On February 18, 2014, I was walking
home on Martel Avenue in Los Angeles, CA heading north from an acting class at my union at 5757
Wilshire Boulevard at about 10:30 or 11:00 pm, which I’ve been doing for
fifteen years. At Santa Monica Boulevard, Martel becomes Plummer Park for a
block, and I proceeded. As I entered the park, I noticed there was a Sheriff’s
patrol car idling to the right of the path that cut through the park. As I
passed the vehicle, the Sheriff nodded to me and I nodded back. Once I passed,
the Sheriff started inching towards me on the path. I thought he wanted to move
on to the path, which was paved and wide enough for a vehicle. I stopped, stepped
off the path, and waved for him to pass.
He didn’t want to pass. He stopped.
He didn’t say anything. When I could see that he didn’t want to get on the
path, I got back on and started walking again. As far as I could tell, I was
proceeding into the park with his permission. He started following me again,
exhibiting predatory behavior. What I did not know, and what the Sheriff did
not tell me, was that the park closed at ten.
When I started walking again, the Sheriff
pulled up next to me and began asking me questions. He did not say why he was
asking me questions. The Sheriff didn’t tell me the park was closed because he
wanted me in the park to create probable cause to “stop and frisk” me. He was
corrupting the law for his own unconstitutional purposes. He had two
opportunities to tell me the law, but he didn’t want me to know the law.
“Where are you going?” He asked.
“Home,” I said.
“Where’s that?”
I told him the name of the street.
Then he asked me another question.
I can’t tell you what it was. He was violating my fourth amendment rights. I
had stopped listening. He repeated the question. He had not identified any
probable cause to question me. This was an unconstitutional “stop and frisk.” I
ran.
Why did I run? I hadn’t really done
anything, but it’s been my experience, after living in Los Angeles for over
twenty years, that innocence or guilt really doesn’t matter. In Los Angeles, you’re either a policeman or
a suspect. Not all, but a lot of the police in Los Angeles are just bullies
with badges. West Hollywood Sheriffs start out as county prison guards, and some
regard everyone as their prisoners. They do their job if you’re guilty, but
they do the same job if you’re innocent, because everyone is their prisoner. To
them, the City of West Hollywood is an extension of the county jail.
I did
not have the intent to run. I just found myself running. It was an involuntary reaction to a perceived
danger. I’ve been traumatized by the police in Los Angeles. I did not feel
safe. Running was instinctual.
The Sheriff
later told me he profiled me because I had long hair and was wearing a long
coat. He was convinced I had drugs. But while he was profiling me, I was
profiling him. The last time I got “stopped and frisked” by the West Hollywood Sheriff’s
Department, the Sheriff got friskier than a TSA agent.
During
this “stop and frisk,” I was sexually assaulted. It was more of a “stop and
molest.” My civil rights weren’t the only
thing being violated. During this “stop and frisk,” the Sheriff asked me
a series of questions that were similar to the questions the Sheriff in the
park was asking. I was wearing a back-pack and he asked to search it. I let
him. I was also wearing a penis and he asked to search that, but not in those
words. He said, “I’m going to frisk you now.”
When he
put his hand in my left pocket, he went right. He was fondling me long enough to know I didn’t have testicular cancer.
The West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department had a new slogan that day: “to
protect and service.”
Once I
had escaped the danger in the park and crossed Fountain Street, I stopped
running and resumed my path on Martel.
As I said, it was a fight or flight panic response. When I felt safe again, I
stopped running. It was a flashback to a sexual assault by a West Hollywood Sheriff.
About three quarters of the way
down this block of Martel, between Fountain and Sunset, the West Hollywood Sheriff’s
patrol car from the park pulled up next to me in a screeching halt. The Sheriff
jumped out of his vehicle and seemed extremely emotionally distressed.
I remained still. The Sheriff
grabbed my right arm from behind and pushed me towards the back hood of the
nearest car. He said, “Move to the car and stand up against it.” He pushed me
down on the hood. I broke the fall with my left hand. A second Sheriff had
arrived and he told me to spread my legs.
At this point other Sheriffs were
arriving. Eventually there would be up to ten Sheriff’s patrol cars swarming
the street. They parked across both lanes with their lights flashing and shut
down traffic.
While one Sheriff held my right
cuffed arm behind my back, the one from the park was on my left side and he had
his hand around my wrist. He said, “Put your left hand behind your back.”
I was suffering from a long
standing painful injury in my left shoulder. I had already scheduled a doctor’s
appointment regarding it for the following Tuesday. I said, “I have a shoulder
injury.”
He then emptied half a bottle of
pepper spray into my eyes, onto my glasses, my face, my hair, and my clothes.
He then repeated his order: “Put your left hand behind your back.”
The fact that he had assaulted me
with half a can of pepper spray did not change the fact that my shoulder was in
pain. I said, “I have a shoulder injury.”
He emptied the rest of the can into
my eyes, on my glasses, my face, my hair, and my clothes. Then he grabbed my arm and put it behind my
back anyway, which he could have done without emptying a can of pepper spray
into my face. I never resisted. This was just something he wanted to do. I’m
sure if he had more pepper spray, he would have asked me again. This is what
bullies do. It’s what thugs and cowards do. It’s what the police in America do to
subjugate the population.
For those of you who haven’t had
the pleasure of being assaulted by your local police, when you are assaulted
with pepper spray, you are immediately blinded. Mucus glands are stimulated to
try to relieve the body of the alien chemical combination that has attacked
their host. My eyes teared up and my nose started to run.
They already had me in cuffs so I
said, “Is somebody going to wash these chemicals out of my eyes?”
One of the Sheriffs, I couldn’t
tell you which one because I was blinded, said, “The fire department is coming.
They’ll wash it out.” This seemed reasonable. The fire department often
administered first aid and there was a station a couple of blocks over.
Chemical weapons are frowned on in
warfare, but I say kudos to the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department for not
reading the Geneva Convention. They’re still working on the Constitution,
particularly Amendments IV and XIII.
I was
thrown into the back seat of the patrol car and the doors and windows were
closed. Not even a window was cracked, which a civilized person wouldn’t do to
a dog, although they might do it to a squirrel in the park after ten.
The
thing you should know about pepper spray in an enclosed space is that it
recirculates and intensifies. It does not dissipate. The Sheriffs knew this.
They were deliberately torturing me, which is a violation of the eighth
amendment.
To further exemplify this violation
of my eighth amendment rights, the back seat door on the driver’s side opened
up, and one of the Sheriffs sat next to me, I assume it was the punk from the
park, although, through his amazing grace, I was blind and could not see. He
proceeded to ask me a series of questions culminating with, “Were you in the
park?” He was essentially questioning me under torture to get me to say I was
in the park after ten.
I answered his first couple of
questions, which I do not recall---either the questions or the answers. My
senses were still reeling from the shock and awe of the police swarm and the
gas attack. It’s very much like what happens to the memory in an accident. The
purpose of shock and awe is to stun and traumatize. I told him, “I cannot make
a statement in this condition.”
At no time during my incarceration
was I read my Miranda rights. They just
kept saying over and over again that I was a drug dealer. “Where are the drugs?
People who look like you usually have drugs!”
I said, “I’m just a citizen,” which
became my mantra throughout the booking process. “I’m just a citizen!”
Profiling is not probable cause.
Any spider can catch a fly if it spins a web.
The longer I remained in the car,
the more torturous the recirculating gas became. We must have remained in that
area for over an hour. As I said, the Sheriffs swarmed. They were probably
canvassing the area for the stash they thought I had dropped. They were stupid,
but they were honestly stupid. They couldn’t fathom why anyone would run from a
“stop and frisk.” ‘Don’t you like to be molested?’
At one point two Sheriffs got in
the front seat, I couldn’t say who because I was still blind, and they taunted
me for being handcuffed in the confines of the back seat of the patrol car with
recirculating gas. “Gee I’d hate to be in here. It smells like pepper in here.
I’d hate to be in here.” They were like a couple of giggling stupid high school
jock bullies.
So being the only adult in the car,
I said, “That’s real nice guys. Mock me. That’s very professional.”
This flustered them. After all, I’m
a fifty-two year old man and these were children---punks with guns, tazers and
pepper spray. They acted like punks, punks who had been caught. They tried to
act like they were talking about something else: “Ooh, this pepper candy is
hot.”
“Yea, pepper candy.” They jumped
out of the car.
At some point another Sheriff opened
up the front door and stuck his head in and I repeated my request to have my
eyes washed out. “A medic is coming,” he said. No medic was coming.
At another point I wanted to kick
out one of the windows, but that would not have helped my situation. All I could do was scream and that is what I
did. It wasn’t a scream to accomplish anything. It was not a call for help, it
was a venting.
The screaming didn’t do anything,
so I decided to pretend I was having a seizure. If I pretended to have a
seizure, they’d have to open the doors and let in some fresh air. I pretended
to have a seizure. They didn’t open the back door or crack the windows. At one
point, a Sheriff stuck her head in the front door and said, “Are you all
right?” I didn’t respond. Nobody opened the back door or rolled down a window.
After a short interval, I pretended
to have a second seizure with similar results.
I asked for a third time for
someone to wash the pepper spray out of my eyes. I was still blind, so I
couldn’t tell you who said, “You can wash it out when you get to the station.”
I said, “That’s great. You bring
the disease, but you don’t bring the cure. That’s very professional.” This
became my second mantra.
After being tortured in the back
seat for an hour or more, the Sheriff got in the car and took me to the West
Hollywood Sheriff’s jail for processing. I asked to wash the pepper spray off,
but they told me I could wash it off when I was put in a cell.
I got put in a holding area while
the arresting officer interviewed me from behind a glass barrier. He said I was
lucky it wasn’t before the Rodney King beating because then they would have
beaten me. The Sheriff who processed my release gave me a similar warning that
I was lucky I wasn’t beaten---typical bully behavior.
They put me in a cell and I tried
to wash off the pepper spray with no success. There was a tiny push button cold
water sink that was set up to be more of a drinking fountain. Trying to wash off
the chemical just reactivated it. They would not let me take a shower until the
next afternoon, shortly before they released me. I had to sleep on my back. If
I slept on my face or side, I would just be inhaling the pepper spray. It was
freezing in the unheated cell and I couldn’t use my coat because it had been
doused in the chemical.
I grew up in a different America. I
doubt if Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison or Benjamin
Franklin ever envisioned a country where the state regularly molests citizens,
whether in “stop and frisks” or the TSA. This is what occupying armies do. This
is how you terrorize a population into submission. Maybe we should amend the
third amendment to include “no officer of the law shall molest the citizens.”
Perhaps my interpretation of the
constitution is out of fashion, but if it doesn’t come back, this country will
not last long. I acted like a citizen with constitutional rights. The West
Hollywood Sheriff’s Department acted like I was a prisoner in their county
jail. I’m a citizen, not a suspect, or a prisoner. I am a free man. My rights
are unalienable and not granted by the state.
The West Hollywood Sheriffs are a
protected criminal class of prison guard thugs. They have no regard for the
constitution or civil rights. They are the Hells Angels at Altamont. I was
assaulted, mugged, tortured and kidnapped and my property was destroyed. I now
have a record and my fingerprints are on file because I was walking home
through a public park.
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