Comments on Morse Mayhem

Reaction to the near-riots (there were two of them) last Friday night in Rogers Park has been, to be blunt, disappointing. This neighborhood seems to be filled with people who either don’t care or do not understand the basic situation. Let me break it down for you.

10:00 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 21 – A Homecoming Dance at Sullivan High School ended. As students left the school building, neighbors say, they were already screaming and cussing at each other, ready to rumble. Neighbors called police. Approximately 20 police cars arrive; police disperse the crowd, but did not end the problem.

10:30 p.m. – The surly groups of students regroup. Police just broke this up; surely every cop in the neighborhood must be aware of the incident from the radio chatter.

11:00 p.m. – Approximately 12 latino teens gather on the south side of Morse Avenue, between the Family Dollar Store and N. Greenview. They hurl insults and bottles at passing motorists.

11:25 p.m. - Approximately 12 black teens gather on the north side of Morse, directly across from the latino kids. The two groups glare at each other. There are no police visible on the street.

11:35 p.m. – A call to 911 alerts the police to the bottle-throwing latinos on Morse.

11:58 p.m. – Police swoop down on Morse Avenue; approximately 16 vehicles. At least three of those squads place a higher priority on intimidating a cameraman than on dealing with a very touchy situation involving a lot of people that could erupt into a full riot at any moment.

12:10 a.m. – Saturday, Sept. 22 – Crowd dispersed.

6:25 a.m., Sunday, Sept. 23 – Local blogger and some commenters blame the cameraman (me) for wasting the time of the cops who questioned me. To wit, Craig at Broken Heart wrote:

I'll say, from the looks of the situation, I'm a bit sad to see the way Mannis and the officer go back and forth with each other. We had two wrongs in this case.

One, the officer(s) should just leave the camera crew(s) alone and go about their business. No matter which media outlet they're with. Period.

Two, the cameraman shouldn't be wasting the officers time playing word-play games- while kids are whipping bottles, rocks, feet and fists at each other. Think of this as war. Would a soldier stop his fighting with the enemy and ask the reporter what station or newspaper he was writing for? I doubt it. He should be trying to do his job of catching the kids fighting, or at least, make sure they're fighting each other fair & square.

I spoke with Craig by phone at 10:15 Sunday morning. He was at a motorcycle rally in the suburbs. He and I both agree that the police are wrong to waste time on harassing and intimidating photographers. This is a regular pattern of behavior for Chicago cops. See a camera near police activity, shine your spotlight at the camera, then try to scare them off if the light doesn’t work.

Where Craig and I disagree is in the type of response that a citizen should give to the police when the police are clearly trying to violate – or interfere with – a citizen’s right to photograph a public incident on the street. As for “wasting the officers [sic] time,” it was the officer who chose to stop his car while a near-riot was taking place, to get out of his car, and to harass me. There is no other reason why the officer chose to stop and engage me other than an intent to harass me.

Any imbecile would have been able to see that I was not one of the kids involved in the incident. The officer knew exactly what he was doing when he chose to waste his own time by purposely trying to waste mine. This, as I said, is sadly typical of Chicago Police officers. See a guy with a camera, shine your light at him, and if that doesn’t work, try to scare him.

Alderman Moore uses a similar tactic. When a constituent approaches Joe and starts asking uncomfortable questions, Moore will glare at the person and sternly ask, “Who are you?” "Uh oh," the questioner is supposed to think, "he’s asking my name. I’m scared. I better stop bothering Mr. Moore." Sadly, this tactic probably works more often than not for both Joe Moore and the police.

The officer who chose to stop his car and ask me for my press credentials was probably following orders from on high. The City of Chicago is not media friendly. If you are not employed by a large media corporation that does not suck up to the right officials, you will not get your “credentials,” also known as a “press pass.” And a press pass is nothing more, in effect, than a government issued permit to practice journalism. (Last time I checked, Ben Franklin did not have credentials from the City of Chicago.)

The big irony here is that I, a conservative, am being criticized by "liberals" for standing my ground against the police and the Establishment. I am taking a stand for the free press, whether it is News Corporation, CNN, The Huffington Post, any freelance writer or any blogger. That includes you, you, and yes, even those who criticize me. We have a right to photograph public events, and the fact that the police try to prevent us from doing so must make us suspicious of their motivation for doing so.

It is wrong for the City of Chicago to require citizens to have credentials in order to cover a public event, whether it’s a riot or a music festival. I have a degree in Journalism, but so what? Any person who writes about events, whether entertainment or politics, is a “journalist” simply by virtue of writing. Whether or not that person is a good journalist is irrelevant. The Government has no right to demand “credentials” from journalists. The First Amendment, I believe, says so:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Granted, the City of Chicago is not the Congress. But do abridge my freedom of speech, or yours, by means of intimidation is to violate the spirit of the Constitution.

Does the City of Chicago require permits for illegal pushcart food vendors? No. But they should.

Does the City of Chicago require permits for somebody to stand on a street corner and preach the gospel? No, and they should not.

Should the City of Chicago require a permit, or “credentials,” for you or me to photograph a riot or write a report about public meeting? No, but often they do.

It is disheartening to read some of the comments about the Friday Night Morse Mayhem. It is disheartening because some of the comments demonstrate such an ignorance of what the police are supposed to do, and of what a citizen’s duties and rights are.

The police are supposed to protect the citizenry. They are not supposed to harass people with cameras, especially when doing so takes needed manpower away from a potentially explosive situation.

You and I, as citizens and residents, have the right of being able to stand on any street at any time for any legal reason. We have the right to do so without fear of police harassment.

We have the DUTY to oppose such harassment when we experience it, or simply observe it. When the officer on Morse Avenue made the conscious decision to stop his squad car, remove himself from the group of cops who were trying to deal with a very sensitive operation, he did his own police force a serious disservice. He did me, a citizen, a disservice. He tried to do YOU a disservice by attempting to scare me away, to prevent me from taking pictures, from reporting to you what was happening. It did not work.

Not only did I report on the events at hand, I was given a bonus: A cop acting stupidly and willing to do it on camera. As I said to the officer on video, I was not detaining him. He was free to disengage at any time. He chose to waste his time for about four minutes. My own time was not wasted; I documented some rather idiotic police behavior.

Don’t get the wrong idea, here. I am very pro-police. Let me qualify that I am pro-Good Police. Most of them are good and well intentioned. The officer who stopped me may be a good cop most of the time. I may have caught in an atypical moment. Yes, I engaged him in word play. He was a willing player. Again, he could have chosen at any time to stop his stupid game and rejoin his comrades, to see if they needed assistance.

One commenter, on Broken Heart, wrote:

It looked pretty barren around there. I think it makes sense to stop and talk to the one person who is standing his ground. Maybe Mannis could have said "I've seen everything that has been happening. What information would you officers like so that you may respond to this disturbance in the most effective way?" Instead, he acted like a jerk.

The commenter, who I take it was not there, has no idea what was happening. I was in the middle of a large situation which could have violently exploded at any moment. It did not, fortunately, but one could not know that it would end peacefully until it was actually over. In addition, I was being confronted by a cop who was obviously not trying to help me. Had he been on top of his game, his first question to me would have been, “Sir, what have you seen here? Can you tell us anything?” Instead, the cop chose to act like a jerk.

Another commenter (“Little Betty,” who has been banned from this blog), wrote:

That was one of the most assine [sic] videos I've ever seen. According to Mr. Mannis's own blog, he claims he has one of the "5" most influential blogs in the state. Well the only thing I've been influenced to think is that he's nuts. Flaming nuts.

Let’s interrupt “Little Betty” here. My claim to being one of the five most influential blogs in Illinois was accurate on the day I made it. BlogNetNews/Illinois, of which I am a member blogger, has a way of calculating the most influential. Like most commenters, and as usual, Little Betty did not get her facts straight. The influence rating on BNN changes daily. I go up and down. Any gripe about the rating should be addressed to BlogNetNews. Betty continued:

Cutting and editing a five minute report using the same footage over and over again hardly defines the situation on Morse. The Mannis petty tirade with the police (who stayed professional throughout) was bizarre.

Betty, Betty, Betty. The “same footage over and over again” was done to emphasize a point. The cop incorrectly said that I told him I was a victim, even after I said to him that I was “not a direct victim” of the events that night. I replayed that one-second snippet perhaps twice, after he insisted that I’d said I was a victim. Betty goes on:

He truly wasted police time. What will these two officers think the next time they see him on Morse and are responding to an emergency? They will classify him with all the other nutjobs in the area and not bother with him.

Betty would seem to prefer that we all be complacent sheep. But she probably has a double standard. What does Little Betty think of protestors who tie up hundreds of police officers’ time and cost the people millions of dollars? But Betty, logician that she is, actually got it right, kind of. When she says that the police will not bother with me in the future, I can only hope she is right. I don’t care whether or not the police think I’m a nutjob, as long as they do not interfere with my right to photograph something happening in public. Betty rattles on:

If no one was hurt and the youth were dispersed from the area, the cops did their job. Obviously Mannis has no understanding as to the nature of police reports. Mannis could have helped the police if he could have provided decent information to the cops on what he had taped or witnessed. Descriptions of the perpetrators, direction of their flight, clothes or gang colors. But Mannis wasn't interested in offering that kind of information. He only wanted to make an ego-centric grandstand appearance on his on video. I for one don't buy it.

Betty, I’m sorry honey, but I must say that you’re a fool. Do you really think that the cop was going to write up a full report about the incident on Morse Avenue, even before the event was over? Are you that gullible? As for provide the police with “decent information to the cops on what [I] had taped or witnessed,” I had not had the chance yet to review the tape. Jeez, girlfriend, I was in the middle of a freeking riot! Do you think a reporter for the Chicago Tribune would stop in the middle of riot, approach the nearest cop and say, “Hey, officer, I know this incident isn’t over with yet, but I’ve taken a bunch of pictures over the past ten minutes. Would you like to see them?” Good God, Betty, get a brain. As for buying it, well, hey, it’s free. No charge. Thank me very much.

Another commenter demonstrated profound stupidity with her comments. “Fargo Woman” wrote:

Officer Everett was clearly offering to make out a police report - what the subject of the report is the citizen's choice, in this case either specifics regarding the melee, perhaps with identifiers regarding the participants, OR the fact that police took "30 minutes to respond," which he clearly complains about on the video. He was not offering to provide a report of the event, as Mr. Mannis seems to think. Officer Everett is not the department's Media Relations Officer, he's a cop responding to a public disturbance. How could Mr. Mannis have gotten that so confused?

To Fargo Woman, I can only repeat my question to Little Betty, above: Do you really think that the cop was going to write up a full report about the incident on Morse Avenue, even before the event was over? Are you that gullible?

FW’s thinking is muddled. She wrote that the officer was “not offering to provide a report of the event.” In fact, the officer said he would give me a “police report,” but after I asked several times he never specified what the report would be about. And if Officer Everett was really going to give me a report right then, right there, how detailed could it possibly have been? And why would he need my state ID card in order to hand me a report?

FW, next time you see police in the middle of responding to an emergency, I challenge you to go up to them and ask them for a full report of the events that they are in the middle of. And when they tell you, in effect, to go jump in the lake, get back to me.”

Commenter “Chaz” wrote:

Glad the event was called in and videotaped, but I do believe that Mannis could of been more cooperative with the police, also giving the officer an explicit description of who and what he witnessed would of been more helpful to the community, also the police report would of just been a record to indicate what has happened in the event of any court case against those responsible for the unruly behavior of those involved with the sulivan [sic] high school incident.

When I called 911 at 11:35 p.m., I told them everything I knew. I could have been “more cooperative?” How, Chaz? By giving him my press credentials? By handing over my state ID to a cop whose first interaction with me was to shine a spotlight into my camera, whose first question to me was whether I was with the media, whose second question was whether I had press credentials? This guy was harassing me, Chaz. Oh, but I’m supposed to cooperate! Sure, Officer, here’s my ID, this is where I live, this is who I am, now write out that detailed report with your ballpoint pen and hand it over, thanks very much, officer.

Chaz also wrote, “also the police report would of just been a record to indicate what has happened in the event of any court case against those responsible for the unruly behavior of those involved with the sulivan [sic] high school incident.” Again, Chaz, are you ALL stupid? Good God, man, do you really think that because I did not get a police report from the good Officer Everett there will now be no “record to indicate what has happened in the event of any court case against those responsible for the unruly behavior?”

Note to Craig: Nothing personal, man, but you get some of the dumbest commenters around.