Facebook users of Alaska: you are now the primary engine of social justice in this state. How many of you saw the video of Sitka Police repeatedly tasing a high school student in a holding cell until he lay limp and motionless, sprawled between a thin plastic pad and the concrete floor? Did you share the video with your Facebook friends? Or perhaps leave an angry comment on the website of one of the media outlets that picked up the story and posted the video?
If so, congratulate yourself. You are the reason the Sitka Police finally asked – over a year after the incident actually occurred – an outside agency to review its stun-gun-happy beat-down of that kid. Because prior to the release of the video on social media last week, Sitka Police Chief Sheldon Schmitt thought what the police did merited no more than a "discussion" with the officers involved.
Prior to widespread sharing of the video, in his comments to the press, Schmitt didn't seem to have any problem with the conduct itself, just the impression it left. In an early interview, he said that "in this instance the cops were trying to do the best they could. Could they have handled it differently? Yes. And in a way that wasn't so negative-looking."
But of course, the problem runs far deeper than mere appearances. The teen had been arrested for the violation of minor consuming alcohol, which is punishable by a fine only, and disorderly conduct, a class B misdemeanor, the lowest level of misdemeanors. It has a maximum jail term of 10 days, and that's only for the worst offenders. Most likely, the kid would have been released by the court the very next day, once he'd sobered up.
Given the extremely minimal nature of his alleged crimes, the police could have just searched the teen's pockets and put him in a cell for the night. The real reason for the gratuitous use of force is revealed by the officer who calls the kid a "douchebag" as he walks out of the holding cell: The teen had ticked them off and it was payback time.
But what is almost as troubling as watching the police punish this kid is the realization that nothing would have been done to address the misconduct of the police if the video hadn't found its way onto the Internet. The police, as it turns out, are not so good at policing themselves.
Two other examples
Take another example, this one from Bethel. In yet another beating caught on video, a police officer came upon an intoxicated man named Wassillie Gregory in the parking lot of the Alaska Commercial Co. store and, according to the officer's affidavit, "kindly tried to assist Gregory into my cruiser for protective custody when he pulled away." At this point, the officer's alleged kindness came to a very abrupt end, because a witness saw the officer pick Gregory up from his backpack and waistband, raise him about 3 feet in the air and slam him down on to the ground repeating the body slam multiple times for good measure. Gregory had to be taken to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder.
Gregory was charged with disorderly conduct, which appears to be the go-to charge when a person is beaten by a police officer, along with harassment, another Class B misdemeanor. When he was finally able to appear in court, Gregory, without a lawyer, pled guilty to the harassment charge and the prosecutor dismissed the disorderly conduct. Once again, the case would have been closed without any acknowledgment of the abuse Gregory suffered if the witness to the incident, a visiting professor from the University of Arizona, hadn't been so horrified by what she saw and motivated to do something about it.
The professor filed a complaint with Bethel Police Chief Andre Achee that same day – two days before Gregory pled guilty in court. After she received no response from the city of Bethel, she went to the media, contacted public radio station KYUK and wrote a letter to the local paper.
Chief Achee retrieved the hard drive from the A.C. store's surveillance system, which had captured the beating, but decided not to release it to the district attorney's office or to Gregory. The private attorney who ultimately agreed to represent Gregory was told by police that no video existed. When the Bethel police finally returned the surveillance system's hard drive to A.C., it had been erased. Gregory's lawyer had to hire a computer technician to recover the video from the hard drive. Thanks to this lack of cooperation by the Bethel Police Department, Gregory's conviction wasn't vacated until almost a year later, after the video was released on the Internet.
Still not convinced? Let's go to Kodiak where three police officers pinned Nick Pletnikoff, a 28-year-old autistic man, to the ground and pepper-sprayed him in the face. The officers were allegedly investigating a property crime. Pletnikoff's mother found him bruised, bloody and crying. When she asked the Kodiak Police Department what prompted this abuse, she was told her son had refused to answer officers' questions.
KPD claimed it officers' actions were, "minimal and necessary under the circumstances in order to maintain officer and community safety." Yet again, the police would have buried this incident had not an outraged eyewitness posted what he saw on Facebook. Local public radio station KMXT then filed a Freedom of Information Act request with KPD for the audio and video recordings from the officer's body cameras. KPD ignored the request. Kodiak Public Broadcasting Corp., the licensee for KMXT, just announced it's suing the city to force release of that information.
Cameras aren't enough
The three cases above illustrate that body cameras and other video systems are not enough to stop police misconduct. It takes an extraordinary confluence of events for police departments to hold themselves and their officers accountable: not only video that captures the abuse in stark detail or a highly-motivated eyewitness, but also a public Internet campaign.
It shouldn't be that hard, and it doesn't have to be. A statewide citizen oversight committee empowered to hear and investigate complaints about law enforcement would go a long way towards improving police accountability. We already have a Police Standards Council, but, currently, that board's authority only extends to decertifying police officers who have already been convicted of crimes of other serious misconduct.
But during the 2014 legislative session, state Sen. Lesil McGuire introduced Senate Bill 180, which would have expanded the authority of the Police Standards Council to receive and investigate citizen complaints from around the state about police, probation, parole, or correctional officers. The bill also would have expanded the citizen members of the council from four to six and specified that none of those members could be former law enforcement. If the council's investigation found the allegations of misconduct to be substantiated, it would be empowered to suspend or revoke an officer's certification.
Unfortunately, this bill never made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was not introduced again in the next session. But it needs to be resurrected this year. Reining in police brutality shouldn't been dependent on an effective Facebook campaign.
Marcelle McDannel has been working in criminal law for almost two decades, both as a prosecutor and as a criminal defense attorney, and she currently practices criminal defense statewide. Her crime fiction blog can be found at askmsmurder.net.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com.