The ABJ reports on new scanners police will be using in the area. However, while they acknowledge civil liberties concerns over the new technology, they only present opinions from those supportive of the technology.

Police throughout Northeast Ohio are getting some new ”bionic eyes” to help catch criminals.

The Summit County Emergency Management Agency/Division of Public Safety is buying 15 mobile license plate readers to hand out to sheriff’s offices and police departments in nine counties.

[…]

Civil liberty concerns

Wherever the mobile license plate readers have popped up, so has some anxiety about ”Big Brother” technology moving in and civil liberties being violated. Law-enforcement officials dismissed those concerns, though, noting that law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear.

While the system might help catch criminals, it also could be used to exonerate people, they said.

”We’re looking at license plates anyway,” Summit Sheriff Drew Alexander said. ”We’re just doing it with the human eye.”

He said he likes the system because it can improve safety during traffic stops by alerting officers immediately to a potential problem.

”It gives that officer a little bit of an edge he needs,” he said.

Positive steps being taken in Akron on police-community relations.

Akron city leaders announced plans Tuesday to form a citizens group that would work with law enforcement to enhance communications.

The move came on the same day that nearly two-dozen residents attended a meeting to air complaints of alleged police misconduct.

The citizens group is just one offshoot of an ongoing, 16-week assessment of the Akron Police Department by a national consulting firm.

Some good community policing skills being built in the city of Lima.

Some of the city’s police officers were in the classroom Monday learning new ways to deal with the public in a more gentle tone that should help make their jobs easier.

Many of the people police deal with have just been a victim of a crime or may be arrested. Learning a new way to communicate with them in a kinder tone will help in the overall communication process, said Sgt. Paula Strickler of the Lima Police Department.

“If they’re upset and we walk up and say, ‘What do you need? What’s your problem?’ it may anger them more but if we approach it with, ‘I’m here to help,’ it may calm them down,” Strickler said.

The new approach, which actually is not that new because the department has been training new officers with the technique for the past six years, is just another tool to help police officers do their jobs better, she said.

Despite this ruling, Toledo police must still work to resolve issues in how they respond to calls involving people with mental illnesses.

Toledo police officers involved in three fatal shootings - including one involving a 62-year-old mentally ill woman brandishing scissors - acted in self-defense when they fired their weapons, the department’s firearm review board concluded yesterday.

The five-member board heard testimony and reviewed evidence related to the three shootings before ruling the officers were justified in using deadly force. Chief Mike Navarre concurred with the decisions, which in effect closed the department’s investigations of the incidents.

But for the family of Linda Hicks, who was fatally shot Dec. 15, the decision doesn’t answer their questions or quell their concerns.

“I want to get everything all together - what happened, what happened in that room, why they shot her so many times. I want to know what happened,” said Evelyn Patterson, Ms. Hicks’ aunt who raised her and her two children.

“I don’t feel good,” she said of the incident. “I can’t sleep at night worrying about what they did to her.”

The DDN shows its support for Dayton Police Chief Biehl who instructed officers not to ask residents for their immigration status.

Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl is right that his officers shouldn’t be questioning victims or witnesses about their citizenship or immigration status — notwithstanding objections about the policy from the police union.

Let’s be honest. Most times, if that question comes up, it’s with Hispanics, not whites and blacks.

The practice itself can be a form of profiling, which invites lawsuits. But, arguably more important, the approach discourages Hispanics from reporting crimes and cooperating with police.

Dayton police (and community officials) have long been frustrated that they don’t always get the help they hope for from some people in the black community. They say they need victims and witnesses to come forward if they’re going to be successful at locking up the bad guys. They say it’s a shame because so often the victims who would benefit are themselves black.

Local activists are rallying around Dayton Police Chief Biehl after he rightfully instructed officers not to ask for a person’s immigration status when investigating a scene.

Police Chief Richard Biehl got a show of support from Dayton’s Hispanic community for prohibiting officers from asking the immigration status of a witness or victim of a crime.

Sister Maria Stacy, director of the local Hispanic Catholic Ministry, Lucia Prier, a social worker at the East End Community Services Center and David E. Larson, an immigration lawyer, commended Biehl’s action during the City Commission meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 13.

“I think the police chief was courageous to issue the policy directive. It was the right thing to do from a human rights and a safety standpoint,” said Larson, recently appointed to Dayton’s Human Relations Council. “It is impossible for any of us to know the extent that crime goes unreported.”

Dayton resident Juan Arias said he believes the executive order lays the groundwork for a better society, a better future.

“I stand before you a human being and ask my rights to be respected,” he said.

Kudos to Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl who has taken a step in improving relations between immigrant communities and local police.

City police officers are now prohibited from asking the immigration status of a witness or victim of a crime in hopes it eases fears some ethnic groups have of law enforcement.

Police Chief Richard Biehl issued the executive order to his nearly 390 officers on Dec. 30 telling them, “Citizens must feel free to call for police services without fear of undue repercussions.”

Biehl’s order, aimed mostly at the Latino community, goes on to say a “Police presence within the entire community is extremely important to engender a feeling of safety and trust…”

The order is being cheered by the city’s Hispanic community, whose leaders have said many victims of crimes who can’t provide documented citizenship don’t report incidents to police because they fear being arrested or even deported.

The ABJ praises the Ohio Supreme Court over their recent ruling requiring police to obtain a warrant before they search someone’s cell phone.

Justice Judith Lanzinger put the challenge in four words: ”Cell phones defy categorization.” Yet the courts must plunge into the task, anyway, seeking to draw clear distinctions and critical boundaries involving police searches and seizures in criminal investigations. On Tuesday, Lanzinger, writing for a 4-3 majority of the Ohio Supreme Court, delivered a careful argument, and the majority landed where it belonged. It upheld the Fourth Amendment principle protecting an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy.

The decision stemmed from a drug case. A woman taken to the hospital after a drug overdose agreed during questioning by police officers to call her drug dealer. Police officers soon arrested the dealer, and in doing so, confiscated his cell phone, eventually recovering call records and phone numbers. A jury convicted the dealer for trafficking in cocaine and other charges. He received 12 years in prison.

The defendant appealed his conviction, arguing that the trial court erred in failing to suppress the evidence found on the cell phone. The court of appeals upheld the conviction. A 2-1 majority sided with the trial court, reaffirming the view that a cell phone is essentially a closed container and thus subject to search during a lawful arrest.

Residents in Toledo continue to question officials over why a 62 year old mentally ill women was shot and killed by a police officer earlier this week.

The shooting death of a 62-year-old woman armed with a 10-inch scissors by a Toledo police officer this week sparked calls for full disclosure of the incident and greater care when dealing with the mentally ill.

Linda Hicks was shot at least three times by Officer Diane Chandler, who responded with her partner to the adult family home at 1321 Fernwood Ave. when the caretaker called 911.

Police Chief Mike Navarre said Ms. Hicks didn’t comply with the officers’ commands and tried to attack Officer Chandler with the scissors.

A five-person police firearms review board will review the shooting after the initial investigation, which includes a complete forensics analysis, the chief said.

Sixteen religious leaders from different churches gathered yesterday in front of the home where Ms. Hicks was killed to demand answers.

“We need some serious answers of what it looks like every time something goes down, someone is shot and killed, so our concern is to try and help the police make it better, that these things will not continue to happen,” said the Rev. Theodis Horton of Shiloh Baptist Church. “When you see a 62-year-old woman taken out by police, it is really sad and it hurts our community.”

Troubling news out of Toledo and police try and piece together how a 62 year old mentally ill woman was shot and killed after they were called to her residence.

When one of the mentally ill people who Tanya Murphy cares for in her home on Fernwood Avenue became agitated and violent, she called 911 and immediately asked for a crisis team.

Minutes later, 62-year-old Linda Hicks, one of two residents staying in the state-licensed Marria’s Adult Family Home was dead - shot in the head Monday night by one of the two police officers dispatched to the central Toledo address because she was threatening people with scissors.

Police Chief Mike Navarre identified the officer who shot Ms. Hicks as Diane Chandler, 33, who has been on the force since 2006. The second officer at the scene was Rebecca Kenney, 34, who has been on the force since 2003.

Ms. Murphy had difficulty discussing the incident yesterday and would only say: “She came at me with the scissors.”

When placing her call to 911, Ms. Murphy specifically asked for “crisis police.”

Yesterday, she said the outcome should have been different.

The Ohio Supreme Court issued a wonderful ruling yesterday affirming that police officers must have a warrant before they search a person’s cell phone.

Police can’t examine the contents of a suspect’s cell phone without a warrant, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled yesterday in a first-of-its-kind case over privacy and technology.

[…]

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Smith’s position, contends that as cell phones become more like personal computers, the data they hold should be protected from unreasonable intrusions.

“There is so much information that we keep in our cell phones,” ACLU of Ohio lawyer Carrie Davis said yesterday. “It is not a simple telephone. Because of that, people have an expectation that the information they keep will be private.”

Lanzinger’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer and Justices Paul E. Pfeifer and Maureen O’Connor.

Cleveland area attorney Terry Gilbert breaks down the shooting by police officers of teenager Brandon McCloud in 2005.

Detective Phillip Habeeb waited outside the house for the right moment to make the early-morning entry, anxious to confront the 15-year-old boy he suspected of robbing a pizza deliveryman hours earlier. He and his partner, John Kraynik, were understandably upset, having arrested the same kid for a similar robbery six months earlier. They thought he’d learned his lesson during their last interrogation session, but apparently sterner and more aggressive measures were required. Armed with a search warrant, they waited for signs of movement in the house.

With time to burn, Habeeb called a radio dispatcher on his cell phone and chatted with her about the plan. The flirtatious dispatcher mused that if the detective was out of breath chasing the kid, “you know he’s running.” When the dispatcher suggested that he should “just shoot to kill,” Habeeb replied, “Absolutely.”

A few minutes later, Brandon McCloud lay dead in a pool of blood, shot 10 times in his own bedroom.

Critics and supporters debate a new initiative by Columbus city officials to install security cameras in several neighborhoods.

As Columbus moves forward with plans to monitor neighborhoods with security cameras, civil libertarians warn that the costs — both to privacy and pocketbooks — might outweigh the benefits.

[…]

But with few exceptions, studies of camera surveillance in the United States and England haven’t found a statistically significant impact on crime rates. Criminals simply move to nearby areas without cameras, experts caution.

“All it really does is give people the illusion of safety,” said Gary Daniels, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union’s regional office in Columbus.

ACLU of Ohio Executive Director weighs in on the recent murders in Cleveland and how Community Problem Oriented Policing may have helped stop the murders faster.

In the aftermath of the Imperial Avenue murders, a full investigation into the events and response from law enforcement is necessary. However, these gruesome events are not an isolated incident and may be indicative of other problems.

The overwhelming theme emerging from much of the news coverage is that there was a staggering breakdown in communication — whether that was between the community and police, different law enforcement agencies, or amongst neighbors. A substantial part of this collapse may have been ushered in by recent cutbacks in community policing practices that seek to create partnerships between law enforcement and neighborhoods.

Community policing focuses on how police and residents can partner to prevent crime in their neighborhoods by working together. In this particular case, if there was a police officer in the neighborhood meeting with residents on a regular basis, there may have been a more coordinated response to reports of odd smells, women spotted at the Anthony Sowell residence and other irregularities.

As news reports continue to surface telling of people who tried to sound the alarm but were either not heard, had no one to follow up on their concerns, or did not know where to report their fears, we can see the value of community policing principles. We must prioritize initiatives that strengthen police-community relationships in order to prevent tragedies like this from ever occurring again.

Christine Link, Cleveland

Link is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

Troubling reports of Columbus police officers randomly searching public buses raise questions over whether individuals are are to decline a search and how the police choose who is searched.

The Central Ohio Transit Authority is now using police dogs to increase security, 10TV’s Angela An reported Wednesday.

While assaults against passengers and drivers are down compared to last year, police made 35 percent more arrests this year on buses and bus stops. There have been 158 arrests to date in 2009, An reported.

“The reason we started with bomb dogs is to make sure people aren’t bringing suspicious packages on the buses and leaving them behind,” said COTA’s security director Stan Alverson.

The dogs are joining undercover officers in searching for anything illegal, from explosives to drugs.

This week the Ohio Supreme Court heard a case challenging whether police have a right to search through a person’s cell phone without a court order.

Police may be able to take cell phones from people they arrest, but that doesn’t give them the right to scroll through call logs in search of incriminating information without a warrant, a defense attorney told the Ohio Supreme Court yesterday.

[…]

The case has attracted interest from outside groups. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief on behalf of Smith, while the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association filed a brief in favor of police and prosecutors.

The court is expected to rule in several months.

ACLU of Ohio Associate Director Gary Daniels discusses the advantages of Tasers when they are used correctly by police officers.

Columbus police used the Taser brand to shock 326 suspects in 2008. How many of those incidents were subject to CPD’s Firearms Review Board?

That would be exactly none.

That’s because the Taser is not considered a firearm.

[…]

Neither Amnesty International nor the American Civil Liberties Union quibbles with the Taser not being deemed a firearm.

“Some people out there think Tasers are inherently bad. That is not our position,” said Gary Daniels of the ACLU of Ohio. “It provides something aside from pepper spray and getting shot and it’s the something-short-of-getting-shot aspect of Tasers that we appreciate.”

The ACLU draws attention to a troubling provision in Ohio Senate Bill 77 that would allow DNA collection of anyone arrested for a felony. While the ACLU opposes this part of the legislation, it supports other aspects such as increased access to DNA testing for convicts, and reforms of interrogation practices

A justice reform bill endorsed by Gov. Ted Strickland and passed by the Senate designed to prevent wrongful convictions also includes a controversial measure to expand the collection of DNA samples to those arrested on felony charges.

Currently, Ohio only takes DNA from people convicted of felonies and violent misdemeanors.

Law enforcement groups support the expansion, saying it gets violent offenders off the street quicker and prevents future crimes.

But others say DNA collection before conviction crosses the line, especially because the bill does not address what happens if a person isn’t convicted.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio opposes the measure, saying it poses a “myriad of civil liberty risks” including violating a person’s constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure, is ripe for abuse and is an invasion of privacy.

“This is certainly troubling,” said ACLU staff lawyer Carrie Davis. “There is no useful purpose of collecting DNA after arrest to avoid wrongful convictions and it poses all kinds of civil risks.

“Collecting DNA from all arrestees is a search and there should be some process, a court order or warrant, for a search,” Davis said.

The Cincinnati Police Chief recently criticized officers who tasered a young woman, but many in the community are still upset about this incident.

The 26-year-old daughter of a Cincinnati councilmember was on her knees, hands in the air, when a Cincinnati police officer fired a Taser at her back, police chief Thomas Streicher said Monday in determining the officer used excessive force.

Streicher has suspended the police powers of the officer, Anthony Plummer, while an internal police investigation is under way into the arrest of Celeste Thomas, the daughter of councilmember Cecil Thomas, a retired Cincinnati police officer.

Police records state that Celeste Thomas was a passenger in a vehicle involved in a hit-skip accident and stopped by police early Sunday morning in Mount Auburn.

Thomas was told to stay inside the vehicle, police said, but disobeyed verbal commands and exited the car, approaching officers.

ACLU of Ohio Associate Director Gary Daniels talks about the dangers of cameras that collect license plate numbers and the room for abuse that may occur.

Are they cutting-edge tools in the war on crime and terrorism? Big Brother in a box? Or maybe a little of both?

Area police are excited about the possibilities offered by the automated license plate reader, a camera with a scanner mounted in a housing on selected police cruisers. The reader takes pictures of motorists’ license plates while police are on patrol, scans the numbers and instantaneously compares them to a database of plates associated with stolen cars and wanted criminal suspects. An alarm goes off inside the cruiser if the computer finds a match.

[…]

But civil libertarians and privacy rights watchdogs say the readers are a step toward a surveillance society in which everyday activities of law-abiding citizens are catalogued by authorities.

“It’s something we’ve been following,” said Gary Daniels, a spokesman for the Ohio American Civil Liberties Union in Columbus. “We’re quickly getting to the point where Americans are very uncomfortable about infringements on what they see as their right to privacy.”

ACLU Staff Counsel Carrie Davis discusses some of the problems with neighborhood watch groups and how they can sometimes unintentionally cause others to unfairly be subject to police scrutiny.

Cruise down the tree-lined streets of the Old Oaks neighborhood on a summer evening and know this: Someone is watching you.

It might be Richard Vickers, who records your license plate number in a notebook as he retrieves gun shell casings from the sidewalk while out on his nightly walk. Or it might be Doug Motz, who alerts via text message: “Watch out for the green van lurking in the alley.”

[…]

Carrie Davis, staff council for the American Civil Liberties Union in Ohio, says block watch members who aren’t trained by police should be cautious of overstepping legal boundaries.

“You have a right to observe what’s going on in the street, but that doesn’t give you a right to go peer in your neighbor’s window,” Davis says.

The ABJ highlights a new report that discusses the many failings of relying on eyewitness accounts in police investigations.

Ask Clarence Elkins about the power — and unreliability — of eyewitness testimony. He spent eight years in prison, wrongly convicted of the murder of his mother-in-law. His conviction turned largely on the account of his niece. She was wrong. She eventually recanted her testimony. DNA evidence finally led to Elkins regaining his freedom.

Now the Innocence Project, headquartered in New York City and dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions, has released a report offering a broad and revealing assessment of eyewitness misidentification. The research shows that of the 230 people who have been exonerated through DNA testing, 179 of the cases, or 75 percent, involved eyewitnesses erring in the identification. In 38 percent, multiple eyewitnesses misidentified the same innocent person.

The story of one man who was found innocent after being wrongfully convicted of a rape, may bring needed changes to Ohio’s justice system.

James Vaughan came chillingly close to spending the rest of his life behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. Some say his case is a testament to the justice system’s vulnerability to human error and carelessness.

Last year, Vaughan was convicted in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court of raping a 9-year-old girl. He faced a mandatory term of life in prison without parole and had been in jail for a year when he won a new trial based on a social worker’s previously unheard testimony. A jury overturned his conviction last month.

Now, the 30-year-old University School and University of Cincinnati graduate is trying to readjust to life untethered from the criminal justice system.

Ohioans should call their state legislators and encourage them to support both SB 22 and 77. Both would greatly expand the rights of the incarcerated and relieve the overcrowded prison system in Ohio.

A bill that would expand DNA testing and try to improve the way authorities conduct investigations and another that would let prisoners earn shorter sentences each passed Senate committees yesterday.

But only the DNA bill appears to have a bright future.

The criminal-sentencing bill would allow most prisoners to get out early by earning up to five days of credit per month, up from the current one day, if they participate in education and rehabilitation programs. But even though it won the battle yesterday, it seems likely to lose the war in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Senate President Bill M. Harris, R-Ashland, had hoped that the committee process would temper the strong opposition to the bill, but that didn’t happen. He wanted to include it in the new two-year budget, saving an estimated $50 million over the biennium to help close a $3.2 billion shortfall.

Last summer, the ACLU of Ohio expressed concern over the enforcement of Columbus’ curfew program. It appears as though the city is expanding enforcement to possibly send some young people to jail.

Last year, Columbus kids caught violating the city’s curfew got off with what amounted to a warning.

But this summer, police will be handing out summonses that will require violators and their parents to appear before a Franklin County domestic-relations judge. Children convicted of the misdemeanor could face up to a $500 fine and 60 days in jail, although judges have latitude to decide a lesser punishment.

The curfew “is not intended to be punitive in any way,” Mayor Michael B. Coleman said in announcing the enhanced enforcement plan yesterday. “It’s meant to protect them from harm.”

[…]

Children Services workers will try to persuade children to stay once they are taken in, but the agency can’t force them, said Director Eric Fenner.

That was also true at the YMCA last year after the American Civil Liberties Union objected that holding children because of their age is unconstitutional.

The Vindicator weighs the consequences of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that protects drivers from having their vehicles searched illegally.

Youngstown police and the Ohio State Highway Patrol are once again joined in an effort aimed at making the city a better place to live by pursuing a zero tolerance policy for traffic violations.

And along the way, Police Chief Jimmy Hughes hopes to nab more than bad drivers, he’s looking for bad guys of all stripes.

“We hope to stop the cars for the violations and search for evidence of any other wrongdoing,” Hughes said.

Police and the patrol pursued a similar strategy last year and it met with some success.

But it may be a little tougher this year.

There’s been a notable change in what the Supreme Court of the United States views as a legitimate search of a motor vehicle following a routine traffic stop.

The city of Akron announces plans to address the police-community relations issues that have plagued the city in recent years.

Akron intends to hire more police and do a lot more talking with residents to help bridge a widening communication gap and rising crime rate.

The announcement came this morning from Mayor Don Plusquellic, whose six-term reign is in jeopardy in this month’s recall election.

Plusquellic, in a joint news conference with Police Chief Craig Gilbride, said the city intends to form a citizens advisory board and a Crime Control Plan Steering committee.

Both groups, whose members have yet to be finalized, are intended to foster, among other things, resident input with police on issues facing neighborhoods.

”These two panels are intended to make sure that police and residents are sharing what they know to make the whole community safer,” Plusquellic said.

Lima police may be slowed down following up on anaonymous tips regarding people using drugs in the city.

A new system is available for residents worried about drug use in their neighborhoods.

[…]

Mike Brickner, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, said there are a couple of issues with this e-mail system.

“A lot of times tips are faulty and unsubstantiated,” Brickner said. “It creates more work for the police because they have to investigate each claim and it could take away from real police work.”

Brickner also mentioned the damage a false claim could have to someone’s reputation.

“What happens to the list of the names and tips if there is no police follow-up - they could be used for something bad,” he said. “That person’s name would be associated with bad behavior.”

The Dispatch reports on the use of laws that supposedly prohibit people from participating in gang activites, but often result in racial profiling.

Three tattooed dots on a man’s hand that officers noted six years ago during a routine booking for a gun charge tipped off Columbus police to another potential investigation.

[…]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio thinks that it unfairly skews enforcement toward urban areas, education director Shakyra Diaz said. The risk for guilt by association is great and could land innocent people on watch lists, she said.

To establish a person as an active gang member, police use criteria such as dress, hangouts, associates and the person’s own admissions.

More fallout from the Mansfield drug case that led to a major investigation on how drug stings are conducted throughout the state and the use of informants in these cases.

The federal justice system will determine the guilt or innocence of Lee Lucas, the federal drug agent indicted last week on 18 criminal counts involving his alleged failure to monitor a dishonest informant.

But the indictment of Lucas, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent, is an important step toward justice obscured for years by false drug charges against 17 people from the Mansfield area — 12 of whom were convicted and sent to prison.

Spurred by the stories of Plain Dealer reporter John Caniglia, this newspaper has long demanded a thorough review of Lucas and his mendacious informant, Jerrell Bray. A convicted killer serving a 15-year prison sentence, Bray admitted he falsely accused innocent people of drug dealing. He has maintained Lucas also was involved in the phony drug stings.

It appears as though Columbus is abandoning its misguided plans to install more surveillance cameras around the city.

Those surveillance cameras that were coming to a Columbus neighborhood near you won’t arrive any time soon.

The city doesn’t have the money to buy them, said Joel Taylor, its finance and management director.

Mayor Michael B. Coleman pitched neighborhood cameras in 2007 and the city’s capital plan had included $1.55 million for them, said Ken Paul, aide to City Councilman Andrew J. Ginther, who leads the council’s safety committee.

Last year, the council approved $243,827 to buy two surveillance camera platforms for crowd control at large festivals and other events.

More and more legislators are joining the call for fair and reasonable sentencing guidelines for drug offenders.

President Barack Obama wants to stop punishing crack cocaine offenders more harshly than those caught with powder cocaine.

It’s a notion that has had growing support among judges and lawmakers, but is only now being championed by the White House.

In 1986, when the use of crack cocaine was taking off, Congress set mandatory sentences of at least five years in prison for convictions with 5 or more grams of crack. It takes getting caught with 100 times as much powder cocaine — 500 grams — to run into the same five-year sentence.

ACLU Staff Counsel Carrie Davis discusses the growing trend of police departments and schools using social networking sites to profile young people for certain crimes.

Dayton area teens who use the Web to communicate with their friends could be in for a surprise if their postings include activities that break school rules.

[…]

Police need to exercise restraint in developing suspicions on the basis of what is said on social networking sites, said Carrie Davis, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

“Really, what they’re doing is using people’s speech and associations as a basis for suspicion,” Davis said.

It is a challenge for law enforcement because technology has developed at a rate that outpaced the laws, she said.

“They’re dealing with technologies that didn’t exist when the laws were written,” Davis said. “Most of our privacy laws were written in the 1970s.”

ACLU of Ohio Staff Counsel Carrie Davis discusses a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that expands Americans’ Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure.

For nearly three decades, Ohio police officers could routinely rummage through vehicles in search of contraband and evidence after arrests.

[…]

The American Civil Liberties Union had argued that residents’ rights were being violated by unjustified police searches unconnected to concerns about safety or preserving evidence.

The court’s landmark 1981 ruling on vehicle searches had been “stretched beyond reason,” said Carrie Davis, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Ohio. “The searches had gotten well beyond what the Fourth Amendment allows.”

ACLU of Ohio Staff Counsel Carrie Davis suggests a better route to tackle the issue of teen “sexting.”

The recent bills proposed by state Rep. Ron Maag and state Sen. Bob Schuler to reduce penalties incurred by teenagers who electronically distribute nude photos of themselves or others are well-intentioned, but may create more problems than they solve.

The criminal justice system should not be the arena to address this issue. By exposing young people who simply made a foolish decision to criminal charges, officials may stigmatize those youth and could cause them to fall deeper into the court system. Instead, we must work to create strong educational programs to help teens cultivate better judgment and respect for others.

If a young person is upset that another person distributed his or her nude picture without permission, his or her parents should instead utilize the civil courts and sue the person for violating one’s privacy rights. Those who disseminate personal photos would still have negative consequences, but would not be labeled as a criminal and processed through the justice system.

While no one will argue that teens should be sending nude photos of themselves to others, the remedy is not to simply punish the children in criminal court. If we hope to prevent these unfortunate incidents in the future, parents and educators must engage in open and meaningful discussions with children about respect for others’ privacy and how to cope with pressure to engage in dangerous activities.

The Department of Justice has begun investigating the disturbing circumstances surrounding the death of Mark McCullough, Jr. while in police custody.

The U.S. Justice Department has obtained stacks of records and autopsy evidence from last year’s criminal case against five Summit County sheriff’s deputies indicted in the 2006 death of a jail inmate.

Federal prosecution is possible, authorities said.

The sheriff’s office also is investigating the deputies’ conduct.

ACLU of Ohio Executive Director Chris Link weighs in on the recent troubles at the Mansfield Correctional Facility and actions the Ohio General Assembly must take in order to alleviate Ohio’s overcrowded prisons.

The recent turmoil at the Mansfield Correctional Institution illustrates that lawmakers cannot wait any longer to initiate meaningful prison reform (”Mansfield guards say prison riot looms,” Dispatch article, April 1). As we have learned from the past, the combination of prisoner overcrowding and inadequate numbers of guards can lead to disaster and must not be ignored.

The prison population has risen steadily for years with no end in sight. A large portion of the inmates are low-level offenders who are only incarcerated for a short time. In previous years, these people would have received rehabilitation in order to keep them out of the prison system and increase the likelihood they would not commit future crimes.

Unfortunately, our misguided prison policy from recent years has slashed many of these programs and relied solely on punishing prisoners.

As a result, many prison facilities have far exceeded their maximum occupancy. Coupled with overcrowding are the drastic cuts the state has made in personnel. Not only is this an obvious security risk, the lack of guards means that there will be fewer opportunities for inmates to be away from their cells.

This often causes psychological stress for prisoners and raises tensions in the facility. Legislation is pending in the General Assembly to reform our broken sentencing policies and direct more funds toward rehabilitation. If the prison population is reduced, there will be more resources to hire guards and fewer prisoners to monitor. This issue must be addressed now before another tragedy occurs.

CHRISTINE LINK
Executive director
American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio
Cleveland

Officials in Cuyahoga County continue on the path of investigating racial discrimination in their justice system.

Cuyahoga County is one step closer to identifying possible racial inequities in the county’s criminal justice system and bringing transparency to what some judges call a culture of secrecy among the court’s players.

Five research groups from across the country have submitted proposals to analyze the impact of race on every aspect of case processing from arrest to sentencing.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason has assembled an advisory committee to help choose which firm is best qualified to slog through tens of thousands of court files, interview players at every level of the system, draw conclusions and recommend possible changes.

A sensible editorial on the dangers of allowing the government more leeway to pull people over for not wearing a seat belt.

State lawmakers - Senate Republicans, in particular - last week kept alive some glimmer of individual choice for Ohio drivers. A conference committee’s transportation bill removed Gov. Ted Strickland’s proposal to make Ohio a primary seat-belt enforcement state.

New Hampshire remains the only state in the union where drivers don’t run the risk of a ticket for not wearing seat belts, but Ohio lawmakers at least kept police from pulling over drivers just for seat-belt violations. Stripping the transportation bill of that was no small matter. Ohio would have received $26.7 million in federal funds if it would have gone to primary seat-belt enforcement. Lawmakers were right not to further strip Ohioans of their freedom (even to make bad choices) to gain the federal money.

Conditions are becoming dangerous at the Mansfield prison because of overcrowding and increasing tensions between inmates.

Ohio officials say a series of fights among inmates at Mansfield Correctional Institution last week is symptomatic of overcrowding.

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Director Terry Collins told the Columbus Dispatch on Friday that he is monitoring the situation at MANCI, which remains on partial lockdown. He said he’s not worried the flare-up in Mansfield will spread throughout the state’s overcrowded prison system.

“I’m not alarmed, but as director of the state prison system, I continually want to assure that things are as secure as they can be for the inmates, the staff and the public,” Collins told the newspaper.