If You Help Black People You may Get Disappeared: White SF Cops Lock Up Public Defender for Objecting to Questioning of Black Man who was not under arrest
Saturday, January 31, 2015 at 04:32AM From [HERE] and [HERE] A white San Francisco deputy public defender was handcuffed and arrested at the Hall of Justice after she objected to white city police officers questioning her Black client outside a courtroom, an incident that her office called outrageous and police officials defended as appropriate. The Black man was apparently not under arrest and had not committed any crime at the time.
The Tuesday afternoon arrest of attorney Jami Tillotson as she denied police officers’ attempts to take photos of her client without explanation raised questions about police intimidation and harassment, Public Defender Jeff Adachi said at a Wednesday news conference.
A video of the incident shows the plainclothes policeman telling her, "If you continue with this, I will arrest you for resisting arrest." Of course, the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides her client, in fact all accused persons, with the right to counsel. Intimidating, and indeed arresting, any attorney for discharging their Constitutional duty to their client is incompatible with that right. And whether he had a right to counsel at the time of questioning is beside the point - he did have counsel and she was present - until she got disappeared by white cops.
She was detained, and San Francisco police say they're now investigating her for a possible charge under a state law that includes resisting arrest, as well as obstructing justice.
Adachi said, “This is not Guantanamo Bay. You have an absolute right to have a lawyer with you when you’re questioned. Ms. Tillotson was simply doing her job.”
Tillotson’s client had just made an appearance in Department 17 on the second floor with a co-defendant for a misdemeanor theft charge when they left the courtroom and came under questioning by a plainclothes police officer at about 2 p.m., authorities said.
Other attorneys with the public defender’s office filmed the interaction, in which the plainclothes officer, Sgt. Brian Stansbury, told Tillotson, “I just want to take some pictures, OK, and he’ll be free to go.” When she declined his request, Stansbury said, “If you continue to do this, I will arrest you for resisting arrest.”
“Please do,” Tillotson responded.
“It was very clear to me that I hadn’t been doing anything illegal,” she said at the Wednesday news conference. “I was challenging him, telling him that you know that I know that I did not violate the law. He moved it forward.”
The video showed Stansbury continuing to take photos of the client and his co-defendant after Tillotson was handcuffed and led away, with Stansbury telling them, “Try not to move.”
Stansbury was one of three officers whose traffic stop of an off-duty black colleague in 2013 led the off-duty officer to file a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against the city. Police officials have said the officers involved had not engaged in racial profiling.
Tillotson was handcuffed to a wall in a holding cell for about an hour while Adachi contacted San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr and Deputy Chief Lyn Tomioka.
“I was arrested for what we do as public defenders every day,” Tillotson said of the encounter, which was captured in a video that the public defender’s office posted on YouTube. “I asked questions. I talked to my client and explained to him his rights. At that point, I was told I was interfering and taken into custody.”
The case raises the question: How can you be arrested for resisting arrest? Isn't that like being fired for refusing to be fired?
David L. Carter, a criminology professor and former police officer, says in most cases, it's an aggravating offense. But when resisting arrest is the only charge, as it is in the San Francisco case, Carter is puzzled.
"I question the legitimacy of that," Carter says. "You've got to have the arrest to have the resisting arrest!" [MORE]
NACDL President Theodore Simon said: "The handcuffing and detention of defender Jami Tillotson was unconscionable and should never have happened. The right to counsel is a core Constitutional value that we cherish in this country. It is my fervent hope that whatever steps need to be taken to ensure this kind of police action does not repeat itself are promptly taken. And moreover, I would like to believe that the situation will be rectified on principled grounds and not just because of the cell phone video of this shameful conduct having gone viral around the globe."
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