ACLU Worker Arrested For Observing Police : NOLA Indymedia

Police arrested ACLU Field Coordinator Brent Cox for surveying a police interdiction last month, though Cox said he was fulfilling his constitutional duty in observing the activity.

Charges listed on the Sept. 14 Jackson Police Department arrest docket identify the reason for Cox’ arrest as “disobeying a police officer” and “interfering with the duties of a police officer.” Cox said he only watched the altercation, took notes and asked the participating police officers for their badge numbers. Officer William Bright was the arresting officer, according to the city’s arrest docket.

“There’s a common practice around the country, called ‘cop watch.’ … It’s a way to ensure police accountability, that rights aren’t being violated and that good police policy is in place and being followed,” Cox said.

Cox noticed two police officers detaining a man and woman around 4 p.m. in the parking lot outside the Rainbow Whole Foods Co-op Grocery on Old Canton Road. Cox said the female officer, after noticing his interest—and notepad—kept telling him to get back, ushering him away from the scene until he was more than 60 feet away from the interdiction, too far to either see or hear the event. The same officer ignored other customers passing by the same scene at closer range.

“She targeted me specifically because she didn’t want me observing what was going on,” Cox said.

After the interdiction, Cox approached the officers again, asking for identification. The ACLU worker said both officers refused to give their identification numbers, counter to municipal policy. The female officer even covered her badge.

Another officer pulled up, and eventually one of the officers told Cox that he was being arrested for “interfering with a police investigation.”

Cox, who has been trained in police scene observation, said police did not read him his Miranda rights at any point during the arrest, emptying his pockets or while guiding him to the patrol car.

Cox sat in the county jail in Raymond for 14 hours before getting his phone call and arranging his $2,500 bond.

“Three shifts of guards passed before I was allowed to make a phone call. I was there with 30 guys, and I have to ask, ‘why.’” Cox said. “It’s morally obscene to lock people up for 14 hours. Their families have no idea where they are, or they could lose their jobs.”

Mississippi ACLU Executive Director Nsombi Lambright said the group panicked when Cox “vanished for the whole night.”

“We didn’t hear from him. We had a witness who saw his arrest, but anything could have happened to him after that. Nobody called us, and nobody (at JPD) had any answers,” Lambright said, adding that the ACLU now classifies Jackson police as “aggressive” to onlookers and restricts members from overtly observing them.

JPD spokesman Commander Lee Vance said he did not know enough about the incident to speculate on the legality of it.

“Not being out there, I don’t know how the circumstances unfurled that … prompted them to arrest. (I’m) not saying it was legitimate or not—I’m just saying that it’s hard for me to say something about something that I don’t have any personal knowledge of,” Vance said.

Kristy L. Bennett is a Byrd-Silverman legal fellow with the Mississippi ACLU. Bennett said the city has likely violated at least two constitutional rights in arresting Cox.

“We believe the officers violated his First Amendment right in refusing him his right to observe. This is a free speech issue. … We also think they could have possibly violated his Fourth Amendment right through the unlawful seizure of his person,” Bennett said.

The ACLU filed an Internal Affairs complaint last month, and is requesting a disposition of the incident. The ACLU plans to make no plea at Cox’s Nov. 15 arraignment, but will ask the city to dismiss the charges.

Mississippi School of Law professor Matt Steffey said the ACLU will likely get the charges dropped, but said the organization was facing an uphill battle in any suit proving constitutional violations.

“If you want the city to be liable, you have to show that this behavior was a city policy. If you want to hold the individual officers responsible, you have to show that they arrested him under circumstances they knew to be without probable cause. … These are expensive, difficult cases to make. Even police brutality cases, with victims showing egregious harm, are expensive, difficult cases,” Steffey said.

I'm the Brent Cox who was arrested. While the people generally know we have the First Amendment right to monitor cops--including watching, note taking, videoing, photographing, etc,--cops sometimes don't know or don't care. As more and more people are comfortable using cell phones and such to catch police misconduct, I expect these kinds of arrests to increase. The response must be people speaking out and challenging these arrests everywhere, in courts and on the streets. Speak out and stand up!

witnessing is the foundation of solidarity

it means alot when some one has the guts to stand thier ground and watch

I hope they chuck the charge durring your first appearence

heres a video of cops arresting me for watching them digitaly

which i go on trial for this week

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=125420428425622744&q=proudline&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

IMC & Email Hrvesting

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a major component in spamming is getting hold of valid email addresses to spam. The same goes for publishing. This part of our investigation delves into some of the more effective and creative techniques for harvesting valid email addresses from IMC members on the collective.

We will not attempt to cover them all, because frankly, there are many different ways to go about this task, and some are independent of our particular focus here.

The art of email harvesting is to obtain valid, high-quality, high-volume email addresses. In most cases, these factors have trade-offs in terms of time. High quality at high volume usually takes a lot longer to obtain, since you have to focus on more targeted mailing lists, newsgroups, and any other medium that displays static email addresses, but the quality of the emails themselves aren't really known. For high volume alone,

this publisher runs multiple extractor tools on newsgroups, to obtain email addresses. For high quality, high volume, and high speed, this publisher will most likely require exploiting systems to gain access to their back-end customer databases.

Harvesting Tools, Targets, and Techniques

There are multiple ways to harvest email addresses off newsgroups, the results are lists generated of potential interest for sales, citizen watch groups, and membership lists for

Your arrest for recording the officer is very troubling. Have you contacted the ACLU in Massachusetts? Please feel free to email me: bcox(at)msaclu.org.

I'd like very much to put you in touch with the office there if you haven't already reached out to them.

Just a follow-up note to this article. Last week I was found not guilty by a Jackson municipal judge. Thanks to everyone who supported me, and a much bigger thanks to everyone who continues to observe police in public. We're not supposed to have secret police in the United States.