top
Santa Cruz IMC
Santa Cruz IMC
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

Santa Cruz Police Department: Political Smears, Unfair Profiling, and Harassment

by via Steve Schnaar
There are numerous cases in which Santa Cruz Police Department leaders have strayed from their role as law enforcers, instead engaging in political smears and unfair profiling and harassment. This makes it more difficult to trust in their objectivity and commitment to serve everyone, and fosters an adversarial rather than cooperative relationship with many community members.
intelligence-gathering.gif
[ Santa Cruz Police Department spying and infiltration of private planning meetings for the 2005 Last Night DIY Parade were exposed by various community members, including Santa Cruz Indymedia. ]

Santa Cruz Police Department: Political Smears, Unfair Profiling, and Harassment

via Steve Schnaar

As outrage erupts across the nation over the perception that police officers are considered to be above the law, it seems appropriate for us to consider issues of police-community relations in our own town. Here as elsewhere, the most successful policing comes through building trusting and respectful relations with the community.

Unfortunately, there are numerous cases in which Santa Cruz Police Department leaders have strayed from their role as law enforcers, instead engaging in political smears and unfair profiling and harassment. This makes it more difficult to trust in their objectivity and commitment to serve everyone, and fosters an adversarial rather than cooperative relationship with many community members.

One recent example was Deputy Chief Steve Clark’s attack on City Council candidate Leonie Sherman, labeling her as an anarchist for participating in non-violent protests like hanging a banner opposing the World Trade Organization, and suggesting that she is a danger to the community and to local businesses. A few weeks later, when an anonymous emailer threatened mass shooting at Santa Cruz High, Clark again strayed from the facts, using the fear of violence to smear unrelated political activists, stating, “These kind of incidents rally the hacktivist crowd.” In both cases it seems clear that Clark was not basing his comments on fact, but rather abusing his position to smear those he perceives as political enemies.

Back in the ‘90s Clark harassed activist John Malkin who was serving on the Citizen Police Review Board, making false statements about him, investigating his political work (without any suspicion of criminal wrongdoing), and later threatening to publicize embarrassing information. A formal complaint on the matter was never investigated. This was after Clark tried to intimidate the City Council into not setting up the Review Board in the first place, stating at a Council meeting, “If you do this, I am going to hold each and every one of you personally responsible.”

Such incidents have a long history at the SCPD, and are not limited to Clark. When activists organized a fun, family-friendly New Year’s Parade in 2005, the police spied on them with undercover officers, leading to a small scandal for the department. In 2010, a handful of masked rioters smashed windows downtown. Although no one knows who committed the vandalism, the SCPD used the opportunity to smear the SubRosa Café, with Deputy Chief Rick Martinez claiming that the police had raided SubRosa, including kicking in their door. In fact, no such raid ever happened, nor was SubRosa nor any of its members ever investigated or charged with a crime. Again in 2012, the SCPD used smear tactics against Occupy Santa Cruz, spreading false rumors about ringworm and scabies outbreaks in the camp.

These attacks on political activists have no place in a free society. As with the Red Scares of times past, the SCPD has used false information and association to portray lawful dissenting voices in a bad light. It is especially troubling to know that the person responsible for many of these smears — Steve Clark, the Department’s official spokesperson —is also in charge of the SCPD’s program of mass surveillance: the use of automated license plate readers, which our local ACLU chapter has denounced as an invasion of privacy.

When repeated actions on the part of police managers violate the trust of the community, it undermines faith in law enforcement and government as a whole. For the benefit of the community and the department itself, the city should help rebuild that trust by holding the police accountable. One aspect of that must be disciplining officers who abuse their authority, including Deputy Chief Clark.

Steve Schnaar lives in Santa Cruz.
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by what gives
Wes Modes' statement reported here contradicts Steve's account of SubRosa having never been raided
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/huffsantacruz/conversations/messages/1346
by matches
From the sloppy article:

District attorney investigators raid SubRosa

By GENEVIEVE BOOKWALTER
Posted: 05/21/2010

SANTA CRUZ -- Investigators with the county District Attorney's Office raided the anarchist SubRosa Cafe on Wednesday, reportedly looking for workers' compensation documents.
Details of the raid were sparse Thursday. But Rick Martinez, Santa Cruz deputy police chief, confirmed the incident.
Wes Modes, co-founder of SubRosa, said four investigators were at the cafe and asked about "workers' comp issues."
"We were closed at the time," Modes wrote in an e-mail. "SubRosa has no employees and has an all-volunteer staff and is therefore not obligated to pay workers' comp."
Once investigators left, Martinez said, SubRosa members called the Santa Cruz Police Department to complain that their door was kicked in and that they were mistreated.
Officials from the District Attorney's Office did not return calls late Thursday.
SubRosa's website does not mention the raid, but asks readers to "contribute to what might end up being a long and expensive legal defense."
by G
City Council? When Clark appeared to threatened them with ICE-ish powers, “If you do this, I am going to hold each and every one of you personally responsible.”, Council members failed to act?

SCPD Chief? When Clark appeared to engage in election tampering, the Chief failed to act?

According to broken windows theory, allowing a scofflaw to go unpunished encourages more and greater violations. Who can stop 'bad apples' like Clark? Is the entire barrel rotten?
by Wes modes
SubRosa was never raided. In fact, it was never contacted directly by any law enforcement after the 2010 Mayday Mayhem as there was no connection.
by Razer Ray
a_system_cannot_fail_those.jpg
I've had few personal problems in my (more than occasional) dealings with the SCPD over the few years for a very simple reason. They've outsourced the harassment and intimidation of their displaced workers to a blackshirt operation called 1st Alarm, coordinated with the SCPD's Community "Service" officers.

I had to dial 911 a few months ago after being surrounded by three of them while sitting in the side window of the "Ritt" after I told the first one who arrived to tell me I couldn't sit there that I didn't agree with his interpretation of the Muni code and neither did most courts hearing cases about public seating.

When the community service officer arrived and I pressed her to write a ticket because "We REALLY need to see a judge about this..." she categorically refused to cite me, with the words "I certainly WILL NOT!" ... because quite simply she couldn't.

You read that right.

I was surrounded by three 1st Alarm Blackshirts for about ten minutes (me sitting in the window ledge and they within arms reach) only to be informed that there would be no citation. They had detained me extralegally, if detained IS the correct word because they HAVE NO RIGHT to detain ANYONE for an infraction.

When the city first hired these thugs I spoke to the council about it requesting TWO SIMPLE THINGS.

1> Get these cretins on the same page as the SCPD about the meaning and intent of the law.

It's become quite obvious to me the city had no intention of doing so because, simply, 1st Alarm was apparently hired to give extralegal interpretations of laws they know nothing about to targeted people as a harassment-intimidation tactic because the SCPD can not. Once SCPD occifers have been briefed at their musters or meetings by legal staff about legal issues they lose the the ability to apply previously used tactics to dissuade people and convince them to comply with offen illegitimate-under-state-law or otherwise constitutionally forbidden 'ordinances'. But the 1st Alarm thugs are under no such constraints.

2> CITY OVERSIGHT of their operations. No Blackwater Santa Cruz overseeing itself.

Recently a friend told me she called 1st Alarm to complain about the older thug at the public library, who called her a 'bitch'. She told me the 1st Alarm staffer she spoke to on the phone offered to retaliate by filing a restraining order preventing her from using the library and was otherwise uncooperative.

Ps. One of these freaks is continuing to stalk and harass me by calling me by name every time I walk by. Seeing me riding my bike and shouting "Be sure to obey the traffic laws (followed by my name) despite the fact I had not violated any traffic law (again, that he has no right to enforce), and otherwise following me as if he expects me to commit some criminal act besides existing as a displaced Santa Cruz worker..

One evening, after observing a friend and I discussing things in front of New Leaf he later walked by my friend and whispered at him as he went by "I love you..." because my friend is perhaps a little effeminate and this freak, 1st Alarm employee Robert Caposio, thought he was Gay.

Pps. Last night I was outside a downtown parking garage on Front street smoking a cigarette and observed 2 hoodied Chicano guys in their 20s TOTALLY tag up a 1st Alarm truck sitting unattended next to the Palomar Arcade's wall by Front.

I'd go to jail before I'd ID those guys.... even if I could.
by furlough them all
a council majority can fire the city manager and replace him with someone who will cut the pigs weekly hours. it is extremely difficult to actually fire a pig.
but can we trust a new council and city manager to do that?
i doubt it.
judges and juries are usually pig lovers, so lawsuits rarely pay off.
breaking windows leads to more pigs not less, as we saw in 2010.
ballot initiatives with binding terms that automatically discipline outlaw officers like clark might work - if you can get the votes.
in the meantime, the best thing we can all do to protect our community from the pigs is to video them in copwatch actions, they hate that.
by Robert Norser
Smirkin' Steve Clark has a nasty history of hardball abuse against the homeless and using his police position for pushing a political agenda.

See "Police Officer's Confrontational History With Homeless People In S.C" at http://www.huffsantacruz.org/StreetSpiritSantaCruz/232.Assaulted%20And%20Arrested%20For%20Speaking%20Out%20At%20City%20Hall=7-2005.pdf
> > & http://www.huffsantacruz.org/StreetSpiritSantaCruz/233.Assaulted%20And%20Arrested%28cont.%29=7-2005.jpg

In my long history of critical writing & public protest about the SCPD, Steve Clark is the only officer who has ever used physical violence against me personally (as outlined in the above article).

Becky Johnson described some of Clark's record at http://www.huffsantacruz.org/StreetSpiritSantaCruz/234.Police%20Officer%27s%20Confrontational%20History%20With%20Homeless%20People%20In%20S.C.=7-2005.pdf

The SCPD's own racist and homeless-targeting record is beginning to be documented as the police--under public pressure--slowly begin to release the records. See ""Homeless People Matter" Protest Gets Honks, Volunteers, at Cop Corner" at https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/12/22/18765911.php .

My thanks to Steve Schnaar for having the courage to name names. We are dealing with armed and powerful officials in a time when it's clear police power in different cities has suborned murder and gotten away with it.

Protests and publicity have impact. Across the country in the last half year we have seen the most continuous series of local and national protests against police in decades. See http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/28/ferguson-spokesman-on-leave-after-calling-memorial-trash/20976367/ And they aren't over: http://fergusonresponse.tumblr.com/ .

The corrupt leadership of the SCPD is important to expose.

Equally important is to end its policies creating unaccountable militarized and massive overpolicing. See "SCPD No Disclosure of When People were PepperSprayed, Choked, Tasered, Gun-Bullied or Shot" at https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/12/04/18765028.php and "Make Cops Accountable" at https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2014/12/13/flyer__for__12-17.pdf .
by over and over
they knew for 7 months and try to sneak it through at the last minute.
send the tank back with clark inside.
we don't need either.
by chris mauk (mauxie [at] mail.com)
the raid on sub-rosa is only a small fraction of the facts that demonstrate that scpd is not law enforcement
but rather glossy thugs for the local power brokers. from june through October 2012, two scpd officers went
outside the city limits to issue municipal code citations. to my knowledge I was the only person to face the
city in court. both of my cases were dismissed. many of the citations issued during these illegal sorties
should have been dismissed, but they have to be challenged in court. things are not improving.
this morning (mar 18 2015) three scpd officers were encountered outside city limits warning that
camps north of redwood creek on the railroad tracks (private property outside city limits) were on
city property and would be removed today. imho these practices are:

1 1st degree burglary

2 conspiracy to deny due process

3 willful dereliction of due diligence

they will not be stopped until people are willing to go toe-to-toe in court.
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$110.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network