Delaware Police Compile Photo Database Of in NWO - Interesting News

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Delaware Police Compile Photo Database Of

Future Suspects
August 25, 2002
By ADAM TAYLOR, Staff reporter

Two Wilmington police squads created in June to arrest street-level drug dealers have taken pictures of at least 200 people who were not arrested for any crimes.

The pictures, names and addresses of the people - mostly minority men - are being used to create a database of potential suspects to investigate future crimes, Police Chief Michael Szczerba said.

Legal experts and state and federal prosecutors say the tactic is legal. Criminal defense attorneys, the American Civil Liberties Union and minority groups say it is not.

City Councilman Theo K. Gregory, who is a public defender, said he thinks the photographing is unconstitutional and morally wrong.

"We should enforce the existing laws, but not violate them, to catch the bad guys," he said. "We've become the bad guys, and that's not right."

Mayor James M. Baker said criticism of the photographing is "asinine and intellectually bankrupt," and he will not stop the practice.

"I don't care what anyone but a court of law thinks," he said. "Until a court says otherwise, if I say it's constitutional, it's constitutional."

No one has challenged the photographs in court here, Baker said.

The police units taking the photographs are known in some Wilmington neighborhoods as "jump-out squads" because they descend on corners, burst out of marked and unmarked vehicles and make arrests in seconds. Up to 20 officers make up each squad.

Police routinely line the people on the corners against a wall and pat them down for weapons. This is known as a "Terry stop," named for a 1968 Supreme Court decision, Terry vs. Ohio, that allows officers to stop, question and frisk people they think are suspicious or people in high-crime areas.

On one shift this month, the officers told a group of men after a Terry stop that they were breaking the city's loitering laws, which bar anyone from blocking passage in a public place if asked to move, and could be arrested on the spot.

During that stop, the police took the men's names and addresses, snapped their pictures and let them go.

Carl Klockars, a professor in the University of Delaware's Criminal Justice Department, said officers "have the right to take a picture'' unless there is a local ordinance to the contrary.

Defense attorney Joseph A. Hurley disagrees.

He said police have a right to photograph a citizen walking home from a grocery store or a library, but they cannot take a picture of someone they are temporarily detaining.

"The second they say, 'We're the police, put your hands against the wall,' the photos become wrong," he said. "They're unconstitutional. Bad idea."

Widener University School of Law school professor Thomas Reed said police in Delaware can detain anyone for up to two hours with no probable cause, so he thinks Hurley's analysis is wrong.

"The questions here surround invasion of privacy and the rules for the Terry stop," he said. "I don't think loiterers on known drug corners have much of a privacy interest. And if the stop and frisk was legal, any kind of evidence [such as a photograph] you gather to identify the perpetrator for other purposes is going to be legal."

State prosecutor Peter N. Letang and U.S. Attorney Colm F. Connolly said they think the practice is legal. Connolly would not say whether federal agents in Delaware photograph people who are not arrested.

Szczerba said the police intend to use the pictures for photographic lineups in the future.

Defense attorney Eugene J. Maurer Jr. said he thinks he could get a client acquitted in such a case by getting the use of the photo suppressed.

"If they're not arresting these people and using the loitering laws as a subterfuge just to get these pictures, I think there are some serious constitutional problems," he said. "Absent individualized suspicion, you're not supposed to be able to detain somebody."

Victor Valdez, 26, a resident of Connell Street, said he feels fortunate not to have been stopped by the jump-out squads.

"But I've seen them - they jump out on whoever they want, whenever and wherever," he said.

"If they stop someone and it turns out they don't have drugs or a gun, what's the point of taking their picture?"

Edgar White, 33, of Wilmington, said he was photographed by police earlier this month at Ninth Street and Clifford Brown Walk. White said he was at the corner with a friend who has a criminal record.

"I felt violated, but this is the only way I can think of for police to know which criminals hang out in certain spots," he said.

But although White said he supports the practice, he said he thinks background checks should be conducted on the spot before photographs are taken.

"If you're as clean as the Board of Health, there's no reason to have your picture taken," he said.

Craig Robinson, 41, a sanitation worker of the 700 block of N. Harrison St., said he is happy about the police assistance. He said he often chases drug dealers off his block.

"I tell them to go sell their drugs in front of their mother's house, and that usually makes them leave," he said. "Maybe if they know something's on file about them, they won't come back."

Drewry Nash Fennell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware, said she finds the new police practice disturbing.

"I don't want the police intimidating people who are lawfully assembled and intimidating them on the basis of loitering laws," she said. "And the retention of photographs is intimidating."

Baker said that he would not permit the police to conduct wholesale sweeps, "where everyone on the corner gets rounded up and put into the van."

"These are targeted, directed sweeps in high-crime areas where police have been turned loose to attack bad people," he said.

"Good little kiddies in the wrong place at the wrong time are not getting their picture taken," he said.

Cpl. Kevin Connor, a member of one of the jump-out squads, said his unit practices restraint.

"We're careful," he said. "There are a lot of kids socializing on the corners who aren't necessarily doing anything wrong."

Charles E. Brittingham, state president for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the photographs are troubling because the squads target low-income communities.

"It does have some racial overtones to it," he said. "I disagree with what they're doing and would like to sit down and talk with city officials about it."

Szczerba, the police chief, said his department has received no complaints about the squad's behavior.

He said the areas the squads frequent - the East Side, Northeast Wilmington, Hilltop, Southbridge and the Riverside housing project - were picked because that is where the drugs are.

"In reality, they're absolutely right," said Tony Allen, president of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League. "We recently studied handgun violence in the city of Wilmington and most of the victims and suspects were African Americans in high-drug areas."

Still, Allen said he would like to know more about the squads' practices to make sure they are being implemented correctly.

Baker said the 289-officer department needs to be creative and aggressive. Otherwise, he said the city would need 100 more officers to reach his goal of cutting crime by 80 percent in eight years.

Szczerba said he hears the mayor loud and clear, and has a message of his own for the city's criminal element:

"Say cheese and tell the judge how you plead."

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