Some good news from the baseball bat incident
I just heard from Eric Post of the Tucson Bike Advisory Committee that they will be sending a letter to various city officials about the Tucson Police Department’s failure to investigate last December’s baseball bat attack on a local bicyclist.
In that attack, a vehicle pulled up to a Tucson bike-commuter and the passenger struck the cyclist with a baseball bat. Through a bit of luck the cyclist escaped serious injury and was able to obtain the license plate on the car as it sped off. The cyclist called the police who took a statement and then closed the case. They never visited the owner of the vehicle and never put out a call to the department to keep an eye out for the vehicle. They just dropped it.
We filed an internal affairs investigation, but the department (not surprisingly) determined that nothing improper had happened, and the officer was exonerated. We also spoke to Councilperson Regina Romero’s aide in the matter, but a TPD official present at the meeting forcefully stated that TPD had done nothing wrong in letting the matter drop.
Hopefully the Bike Advisory Committee will have better luck getting this kind of behavior changed. And I still hold out hope that the owner of this vehicle will get a visit from the police–though truthfully that may be a fantasy at this point.
Somebody, though, needs to alert this person that he’s been caught just so he doesn’t do it again.
–Erik Ryberg
May 15th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
This is just mind boggling to me. The fact is that a citizen was attacked with a deadly weapon! If the police are saying they won’t investigate it because the victim was on a bike, that’s a national scandal which every bike advocacy group in the country should be talking about. If they are refusing to pursue this matter because they don’t pursue attacks on citizens with deadly weapons at all, that’s a national scandal which every news organization in the country should be covering.
Keep up the fight and keep us posted.
P.S. any thoughts of civil action against the owner of the car?
May 15th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Reading btwn the lines( of the police report): The perp is affilated to law enforcement! .
May 15th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
OK
Let’s try to sort out this legal mumbo-jumbo…
The cops won’t charge the owner
because he obviously is not the perp….
the victim did not(?) get an ID on
the guy swinging the bat….
So…who gets charged?
Can the owner be made to identify the guy who swung the bat?
Could the owner be charged with abetting the crime?
Let’s say the car is a gun…
the guy swinging the bat is the bullet…
Is not the registered owner responsible for crimes committed
with the gun?
If this never gets a just resolution and the same thing happened to me, I’d hire a P.I. and
take care of the matter personally…if you know what I mean, never making a report to the
cops. This reaction by TPD just enables the impunity and anonymity
of people in cars who feel like being jerks to other people engaged
in behavior different from theirs.
So could they be charged with a hate crime?
This should keep the BAC’s enforcement committee busy for quite some time.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:53 am
No, wait…
maybe it WAS the owner who swung the bat and it was his buddy who was driving.
I guess the owner couldn’t be made to incriminate himself.
And if it was his wife doing the driving…..
case closed.
An odd scenario, but it does make TPD’s assertion that it had done nothing wrong in letting the matter drop a true one.
And I guess there could be other situations that make their assertion true.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Coghauler,
The scandal here is not because there have been no charges, it’s the because according to Erik, there hasn’t even been an INVESTIGATION! That means that the TPD’s assertion that it had done nothing wrong NOT A TRUE ONE!
May 16th, 2008 at 10:13 am
I don’t know much more about this other than what’s been exposed here, but even though there has been no investigation, it has not been stated that TPD doesn’t know who the person is. If that knowledge has kept the investigation from happening, then I think TPD would criminal in its actions. I’m not on TPD’s side in this by any means, but the mystery is why there was not even a preliminary persuit. I offer forth speculations (freewheeling, if you will) that may explain the behavior in this matter.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:43 am
I wonder if the policy is related to the victim being on bicycle or if the policy is related to a license plate not being enough evidence? If hypothetically there were a driveby shooting or a pedestrian was hit by a car and in either case one person retrieved the license plate as the car was leaving, is that enough evidence to warrant an investigation? I would say yes, but perhaps TPD says no?
At this point it might be fruitless since so much time has passed since the crime, but I mean regardless of whether or not the driver was directly involved he at the very least provided the car to the assailant, which alone would make him an accomplice to assault. And that would have some sort of repercussions, right?
May 16th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I wonder if our bicycle friendly mayor is aware of this incident? Perhaps someone at the Daily Star should know about this case. Here’s some speculation: I’ll bet that if someone whacked a mirror off of someones “Navigator”or”Escalade”with a baseball bat there would be an investigation. Maybe we should have a campaign for everyone to write to the LAB about this problem. If we could get them to issue a threat of demotion maybe then we could get some action. Platinum my ass.
May 16th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Just to clarify:
1. The victim got hit with a bat out the passenger window, then the car sped away.
2. The victim got the license plate and a description of the car, and rode to a payphone and reported the attack.
3. The police wrote a report and confirmed that the license number matched the vehicle description — which is to say it is very likely the victim got the number right and the assailant did not alter the plate.
4. The police closed the case after a 23 minute investigation.
5. We filed an internal affairs complaint. Internal Affairs then exonerated the officer.
6. Police representatives have defended their decision not to investigate by saying that the victim did not get a positive identification of the man who was clubbing him.
We say: if TPD had looked for the vehicle and caught it that night with a passenger and a baseball bat in it, at the very least it would have signaled to the assailants that they better stop this activity. And good police work can get people to confess in this situation, as happened in South Lake Tahoe recently. Even a visit today by the police would put the assailant on notice that this prank nearly cost him a long spell in jail. As it is, he has no idea that he’s even been seen. What’s to stop him from doing it again?
I believe that if I drove up to another vehicle and started smashing it with a bat, I would get a visit from the cops. But hit a bicyclist and everyone’s hands are suddenly tied, and nothing can be done.
And yes, we know where the owner of the car lives, as do the police (because we told them).
–EBR
May 16th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Ok, lets have it…
The address and the plate number that is.
Lets find out if smashing a vehicle with a bat will result in a visit from the cops.
Hey, somebody had to say it.
May 17th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Unfortunately, “internal investigations” do not work because a supervisor somewhere along the line must admit fault. Besides, that is more work to do and supervisory law enforcement cannot be bothered with such an affront to the department’s unquestionable “honor”.
I have tried for years since 2003 to have a federal law enforcement officer censured for violating the very laws that person took an oath to enforce and uphold. I just received my last FOIA request reply from a high-level LEO investigatory Washington D.C. office involving another 2005 violation by the same officer.
The FOIA reply demonstrated that the officer and that person’s previous supervisor continue to lie and cover-up the facts and there is little more I can do. The Washington Office investigatory officer criticized the format and extent of my complaint and there were so many redactions to make the FOIA request unusable. After almost 3 months of delays with this single request, I am in for many more delays if I decide to appeal the reply to my request.
Local, state, and federal agencies’ law enforcement programs are in serious trouble with apparent widespread corruption. Entry-level qualifications have been lowered so much that the quality of applicants is abysmal. The particular federal officer I referenced “washed-out” of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and that person was given an unprecedented “waiver” to continue to become an officer. Since given a commission the “officer” has committed 2 major law enforcement violations and continues double standard law enforcement of issuing citations to citizens for committing the same, similar, or much less criminal violations that officer has committed.
The situation with the Tucson Police Department is just 1 more example among many that corroborate the serious problems at all levels of law enforcement. The rule of law is fundamentally critical to any society and citizens must know that their officers are above reproach. The TPD’s negligence with not investigating the “batting incident” adequately is an unconscionable breach of jurisprudential fairness.
There was a time when I was a federal law enforcement officer that I never questioned what my fellow LEOs, at any level, stated as fact. Their word was golden and irrefutable. I even held defense attorneys somewhat in contempt and disrepute when they supported defendants who would question the integrity my fellow officers. As I reflect on some of those cases, I now wonder how many people were unjustly cited or prosecuted because of false statements or lies made by fellow officers in those cases and if due process of the law was abrogated.
Mr. Ryberg, the best of good luck with your case if you are able to pursue it further. I have gained a new respect for lawyers/attorneys since I have gone through my own experience of a fellow “officer-done-wrong-and-skates” process. Apparently, attorneys must often face similar legal frustrations and therefore not a profession I could work in on a daily basis; as such, they all deserve my initial respect.
I will never again automatically take any law enforcement officer’s “word” as factual. I have learned as a one-time insider that there are likely as many bad cops as good ones, especially in today’s climate of lower standards. I will always wonder when I see a LEO who has the right to take a citizen’s “LIFE, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” if that officer “slipped through the cracks” as a result of deceit, is a product of substandard entrance requirements, or as in the Tucson PD case, the result of a likely duplicitous “internal investigation”.
May 17th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
“Entry-level qualifications have been lowered so much that the quality of applicants is abysmal.”
Mr. Kearns’ observation is corroborated by the TPD itself, which admitted that the investigating officer filled out the face-sheet of his report incorrectly.
“He’s new,” shrugged Sgt. Tim Beam.
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:34 am
I’m having a similar problem trying to get a complete report on my wreck from ‘01 here in TX. I should have gotten a complete report with the names of the witnesses and last known address within 30 days of the wreck, but here it is almost 7 years later and I’m still trying to get the names of those witnesses. Interestingly enough several people have come to me privately and said they reported what they say to the police, but the only witnesses that the police will admit to are an elderly couple from out of state (but still no address)…
Opus
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
Ummm that should have said “reported what they saw” not “reported what they say“
February 5th, 2010 at 10:45 am
[...] He also said they have been told by officers and lawyers around Tucson, that unless the cyclist can identify the driver they won’t go after the driver. This is what Erik Ryberg was told when one of his clients was hit in the back with a baseball bat. [...]
April 11th, 2010 at 6:56 am
[...] He also said they have been told by officers and lawyers around Tucson, that unless the cyclist can identify the driver they won’t go after the driver. This is what Erik Ryberg was told when one of his clients was hit in the back with a baseball bat. [...]