Police Assisted Apple Investigators in Search of SF Man's Home
blogs.sfweekly.com
blogs.sfweekly.com
New information:
San Francisco Police Department spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield now tells SF Weekly that "three or four" SFPD officers accompanied two Apple security officials in an unusual search of a Bernal Heights man's home.
...plainclothes SFPD officers went with private Apple detectives to the home of Sergio Calderón, a 22-year-old resident of Bernal Heights. According to Dangerfield, the officers "did not go inside the house," but stood outside while the Apple employees scoured Calderón's home, car, and computer files for any trace of the lost iPhone 5.
Dear H-N readers from SF: you _can_ effect change by contacting your supervisors and asking them to raise questions with SFPD. You don't have to silently sit there watching bad things happen; you have an option, and that is to speak up. Sending an email to your supervisor is a very easy thing to do, and if enough of us band together and raise our voices, the powers-that-be will have to listen.
If the mass beating of gays in the Castro and two dozen illegal arrests wasn't able to perturb the SFPD, what makes you think the illegal search of one man's home will?
I get the feeling that in municipal politics the police-city relationship is very similar to the military-government relationship in many banana republics. On paper one answers to the other, but in reality one is so powerful by itself that it is essentially immune to prosecution.
Everything in that series of events is incredibly sketchy and falls under the heading "if it isn't illegal, it should be." And if you go by the spirit of the law, the Apple employees should definitely be charged for impersonating police officers, given this narrative of events.
Note that it would still be incredibly goonish even if (a) they made sure the dude understood they were Apple employees and not police officers or (b) everyone involved actually is a police officer. Pure nastiness on the part of Apple and the SFPD.
I know what you're saying: but that shouldn't stop us from trying!
Look at it this way. If we don't raise questions, then things continue on the trajectory they're on (Newton's Third Law? ;) ). However, if we do raise questions, in sufficient numbers, then we have a chance, however small it may be, to effect change. So why not try to effect change? We have nothing to lose! At the worst, things are no different; in the best case, things get better.
So please! Contact your supe from this page: http://www.sfbos.org/index.aspx?page=1616 It'll only take a minute.
Ask yourself: would an iPhone 5 would get $500 on the open market? More likely it would be worth $100,000 or more. And if someone stole a $100,000 device of mine with a GPS device that was tracked to a residence, I would hope the SFPD would help me. Anything less would be a miscarriage of justice.
Now onto guilt, this person admitted he was at the bar from which the iPhone was allegedly stolen. Now while this might not be enough to convict someone in a court of law, it's certainly enough to investigate further.
I do not understand why this story is getting any traction except the standard internet hatreds for police and corporations.
EXACTLY! Have you ever, ever known the cops to back off from doing something, and let a civilian handle it? In my few observations of such situations, I've always seen the cops take charge, and shoo the civilians away. For them to just stand at the boundary line and watch the Apple goons go in and search, to me, is clear evidence that the cops knew fully well what they were doing.
And just because he doesn't know the law, it does NOT mean that it doesn't apply to him. The laws still apply. The cops knew that they had absolutely no evidence or reason to search his house; which is why they wisely stayed outside. But they also knew that they had created a false impression that the Apple goons were also SFPD, which allowed them to enter the guy's house.
As far as the value is concerned: so what? If I put a value of $1000000 on my Bic pen, does that mean I'm allowed to break the laws in finding out who took it?? If it really was that valuable, then what the heck was an Apple employee doing with it getting drunk in a sleazy bar? Will the Apple employee be docked $100,000 from his paycheck if the phone is not found? Get real!
Calderón could easily say in court he never had it and the Apple employees planted it there.
I am going to setup a company and then turn up demanding to search your home for my property. See the problem now? That's a scary incursion of your home by a corporation. Tell me you are happy with it especially since the guys you paid with your taxes stand outside waiting for me to complete searching your home.
Now assume that I plant an ounce of some green stuff under the mattress while I am at it. Now what?
But it's extremely disingenuous to say that this is just another phone, it's value is much higher than $500.
I believe there is also law (again, varying by jurisdiction and treaty obligations) to prevent a person from consenting to their own slavery. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Indentured_se... seems to cover it briefly, but I can't find a better reference immediately.
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Operation_Spa...
When you said "basically" did you also mean to prevent discussion of duress? False pretenses? Fraud?
He said basically IMO because he meant "of the subset of actions against your person or property that you can legally consent to the further subset of those you have freely consented to are those actions that you can not properly object to being performed".
It's an internet forum not rendition of statute.
He can't say anything that "prevent"s proper discussion on an open internet forum. If you wanted to discuss informed consent, duress or fraud why not just do that.
From what we know the "suspect" consented to a search of his apartment. That's the end of at least this part of the story.
"of the subset of actions against your person or property that you can legally consent to the further subset of those you have freely consented to are those actions that you can not properly object to being performed".
I do not understand the "consent to the further subset..." Part. Its not a sentence construction I am familiar with.
1) A group of people show up at his door in plain clothes.
2) Some of them identify as police officers.
3) They ask him about the iPhone 5 and he denies it.
4) They threaten him a bit and then ask him to allow a search of the premises.
5) Since, from his perspective, there are a bunch of police officers threatening the immigration status of his family, he consents.
6) Two people from the group (Apple employees) enter the premises and search for the iPhone. He assumes that they are police because they are all in plain clothes (no way to tell them apart without asking to each each badge).
Seems to me like the police used their muscle to strong-arm the guy, but then stopped short of doing the search themselves (because that would be illegal). Since the guy consented to the search, then there may not be anything illegal about the Apple employees performing the search.
This whole thing stinks:
* Sounds like the ex-police security guy that Apple hired got some of his buddies to use their badges to get him in the door.
* The police performed a search without technically performing a search.
* The Apple security employees impersonated police officers without technically impersonating police officers.
My take:
A bunch of police officers (and an ex-cop) were behaving badly on their off-hours and now the SFPD is going to go into CYA-mode. No charges will be brought. Nothing will happen to anyone. Maybe the Apple security guy will get dressed-down by his superiors for being so heavy-handed and causing bad press.
KNOW your rights. Nothing stinks here. As one of the videos below states: If police is entitled to a search then they will just break in and do a search. If they ASK for consent, and even more, if they threaten, they KNOW that they are not entitled.
Keep the door shut and don't given up your rights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDJrQBwJpqk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XtBvalUVKU
Also, you're telling me that /nothing/ here stinks?
How about:
- This was likly an 'off the books' operation until it hit the media. This is why the SFPD spokesperson thought that no police were present.
- This was likely a bunch of officers using their badges to help a friend in their off hours. Now the SFPD is probably feverishly writing up paperwork to make this look legit to cover for the cops in question.
- The cops in question committed what amounts to fraud by implying that the Apple employees were cops.
Don't point out that the guy didn't know his rights and act like that is the only thing wrong with this picture.
[1] Nothing will come of this... gotta protect the nice big corporations even if they occasionally get it wrong. That guy was surely a common fellow, pure worthless evil most likely, otherwise Apple would not have suspected him. This is good enough for any DA to ignore the law that might otherwise protect that common trash.
Consider that the actual police were there at all. They probably didn't each go on their own initiative. Apple's guy called an SFPD guy, who arranged for the officers to go along. So someone in the SFPD hierarchy was in on it.
No one in the SFPD is going to testify, or state during an investigation, that the Apple corporate police said anything that would lead the victim to believe that Apple's people were real police. Even though that was the whole point of the officers to be along, so the words "San Francisco Police" could be spoken, with all implications that come along with that.
This sounds worse than a poor engineering post-mortem: only "three or four" hours or days went into the work, but that could easily involve another "three or four" that were not included in the estimate, so are not counted for the total effort involved.
I'd hope a publicly-funded department has greater accountability than a random development task, but here we are.
Presumably these police carry GPS devices (that would eg give their location when they call in and such) and so the whereabouts of any officer on duty should be traceable in their database?
I wonder if it was the Apple-associated people who spouted this lie (my guess would be yes).
Individuals (e.g. victims) do not have any say in whether or not a prosecutor charges a suspect with a crime. This is a common misunderstanding - there is no such thing as "pressing charges" if you are not a prosecutor.
> However, he said he was under the impression that they were all police, since they were part of the group outside that identified themselves as SFPD officials. The two who entered the house did not disclose that they were private security officers, according to Calderón.
I wonder if they had the same badges, uniform on? Or did the Apple people have their own security uniform on and Calderón just didn't notice the difference. Maybe Apple's people could have been more explicit that they were not the police, but this reads like a big misunderstanding.
In any case, the person in question certainly didn't have to let these people in, and probably shouldn't have. But, it can be tough to justify refusing entry to the police if you think you haven't done anything wrong.
It sounds sketchy but I doubt anyone broke the law here.
It's called the American Dream because you have to be
asleep to believe it.I believe this is a strict liability case - meaning - would the normal guy think that his rights were being violated and he was the victim of an illegal search?
In what capacity were the cops and everyone involved identified at the time of the 'crime'? Should they have gotten a warrant? I definitely want to know what kind of documentation was taken - sounds to me like a good old fashion ILLEGAL police state shake up?
Anyone else?
Take care of these cops - this is ridiculous.