By Mark David Blum, Esq.

I come to bear witness to the screams you never hear and the tears you never see. An entire neighborhood screams in anger and fear, and tears flow from fearful women and terrorized children. Nobody sees or hears and most absolutely nobody listens. I come to bear witness to the screams you never hear and the tears you never see because I saw it all for the first time up close and personal. Not only do I bear witness to a search and arrest, but I heard the vows of revenge and rage and saw the tears of children.

Syracuse’s dumbest – its gang in blue arrived at a home on the south side of Syracuse this past Sunday afternoon. The folks out front of the home had been talking and having a Sunday gathering with friends and family. It was a beautiful day and an entire neighborhood was out having fun.

Suddenly, Syracuse police arrive. SPD’s prowling of these streets and showing up in force unannounced is nothing new. The rule on the streets is simple; cops show up, and everybody goes inside. After all, who wants to be stopped, harassed or even arrested for no reason.

Police knock on the door of this house; rented by someone who has a years long civil case against officers in the department. This is the same home where every month or so, SPD like to show up in force and harass and annoy and threaten and at times assault otherwise innocent people engaged in innocent activities.

So this past Sunday must have been a relatively boring day for the department to send out 10 units to this one house.

In response to the knock, resident tenants of the home tell police to go away and inquire if they have a warrant. Police refuse to leave and state no good reason for being there. Again, the tenants refuse to grant police entry absent a warrant.

Manufacturing what is called “exigent circumstances”, police decide to end run the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Coming up with a story that the residents of the unit are being held hostage and notwithstanding no evidence to support that claim, en masse, police break down the door, storm into the house, and take everybody inside into custody. When I arrive, I see about eight brothers laying face down in dirt, handcuffed and police milling in and out of the house. At first, the bald headed idiot cop who I met up with refused me access to my client. I asked if my client was under arrest and I was told to go away. Instead I demanded to speak to his superior. With no brain damaged dogs around, the only superior around at the time was a Sergeant and a Lieutenant

When police finally came up to me and tried to explain that they believed my client and his fiancé were being held hostage inside. That would explain why everybody, INCLUDING THE alleged victims, were out front, in handcuffs, face down in the dirt.

With the exigency gone and everybody removed from the house, police did not stop their illegal moves. They began to tear apart the house and engage in a detailed search. They ripped apart a 10 year old child’s school bookbag including throwing his homework around. Police unrolled all the rolls of toilet paper in the house. At one point, some young ignorant vagina of a cop interrupted my conversation with the Lieutenant and started interrogating my client on the contents of a package allegedly found in his closet. Client said he didn’t know anything about it and the vagina kept his monologue going by saying, “then you don’t mind if we take it with us.”

I objected. Not because of the content of the bag but because it was the product of a warrantless search. After inquiring if the contents of the bag were illegal to possess or constituted evidence or contraband and hearing the negative, I objected to the seizure on behalf of the client. It was his home and he had the absolute right to privacy therein. To Syracuse Police, the law and constitution just aren’t good enough at preventing their illegal activities. They took the bag anyway.

I will spare you the stories of the kid in the bathroom who was tasered while still on the toilet or the kid who was kicked in the face while handcuffed and down. Tearing apart the bedroom of a ten year old child and seeing his anger and tears after was the ultimate sin.

While SPD may be having fun torturing and tormenting a citizen who has filed a civil action against them, over the past four years so many times have police come to the house and so many times has an entire neighborhood seen the corruption and violence unprovoked by police, that police have become just another gang. Bloods, Eastside, SPD.

The children and neighbors who watch all this take the memory with them. It gets shared with their friends and family and eventually their own children. Generations of hatred and mistrust are built up between the community and the police. Then one day, a cop gets shot and we all wonder why.

As Chief Miguel and Frank Fowler continue to stick their heads in the sand and up the Mayor’s rectum, more and more damage is going to occur. It is bad enough that police are seen as the enemy. But the more they provoke and poke at the innocent in the streets, we are all put at risk. When government loses its legitimacy; when a community cannot trust the police or the local establishment, people turn to self help. That is when the streets turn dangerous.

It was real interesting to see the sudden change in attitude upon the arrival of a lawyer at the scene of the mass arrest this past Sunday. Suddenly, at least toward me, police were respectable and dealt with me as a citizen. In the end, all those arrested were released and no charges were filed. One person was dragged in handcuffs to an ambulance to see how bad his being tasered and beaten had hurt him, but even he too was let go.

As the last officer was driving off, I believe it was the sergeant, I told him now that I have to explain what happened to the couple hundred people gathered outside. He told me I had better explain to them the law. I assured him I would … the law of the Fourth Amendment and the law of civil rights litigation.

Syracuse police is not only its own worst enemy but is a threat to the entire county. As they go about their greet-and-beat policy, the distrust and anger is building. Every resident of the County and every visitor to Syracuse is at risk. When self help is the only answer, it is the innocent who suffer.

What I want to know is when is somebody going to do something about this?