store the information in a large networked database; others retain it only in the memory of each individual reader’s computer, then delete it after several weeks as new data overwrite it.
A George Mason University study last year found that 37 percent of large police agencies in the United States now use license plate reader technology and that a significant number of other agencies planned to have it by the end of 2011. But the survey found that fewer than 30 percent of the agencies using the tool had researched any legal implications.
There also has been scant legal precedent. In Takoma Park, police have two tag readers that they have been using for two years. Police Chief Ronald A. Ricucci said he was amazed at how quickly the units could find stolen cars. When his department first got them, he looked around at other departments to see what kind of rules and regulations they had.
“There wasn’t much,” Ricucci said. “A lot of people were using them and didn’t have policies on them yet.”

Finding stolen cars faster
The technology first came to the Washington region in 2004 as a pilot program. During an early test, members of the Washington Area Vehicle Enforcement Unit recovered eight cars, found 12 stolen license plates and made three arrests in a single shift. Prince George’s police bought several units to help combat the county’s crippling car theft and carjacking problem. It worked.
“We recover cars very quickly now. In previous times that was not the case,” said Prince George’s Capt. Edward Davey, who is in charge of the county’s program. “Before, they’d be dumped on the side of the road somewhere for a while.”
Now Prince George’s has 45 units and is likely to get more soon.
“The more we use them, the more we realize there’s a whole lot more on the investigative end of them,” Davey said. “We are starting to evolve. Investigators are starting to realize how to use them.”
Arlington police cars equipped with the readers regularly drive through the parking garage at the Pentagon City mall looking for stolen cars, checking hundreds of them in a matter of minutes as they cruise up and down the aisles. In Prince William County, where there are 12 mobile readers, the units have been used to locate missing people and recover stolen cars.
Unlike in the District, in most suburban jurisdictions, the units are only attached to police cars on patrol, and there aren’t enough of them to create a comprehensive net.
Virginia State Police have 42 units for the entire state, most of them focused on Northern Virginia, Richmond and the Tidewater area, and as of now have no fixed locations. There is also no central database, so each unit collects information on its own and compares it against a daily download of wanted vehicles from the FBI and the state.
But the state police are looking into fixed locations that could capture as many as 100 times more vehicles, 24 hours a day, with the potential to blanket the interstates.
“Now, we’re not getting everything — we’re fishing,” said Sgt. Robert Alessi, a 23-year veteran who runs the state police’s program. “Fixed cameras will help us use a net instead of one fishing pole with one line in the water waiting to get a nibble.”
Beyond the technology’s ability to track suspects and non-criminals alike, it has expanded beyond police work. Tax collectors in Arlington bought their own units and use the readers to help collect money owed to the county. Chesterfield County, in Virginia, uses a reader it purchased to collect millions of dollars in delinquent car taxes each year, comparing the cars on the road against the tax rolls.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Police across the region say that they are careful with the information and that they are entrusted with many pieces of sensitive information about citizens, including arrest records and Social Security numbers.
“If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re not driving a stolen car, you’re not committing a crime,” Alessi said, “then you don’t have anything to worry about.”


_______________________________________________________________

Welcome to the jungle it gets worse here every day...
I always thought Maryland had too many cops and troopers.:rolleyes:
The Patriot Act has been used by law enforcement primarily to go after regular criminals with only a handful of the secret warrants issued for bona fide terrorist suspects.
I'm Shocked, Shocked! that this has happened.

The same cynical ethic will be irresistable to law enforcement which doesn't know anything unless someone or now something tells it information.
This delightful to law enforcement mass surveillance of the movements of every plated vehicle in the country at entrance and exit points along the interstates and other roads and locations will be the new reality.
 
Mission creep is the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes. Mission creep is usually considered undesirable due to the dangerous path of each success breeding more ambitious attempts, only stopping when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs.
 
Mission creep is the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes. Mission creep is usually considered undesirable due to the dangerous path of each success breeding more ambitious attempts, only stopping when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs.

This won't end in a catastrophy in the usual sense.
It will just be the new reality of the eyes of government watching everyone.
I'm very interested as to how SCOTUS will rule on warrantless GPS tracking.
The justices have said that if they allow it there would be no permission required from any oversight to put these trackers on the justice's own vehicles at the whim of typically lazy law enforcement if that is what some official decided.
Add in the element of the usual human corruption and the moral hazard of mission creep and we have our Brave New World.
 
I hope you are wrong on that...

In a similar vein:
London currently has 500,000+ surveillence cameras on streets and public places the police watch on CCTV.

This plate reading net to catch the "fish" is the stuff of police dreams and just too irresistable to law enforcement.
The population will be and already is easily cowed by authorities into accepting less liberty for "security" and now this police surveillance, for the common good.
By the time the general population is aware of this and what it means it will be a fait accompli.
Capturing a few crooks and carjackers with minimal efforts will be trumpetted as making us all safer thanks to the benevolent government of Big Brother.
It is at least good to be aware of something that you can do nothing about.
Welcome to the new tomorrow.
 
Revisiting the Constitution:p
Is this the New America?:rolleyes:

declaration_custom.jpg
 
I have On-Star in my Cadillac which can be used to track everywhere I go, but I can care less. I don't have anything to hide and On-Star can be used to find my car should it be stolen or to send help if I should ever need it.
 
I have On-Star in my Cadillac which can be used to track everywhere I go, but I can care less. I don't have anything to hide and On-Star can be used to find my car should it be stolen or to send help if I should ever need it.


OnStar - watching over you or watching you?

http://www.examiner.com/homeland-security-in-los-angeles/onstar-watching-over-you-or-watching-you

The modern world is full of sophisticated conveniences – wireless Internet, GPS, Twitter, OnStar - you’re never alone anymore. But what if you want to be? It might come as a frightening realization, but pushing the button to get rid of the deceptively helpful robotic voice doesn’t come close to solving the problem. Invisible to the naked eye, the OnStar connection lingers – whether you want it or not. True to its name, the OnStar is always on. Like a psychotic stalker, it’s simply unwilling to hang up – that is, unless you’re willing to take a hammer to your brand new Cadillac, because the GM dealership won’t help you either. In fact, they will politely refuse to even attempt to locate and remove the OnStar modem, insisting that its operation is so intrinsically intertwined with the inner workings of your car that removing it would render your vehicle virtually inoperable.
A tracking system that comes pre-installed, can’t be removed or directly controlled by the customer that was obviously not designed with your needs in mind. Your car is speeding down the data-mining highway, driven by an invisible hand. Concerned voices of privacy advocates are barely heard through the buzz of the OnStar’s self-extolled virtues in assuring driver safety and convenience. The simplistic approach continues to be used in an attempt of silencing any concerns over our ever-diminishing rights to privacy: “Only criminals are concerned with being watched – if you have nothing to hide, don’t worry about your privacy”. If only it were this simple.

OnStar, using a global positioning system (GPS), tracks your vehicle’s physical location, it can unlock your car door via satellite or help the public safety agencies find you in case of an emergency. It can also be used to track the addresses you visit, such as your psychiatrist’s office, the liquor store, abortion clinic, your lover's house, rehab, the casino, AIDS treatment center, your child’s school – you name it. OnStar privacy policy does not promise to keep this information private - they may sell a permanent record of your movements to your current or potential employer, marketing firms, your ex-wife, potential stalker, creditors or the opposing parties in litigation.
OnStar warns, "we may routinely collect information, such as ... the location of your vehicle provided via satellite, or any other information, including your preferences or usage patterns." It’s virtually unprecedented for location information pertaining to millions of people to be remotely available to third parties, without the target’s knowledge or consent. The company neither identifies any specific purpose for collecting those records, nor does it identify any limitations on its potential use of the same – to the contrary, OnStar reserves the right to modify its privacy policy according to the company’s own needs. Considering OnStar is owned by GM, now the government and routinely provides information to auto dealers, information it collects could be potentially used to deny warranty repairs or extended warranty, clear auto manufacturers of liability, increase your insurance premiums or find you at fault in an accident.

What other information does OnStar collect? According to the company’s privacy policy updated in 2009, they know your name and billing information, how fast you drive, if and when you apply the brakes, whether you’re wearing your seatbelt, oil life, tire pressure, and odometer reading. If your car is on or off, when your fuel is refilled and your vehicle’s location. OnStar can remotely unlock your doors, slow down your car or prevent it from starting altogether. They record and monitor conversations by you or others from your car, but if you ask for copies of your own records, you will find out that “OnStar is not required to release any audio or physical records…without a subpoena (unless otherwise required by law).”
They’d like you to think that OnStar listens to conversations in your car only after giving you notice. Of course, that assertion is inconsistent with the passive listening feature highlighted by recent litigation, especially since a United States Appeals Court ruling mentioned in 2003 that the government used the on-board connection to eavesdrop on the vehicle’s occupants. When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell that their conversations were being monitored. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco didn’t have a problem with the government converting safety and communications system into roaming in-car wiretaps, as long as it didn’t impact the safety features.
The majority of the Judges deciding this sealed case, pertaining to a criminal investigation in Nevada, had no privacy concerns as to converting the device into a bug; a dissenting Judge would have allowed the eavesdropping even at the expense of safety. "The F.B.I., however well intented, is not in the business of providing emergency road services," Judge Marsha S. Berzon wrote for the majority. In dissent, Judge Richard C. Tallman said the government should have been allowed to use the stealth listening "an important investigative tool." The technology involved, which is being used by OnStar, ATX and other companies, may have already been altered, taking these concerns into consideration.
What if you give your friend a ride, lend or sell your car to anyone? Company policy states that it’s YOUR responsibility to advise all occupants of your car (including other drivers) how information about them may be collected, used or disclosed by OnStar - for research and analysis, to hand over to law enforcement, car dealers, as well as to protect OnStar’s own rights and property. What about your rights, property and privacy? Do you have a choice as to how your information is collected and shared by OnStar? Well, not really. As OnStar warns, “choice as to how your information will be used or shared may not always be possible”.
Amongst other things, this means that for $150 dollars an hour, OnStar will track your car and hand over all of your information at their disposal to the feds, as long as they get a subpoena or a court order. Unbeknownst to you, somewhere in court a miscellaneous motion is being heard, entitled "In the Matter of the Application of the United States of America for an Order Authorizing the Monitoring of a Mobile Tracking Device as a Physical Surveillance Aid on a Motor Vehicle Registered to [your name], [your vehicle’s year, model and VIN number]”. This application will be based upon Title 18 USC § 3123, including provisions that “Upon an application made under section 3122 (a)(1), the court shall enter an ex parte order authorizing the installation and use of a pen register or trap and trace device anywhere within the United States, if the court finds that the attorney for the Government has certified to the court that the information likely to be obtained by such installation and use is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.”
It gets even better. You (the subject of surveillance) may never know any of this took place, because the surveillance order will be sealed by court, specifically ordering OnStar NOT to disclose its existence to you, the subscriber. It’s also in their best interests, since the same court order indemnifies OnStar from being held accountable for allowing its systems to be used by the government, violating your privacy.
Sometimes, the government may track you even without a court order, as in the case decided in May of 2009 by the New York State Court of Appeals. A State Police investigator placed a GPS tracking device inside the bumper of Scott Weaver’s van without a search warrant, tracking him nonstop for 65 days and later charging him with crime, based in part on the data obtained through GPS tracking. To do that without a warrant, the court said, is not “compatible with any reasonable notion of personal privacy.” The Supreme Court is yet to rule on this issue, while lower federal courts and state courts have reached different results. Just this month, a Wisconsin appellate court upheld the use of evidence obtained by placing a GPS device on a suspect’s car without a warrant.
Starting with its 2009 models, half of all General Motors vehicles — 1.7 million, mostly Chevrolets — are now equipped with an OnStar emergency satellite communication system with Stolen Vehicle Slowdown, a system that can shut off the fuel and stop the vehicle. This includes Chevy Silverado, Tahoe, Suburban, Equinox, Avalanche and Impala, Cadillac SRX, DTS, CTS, Escalade, Escalade EXT and Escalade ESV, Buick Lucerne, Pontiac Torrent, Hummer H2 and H2 SUT, Saturn Vue, and GMC Sierra, Yukon and Yukon XL, and will later spread to other vehicles.
OnStar president Chet Huber describes how the Slowdown feature works, "When police have the vehicle in sight and feel they have safe access to getting it, they will then notify us at OnStar,” Huber said. “We'll take the power out of the car and turn on its flashers to alert others nearby to beware of a stolen car." The service is free during the first year of ownership; after that it’s part of a $190 package. It should be noted that OnStar service is raking in $1 billion in business annually and saves GM more than $100 million annually by wirelessly collecting information on its users’ vehicles. It should also be noted that the U.S. government owns 60 percent of General Motors.
Another troublesome feature of most new cars is the Event Data Recorder ("EDR"), or Black Box. Much like its namesake used in commercial airplanes, this device keeps track of how a car is being used, including speed, acceleration, braking, steering, and seat belt use. Prosecutors are already using information obtained from EDR’s as evidence against drivers – for example, in 2004 Robert Christmann was convicted in a New York traffic fatality based upon information downloaded from his car's Black Box. Unlike OnStar and its commercials, vehicle manufacturers are keeping quiet about this feature, because it has nothing to do with safety. EDR is nothing more than a surveillance tool, but unlike OnStar’s monitoring in real time, information is extracted after the fact.
Joan Borucki, appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to head California's Department of Motor Vehicles in 2004 (she is currently serving as the Director of the California State Lottery), has proposed a mileage tax based on the information obtained from Black Boxes. Some rental companies are charging renters fines for speeding in their rental cars, using a GPS-equipped monitoring system. California’s legislation is likely a sign where things are headed, since the state requires notices in the owner's manuals of cars that have EDR/Black Boxes. Current laws allow the Black-Box data to be accessed under court order, for research, and for other purposes.
We’re likely to start seeing automatically-issued traffic citations if governments were to act on their intent to obtain revenues based on EDR-citations, in addition to what they now get from red-light cameras. Aside from the notice that a spying device is contained within their vehicles, customers aren’t being given a choice as to whether or not they wish to have their information collected and used. Every American citizen has to decide whether they would be willing to sacrifice their privacy for a promise of security. As Benjamin Franklin said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

_______________________________________________________________

And you volunteered for this surveillance! :p
They're listening to and recording your conversations all the time!! :eek:
Maybe you can pass notes around the car to thwart that when you have something important, valuable or secret to say or decide to diss Obama or some politician :D
 
Whenever I hear someone say, "if you've done nothing wrong then you've got nothing to fear", my reply is, "if I've done nothing wrong, then you've got no goddamn business keeping tabs on me!" Constant surveillance is not an acceptable remedy for bad police work.
 
Whenever I hear someone say, "if you've done nothing wrong then you've got nothing to fear", my reply is, "if I've done nothing wrong, then you've got no goddamn business keeping tabs on me!" Constant surveillance is not an acceptable remedy for bad police work.

With my radar and laser countermeasures I can drive the LS as I please :D

I don't think I would want OnStar spying and tattling on me.:(
 
Whenever I hear someone say, "if you've done nothing wrong then you've got nothing to fear", my reply is, "if I've done nothing wrong, then you've got no goddamn business keeping tabs on me!" Constant surveillance is not an acceptable remedy for bad police work.

Agreed.
 
Video backs man in pepper-spraying

In 2008, Joseph S. Wilson and his wife were pulled over for failing to signal. The events that followed put Wilson in the hospital and in court, seeking vindication against the officer who hurt him.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/aurora-east-aurora/article659087.ece

Updated: December 3, 2011, 11:29 PM
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After drinking too much at an East Aurora bar, Joseph S. Wilson made a smart move in calling his wife for a ride home.
She picked him up in her housecoat at 4 a.m. on a cold January 2008 morning. But while driving him home, she made a turn without using her turn signal, and an East Aurora police officer pulled her over.
That's when Wilson did something not too smart: He got out of the car and approached the officer.
Footage captured by a police car camera shows what happened next: the pepper spray, the shouting and the struggle to handcuff Wilson.
The pepper spray left him blinded and doubled over in pain, Wilson said in court papers.
Then the officer trying to handcuff him "pushed, punched and kicked" him to the ground, with Wilson's face "repeatedly pounded into the pavement."
A photograph shows the end result: a swollen left eye and cuts to his face that required an overnight stay in Erie County Medical Center. Wilson said he saw doctors several times for his eye injury, including outpatient treatment at the Ross Eye Institute in Buffalo.
After watching the video at Wilson's criminal trial two years ago, the town justice who presided over the case called it "very incriminating" — but he was referring to the police officer's actions, not Wilson's.
Last week, the village agreed to settle Wilson's civil lawsuit — believed to be a six-figure settlement — just days before a jury was to hear the case.
The settlement is the result of what happened in a minute that January 2008 morning, all caught on video.
"Why are you pulling us over for?" Wilson asked as he walked toward the police car.
"Get back in the car," Officer Michael S. Feldman commanded.
"My name's Joe," Wilson continued, extending his right hand in an attempt to shake the officer's hand.
"Get back in the car," Feldman said again. "I'm not going to ask you again."
Ten seconds later — with Wilson returning to the car, but then looking back — Feldman pepper-sprayed him.
Wilson, a 36-year-old Holland lawn care and snow-removal business owner, shouted an expletive after the blast of pepper spray hit his eyes.
Wilson stumbled toward the front of the car, with the officer following him and then falling on top of him, trying to apply handcuffs.
The car blocks the camera's view of the two men on the parking lot in front of the car.
But Jennifer Wilson, who opened the driver's side door, can be seen and heard in the video, revealing what she sees.
"Hey, why are you hitting him!" she exclaimed.
"He's resisting," Feldman said.
"Stop resisting," he told a groaning Wilson.
"I'm not," Wilson replied.
"Stop! Please, stop!" Jennifer Wilson cried out.
"Get back in your car!" Feldman yelled.
"OK, I'm sorry," she replied, as she got back in the Saturn.
Wilson, who has no criminal record, was charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and obstructing governmental administration.
He faced a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. He fought the charges at his December 2009 trial, which was moved to Wales because of Wilson's civil suit against East Aurora.
"As a criminal lawyer, you look at this case and ask, 'What the heck did my client do?'" said Joseph J. Terranova, a defense lawyer who represented Wilson in the criminal case.
"I didn't think the officer could justify his actions," Terranova said.
After looking at the video, neither did Town Justice Raymond Poliseno.
"This video that I just observed ... pretty much says it all to me," Poliseno said as he announced his verdict, according to a trial transcript.
"I couldn't see at any time that the defendant was resisting, but what I did see was the defendant certainly complaining about the pepper spray in his eyes or in his face, saying, 'Oh, my God! Oh, my God!'
"And I saw no resisting here, except this is very incriminating to the officer, and in this respect, I am dismissing all charges," Poliseno said.
Erie County Assistant District Attorney Sarah E. Ryan inherited the case from another prosecutor shortly before the trial.
"I came across the video, and it seemed to corroborate what the defendant was saying," Ryan said.
Ryan said she informed her superior and then Terranova about the video.
After watching the video, Terranova dropped his request for a jury trial and asked the judge to decide the case, because that offered a quicker and cheaper route to a sure acquittal, he said.
Ryan submitted the video as evidence.
Ryan called just one witness, the police officer, and she did not make a closing argument.
"It went from a hotly contested jury trial to a quick nonjury trial," said Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita, who said Ryan "did everything correctly."
Feldman, a village police officer from 2007 to 2008, was serving on Rochester's police force at the time of the trial.
Feldman said in court that Wilson "seemed a little hostile" as he approached the police car.
"When I ordered the defendant to go back to his vehicle, his demeanor increased in a more hostile manner," Feldman said.
"As he walked back towards his vehicle, I remember removing my can of pepper spray as an officer safety issue," Feldman continued. "I observed the defendant walk past the actual door; both fists were clenched. I was directly behind the defendant at that time. I am not sure — being that I didn't have the opportunity to perform a pat frisk of the defendant — I didn't know if he had any weapons on him."
So why the pepper spray?
"I observed the defendant make an abrupt turn towards my direction," Feldman said in court. "It concerned my safety. I administered a shot of pepper spray to the facial area of the defendant."
Feldman said he then tried to grab Wilson's wrists.
"The defendant did not want to put them behind his back. They were stuck in the front area near his stomach," Feldman said, according to the transcript.
"At that point, I tried to use the force of my arms to put the defendant's wrists behind his back. I couldn't," he said.
"We actually both fell on the ground and forward, me falling on top of him," Feldman said. "The defendant was basically laying flat on the ground, still had his hands underneath him.
"I am still trying to gain control of his wrists, trying to place them in the back [and] place him in handcuffs," he said.
Then a police lieutenant arrived.
With the lieutenant's assistance, "I initiated two knee strikes to the left thigh as a trained technique," he said.
Feldman said he did not use a night stick or any other weapon, besides pepper spray. Wilson was handcuffed about a minute after he was pepper sprayed.
Feldman, who became a police officer in 2006, said he had written more than a thousand traffic tickets. A dozen or so times, somebody got out of the car and approached him like Wilson did, Feldman said.
During cross-examination, Terranova asked Feldman if Wilson was committing a crime by getting out of his car.
"Potentially, yes," Feldman replied.
Wilson's tone of voice, and not knowing if Wilson was armed, alarmed Feldman.
"He did not get back in his car," Feldman said of Wilson.
Was Wilson acting hostile when he held out his hand like he wanted to shake hands? Terranova asked.
"Sarcasm," Feldman replied.
"Not hostility — sarcasm?" Terranova asked.
"It could be potentially both," the officer replied.
In his civil suit's court papers, Wilson said he was "pushed, punched and kicked to the surface of a parking lot" while blinded by pepper spray and doubled over in pain.
In addition to his head repeatedly hitting the surface of the parking lot, Wilson said he was struck in the groin with what he believes was a night stick.
In July 2010 court papers, Wilson asked for $1.2 million in damages.
The village, in its court papers filed in August 2009, said the police officers "used no more force than was reasonably necessary under the circumstance to carry out their official responsibilities and functions."
"The conduct of the police officers ... was lawful and proper in the face of plaintiff's failure to obey the officers' lawful and reasonable requests," according to the village's response to Wilson's lawsuit.
East Aurora Police Chief Ronald R. Krowka could not be reached for comment. The News tried to reach Feldman by contacting the Rochester Police Department but was unsuccessful.
David G. Brock, a lawyer representing the village, said the civil lawsuit has been settled.
"It's over with," he said.
Terranova also represented Wilson in the civil case.
Both lawyers said terms of the settlement include a confidentiality and nondisparagement clause that forbids them or Wilson from disclosing the settlement amount or discussing the facts of the civil case.
"My client and I are quite satisfied with the result," Terranova said.

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The Thin Blue Line :p

Getting out of your vehicle in a drunken state and trying to make friends or other unusual behaviour during a routine traffic stop is generally not a good idea :rolleyes:

The "fear" inside the officer from his experience dealing with liars and lowlifes makes pepper spray and a takedown the first resort instead of the last.

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When ever you discuss things like this, you need to think of it it in 10-20 years. What happens when computer processing and storage is so great that all of these worst-case scenario fears can easily be accomplished in the name of security, and worse yet, stability.

Think about how much our technology has grown exponentially since 2001. Now compare it to 1991 and 1981. Now imagine 2021 and 2031 with that same trajectory.
 
When ever you discuss things like this, you need to think of it it in 10-20 years. What happens when computer processing and storage is so great that all of these worst-case scenario fears can easily be accomplished in the name of security, and worse yet, stability.

Think about how much our technology has grown exponentially since 2001. Now compare it to 1991 and 1981. Now imagine 2021 and 2031 with that same trajectory.

Well my papers are in order :D
But...
People's plate numbers could be maliciously entered into the system
for nefarious or political purposes.
Without some formal rulings what is "lawful" is essentially an opinion based on the zealotry and ethics of the LEOs on hand as this grows exponentially
Beyond finding stolen cars and people wanted on a warrants in higher crime areas, as this technology spreads the number of people able to be watched will greatly increase along with the temptation to expand and study the information for more "usefulness".
The SCOTUS ruling on GPS will be a big one.
It will set the tone on how far(or how much further) the government can go watching and tracking it's citizens.
 

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