I don’t know Temple University photojournalism major Ian Van Kuyk, despite his enrollment in Temple’s Journalism Department, where I teach.
I do know that dynamics embedded in the recent arrest of Van Kuyk by Philadelphia police–an arrest now generating news coverage nationwide–provide yet another snapshot of the systemic abuses I’ve reported and researched during three decades spent documenting the lawlessness endemic among law enforcers.
Philadelphia police roughed-up and arrested Van Kuyk for his photographing a police traffic stop taking place in front of his apartment. The arrest of Van Kuyk violated Philadelphia Police Department directives permitting such photographing as well as court rulings and constitutional rights.
Police harassing citizens lawfully documenting police activities taking place in public is a “widespread and continuing” problem according to the ACLU.
“The right of citizens to record the police is a critical check and balance,” an ACLU analyst noted during a September 2011 speech where he referenced six incidents in five cities of police arresting citizen photographers during just the spring of last year.
Yes, police attacking civilians for lawfully photographing public spaces, police routinely employing unlawful excessive force and prosecutors too frequently turning a blind eye to such police misconduct are all nationwide problems.
Systemic abuses by police and the prosecutors that condone such misconduct corrode public confidence in the justice system and cost taxpayers millions of dollars spent on settling lawsuits alleging illegalities by police.
Ian Kuyk, arrested by Philly's Finest for taking photos of them arresting someone
Historically, abuses by police and particularly those by prosecutors receive short-shrift from most elected officials.
Just a few days before the alleged March 14, 2012 abuse of Van Kuyk, an artist filed a federal lawsuit against a Philadelphia policeman for roughing her up when arresting her less than two miles from the Van Kuyk incident. When arrested that artist was lawfully creating an outdoor artwork.
In January 2012, the City of Philadelphia settled another lawsuit filed against the same artist-arresting policeman, with the City agreeing to pay a woman $30,000. She alleged that the officer had “violently manhandled” her – breaking her nose and spraining her wrist during a sidewalk encounter.
Abundant evidence now implicates a police-prosecutor abuse angle in the Florida fatal shooting of teen Trayvon Martin by 28-year-old George Zimmerman.
The evidence is clear that Sanford, FL police officials acted in incomprehensible variance with established procedures in their handling of that fatal incident, seemingly proceeding in ways calculated to support Zimmerman’s self-defense claim.
And evidence indicates those police officials plus prosecutors rejected a Sanford Police detective’s request to arrest Zimmerman for manslaughter – a management decision that appears to demonstrate less concern for victim Martin than for shooter Zimmerman, whom the evidence shows ignored police orders to not confront Martin, only to have him then claim he shot Martin in self-defense.
That incident producing the arrest of Van Kuyk and outrage from the general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) about gross violations of this young photojournalist’s First Amendment rights occurred in a section of South Philadelphia.
Of course there are two sides: in this case the account advanced by arresting officers and accounts from Van Kuyk, his girlfriend (also arrested that night) and a few of their neighbors who witnessed the events.
The only points of agreement between the two versions are that police were questioning one of Van Kuyk’s neighbors outside the South Philadelphia apartment where Van Kuyk lived, and that the budding photojournalist began photographing that encounter.
Philadelphia police are now reinvestigating the incident in the wake of criticisms and critical news coverage.
According to Van Kuyk, Philly police, after demanding that he stop photographing them, and after their dismissing his First Amendment protests, snatched Van Kuyk up, slammed him to the ground, swept him off to a police station for a nearly 24-hour detention, and eventually slapped him with a slew of charges, including disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstruction of justice.
How was Van Kuyk ‘obstructing justice’ if as an NPPA letter to Philadelphia police contends Van Kuyk “never came closer than ten feet” to the police? That letter notes that Van Kuyk “voluntarily backed up” when ordered by police before a policeman “approached [him] in an aggressive manner demanding that he stop taking pictures.”
Police also arrested Van Kuyk’s girlfriend, detaining her for 19-hours, also slamming her with trumped-up charges. Her arrest arose from her trying to retrieve Van Kuyk’s school-issued camera.
At the core of this incident we see some Philadelphia police failing to follow clearly stated department policy. A Philadelphia Police Department directive issued in September 2011 bars officers from arresting people for “photographing, videotaping or audibly recording police personnel [conducting] official business…in any public space.”
The “Purpose” listed on that policy, Memorandum (11-01), was to “remove any confusion as to duties and responsibilities” when police find themselves subjected to recording devices.
That National Press Photographers Association letter to Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner, raising the First Amendment, stated “It is truly abhorrent that not only did your officers abrogate that right [they] chose to add insult to injury by overcharging Mr. Van Kuyk with offenses he did not commit.”
Given that red-line PPD policy directive, police supervisors and prosecutors should have immediately pulled the plug on the charges against Van Kuyk and his girlfriend, but they didn’t.
Prosecutors pressed the flawed-arrest-related charges against Van Kuyk’s girlfriend, extracting their pound of flesh by forcing her into a program requiring 12-hours of community service and paying a $200 fine in exchange for their dismissing those flawed charges.
Van Kuyk is awaiting his preliminary hearing and possible trial.
The prosecution of Van Kuyk’s girlfriend and his pending charges are a stain on both the ethical duty of prosecutors to seek justice and Pa Professional Conduct rules for prosecutors restricting prosecutions “not supported by probable cause.”
Someone somewhere in Philly’s prosecutor’s office should have questioned questionable if not totally bogus charges arising from arrests prompted by police violating their department policy.
Philadelphia police spokesmen proclaim that the arresting officers knew about that directive protecting First Amendment activity, but contend that “other things happened…that caused the officers to make an arrest,” according to widely reported media accounts.
The Philadelphia Police Department’s record of abusive misconduct, however, casts a dark shadow on the department’s contention that “other things happened,” as do eyewitness accounts.
This incident involving Van Kuyk is hauntingly similar to an August 1972 incident that occurred just ten blocks from Van Kuyk’s apartment.
In that 1972 incident, a minister questioning police for pummeling a man outside his house triggered a home-invasion, with police ransacking the minister’s home and arresting him, his wife, his daughter and a house guest from Germany.
As with the Van Kuyk case, the assaulting police hit Rev. Joseph Kirkland, his family and house guest with a slew of charges, including disorderly conduct and interfering with a police officer.
Philly prosecutors pressed those charges, which police had concocted to cover-up their criminal assault on Kirkland’s house, but a judge quickly dismissed them.
Philly’s then top prosecutor, Arlen Specter, later a US Senator and top Senate Judicial Committee member, rejected widespread demands to prosecute those offending police officers for their criminal conduct against Rev. Kirkland and his family.
Specter recently released a book criticizing the dysfunction in contemporary partisan politics – an ironic argument coming from someone who once shirked his ethical and professional duties by ignoring outrageous misconduct and abusive behavior by police and prosecutors.
Months after that August 1972 incident, a federal judge in Philadelphia issued a ruling in a class-action police brutality lawsuit in which he criticized arrests without probable cause.
That judge noted that those most likely to be targeted for police abuse are individuals who had the audacity (but legal right) to challenge their initial police contact.
I guess certain abusive practices are just embedded in Philadelphia Police Department culture.
So are a 1972 incident and 1973 court ruling ancient history?
Well, that ’72 incident and ’73 court ruling implicated issues animating the Van Kuyk incident.
Meanwhile, a Maryland man in 2010 avoided a possible 16-year prison term for posting a video on YouTube showing a plainclothes state trooper brandishing a pistol when he stops that man for an alleged speeding violation.
A Maryland judge dismissed the criminal charges filed against that motorcyclist wearing a helmet cam in a ruling reminding police and prosecutors that public officials are “ultimately accountable to the public” and public servants should not expect their action to be “shielded from public observation.”
Philadelphia prosecutors need to drop the charges against Van Kuyk and reverse the proceeding against his girlfriend.
Further, authorities nationwide need to crack down on misconduct by police and prosecutors.