Experts: ‘Pop-up’ arrests not new practice
When a protester was taken off the streets of Oakland by heavily armed plainclothes officers in an unmarked van, it immediately drew swift condemnation from activists and public officials.
The moment sparked memories of federal officials putting protesters into unmarked vans in Portland, Ore., and the New York Police Department using a similar maneuver in Manhattan, both of which garnered widespread attention on social media and in the press.
But the use of officers in unmarked vehicles making “popup” arrests is not a particularly new tactic, nor is the presence of plainclothes police at protests.
David Wright, who spent nearly 26 years in the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and was a chief instructor of use of force defensive tactics, said this method has been used before outside of protests, particularly in narcotics investigations.
“I’ve seen it done throughout my 27 years in law enforcement, where you have your undercovers or people who make your buys, and people jump out in plainclothes and make the arrest,” Mr. Wright said.
He also noted plainclothes officers have been used in crowdcontrol scenarios before, notably during the volatile protests that coincided with the G-20 summit in 2009.
During those demonstrations, Mr. Wright was assigned to monitor activity and gather intelligence on a mountain bike, and other officers may have made plainclothes arrests if they felt it was necessary. (Some of the people arrested during the G-20 protests did not face any charges.)
Mr. Wright argued the tactics used Saturday to arrest 25-yearold Matthew Cartier, of Pittsburgh, were lawful, and the resounding outcry has been a result of “politics getting in the way of policing.”
But Thomas Frampton, an associate professor of law at the University of Virginia, said he was unsure of that assessment.
“Just because there’s probable cause to arrest somebody for a low-level offense does not mean law enforcement has carte blanche to use an unlimited and unreasonable amount of force to effect that arrest,” Mr. Frampton said, citing the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizures.
The use of so-called “snatch squads” has been used before as a way to extract ringleaders or troublemakers from a large, potentially unruly crowd, Mr. Frampton said. “This seems to be different, which is to say roving bands of plainclothes officers who are essentially snatching people up off the street in settings which are at least somewhat removed from the heart of a volatile situation.”
Kevin Robinson, a former assistant police chief and current instructor at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said he had seen the tactic used during the 36 years he spent at the Phoenix Police Department.
“But it’s usually been in situations where the person was considered armed and dangerous, and the element of surprise had to be on the side of the police department,” Mr. Robinson said. “It just had to.”
He said such techniques may be used if police are likely to end up in a pursuit, so they may block the suspect’s car to keep it from evading. Or they may be used in situations where the person being arrested was highly violent. It’s a tactic used to make sure that a “bigger, more dangerous situation doesn’t occur,” Mr. Robinson said.
Pittsburgh police called the arrest a “surgical maneuver to remove the person that was the problem and allow the main protest march to continue.”
Officials repeatedly said protesters have refused to share planned routes, leading to unsafe situations for protesters, drivers and pedestrians.
“The unwillingness of protest organizers to consult with police about the planned protest route is putting protesters in danger,” Pittsburgh Public Safety director Wendell Hissrich said at a news conference Sunday.
But at a news conference Monday, leaders of Black, Young and Educated, who planned the protest, said they haven’t heard from officials in weeks.
Mr. Cartier was a bike marshal, a person who typically forms a sort of perimeter around the protest.
Activists say marshals play an important role when incidents of drivers hitting protesters with cars, intentionally or otherwise, have occurred across the country. In Penn Hills, a man was arrested in June after he allegedly drove twice through a red light into an area filled with protesters and clipped a demonstrator with his mirror.
“Our marshals work tirelessly to protect our protesters when the police do not,” BYE co-founder Treasure Palmer told reporters Monday.
Mr. Robinson said arrests by plainclothes officers can also lead to harmful situations, like when officers executed the no-knock warrant that resulted in the police killing Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.
Neither Ms. Taylor nor her boyfriend, who fired at police after he thought they were intruders, were the subject of the warrant.
“You run the risk of the person reacting, doing something, or other people come into their aid thinking there’s a person out to harm them,” Mr. Robinson said.
But Mr. Wright disagreed, noting that using uniformed officers could have led to an even more volatile situation, and that it’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback when judging Saturday’s quickly evolving scenario.
Police asked Mr. Cartier multiple times to move from an intersection, telling him that he was blocking access to nearby hospitals, according to a criminal complaint.
Mr Cartier refused to move, responding, “Show us the ambulance, buddy,” the complaint reads.
Mr. Wright imagined a different scenario playing out. “Officers arrive yet again, and they’re in uniform and they had this dialogue [with Mr. Cartier] that they’ve had multiple
times and a crowd forms,” he said. “Who knows what happens at that point? Then the police will be scrutinized for what happened after that.”
The optics of the arrest were particularly troubling to both Mr. Robinson and Mr. Frampton.
“What I fall back on is the fact that it’s a misdemeanor,” Mr. Robinson said. “I just think in this day and age, on a misdemeanor charge, I think police departments could use a little more discretion on when they make an arrest of somebody.”
“Across the country, we’re seeing protests where large numbers of people are asking us to re-imagine public safety, and are questioning the role of the police in promoting public safety,” Mr. Frampton said. “It seems extraordinarily ironic that in responding to these protests, law enforcement in many different cities across the country seem intent on proving the protesters’ point.”