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Boston Pays Out $170,000 To Man Arrested For Recording Police
Ian Lamont writes "The City of Boston has reached a $170,000 settlement with Simon Glik, who was arrested by Boston Police in 2007 after using his mobile phone to record police arresting another man on Boston Common. Police claimed that Glik had violated state wiretapping laws, but later dropped the charges and admitted the officers were wrong to arrest him. Glik had brought a lawsuit against the city (aided by the ACLU) because he claimed his civil rights were violated. According to today's ACLU statement: 'As part of the settlement, Glik agreed to withdraw his appeal to the Community Ombudsman Oversight Panel. He had complained about the Internal Affairs Division's investigation of his complaint and the way they treated him. IAD officers made fun of Glik for filing the complaint, telling him his only remedy was filing a civil lawsuit. After the City spent years in court defending the officers' arrest of Glik as constitutional and reasonable, IAD reversed course after the First Circuit ruling and disciplined two of the officers for using "unreasonable judgment" in arresting Glik.'"
...that a precedent had been set in by court instead of by settlement. When one party (in this case, the government) is forced by the court to do something, it tends to have more legal weight behind it than when the party instead voluntarily takes an action.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
And it only took 5 years! And it didn't invalidate similar laws in other states, either.
Not that I wouldn't do the same thing in his shoes, but I would still have liked to see this go the distance rather then it just being a payout of tax payers money.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Its close but its not April 1st yet guys!
Boston has paid out nothing; Boston tax payers have paid out. There is no downside to law enforcement breaking the law, as they simply fall back on the (apparently) bottomless pockets of the general population. It's unlikely those involved will receive so much as a reprimand, let alone be fired. Even when officers are fired, they simply get re-employed as another location. It's a lose-lose situation for everyone but the officers.
should be 10x that.
Make an example of them until they take our rights seriously. It's obviously a cultural problem they have deep into the roots.
For 5 years of hassle to a citizen's effort to keep the government honest? I think it's a bargain compared to the payments we give out to politicians. Compare this to the millions that CEOs receive? A rounding error. This number is too small, not too large.
So you've never heard of punitive damages? You think he had no legal fees?
The money has to go to somewhere, and we don't generally give it to charity by default.
ridiculous for falsely arresting someone, then dragging it through the courts for years? Anyway, it says it paid damages AND legal fees. What do you want to bet that 5 years of legal fees are about $160,000? The city got of easy.
this also happened in Mass around 2001 or 2002, where someone was getting harassed and decided to record the procedure. He was a musician and had a recorder of some sort in his car. After all the grief that he took, he brought the tape to internal affairs to have the offending officers reprimanded, and they used the tape against him in a wiretapping case. Now he has been harassed and arrested. WINNING
How can it be "wire" tapping to record what your eyes can plainly see, in public? What wire? What tapping?
Yeah public apology and implementation of more stringent training would have been better, but 170k is pretty good as punitive fine and sets a precedent for future lawsuits. It doesn't say if the department intends to dock the officers' salaries to offset the cost (I hope so).
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
I knew that there would be more people whining about tax money here, than the violations of the man's rights.
Not ridiculous. He was arrested, then spent years in court trying to get the police to do the right thing. What should he have done instead? Stopped when the time he invested became ridiculous? Then they would never change their behavior, and our rights would be even worse off than they are.
I bet he won't even get half of that as the lawyers will get a good portion. The idea of this kind of settlement is to make the defendant not do it again. You can bet that in morning roll call there will be some orders there about not arresting people for using phones to record police.
Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro
Arrested and five years of being run-around and fighting in court.
I don't know about you, but I feel five years of my life is worth more than $170k. Our civil rights as citizens are worth much more than that as well.
Dayum, I need to record cops and get myself arrested!
Well most of it is probably going to a lawyer. In fact 170K is very cheap for employing a lawyer for 5 years.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The cops are slow to learn.........
http://www.wnd.com/2012/03/student-arrested-for-taking-photo-of-cop/
http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-26/news/31240585_1_police-officer-cops-misdemeanor
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Simon Glik was only able to afford this because he's a lawyer and had the ACLU backing him up. The government is never in a hurry, and has no shame when it comes to spending someone else's funds.
Recording cops get you arrested, but carrying a gun hoping for an excuse to murder someone, then chasing down and killing a random child in cold blood does not even get you detained.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Another site, Ars, I think, stated that we will get around $50k. The rest going towards legal fees.
Gone!
So until, the police and Internal Affairs get caught breaking the law, the law on the books isn't actually followed by the exact people who should know the law? Vigilante justice from within the police system is not a good culture to have brewing. Shouldn't anyone within the policing system that breaks the law or supports breaking the law be fired? Seems to be a conflict of interest to me.
If anything, I expect a larger outrage here about the rights than you would get in most news circles. The average person doesn't care about the rights issue because it's happening to "someone else", whereas the settlements (and the money to fund it) is coming from them the taxpayer and does have an effect on them personally (if it changes tax rates or effects funding on things the other individual cares about). Plus there's the whole "he got money for nothing" angle which is more a jealously thing.
You're not complaining about Slashdot, you're complaining about human nature.
Agreed. I thought the courts ripped this guy off. He should have received more.
So, does that compensation include:
1) Removing his fingerprints from not only Boston police's files, but the FBI and every other system it was instantly and permanently sent to?
2) Removing all records of his improper and illegal arrest from every system?
Somehow I think information, once collected, is forever there. He will now be "searched", like a suspect, every time prints are run.
After paying his lawyer and taxes, he'll end up about $20 in the black.
Working...
Not sure what this guys occupation is, but 5 years later with $170,000 isn't much to show for it. That's $34,000 a year. It's also a payout for his legal fees. Net profit??? In fact, he could still be in negative when it's all said and done.
Life is not for the lazy.
In order to change anything, it has to be enough for the offender to sit up and take notice. Now if only the officers in question were liable for 1% of the settlement, we would make some real progress.
Agreed. This is why so often government agencies settle rather than go to court and be proven wrong. Sometimes we get lucky when they are dumb enough to not only get caught, get sued but also don't settle. Then we get precident, but ONLY when the ruling is actually "published". A quirk of court that keeps many very helpful rulings from helping real citizens.
There are other instances where citizens have won over government on this level of grand stupidity, however the regulations literally state the standard of justice is the regulators re correct unless it can first be proven in their own court (that's right) they are arbitrary and capricious. It rarely happens of course and that standard of justice flies in the face of preponderance of the evidence, but, rarely, it can happen:
http://www.v-serv.com/usr/ATFE-03-16-09.pdf
JJ
So, now that if could be worth almost $120K to be arrested for recording police in action, I wouldn't be surprised if the next big craze (or How to Make Money scheme) will be to look for & start recording any police action (from the common ticketing of a motorist to questioning witnesses or suspects near the scene of an incident, etc.)
It's perhaps like a lottery... some officers will be either unaware of the final outcome of the Glik story or perhaps simply lose their cool in the heat of the moment.
1. See & Record some police-in-action sequence
2. Be arrested for it
: (be lucky enough to have an outcome like Glik's)
3. Profit!
The taxpayers are also the voters. They deserve to pay until they take notice and send a message to their government.
Seriously, you are an idiot.
Glik did not ask to be arrested, but he was. He asked the IAD to investigate, they told him to fuck off and file a civil suit. So he did. And by winning it and costing them $170,000 the Boston police department did what they should have done in the first fucking place - the disciplined the officers involved.
Maybe the tax payers should pay more attention in the future to their local cops.
I don't think the parent poster was lamenting the fact that the guy got a big payout, but that this ended up with a cash settlement instead of being played out to the end to set a legal precedent. Even if he ended up getting $170K (or more) in the end, at least it would have set a legal precedent that should make this kind of thing less likely in the future.
Elmer Fudd comes out and says "Tony you been warry warry baddd".
Seriously oral reprimand? Something like "hey dumbass you just cost us two years of your wages". The sad think is it is the public's money that is going to be used to pay this. So you pay for a police officer, he pisses on a citizens rights then you tax the public some more to pay off for the damage you did. Nice.
I can't believe this was ever an issue. Recording events as they happen, whether it's with a video, audio, or the old-fashioned pen-and-paper method, is a protected right under the first amendment of both the U.S. and most State Constitutions.
And to the person who wished a precedent had been set? Here it is: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/08/28/2030243/mass-court-says-constitution-protects-filming-on-duty-police
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
5 years. Way to go USA justice system. You suck.
Not that I wouldn't do the same thing in his shoes, but I would still have liked to see this go the distance rather then it just being a payout of tax payers money.
Yes, that is exactly the problem: have your fight for 5 years and all the others only cheering on the margins (if ever). That's no longer justice, it's "entertainment"... and of a dubious quality.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I guess the beginning is for the brave, but if everybody just takes photos non stop ... eventually the police will be decentitized. Everybody knows that there are cameras everywhere noways so much like open source ... a million eyes will eventually weed out the bugs in the system. We are living in times of change.
It's a bonus on top of whatever his ordinary salary is, not a replacement. I dare say most people would be happy with a bonus of $34,000 a year.
You're absolutely right. The correct thing to do in this case is to try the officers in question for kidnapping, and their superiors AND the IAD for being an accessory to kidnapping. Making settlement payouts from the general fund does nothing to deter future crimes on the part of these thugs.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I once talked to someone who knows Nancy Grace - that shrill fat chick on TV. She lives in Atlanta, GA - in a really expensive suburb.
Anyway, they "bragged" how she never lost a case when she was a prosecutor. I had to inform this person that prosecutors cherry pick cases. In other words, they set themselves up to win.
My point? If you're a smart criminal the "justice" system is easy to beat because it's filled with stupid people and people too lazy to work to put away smart criminals.
Crime pays for smart people. And if you're really smart, they pay you to steal Case in point: Wall Street.
how can IAD call it"unreasonable judgment if they had been supporting the idea for 5 years?
So government employees do something wrong and the court punishes the taxpayers? How about paying that $160k out of the cops retirement fund?
This is like when a Priest gets caught molesting a kid and the Church pays the victim with the congregations money.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I'm with you on this 100%.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Mayor Mumbles should put this in his pocket and raise it again the next time the city has to negotiate with the Boston patrolmen's union. The overall cost is higher. $170k is just the settlement. This whole debacle will have cost Boston taxpayers more than that from start to finish.
The guy is a family court lawyer. The settlement is $50,000 + lawyers fees (he was represented by the ACLU). The case is decisive in that Boston attempted to have the case dismissed base on limited immunity(i.e. can't sue police for doing their job). The trial court ruled against them (i..e. lawsuit can go ahead). The ruling was appealed and the appeal court handed down a ruling (pdf) that left little doubt how the rest of the trial would go. The appeal court ruling said, in no uncertain terms, that the recording was legal, that it was not secret and Mr. Gliks rights were violated. Given that ruling on a motion to dismiss, there is no way the city would go ahead with a lower trial that would just confirm what the appeals court already said, so they settled.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
If you mean "go the distance" as in set a precedent, then this case already did.
Early in the trial, the city attempted a motion to dismiss on the ground of limited immunity(i.e. can't sue police for doing thier job in good faith). The Citiy's argument was that the wiretap law says you "can't record in secret" and since it wasn't clear that the phone was recording audio, then the audio part of the recording was secret, and therefore the was probable cause for the arrest, and thus limited immunity applied. The appeals court handed down a decision(pdf) in 2011 that drew on over 10 years of precedents that said in no uncertain terms that it wasn't a secret recording, that Mr Glik had the right to record police in public and that any resonable person would have known this. Therefore the police cannot claim llimited immunity.
Faced with such a strong appeals court ruling on the motion to dismiss, it was clear any trial would be lost by the City. So they settled.
The 2011 dismissal appeal decision is a precedent, and has already been used as binding precedent in 1st circut, and as non-binding precedent in all of the other circuits on similar cases. There is one case, I have misplaced the link, where the lawsuit is for an incident that happened before the 2011 glik decision and the police are claiming that since the incident happened before the glik decision, they couldn't know that it was a civil rights violation to arrest someone for this. As far as I can tell, they aren't getting anywhere with that argument. The language of the glik decision makes it clear that it has always been a civil rights violation to arrest someone for openly recording the police in a public space.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
I agree it sucks that taxpayers pick up the tab but I doubt there's a legal way to get at retirement funds. The alternative is they don't pay at all. I don't think that's fair either. If the cops had falsely arrested this guy and the city said "whoa! that's just wrong, you're fired" then maybe it would have been enough. Those taxpaying citizens should be more concerned with false arrest by the people they are paying to enforce the law and by a city government that pisses away money for 5 years defending that action. Maybe some of them will be mad enough at the waste of money to vote out the retards that are in office.
To your priest example, it's completely fair that the congregation that stood by oblivious while some priest molested children for years pays for that. I just find it hard to accept that hundreds, maybe thousands of people were members of these churches and not once did someone notice or have the balls to say "About Father Bob..." It's ludicrous that someone can get away with this stuff for decades. I guarantee that any congregation that's paid out because of molestation is a hell of a lot more careful about who is in the clergy and what they are doing, especially where kids are involved. Sometimes messing with peoples money is the only way to get a change.
So government employees do something wrong and the court punishes the taxpayers? How about paying that $160k out of the cops retirement fund?
This is like when a Priest gets caught molesting a kid and the Church pays the victim with the congregations money.
The cops were working for the city. They authority they abused was derived from the city. The city -- and thus the citizenry -- is responsible for their actions.
Now if the city thinks that it is not at fault for the actions of these employees -- that it wasn't bad management or poor training, etc., but rather something completely out of their control -- then perhaps the city should sue the officers to recover the money.
At any rate, it is important for all employers -- cities, churches, banks, etc. -- to ensure that they hire, manage, and train the employees acting in their name to obey all relevant laws and regulations in the course of their duties. To do any less is to expose the organization to unnecessary liability. This is especially important if you issue the aforementioned employees badges, guns, foreclosure forms, or the ability to invoke eternal damnation.
I am not a crackpot.
Not arrested for filming, but officers were filmed arresting a guy after one of the officers assaulted him.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
According to TFA, things should be better now that:
Or maybe things won't be much better, since even the police trainers seem to think that laws confer a "right of arrest" on police officers.
Authority? Yes.
Duty? Yes.
A "right"? Never. That's severely twisted thinking.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Come down off your high horse there for a moment and think about this. There are times when recordings of police action can put lives at risk. Think about the under cover cop busting a gang up. Record him doing his job and releasing that recording would put not only the cop at risk but anyone around him. His family, friends and coworkers would quickly become targets.
Look, I am not saying what these police did is right but I am also not going to condemn the whole force or the policy they are following in limited cases. The fault lies in their training and supervision. A lack of either will result in instances like this.
Lastly, it was the city attorney and police chief that decided this case had merit enough to pursue it all the way to the appeals court. That was a foolish mistake that the Mayor and city government is ultimately responsible for. Want to punish someone, punish them.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
disciplined two of the officers for using "unreasonable judgment" in arresting Glik
The city fight tooth and nail, doing everything it can purely to defend the officers judgment, they must be a very noble bunch of people to be so selfless in defending the actions of their employees.
Ohwait, could it be they where really trying defend their own actions as well as the officers. Hmm... na, that doesnt make sense, if that was the case they would have taken their share of the blame.
It's curious to note that a dystopic system of constant video and audio surveillance would actually serve to check this particular behavior, as long as the cameras were not controlled by any government department or organization in the regional executive branch.
Help me out people. SO this new job I have, I get to lock/bitch slap people who don't respect my "authorita" and even if I screw up (on purpose), SOMEBODY ELSE pays my legal bills and any judgements against me??? Sweet!!! What a deal!!! Sign me up. Even the mafia couldn't do this... AWESOME!!!
If you think the citizenry of this semi fascist community should be off the hook, then I suggest more than a few of them get on the phone with the mayors office and ensure the officers get more than a reprimand. Rank and file thug officers are hard to come by. Police chiefs usually serve at the pleasure of the city manager. My most haunting thought is half the people in this town think the police were right.
As an aside, what percentage of people in your community derive their income from the police state you live under? You know we're screwed right?
Uh.. if the under cover is performing the bust... his cover is already blown because the people he is arresting have seen his face. Since you are going with a gang example.. the arrested members can and will pass that information on to their outside fellows. And the danger you say would exist because of a recording will exist without one. So.. try again?
Also.. the police officers themselves deserve to be punished. They have powers of arrest. If they don't know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what they are doing is legal, they shouldn't be fucking doing it. We could call it something new and crazy .. like "responsibility" If these officers don't want to be responsible with power, they can get a job without the bloody power.
If you're doing anything other than pointing out the law, which a judge will either agree with as written or you appeal to the higher courts, you will need expert testimony.
A good expert will be $5000 plus travel, adjust for better/worse and the city. He may have paid someone $10k just to review the evidence and testify on the technical side of things. Was the video doctored? I bet the police defense asked those types of things. Poke any hole at all in the evidence.
"The lawyers" get all the money in class action lawsuits, where they have to compile piles of suits into a single one and coordinate. Excessive, even they will do a lot of work. IP suits, especially where the language of the contract is at issue (such as the Novell IP with Unix/SCO), they will spend a while interviewing people and reviewing evidence and come away with a huge payday. These are the areas where you get to say "the lawyers probably took it all."
This type of suit, "legal fees" includes a lot more than just what the lawyer gets. Especially when it's $50k over 5 years. $10k/year, allowing for one expert per year, is not a whole lot.
I was wondering why someone was arrested for bootlegging a show made by Sting, Andy Summes and Stewart Copeland, and why Tom Scholz and Michael Sweet have to pay $170.000 to him.
When the next election rolls around make a fuss, point out to everyone that the police have cost you money with their thuggish tactics, demand candidates for the city council reduce the police budget by 170k demand the officers be fired. Your city officials allowed this, hold them accountable for it.
Here's a source for ya :)
Yeah, good luck holding a job after spending who knows how long in jail, followed by having to make court appearances over a five year trial...
The cops were working for the city. They authority they abused was derived from the city. The city -- and thus the citizenry -- is responsible for their actions.
The problem with this sort of logic is that it is almost impossible for concerned citizens to reform this kind of behavior. The people making the decisions wield too much power and our electoral system shields them from most accountability. Financial immunity just means they have virtually no incentive at all to do the right thing. Re-election chances have much more to do with prevailing politics than individual actions, even if the latter is what makes it into the issue ads that the candidate with more money runs.
I almost got arrested once for watching the cops beat down an innocent man, but I was generously offered the option to leave, rather than go with him.
So, some cops are cool.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
It is about time that they had accountability for their actions, and too many in the gov. were helping sweep the problem under the rug. Now we have a first case precedent that will help with all future case (hopefully) and allow a more controlled approach to video taping cops doing their jobs, which we should be able to do!
If exposing an undercover cop put so many lives at risk, then why don't more of them get killed? After a person is arrested, they aren't kept from communicating with the outside world. And the cop probably has to testify against them at trial. So you definitely have people who both know the person was an undercover cop AND what he/she looks like.
On the other hand what rules are there against filming a cop maintaining his cover? The person filming can't know the person is a cop. It could be just a good citizen trying to help the police top the neighborhood gang.
Hehe, it sounds better than what that troll APK is doing to you right now. He does know who you are and what you've accomplished, yes? I am slightly amused, just not in the way APK was intending...
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
How much of that is "actual economic" damages, how much is "loss of reputation/pain and suffering," and how much is punitive?
Normally, I would say that the amount that is "punitive" should go to the government or taxpayers, but since this was the government screwing up, it should go to a charity instead.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What you just said is exactly right, even though you stated it sarcastically. Police performing official duties in public have no expectation of privacy. When they get home, though, they have the same right to not have their phone calls snooped that every private citizen enjoys in their own home.
Wiretapping laws exist to defend every citizen's reasonable expectation of privacy, an extension of the constitutionally-guaranteed right to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches". Any recording of U.S. citizens' private conversation for the purposes of law enforcement should therefore be a special exception to the rule, not a matter of routine procedure; it is by definition an invasion of privacy, is only acceptable when there is probable cause to suspect a crime is being committed, and even then only under supervision of judicial authority (warrant issued by a judge).
Anyone walking down the street, however, has the right to see anything that's visible to them. Cameras (whether they be still or video) serve as memory augmentation devices; the photographer uses them to help remember what they saw. And, according to this ruling, everyone in the U.S. has the right to photograph anything that they can see from a public place (although that precedent had already been set prior to now). So if they see a policeman arresting someone, they have a right to record it. In contrast, however, the city putting up police cameras everywhere and monitoring it with software that can track an individual's face as it moves from one camera to another is exactly equivalent to close surveillance, another activity that U.S. courts have declared an invasion of privacy.
The biggest difference between private actions here and state actions, however, is the implied threat of force. A private citizen following someone else around the city with a camera without the subject's permission is simply harassing the subject. A policeman doing so is collecting evidence, and does so with authority to detain, arrest, prosecute, and imprison (with authorized used of deadly force if necessary to perform such acts). It is a violation of the subject's rights regardless of who is doing it (be it a private citizen, a police officer/other government official, or a corporation), but I find it particularly offensive when the government i pay for with my taxes and which is supposed to be acting to defend my rights violates them with an implied threat of violence and a "what are you going to do about it" attitude.
I suspect that you're actually just trolling; if that's not the case, however, I hope that I've at least made clearer the position of the people you were mocking in your comment.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
.... well not quite, but it seemed like a funny reference.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
How long do you imagine he spent in jail for filming the police?
Do you know what his job is? Heres a clue.
http://gliklaw.com/gliklaw/About_Me.html
I can guarantee you neither of these things you mention were any problem for him at all. They'll have taken up some amount of time over the years, but they won't have stopped him working on many other cases as well.
I'm not TheRaven64. Among other ways to tell (uids, posts, etc...), he's English and I'm American. You can tell by this (old) post : http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2563666&cid=38310690. He spells it "vapour" and I spell it "vapor".
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
He worked on behalf of all United States citizens for years, protecting your rights, so maybe he should receive more. Who says it needs to come from the courts? Get him to put up a page with his Paypal details. If you all sent him $10 for the 5 years of work he put in on your behalf then you can probably double his $50k compensation within a day.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
You were asked a question, so was TheRaven64. Answer it. You too TheRaven64. I am curious myself now on what either of you have done. I've seen apk's list before he has put up when confronted by lesser mortals around here. Match or exceed it.
I have patches in Samba and there is a patch in Linux-3.4 based on a patch I wrote a while ago that was picked up by Red Hat. Every modern Linux distro ships code that I wrote.
As to your prevarications and easily seen thru smokescreen facades? Why don't you just telegraph your b.s. and methods you use to use your alternate registered sockpuppet accounts TheRaven64. Others here do it like tomhudson = Barbara, not Barbie, and have been caught in it. Do you think you're suddenly defending TheRaven64 fools us not? Not.
What does this even mean? Do you still think I'm TheRaven64? Was the fact that we speak different dialects of English not enough? Do you really believe that someone would go through the trouble of running two accounts (registered hundreds of thousand users apart) using two dialects of a language just to screw with you? I assure you that no one cares that much.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
"Below is a list of initiative petitions filed with the Attorney General's Office and the Attorney General's certification decisions." See Initiative Petition 11-31. It got certified last summer, a good sign for the voters next time around.
I was tortured with a handcuff on only one arm by a Trooper trying to get me to resist. As I had stood in front of his cohort's police car moments before so he wouldn't drive away with the key to my bike, I had clearly started video recording him out of concern for being run down by him. He returned the key when Trooper B showed up, who sadly did not get to call the tow truck on my account. Did my phone make record of the entire encounter?
Glik has returned my call on a couple occasions and I celebrate his reasonable compensatory award with him in spirit. His ACLU lawyer also returned my call. I'm not a lawyer, but Wendy Kaminer's book about the ACLU "Worst Instincts" gets some validation from what I've observed. Perhaps it takes the added value of a lawyer to assist the ACLU--or does it take a lawyer to get them to serve their function? I'm not done with this episode although the statute of limitations has passed. You see, there are some outstanding matters to still be addressed.
Massachusetts is troubled place when you get a view on the behavior of Commonwealth employees from police, RMV, to judges. What relief we get is a market of cowardly attorneys and legislators that double-down on attempts to improve things. I live in a troubled place, indeed.
J. Toby Knudsen
by winning it and costing them $170,000 the Boston police department did what they should have done in the first fucking place - the disciplined the officers involved.
You have several small inaccuracies in your post.
1) It cost the taxpayers $170,000. No one in the chain of responsibility will be out a single penny.
2) The "discipline" is most likely to be an "oral reprimand". Unless I misunderstood the term and the "oral" part refers to the officers being forced to fellate Mr. Glik, this is not much of a punishment.
...they got sent home with pay. That's what always seems to happen.
Police Chief: 'Officer Dickwad, we're going to punish the hell out of you. You have to stay home for a month at 100% pay.'
Dickwad: 'C'mon, Guv! Don't make me stay home and get paid to do nothing! Oh the horror!'
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Fair enough - if you're a lawyer you might not be crippled by a lawsuit.
Not really sure it changes the fact that the system is pretty broken.
Is it really anything if they paid out 170k to avoid having a judge rule? Did they terminate the officers involved?
Until officers fear loosing there jobs for infringing on the general populaces rights these abuses will continue.
No sir I dont like it.