New Balance settles our lawsuit claiming toning shoes were falsely advertised

Last month, New Balance Inc. agreed to pay up to $3.75 million to settle a class action lawsuit claiming that the company falsely advertised their toning shoes. Plaintiffs claimed that New Balance, in connection with the marketing and sale of Toning Shoes, misrepresented the benefits of wearing Toning Shoes to consumers. Plaintiffs further claimed that Toning Shoes did not provide the benefits to consumers claimed by New Balance. In settling this case New Balance denies any and all claims of wrongdoing and does not admit any fault, wrongdoing or liability.

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Prosecuting Police Brutality

By Attorney Howard Friedman

Since I first began working on police misconduct cases in 1976 as a law student I have known that local prosecutors are reluctant to prosecute police officers for brutality. A lot has changed since then, starting with the federal criminal prosecution of police officers for beating Rodney King. Still, it is not news when a local prosecutor refuses to prosecute a police officer for beating a handcuffed prisoner. But I was surprised that the District Attorney in Queens, New York, has refused to prosecute a police officer for assaulting a judge from the Queens Supreme Court (a trial court in New York where he handles matrimonial cases). If a judge—along with other witnesses—cannot provide enough evidence to charge a brutal police officer criminally, police can beat people without fear of criminal prosecution.

Judge Thomas Raffaele witnessed a New York City police officer smashing his knee into the back of a handcuffed homeless man. The judge looked closely and saw that the prisoner was not struggling; rather, the police officer was out of control.

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DOJ signs consent decree, requiring policy overhaul in New Orleans Police Dept.

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the New Orleans Police Department have reached an agreement, called a consent decree, which outlines the systemic deficiencies in the police department and requires specific policy reforms. This agreement comes after the DOJ investigated the police department, finding it was saturated with unconstitutional practices and uncovering evidence of police brutality, excessive force, discrimination, and a lack of accountability. (Read more in the New York Times. View the consent decree here.)

Decrees by the DOJ are great tools to get other police departments to adopt better policies to prevent police misconduct.

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Petition and public hearing address the high cost and low quality of prison telephone service

The telephone service provided to prisoners is notoriously expensive and of poor quality. Prisoners’ Legal Services and the firm of Stern, Shapiro, Weissberg and Garin, LLP, filed a petition before the Department of Telecommunications and Cable (DTC) on behalf of prisoners, their families, attorneys, and other users of prison telephone service, asking the DTC to limit telephone rates and to investigate the poor quality of prison telephone service. Our firm is one of the petitioners.

We are a civil rights firm that brings lawsuits, including class action lawsuits, on behalf of prisoners. We have numerous clients incarcerated across the state. The telephone is the most practical way for us to communicate with our clients. Our work depends upon reliable phone service with prisoners. Prisoners depend on the phone to inform us of important developments and to seek legal advice in a timely manner. However, the service we pay for—and we pay extravagantly—is not reliable. Calls are occasionally dropped. The connection is frequently poor. Sometimes our clients sound impossibly quiet. Other times there is constant static on the line. We often ask prisoners to hang up and try calling again. Sometimes this solves the problem, sometimes it doesn’t. 

The high cost of prisoner phone calls places burdens on attorneys, prisoners, and in some instances all taxpayers.

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Phoenix’s Award for Outrage Against Free Speech goes to School Committee Chairperson we Sued

Every year around the Fourth of July, the Boston Phoenix publishes the Annual Muzzle Awards, a “round-up…of outrages against free speech in New England.” One of the recipients this year was Edward Boisselle, the former chair of the South Hadley School Committee. Our firm represented Luke Gelinas in a civil rights suit against Boisselle for violating Gelinas’s right to free speech during a school committee meeting on April 14, 2010. During the public comment period Gelinas began to say that it was time for school officials, including Boisselle, to be held responsible for their role in the death of Phoebe Prince. Before he could finish, Boisselle rudely interrupted and ordered Gelinas to stop speaking and sit down. Boisselle claimed that our client’s First Amendment rights were out on the street. Gelinas was escorted out of the building by police officers. Our lawsuit settled for $75,000 earlier this year.

The Phoenix article describes Boisselle’s "thuggish tactics," stating, "[A]s the video makes clear, Gelinas was a model of decorum. It was Boisselle who was on the verge of losing control."

Civil Service Commission Upholds Dismissal of Somerville Police Officer Marcos Freitas for Lying

On June 28, 2012, the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission upheld the dismissal of Somerville Police Officer Marcos Freitas, determining that he was rightfully terminated from his position as a police officer for untruthfulness and conduct unbecoming a police officer. The Commission found that Freitas lied repeatedly and refused to admit that he lied. Among the lies was false testimony given at a deposition taken by this office in a lawsuit we filed against him.

Freitas’s misconduct first surfaced in August 2008, when he took a polygraph test as part of his application to the police department in Austin, Texas. During the test, he said he sometimes used “creative writing” in his police reports and that on at least two occasions, he confiscated marijuana from a suspect then gave the marijuana to a friend.

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Attorney David Milton speaks at NYC training

On June 29, 2012, David Milton gave a presentation at a training in New York City for civil rights lawyers. David spoke on electronic discovery in police misconduct cases. David emphasized that as police departments’ use of technology increases, police misconduct lawyers must develop new strategies for obtaining police records. The event was sponsored by the National Police Accountability Project.

Nantucket Police Officer Sued for Tackling Man, Fracturing his Skull

On Wednesday, we filed a civil rights lawsuit in the United States District Court in Boston on behalf of Eric Kaminskas (now 39) against Nantucket police officer John Hubbard for using excessive and unreasonable force, resulting in a fractured skull and traumatic brain injury.

The lawsuit alleges that on September 4, 2011, Labor Day weekend, at around 1:00 a.m., officer Hubbard was investigating a report of an altercation inside the Chicken Box nightclub. Hubbard approached Kaminskas outside the Chicken Box to question him about the earlier incident. Although Mr. Kaminskas was not a threat to anyone’s safety, Hubbard tackled Kaminskas, slamming him down so that his head hit the pavement. His head hit the pavement with so much force that the bones in his right frontal skull sinus broke into pieces.

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Public records law has no teeth

Colman Herman recently wrote an article for the New England First Amendment Center about problems obtaining records through public records requests. The article discusses a records request made by attorney David Milton that the state’s public records agency refused to enforce on questionable grounds. Milton wrote a response to the agency in which he stated, “Your resolution of [my] public records appeal does more than confirm that the Public Records Law has no teeth. It removes the gums. That this injury to the law comes from the agency charged with upholding it makes it all the more shameful.”

Filming the police

The National Public Radio program On The Media has two short audio segments relating to the right to record the police. One is Minneapolis Police Filming Their Own Work and the other is The Perils of Filming Police.

This firm is experienced in handling cases involving the right to record on-duty police officers in public spaces. Most notably, we represented Simon Glik in a case that went to the First Circuit Court of Appeals and resulted in a landmark decision affirming the right to record the police. The letter written by the Department of Justice (mentioned in the second audio clip) relies heavily on the Glik decision.

Can we all get along?

Rodney King’s death brings public attention to his life and to the issue of police brutality. Rodney King did not seek the public spotlight, it was forced on him. Twenty-one years ago a man testing his new video camera, George Holliday, videotaped four Los Angeles police officers beating King. After viewing the video, many people throughout the country realized that police brutality was real. It allowed these people to see the police violence that African Americans in South Central L.A. saw regularly.

In 1981, when I started representing people who were injured by police officers, I encountered people who didn’t believe police misconduct was a problem.

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“What a huge debt this nation owes to its ‘troublemakers.’”

In New York yesterday, Judge Jed Rakoff denied a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against the police officers who arrested over 700 Occupy Wall Street demonstrators on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, 2011. He begins his opinion by explaining the importance of protecting the civil rights of political protestors. He writes:

What a huge debt this nation owes to its “troublemakers.” From Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King, Jr., they have forced us to focus on problems we would prefer to downplay or ignore. Yet it is often only with hindsight that we can distinguish those troublemakers who brought us to our senses from those who were simply ... troublemakers. Prudence, and respect for the constitutional rights to free speech and free association, therefore dictate that the legal system cut all non-violent protesters a fair amount of slack.”

Garcia v. Bloomberg, 2012 WL 2045756 (S.D.N.Y. June 7, 2012).

Internal Affairs: Protecting the Integrity of the Badge

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey recently created this 5-minute police training video on how to handle Internal Affairs (IA) complaints (citizen complaints against police officers). The video features four law enforcement officials. Some of the points they make are:

• IA complaints should be accepted in any manner (via letter, telephone, or even when someone stops an officer on the street)
• Officers should accommodate non-English speakers
• Minors can file with or without a parent
• Officers cannot ask questions about immigration status
• Officers must accept anonymous and third-party complaints
• Officers should not intimidate people who complain or try to convince someone not to complain

Click here to learn about ways to complain about police misconduct.

Boston settles lawsuit alleging police falsely arrested and beat teenager for recording officers with his cell phone

The city of Boston paid $33,000 last week to settle a civil rights lawsuit our office filed on behalf of Maury Paulino last November. The lawsuit alleged that after Mr. Paulino used his cell phone to legally record four Boston police officers, the officers punched, kneed, and pepper-sprayed him in the face, then arrested him and charged him with violating the wiretapping statute and other charges.

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Why do police lie? Insight from a Florida judge

An interesting decision from a judge in Volusia County, Florida, helps us understand why police lie. The case at issue involved the Daytona Beach Police Department, which received an anonymous tip that there was drug activity at the defendant’s home. Two officers went to the home, and the defendant’s mother answered the door. The officers told her they were looking into a “911 disconnect” and wanted to enter the house to ensure her safety. She allowed them in. By lying in order to gain entry to her home, these officers engaged in a police procedure called a “knock and talk.” Courts have found this practice perfectly legal. Officers are permitted to create false scenarios to try to catch people they think might be involved in crime, but for whom they do not have probable cause to arrest or search.

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Brockton police brutally slam man to floor, then file a false police report

Bill Ceneus is suing Brockton police officers Andrew Kalp, David Montrond, and Hermer Cole for using excessive force. Hank Phillippi Ryan of Channel 7 News investigates:

Read the complaint here.

Recording the police

Time.com and the New York Times recently published articles about the First Amendment right to record the police. Both articles cite our case, Glik v. Cunniffe.

U.S. Dept. of Justice affirms the right to record police, offers guidelines for police policies

This week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) provided detailed guidelines on how a police department should ensure that police officers respect civilians’ First Amendment right to record them. The DOJ wrote a public letter to the court in a lawsuit involving Baltimore police officers who seized a man’s phone and deleted its contents after he recorded officers using force to arrest his friend (Christopher Sharp v. Baltimore City Police Department, et al.).

The DOJ’s letter affirmed that recording police officers is a fundamental First Amendment right. The letter relies heavily upon the First Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Glik v. Cunniffe, a case brought by the Law Offices of Howard Friedman and the ACLU of Massachusetts. In that case, Boston police officers falsely arrested a man for illegal “wiretapping” because he used his cellphone to record an arrest on the Boston Common. The federal court of appeals issued a landmark decision affirming the right to record the police.

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Another federal appeals court upholds right to record the police

On May 8, 2012, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Chicago, ruled that the 1st Amendment protects the right to record police engaged in their official duties in public. The Court found that the Illinois wiretapping statute could not be used as a basis to prosecute individuals for making recordings of the police that include audio, regardless of whether the police consent to the recording. The Court cited this firm’s case Glik v. Cunniffe as favorable precedent for the right to record.

Read more about these cases at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Blue & Black: Stories of Policing and Violence

Check out this great zine about the causes of police brutality and abuse of police powers. Although it was written in Chicago, the issues are the same throughout the country.  

Blue & Black: Stories of Policing and Violence by Rachel Marie-Crane Williams (sponsored by Mariame Kaba and Project NIA).