Mason County Commissioners Revisit Police Brutality Five Years Later

[XLFD]

The title of this article is misleading in that the county commissioners allowed a citizen to create a presentation about the Joe McAdams incident that happened early in the morning of July 20, 2009, and take 15 minutes to address the commission and their guests at their meeting at 9:00 AM this morning. 

 

To get such permission, I was able to convince the County Administrator Fabian Knizacky to allow me 15 minutes to show the full video of the traffic stop (at least until both are led away in cuffs) after he passed on my correspondences to him to the County Finance, Personnel and Rules Committee.  I was pleasantly surprised when I received an E-mail from CA Knizacky telling me that I had the okay to go with it at the beginning of this month. 

 

Mayor Ryan Cox of the City of Ludington was less receptive to having this topic aired-- at least for any longer than the five minutes any citizen normally has.  The City of Ludington rules of meeting procedure allows the Mayor to approve or disallow such presentations without having to explain why.  Not surprisingly, Sergeant Mayor Cox's loyalty to keeping his fellow police officers safe from criticism overruled any consideration of whether there was a valid public purpose in bringing awareness of the relevant issues I brought up in front of the county commissioners for an event scheduled to have its five year anniversary on July 20.  This only guarantees that I will dwell on the topic often at upcoming meetings, whereas the county is unlikely to hear any more about this from me.  

 

Unfortunately, I still have not been able to convert the in-car camera footage directly to a format that can be presented here, so I will provide a few stills of the footage as I offer the same commentary I shared with the county board.

 

 

 

Hi, I'm Tom Rotta, a resident of Ludington, and my presentation today deals with an encounter between two residents of Ludington and two members of both the Ludington Police Department and the Mason County sheriff's office which happened five years ago right at the beach area in Ludington.  I have had no occasion to meet with any of the six principles involved, but I believe this event was an unfortunate occurrence which had several negative consequences for people who live in or visit our area. 

 

My hope for this presentation is to bring awareness of several problems which have not been addressed publicly, and to motivate this county commission to see that such an incident will not ever again take place without being suitably addressed instead of dubitably suppressed.  The public's confidence in their public officers has taken a serious blow with what has happened in this one night.  But, I believe the more serious damage to the public' confidence was the way that it was handled afterwards.

 

The event began early in the morning of July 20, 2009 at 12:30 AM.  The first part of the incident was recorded courtesy of a dash cam on the original LPD vehicle, that I will present in it's entirety here on this TV showing the unedited recording.  For some reason, the audio was imperceptible in my recording and so I will talk while the action plays out, frequently spoiling for the viewer what is going to happen, so as to address more areas of concern.   [video begins]

 

 

 

Ludington Police officer York has his in-car camera activated at around the entrance to Stearn's Park, where it shows the tail end of the car he will eventually find out is being driven by the owner of a successful local bar, Sue, with her full grown son, Joe, as a passenger.  Officer York says the stop is due to the car having inoperable taillights, which is hard to determine with the glare in the video, but once he stops her, he does seem to show that her taillights are indeed out, even though the brake lights and signals seem to work.  You will notice there appears to be little or no impairment to the driving of Sue throughout the time she is on the road and being recorded. 

Ironically, even though this whole traffic stop was recorded by LPD's dash cam, thereby making a video and audio recording of the stop, once Joe brings out his I-phone to record these Ludington public servants to keep them accountable, he is effectively assaulted by LPD's Officer Warmuskerken when he swats Joe's arm with the phone, and is told that it could be used as a weapon.  Recording police officers or other public servants while on public grounds is not against the law, and yet in this incident it seems that at least the Ludington officers did not respect this right.  It's hard for me to conceive as to why police officers often overreact when the public tries to record them; such videos will generally help to exonerate them if they are doing their duties and job correctly. 

York appears at the window and asks for the usual license, registration and proof of insurance, which Sue had other than the driver's license, but showed alternate identification over a period of 80 seconds.  During which time she is asked if she had had any drinks that night, to which she responds that she has had a couple of drinks at her mother's house.  By the time Officer York gets back and until the end of the encounter, Sue has been offered but not been given any field sobriety tests or any other tests for intoxication until after she is handcuffed and locked in the back of the Ludington police car.  Remember this at the end when you will see Sue herself gets accosted and arrested by the Ludington officers.

 

 

 

According to the police report of Officer York made after the actions here, Sue refused to take a PBT or breathalyzer test, she then refuses to take any of the Field sobriety tests which Officer York offers to her.  You won't see any of these performances on this video.  Refusing an initial PBT is within her right to do so, however, she could be given a civil infraction because of it and it could give Officer York the ability to arrest her if he was able to articulate probable cause that she was driving impaired. 

 

But the police report also states she assented to being taken in for a blood draw test before being arrested.  She is quoted as saying:  "I don't have to do (the PBT), if you want to take my blood, go ahead, I don't care."  Sue was knowledgeable as to her rights to refuse a PBT test, which quite often gives inaccurate results, in order to get the more reliable blood test.   Even with this voluntary gesture to determine her sobriety of which she was well within her rights to request, in the video and police report there is not any articulation of why she was being arrested.  Nor was there going to be any articulation of any crime her son was being arrested for in the end.

 

Are we now arresting people for having defective taillights or taking videos of police officers?   Probably not, the arrest was almost assuredly used to intimidate the poor woman who had just came back from putting a loved one to rest earlier that night and then witnessed after this innocuous traffic stop an atrocious display of brutality and assault committed on her own son right in front of her eyes without any reasonable provocation. 

 

After Sue is taken to the back of her vehicle by Officer York, you will shortly see Officer Warmuskerken's LPD Tahoe drive by the scene turning on from Ludington Avenue and then lurking off-camera just before York requests additional help after Joe steps out of the vehicle and checks on his mom.  Warmuskerken today is now a county deputy; he will play a significant role in the events to come on the street and in the hospital along with two other deputies currently serving the county.  That night he was primarily patrolling the beach area; he was fairly young and inexperienced in police work at that time, and was the least senior officer on scene that night. 

 

While Sue and Officer York talk about sobriety, her son Joe will shortly get out of the car and make an appearance in less than a minute.  Joe is a tall and lanky individual hovering at 6 foot 7 inches tall.  You will see him get out of the car and talk with Officer York at the 28:20 mark from off camera.  He is inquiring about whether his mom was OK, which is what any concerned son might ask.  He is told to get back in the car by Officer York, which he does without protest.  It should be pointed out that there are two dogs in the back seat of the car, probably every bit as restless as Joe to get out of the enclosed car on this warm summer night.

 

As the video progresses make sure to keep close tabs on Joe and his actions, and see whether he is out of line or doing anything that could be considered illegal so as to be arrested.  Not only does he listen to Officer York when he first gets out of the car, he also listens to Officer York the second time he gets out of the car and is seen as 'interfering with an investigation' simply by being outside when unlawfully ordered by Officer York to get back in the car.  A police officer or deputy has no right to order someone innocent of any crime around arbitrarily. 

 

 

Yet, Officer York and the three other officers all arbitrarily order Joe around perhaps based solely on what they perceive as the imposing size of Joe and the fact that he wants to record the encounter; Joe whose only imposition that was part of the record that night was that he knew what his rights under the law was.  Unlike all four police officers, who under the color of the law repeatedly violated his rights, stole his property illegally and destroyed his recordings, assaulted him on the street and in the hospital, unlawfully imprisoned him thereafter, and then engaged in malicious prosecution by heaping five charges of assaulting police officers on the victim of violence, Joe, that was conveniently took up by our gung ho prosecutor who had access to the evidence that pointed otherwise.  None of the highly aggressive and assaultive actions of the police that occurred on the street or in the hospital were even considered as actionable.

 

You will see Joe being gang tackled and taken down to the pavement in the middle of Ludington Avenue towards the end of this video for absolutely no reason-- this is admitted in the county deputy's depositions-- they were solely acting on Officer York telling them that Joe was a problem.  They told Joe he had to go without any legal reasoning behind it, even though his dogs, his mom, and some of his and his mother's property was being threatened with seizure.  The two county deputies threatened Joe with arrest without any explanation.  Assuredly, the incident was not escalated by Joe, but by all four officers who overstepped their authority, and deprived both Sue and Joe of the most basic of human rights in dereliction of their duties to defend and protect them. 

 

All of you county commissioners have sworn an oath to protect and defend the constitutions of the United States and Michigan, as have all of these officers.  When you were confronted with this lawsuit, and looked over the incontrovertible facts of the matter, and seen that your sheriff's department was guilty of such naked aggression on one of your constituents, and seen that the prosecutor, your ultimate legal advisor, abused their discretion by seeking assault charges on the victim of eight taserings by three police agents conducting an unlawful arrest. 

 

All these county agents got together and conspired in making a malicious prosecution containing five felonies against this victim of violence who was deprived of so many of his basic rights under the Constitution by all of these county agents-- county agents who raised their right hand and swore they would do their best to preserve and defend them for everyone.  Just like you.  

 

And what did you do?  Did you seek out justice for the victim?  Did you demand proper punishment for the badged aggressors?  Did you allow the public to see all that transpired and assure them that such an injustice will not go uncorrected?  Or did you try to cover up everything that went on, protect your fellow public officials, and do your best to see that the County would go against the very public you supposedly serve by fighting Joe's efforts for justice any way you could? 

 

Five years, and not one bit of condemnation of this incident by any City or County official of any stripe, even though it has been tried and found that both city and county are liable for what happened in the hospital.  Where police chained this innocent victim to a hospital bed and once again tasered the heck out of him when he refused to have his knee treated, as he had the right to do.   

 

Back to the video, Joe is off camera with Officer Warmuskerken trying to record the course of that night's events.  Like Officer York, he orders Joe back into the car even though Joe is on the public right of way filming the proceedings, Joe declines and Officer Warmuskerken slaps or grabs Joe's arm, which makes Joe claim that he has been assaulted.  And technically he has; Officer Warmuskerken has no right to touch Joe at this point, perhaps he could have made clear to Joe that he thought the I-phone was too close to him and asked him to record at a more respectable distance.  Again, Joe is well within his rights to film what was going on that night as long as he wasn't directly interfering with the police investigation, which Officer Warmuskerken was not part of as regards the traffic stop.  Just as any of you commissioners may film when you are stopped by any police agency.  It is not a bad policy.

 

 

 

Now the action gets intense, Officer Warmuskerken walks Joe away from the scene even though Joe does not want to go.  He asks about the two dogs in back, and since he has reason to believe his mom may be arrested, he is concerned of her and her vehicle as well.  But the Ludington police are adamant about him leaving and as the two county deputies, Wilson and Davila, pull up and get out of their cars, and walk purposefully towards Joe, Joe is effectively blocked from getting back to secure any of his concerns. 

 

According to depositions, the deputies are told by Officer York that Joe needs to leave the scene, they immediately walk directly at Joe and Deputy Davila threatens him with arrest if he doesn't immediately leave.  Without any knowledge of what is going on, a county deputy threatens to arrest a subject that has committed no crime and has gave no indication that he planned to.  This escalation leads to Joe walking away while filming, leading to the deputies rushing at and taking Joe down with a leg sweep onto the street. 

                                      At the Memorial Medical Center, where the madness continued

 

Without zooming in, it is hard to see what actually transpires, but tasers are used on Joe about five times and from the footage, it looks as if there is no active resistance on Joe's part throughout the brutal and senseless assault.  In depositions, the only resistance noted was passive, Joe keeping his hands at his side; he effectively had every right to protect himself from the unwarranted attacks of the three peace officers.  He suffers multiple abrasions from the fall, the taser deployments, and the beat down.  Officer Warmuskerken complains about getting hit by someone in the face.  He is unclear as to whether it as from his deputy companions, as Joe is said to have had his hands in a protective and passive defensive mode by all concerned during the time he was beaten and zapped repeatedly.

 

To quickly wrap this up.  We the people, including all of you officials, will get more and more of this type of response in the future from the LPD and the sheriff's office if actions like this are allowed to continue without any outrage from you and without any public transparency.  Three peace officers without question, unlawfully assaulted an innocent citizen in front of his mother; you people had access to the records, you people helped make the decisions as to how to settle this federal lawsuit.  Yet you remain mute about the incident, meaning that you effectively condone it, and you offer no solutions as to how to best proceed to make this avoidable in the future.  That is unconscionable, and an unworthy position to take as a servant to the public who have sworn oaths to serve.  Consider what would have been the disposition if the roles of police and civilian were reversed in this instance.

 

Thank you for your time and the opportunity to speak here today, and please consider in the future, ways to protect the public and not just ways to protect your fellow public officials from public scrutiny and justice. 

[AQUAMAN]

I see where 6 others have viewed this thread and posted nothing. Did any commissioners make any comments at the end of the presentation? If not, it appears the atrocious acts are being condoned and approved for future incidents like Joe's and Sue's. By MC Commissioners and some other public officials that regularly spy here for whatever purposes they deem as necessary. Someone, anyone, should have made at least some reference to show concern and apology. I guess that is way too much to expect from the local officials holding positions of power these days. 

[XLFD]

None of the commissioners commented any further on the issue today, but I will give them some credit for allowing me the extra time to speak today and being a lot more professional than the Ludington City Council has been in the past.  All listened to the presentation, and at least feigned interest.  The two female commissioners, Janet Anderson and Mary Nichols, even talked to me a little bit afterwards, albeit over safe topics not related to the topic I talked on.

It would be nice, now that the ordeal is effectively over in the courts as far as I know, to hear county officials move to adopt some new policy or resolution to address proactively the problems that came forth from this incident so as to make its recurrence a lot more remote.  Chances are, however, if a brutality incident like this were to happen on July 20, 2014, we would see it play out even worse than it did back in 2009.

[AQUAMAN]

That's a very prophetic statement XLFD, but sadly, and embarrassingly for all good honest caring citizens around our fair county, quite true. The SHAME has not even entered most minds, not now, and probably, not ever. 

[Willy]

Excellent presentation of the incident X.

[XLFD]

Thanks, I hope that it could have at least helped some of the commissioners and other officials do a gut check about what's really important and whose side they're on.