A swab in the cheek while the State Police cracks

Today the Pennsylvania Senate Law and Justice Committee and the House Judiciary Committee held a joint hearing in Gap, Lancaster County, on the plans by the Pennsylvania State Police to close its barracks in Ephrata and to downgrade the status of Troop J, the local PSP headquarters, to a substation. The latter move would lead to numerous services of the state police moving elsewhere.

PSP Commissioner Frank Noonan testified and was followed by several local leaders. Noonan said that the state police is currently 435 troopers short of its full complement, statewide, and expects to be at 500 short by the time the next class of cadets graduates from the academy. The locals, including the chairman of the county commissioners, the district attorney, and the chief of police in the city of Lancaster, protested PSP's planned closure.

Could PSP use $13 million? That's Noonan's estimated cost of Senate Bill 775, a bill to collect DNA from people who have not been convicted of a crime but who have been arrested for a felony or one of several designated misdemeanors. We oppose this bill because taking a DNA sample from someone is a search, and in order to conduct this search, the government needs a finding of probable cause that it will produce evidence of a crime. The high state court in Maryland recently came to the same conclusion. DNA collection from people who have not been convicted of a crime turns innocent-until-proven-guilty on its head.

The pricetag isn't the only significant practical problem with this bill. PSP's DNA caseload will increase from 23,000 samples per year to 121,000 samples per year, according to an article published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in February. Under current law, in which DNA is taken from those convicted of a felony or one of the designated misdemeanors, it takes eight months to analyze a DNA sample. The wheels of justice could come to a grinding halt if SB 775 becomes law.

Incredibly, in this environment, the House Judiciary Committee is rumored to be taking up SB 775 before the end of June. While local leaders gnash their teeth over the closure of a nearby state police barracks and while PSP leaders decry their shortage of troopers, the legislature may take up this bill to place a new and expensive burden on the state police.

How many troopers could the state hire with $13 million?

Eleven reasons you should make a last-minute donation to the ACLU

Click here to make a tax-deductible gift to the ACLU Foundation.


11. Because you like to swear.
Admit it.  You do.  We all do.  There's nothing quite as cathartic as unleashing a few choice words when a day isn't going your way.  Even certain mayors know the value of a well-timed dirty word.  Trouble is, some people in authority seem to think there's a "no dirty words" exception to the First Amendment.

In the past few years, we've represented a woman arrested for swearing at an inanimate bathroom fixture, a man who was told that calling his business "I Choose Hell" was illegal for being 'blasphemous,' and a whole slew of people who used words that police officers didn't like.  

So if you enjoy the right to legally use every word in the lexicon, or if your family swear jar is filled to the brim, maybe toss a few dollars our way.  Who knows?  We may someday keep you out of prison.

10. Because you own a cell phone.

...and you'd rather the government didn't use it to track your every movement, or go through it when you aren't looking, or charge you as a child pornographer because you took a naked (or near-naked) photo of yourself.  Cell phones are fast becoming a new front in the fight for civil liberties, and the ACLU is working hard to remind the government that you don't waive your right to privacy when you buy a cell phone.

9. Because criticizing the government does not make you a terrorist.
Nor does protesting against natural gas extraction or attending a vegan block party, and yet people engaged in these very activities ended up in intelligence bulletins distributed to the State Police to warn them of potential terrorist activity.  The ACLU has been helping activists from around the state obtain information as to whether they or their organizations were listed, and has called for an investigation into the matter from an independent party.

Read more »

Potty Mouths, Steer Clear of Pennsylvania

Cross posted at Blog of Rights

If you have a potty mouth, stay away from the Keystone State. It turns out that police in Pennsylvania have delicate sensibilities. A recent ACLU of Pennsylvania Right to Know Law request revealed that in a one-year period, the Pennsylvania State Police issued over 770 disorderly conduct citations for profanity or profane gestures. That's two citations a day. Illegal citations, I should emphasize, as the courts have made it very clear that profanity, unlike obscenity, is constitutionally protected speech.

On Wednesday, the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed two lawsuits against the Pennsylvania State Police and the Mahanoy City Police of Schuylkill County for issuing disorderly conduct citations to two Pennsylvania residents for using profanity. Our lawsuits argue that profanity and profane gestures are constitutionally protected speech.

Much of the problem stems from the fact that there is a huge difference between the legal definition of obscenity, which is illegal, and profanity, which is not. In legal terms, the pornography in your local porn store doesn't even qualify as obscene, much less dropping the F-bomb in front of an officer of the law. Only very graphic or extremely violent sexual acts intended to arouse a sexual response qualify as obscenity. It's understandable that average citizens might not know the difference, but people whose job it is to defend the law should know what the law actually means.

While many people find this case understandably humorous, the consequences of these citations are not so funny. In one case (PDF), our client called a passing motorcyclist she knew an "asshole" after he deliberately swerved as if to hit her and shouted an insult at her. That same day, she reported the incident to the state police, who proceeded to mail her a disorderly conduct citation for swearing. The citation noted that she could face as much as 90 days in jail and a fine up to $300. She was eventually found not guilty — after hiring a lawyer to defend her. In the months leading up to her hearing, our client, a mother of three young children, constantly worried that she might be separated from her family because of the citation.

Unfortunately, the zeal for citing folks for profanity isn't limited to the state police. In the past few years, the ACLU of Pennsylvania has successfully defended about a dozen individuals against similar charges, including most recently a Scranton woman, Dawn Herb, who swore at her clogged toilet in her home and a Pittsburgh man, David Hackbart, who flipped off a police officer in a dispute over a parking space.

Is it poor manners to swear like a sailor? Definitely. Is it a crime? Definitely not.

Sara in Philly

Confusion center

In my almost four years at the ACLU, I've attended numerous press conferences where proposals we oppose were being announced. Because of the proximity of this office to the state capitol, each opponent press conference that I can recall attending has been at the state capitol, and that's basically neutral ground.

But on Friday I attended a press conference outside that comfort zone when I went deep into the lair of the Pennsylvania State Police for an announcement by PSP and the FBI that PSP's intelligence center has been certified by the FBI as a "fusion center." Essentially, this means that PSP officers and civilian workers and FBI agents will work side-by-side at PSP's intelligence center.

Before the press conference began, someone from the FBI asked me where I was from, and to their credit, I wasn't kicked out once I was identified as ACLU. Of course, with a room full of reporters, that would have made for a better story than the announcement of the certification. FYI, I didn't have to lie my way in either. At the security desk, they simply asked for a driver's license. Maybe I should have ID'ed myself as a blogger for Speaking Freely.

So what's wrong with fusion centers? Funny I should ask since that's the name of a report that national published late last year. The mere existence of fusion centers is not a civil liberties concern. Trouble lurks when there are not proper checks-and-balances to ensure that the information gathered by these centers is not abused. Around the country, some fusion centers have brought corporate and/or military personnel into the process. Federal guidelines also encourage the practice of data-mining, and some fusion centers have collected non-criminal information on private citizens.

I had to chuckle when one of the officers from PSP said that they track hits on the feds' terrorism watch list, in light of our announcement earlier this month that the watch list now has over one million people on it, including Nelson Mandela, the late 9/11 hijackers, the late Saddam Hussein, and Senator Ted Kennedy.

After the press conference and tour were over, I was escorted out by a communications officer from PSP. I asked her about oversight, and while she didn't directly answer that question, she said that this is all information they can collect, anyway.

Unfortunately, we know that both the FBI and PSP have conducted surveillance on and infiltrated Pennsylvania residents who were simply exercising their first amendment rights. Before the Iraq War, the FBI watched the Thomas Merton Center, a peace group in Pittsburgh. Before the 2000 GOP convention in Philadelphia, PSP infiltrated an activist street theater group, and a month before that, PSP abused activists at the National Governors' Association meeting in State College.

We'll need to watch the people who are doing the watching.

Andy in Harrisburg