Tiny Crimes by the Thousands

While the big crimes tend to cause the greatest outrage, and hence get the most attention, it's the little ones, the ones we consider inconsequential, that have the big numbers. Thousand, tens of thousands, of petty offenses are prosecuted yearly, although it's not quite fair to call them prosecuted as they usually result in a quick guilty and check changing hands.

Big numbers and lots of money, but mostly in the aggregate.  For the individual, it's hardly inexpensive, but still far less expensive than fighting and winning.  And provided it's not something that will send a guy to jail or ruin his life, most people are happy to get it over with and be gone.  Tiny crime. Thousands of them. Like loitering.

From WXYZ in Detroit, Robert McGowan was driving home when he was stopped by a cop.

That officer wrote him up for a decaying license plate.  But it wasn’t until the next morning that Robert looked closer at that ticket, and saw two words that made him panic: prostitution and narcotics. 

"I was driving down the street," McGowan said.

"I wasn’t sitting with my feet hanging out the window, I wasn’t having fun skipping up the sidewalk.  I was driving home.

Turns out the cop wrote Robert up for loitering in a place known for prostitution and narcotics. It’s a misdemeanor charge with a penalty of up to $1000 and 93 days in jail.  McGowan says he got the ticket because he was profiled.     

"He pulled me over because I don’t look like I belong here after dark and my car is not a very pretty car," he said.

Unlike most, McGowan wasn't willing to take the hit for loitering for the purpose of prostitution and narcotics, particularly since his reason for being there was to mentor a high school student. He wasn't that type of guy, and wasn't going to take the path of least resistance.  His ticket was dismissed.

Now, he's doing something about it.

Southfield lawyer Daniel Romano represents McGowan, Tonon and about 20 others from both city and suburb hit with the same type of violation.

"What does that mean?  I don’t know.  I don’t think the Detroit police officers know what it means.  It means what they want it to mean at the time."

Romano says the law is vaguely written and allows police to abuse it. 

They've commenced a class action to put a stop to the cops writing up bogus tickets.  Naturally, the Detroit Police Chief knows nothing about it.
Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee declined to talk about these cases. Instead he released a statement that says, in part: “…over the course of a year thousands of individuals are arrested by officers of the Detroit Police Department and many more individuals receive citations…we are not in a position…to respond to claims that cases were mishandled.”

If the Police Department isn't in a position to respond, who is?  The courts, as reflected in the settlement of a New York class action suit, via the Daily News.

The city has agreed to pay $15 million to 22,000 New Yorkers — many of them homeless panhandlers — who were arrested for loitering using laws that were struck down decades ago.

“Thousands of New Yorkers were arrested and forced to defend themselves in court, and even serve time in jail, for completely legal behavior,” said Katherine Rosenfeld, representing the plaintiffs in the class action suit.

Averaged, that comes to $682 per person, hardly enough to justify the rigors of a federal lawsuit on an individual basis, but added together provides a pretty decent smack.  A $15 million smack. Not too shabby.  In New York, the problem with loitering tickets is a bit different than Detroit.

The state’s anti-loitering law, passed in 1964, was ruled unconstitutional three times by state and federal courts in the 1980s and 1990s.

But the NYPD continued arresting beggars or hustlers under the statute for more than two decades. Most of those arrested lacked the resources to fight the charges.

“After courts struck down these loitering laws as unconstitutional, the NYPD should never have charged a single person under them,” Rosenfeld said.

If there's something familiar about the cops using a law long since dumped, it may be because of the enormous number of pot busts in New York, long since decriminalized on a theoretical level, with the caveat against "public display."  The cops magic trick is to pull it out of its hiding place into the light, then charge for it being there.  And rather than fight this lunacy, defendants cop out quickly and go home to wash off the stink.

When a defendant's back is to the wall, charged with a serious offense he didn't commit, there is little choice but to fight.  When the charge is tiny, and resolvable by a fine or a day of community service with no criminal record, or when the defendant is indigent and incapable of putting up a fight, discretion is usually the better part of valor.  Fighting is hard. Fighting is expensive. Tiny charges aren't fought, at least on the individual level.

Like the phone company tossing in an inexplicable nickel on the bill, it's not worth the time it takes to make it through voicemail to get to a real person. But do it a few million times a month, and it comes to real money.  For the cops, it shows they're doing their job, and earning their budget, when they put up tons of tickets written.  It all relies on people not finding it worth their while to fight back.

Hopefully, the Detroit class action will find the same success as Katherine Rosenfeld's case in New York.  Hopefully, the cost of the settlement will have enough of an impact to compel the police to stop writing bogus tickets for non-existent crimes.  While it's death by a thousand tiny crimes, it's still wrong.  Maybe Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee will come to find it worth his while to know whether his cops are liars, falsely accusing people of non-existent crimes to up their numbers. 

H/T Spencer Neal at the Oregon Law Center

Posted by SHG at 2/10/2012 6:14 AM
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  • 2/10/2012 9:40 AM John Neff wrote:
    If you don't watch them they will use obsolete and unconstitutional statutes. At the cite and release level they are not being watched.

    They have set up the judicial equivalent of a bottling line for low level cases because most folks figure the lowest cost solution is to pay the fine and move on.

    Obsolete and unconstitutional charges should be dismissed but they are not because the legislature wants the income from fines, surcharges and court costs.
    Reply to this
  • 2/10/2012 10:20 AM John Burgess wrote:
    Naive of me, I guess, but don't judges have some responsibility for knowing the law, too? Ought not a judge know that a case being presented before him is actually based on an extant law?
    Reply to this
    1. 2/10/2012 10:48 AM John Neff wrote:
      The judge or magistrate says "If you are going to plead guilty go to that window and pay your fine there." Most people do that and a few form a line to talk to the judge or magistrate. No thought is involved in the majority of the cases.
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    2. 2/10/2012 3:14 PM SHG wrote:
      Lots of people should, judges included, but they rarely get to see these tickets.  Though on the rare instances they do, they don't tend to let it bother them too much.
      Reply to this
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