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'One of the Internet's few journalistic pit bulls.' Matt Welch, tabloid.net

National police force takes the field in Clinton's 4th quarter

By GEOFF DAVIDIAN
Editor, The Putnam Pit
For Project Censored

ROHNERT PARK, Calif. -The United States has created what amounts to a national police apparatus, funded by Washington and sometimes through state legislatures, and set into action by mandates tied to the cash - fight gangs, fight drugs in order to receive funds. Under the protection of increasingly police-oriented legislative restrictions on gathering information about police, these police task forces work secretly and with amazing resources. While some stories are partially covered by the hometown press, there is no official national count of crimes or murders committed by police, the Summer 1999 Project Censored/Putnam Pit Investigative Reporting Institute found.

For example: According to allegations in a dismissed federal civil rights lawsuit, the Sonoma County, Calif., Multi Agency Gang Enforcement Team - they call themselves M.A.G.N.E.T. - made misrepresentations to get a search warrant, then pulled masks over their faces in three raids on April 21, 1997, in which police shoved a gun into the head of an 80-year-old woman who lived next door to the address they had court permission to search, had a resident crawl in his back yard in his underwear at 7 a.m. where his neighbors could have witnessed the intrusion, confiscated personal property not listed in the warrant and kept the property even though no charges were filed and there was no sign a crime had been committed. The case, Rex Biteng et al., Plaintiffs, v. City of Santa Rosa, et al., Defendants, [C98-1800MJJ,United States District Court, Northern District of California], was not widely reported although the raid itself was covered by mainstream media. Under existing California law, the media are barred from access to background information about the individuals, or what prior complaints may have been lodged against them. The Biteng case was dismissed because the statute of limitations ran. Three volunteer lawyers -- Jamie Braga from Berliner Cohen, a San Jose, Calif., law firm; attorney Rick Williams, of Santa Rosa, Calif.; and Samuel J. Harris, from Harris Law Firm, Cookeville, Tenn., helped with legal support and representation -- and Dr. Dan Morris, of the Communication department at Boise State University, contributed data-base instruction and moral support during two stints at the California campus. Students included Ben Kline and Carissa Wolf, of Boise, Idaho; Kim Ognisty, of Mammoth Lakes, Calif.; Tom Ladagaard, Cotati, Calif.; Tovanna Bieberich, Glen Ellen, Calif.; Bryan Cobery, of Rohnert Park, Calif.; and Bonnie Faulkner, Glen Ellen, Calif.

For example: The government underreports or does not generate statistics showing the total number of civilians killed by police officers in the United States. Karen Saari has been counting reports of prisoners, suspects and others killed by police and she said they are at least double the official numbers -- where they exist. Her research, if raw and unscientific, nevertheless shows how much America is at war with itself, and who the victims are. Working with the Stolen Lives Project, Saari and other opponents of police brutality say they have gathered information on the circumstances in more than 2,000 killings by law-enforcement agents since 1990. Part of her research, in conjunction with Project Censored at Sonoma State University, was focused on excessive force deaths (shootings, chokings, beatings and so on). The government either does not keep these records or the records that exist are not public in much of the country.

For example: The Washington Post reported on Nov. 5, 1999, that a tabloid newspaperman is alleging that seven St. Mary's County sheriff's deputies violated his First Amendment rights last year when they bought more than 3,000 copies of his newspaper that ran unflattering stories about their political allies, according to a civil rights suit filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. Attorneys for Kenneth C .Rossignol, the publisher of St. Mary's Today, allege in the suit that the deputies drove around St. Mary's County early on Election Day, Nov. 3, 1998, buying newsstand and newspaper box copies of the paper "for the sole purpose of preventing distribution to the voting public of two news articles concerning candidates for . . . State's Attorney and Sheriff."

For example: An Oklahoma City newspaper sues for records about police nightclub incident. [http://www.freedomforum.org/press/1999/11/3okpolicerecords.asp] The police report blacked out most names in the report because no one had been arrested. But the department identified Capt. Bill Martin as one officer found inside the club and a possible suspect in an alleged rape of a club bartender. Police officials have declined to release more information. ? For example: The Seattle Times reports that the FBI moved in when key documents compiled by a citizen panel that looked into the Seattle Police Department's internal review process disappeared just before they were to be made public. The documents disappeared after Mayor Paul Schell's office handed them over to police -- breaking a promise by the citizen panel to the people it interviewed that their statements would be confidential.

For example: In Putnam County, Tennessee, the Thirteenth Judicial District Drug Task Force runs up considerable overtime, then auctions off confiscated property to pay themselves. Efforts to get the accounting of the auction proceeds are withheld because they have to do with ongoing investigations, officials say.

For example: On Nov. 26, 1997, the Washington Supreme Court decided 5-4 that police can keep secret files on any citizen, overturning a law established by the public through an initiative process and referendum vote. Is this a ‘police state?’ That may be clearer in January when Project Censored and The Putnam Pit will hold a three-week, three-credit intensive investigative reporting and sociology session at Sonoma State University. The course, which begins Jan, 4, 2000, will undertake the first measurement of how law enforcement uses the United State Postal Service as spies. Joining Peter Phillips and me will be Michael Ravnitzky, a lawyer working for APBnews.com in New York. Ravnitzky has freed FBI, Defense Department U.F.O. and other documents through federal Freedom of Information Act provisions. His penetration of the Postal Service yielded the largest single collection of documents showing use of the post office to spy on citizens, which he has turned over to Project Censored. The Project Censored/ Putnam Pit courses are offered to students wishing to take on big projects outside the corporate media atmosphere. Participants learn how to publish newsletters and Web pages to overcome impediments in the commercial news world. For more information, call Project Censored at 707-664-2500, or email us at geoff@putnampit.com

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