[CIMC-work] court decision exonerates reporters of trespassing charge while covering protests

[Chris Kaihatsu]

http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/35677/index.php


CIMC,

I hid the test article of Chris G.'s at the link above.


Also, the article below is of major consequence to anyone who has or will be
reporting on protest activities in Chicago, as protests are invariably
surrounded by cops.

I, myself, was arrested in Madison, Wisconsin, while covering the protests
at the Conference of Mayors for the Chicago Independent Media Center. I was
detained for four days in the Dane County jail while the FBI mulled over
whether or not to extradite me to Philadelphia for a trial on a separate,
protest-related arrest. (They decided not to.)

Besides the court ruling I also wonder if police have any standing to eject
reporters or members of the public from the scene of a protest if they have
not committed any crime.


Chris







http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/35613/index.php#comments

News :: Protest Activity

Bogus Conviction Overturned

Current rating: 6
by jack
Email: wrenchinthespokes (nospam) riseup.net (unverified!)  22 Jan 2004
Modified: 02:27:10 AM
An unjust and unfounded ruling on a case dating back to Mayday, 2003 has
been overturned.
Judge Colleen Sheahan has reversed her initial ruling on a trespassing case
dating back to Mayday, 2003. An appeal to the guilty verdict which had been
in the works for several months was heard in court yesterday, and was
granted.
At the heart of the case was whether the defendant-me, jack-had been given a
chance to leave the grounds of the Chicago Stock Exchange, where a Mayday
demonstration was taking place, which I was documenting with a videocamera.

During the original trial, in August, both the footage shot by me and
security camera footage used by the prosecution as evidence against me
showed clearly that I was not being allowed to leave the plaza at the Stock
Exchange, after being asked to, and was asked to leave directly only after
being backed into a wall by multiple security gaurds who were significantly
larger than me. The footage also showed how I was being singled out as a
target, presumably because I had a camera.

As soon as these guards backed off from me a little, I ran toward the
nearest exit from the plaza, in an attempt to leave, as I had been asked to.
At the orriginal trial, this was interpreted as "evidence of guilt," and
through the appeal it was proven that since I was forced to remain in the
plaza against my will, the running was evidence only that I was trying to do
what I had been asked to do by the building security.

What the overturning of this conviction means is that there is no longer a
case the state can point to in Chicago if it wants to go after journalists
or anyone else who is simply documenting a demonstration in a manner similar
to what I was doing last Mayday. It means that activists now have the upper
hand, so to speak, if another case resembling mine-or possibly even one
that's not so much like mine-should come up again. It seems like only a
small step in the right direction, but laws revolve around precedents, and
this is clearly a precedent that now works in the favor of those who choose
to fight injustice.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with this! It means a lot to me, but I
hope it will mean even more the next time they try to arrest someone on some
bullshit and they're less able to get away with it because of this
conviction being overturned.

This work is in the public domain

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ALSO................
by Dorina Prisacaru
DCGolightly (nospam) ecoisp.com (unverified)  Current rating: 0
22 Jan 2004
The Courage of Mitchell Crooks

Jailed, Beaten, Tortured and Threatened for Videotaping Police Beating

Revolutionary Worker #1226, January 25, 2004, posted at rwor.org
Also, Check Mitchell's site out www.freecrooks.com

Mitchell Crooks was on vacation that July 4 weekend in 2002. "I heard a
woman screaming, `Don't resist!' and I knew right away that it was the
police."

Crooks grabbed his camera and ran outside his motel in time to catch on tape
the now infamous beating of Donovan Jackson by a gang of cops in Inglewood,
right next door to L.A. His videotape shows how the cops took the
16-year-old Donovan and beat him outrageously, then slammed the
half-conscious young man onto the hood of a car and beat him some more.

On the tape, you can hear Crooks say, "They're gonna come up and come after
me now." Worried about turning the video over to the cops, Crooks took the
precaution of separating the tape from his camera and giving it to some
other guests.

Within minutes, 17 sheriffs were combing through the motel. Crooks later
said, "Ninety percent of the people there knew I'd taped it, but no one said
a word. We all knew that if they got it, it would be the end, it would
disappear."

The cops didn't find the tape. And instead of disappearing, Crooks made sure
that the media got copies of it. His footage was aired on all the major L.A.
news broadcasts, and it was picked up nationally and even internationally.

People across the country and around the world were outraged when they saw
the footage and responded immediately with demonstration after angry
demonstration. Haunted by the memory of the Rodney King incident and the
1992 Los Angeles Rebellion, officials rushed to put out a fire before it
could start by indicting two of the cops who'd been caught on tape. One of
these cops, Jeremy Morse, had been on the force only three years but already
had six previous brutality complaints against him.

Local law enforcement now knew who had shot the video, and they wanted to
get their hands on him. Mitchell called the District Attorney to try and
work something out. The DA ordered him to appear before a county grand jury,
which Mitchell agreed to do. But when they demanded that Crooks turn over
his original tape, he began to get nervous.

The next day, Crooks was being interviewed live on the radio when the Chief
Deputy District Attorney broke into the broadcast. On the air, his tone was
threatening: "Mitchell, there's a grand jury subpoena for you, and I suggest
you honor it! Show up at the Criminal Courts Building."

Crooks told his interviewer, "They're coming after me because I shot the
video. I fear for my life."

In a recent interview on radio station KPFK, Crooks explained: "It's scary
to challenge the system, and I knew that's what I was doing."

When Crooks arrived at CNN the next day for an interview, undercover cops
jumped out of unmarked cars and arrested him when he tried to enter the
station. As they spirited him away in an unmarked SUV, Crooks' screams could
be heard clearly.

Later that night he was treated for unspecified injuries at a hospital, and
the next day he was extradited to northern California to face warrants for
an old traffic violation and a bogus charge of petty theft. He was in
custody for six months, locked down 23 hours a day, and allowed no mail and
no contact with the outside.

In contrast, the cops who beat Donovan Jackson have not spent one day in
jail!

*****

The authorities used the trial not to punish these two brutal cops but, in
Mitchell's words, "to deflate the balloon of people's anger."

First, they moved the trial out of the predominantly African-American
community of Inglewood into the nearby South Bay, a suburban L.A. area with
a reputation for being unfriendly to anybody who isn't white. The defense
was so blatantly kicking all Blacks off the jury that the judge had to
outright override them and reinstate one African-American juror who'd been
excused because, they said, "he looked too much like Donovan Jackson."

During the trial, the prosecution showed they were not at all eager to
really prosecute these cops. They didn't call Crooks or any of the 20 other
eyewitnesses to the beating. And their "use-of-force expert" was an L.A.
County Sheriff's Department commander who expressed empathy for the cop
Morse and testified that he thought the cops should never have been charged
in the first place. In other words, prosecutors used an expert who directly
undermined their case.

So it was no surprise when one cop was acquitted and the jury hung on Morse.
Within days, D.A. Steve Cooley announced that Morse would be retried.

(Morse, who was fired from the Inglewood police department after his
indictment, has filed a "reverse discrimination" suit against the city,
alleging that he was fired because he is white!)

*****

Last week, a new jury was picked for the retrial of the cop Jeremy Morse,
and Crooks' video is expected to play prominently in this second trial.

Mitchell says that over the past month there's been a noticeable rise in the
number and explicitness of the death threats against him. "I've been getting
lots of emails. Some are carefully worded, and some are very crude, overt
ones. I get hassled on the street by cops. I got a dog for protection just
so I can go out in public."

*****

On October 22, 2003, Mitchell Crooks spoke in Los Angeles at the National
Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality and the Criminalization of a
Generation. http://homepage.mac.com/encyte/Personal22.html to watch the
video.

"I wasn't sure I wanted to do that. Hearing [the families of those murdered
by the police] made my situation so small. But then I realized, it's not
really up to me. I have a responsibility to speak out." He told the RW , "We
have a problem of police brutality, and it's all over the country. In Miami
at the FTAA protests. I saw the videotape of the police beating in
Cincinnati. It made me sick! That cop kept jabbing the guy with his baton
just like he was stabbing someone over and over, then dancing in their
blood. And they just keep getting away with it. It's like the October 22
Coalition says, `Police brutality didn't die on 9/11.' Would they have
beaten Donovan Jackson in broad daylight like they did if they didn't think
they could get away with it? They think they have free rein to do whatever
they want now. Do we want to live in a police state? No! People have got to
rise to the occasion."

When RW reporter Michael Slate interviewed Mitchell Crooks on KPFK radio
show "Beneath the Surface," Mitchell talked about why he had stepped out to
expose this brutality against a Black youth: "I'm tired of living divided by
color, divided by race, divided by class. That's what they do to maintain
control over people. I'm tired of living in a world like that. It's so last
century, so last millennium. Me standing up is just one person, but there's
lots of white people who feel the same way. People need to stand up to
racial oppression."

Mitchell Crooks talked about drawing inspiration from rebel youth of Los
Angeles: "It was when the Lakers won their first championship. It was an
awakening. Outside that stadium, I saw history about to happen. When they
danced around the fires, I knew that the youth were going to use their
strength and their knowledge to stand up to this system. I didn't know what
my part was going to be, but all that helped me to know who my enemy is in
this battle and come forward."

Mitchell later told the RW , "I'm proof-positive that revolution is possible
because I'm not the kind of guy who would've had the guts to make that film
and turn it over like I did. I wouldn't have done that before. But after the
Lakers riots woke me up, I said, `If I don't get involved, my dreams will be
crushed.' People should get themselves organized and reach out for more
people to join the fight. You have to encourage others, you have to get them
committed. That's what I'm trying to do every day of my life."
http://rwor.org/a/1226/lavideo.htm
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
rwor.org
Write: Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654
Phone: 773-227-4066 Fax: 773-227-4497

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Re: Bogus Conviction Overturned
by Dorina Prisacaru
DCGolightly (nospam) ecoisp.com (unverified)  Current rating: 0
22 Jan 2004
BTW...Jack, I am very happy for you!!! ^5





___

More and more, the U.S. seems to resemble the former U.S.S.R., except that
instead of people pretending to work and the rulers pretending to pay them,
our rulers are pretending to scare us and we are pretending to be scared.

- me (Chris Kaihatsu), 1-22-04