By Mark David Blum, Esq.
I noticed today that a “team of lawyers” from the Attorney General’s Office is coming this week to Syracuse to spend a whole hour and a half discussing civil rights issues. Huzzah! Housing, employment discrimination, fair lending, and immigration are all sexy and interesting topics. But, we need real civil rights assistance from Mr. Cuomo’s Office but I doubt we will get it.
There is a crime wave in the City of Syracuse. It is a clear organized effort that targets the weak, steals from them money, property, and freedom. Admissions by the wrongdoers establish both intent and malice. The City’s quality of life is deteriorating. People are suffering and nobody is doing anything about it. Neither our local District Attorney or U.S. Attorney bother to investigate these crimes. Neither the State Police nor the F.B.I. have shown any interest. In fact, by raising this issue, I make myself a potential target of these agents and agencies.
Still the call goes out for investigation and prosecution.
The City of Syracuse, its Mayor, Corporation Counsel, and elements within various agencies and departments have demonstrated over a course of years a willful and deliberate intent to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights. In defense, they delay and and attack, make evidence disappear, and abuse the power of their government offices to bring harm to citizens and to take their money and liberty and property. When sued, they circle the wagons and send the cases into litigation hell for years; at a tremendous cost to taxpayers.
Example #1: From DDT to Neighborhood Policing to Operation Impact; there is an extreme amount of violence being used on the streets and it is coming from the police toward the citizen. Heavy handed over the top arrest policies, random street corner strip searches, arrestees repeatedly falling down stairs, to routine denials of medical treatment, to provoking the innocent into criminal activity are all part of how policing is done is the poorer (read: Black) sections of the City of Syracuse. While at the same time engaging in foot patrols for the Italian White neighborhoods, on the South Side and Near West Side of Syracuse, police keep not only their distance, but the conflict and tension levels escalated. The streets are “cooking” and the danger level is rising.
Example #2: Deliberate and Willful Constitutional Violations: First, The intentional trespass onto State land by Syracuse police and the taking of all the personal possessions of homeless people and throwing all that property into the garbage. Done without benefit of warrant or exigent circumstance; this is a willful violation of the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement, Fifth Amendment due process requirement, and First Amendment Assembly and movement freedoms. Police make no apologies and state their intentions to do it again. Second, by City officials that citizens were denied access to open bidding on contracts because City officials were ‘offended’ by political speech expressed in a public forum. This is without a doubt, an open and shut case of a constitutional violation of the right to free speech. City officials brag about their intentions to use the free expression as the basis to deny a contractor the right to bid on a contract.
Example #3: In 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, and 2006, studies, reports, and neighborhood evaluations of Syracuse Police activities show a rising effort of energy concentrated in low income minority neighborhoods. Significant numbers of Citizens and scientists have decried ‘profiling’ as being the basis for the disparate impact of police activity upon Blacks in Syracuse and Onondaga County. While low income neighborhoods are presumed to be rife with violence against persons and property and hence, stepped up police patrols are concentrated in those areas. An evaluation of the distribution of Level 1 offenses (violence against persons and property) shows that such crimes tend moreso to be occurring in more middle class neighborhoods than in the Southside or near Westside of Syracuse. The types of crimes that show up on activity reports for police in the poor neighborhoods are either on the spot observations by officers or crimes that do not exist absent the presence of police. Police make no apologies, City Hall takes no action, and hundreds of complaints pour into the Civilian Review Board that never get investigated. City Hall deliberately refuses to open up the process and instead protects and shields the wrongdoers.
Example #4: Under the shield of “law”, local neighborhood markets are closed down because of “three arrests in four months” out front or because the market itself was the victim of a robbery. The City passed local ordinances that are being used to target low income businesses in poor neighborhoods and punish the business owners for the failings of police and City Hall to address the larger social and criminal problem. Just like with the loitering ordnance once before, this new seize and close process is but another mask for a racist arrogant policy that targets the weakest amongst us. Meanwhile the same crimes go on tenfold in the white yuppie areas like M Street yet police are noticeably absent.
Example #5: The Common Council, with the blessings of the then City Corporation Counsel and continuing through today, passed an Ordinance empowering the City to pay any punitive damage award made against one of its employees. By definition, punitive damages are ordered when a defendant is shown to act with malice and almost criminal intent. For the City to cover these judgments, there is zero incentive for police or other municipal workers to stay within the law as they do their jobs. They are given absolute immunity and free reign to do any wrong they desire and will not be called upon to answer for their sins.
By definition, all of the foregoing (and there is plenty more) is evidence of a conspiracy to violate the civil rights of citizens of the City of Syracuse. If the wrongdoers were young black males, the U.S. Attorney would be rounding them all up, perp walking them in front of TV cameras, and charging them with a RICO violation. When people are part of an organization that deliberately causes harm to others for pecuniary gain, this is a RICO violation.
But where is the protection for the common citizen against criminal actions by its government? No police agency or prosecutor will come to their rescue. Tell a judge at your client’s arraignment that he was beaten by police, and the judge will just smirk and move on. The doors to the local federal courts are nearly closed to the public as it can years for a civil litigant to get any relief; meanwhile the wrongdoers leave office and move on. If litigants try to proceed in state court, Corporation Counsel removes the case to federal court where, again, it can take unreasonably long periods of time just to have a motion to return to state court heard. In the end, there is no avenue open for quick prompt response to the illegal actions of City government. In fact, the opposite is true: Namely, that citizens fingered by government are swiftly and furiously dealt with but complaints against government are ignored.
Any first year law student can tell you that based on the foregoing, there is probable cause to believe that a criminal conspiracy afoot to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights. There is no doubt that a grand jury would hand down indictments; since we know they can indict a ham sandwich. We have learned from the media that the Justice Department is following its own agenda and is not sufficiently independent to engage in prosecutions of government wrongdoers. Ask former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam from Southern California; removed for her prosecution of Duke Cunningham. Our own District Attorney seems more interested in pursuing 25 year old homicides.
Everything necessary for an investigation and an indictment is in place. The only thing sorely lacking is a prosecutor who will stand up for the People and defend them against what is clearly an organized effort to deny them constitutional and civil rights.
What we need is Mr. Cuomo’s team of civil rights lawyers to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
