Slashdot Mirror
Man Wins Partial Victory In Circuit City Arrest
JeremyDuffy writes "Michael Righi, the man who was arrested at Circuit City for failing to show his reciept/driver's license, has fought a moral battle against the city for almost a month now. The case has already been settled and he emerged victorious... sort of. It turns out that he's already spent almost $7500 and would have kept fighting them too, but because his family would have been dragged into it, he was forced to take a deal. They've expunged his record and dropped all charges, but he had to give up his right to sue the city to do it."
...can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in to Circuit City, buying something, and refusing to show ID? My friends, they may think it's a movement.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
In the days that followed a few things changed. First, I learned that the prosecutor was more interested in protecting the city against a civil law suit than she was in silencing my speech.
And by doing so she effectively did silence you and the Brooklyn, OH police department and city will not have a blemish on their record because one of their officers acted like an uninformed dick.
It's an unfortunate situation where you still have to pay out when you are completely in the right.
"One more such victory and we will be undone."
This headline needs rewriting as "Man wins Pyrrhic Victory". $7500 worse off and he didn't even get an apology. Hell, if he'd actually been shoplifting he'd have got a smaller fine than that.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I think every city/county/state with a reasonable sized police force needs to have citizen review boards with the power to punish/fire officers. It's the ultimate solution.
It will solve many problems and make cops stop and think before doing something stupid - especially with all the news lately about abuses of power and authority.
Internal reviews are useless and don't change a thing. If some kind of "policing for police" isn't done soon, it's only going to get much worse.
Many years ago, when the web was still quiet and tiny, we had a little group of friends who promised to follow through with customer service and govenrment issues for one another. Since we all had various newsletters, writing gigs, and other media-style connections, we had the ability to contact people giving bad service via the phone and inquire to the service issues from a media perspective.
Of course it was more a joke than a reality, but as time grew, we found that hundreds of people calling businesses and police departments inquiring about "Any new information?" was a great way to get things fixed. I can recall one incident with Circuit City (of all places!) where the managers on duty received nearly 200 phone calls a day from "media inquiries" relating to a direct lie from a sales person to one of our group. It only took 2 weeks of "Any new information" for the company to back down and repair the situation, at which point there was no more news to cover.
Now I know harassment is a "crime," but why isn't there a site like phonedot.org? Instead of the slashdot effect, you can have the phonedot effect. Give it digg like capabilities so bloggers and other media contributors can vote up or down various customer service issues, and then let these thousands or hundreds of thousands of bloggers make their calls to see if there is "Any new information?" until the issue is settled.
When my previous city refused to get rid of the city sticker for vehicles, I typed up a newsletter and printed 30,000 of them to distribute. The newsletter had every phone number of every city official (home, work, cell). It only took 2 months of massive phone inquiries for the city council to end the city sticker harassment, and I think it was a net gain for those who called to inquire. Fight idiotic harassment with idiotic harassment.
I fail to see where the victory is in this. The only thing he gained was that the charges were dropped. Considering that the charges were baseless to begin with, that is not much. On the other hand, the city won by making him pay $10k to fight a baseless charge and by getting away with no punishment for the city or the officer involved. Seems to be a weak victory to me...
Ya know, I had in my head that this guy was some sort of a punk just looking for attention or money. Having read his blog about the case, I must admit that I am thoroughly impressed with this man and his principaled stand. I was blown away by the calm but strong tone of his wrap up, and his desire to put his family first, in the end. For this right winger, this man is everything that there is to be admired about the left wing, and the United States is better off for his citizen ship.
This is my sig.
Especially since it involves a guy who was basically being a prick.
Ya, what an asshole, standing up for his rights against a cop that BROKE THE LAW or a store that does the same.
That's on shaky ground ethically speaking DR 7-105. THREATENING CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.
(A) A lawyer shall not present, participate in presenting, or threaten to present criminal charges solely to obtain an advantage in a civil matter. Whether he threatened to present the charges *solely* to gain an advantage in the civil case would be the point of argument. The prosecutor would say that it wasn't solely to gain an advantage, because it was the police officer who made the arrest, and the prosecutor just prosecutes whatever cases come to him. However, if the case is not supported by probable cause, he's not allowed to go forward. DR 7-103. PERFORMING THE DUTY OF PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OR OTHER GOVERNMENT LAWYER.
(A) A public prosecutor or other government lawyer shall not institute or cause to be instituted criminal charges when he knows or it is obvious that the charges are not supported by probable cause. I would argue that the only reason the prosecutor threatened to go forward was to get the waiver of liability in the civil case. There was no merit to this case. An officer needs some level of suspicion to search a person or to require a showing of ID. There was no level of suspicion whatsoever here. There was no merit to this criminal case... at least according to what this fellow is telling us. One thing I've learned in my practice is that sometimes people charged with crimes lie... yeah, I know, hard to imagine.
if this person is not cooperating then they have something to hide.
Your post makes the baby 5th amendment cry.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
"if this person is not cooperating then they have something to hide"
If a person replies as AC, does that mean they have something to hide? Or does it mean that there's an expectation of privacy in going about your business.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The point is that we should not have to justify ourselves to anyone, period. The police are not our masters, the government is not our master. We are each, our own master; this is what Liberty means. By requiring us to present any sort of papers or justification for us to be somewhere where we are allowed to be (especially a public place), the government and specifically the police are attempting to proclaim superiority over us. This is absolutely wrong. I applaud Michael Righi for taking a stand and saying, "no." It is sad that he has been dragged through this ordeal. It is sad that, in order to defend his rights as a human being, he was forced to pay out a considerable sum and that his family was so put upon; but this is the price of freedom.
I find it sad that we have become so timid, in this country, that we are willing to tolerate this type of activity by the police. While the officer in question might have thought himself justified in making such a demand, and then enforced his wrongheaded belief with the authority we have granted him , he was wrong and should be called to account for it. We have given the police special powers, because it is necessary for them to do their job. I realize it is a very hard and thankless job; it does not pay well, and is often looked upon with scorn. But, that is something which must be accepted when a person chooses to become a police officer. Along with that, there must come an added level of responsibility to use the powers granted by the people, in an appropriate fashion. Any abuse of those powers, no matter how slight, must be punished. This is were we, as a society, are failing to uphold our rights, and will lose them eventually; we not only allow abuses such as these to go unpunished, we have people who encourage it. The AC who posted the idiocy of, "Why not cooperate?" is complicit is the destruction of our rights. He would give over his personal sovereignty to the police because it is easier. Freedom and Liberty are not easy, they are hard, but they are worth the constant struggle. He may think that having the police rule his life will make him safer, but time and again history has shown us that this is not the case. Governments given absolute sovereignty over their citizens do not long remain benign, and usually lead to tyranny and abuses far greater than the constant annoyance of crime.
Liberty requires that each of us take responsibility for ourselves. This includes accepting a certain level of risk from criminals who may abuse their freedom. This means that you will be responsible for protecting and caring for yourself. In then end, you must ask yourself whether it is better to die on your feet or live on your knees.
Patrick Henry said it best:
I know not what course others make take, but as for me: give me Liberty, or give me death.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Mod parent up. Excellent point.
And sadly, it's extremely typical of how minor criminal charges are handled. The first line is usually the cop, whose job amounts to little more than hired muscle for the state; entrance requirements in terms of education are pretty low in most areas, and cops barely understand the law themselves, instead adopting an attitude of "arrest first and let the courts sort it out later".
Combine this with absolutely zero options or oversight from the citizenry and you already have a recipe for disaster.
A cop will therefore hassle a citizen based on a combination of hazy understanding of the law, bad mood, and whether or not he approves of the citizen's attitude. The charge is usually, in the grand scheme of things, fairly minor, but enough to cause a serious headache for the victim. For many things, an arrest will be involved, along with jailtime, bond money, and the embarassment of having to call friends and family to get you out, not to mention the retrieval of whatever confiscated or impounded property -- and the money involved in getting that back.
This is justice in America.
Your court date will roll around and you'll plead not guilty. A trial date will be set, meaning you'll have to schedule your life around that, and try to get a lawyer to help. The average person isn't expected to fully understand the law, because it's so nuanced and convoluted, which is why defense attorneys with years of specialized training exist. The average person is expected to fully abide by the law he doesn't understand, though, which may suggest a problem with the system, but nobody will question it during this process.
On your trial date you'll speak to some self-important prosecutor or solicitor who acts on behalf of the government. He'll treat your minor case like it's the crime of the century. Depending on your demeanor he may offer a deal of some sort, which usually entails you pleading guilty to a somewhat lessor offense. What he probably won't tell you is that if you reject this offer, and make him go through the hassle of an actual trial, he'll push for the maximum possible punishment the law allows, regardless of any circumstances up to that point.
This is justice in America.
If you take his deal, you've just pleaded guilty to an offense you may not have even committed, and is probably something so stupid no one should care even if you did do it, but you're intimidated into the plea by his legal jargon and the fact that, as an average Joe, you don't have the time, money, or resources devoted to fighting it. You'll pay a few hundred dollars in fines and be on your way, with an arrest record, a criminal history, and completely out the hundreds you spent for the bond, the fine, the impound, the attorney, and anything else. The state will pat itself on the back for a job well done for cleaning up the mean streets of dangerous scum like you.
If you don't take his deal you'll be put on trial. For minor offenses you may not even get a jury of twelve average Joes who will sympathize with you; the state has found a loophole and called this an "administrative matter", meaning you'll get tried by a judge, who will claim to be impartial but is on the state's payroll and has a vested interest in making sure things turn out in the state's favor, not to mention his clouded view of every person who appears before him as a criminal.
The judge will ignore everything you say, and your attorney will be mostly powerless since the time for deal-making is over and all he can do is try to object to the prosection's evidence. There will be little evidence to which he can object, though, since for most minor offenses there aren't any significant witnesses or material bits of evidence. Nothing but the policeman's word and charge on the books, often, and this will be taken as wholly sufficient to pronounce you guilty, whereupon you'll pay a huge fine, face possible jail time, and be in worse shape than you had you just meekly submitted instead of trying to assert your rig
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