I understand that Sergeant Allen had an earlier career in the music business...
Posted on 06/08/2006 7:32:06 AM PDT by kokonut
Local Police Attempt to Block Collection of Pro-Marriage Petitions Agape Press - June 7 ,2006 A pro-family group in Florida is outraged over the behavior of some police officers last weekend who tried to stop a petition drive aimed at protecting traditional marriage. Last weekend members of the Florida Family Policy Council were at a Promise Keepers conference in Broward County where they were collecting petitions for the Florida4Marriage campaign, an effort to get onto the November 2008 ballot an amendment protecting traditional marriage. The pro-family group had paid a fee to have a booth at the PK event at which it was collecting the petitions in support of the campaign`s goal of gathering 611,009 signatures by July 12, 2006.
Then in what the group calls a "stunning display of unprofessional conduct," several members of the City of Sunrise Police Department arrived at the scene and ordered Council vice president Nathan Dunn to stop collecting the petitions, and then removed the petitions from public view. A discussion ensued, during which John Stemberger -- president and general counsel for the Council -- was summoned to the scene. The group says Stemberger`s request for an explanation of what law or ordinance was being violated was ignored by Police Sergeant Stephen Allen, who it says then began lecturing nearby volunteers on what Jesus taught about homosexuality, claiming that the petition effort was a waste of time and that he was the authority and they should obey him.
I understand that Sergeant Allen had an earlier career in the music business...
this is the type of jack booted thug, using a position of authority to bully law abiding citizens in an effort to further an agenda rather than enforce law that i was talking about when i make generalizations about cops being idiots that don't deserve to have a badge.
unfortunately, it seems that the few cops that aren't idiots in one way or another are bound by PC crap.
The notion of a police presence at all, though, at a paid-for exhibition booth for petition signing is at best dubious and at worst...potentially criminal.
The notion of 'authorization' is undoubtedly a straw man; either the civic center took the money or it did not. Either the booth's activities were consonant with whatever ''exhibitor's code'' was in force or they were not. However, pls note that both these conditions were known in advance to the civic center (or, at minimum, should have been known, were the civic center authorities even marginally competent), and the notion of posteriori invalidating the exhibitor's activities stinks to high Heaven. To claim, after the fact, that the exhibitors represented that they intended to do actions A, B, and C, but actually engaged in doing actions X, Y, and Z, where X, Y, and Z were violations of some sort, sounds both tinny and flat to my (admittedly somewhat cynical) ear.
Why, again, were the police there in the first place? What crime was alleged and by whom?
I'm finding it impossible to believe (to paraphrase you) that a petition-gathering group in an exhibition booth (as opposed to, say, obnoxiously button-holing passers-by a la the Hare Krishna types) constituted such a serious threat to public safety that five officers' presence was required. This simply doesn't pass the smell test.
I agree.
Until I looked at the pics. Did you look at them?
This was apparently in the parking lot of what is no doubt a largely publicly financed center, so I'm not surprised that a significant police presence would be routine. And it's quite possible that there is a chronic problem with unauthorized groups setting up petition-soliciting and/or information-distributing booths, thinking that it is a "public" place and therefore freely available for such activites. If this were allowed, it would obviously severely undermine the ability of groups renting the center to offset their costs by selling rights to put up such booths. That's why my best guess is that the officers were originally led to believe that the group lacked official permission to be there, and perhaps the people staffing the booth quickly mounted resistance to the officers, before providing any evidence that they did in fact have a right to be there. I find the articles' (there are 2 slightly different versions on the linked website) fuzziness about the chronology of events to be a bit suspicious -- seems deliberately vague about whether the officers continued any actions against the group after being told by PK and/or center officials that the group was authorized. I'm always of suspicious of people who make loud accusations while being fuzzy with key facts.
That said, it's pretty clear that the officers did engage in some inappropriate and unprofessional actions. The kissing picture alone fits that bill, especially given that it occurred while a group that would clearly object to it was renting the center, and in front of an authorized booth whose staffers would also clearly object to it (perhaps if the officers had jokingly done this while a gay group was renting the center, it could be written off as good-natured kidding around). I'm sure these officers are going to have some 'splainin' to do back at the precinct house (and I suspect that if a breathalyzer test had been administered to them on the spot, the results would have been "revealing"). But I'm not convinced that their actions were as egregious as the articles are painting them.
The booth-operators, and the like-minded publication which carried this article, clearly have a vested interest in revving up and mobilizing all their potential supporters, given that they have a limited time in which to obtain a significant number of signatures, so they certainly have motivation to exaggerate. It's not clear what benefits -- personal or political -- the officers could possibly have imagined coming from the actions which they are alleged to have committed, or even from the lesser actions which they clearly did commit (but again, I rather suspect that a breathalyzer could have shed some light on the nature of their reasoning processes).
They definitely engaged in some inappropriate behavior, but it's not at all clear that they engaged in the degree of egregiously unconstitutional behavior that is alleged, nor that there weren't some additional relevant facts. Did someone misinform the officers that the booth was NOT authorized? Did someone from the booth inappropriately pressure the officers to sign the petition?
"Did someone from the booth inappropriately pressure the officers to sign the petition?"
One doesn't harangue a cop while his fellow officers are in attendance unless one is nuts. Not even if he's a standalone. I can't believe that scenario.
It's not clear whether the booth-operators bought their rights from the civic center or from the Promise Keepers. It may well have been the latter, if booth-renting rights are part of the overall rental package (as is usually the case with this sort of venue). E.g. when a gun show operator rents a civic center or fair grounds, they are entitled to control what booths operate on the property -- both for-profit and non-profit. This is often a major source of revenue for many organizations that put on big events like this, and booth rights are often linked to larger sponsorship packages, and large sponsorship packages often include a guarantee that no competitors will be allowed to exhibit or sell at the event. And when you've got one entity that owns and operates a venue on a permanent basis, and another entity that is renting the venue for a brief period along with specified but not unlimited rights to use it, administrative foul-ups are not uncommon. However, even if that was at the root of this incident, police officers are duty-bound to handle conflicts in a professional manner, and to firmly refrain from taking actions which would escalate conflicts.
Zealous supporters of a cause might well do that. I'm not suggested they aggressively accosted an officer, but they might well have approached an officer and asked him to sign the petition, and then reacted to a polite no (which an officer should have delivered regardless of whether he agreed or disagreed with the aims of the petition) by attempting to continue to solicit the officer's signature with political/religious arguments. At that point, a basically reasonable officer who disagreed with the petition might well start to get really annoyed. Still not an excuse for unprofessional, much less unconstitutional, behavior, but I suspect the booth-operators (and their staff, which likely consisted of random volunteers, one or more of whom may have been "loose cannons") may not be as squeaky clean with regard to this incident as they would like people to believe.
The officers would have had to be equally nuts to engage in the alleged actions in front of hordes of witnesses (per the article, about 50 people applauded the officers' departure).
Ha ha ha!!! Good one GS! Cops only give a sh!t about civil rights when there is a camera rolling. Where the heck do you live?
As the sentence which followed made clear, it's doing this in front of a horde of witnesses (which in this day and age invariably includes people armed with cell phone cameras, video recorders, etc.) that police officers wouldn't be inclined to do. Sure, there are police officers all over the place who do things when they think they aren't being watched or recorded by anyone who would report them. But that clearly wasn't the case here.
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To be photographed in kissing another officer pretty well eliminates any professional approach by the police on this one.
The article appears to be just an excerpt of the full story. Another excerpt:
"It quickly became apparent that [Allen] was a supporter of gay marriage and personally disagreed with the marriage amendment effort," says the Council`s press release, which includes a picture of Allen kissing another male officer on the cheek in what the family advocacy group describes as a "mocking" gesture.
Similar to the Philly 11 case that has been in the news -- If the allegations are true then this will be quite an interesting story to follow and keep on the radar screen.
Request any ping me to updates on this one...
Indeed. That's why I suspect that "alcohol may have been involved".
I hadn't thought of that. You may be right.
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