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I Stand Accused

I Stand Accused image I Stand Accused image
Parent Issue
Month
September
Year
1988
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held By
Agenda Publications
OCR Text

I STAND ACCUSED

by Harold Marcuse

The use of violence and intimidation to prevent citizens from exercising their civil rights pervades our society. The tactics of the Ann Arbor police in dealing with an anti-CIA demonstration last fall were strikingly similar to the CIA itself. Just as the CIA has repeatedly freed itself from all legislative controls to implement clandestine policy goals of the executive, so do the City police impose order as they see fit, instead of as the laws require.

After participating in that demonstration, I had an opportunity to see how the local police and legal system work hand in hand to intimidate people who challenge their authority . During the November 25 protest, plainclothes Ann Arbor Police Detective Douglas Barbour physically harrassed me. Later I was kicked forcefully in the groin by U-M Assistant Director of Public Safety and Security, Robert Patrick. Since the attack was completely unprovoked and witnessed by several people, I told the police that I wanted to press charges against security officer Patrick.

The police moved swiftly. Instead of taking down my story, they isolated me from the other demonstrators and arrested me on a fabricated countercharge. The incident of harassment, in which plainclothes police detective Barbour rammed into me, then turned and yanked me down a hallway, and finally forced me to the ground, was now construed as an assault perpetrated by me on him.

How, exactly, was this done? As soon as the police officer listening to my complaint found out that I wanted to press charges against a security officer, he left to consult with one of his superiors. That superior, coincidentally Detective Barbour, the plainclothes officer who had harassed me earlier (I did not realize that at the time), came over and asked me what had happened. Barbour, too, cut me off as soon as he heard that I wanted to press charges of assault and battery against security officer Patrick who had kicked me. 'That's enough, we'll deal with that later," was Barbour's curt reply.

Shortly thereafter the demonstrators occupying a room and a hallway were allowed to go to another part of the building, nearer to where the CIA interviews had been relocated. When I got up to follow the others Detective Barbour arrested me. I was escorted out of Career Planning and Placement via a back staircase, taken to the police station, questioned and released pending the results of the investigation. Later, three other demonstrators filed statements, and several policemen filed their own accounts of what had happened. Leo Heatley, the director of the University's Department of Public Safety and Security, and Robert Patrick's boss, was contacted on the phone. Heatley claimed that he had seen me "grab Officer Barbour and spin him around," try to "get Officer Barbour into a choke hold and possibly take Officer Barbour's weapon away from him," and "knee Officer Barbour in the back," according to the police report.

Even though Heatley's account was inconsistent with both mine and Barbour's, no other witnesses of the first incident were contacted. Nonetheless, when the police passed the three reports to City Attorney Bruce Laidlaw, he found them sufficiently incriminating to indict me for assault and battery.

Robert Patrick's kick had been witnessed by so many people that it could not be denied. However it could be reinterpreted. Any testimony Patrick might have given on the day of the incident had disappeared from the police investigator's pad. Thus five days later Patrick and Robert Pifer (the other U-M Assistant Director of Public Safety and Security, also present at the protest in plain clothes), were contacted by the police to give new accounts. This time they described an attack on Pifer, perpetrated by me, which they claimed had immediately preceded Patrick's kick. Pifer even added that his assailant must have been very strong, since he himself "is usually fairly stable on his feet as he weighs approximately 220 pounds," according to the police report. Patrick was claiming that he had been acting to defend Pifer and was "fearful of his own safety." The testimony of the other witnesses who had been questioned on the day of the incident contradicted this story directly. Student protesters Jeff Gearhart, Eric Holt and Tim Scarnecchia gave statements to the police saying I had not assaulted Pifer or Barbour. but City Attorney Laidlaw couldn't even remember having read them in his initial review of the case (The Ann ArborNews, 12/11/87).

The police had now turned the victim into an assailant, and the assailant into a victim. The city attorney authorized a warrant for my arrest on two counts of assault and battery (on Barbour and Pifer), and dismissed my charge against Patrick. Laidlaw claimed that the kick had been "privileged," (done in self-defense) as stated in a Dec. 15 memo to his assistant, Ron Plunkett.

This distortion of the truth was so blatant that a broader public became aware that the police and judicial systems were colluding to protect one of their own. On Dec. 10, the Latin American Solidarity Committee (LASC), which had organized the original anti-CIA protest, held a demonstration at Ann Arbor City Hall demanding that charges against me be dropped, charges against Patrick be pressed and that U-M security and the Ann Arbor police be investigated for conspiracy to frame me. Newspaper editorials, analyses and letters to the editor appeared, detailing the case, and the student governments of the Rackham Graduate School  (RSG) and of the Michigan Student Assembly (MSA) pledged $1,000 to Ann Arbor police or Campus Security officers for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any fellow officers for conspiring to commit perjury and obstruct justice.

At a meeting between LASC members and City Attorney Laidlaw on Dec. 17, Laidlaw reaffirmed the City's original decision to file charges against me but not against Patrick. Perhaps fearing bad press before his upcoming bid for a circuit court judgeship, however, Laidlaw agreed to review testimony he "hadn't seen," and to accept new testimony from student witnesses who had not been asked the relevant questions at the time of the incident.

In late January Laidlaw assistant, Ron Plunkett was given sworn testimony from witnesses and shown photographs which clearly contradicted Heatley's, Pifer's and Patrick's stories, but he refused to reopen the investigation. At this point it became clear that Plunkett was pressing charges against me to protect Patrick from prosecution.

Plunkett's political motivation to intimidate me can be seen by the successively softer plea bargains he offered. Still later in January, he said he would drop one charge if I pleaded guilty to the other, and he would sec that I got a light sentence. He told me the sentence would probably be community service work, such as working a night shift in the shelter for the homeless, since I was a "first time offender." After several witnesses dropped in to see him in March, he offered to drop both charges if I would work for two nights in a homeless shelter. I refused and said that I would only accept community service if Patrick would do the same. This offer belied the massive pressure the Assistant City Attorney must have been under. "Tell you what,'' said Plunkett, "If you'll work one night at the shelter, I'll do the shift with you."

I refused Plunkett's offer because I wanted to clear the record in court. That limited public forum would give LASC and myself an opportunity to uncover the irregularities in the work of police, prosecution and University security.

Plunkett must have also realized what a debacle was awaiting him in court. On the day before the trial he was desperate. He called me in the morning and said that Patrick's boss, Leo Heatley, had offered to do the community service work with me.

That was a tremendous offer, but by then I had devoted so much time, energy, and resources to the preparation for the trial, and was fairly certain that I could win the case and expose the collusion, that I refused it. If they were going to go to such lengths to intimidate me, I would have the satisfaction of seeing those officers squirm on the witness stand. Plunkett, exasperated, finally dropped the charges. But the cover-up had by then achieved some of its goals. Public interest had waned, and Plunkett would not have to justify not prosecuting Patrick.

My experience made several things clear. First, that the police and University security work together when it is necessary to cover up their own criminal acts. The tactic of fabricating countercharges is part of their standard repertoire for dealing with victims of their own brutality. Secondly, in using fabricated countercharges, they can count on the full support of the judicial system. The third lesson is that since the judiciary cannot be relied upon to control the police, it is necessary that the public bring both under scrutiny. In this case only skillful mobilization and application of public pressure brought the cogs of injustice to a grinding halt. But they were still not enough to bring the real culprits (assailant Patrick with his co-conspirators in University Security, the Police Department, and the City Attorney's Office) to court. This points, fourthly, to the need for the institutionalization of an organ of public scrutiny and control, such as a community review board to look into irregularities in the police and judicial systems. Such a board might be linked to the City Council and thus directly answerable to the electorate. It would break the vicious circle of the police being responsible for complaints against the police. It would open political decisions by the judiciary to debate and thus revision in the political sphere.

At another level, the University of Michigan would like to have similar leeway in implementing its policies. The newly introduced "Code of Non-academic Conduct" creates a system of kangaroo courts which will pass judgement as the University administration sees fit. The recent attempts to deputize the University's Security force, which would allow them to carry weapons and empower them to make arrests, should also be seen in this context. Leo Heatley is, not surprisingly, one of the most avid proponents of this measure. I shudder to think of what might have happened if kicker Patrick had had a gun in his hand that morning.

Harold Marcuse is a doctoral candidate in History at U-M.

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