The Little Rock Drug Raid Story Is A Fourth Amendment Story. But It's Also A First Amendment One.

from the all-amendments-matter dept

The Little Rock drug raid story is appalling. The indiscriminate, repeated, and systemic violation of the Fourth Amendment has been enormously destructive to people's lives, as well as an entire community. But if this situation is to be remedied, and hopefully it will be, it will be thanks to the First Amendment.

Most obviously, the First Amendment is what has allowed for Radley Balko's reporting of the story. Speaking truth about power is only possible with strong press protection. By allowing injustice to be discovered and shared, justice becomes possible. With Balko's reporting the public at large can now be aware of the abuse being done in their name, and the revelation is what will allow people to press for change. As it is, publication of the story has already led to charges being dropped against one of its other victims.

Just heard that earlier today, Little Rock prosecutors dropped all charges against Derrick Davis. I wrote about him in my piece on LRPD's narcotics unit. The same informant caught lying in Roderick Talley's case alleged he also bought drugs from Davis. https://t.co/l7CHiDjp8s — Radley Balko (@radleybalko) October 19, 2018

Victim Roderick Talley's own First Amendment rights also made a difference, and in several ways. One important way is that they gave him the right to film the world around him, and that let him record the police's abuse, which provided him with compelling evidence to use in his pursuit of justice.

The complex where he currently resided had recently put out a notice to residents to be on the alert for break-ins. So Talley bought a security system to monitor both the inside and outside of his apartment. About a week before the raid, the outdoor camera picked up some strange activity outside Talley’s apartment. As he sat handcuffed while police officers rifled through his belongings, he began to make the connection. The outside camera had recorded two odd incidents. First, a man whom Talley didn’t know approached the apartment while Talley wasn’t home. Looking anxious, the man knocked, waited a few moments and then left. A few days later, the camera picked up a police officer outside the door. The officer looked around, snapped a photo of Talley’s door with his cellphone, and left. .

[…]

After reading the affidavit, Talley went back to check the camera footage of his mysterious visitor from the previous week. “Sure enough,” he says. “The dates matched up. And nobody else came to my apartment that day.” The informant described in the affidavit was the same man Talley’s camera had recorded knocking on his door, waiting and then leaving. Talley wasn’t home at the time. The account given by the detectives and informant was false. And Talley had the video to prove it.

His access to public records was also critical. Through them he was able to discover patterns of abuse affecting not just him but his fellow citizens.

In the months after his own raid, Talley filed open-records requests for every warrant and affidavit involving the detectives who handled his case. He then expanded out and asked for warrants related to other officers on the drug unit.

In those records was also another important piece of information: the informant's mugshot. Remember the story here about mugshots? The one about how people were arrested for having posted these completely public records, simply because they made the editorial decision about which ones to post based on a profit motive? This story shows why it is so important that they be public records that the public has ready access to. Because with the mugshot Talley was able to figure out what had happened to him and others. A name on a search warrant application is an abstraction; but with the picture he could compare the affidavit to his security camera footage to spot the lies.

Over the ensuing weeks, Talley scoured Facebook and Instagram. He talked to residents of the apartments and the surrounding neighborhood. He started watching the Arkansas courts website for cases that looked similar to his. He eventually found a mug shot of the informant. The man who falsely claimed to have purchased cocaine from Talley is a nine-time felon whose criminal record includes nine convictions for theft and another five for burglary. He has also been convicted for giving a false name to police officers after an arrest, for filing a false police report, and, while behind bars, for writing a death threat to a police officer, forging another inmate’s signature on the threat, and then reporting the threat in exchange for reducing his own charges.

The mugshot also helped him compare notes with other victims, some of whom remembered seeing the informant lurking around the neighborhood.

Talley found Davis’s case late last year on the Arkansas courts site. After contacting Davis, Talley showed him a photo of the informant. “Oh, that was him,” Davis says. “That was the guy who came to my apartment. He has what you might call a unique look. You don’t forget a guy like that.” The informant told the police that Davis sold him cocaine. The police found only pot, a scale, Davis’s gun, bullets and the registration for his gun.

And then there was social media. Not only did it help him figure out what had happened by letting him find posts and pictures from others' affected, but it gave him a forum to speak out about what had happened to him, and to reach out to other affected community members – er, at least until he was censored by Facebook for having posted public information about the state actors who had abused him…

He also continued to use social media to publicize his case and reach out to others who may have been raided. He says he was at one point suspended from Facebook for posting the officers’ identities, photos and contact information, though Talley insists this was all public record.

His First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of his grievances is also what allowed him to sue for the violation of his other rights. The city tried to seal all the records associated with the case, but fortunately a judge refused to allow that impingement of his First Amendment rights to add to the list of constitutional injuries.

In response to the lawsuit, the city’s first move was to ask a judge to seal the search warrants, affidavits and everything else Talley had found — including Talley’s own security camera videos. Laux and Crump fought the motion and won. Talley had obtained all of that information from his own cameras or from public records. The city couldn’t then bar him from sharing or publishing it.

Because Talley's story, and the records evidencing it, are able to remain in public view, we are able to learn about a renegade police force running around one of America's cities, unfettered by the constitutional limitations put on police power. Fortunately knowledge is power, and thanks to the First Amendment we can start to fight back.

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Filed Under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, drug rainds, first amendment, foia, free speech, little rock, little rock police department, roderick talley, video recording