This last week Evanston Police released dashcam video of a traffic stop where it can easily be concluded that they acted inappropriately.  In it you see the aftermath of an unfortunate sequence of events that will cost the taxpayers plenty due to their poorly trained and brutish police force.

A 911 call was placed to EPD by a woman who reported a man was breaking into a car. That man turned out to be Northwestern graduate student Lawrence Crosby, who is black, and the car was his own. When he heard the woman honk her car horn at him repeatedly, he got into his car and drove away. The woman followed him in her own car and informed police of where he was driving.

Police then pulled Crosby over and he exited his car unprompted, with his hands in the air and a cellphone in his hand, according to the video footage and police reports. Police ordered Crosby to get on the ground. He resisted and was forced on the ground.  Look for yourself.

The Evanston Police Department released the video, which compiles footage from Crosby’s personal dashboard camera, police dashboard cameras and audio recordings of the 911 call that prompted the arrest, as well as conversations between police officers.  In an opening segment, Sgt. Dennis Leaks justified the use of force by police, saying it complied with police procedures.

You can decide using your own metrics whether this evaluation is within reality or further betokens how poorly unaccountable and untrained this Indiana police department is.  But the hidden story behind this accosting is not in the unnecessary escalation of force used or the issue of racial profiling gone bad, it's in the timeline. 

This traffic stop happened in October 2015, Lawrence Crosby had to go through the process of clearing his good name and filing a law suit before this dashcam footage was finally released here in January 2017, 15 months later.  The irony of having an EPD sergeant named Leaks finally make it public is not lost on this chronicler. 

What if I told you, the police are notorious for flagrantly violating public record laws.  A dash cam video or a police report, suitably edited to comply with allowable Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions, should be available to the public within a business week at most.  Yet even though the law seems explicit enough, 'The Law' seems to feel they do not have to comply.

For certainly they must violate some laws in the course of their duties, whether to pursue a fleeing felon at speeds over the speed limit, or block traffic with their car to secure a accident scene, this is part of the job.  Speeding into lawlessness themselves by blocking public access to records, however, is a crime which shows they are not acting in the public's best interest, only their own.

Releasing such a video well after its been called for indicates to most discerning citizens that the EPD themselves believe they have some degree of guilt.  When you get arrested and don't offer readily available exculpatory information until fifteen months later (not that the video is exculpatory for the EPD), the first thing they would do is ask why didn't you present them with it in the first place-- before trying to discredit it.  

The Evanston police are only one of the many bad actors on this stage, there are many high-profile incidences of where the authorities tried to suppress public records without having any applicable FOIA exemptions. 

The nearby South Bend Police Department released a video after 20 months and many denied FOIA requests showing the beating of an unresisting man by two of its officers. 

In 2015, San Diego's finest refused to release videos to the press and public while allowing their officer to look at them and take his time in drafting the report of him fatally shooting a man with a pen in his hand.  This led to multiple press agencies filing lawsuits for failure to disclose and the victim's family to have a stronger case in court. 

It took nearly a year for 911 tapes (not investigatory records) to be released after the Sandy Hook shootings.  This and other irregularities have led to many provocative conspiracy theories.

And closer to home, I've ran into my own problems while trying to get police reports and videos. 

The Kent County Sheriff's Office withheld a simple vehicle/bicycle accident report while trying to charge unlawful fees that were never justified.  When I asked to inspect a record they are required to keep by law of the previous year's FOIA requests, they quoted me a fee of $650 just for making hard copies of records I never requested.   

The Michigan State Police would not divulge the interrogation training records of one of their troopers or their training materials for such interrogations, seeking to ignore a request via their FOIA website rather than responding in any timely fashion.  This led to a FOIA lawsuit v. the MSP, which was ultimately dismissed by the local trial court after they accepted it, because the jurisdiction of theirs was successfully challenged by the defendant citing a new 'law' making the Court of Claims the court of record for state agency lawsuits.

The Ludington State Police, fresh after losing a FOIA lawsuit where they attempted to withhold a suitably redacted police arrest report  by Tony Kuster, decided to redact their SSCENT officer's name and work hours off of a 6 month old payroll record unlawfully.  The FOIA Coordinator's hokey justification for this was never used by the defense in court, who argued that the information instead was used to help the other case which hadn't been finalized.

And most dramatically, a four (amended to five) count appeal of the Mason County Sheriff's Office in the local circuit court where they refused to release any part of police report records to me, after they had already released plenty of details to other news agencies.  They always claimed an investigation exemption for every part of the records, even when such weren't applicable for any part of 'traffic accident records' while they had been released in parts in news releases weeks before they responded to my requests. 

Particularly maddening in this last effort has been for the new judge in the local circuit court, Susan Sniegowski, to grant me any kind of hearing in over a year to try and liberate this public information.  I haven't even been allowed any discovery, while the judge has unilaterally decided through an in-camera review out of court that all of the four police reports were totally exempt from disclosure, a position that will be found to be totally unsupported by the law and her own practice back when she was a FOIA Coordinator.

The only way to correct such lawbreaking by police authorities is to re-assert and strengthen the public records laws at all levels, and make sure that the highest authorities will not accept anything less.  Is this likely to happen with a president coming in that seems comfortable with keeping his own dealings and tax returns secret and a legislature that has its priorities towards other things.  Probably not.

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A major flaw in the police response to potential crimes is the actual call to 911. Who's to say that the caller is not lying or attempting to cause trouble or even has the facts of the situation correct as in this case. The police must consider each call as a potential mistake or prank and proceed from there. They must discover the truth of what has taken place before they jump into action and cause harm to an innocent citizen.

In domestic situations especially, the first to call the police is often not the 'victim', they may be trying to get more leverage by being the first complainer.  If the police follow their training and develop their professional instincts over time, they are less likely to get caught up in the moment as what happened in Evanston.  The situation was under control, a forced takedown was not in order, and will be ruled as excessive force if it ever gets to trial, as it should be.

All it takes is for one officer to jump the gun, and a scene can quickly escalate.  It's why the issue of using police reserves should come under a lot of scrutiny, they often lack the necessary training and may not emotionally be up to the job. 

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