Gangsters in Blue

Ryan Frederick is the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). Prior coverage of his trial here.

(Note: My analysis of the trial is based on coverage by the Virginian-Pilot and by local blogger Don Tabor.)

On Friday, the jury heard more testimony police officers who were on the raid. It’s notable that the testimony from the various officers varied about which and how many announcements individual officers heard. One officer who was with the second raid team that hit Frederick’s garage, for example, says he only heard one announcement, from a female officer. This, even though he was outside with the other raid team, only a short distance away. Frederick, meanwhile, was sleeping, separated from the officers by walls, and distracted by barking dogs and likely his own paranoia from having just been burglarized.

The second raid team was also slowed down by a fence, and entered the garage after the other team began taking down Frederick’s door.  That means the garage raid team’s announcements wouldn’t have been a factor in determining whether or no Frederick should have known the people invading his home were police.

One thing I neglected to mention from Thursday’s proceedings that’s worth rehashing: Just as they did at a preliminary hearing last March, the police again said they moved to break into Frederick’s home after one officer peered through a window and saw a moving human figure. If the purpose of the knock-and-announce requirement is to give the home’s occupant time to answer the door and avoid a violent confrontation, a figure moving toward the door shouldn’t be a reason to commence with the battering ram. Doing so renders moot the whole point of knock-and-announce. If the cops see you move to answer the door, they invade because you’ve blown their cover.  Of course if you don’t answer the door, they’ll also be taking down your door.

The other two notable items from Friday involved more shenanigans from the prosecution. During opening statements, prosecutor James Willett told the jury Frederick was “stoned out of his mind,” and “in a blind rage” when he shot Det. Jarrod Shivers the night of the raid.

During his own opening, Frederick attorney James Broccoletti showed video of an interview with CPD Det. Edward Winkelspecht, who said Frederick didn’t appear high after his arrest. Despite the fact that his name was on the prosecution’s witness list, when Broccoletti said in court Friday that he’d like to hear from Det. Winkelspecht, the Virginian-Pilot reports,

“…prosecutors told Judge Marjorie T. Arrington that the officer was unavailable to testify because he was in Georgia for training and was expected to be there for weeks, if not months.”

Seems odd that the prosecution wouldn’t have ensured that such an important witness would be around for questioning—or, if you’re sufficiently cynical, it isn’t odd at all.

At Broccoletti’s request, the judge compelled the officer to come back. Det. Winkelspecht then testified today that Frederick was coherent and responsive the night of the raid, that his eyes weren’t bloodshot, and that he had no concerns about Frederick not understanding or comprehending his rights. The police also apparently either didn’t give Frederick a drug test, or they did and the results either weren’t positive or weren’t conclusive.

All of which means Willett had zero evidence for the “stoned out of his mind” and “blind rage” description of Frederick he made to jurors in his opening statement. I’m not sure what Broccoletti can do about that, other than to remind the jury during his closing, and to take note of it all for the appeal should Frederick be convicted

The other major detail from Friday involves a videotaped reenactment of the raid conducted by police and prosecutors that the state has fought vigorously to keep the defense from seeing. From Tabor’s report:

Though the video was the product of a search warrant, the prosecution has maintained it was an internal ‘work product’ of the prosecution crafted to help them develop their theory of the case and not subject to discovery by the defense. They admitted that the defense was entitled to any measurements, drawings, photos or graphs resulting from the search, but not the video. But they also claimed they made no measurements, photos or drawings, only the video.

The problem is that the prosecution then entered a still from the video into evidence, which one of Frederick’s attorneys noticed included a string used to measure the trajectory of the fatal bullet. That’s pretty clearly a measurement, which means the prosecution wasn’t telling the truth about what’s in the video, and hasn’t given the defense all of the evidence it’s required to turn over. The judge ruled that the defense be allowed to view the video, and ordered the prosecution to look again to be sure it wasn’t holding any evidence that could be relevant to Frederick’s lawyers.

According to the Virginian-Pilot, the police also revealed today what they found in Frederick’s home—lights, tubing, and some books about growing marijuana. None of those things are illegal, though they do indicate—as Broccoletti conceded in his opening statement—that Frederick was likely growing marijuana. Broccoletti told the jury Frederick grew solely for his own use, and so far the prosecution has provided no evidence of selling or distribution. The police found no plants in the house or garage on the night of the raid, but did find misdemeanor amount of dried marijuana. Still, it looks like this will all boil down to whether this jury can look at the holes in the state’s case long enough to get beyond “growing pot + shot a cop.”

The jury was supposed to view Frederick’s home this afternoon (over the objections of the prosecution), but that visit was cancelled. The reports I’ve seen don’t say why.

Agitator pal Pete Eyre reports an Arlington, Virginia police officer parked in a no parking zone. The officer then follows Eyre as he walks home. Incidentally, it’s perfectly legal to open carry in Virginia. So the officer’s claim that that’s why he was following Eyre doesn’t fly.

Via J.D. Tuccille, who notes a couple other recent examples of police getting special treatment.

Ryan Frederick is the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). My coverage of the first two days of his trial here.

I should note in these updates that I’m not actually in Chesapeake for the trial. My analysis of what’s happening is contingent on reporting from the trial from the Virginian-Pilot newspaper and from local blogger Don Tabor, who is writing up reports from notes he’s taking in the courtroom (and whom I’ve found to be pretty fair in his prior coverage of the case).

Yesterday began with the state calling Jarrond Shivers’ widow to the stand. I found this odd, and a couple of criminal defense attorneys I spoke with (both not related to the case) confirmed my suspicions. I don’t doubt Nicole Shivers’ grief, but her tearful testimony added nothing substantive to what’s at issue in this case: whether Ryan Frederick knew or should have known that the men breaking into his home were police officers. Shivers testified about her first date with her husband, about their relationship, and about the last time she saw him. This sort of testimony at least makes some sense during a sentencing hearing, but during the guilt phase of a criminal trial, it’s inappropriate. It’s only purpose is to spark juror emotions—to put in their head that a "not guilty" verdict may only inflame the widows’ grief.

According to Tabor, Frederick attorney James Broccoletti didn’t object to Shivers taking the stand, though it’s possible that he objected to her inclusion as a witness at an earlier hearing. Broccoletti didn’t respond to an email query (understandably, given that he’s in the middle of a trial). It’s possible that Broccoletti calculated that objecting to allowing Shivers to have her say would lose him sympathy with the jury, particularly if he thought he’d be overruled, anyway. I’d be interested in what readers with a criminal law background think of Nicole Shivers taking the stand.

The rest of the day was taken up by testimony from police officers involved in the raid. They reiterated the claim that they knocked and announced themselves repeatedly. Tabor found their testimony believable. I’ve heard from others at the trail who found them less credible.  But I’m not sure their credibility matters. Even taking the officers’ testimony at face value, from the first knock until the battering ram took out the lower panel of his front door, Frederick had at most 25 seconds to wake up, gauge what was going on outside his home, and determine what to do about it. This, while his dogs were going nuts, and after he’d been burglarized days earlier (by the police department’s own informant).

A few other items that came out yesterday that are worth noting:

•  On the day of the raid, Frederick bought two dead bolt locks for his door. A relatively minor point, but it helps establish his state of mind the night of the raid.

•  Broccoletti conceded that Frederick did at some point grow marijuana plants for personal use, but Frederick adamantly denies ever selling any. The police had no evidence at the time to suggest otherwise. (I don’t know what the state has in store for the trial.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they trotted out a jailhouse snitch claiming to have bought marijuana from Frederick). They attempted no controlled buys from Frederick. They surveilled his home and found nothing unusual. The affidavit mentions no complaints from neighbors (the neighbors I’ve spoken to speak highly of him). This raid wasn’t conducted on a community menace. It was conducted on a guy who smoked and sometimes grew pot in his own home, for his own use.

• Indeed, the police officers who testified yesterday conceded that the only evidence they had on Frederick was the word of their informant, Steven Wright. Wright at the time was being held on felony charges related to credit card theft. According to the officers who testified, Wright had helped them on one prior case, and was paid $50. 

I should first add that this testimony conflicts with what Renaldo Turnbull (the other man who broke into Frederick’s house with Wright) told me in June, and with what he told the Virginian-Pilot last February. Turnbull said both he and Wright had been working with the police for months, and that the police had encouraged them to illegally break into private homes to obtain probably cause for search warrants.

But let’s assume the police officers are telling the truth. If so, that means they broke into Frederick’s house after nightfall, using a battering ram, based solely on the word of a shady informant who at the time was facing his own felony charges. Not only that, but he didn’t even have the marijuana plants he claimed to have taken. Those plants, if they even exist, have never been in police possession.

• From the Virginian-Pilot:

Roberts, Shivers’ partner in the Frederick case, testified at length about the history of the investigation, the informant used and the surveillance conducted.

He described how they pulled up to the house that night in an unmarked van with the lights off. A second group was in an unmarked car, and a marked patrol unit rolled up past the house.

Dressed mostly in black, they “approached in a stealth manor,” [sic] Roberts said. Shivers was to be the first through the door.

They started pounding on the door, shouting and then trying to break it down with a battering ram.

“I wanted, without a doubt, Mr. Frederick to know that we were the police outside,” Detective Sgt. Scott Chambers said.

This doesn’t make sense. If they wanted Frederick to know there were police outside "without a doubt," why approach the house in a "stealth-like manner"?  Why dress in black, and pull up silently in black, unmarked cars? If they wanted Frederick to know "without a doubt" that the police were outside his home, they should have used lights and sirens.  Perhaps a bullhorn.

This is the typical position the police take in these cases. They simultaneously maintain that the ninja tactics are necessary to take the suspect by surprise—and that the suspect should have known it was the police who were breaking into his home. The only way to resolve those two positions is to say that the police want to be stealth until they get to the door, at which point they want to be loud and boisterous.  That is, they want to take the suspect by surprise until just before entry, at which point they want to make it clear who they are. That puts an incredible amount of pressure on, in this case and others, a sleeping person to wake up and correctly ascertain what’s going on.

(I’d encourage readers to experiment sometime.  Lay down in a bedroom and have a friend pound on your front door and yell.  See if you can decipher what they’re saying, even while awake.)

• As I discussed yesterday, the other gaping hole in the prosecution’s case is that they’re maintaining that even though Steven Wright told them Frederick’s home was broken into three nights before the raid, and even though they knew that Wright was in Frederick’s home the same night it was burglarized, they didn’t know until months later that it was actually Wright who conducted the burglary, and that he conducted it specifically (and illegally) to obtain probable cause for the search warrant.

Again from the Virginian-Pilot:

Roberts’ testimony drew the most intense cross-examination after he named the informant – Steven Wright, whose full name is Steven Rene Wright. The police have refused until the trial to name him.

Also for the first time, Wright was identified as the person who alerted police to a break-in at Frederick’s house days before the raid.

Wright failed, however, to tell police that it was he who broke into Frederick’s garage and stole several marijuana plants, despite being asked “15 times,” Roberts said. Police didn’t learn that until about three months ago, he said.

Again, lots of problems, here. If they had to ask Wright "15 times," might that speak to his trustworthiness as an informant—particularly one on whose word would be the sole reason you conduct a home invasion raid?

Moreover, why would Wright possibly implicate himself by telling the police about the burglary in the first place? Did the police think Frederick invited him in?  Did they ask Wright how he was able to take several plants without Frederick noticing?

The state seems to be arguing that Wright came to the police that night and said something to the effect of, "Okay, I found several marijuana plants in the guy’s garage tonight.  I took a few. Don’t ask me how I got them. Also, I don’t have the actual plants anymore. Must have lost them. But I’m sure they were marijuana. Trust me on that. Also, somebody broke into his garage tonight. But it wasn’t me."

And they bought it?  In fact, they not only bought it, they bought it enough that they didn’t feel they needed to do any further investigation before conducting a raid?

Seems to be that what Turnbull told me and the Virginia-Pilot is a far more plausible explanation. The cops had an arrangement with these guys. The cops looked the other way while their informants illegally broke into homes to get probable cause. That would explain why the cops knew on the night of the raid that Frederick’s house had been burglarized three nights earlier (and were recorded saying as much).

Finally, we still don’t know if Turnbull and Wright been charged for burglarizing Ryan Frederick’s home. If not, why not?

Garland, Texas police officer responds to a noise complaint. Instead of knocking on the front door, he walks around to the back of the house. There, he claims the leashed dog, while in its own yard, “attacked” him, so he shot and killed it. The police department now says the officer wasn’t aware that the dog was on a leash.

I wonder if that excuse would fly if someone other than a police officer shot and killed someone’s leashed dog while on their property. By going around to the back, the cop didn’t really give the owners a chance to notify him of the dog, or to call the dog to restrain it.

Also, when we’ve seen these sorts of stories in the past, the police department is quick to point out that the dog wasn’t properly leashed. This time, we get this:

When it comes to aggressive canines, Officer Joe Harn said that Garland officers “are allowed to do what they feel is necessary at the time.”

Harn also said that according to city code, an animal is not allowed to be leashed to a “stationary object,” which could endanger the animal or any people.

Seems like a strange law. It makes sense if it’s referring to public areas (you can’t tie your dog to a telephone pole while you run into the post office, for example). It makes much less sense if it applies to private residences, too.

Via Trey Garrison.

Today is the third day in the trial of Ryan Frederick, the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). Tuesday primarily consisted of jury selection. Yesterday featured the opening statements.

I’m really in awe of the prosecution’s brazen strategy. According to the Virginian-Pilot, prosecutor James Willett argued in his opening that Frederick was “stoned out of his mind,” and “in a blind rage” at the time of the raid. Willett is apparently confident that no one on the jury has ever smoked marijuana. Frederic attorney James Broccoletti then asked the judge to admit into evidence a video in which a police detective flat-out says that Frederick didn’t appear high at the time of the raid. Moreover, in a recorded conversation taken shortly after the raid, Frederic says he didn’t know the men breaking into his home were the police. And he’s weeping.

As I suspected, the prosecution’s case is going to rely not just on the word of criminal informants, but of jailhouse snitches, too. Again from the Virginian-Pilot:

[Frederick] later told a jail inmate that if he had more ammunition, “he would have taken them all down,” a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.

“He’s over there” in jail “bragging about it. He thinks he’s going to beat this charge,” James Willett, one of three prosecutors, told the jury during opening statements.

This is just absurd. Frederick was on suicide watch shortly after the raid. He surrendered after discovering the men breaking into his home were the police. Everyone I’ve spoken to who knows Frederick describes him as meek, shy, and introverted. It isn’t surprising that the prosecution could find a felon willing to say Frederick confessed to him in exchange for help with his own sentence. What will be surprising is if the jury is made aware of the deal he cut with prosecutors.

One other huge inconsistency in the state’s case came out in opening arguments. From the Tidewater Liberty blog:

[Willett] went on to describe how the police carefully planned how to serve the warrant and of the necessity of serving it with overwhelming force because they knew Frederick’s home had been burglarized and he would be wary.

Let’s set aside for a moment the incredibly dumb calculation that it would be a good idea to launch an aggressive, forced-entry, after-dark raid on a man the police knew would be “wary” because his home had just been burglarized. (A man who had no prior record and no history of violent behavior, by the way.)

We now know that the police informants were the ones who broke into Frederick’s home, and that this is how they obtained probable cause for the raid. Yet the police didn’t explain on their affidavit for the warrant that their probable cause had been obtained illegally, as is required by law. The state says this is because the police weren’t aware of that fact until months later. Yet they’re now arguing that the police knew on the night of the raid that Frederick’s house had been broken into three nights earlier, even though Frederick never reported the break-in.

So the state is arguing the following:

• The police knew on the night of the raid that Frederick’s home had been burglarized three nights before the raid.

• The police learned of the break-in through their informant, Steven Wright. Frederick never reported the break-in.

• The police mention on the warrant that Wright was in Frederick’s home “72 hours” prior to the raid.

• Despite all of this, the police never made the connection that, despite his criminal record, and that he was desperate to get help on the felony charges he was facing at the time, their informant could possibly have been the one who committed the break in.

The Chesapeake police involved in this raid were either corrupt or stupid. They either lied on the warrant, or they were incredibly ignorant of what their informants were doing. The prosecution has apparently calculated that their case against Frederick is better served by “stupid.”

Frederick’s defense is moving for a mistrial given these inconsistencies in police and prosecution statements regarding the informants.

This, from the Virginian-Pilot’s latest article on the upcoming Ryan Frederick trial, actually threw a chill down my spine:

Also subpoenaed for the trial were five jail inmates who evidently had conversations with Frederick about the shooting. One of them is Marlon Reed, a Norfolk gang leader who already got one break on his sentence after testifying against co-defendants in his federal racketeering case.

I’ll make a prediction: At trial, we’ll hear about how the slight guy who has wept at nearly every public appearance since his arrest (one year ago yesterday, by the way) was openly boasting to other inmates about the cop he bagged. Or maybe they’ll say he tried to sell them marijuana.

To retrofit a phrase, once the state has determined you’re a nail in need of smashing, there’s really no limit to the number of hammers at its disposal.

A jury has found that officers with the Prince George’s County, Maryland (where else?) police department used excessive force when they apprehended and arrested a TV reporter who was investigating possible improper use of public resources. I don’t know the much about the case other than what’s in the article, and from the article, it sound like the jury got it right–too much force, though the decision to puller her over may not have been out of bounds.

But it’s the last sentence of the article I found particularly interesting:

In all, nine police cars from Prince George’s and Cheverly responded. Although most of the squad cars were equipped with video cameras, police said none of them were working that day, Pavsner said.

So “most” squad cars in PG County have video cameras. Yet at the scene of a controversial arrest, with nine cars at the scene, not a single squad car camera was “working that day?”

So after looking at the videos several times, I have to dissent from the chorus calling for the head of Johannes Mehserle, the cop who shot and killed Oscar Grant at an Oakland BART station two weeks ago.

Mehserle’s body language after he fires the shot to me indicates panic and confusion, not satisfaction at having just carried out a deliberate execution, as some local politicians have portrayed it. I find the explanation that Mehserle thought he he had grabbed his taser to be not only plausible, but likely.

That doesn’t mean Mehserle should get off.  He’s clearly at fault. Whatever line of work he finds next, a portion of his paycheck should go to Oscar Grant’s family for the rest of Mehserle’s life. That should probably go for the people who trained him, too (though that isn’t going to happen).  Moreover, Mehserle should never wear a badge again. Oscar Grant’s death will either haunt him for the rest of his life, or it won’t. In either case, it disqualifies him from being a cop. If it’s determined that there was no reason for Mehserle to draw his taser (Grant appears to be handcuffed and on his stomach in the videos), then he’s guilty of excessive force, and a manslaughter charge might be appropriate.

The police should be held to a higher standard than those of us without a badge. As Glenn Reynolds points out in the New York Post today, the courts unfortunately seem to hold them to a lower one. The doctrine of qualified immunity, which affords police officers (and other government employees) protection from negligence not afforded to those of us who don’t get a government paycheck, is another example.

That said, there seems to be a mob-fueled rush to pin a murder charge on this guy. Given the videos, it just doesn’t seem warranted to me. Speaking as a journalist who has reported on plenty of aggravating stories where bad cops got off scot-free, Mehserle shouldn’t have to suffer the accumulated anger of all of those stories. He should be charged for what he did, nothing more.

At the same time, I’d pose this question to the Mehserle defenders I’ve seen on police forums and bulletin boards: I’m sympathetic to the argument that in the heat of the moment, Mehserle inadvertently reached for the wrong weapon. But Mehserle had training. He had other cops there backing him up. If we’re going to be sympathetic to him, where’s the sympathy for people like Cory Maye or Ryan Frederick?

Why should we assume good intentions when a cop with training, wide awake and conscious, with other cops all around him makes a mistake that ends with a fatality, but assume the worst when a civilian is awoken by the sound of police breaking into his home, and in the heat of the moment, fires a gun after mistaking them for criminal intruders?

Seems to me you can’t simultaneously argue that trained police officers should be forgiven for nervous mistakes made in the heat of the moment, but ordinary people should be expected to show impeccable judgment and restraint, even under unimaginably volatile and confrontational circumstances.