The Tennessee Court of Appeals has upheld the firing of former Chattanooga Police Officer Kenneth Freeman.

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_197932.asp

http://chattarati.com/metro/government-politics/2009/8/12/chattanooga-police-department-terminates-officer-k/

This same detective has assaulted someone while on duty
outside a court room and now a elderly Walmart greeter
maybe when Freeman actually hurts someone the city of Chattanooga will be justly sued as well as the administration…..

Mr.Freeman you woudld no longer represent the law of Chattanooga if I made the decision…. You are an embrassment Period.

Some EAS systems have a digital counter that records every activation. Look at the next one you pass. Unless it’s been very recently reset, you’re likely to see a high double- or low-triple-digit number. If even half of these represented actual shoplifters, police would have to set up a substation in the parking lot. An active sensor triggers the alarm, and while many false positives are due to cashier error, some high-dollar electronics contain EAS sensors inside the packaging that can’t be disabled during checkout. Magnetic strips on credit cards or key cards have been known to trigger the alarms in some cases.

It’s perhaps a minor phenomenon of social conditioning that we pay any heed to a system that cries wolf so often. Most people ignore car alarms and regard them as more irritant than crime deterrent. Why, then, should rational, free thinking adults click their heels together in full halt and open their bags for inspection at the beckoning of a robotic voice? There’s something altogether Pavlovian about this response. You know you didn’t steal, you know the doorway inspection for contraband will be fruitless, so why endure it?

What should store employees do? Well, they’re certainly free to approach customers and ask to see their receipts. As long as it’s an interrogative and not an imperative — that is, the search is completely voluntary — they have every right to take that step. But to demand proof of purchase, to hold someone’s cart, to grab them or otherwise restrain them amounts to an irresponsible and indefensible strong-arm witch hunt. In those four states that allow detention for an EAS activation, just because an employee can stop you doesn’t mean he should. The law extends to merchants the right to hold customers, but there is no corollary law requiring those customers to play along. They can keep walking, and if they’re physically restrained, they can refuse to be searched and demand the police be called.

Responsible loss prevention agents don’t detain someone on suspicion alone — the corresponding number of “bad stops,” or false arrests, would be staggering. To touch a customer and physically prevent him from leaving, you should have nothing less than actual knowledge of shoplifting. That’s the accepted industry practice. That’s why the store has surveillance cameras — and someone deep in the bowels of the building watching real-time on a monitor.

What should the store do when someone sets off the alarm and waves off the exit search? If LP didn’t see him steal, absolutely nothing! They can follow me to the car and write down my license plate number if they want…as I’m not a thief, I have nothing to worry about. Call the police, you suggest? Call and tell them what? “We think someone maybe stole, but we don’t know. He set off an alarm that goes off dozens of times a day.”?

“Channel 9 has used the word “grabbed” in at least two stories posted online about the incident.”

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The exact sentence from that article:

“The greeter reportedly told Freeman to stop and grabbed him on the arm.”

We aren’t told who “reported” the grabbing, but since the title of the article is “Chattanooga Officer Tells His Side on Assault Complaint”, we can reasonably that this is the detective’s side of the story.

You should shrink from using the word “manhandled”, because as you know, it implies much more violent behavior than merely “grabbed”. It is an attempt to strengthen your argument by emotional means, not by effective argumentation.

But, now, a hypothetical.

You seem to have indicated in an earlier post that you don’t think the sounding of the alarm plus the refusal to cooperate should constitute probable cause to detain (I quote):

“I’m truly sorry I neglected to mention that at least four states by my count — Florida, Georgia, Mississippoi and West Virginia — have shoplifting laws that empower merchants to detain and search shoppers who activate the EAS sensors. While I certainly disagree with the law in these cases…”

Suppose a customer, not otherwise suspected of shoplifting, trips the EAS alarm upon leaving the store. Suppose an employee asks the customer to stop and submit to an inspection of his/her bags, but the customer ignores the request and simply continues walking out of the store.

What would you have the store do in such cases? Just let the customer go on his way, possibly with stolen merchandise (and, possibly not, of course)? Take his picture? Call the police, who won’t get there until the customer is long gone?

Your little anecdotes and condescending swipes fail to advance your position. If you’re such a learned scholar, why have you failed repeatedly to answer my challenges to your highly suspect legal theories and instead responded with ad hominem bile?

You don’t prove that you’re correct. You don’t debate. You just repeat yourself.

When I pointed out the shortcomings with your summary of the Sporny case, you remained silent. When I picked apart your assertion that the greeter had probable cause to try to detain the detective, you said nothing.

You and I may respectuflly disagree on some subjects, but I’m a fair person who will admit when he’s wrong. So, prove your point. Enlighten me. Tell me what gave the greeter probable cause to grab Freeman in an attempt to detain him.

“Despite Mespo’s putdown, (s)he hasn’t disputed the fact that the greeter didn’t have probable cause to detain Freeman.”

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Your utter misunderstanding of this situation in spite of the black letter law gently shoved under your nose coupled with your chosen profession of independent journalism, force me to repeat a famous line by former IU coach Bobby Knight. When confronted by an equally clueless reporter asking the same exasperating questions already covered in the answer he just gave, Knight responded “All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.” Knight is assuredly no role model for anything, but his observation of some in the press is spot on.

Channel 9 has used the word “grabbed” in at least two stories posted online about the incident.

http://www.newschannel9.com/news/officer_974544___article.html/freeman_charged.html

The Chattanoogan says the greeter “reached to stop” Freeman. That’s pretty vague, and I’ll leave it to others to parse its meaning, but it certainly sounds like some attempt at restraint.

Yes, I used the word manhandled, and I won’t shrink from it. Store employees who use their hands instead of their mouths when they approach customers are at least thoughtless and rude and at the most intentionally trying to intimidate the shopper.

Despite Mespo’s putdown, (s)he hasn’t disputed the fact that the greeter didn’t have probable cause to detain Freeman. Again, no one’s completely innocent here. The greeter was wrong and the detective was dead wrong.

“…you’re making me dizzy.”

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Though I’d like to, I don’t think I can take credit for that.

“He tried to stop Freeman and pushed against a soft drink machine and to the floor.”

Then in the first response by USA, we find this quote:

“He said he reached to try to stop Det. Freeman and he was pushed against a soft drink machine and to the floor.”

This sentence is not to be found in the article as Turley posted it; we have to go to the Chattanoogan article to find it.

But, USA morphs “reached” to “grabbed”. For most of the remaining responses the act performed by Walker is called “grabbed”, although this word wasn’t used in any of the articles I’ve seen.

But, now in the immediately previous response by indieregister, “grabbed” becomes “manhandled”.

How these descriptions escalate!

If not, why not? Shall we enforce the laws differently depending upon whether we approve (or disapprove) of the alleged perpetrator? Can we do this and still claim to be a society that values the “rule of law” rather than the rule of man?

The point we differ on is whether the greeter had PC to detain Freeman on suspicion of shoplifting. His grabbing was the attempted detainment. It would be nonsensical to say that his shoving the greeter helped establish PC for the grab that PRECEDED the shove, now wouldn’t it?

My question to you was and still remains: Did the greeter have probable cause to try to detain Freeman? By your formula of EAS activation plus failure to cooperate, it seems that he didn’t, since there’s no indication that Freeman was uncooperative before the greeter tried to detain him.

Lest anyone accuse me of defending the cop, I’ll say again that his retaliatory shove was a disproportionate use of force response, and Freeman most likely should have been charged with simple assault or its equivalent. While he is held to a higher standard because he’s a police officer, however, two wrongs do not make a right.

The greeter, old and frail and pitiable as many have painted him, was still spry enough to try to manhandle a shopper. I doubt he was meekly trying to get the man’s attention. A tap on the shoulder translates to “Excuse me, sir,” but grabbing someone’s arm is a restraint. You don’t get all handsy with a customer you haven’t even spoken to.

The first wrong belongs to the greeter, and the greater wrong belongs to the detective. Agreed?

“Declining a consent search shouldn’t be considered evidence that someone’s guilty. Explain that one to me…please!”

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Apparently you have trouble synthesizing separate events into a coherent whole. Failure to agree to a consent search without more doesn’t amount to probable cause, and failing to heed an EAS buzzer doesn’t either. We’re talking about the combination of the two which at least two courts says amounts to probable cause. Much like hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water yet neither is wet. I hope this illustrates the concept which obviously eludes your grasp.

BTW throwing a 71 year old through a plate glass door usually qualifies as “belligerent failure to cooperate” in the minds of most reasonable people, I suspect.

Cops are supposed to have and use judgement, and they’re trained, so we are continually told, to use it in life-threatening situations. Is it rational, is it smart,–is it good judgement to beat down an old man who reaches out and grabs your arm?

Or would anyone with an ounce of brain perhaps simply ask what the individual wanted?

Of course, as some people have stated, the excitement of being touched may have simply triggered the officer’s catlike ninja self-defence reflexes, which also explains why he threw a third party through a plate glass door. Sure … his catlike ninja reflexes hadn’t been deactivated yet … that musta been it. Musta been.

The thought that this detective is running around armed makes me glad I don’t live anywhere near him. And you could add some of the authoritarians in the comment thread above to that.

People have been charged with assault for standing on a sidewalk in front of cops, farting near cops, and in other, equally ludicrous circumstances. But a cop beats down on an old man and tosses a stranger through a window and that’s just peachy?

Something is wrong with your mind if you consider this somehow justified.

You said the greeter had PC to detain Freeman because of the “triggered EAS coupled with the detective’s belligerent failure to cooperate.”

First of all, where’s this belligerent failure to cooperate? None of the media accounts indicate that the greeter asked Freeman to stop or shouted to get his attention — only that he immediately got grabby. Surely you’re not suggesting that every exiting customer is supposed to instantly freeze on the spot whenever a security alarm sounds.

Maybe Freeman would have gladly and voluntarily showed his receipt. Maybe he would have politely told the greeter that he chose not to be searched. We don’t know that the greeter ever asked. He grabbed.

Secondly, something doesn’t seem to add up in your “Alarm + failure to cooperate = probable cause” equation. What would constitute cooperation? Letting an employee rifle through your bags and review your receipt?

A receipt check is a consent search. It’s our property, they ask for permission to inspect it because (1) private citizens can’t forcibly search, and (2) they don’t have PC to detain. Declining a consent search shouldn’t be considered evidence that someone’s guilty. Explain that one to me…please!

I guess the way I see it is that what is the different between stopping people jsut to see their reciepts for the sake of seeing them when there is an appearance of having done nothing wrong and for example a police officer stopping you while driving by him on the street just to see if you have a drivers license and to just check you out for no other reason other than he felt like it.

“A lot less than that has passed for probable cause in false arrest complaints against police officers.”

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This is the most elliptical nonsense I have read on this blog. If the arrest lacked probable cause it was unlawful. If a court determined that the circumstances amounted to probable cause it therefore existed. If you mean that police departments routinely dismiss complaints with pre-textual arguments of probable cause, thank you for stating the obvious. That’s why we have courts.

The point that many have made throughout this thread is that ample probable cause existed for the greeter to detain the officer due to the triggered EAS coupled with the detective’s belligerent failure to cooperate. That is the holding in the two cases I cited above. I am aware of no case which holds the triggered EAS, in and of itself, warrants a detainer without more.

Stick to the pastry advice. You’ll have more credibility.

Consider the BART police who stood by, perhaps in shock like all the other witnesses, and did absolutely nothing in response to witnessing a fellow uniformed officer murder a detained, unarmed citizen by shooting him at point blank range as the citizen lay prone on the ground with his hands pinned behind his back by another officer. I’m sure they were surprised. But what is important to understand from the incident is that none of the dozen or so other police present at the time recognized what Officer Mehserle did as being a crime. He wears the same uniform as them. Attends the same roll call.

The unique cultural mindset of comradeship among law enforcement officers in most agencies simply precludes any consideration, no matter how glaring the evidence, of another officer’s criminality. It’s considered wrong to even think that way.

Otherwise?
Neat trick.
But “the context of this case” includes the fact that, mistakenly or not, the theft security alarm sounded as detective Freeman was attempting to exit the store. A lot less than that has passed for probable cause in false arrest complaints against police officers. Detective Walker’s associate, Sgt. McPherson, responded by stopping and displaying his receipt for inspection. And there is nothing in the police reports or any of the statements to indicate that Mr. Walker’s attempts to detain Detective Freeman were anything other than reasonable.

It’s also quite neat how you managed to totally ignore the relevant issue: was detective Freeman reasonable to fear for his personal safety under the circumstances, thus justifying his reaction?
You’ll find few who would agree that he is, outside the ranks of Tennessee law enforcement.

Let the local prosecutor charge Mr. Walker with battery if he thinks it is justified (RME). But the fact remains that Detective Freeman should have been arrested at the scene. And unless the prosecutor determined from the evidence that he was reasonable to fear for his safety, Detective Freeman should have been charged and arraigned.

“Physically touching or blocking a person to get their attention has not been viewed by any court of jurisdiction as a form of assault.”

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I suppose you mean “battery” here rather than “assault,” but where did you get the idea that intentionally “touching or blocking a person to get their attention” isn’t battery. Battery is an offensive or injurious touching without legal justification to do so. Surgeons may be sued for battery if they simply exceed the scope of the patient’s consent, so your statement that intentionally touching someone without permission or legal justification isn’t battery just doesn’t hold water. In the case of the greeter, he has an express statutory right as an agent of the shop owner to detain a suspected shoptlifter if he does so with probable cause and in a reasonable manner. Otherwise it is battery in the context of this case. For example if the greeter simply picked someone out of a crowd and grabbed them to shake then down as a shoplifter, that is battery.

Also your reversing the situation isn’t much help either since if the officer is doing the arrest it’s no longer a “citizen’s arrest.” Instead, the officer has express statutory policing authority to detain and arrest for certain offenses committed in his presence or pursuant to a warrant of arrest. If the suspect resists, he is resisting a prima facie lawful act by the officer which is itself a crime in most jurisdictions.

About the only thing I am getting out of your comment worthwhile is to avoid selling cookies to the detective. I’ll take that sound advice.

“Cops are filthy power hungry pigs. No more no less. Expect little from their kind.”

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I’ll hold you to that mantra the next time you hear the tinkling of breaking glass in your downstairs at night and the rustling of footsteps up toward your bedroom door. Maybe someone who was paid attention to in school will rush to your house armed to defend you. Put them on your speed dial. If I was a cop in your town, you’d need to.

Your statement is unfounded nonsense.

Cops are simply mad that they never paid attention in school and are stuck in their back-water hick-town.

Physically touching or blocking a person to get their attention has not been viewed by any court of jurisdiction as a form of assault. (Plenty of big city mayors have tried it with pan handlers.) Otherwise, police officers would face assault prosecutions on a daily basis. But reacting to such touching with a violent assault has almost always been regarded as a crime. Normally the only circumstance to mitigate such a determination would be evidence to support a claim by Detective Freeman that his personal safety was endangered by the touching. But that determination should not be made by the responding police officers investigating the incident. They take statements and collect evidence. Following an arrest, a prosecutor would determine from the statements, evidence, and any follow up interviews if Detective Freeman had reasonable cause to fear for his personal safety when a seventy one year old store employee touched him.

Whatever you do, don’t try to sell any Girl Scout cookies to Detective Freeman this year.

The police officer had every right to react to being grabbed.”

They are also trained to handle any situation by de-escalation. Trying to resolve it peacefully. So in your opinion if a cop feels a tug on his sleeve he has every right to kick the hell out of that person. WOW, I feel sorry for the first lost kid that was trained to find a police and gets this guy, he is going to get F#&ked up. I just hope someone is around to get video of it so you got something to spank the monkey to…

My aged mind is likely not more that 1/2 a step behind yours at best; however, it is more likely 2 steps ahead of yours in ‘mind going’ agedness.

The Chattanooga Police Department, in giving no accountability for this extremely poor behavior on the part of its officer, has demonstrated nothing less than corruption and really, really stupid policy. Recall the recent shooting in Oakland–this is simply an example of the same kind of thing. Should the man have been shot because he reached toward the officer, would that have been justified? What if the greeter had had a heart attack or some other physical trauma as a result of the assault? Should the officer have been exonerated for manslaughter if the glass his other victim went through had sliced the carotid artery? The three (officer and victims) of them were lucky that this didn’t turn out worse.

As Tom Baker said above, there is absolutely no excuse for what the officer did, and there is absolutely none for the Chattanooga Police Department’s response to the situation. Both the department and the officer have been irresponsible in the extreme.

There is NO EXCUSE for what that officer did. None.

A badge is not a license to be a belligerent asshole.

You jackbooters defending him should find a nice police state to live in. For the time being, this isn’t one.

Aside from the legal issues, this guy is a bully. He should certainly not be a cop.