Posted on 10/12/2006 8:03:38 AM PDT by pikachu
Here's a quick lesson for all police officers: Pulling over the president of the Dallas NAACP branch could be hazardous to your career. Just ask Dallas County sheriff's Deputy Mike Baker, who was ordered to be transferred out of patrol last month even though two separate investigations exonerated him of any wrongdoing.
On May 30, Baker and rookie officer Patrick Arnold stopped a white minivan in Northwest Dallas with expired tags. Arnold, who was in training, talked to the motorist, filled out the ticket and returned to the patrol car. So far, so good. But Baker noticed that the motorist wrote "refused" on the signature line of the ticket. As everyone who has ever been pulled over knows, signing the ticket is not an admission of guilt, just an assurance that you will pay the fine or appear in court. Without the signature, however, officers have no way to know that you'll do either of those things and are typically instructed to arrest the offending motorist. For obvious reasons, this doesn't happen too often.
So, needing a signature, Baker, a 15-year veteran of the department, left his patrol car to talk to the motorist.
"I went up to him and said very politely, 'There seems to be some sort of misunderstanding about signing the ticket,'" Baker recalls. "He said,'There's no confusion. I'm not signing it.'"
At that point, Baker told the motorist he'd have to arrest him. The man wanted to call his wife first, but Baker told him to hang up the phone and repeated that he was under arrest. But the motorist insisted on calling his wife.
"I then reached in with my right hand and took his sleeve between my thumb and forefinger and started to pull so he would know I wasn't kidding," Baker would later tell investigators from the department. "And he needed to get out. He said real loud, 'Don't you touch me!' I let go and said, 'If you don't get out of the van, I will put you to the ground.'"
The motorist decided to sign the ticket after all.
If you think Baker acted a little harsh toward the motorist, he explains that officers have to assert control in that type of situation.
"He was trying to take charge of our traffic stop," says Baker, who is built like a nose tackle. "He was trying to run the show, and we're trained that we have to be in charge. You can't let the violator take charge of your traffic stop."
After the motorist signed the ticket, Baker returned to the patrol car to give him his copy. Somehow, Baker dropped the ticket on a clipboard the motorist was holding and a breeze blew it to the ground. That seemed to be the tipping point.
"He starts screaming that he's the president of the NAACP," Baker says.
Soon after, Bob Lydia, whose wife is also active with the NAACP, met with Sheriff Lupe Valdez and her chief deputy, Jesse Flores, and filed criminal charges against Baker, claiming that he abused his authority. The department launched both a criminal and internal affairs investigation of Baker. A few weeks later, both inquiries exonerated him.
It was probably an easy call. For one, Lydia admitted to investigators that he initially refused to sign the ticket and only afterward did Baker grab him. Baker himself admitted as much, saying that he touched the motorist only after Lydia continued to talk on his cell phone even though he had been informed he was under arrest. Finally and perhaps most important, Baker's partner corroborated his story.
Patrick Arnold says that Baker never used excessive force, and Lydia was the one making a scene. "He wanted everyone's name and badge number," Arnold recalls. "He pulled out his business card, and it said 'president of the NAACP.'"
Baker says that Lydia also wrote down their license plate number.
"It appeared to me that he was being rather hardheaded," Arnold says. "I thought the whole situation was kind of silly."
So that should have been the end of it, right? Well, here's where things get murky. Last month, Flores transferred Baker from the traffic division to court services, claiming he did so only because Baker requested a new assignment. But Baker says that he never asked to leave and claims that Lydia is using his political influence to get him off the street. Lydia did not return several phone calls, but the Dallas County Peace Officer's Association, which represents black officers, backs up Baker's claim and says that they talked about Baker in a meeting with Flores.
"The president of the NAACP requested that Baker be removed from the street," says Charles Bailey, the first vice president of the association. "We did bring it up [in a meeting with Flores], and he advised us that he would remove Baker from the street."
Bailey insists that the association was merely relaying a message from Lydia and not acting in anyway as an advocate. In any case, Raul Reyna, a spokesman for the department, says that Flores did not respond to any political pressure to transfer Baker.
Meanwhile, Baker's black friends are sticking up for him. "Mike is no racist. I've known him for 13 years," Deputy Keith Johnson says. "If he was cleared by IAD and CID [internal affairs and criminal investigations], I don't understand why he was transferred."
For Baker, being transferred after enduring two separate investigations into a routine motor stop is simply adding injury to insults. He plans to fight his reassignment and is talking to an attorney.
"I feel like Flores is throwing me to the wolves, taking one civilian's word over mine and my partner and everyone else who has investigated this thing," he says. "He is attacking my character, making it look like I have done something I didn't."
Some people are more equal then others...
don'tyouknowwhoIam?
Hopefully their cruiser was equipped with a dashboard video camera (though it sounds like it wasn't). If it was, the video of the local head of the NAACP making a total ass out of himself would be priceless...not that the news media would probably have the stones to air it, of course.
}:-)4
Cop should get a Lawyer and sue for his rights being violated as well as impuigning his rep.
Hope he get a million or so and leaves this butthead dept for one not running scared of the naacp.
This is a shame. I'm getting tired of people not cooperating with the police. The cops have a tough enough job as it is without someone acting like an arse towards them. The "president of the NAALCP" should have just signed the ticket. What a moron!
Good, and I hope he fights hard. That NAACP guy sounds like nothing but a thug who thinks laws don't apply to him, and anyone who holds him accountable must "pay."
....ya stole my thunder, mate.........
as Napoleon the pig stated in George Orwell's famous book,
"Animal Farm" (1945), "All animals are equal [on this farm]; but some animals are more equal than others."
It always comes down to race with these people, doesn't it....? getting pulled over for expired license plates is in and of itself not a racist act; in fact, it demonstrates the stupidity or laziness of the owner of that vehicle for failing to timely renew the vehicle's registration, but nothing in that is inherently racist...... I hope this police officer's actions are vindicated.....again, another example of the mentality of the NAAWCP (National Association for the Advancement of Whiney Colored People)....
Right or wrong, we minorities need to stick together you know.
Police administrators that behave politically rather than morally do not have the interests of the men under their command at heart, and thus, should be removed from their positions. If this traffic stop occurred as stated, Baker did nothing wrong. The NAACP President is not above the law. Those who sympathized with him on the PD should be thrown out on their ear! But that would require leadership, and Dallas does not seem to have a political environment that can provide real leadership.
Yup.
But the *salient* question is.
...are we equal yet?
>>don'tyouknowwhoIam?
Some times this is an important question, for Example: I once made fun (at work) of a really bad “Disco” shirt (changed color when it bent, open to the mid chest worn with Gold chains…)
Turned out to be the new CEO…
Nuff said, luckily he had a good sense of humor.
Really should. Some years ago a Houston officer sued and won a large sum under similar circumstances.
>>The cops have a tough enough job as it is without someone acting like an arse towards them.
Um I really hate to disagree with you here, but when the police actually talked to people and were a deterrent to crime, I had respect for them, now they hide behind bushes and ticket people on a road once a month. When there is a crime, they show up later to see how you did against the bad guys, sorry, but no respect.
I wish we had a police force like my parents grew up with, but we don’t we have heavy handed, tax collectors who aren’t interested in getting to know the people they are supposed to be protecting. (if they did not get any revenue from the tickets they write it would help)
I agree. Wonder if he'd have a snowball's chance in hell of winning?
Disgusting. This is the new oppression.
Texas isn't like N.Y. and I'm sure the judges there would be more fair.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.