Tag Archives: Municipal Court

Will our city presume to prohibit life for whoever can’t afford to pay their way?

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In case you thought City Council’s reprieve earlier this winter reflected a soft spot in their heart for the homeless forced to live in tents, in reality the city attorneys advised any purge of the unsightly camps be delayed until an iron-clad ordinance could be devised. The suggested legal verbiage was reviewed at Monday’s meeting, to be formally adopted today. It reads “9.6.109. Camping on Public Property Prohibited.” The definition of “camping” to include: “Sleeping or making preparation to sleep, including the lying down of bedding for the purpose of sleeping.”

No sleeping. On public property.

By the way, I care not the least about a slippery slope that might infringe on your prerogative to take a nap in the park. This is not about the average man losing his middle class privileges to the creep of authoritarian rule-making. At some point I have to presume we agree that human beings have some inalienable rights. They used to be lofty ideals, protected by fundamental principles. On the issue of sleep, we are discussing the right to an involuntary life function.

The right to defecate is what’s got these homeless camps in trouble, but it stands to reason that to shit is more than a right too, it’s a necessity. All of this is dreadful platitude unless it’s escaped our city administrators. Are they suggesting that because the city cannot provide for the services for its people, that the people must forgo their basic creature needs?

What inhuman folly. And on public ground. Where are they to go? Must man pay rent to exist?

That you can dictate the rights of another on private land is open to debate. By whose authority do you claim dominion to use land for yourself? How dare you refuse a fellow human being, wherever he might need to rest his head? Granting the argument for private property, who are you to force your will upon others on shared common property? Others can’t do what? Where?

Do public lands belong only to property owners? You can legislate the right to take property for yourself, but you can’t hoard all of it. You have the right to private land precisely because the remainder is reserved for the public. The authority to give the deed to you comes from a governing entity empowered by everyone. A government is bound to providing for the land-less in exchange for the privilege to sell premium land to the better-off.

And a city has obligations to service that public land just as much as it serves the private lots. Can local administrators say, sorry, no more money for water, sewer, utilities, or security? Neither can it fail its responsibilities to the poor.

You aren’t obligated to provide eat, drink and shelter to all, but you can’t deny men access to the basic resource of land. Would you have men born into cells until they agree to work for their sustenance? Colorado Springs would deny them heat and sleep too. If we could, would we regulate breath?

On public land you have limited authority to regulate. Where private property owners crow about property rights, so do the public have property rights. Every bit, and perhaps more sacrosanct. The public can consent to regulation, for the safety and health of all etc, but that doesn’t encompass prohibition. You want health and safety, you provide the services. You have no authority to deny the service and then deny man’s basic needs. What an absolute crock.

Below is the text of the city’s proposed ordinance. It describes the creation of a new section, under 9.6.109.

9. Public Offenses, fair enough;

6. Offenses Affecting Property, a functional necessity of course;

109. Camping on Public Property Prohibited. Huh?

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT ORDAINED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF COLORADO SPRINGS:

9.6.109: CAMPING ON PUBLIC PROPERTY PROHIBITED:

A. It is unlawful for any person to camp on any public property, except as may be specifically authorized by the appropriate governmental authority.

B. For the purposes of this section “camp” or “camping” means to use the public area for living accommodation including, but not limited to, the activities and circumstances listed below. These activities and circumstances may be considered in determining whether reasonable grounds for belief have arisen that a person has “camped” or is “camping” in violation of this ordinance.

1. Sleeping or making preparation to sleep, including the lying down of bedding for the purpose of sleeping.

2. Occupying a shelter out-of-doors. “Shelter” shall mean any cover or protection from the elements other than clothing, such as a tent, shack, sleeping bag, or other structure or material.

3. The presence or use of a camp fire, camp stove or other heating source or cooking device.

5. Keeping or storing personal property.

Sleep, a basic animal function. Shelter, a fundamental human need. Fire, the first of mankind’s tools. Before agriculture was fire.

Property. How unbecoming that an ordinance seeking to prohibit the public’s right to public property should also deprive the public of the ability to keep personal property.

Also presented on Monday were recommendations from the city management, detailing the consequences of violating the camping prohibition. They included this paragraph:

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS: A violation of these updated ordinances may result in a fine and sentencing to the Criminal Justice Center (CJC). In the past, homeless individuals have been known to ignore summonses to appear in Municipal Court until it is advantageous for them to be placed in CJC (cold weather, need for food and/or shelter, etc.). The preferred method of dealing with these types of violations would be to gain the cooperation of the individuals involved without relying upon the criminal justice system, thus removing them from the circumstance by linking them with the appropriate service agency.

Making the specious argument basically that since homeless persons sometimes get themselves arrested on purpose, authorities are justified in accommodating them full time. How considerate of us.

COS drops convention trespass charges

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Park sidewalk
COLORADO SPRINGS- At this morning’s motions hearing in Municipal Court, the city attorney asked Judge Spencer Gresham to dismiss their case. Due to “discovery issues we cannot resolve” and “internal misunderstandings,” the city dropped the trespassing charges against Peter Sprunger-Froese and I. So let’s see. They arrest us in front of hundreds at the World Arena, detain us until our chance to protest the State Convention is over, put us through five court appointments, then decide we shouldn’t have been arrested? And they didn’t even say that.

It was rather hard to stomach. A city prosecutor explaining that complications with the evidence led them to conclude the case wasn’t worth pursuing. No apology, no admission of error. Simply that taking us to trial was now thought be too inconvenient.

This after claiming there was no additional evidence from World Arena surveillance cameras, no tape from a the police observation van across the street, no recordings from the spooks with parabolic dishes above the Hampton Inn, no better audio track and additional footage to accompany the chopped up inaudible video they did offer us, no transcript of the public meetings beforehand where contradictory descriptions were given of a planned demonstration area.

This after maintaining that a “Free Speech Zone” was clearly marked when their own video showed that it wasn’t.

This even after fighting our request for a jury trial.

We walk into court and the same stonewalling city prosecutor declares that the City of Colorado Springs has decided to be magnanimous and drop the charges.

To his credit, Judge Gresham did ask if the city’s request was based on finding the new evidence exculpable. No, your honor, said the city prosecutor, this was just about the mounting difficulties of complying with the requested discovery.

The judge asked if the defendants had any objections. Our attorney said no.

This was not something we’d discussed as being an available options, but our lawyer answered on our behalf. Peter and I would be apprised later that voicing any objections would have been deleterious to being cleared of the charge. Otherwise, we for damn sure had objections!

Can you usurp someone’s free speech only to admit later you had no cause? There was no apology actually. Can they do that? I am Goddamn incensed that my rights were shoved aside, handcuffed, escorted, photographed, fingerprinted, detained, driven to the other side of the city, made to wait for a ride back to my car, denied the chance to return to what I was doing before I was arrested, now it turns out, for no cause!

What about the repercussions? I’ve got friends thinking I’m a troublemaker, when in fact I didn’t make trouble. It was heaped on me by uniformed misapplication of authority. Can they do that? Others are now sheepish about expressing themselves publicly because those police officers acted illegally. That’s the chilling effect of law enforcement given too much power. Now what? Honestly I’ve got friends who in the past have shown great courage in the face of repression and injustice, made into sheepish cowards who think speaking up means being insufficiently peaceful.

This is the result of the City of Colorado Springs police making arrests however they damn please. Is that going to stand? How many more acts of police intimidation are we going to tolerate before the chilling effect silences everyone?

Probably you’ve discerned where the meat of this case might have been found. It would seem to be what the city wants to avoid coming to light. It’s where a civil case is going to find incredibly flammable fuel.

Will free speech arrest merit a jury trial?

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COLORADO SPRINGS- I figured our Motions Hearing today would be a perfunctory affair. Wrong! The city is denying there is more evidence, they want us to waive our right to a speedy trial, and, they asked the judge to deny us a jury trial. Can they do that? The judge will give his written decision by Friday. On whether we have a Constitutional Right to a Trial by Jury.

A trial by a jury of one’s peers
It seems between the first appearance at which we were granted a continuance, then the arraignment where our attorneys set a pretrial date, neither of the judges asked about a jury trial. We entered a plea of not-guilty, but were never asked if we wanted a jury trial, nor asked to deposit a $25 payment. It wasn’t until the pretrial conference that the judge looked over the paperwork and noticed no deposit had been made to reserve a jury trial. A motions hearing was scheduled, where among our requests, we would have to ask for a jury trial.

Our attorneys cited precedent today, that even in the event of attorney negligence, the right to a trial by jury is considered so important that it’s been granted to defendants who’ve previously declined it. Regardless whose mistake, they argued, Peter and myself were clearly never asked and could under no circumstance be considered to have waived the right.

The city on the other hand explained that precedent in municipal court has long established that a trial by jury in petty offenses is not a Constitutional Right, and instead is a “Statutory Right.” Meaning that if the defendants have not followed every provision of the statute, they sacrifice their opportunity for a trial by jury.

Judge Hayden W. Kane II declared that he would issue a written decision on the matter, by the end of the week. This move does not look encouraging to us. The judge faced two very competent defense attorneys and perhaps didn’t dare rule against them in light of rebuttals they might have offered.

Evidence withheld from Discovery
Through discovery, the city has offered that the only evidence they have to show us, besides officers’ accounts, is a hand held video with unintelligible sound. Nothing else. At today’s motions hearing we proffered affidavits to the effect that men were observed with parabolic dishes above the Hampton Inn. As well, some CSPD officers observed the arrests from the basement of the World Arena, indicating that surveillance footage would be available from there.

The city has denied any of this exists, and in making the argument that cameras don’t always record their footage, the city lawyer explained that she learned policemen were observing from a van across the street, but that their cameras were only capturing a live feed, and weren’t recording. Whether you believe that or not, in either case those “witnesses” had not been revealed to us in discovery.

Peter and I are quite interested in video evidence because it was very plain to us that we hadn’t stepped over any tape. Surveillance footage would show that there was no division between a “booster zone” within the “free speech zone.” Audio will also demonstrate that our conversation with police was amicable and betrayed our earnest interpretation of where our speech was permitted.

But the judge appeared to give the rather novice city lawyer all the slack, offering her ten days to get the evidence to the defendants. If the judge decides we don’t have the right to a trial by jury, our lawyers will have to appeal. To my knowledge this will spoil our opportunity to have a speedy trial. A trial date has been set for August 29.

Convention free speech still in question

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COLORADO SPRINGS- A motions hearing is scheduled Monday, Aug 18 at 9:30am, for defendants Eric Verlo and Peter Sprunger-Froese at the Colorado Springs Municipal Court. The two are charged with trespass at the Colorado Democratic State Convention. They were arrested for trying to exercise free speech rights, outside of what Police describe were the bounds of a “Free Speech Zone.” Motions on Monday will address discovery of exculpable surveillance evidence which the city and other law enforcement agencies have been denying to the defendants.

The legal proceedings thus far:
MAY 17 -Arrest for Obstruction, amended to Trespass
JUNE 10 -First appearance, received continuance
JULY 1 -Arraignment
JULY 29 -Pretrial meeting with City Prosecutor
AUG 18 -Motions Hearing

CSPD forced to give unwarranted tickets

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COLORADO SPRINGS- Of course it’s imperative to take a hard line on dishonest officers of the law. But I have mixed emotions about these two: 2 MOTORCYCLE COPS FALSIFIED TICKET NUMBERS. They weren’t issuing unwarranted tickets. No, they were in trouble for wanting NOT to give out unwarranted tickets. Should that be discouraged? Let’s give the officers a medal for bringing a bad bit of law enforcement policy to light. But I want to see a third policeman in bigger trouble. incredibly, “A police spokesman said there are no ticket quotas.”

Wouldn’t you say that policemen who lie to us about how laws are being enforced are about as bad as it could possibly get? “Lt David Whitlock said no such order exists in the General Orders that govern Colorado Springs police.” Why were the traffic officers compelled to falsify their ticket numbers? The forked-tongue spokesman “could not rule out the possibility of a ‘minimum performance standard.’”

There it is. Totalitarian doublespeak. We don’t torture people in jail, we just have ‘minimum comfort requirements.’ What assholes!

We don’t want quotas by any definition! We may laugh about means to keep police officers from the donut shops, but it’s up to their supervisors to make sure they are doing their jobs. We don’t need them returning with scalps to prove they’ve been busy, regardless whether their victims were law-breakers. Can we mandate that traffic cops write forty tickets a day if they don’t encounter 40 infractions on their rounds? By relying on revenue from traffic citations to meet their budget requirements, the CSPD may be encouraging worse falsification. False charges, false witness, false arrest.

How exactly did management catch up with these two? Was there a budget shortfall when forecasted ticket earnings -based on the policemen’s paperwork- did not match the Municipal Court takings?

The community service chain gang

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Support your local sheriff
Involuntary roadside workers may not be as conspicuous as when they wore the stripes of yore, but they’re there. You thought those bright orange vests belonged to Parks and Rec personnel? Often they are citizens repaying a debt to society. More specifically, a sweat equity forfeiture to the sheriff.

Municipal courts and prosecutors levy community service hours as a penalty for misdemeanors. While we might envision “community service,” as lauded recently by Barack Obama, as helping a charity for example, or doing social work, in reality it’s whatever the local government needs done on the cheap. They pay the private agency which validates your hours, you work for free.

While municipal courts, and the traffic tickets that drive them, serve chiefly as cash registers for the local administrators, one can easily imagine the growing incentive to harvest unpaid labor for services that require work. These are jobs that could be going to union laborers, or landscaper contractors. Instead the burden is being put on the common citizen, usually the ones least able to fend off the arbitrary enforcement of law.

In the age of electronic ankle bracelets, work-release programs, and house arrest, there’s no need for striped coveralls and chains. Bring your own leather gloves and sunscreen and put your shoulder to the facade of our healthy looking community. It’s becoming a prison planet without us really seeing it. Wages are shrinking, the cost of living rises, the pursuit of happiness dissipates, and you’re throwing your back and your dignity into tasks that once upon a time you would have proclaimed were why we all pay taxes.

Trespassing into the booster zone

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Peter and I are now described as having been confused about where to express Free Speech at the May 17 state convention. We are being arraigned today at 1:30 at Municipal Court because the Democratic Party is sticking to the trespassing charges. Peter’s and my confusion had to do with how anyone, the World Arena, the Dems, or the police, could decide SUBJECTIVELY what speech belonged to what zone. Peter and I were waved into a Free Speech Area, then told to leave the better part of it because we weren’t “boosters.” Not in this America they can’t.

State Dem Convention trespass charge arraignment hearing 1:30pm today

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Peter and I are scheduled to appear at the Colorado Springs Municipal Court, 224 E. Kiowa, Tuesday June 10 at 1:30pm. The charge: “TRESPASSING. PROTESTED OUTSIDE OF DESIGNATED AREA.”
 
UPDATE: We received a continuance until July 1st, 1:30pm.

2003 police over-reaction under-revisited

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In March of 2003, as an invasion of Iraq loomed ever imminent, citizens of 800 cities worldwide mounted the largest peace rally in history. In Colorado Springs three thousand people assembled in Palmer Park to urge President Bush to chose diplomacy instead of war. The participants were peaceful, but the police incited frustrations by diverting traffic from Academy Boulevard which prevented drivers from seeing the anti-war banners and eventually used tear gas to prompt the crowd to disperse.

Colorado Springs was one of only two peace rallies in the world where police used tear gas that day. Many Springs families with small children were caught with no way to escape the gas. After a subsequent review, the CSPD admitted it had overreacted. As part of a legal settlement with the people they had arrested, the department agreed to host a public meeting to discuss matters of police conduct with respect to a citizen’s right to assemble peacefully. The meeting would involve a panel discussion on the issues and would be videotaped for public broadcast and for purposes of training incoming police officers. After four years of legal wrangling, the meeting is finally scheduled to happen this Friday, May 4th, at the Senior Center on Hancock and Uintah.

What an unfortunate coincidence that the arrests this Saint Patrick’s Day happened before Friday’s citizen-police meeting. As we are now well familiar, on March 17 at the annual parade, forty five permit-holding participants were prevented from carrying peace banners in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Ten of them were brutally removed and seven of those were arrested; I was among them. The police and parade organizers still admit no wrongdoing, but bystander videos and photographs captured the police display of excessive force.

In the aftermath of the arrests, the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission has asked the Colorado Springs City Council to hold a public meeting to address police department policy with regard to what happened that day. As yet they’ve only agreed to meet in private, to acquaint themselves better with peace activists.

While we welcome a better acquaintance, the PPJPC is not interested in obtaining a permission slip to exercise our right to self expression. We are interested in every American’s natural rights and civil liberties. We hope to establish an understanding that our city police department will implement a policy to honor and respect those rights. For that purpose we are requesting a public meeting where Colorado Springs residents who were alarmed by the heavy handed law enforcement can voice concern and give their input. The meeting on Friday will only address the police misconduct of 2003.

The Saint Paddy’s Day Seven, as we are being called, currently face charges in Municipal Court for obstructing a public event. The American Civil Liberties Union has agreed to represent us because at play are violations of multiple amendment rights. The police use of illegal choke holds, menacing with a taser and reckless brutality causing physical injury fall under illegal search and seizure and citizenship rights.

We are called called the Seven but in reality we are the Saint Patrick’s Day Forty Five, because forty five of us were deprived our first amendment right to freedom of speech. The parade is described as a private event, but it is held on public property and is underwritten with public resources. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

We are called the Saint Patrick’s Day Seven, but we are in reality the Saint Patrick’s Day Forty Thousand, who saw that day the attempted abridgment of a fundamental American right. A right which Americans aspire to extend to all people of all nations. Many of us watching that day had no idea we would have to fight for that right here.