By Mark David Blum, Esq.

There is very little about which the Onondaga County Department of Probation can be proud. Between officers shooting themselves in the foot, overloaded cases, and having an overall attitude somewhere between a rabid schnauzer and a poodle with irritated bowel syndrome. This agency is one of the great blights on the County as it sucks away millions of your tax dollars and gives you nothing back but more danger and attitude.

Here is how it works: Assume for whatever reason, you find yourself facing a criminal charge. It is an insignificant charge but one requiring some form of punitive response from the judge. Before anybody can be sentenced on a misdemeanor or felony, the Courts are required to get a “Probation Report” which is supposed to be an analysis of the defendant’s life situation along with a recommendation for sentencing. Regardless of the crime, the time, or the individual characteristics of the defendant, I have yet to see Probation come back with a report that did not “recommend” at least probation for the defendant. They have to justify their existence somehow. As a matter of course, judges tend to go along with the Probation recommendation even if having a set of super parents is the wrong response or will not resolve the underlying problem.

That indeed is what Probation sees itself as being; super parents. They assume supervision over where you can work, with whom you can hang, your curfew, what you can and cannot eat or drink, where you can live, and are constantly drug testing every probationer. It matters not if the individual is self supporting, a well adjusted family person, paid up on their bills, and otherwise successful and peaceable in their lives. It is about power and control and Probation Officers must feel the most impotent of all law enforcers given how they abuse their power and trash the lives of those they are supposed to be helping.

As part of the process of probation, the defendant is given a list of Terms and Conditions of Probation at sentencing. There is a general list that all defendants sign off on and on occasion, there are special terms and conditions. Regardless of age, marital or income status, the general conditions about curfew are the same. The bar against being in establishments that sell alcohol is the same keeping probationers out of restaurants or celebrating religious functions. Notwithstanding the racist and dying job market, probationers who are unemployed are required to find jobs or lose their freedom. Good lawyers will stand up and argue that some of the requirements are irrelevant to the crime charged and enlightened judges will remove those conditions. For the most part, however, I have seen lawyers just sign off their clients to the terms and conditions without a single afterthought of how doing so will impact their client.

The most offensive, illegal, and outrageous demand by the Onondaga County Department of Probation is how they demand that Probationers sign a provision that gives them, Probation Officers, “the right to search wherever and whichever premises the probationer happens to be at.” If a probationer is visiting you, according to this rule, officers can enter your home without warrant and search it from top to bottom and do so legally and without ramification.

While an individual can choose to waive their own rights to search or seizure, they cannot waive the rights of others. The Probation Department does not care and uses this provision to barge entry into private homes and destroy property and use it as pretext to search not the probationer, but the person being visited. Bringing with them an army of black shirted cops, probation officers force their way into homes without notice and begin to search every nook and cranny of those who still are protected by the Constitution. As but one example: Imagine having a party where just one guest is under supervision. Probation officers with their police escorts can crash your party without warrant or exigent circumstance, search your home and everybody in it, and make no apologies for their wanton destruction and arrogant attitude. A “Buzzkill” by definition.

A better example of what really goes on I witnessed with my own eyes Friday night. I have a client who is a good man, good father, and takes care of his responsibilities as best he can. His fiancé is also an honorable woman who, several years ago, made a mistake with a check that cost her a couple years of probation. Regularly and without incident, this woman has made her visits to Probation officer House and he has dropped in on her also on several occasions. Thrice I have been there when he has shown up.

Friday night, a probation officer Matthew Deno, a person with whom the woman has never dealt, showed up at my client’s door and demanded entry. The Client refused and called me. In the ten minutes it took me to arrive, two probation officers and five Syracuse City Police were meandering about and searching the client’s home. Since the client is not on probation, I repeatedly demanded that the police and probation officers get out of the house. They refused citing the provision that grants them permission to search. I asked the police and probation officers to show me where the woman had so agreed. Nobody could show me such a document and I turned to the cops and asked if they always violate the law on just the say-so of a stranger. Since they had no such documentation or other demonstrable exigent circumstance, I told them I was going to call them in the next few days to come search a home for me as well.

However, arguing with five cops at the same time, with each trying out shout the other is not so much fun. The cop suffering from little guy syndrome had the biggest mouth and did manage to use the words “idiot” and “know-it-all” in the same sentence. Trying to have a rational conversation with a Syracuse police officer is like trying to nail jello to a tree. They are trained to win and when logic fails, they raise their voices and put their hands on their weapons.

After this exhaustive search and attitude, at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday night, when Mom, Dad, and their three children are sitting around relaxing; for all these police to burst in and behave as they did is offensive beyond words. I know three children who will grow up hating the system and police for the abuse and how their parents were treated. It appeared as though the goal of probation and police was to intentionally disturb the peacefulness of that home on that otherwise quiet night. Once the probation officers left, the five Syracuse City Cops stood out front of the sidewalk for a good twenty minutes with their engines running and taxpayers funding the fuel. If only they had been on patrol, perhaps real crimes might have been stopped.

The real horror began first thing Monday. My client’s fiancé was told by her Probation Officer that she has to move from the home she shares with her fiancé and their three children. They are insisting she move home and live with her father. The basis for this demand is my client’s exercising his Constitutional rights to his privacy and his home.

Now, not only has probation treated adults like children, scarred children for when they become adults, but now Probation is going to tear into the fabric of the ultimate right of every American. Family privacy; the right to live with whom you please and raise a family is a cherished and inalienable right. But House and Deno are going to separate this family for no other reason than probation’s inability to cope with the Fourth Amendment. Shame on them – forever.

Let this be a clarion call to all attorneys and Judges. The Onondaga County Department of Probation is a failure from start to finish. They keep demanding more probationers so they can get more budget so they can get more probationers so they can get more budget. Even more importantly than anything else, I beg the Courts to STRIKE any provision from Terms and Conditions for Probation that requires uninvolved third parties to surrender their rights. Such provisions are an insult to our nation and the lessons we supposedly are teaching our probationers.

Let it be heard loud and clear: The Right to Family Privacy is nearly absolute and certainly above the strictest of scrutiny. No probation officer should have the random and subjective authority to summarily destroy and separate a family. Messrs. House and Deno are the faces of the forces against which our nation’s founders took up arms. Our new County Executive and County Legislature should cut Probation’s budget to the bone such that they are really only watching and helping folks who NEED watching and help.

Personally Mr. House and Mr. Deno should experience how it feels to have their spouses and children taken from them. But since neither man has probably touched a woman in years, what better explains their being out and causing so much havoc and injury on a Friday night?

… or was it all pretextual?