A Disturbing Video, a Disturbing Prosecution

[XLFD]

Those who follow our brushes with the local band of tyrants found at Ludington City Hall and their adjoining security force at the Ludington Police Department (LPD) will know that this reporter was accosted, threatened, and later charged with a crime for standing quietly by a door at city hall.  The prosecutor, who likely never took a look at the evidence before issuing a warrant for this nonsense crime, finally got discovery materials to me last week, more than a month after I was arraigned for the local crime of disturbing the peace/disorderly conduct (seen here, subsection 4) and fully a week after my first preliminary conference was scheduled by a prosecutor known for her Brady Rule  violations depriving people of receiving justice.

"No person shall disturb without lawful authority any peaceful and lawful assembly or meeting of persons", says the local law I supposedly broke.  Yet the multiple body and security cam footage I have seen indicate that I am not culpable for that crime; indeed, the delusions of a police captain, Mike Haveman (affectionately known as My Caveman), written down in his police report indicate that any disruption was caused by his own paranoia and baseless suspicions that he never even tried to investigate.

                          Captain My Caveman swinging into action, without his teen angels

The police report documents his weird obsession with this reporter, witnessed by his narrative: 

One must understand that from his perch on the council dais, he can see very little outside of the tiny windows on the closed council chamber door, one cannot see another walk around the lobby, and if he failed to see me for any period of time, it could just mean I was in part of the 90% of the lobby he couldn't observe.  The video of the lobby (which I still haven't been able to play as it needs a special player) would indicate that I did end up near the door.  I was as close to the aquarium as I was to the chamber door and could hear nothing distinctive from that perch in regard to the conversation on the other side of the door.

One thinks that I wouldn't have been startled if I had been able to listen in on the activities of the session when he approached and came out of the door, but if I was startled at all, it would have been that they generally open the door only when they are done, and they had only been in there for a very short time.  I recall Haveman giving me a suspicious glance as he did a short walk to the bulletin board, walk back, pose for an extra second or two at the door entrance and go back in after shooting me another look.  

One doesn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce what the captain suspected when he would come back out shortly thereafter to clear out the lobby.  Unfortunately, I could not tell you what was said in making that decision, because I could not hear what was being said from my vantage point at the side of the door near the aquarium.  If I was asked to make a report on what I heard from that spot, I honestly couldn't because I wasn't hearing what was being said.

I wasn't happy about myself and others being thrown outside on a hot August afternoon for some baseless suspicion of a captain whose former trespass debacle cost the city and prosecutor a lot of time, money, and credibility (but recall, this debacle wasn't fully adjudged until September).  As reported before, I decided to yank Captain Caveman's chain further down the path by positioning myself outside the fire door to the council chamber.  

Haveman closed the outer doors, went to the council to notify them, came back and saw me crossing over landscaping to get to the fire door, alleging that I was listening with my ear to the door , then went back to council, notifying them of this, got them to stop the meeting, and then came back outside to deal with me, and all within a minute's time, when one looks at the external video:

Frankly, I didn't know he had such speed within him.  Truth is, I never put an ear to the door, I believe I did cup my ears for a second or two just to see whether I would be able to hear anything (I heard nothing), just so I couldn't be credibly accused of eavesdropping on their unlawfully closed session to discuss matters I wasn't even involved in.  I have since tested the door with a friend and we found that conversational tones within the chamber could not be heard from outside.  

Nevertheless, Captain My Caveman that day decided I was disrupting the meeting simply by standing outside an exterior city hall door on public property that I was famously trespassed from before in 2011 for an equally ridiculous notion.  That infraction cost the city tens of thousands of dollars, and admissions that they behaved inappropriately.  This failed Fourth Amendment audit will not work out well for them either.

After trying to give me requests to move from where I was without providing any lawful reason for him to boss me around in such a manner, he started to threaten me and my freedom.  After a couple of minutes of this, which the above security cam video fails to cover completely, he leaves and comes back with backup:  two police cars arrive with one officer each, and two other officers come from the LPD station attached to the city hall.  Almost a full shift of cops responded to this crazy standoff, and this is where the body cam recordings came in and showed how wacky the situation was (a transcript follows of Austin Morris' footage):

Rotta:  Can I have something written please.

Haveman:  I don't have anything to write it on right now, you can come back tomorrow and maybe I can give you something (cross talk) you're disrupting a public meeting.

Rotta:  How am I disrupting a meeting?

Haveman:  By trying to listen, by trespassing on public property (unintelligible)... look, I asked you to leave...

Rotta:  Please, give me something in writing

Haveman:  I'm not giving you anything in writing, I don't have anything...

Rotta:  You're accusing me of trespassing, give me something in writing

Haveman:  I don't have anything to give you, you can come back later, but you got to vacate the area.

Rotta:  I'm staying here.

Haveman:  You're not staying

Rotta:  I'm staying here.

Haveman:  You're disrupting the public meeting

Rotta:  I'm not doing anything with a public meeting, I'm outside...

Haveman:  You're disrupting a public meeting, Tom.

Rotta:  No.

Haveman:  You are.

Rotta:  No, I'm not.  If you take me off the property, you keep me off the property, you're going to be in violation of several acts that allow me to be at public meetings.  

Haveman:  It's not an open meeting, it's in closed session right now.

Rotta:  Well, they're going to be resuming an open meeting...

Haveman:  Well, you're being trespassed from the area and it's disturbing the peace...

Rotta:  I'll be effectively taken away from the public meeting

Haveman:  You're effectively going to be taken to jail if you don't leave, that's the problem, Tom, because you're trespassing and you're violating 

Rotta:  Give me a trespass order.

Haveman:  I don't have it in writing right here

Rotta:  I'm not disrupting anything, you're doing the disrupting, you're the only disruptor.

Haveman:  I'm not disrupting anything

Rotta:  You are.

Haveman:  So please step away from the door until the closed session is completed.

Rotta:  Alright, so now you're going to arrest me?

Haveman:  Yeah, for trespassing.

Rotta:  For trespassing

Haveman:  Yup, so step away or you will end up getting arrested.

Rotta:  Under whose authority am I being trespassed?  Is it yours?

Haveman:  Yeah, you're violating the... you're disturbing the peace of this meeting.

Rotta:  I'm not.

Haveman:  You are.

Rotta:  No, I'm not.

Haveman:  You are Tom.

Rotta:  Do we have actual body cams...

Haveman:  Yeah, all body cams are on.  

Rotta:  I'm not disrupting a meeting; I'm standing outside city hall.

Haveman:  Step away, this is the last time I'm going to tell you before you end up getting arrested for trespassing.  

Rotta:  I'm not trespassing, this is public prop...

Haveman:  You are trespassing, I told you that you have to leave.  Legally, I can tell you that you have to leave.

Rotta:  Give me some MCL numbers, give me some prec...

Morris:  At the end of the day whether you believe you are interfering with the meeting or not, you are still being told that you are trespassing now, so we have to have you leave.  So, you're being trespassed now, you have to leave from the property, that's just the end of the story.

Rotta:  So once the meeting comes back into (open) session, I won't be allowed back on the property, is what you're saying.

Morris:  What I'm being told, you are trespassed from the property at this time.

Haveman:  What we're trying to do before the meeting goes back into (open) session and let you back in, but you're not making this cooperative.  You're not listening and following directions...

Rotta:  How will I know when the meeting comes back into session?

Haveman:  Well, we'll come and get you (unintelligible)

Rotta:  How will you come and get me?

Haveman:  You'll be standing out here and I can see you and say the meeting is back to open.

Rotta:  Okay.  (Moves over to be in front of the LPD office, without further ado).

Unless you're well versed in civil rights law and willing to pay the price of asserting those rights, I wouldn't advise people to refuse a police officer's request.  In this case, a couple of minutes of talking it over with My Caveman (between the recordings) showed his request to move was not based on public safety, his or my safety, or any reasonable suspicion that a crime was in progress or eminent, or any other lawful cause.  He suspected me of listening at the door to be sure, but criminal eavesdropping in Michigan requires a third party using a device to record a private conversation.  

So why would My Caveman believe that he had the authority to have me move from a place open to the general public?  Subsequently, having the ability to trespass me, arrest me, and take me to jail when his requests to move along had no lawful authority behind them?  It comes from the same void in his mind, his heart, and his training that made him actually think he could take away my privileges to be at a public park for a month after his employer's gross negligence almost led to my early death by deer cullers.

Had I not deescalated the situation that afternoon, Haveman would have likely followed through with his threats against me and my freedom.  Federal law classifies this as a deprivation of rights under color of the law.  Apparently, My Caveman wanted to re-escalate the situation by sending it to the prosecutor requesting a warrant. 

Prosecutor Beth Hand, contracted by the City of Ludington for nearly $20,000 a year, currently being sued by myself for violating the FOIA by denying public records, and herself a frequent topic of conversation on this website due to her tantric embrace of unethical conduct, saw to it that this spurious and specious charge would be prosecuted, as witnessed in the complaint:

Any good prosecutor would see these major conflicts of interest as a reason for recusing herself for issuing a warrant, but this unscrupulous harpy has likely decided that no other sane prosecutor would ever take this counterfeit violation of an ambiguous city code section to trial.  So even though she is defending herself in a civil case I have against her for Brady Rule violations, FOIA violations, and seeking punitive damages for her arbitrary and capricious acts, she feels that she can be an objective decision maker in choosing whether to go forth with a frivolous prosecution that really has no chance for success.

My attorney will be presenting a motion before the court the day before Thanksgiving for Beth Hand to recuse herself from this case in order to allow a less compromised prosecutor to review and use their own prosecutorial discretion, chronically absent in Hand's career, to decide whether this My Caveman manufactured event warrants any prosecution in the first place.