Monday, March 01, 2010, 9:45 PM
News, Opinion, Politics
By Stephanie Ramage
ATLANTA CITIZEN REVIEW BOARD GETS SUBPOENAS IN EAGLE RAID CASE
A City Council subcommittee voted today to issue subpoenas for 18 Atlanta Police officers involved in the raid of the Atlanta Eagle, a gay leather bar in Midtown, last September. The move sets the stage to potentially expand the power of a citizen’s board meant to address concerns over how police go about policing.
The Atlanta Citizen Review Board (CRB) does not have subpoena power. It must, therefore, ask council—through the subcommittee, the Committee on Council—to issue subpoenas on its behalf. During the committee’s meeting today at City Hall, CRB Executive Director Christina Beaumud complained that 39 officers have refused to testify to the CRB in investigations of officer conduct since the board’s chartering in late 2008.
Today’s meeting also gave Atlantans a startling view of just how little the CRB understands Fifth Amendment rights.
A civil lawsuit was filed months ago against the City and several police officers by more than 20 patrons and one employee of the Atlanta Eagle who claim their civil rights were violated by the police. They say the officers subjected them to slurs regarding their sexuality, forced them to lie on a floor strewn with broken beer bottles for more than an hour, and ran their social security numbers through a warrant check without adequate cause to do so.
That police officers abused their authority during the Eagle Raid is entirely possible, but there is a civil case already underway to address those allegations. There is also an investigation by the Atlanta Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards.
Meanwhile, some of the plaintiffs have also filed complaints with the subpoena-less CRB. Though the officers show up for CRB interviews, said Beaumud, they do not answer questions. Seth Kirschenbaum, vice chair of the CRB, told the committee that the practice has made the CRB a laughingstock. Without the subpoenas, Kirshenbaum said, the CRB can not do its work.
“This is a fundamental moment in the history of this board,” Kirschenbaum warned.
As to whether officers should be made to testify to the CRB, Don English, an attorney for the Police Benevolent Association, a police union to which more than 300 Atlanta Police officers belong, said police, just like any other citizens, have Fifth Amendment rights. They shouldn’t be forced to testify if their statements can be used against them later in other cases.
Beamud and Kirschenbaum claimed the Fifth Amendment is not applicable to civil cases like those of the CRB.
That is simply not true, and I am very surprised that an attorney of Kirschenbaum’s caliber would be party to putting such misinformation in the public sphere.
The Fifth Amendment protects one’s right not to give witness against oneself. It also, famously, extends variously to husbands, wives, lovers, co-workers, offspring, etc. Every American has the right not to give testimony that incriminates herself or the people close to her. The Fifth Amendment certainly does extend to civil cases—just ask any divorce attorney or corporate lawyer. It is entirely possible to incriminate oneself in a civil matter, so the Fifth Amendment is perfectly applicable to a civil case.
Police officers have reason to worry about how their statements to the CRB might be used in the future. The CRB, try as it might to impersonate a court of law, is not a court of law. The ordinance that established it actually says the CRB “hearings shall be informal and strict rules of evidence shall not be applied” so statements given to the board, or even made by members of the board, do not enjoy the kinds of protections that a judge in a real court of law can invoke. A judge, for example, might seal court records or order a court reporter to strike something from the record. The CRB does none of that, and many, perhaps even most, of its proceedings and records are open to the public. Openness is good. But treating police officers as if they are not worthy of the same protections the rest of us enjoy is a travesty.
“Law enforcement officers are not required to surrender their constitutional rights or to settle for some watered-down version of their constitutional rights,” English told the committee.
Another issue is “Garrity rights.” Essentially, says English, because the CRB is not in the officers’ chain of command and lacks the authority to order disciplinary action against them, their statements to the board can be used in other criminal proceedings, unless the Atlanta Police Department orders the officers to testify to the CRB. So far, the APD has not ordered officers to give testimony to the board.
The four members of the Committee on Council who were present today—Joyce Sheperd, Felicia Moore, Alex Wan and Cleta Winslow—voted to issue the subpoenas the CRB requested. Councilman Kwanza Hall was present, but was absent for the vote. Winslow, in an obvious attempt to make everyone happy, gave a strong defense of Fifth Amendment rights before voting to issue the subpoenas. Moore’s sentiment was that after the officers are subpoenaed, whatever they choose to do or not to do is up to them.
Kirshenbaum claimed failure by officers to give statements to the CRB “stymies” the board’s ability to do its job, but I wonder if the CRB actually remembers what its job is. As Beaumud pointed out, the CRB was founded (in truth it was renewed—it had actually existed previously) with the intention of restoring community trust in the police after the police killing of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in November 2006.
It has not done that, and if the CRB continues on its present path it will never do that.
If the CRB could subpoena every one of Atlanta’s approximately 1,600 officers it still would not restore trust between the citizens and the cops. The FBI, in its investigation of Johnston’s tragic killing, “found performance quotas of nine arrests and two search warrants a month expected of officers” according to one of the attorneys in the officers’ trials, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes said “the pressures brought to bear” by the quotas helped prompt the actions of the officers who were later sent to prison in connection with Johnston’s death. It was the APD’s policies under Chief Richard Pennington that were the problem, but he has never been held accountable for them.
The CRB would rather play courtroom with the careers of individual cops than do the less-glamorous but much more necessary work of assessing police policy. Atlantans desperately need the CRB to look at why and how officers are allocated, how their procedures jibe with 911-center protocols, the practicality of city ordinances, and whether certain practices encourage number-fudging or perhaps target some groups of citizens more than others, among other things.
While the CRB’s members are to be admired for giving their time and energy to the City, the board’s leadership apparently wants all the power of a court of law with none of a court’s responsibility to protect the rights of those who come before it. No wonder the police won’t testify.