Using City Cameras NOPD Falsely Arrested a Black Man Minding His Own Business. Initially Police said Cameras Existed to Get Evidence After a Crime Occurs But Now Are Used to Track Residents Movements
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MESSAGE TO SLEEPING TOMS AKA THE BLACK VOTARY: YOUR GREAT WHITE LIBERAL FRIENDS ARE SURVEILLING YOU, STOPPING YOU AND TRYING TO LOCK YOU UP EVERYDAY IN PRISONS THEY CONTROL IN CITIES SUCH AS NEW ORLEANS, DC, NEW YORK, CHICAGO ETC.
A MAIN PURPOSE OF POLICE IS TO SURVEIL BLACK PEOPLE ON BEHALF OF ELITE RACISTS. From [HERE] Twenty-five year old Michael Celestine [above] walked outside his friend’s 7th Ward home to take a phone call and smoke a cigarette. Wearing a Tommy Hillfiger puffer jacket on a brisk day in January 2020, he chatted with a friend, walked across the street and then went back inside.
What Celestine didn’t know that is that for the full 15 minutes he was outside, he was being watched by a New Orleans police officer on a monitor about a mile away at the city’s surveillance hub, the Real Time Crime Center, which has access to more than 1,200 live feeds from cameras across the city.
Celestine was the subject of live video surveillance that landed him in jail for more than a year — in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit New Orleans early and hard just two months after he was arrested — even though all the charges against him were eventually dropped. In 2021, Celestine sued the NOPD with the help of the ACLU of Louisiana for a litany of alleged abuses, including an unlawful stop, false arrest and excessive force. Celestine and the NOPD agreed to a $10,000 settlement last year.
“It’s very egregious,” ACLU of Louisiana staff attorney Meghan Matt told Verite. “It’s a man literally minding his own business outside … and subsequently spends a year in jail on false charges during the height of COVID when hundreds of people in that jail were infected, and people were literally dropping dead.”
When the city’s camera network was first introduced in 2017, officials assured the public that the system was primarily there to gather evidence after a crime occurs, rather than proactively surveil the public for suspicious activity.
But in recent years, the NOPD has increased its use of live surveillance to justify stops and searches, according to local defense attorneys and advocates.
“We’ve seen over the years the increased use of the real-time crime cameras to lead to stop and frisks,” New Orleans Chief Public Defender Danny Engelberg told Verite.
Civil rights advocates say that trend is concerning, escalates the privacy implications of the city’s ever expanding surveillance apparatus and threatens to amplify the worst tendencies of the criminal justice system.
On the day of Celestine’s arrest, NOPD officers on the street were conducting what the police report described as a “proactive patrol in high crime areas” while another, Daniel Grijalva, was monitoring a surveillance feed from a nearby camera in the neighborhood. The camera shifted to follow Celestine’s movements, zooming in to provide a close visual inspection of his clothing and cellphone. Grijalva saw a “bulge” in the puffer jacket, and notified nearby patrols that he believed Celestine had a gun, according to the police report and the lawsuit. Officers did not initially respond while Celestine was in the home.
Grijalva was still watching when Celestine left the house again two hours later, and again called for nearby officers to respond. Justified only by a perceived “bulge” in video surveillance, two NOPD squad cars approached Celestine. He ran away before the officers could say a word. Officer Bryan Bissell chased him on foot into a backyard and pulled out his gun.
“I will f—ing shoot you,” the officer said, body camera footage obtained by Verite shows.
Celestine then hoisted himself halfway over a fence before Bissell shot him with a stun gun. Celestine fell to the ground wailing in pain. As he was being arrested, he told the officers “I can’t breathe.”
“Shut up,” Bissell responded.
After briefly being admitted to the hospital, Celestine was taken to jail on Jan. 13, 2020 on several charges, including possession of a stolen weapon, which officers said they found in his pant leg. The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office later dropped all charges against him, but not until January 2021. Celestine was kept in jail for the entire year because he was on parole from a previous conviction and was put on a “parole hold” that prevented him from posting bail.
A portion police body camera footage shows Officer Bryan Bissell chase, stun and arrest Michael Celestine on Jan. 13, 2020. Credit: New Orleans Police Department (/customCaption]
“The damage that can happen to a person’s life and livelihood by spending a year in jail without conviction is almost indescribable,” Chris Kaiser, advocacy director of the ACLU of Louisiana, told Verite. Verite was unable to reach Celestine for comment.
Matt, who previously worked as a staff attorney for the Orleans Public Defenders office, said all of the abuses suffered by Celestine stemmed from an initial live video surveillance stakeout — a practice she said is becoming more prevalent in New Orleans.
“As a former public defender, I can tell you this was all the time,” Matt said. “It’s happening multiple times a day, every single day.”
Neither the NOPD nor Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s office responded to requests for comment.
From ‘complaint-based’ system to proactive surveillance
Since the city’s crime camera network launched in 2017 under then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu, city officials have told the public that the system would be largely “complaint-based,” meaning that the footage would primarily be used to gather evidence after an alleged crime was called in.
But it quickly became clear that the cameras were also being used to proactively search live footage for potential suspicious activity.
In 2018, The Lens reported on the case of Clint Carter, who was arrested during a drug bust coordinated through live video surveillance. The cameras caught an interaction that an NOPD officer interpreted to be a drug deal. Carter was swarmed by NOPD squad cars and arrested.
No drugs were recovered from the scene, but the police said they found brass knuckles on him. And one officer claimed that Carter, who was taken for medical treatment after his arrest, tried to take a swing at him from his hospital bed. (The officer later admitted that Carter was shackled to the bed more than five feet away from him.)
Carter was booked with illegally carrying a weapon, simple assault and trespassing — the last charge allegedly stemming from a neighbor’s complaint, though, according to a report by The Lens, video footage did not show Carter entering the property in question.
In November 2018, about four months after the arrest, a judge found Carter not guilty of all charges. But Carter still ended up in prison because the arrest was considered a violation of his parole.
Many criminal justice and privacy advocates object to the city’s crime camera apparatus altogether, saying that it has inadequate guardrails, that the multimillion-dollar investment hasn’t actually helped reduce crime and that it violates people’s privacy. City officials have repeatedly argued that because the cameras are placed on public rights-of-way, the cameras do not present a privacy concern.
“This isn’t making us safer,” Marvin Arnold, an organizer with the privacy advocacy group Eye on Surveillance, told Verite.
But the cases of Celestine and Carter speak to another objection some advocates have to escalating police surveillance — that powerful tools that amplify the police power also amplify the misconduct, abuse and bias in the American criminal justice system.
Kaiser said that while the arrest of Celestine began with invasive surveillance, every other abuse he experienced are issues that have long plagued major police departments: excessive force, racial profiling (Celestine is a Black man), officers lying to justify use of force, unconstitutional stops and the NOPD’s failure to follow its own policies.
“This implicates surveillance technology,” Kaiser said. “But from another angle, this really does boil down to more old-fashioned police misconduct.”
Matt said that the more live surveillance is used, the more opportunity there is for misconduct.
“This happens constantly, and it’s going to be happening more and more the more surveillance is used,” she said. [MORE]
