Police snapping photos brings up questions of rights

WILMINGTON, Del. -- The city police department's Corner Deployment Unit is known as the "jump-out squad" for bursting out of vehicles to question and search suspects. Its officers also are known for something else: snapping photos of suspects they stop, even those they don't arrest.

City officials defend the practice as a legal and effective part of fighting drug dealing and street crime.

Critics say it violates the constitutional rights of innocent people.

In an era when surveillance cameras peer from buildings and parking lots, courts have ruled that people can't expect privacy in public places. Civil libertarians argue that police photographing people they don't arrest is a different matter.

"There's no authority to forcibly photograph someone and enter them into a database when they have committed no crime," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"I'm not aware of any other municipal police department that has engaged in this type of behavior," he said.

Wilmington Mayor James Baker describes such criticism as "blithering idiocy," saying police take pains to protect the rights of law-abiding residents while targeting people "who are killing our neighborhoods, who are killing our people."

City officials deny police are photographing individuals they believe are likely to commit crimes. Some media reports have compared the technique to "Minority Report," a recent science fiction movie in which police identify criminals before they commit crimes.

"It's not a Gestapo technique, it's not anything other than a progressive means of policing an urban environment," said police spokesman Cpl. Stephen Martelli.

Kept for future

Among other things, the photos can serve as proof that a person arrested for loitering received other warnings. They also are kept as "possible evidence for ongoing investigations," authorities said.

Police chief Michael Szczerba said his department has taken photographs of suspects for years without complaints.

It's "highly improbable" that innocent people were caught up in the stops, he said.

According to city officials, 658 people were stopped and questioned between June, when the jump-out squad's "Operation Bold Eagle" began, and last week. Among them, 546 were arrested, and 708 charges were filed.

Police believe the other 112 are involved in criminal activity, even if officers didn't find enough evidence that day to arrest them.

Drewry Fennell, executive director of the ACLU's Delaware chapter, argues that shouldn't matter.

"Their criminal histories are not relevant to their rights to move freely about on the street," Fennell said.

The ACLU is considering a lawsuit but, so far, no one has come forward with a formal complaint, he said.

City officials have met with ACLU, NAACP and Urban League representatives to hear their concerns. Another meeting is scheduled Wednesday.

In crime-troubled neighborhoods, some residents have welcomed the camera-toting police.

"I would rather have innocent people's pictures taken than innocent people shot," said Barbara Washam, who joined a rally last week to support the police.

Mayor Baker said the photo policy doesn't violate the U.S. Supreme Court's 1968 decision that police may stop and frisk people if they have reasonable suspicion they are engaged in criminal activity.