Correct Expectations, Kick the Can, Accountability re Jordan Miles

Sometimes, evaluating an experience depends on your expectations. If your expectations are informed and realistic, you are more likely to end up with the appropriate degree of satisfaction.

Before you go downtown — for dinner, a play, a meeting, business, etc — make sure you have the correct expectations.

From the excellent Rick Lord in today's Post Gazette::

The City of Pittsburgh paid a consultant, Joseph J Stine, to write a report which "concludes that jumping out of an unmarked car, pursuing Mr. Miles and striking him until he submitted to being handcuffed were consistent with police training."

If that's not your expectation when you go into the city, perhaps you should recalibrate. Also, a minor nit: testifying for cash that something is "consistent with training" is not the same as saying it's legal, justified, or moral. The Police Academy lesson plan doesn't trump the Constitution.

Playing Kick the Can

The report is not a whitewash; it does find one instance of incorrect procedure. When the policemen threw away the Mountain Dew can that they thought was a gun, they violated evidence rules. The report explains that this error is understandable in the context.

Jordan Miles insists there was no Mountain Dew. The report asserts without evidence that there was one.

The Mountain Dew is the purported basis for the police beating. No Dew, no justification.

If there ain't no Can,
Why did you Beat the Man?

If there ain't no Dew,
WTF is wrong with You?

---

Hired guns deliver the desired outputs. According to AELE, Mr. Stine's rates are:

• $275 per hour for review of material and report preparation and submission
• $100 per hour for travel
• $2,000.00 per day depositon [sic]
• $2,500.00 per day for trial testimony days
• $1,200.00 per day for monitoring testimony
• All plus expenses

Traditionally, a litigant gives a consultant money to get the desired report which is biased in favor of their case. What's curious in this instance is that the litigant (the City of Pittsburgh and the Mayor of Pittsburgh) are public and elected, respectively, and so they are presumably accountable for their decisions and the way they spend the Public Treasure.

• It would be interesting to hear the Mayor support (or disavow) the expert report He paid for.
• It would be interesting to hear who decided to hire this consultant, and what process guides public spending on this sort of thing.
• It would be interesting to know, what public official supports the expense and the report that the City has introduced to the Court as authoritative and reliable?

The intriguing question is whether the City, the Pittsburgh Police, and the CopOnTheBeat actually believe this report (which they have told the Court is truthful). I kind of hope that they don't believe it, either.

@justice4jordan

Separation Anxiety: A New Birther Meme

I am intrigued and often amused at the dynamics of misinformation and disinformation, because they lay bare the elements of effective, credible narratives and identify our blind spots. They often seem to generate a higher speed of distribution if they can tap into a latent need in the audience.

For instance, look at the effectiveness of the corporate archive footage of Rockwell's Retroincabulator (and the subsequent update, the Turbo Encabulator). There are lessons to be learned there.

One recent local example would be the spoof FOP Press Release that did, in fact, become a news story that refreshed public awareness of the issue and took on a life of its own when the authorities over-reacted.

Originally from Alex Leary of the St. Petersburg Times, via Politico, we have this video developed on behalf of US Senate wannabee Steve Welch:



I have to wonder if introducing yourself to the electorate by demonstrating your capacity for smooth, glossy disinformation is going to have unintended consequences. (If, in fact, elections still have consequences — but that is a topic for another day.)

A Countdown of Sorts: 3 Days and a Wake Up

FOP Extortion and the Profitable Violence of Public Intoxication

Extortion, outwresting, and/or exaction is a criminal offense which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either {money, property or services} from {a person(s), entity, or institution} through coercion.

Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime groups. The actual obtainment of money or property is not required to commit the offense.

Making a threat which refers to a requirement of money or property to halt future problems is sufficient to commit the offense. Exaction refers to extortion but also means the infliction of something (pain, suffering, enduring something unpleasant).

Neither extortion nor blackmail require a threat of violence but merely a threat used to elicit actions, money, or property from the victim. Such threats could include the filing of reports, revelation of damaging facts, etc.

The PG headline reads, "City sergeant sues owner of Station Square over bar brawl". The writing is great but the headline may be inadequate. Here's the article:

A Pittsburgh police sergeant Friday sued a Beaver County man and the owner of Station Square over an injury the officer said he suffered there in 2009 while trying to break up a bar fight.

Sgt. Craig Campbell, head of the vice unit and a veteran of the city's elite Street Response Unit, was in uniform and working a secondary employment security detail at the Saddle Ridge bar on May 3, 2009, when a fight broke out in front of the nearby Matrix Bar at about 2 a.m.

When Sgt. Campbell responded to help other officers break up the fight, he said one of the combatants, Brian Richard Grimes, 27, of Beaver, kicked him in the knee from behind. Police arrested Mr. Grimes and hauled him to jail.

Sgt. Campbell said he suffered a torn knee ligament and dislocated kneecap that has required surgery and extensive physical therapy. In the complaint, filed in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, Sgt. Campbell accused Mr. Grimes of assault and battery and Forest City Enterprises of negligence.

[Sgt. Campbell] said Forest City, owner of Station Square, was partially liable because the company didn't hire enough security personnel to handle brawls on busy nights, putting him at risk.

According to the complaint, Forest City failed to provide adequate security despite knowledge of "heightened frequency of fights" on weekends.

Mr. Grimes was charged after the bar incident with various offenses, including aggravated assault and resisting arrest. His trial last month ended in a mistrial and a new one is coming up in the next several months, said his lawyer, Michael O'Day. . . .

I wonder if there isn't a larger story of the City of Pittsburgh allowing its police force to be hired out as security guards, providing local businesses with bouncers who, at any sign of trouble, magically transform into police officers with arrest powers and the authority to write the official version — police officers whose errors are paid for by the taxpayers and the city's insurance provider, and whose injuries are covered as if on-the-job by the City-FOP union contract.

It's a sort of reverse contracting out; instead of the city hiring private companies to provide government services, the City/FOP rents out fully-equipped, fully insured government employees to provide private services. The payment goes to the mercenaries, the politics benefit the Administration, and the liability/risk go to the taxpayers. The city (ie us) pays for all the training, uniforms, guns, bullets, Tasers, insurance, injuries, and settlements. Sweet!

Let's attempt to describe the events of "the night in question".

• Police officer works part-time, off the clock, for private business
  
• The city and union regulate, approve, and administer the arrangement
  
• He's working as an independent contractor, wearing a Pittsburgh police uniform, carrying a Pittsburgh gun and a Pittsburgh radio
  
• at a business down the street, some other contractors get in trouble
  
• How did he know about the trouble? Pittsburgh police radio
  
• He leaves his workplace to help other contractors at another site. Amazingly, in an instant they all transmogrified from private contractors into members of the FOP Pittsburgh Thin Blue Line Club.
  
• He gets injured in the fight he ran over to join, and he sues the deep-pockets owner of Station Square who will in turn pass the cost along to the bar owners
  
• He sues the owner of Station Square for - wait for it, wait for it - not hiring enough FOP members.
  
• They arrest the kid, who is Not From Here and unlikely to have any pull. There has been no conviction (which kinda sorta means the kid is innocent).

Next time, those Station Square bars should hire more FOP members. Just saying. That's extortion. That's a shake-down, nothing more than third-world corruption. You want to run a bar? You better hire enough FOP members.

The beauty is, the FOP doesn't need to lean on the penny-ante bars directly. They just withdraw their services or file suits against the landlords, the button-down money, and then the landlords tell the bar owners to shape up and play ball. I wonder if the insurance coverage has something to do with it - if the policy says there will be off-duty cops and the FOP says No, then the business won't be making any money that night.

The PG headline might have read---

FOP Militia Leaders Extort Real Estate Company

By the way, who is responsible for the Pittsburgh Police? That would be the Mayor of Pittsburgh. Who investigates the Pittsburgh Police? That would be a panel appointed (and interrupted) by the Mayor. The Mayor (this version's name is irrelevant, it's happened before, it's the Pittsburgh machine) gains by having a tight relationship with an organized political force. The Police Department gains because this lucrative arrangement induces policemen to remain on the city's force and not leave for easier work in the 'burbs.

• Remember when the Mayor called for (and the FOP implemented) a full-court press on public intoxication and parking violations? Remember when it disappeared as fast as it arrived, in spite of generating more revenue than it cost?
  
• Is it possible that the crackdown on parking and public intoxication was actually a squeeze on the bar owners, driving their customers away in a show of force?
  
• Remember the St. Patrick's Day brouhaha when the FOP threatened the city that they would withhold their efforts from their secondary assignments over a respect issue? Think about that - they threatened the city that they would stop working for private businesses? Fortunately, enough respect was paid and they were able to continue protecting the public. Glad we got past that.
  
• Is it possible that the Brinksmanship Brouhaha was actually a squeeze on the bar owners, who would have lost a key business day without police "protection"?
  
• Blog Staff apologizes for starting two related sentences with the word "remember", but it does allow us to sneak this in: The struggle of men against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. (Milan Kundera)
  
• Do you either of those bits of kabuki theater were anything other than a dance between the Mayor, the FOP, and the bar owners?
  
• Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Connect the dots and you'll see that the City, the FOP, and the bar owners are all complicit in optimizing the profitable violence of public intoxication.

Pittsburgh cops are shaking down businesses.
Pittsburgh cops are beating up honor students.
There needs to be a big change.

Extra Credit Journalism Questions

There are Pulitzer-worthy stories here! Interesting extra-credit questions:

• How much (city) paid time off did the Sgt. get for the injury on his (private) job, which "required surgery and extensive physical therapy"?
• How much (city) paid time off (total, citywide) did police officers get in the last year for injuries from their private jobs?
• How much money has the City paid this year in awards, settlements, and lawyer fees over police officer's outside jobs?

Fake News As An Under-Appreciated Art Form

I've begun to contemplate an under-appreciated art form, and as hipsters and collectors will assure you, the time to get in on an under-appreciated art form is NOW RIGHT NOW before the market gets too hot and you can't get anywhere near it, believe me, and then you want to UNLOAD just before it goes mainstream and becomes widely accepted.

Let's talk about fake news as an art form. Pittsburgh recently went into a tizzy over a faux FOP press release; it seems to have accomplished exactly what its creators desired. The Onion is all about fake news. Also, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Fox News have all done well for themselves with fake news.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a doozy of a fake news story by Holman Jenkins, purporting to be from the year 2061, when litigation regarding the Japanese nuclear power plan problems is still continuing. The title: What GE Was Thinking in 2011.

I urge you to read it for yourself. Key moments include:

• Recovery Strategy: Sell Nuclear Business to Comcast.
• Japanese bloggers call GE's 1960 reactor design the "third nuclear attack on Japan"
• Nobody at GE needs to be reminded that there is no natural private market for nuclear reactors. All our customers are governments.
• a disturbing new correlation: Whenever President Obama endorses an energy option, disaster promptly ensues. His ringing support of expanded offshore drilling came just weeks before the BP oil spill. The Japanese reactor mess followed not long after he lauded nuclear energy as a weapon to fight global warming.

Timing is everything.

The Duty of Fair Representation

The Big Lies insidiously drive discourse into foul perfidy, presenting themselves as obvious truths (if only the people had the eyes to see), and moving the boundaries of acceptable conversation further and further toward their paymaster's purposes.

One of the techniques of the modern Big Lie is dropping small truths and reasonable questions into the stream of messages; these unobjectionable tidbits provide a foothold for unaffiliated voices to join the discussion designed by the Big Liars, unintentionally contributing a bit of momentum and credibility to the scurrilous campaign.

In the recent discovery Big Lie that public employee unions are the perpetrator of every known problem, some legitimate questions about unions have been raised. A reasonable theme (expressed by worthy bloggers and commentors) is that Unions would fare better if they choose their battles with more wisdom; in other words, Unions would get more support if they used discretion and avoided supporting their more egregious members.

It's a good question. Why do Unions support every member, even if it's onerous or unwise? The answer comes out of a 1941 Supreme Court decision regarding racism, railroads, and unions.

The history of organized labor and racism is no better than the American history of racism. A union was formed to represent railway workers, the union excluded blacks, and the union was recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent. A black man named Bester William Steele had lost his job in 1941 over the Union's racial bias. He filed suit jointly against the Louisville and Nashville Railway Company and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Enginemen and Firemen. He charged

that the Union "had refused to represent the Negro fireman fairly and impartially, had been persistently disloyal and hostile to them, had sought to destroy their vested seniority rights, and to drive them out of service", and because the Union enjoyed Congressionally conferred exclusive bargaining power, these violations comprised breaches of the fidiciary duty the union owed to members and nonmembers alike.

In the Encyclopedia of U.S. labor and working-class history, Volume 1, we read that the Court found that since the Unions had been given the status of exclusive bargaining agent, they had implicitly assumed a fiduciary duty of fair representation for all employees in the bargaining unit.

From Wikipedia:

The duty of fair representation is incumbent upon U.S. labor unions that are the exclusive bargaining representative of workers in a particular group. It is

the obligation to represent all employees fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination

. Originally recognized by the United States Supreme Court in a series of cases in the mid-1940s involving racial discrimination by railway workers' unions covered by the Railway Labor Act,

the duty of fair representation also applies to ... public sector workers covered by state and local laws regulating labor relations

.

The US Supreme Court now recognizes the necessity for protecting the "workers' precarious position between the two giants of labor and management and have recently moved in the direction of establishing a negligence standard to determine breach of the duty of fair representation".

Unions cannot pick which employees they will represent. They cannot pull out all the stops for a conscientious employee saddled with an unjust situation and not make the same effort for a despicable goldbrick. They get the ugly babies along with the pretty ones. If a Union were to treat an unappealing member's complaint with benign nonchalance, they are liable themselves and subject to decertification. A decision to abandon an unsavory Member is a decision to risk dissolution of the union.

Why do Unions support every member, even if it's onerous or unwise? In the normal world, in places like Iowa or Kansas, our answer would be:

• In general, unions support employees consistently because of the theory of Duty of Fair Representation.

---

Unfortunately, I've learned that there are two sets of answers.

There's a Normal-World (Iowa, Kansas) answer, and then there's a Pittsburgh answer.

Here in Pittsburgh, there are many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many examples of Pittsburgh unions standing up for unsavory or malpracticing members.

Given the remarkable supply of local anecdotes, we must recognize one additional Pittsburgh answer to the question, Why do Unions support every member, even if it's onerous or unwise?

• Normal World: In general, unions support employees consistently because of the theory of Duty of Fair Representation.
• Pittsburgh: Joe King and Dan O'Hara really don't have a clue, and their sense of time is about 60 years off.

The theory of Duty of Fair Representation does not provide for discretion. It's not the Union's role to handle incompetent or scandalous employees; that falls to management to handle. It's the Union's role to represent them.

It's not too different from the application of our American constitution or our Bill of Rights. We don't guarantee rights to the inoffensive, tolerable, well-mannered members of the Rotary; we guarantee rights to everybody, specifically including the poorest, the weakest, even the stupid and offensive, even in Pittsburgh, and we even guarantee these rights to Glenn Beck.

"Do Not Cross" Pittsburgh FOP

"Cop Drama" is an excellent article in the City Paper by Chris Young, about an ongoing show situated in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, it is not a television series that the Pittsburgh Film Office can take credit for; it is a case of real life imitating bad art. But if this were a series, the key points of this week's show would include:

• Outcry over the beating of Jordan Miles has been overshadowed, if not replaced, by the hue-and-cry over a spoof press release on the first anniversary of the beating
  
• "If we catch anyone with regard to this, it's going to be multiple felonies," FOP President Dan O'Hara was quoted as saying in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. I don't think the FOP, which is an employee union, is entitled to conduct investigations, seize evidence, or file felony charges.
  
• According to an affidavit of probable cause -- a sworn statement needed to justify the Dreaming Ant search warrant -- police were forwarded a copy of the statement by WTAE-TV reporter Ashlie Hardway.
  
• The role of WTAE and Ashlie Hardway in sending the police squad to Crazy Mocha / Dreaming Ant to seize their hard drive and router has not yet been fully explored.
  
• Pittsburgh ACLU says the press release "is parody protected by the First Amendment"
  
• "It's a part of democratic free speech," says Pittsburgh City Councilor Bill Peduto
  
• a neologism was introduced: "douchenarchists"

Kudos to City Paper, Chris Young, Chris Potter, and Sadie Gurman, the only Pittsburgh journalists who seem to be working this beat.


Although the Post-Gazette reporting staff seems too interested in Steelers pep-rallies to cover the story, the PG Editorial Board awoke, arose on their hind legs, and wrote an interesting piece on Friday:

A year after what looks like the unnecessarily harsh treatment of a law-abiding citizen, there is no sign of movement toward a just conclusion.

Pittsburghers have a right to know what happened to Jordan Miles. He and the officers have a right to see the facts aired in public. Until that day, a cloud will hang over Pittsburgh and what passes for justice, accountability and transparency in this city.

Finally, in the top-left corner of this blog, you will find a Justice Delay Counter which keeps track of the number of days since Jordan Miles was beaten without any accountability. At press time, 383 days and waiting.

The Crime of Not Getting it: Pittsburgh FOP / Fraternal Order of Police

1	2	3	4
			^

The great crime is the beating of Jordan Miles, and the subsequent failure of the system that is supposed to protect him to take any action on his behalf, which diminishes public confidence and the rule of law. Our leaders politicians don't get that.

We are amused at Pittsburgh Police Fraternal Order of Police investigating internet crimes. Does the FOP have any jurisdiction? Do they control the Cloud? Could the FOP seize the router from a suburban Wifi hotspot? What will they do with the (previously private) information on that server? Is the city liable for the FOP closing a business for two days? Would they have closed the Duquesne Club's wifi as quickly as they shut down "Pittsburgh's premier source for independent, foreign, gay+lesbian & documentary DVDs"? (per their website)


The Great Hoax serves well to remind us of the event, but the attention paid to the Hoax by the FOP, the City, and the Media actually overwhelms the attention paid to the Beating, and serves as a distraction. Every good magician needs a distraction to fool the audience. We shouldn't let the Hoax distract us from the Beating.

If the Fraternal Order of Police had ignored the Hoax, it would have blown over in one news cycle. But they reacted and over-reacted, sent seven cops into a coffee shop, and the Hoax has fixed public attention on the FOP's priorities for a week. They don't get it.

People who do "get it" see this as a manifestation of the Streisand Effect.

The Streisand Effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of perversely causing the information to be publicized more widely and to a greater extent than would have occurred if no contrary action had been attempted. It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, following a 2003 incident in which her attempts to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity.

As early as 1993, John Gilmore observed that "the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Examples of such attempts include actions against photographs, numbers, files or websites (for example via a cease-and-desist letter). Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.

By the way, the Hoax Letter is online, if you're interested.

The conflation of the City, the Police, and the FOP in their responses to the Hoax blurs any boundaries of propriety or fiduciary responsibility. The FOP is not a law enforcement agency; they are a labor union. The police department should not take direction from the employee's union. The District Attorney should not wait for the Justice Department to tell him what happened. There is a complete abdication of civilian / political leadership. They don't get it. It isn't 1952 any more, Toto.

---

A few weeks ago, I suggested that if Pittsburgh had any real journalists, they'd conduct an interview with the young coed victimized in the Roethlisberger debacle of last summer.

Now I have a second person on my List of Those Who Should Be Interviewed: If there's a journalist working in Pittsburgh (rather than enabling sports writers, shills for the Allegheny Conference, and apologists for the Marcellus Coalition) can we also please have an interview with Jordan Miles? How is he doing? Is he holding out as well as the three men on paid administrative leave? Have the results when you Google his name affected his college applications? Is he okay?

---

And finally, the Crime that has not happened yet. It would be wonderful for the city, the police, the politicians, and the Pittsburgh F.O.P. if something bad happened to Jordan Miles. I pray that it does not happen.

Related: EBM: Justice Delayed: "Does anyone not get that the charge by minorities that the cops sometimes act like they are part of an occupying army is grounded in fact?"

You could Google Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police, or else Google Pittsburgh FOP.

The Crime of Criticizing Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police ( FOP )

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		^

Status as the anniversary of Jordan Miles' beating approached:

• the Mayor promised a City investigation
• the Feds started looking into this
• the City investigation decided to wait until the Feds acted
• the District Attorney decided to wait for the Feds
• the Citizens Police Review Board is dormant on hold, awaiting completion of the City investigation as required by law
• the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) marched in support of the three cops
• Jordan Miles filed a civil lawsuit in federal court

On the eve of the anniversary, an interesting press release was sent to CityPaper and at least one local blogger. The press release was a hoax, and by reports a fairly detailed hoax - the phone number purported to be an FOP phone, etc. It was an excellent fake, and several people took the bait.

The text of the fake presser was really excellent; it highlighted the contradictions between "should be" and "is". The hoax press release is on Google Docs. Maybe a lot of people will make their own copies of it. I'm just saying.


A honorable and worthy Pittsburgh blogger was duped by the hoax and posted it as news, then announced it was a fake and withdrew the original, and then twittered that he was willing to help the investigation. That's an unfortunate sidebar, and a distraction from the real issues. I think that's the nature of online reporting. BR and the Comet are tops in my book. He's done no wrong in this.


The hoax has game. The logo is a fake, and the latin "Justicia Volutabrum" seems to mean "Justice in a Pig Sty". The first letter of each word along the left column seems to spell out a vulgar message. The remaining three letters in the series seem to offer another clue, as yet unsolved: the letters T,D,J. Someone's initials, perhaps?

Which brings me to a point I'd rather not forget: Is this a Pittsburgh City Police investigation, a District Attorney investigation, or a Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) investigation?


On January 19, Pittsburgh police FOP raided Dreaming Ant, seizing a computer and a router and shutting the business down. This prompted Infinonymous to ask, How Many FOP Members Does It Take to Bring In A Router? (Dreaming Ant has since reopened.)

The CityPaper covered police statements on the Dreaming Ant / Crazy Mocha raid and seizure of a computer and router. As is often true, some of the best stuff was in the comments. F.D. was on target.

What intrigues me is that the police spokesman in the CityPaper article is also an FOP official. The same person is reported as applying for the search warrant. Isn't there a conflict of interest for an FOP official to be performing police duties on duty time (representing the City, btw) investigating an issue the FOP has a clear interest in, requesting search warrants, and resulting in closing a local business? Does this make the City responsible for damages? I think: you betcha!

When did criticizing the police and local government become a crime?
When did satire become terrorism?

I think the hoax was well played. It got the media to talk about the one-year anniversary of an onerous event that the power structure would prefer we all forget about. It has the touch of a savvy marketeer. The 'perpetrators' are people who get it.

It seems like the local discussion of these events is driven by City Paper and the BurghBlogs, with particular compliments to Infinonymous and Chris Potter. Where is the Post-Gazette and the Tribune Review? You know, the media?

On cold days like this, I wonder how people lived in this region during the Revolutionary War, and I recall the history story about Washington's troops not having shoes, leaving a bloody trail from walking in the snow with frostbitten feet. What were they fighting for?

How did it come to this, with police criminalizing criticism, with the police union setting official city policy and driving official investigations, and with civilian oversight of the city's forces non-existent?

The city's response is un-American.
The Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police ( FOP )'s response is un-American.
The mayor's response is un-American.
The DA's response is un-American.

The city, the Pittsburgh FOP, the mayor and the DA dishonor the government that a lot of good men died to bring about, and they squander the virtue of the many honorable public servants. Shame on all of them - the Pittsburgh FOP, the mayor, and the DA.

Pop quiz: Which has resulted in more police activity and newspaper coverage?
        A: Jordan Miles' beating
        B: Making the Pittsburgh FOP look silly
        C: Friday's "Ground the Jets" Steeler Rally



Here we go Steelers, here we go.

continuing - - -