Brattleboro residents decry police-sponsored surveillance

By Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian

Posted July 11, 2006

Residents of a poor Brattleboro neighborhood are up in arms over video surveillance by a man who they say police are paying to keep tabs on minorities.

About a dozen residents of the Clark-Canal neighborhood appeared last night before the Civilian Police Communication Committee regarding a July 7 complaint filed by the ALANA Community Organization.

According to the complaint, Clark-Canal resident Paul Canon told his neighbors that he is paid $30 per tape to record the activities of African Americans and Latinos. The residents said Police Officer William Davies picks up the videotapes at least twice a week from Canon’s house.

“I understand it is legal to videotape, but what is he videotaping?” said Peggy Longueil, 64, president of the Clark-Canal Neighborhood Association. “He’s videotaping my house, where I feel very violated. He stops me on the street, he tells me I’m a drug dealer.”

Longueil said the reason young people frequently go in and out of her house is because she runs a foster care home.

Brattleboro Police Lt. Jeremy Evans, the ranking officer on duty last night, would not comment on the allegations, nor would he forward a reporter’s message to Police Chief John Martin seeking comment about the complaints.

“This is racial profiling,” ALANA Executive Director Curtiss Reed Jr., told the board. “The Brattleboro Police have denied charges that they racially profile, but they have a contractor out there who is videotaping black and Latino families.”

An ALANA survey of Brattleboro minority households released earlier this year indicated police contact with minority households far exceeds the rate of contact with white households. At least two racial profiling complaints against police are also pending before the fledgling community board, which was formed in response to the 2001 police shooting of a man in a church.

Canon said he does not only videotape minorities, but everyone on the street who he suspects is dealing drugs.

Tina Fiorillo, who is white, said she is a target of Canon’s surveillance. “My everyday life of nothing is being videotaped every single day,” said the young Clark Street mother, tears welling in her eyes as a baby fussed on her lap.

Fiorillo and her neighbor, Jean Rawson, said they have attempted to report the surveillance to local and state officials, from the state’s attorney’s office to Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, but have gotten no responses.

“But you let [Canon] call, and Officer Davies is there,” said Rawson.

Canon told a reporter that police do not pay him, but they do supply him with VHS-format videotapes. He said he told his neighbors that he is paid as a protective measure.

He said he makes several copies of each tape, giving one to the police and keeping a second copy locked in a safe in his home. He said he has stored hundreds of such tapes, shot with two video cameras positioned in the upstairs windows of his Clark Street home and a hand-held camera that he uses downstairs.

Canon said he decided to record the activity on his street after police failed to respond promptly to his phone calls “and then they tell you, ‘We didn’t see it so we can’t do anything.’ ” He said he videotapes most nights between 8 p.m. and 3:30 a.m.

Canon showed a reporter one video, date-stamped May 27, 2006, at 12:30 a.m., in which several men appeared to be waiting quietly outside Canon’s neighbor’s home while others went in and out of an upstairs doorway several times. Two of the men appeared to be African American, and the others were of indistinguishable race. Canon said police told him the men were “known drug dealers.”

Another part of the video, shot during daylight hours, appears to show a white teenage boy talking to two African American teenage girls outside Longuiel’s house, and three adolescent girls rollerblading down the street. No drugs or exchanges of any kind were visible in any tape sequences.

Canon alleged that frequent drug deals keep him awake late into the night. He said police have conducted at least three raids on one neighbor’s property, a fourplex owned by the Brattleboro Community Land Trust, based on his tips.

One resident of the house, Freemona Roundtree, who is black, said police came to her home at 5:30 on a Sunday morning, handcuffed her and her 22-year-old son and kept them on the porch in their nightclothes for four hours while they searched the house without a warrant. She said they found nothing, and produced a warrant hours after the search.

“I came from upstate New York to this little town to get away from what was going on. … My son has been arrested four times since we moved here,” said Roundtree.

When CPCC member Katie Knapp urged Roundtree and others to file formal complaints about their allegations, Roundtree said she has attempted to file so many complaints that one officer gave her a stack of the forms to keep at home. She said she has also appealed to Martin in person.

Roundtree’s son, Jeffery Anderson, 22, told CPCC members that police harassment was constant — “like a toothache.” He said Davies recently attempted to give him a $195 ticket for driving without a license after Anderson was observed sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked car with no keys.

“I have no freedom. I have no freedom on my street,” Anderson told the CPCC members.

Reed said if the police are paying Canon $30 twice a week, the department would have paid him several thousand dollars over the past year.

“Our understanding is that when the town requires outside contractors, as Mr. Canon claims he is to his neighbors, it normally issues a request for bids. We are unable to locate such a request for bids, and are therefore left to speculate by what means Mr. Canon is being paid,” according to the ALANA complaint.

ALANA has asked the committee to ask the police department to keep taped audio and video from cruisers and other “police-controlled video cameras” for 120 days, rather than the current 30 days. Reed said people traumatized by police usually need four to six weeks to come forward.

Reed also asked the board to clarify police policy regarding the issuance and use of cell phones, either personal or professional, after residents charged that Canon is contacting Davies directly rather than going through a dispatcher — a procedure that would produce a public record.

Canon said he does call through the dispatcher, but on the videotape, Canon’s voice can be heard leaving a telephone message for a police officer without speaking to a dispatcher first.

CPCC members are scheduled to make a general presentation about the committee’s work at tonight’s selectboard meeting. ALANA board member Tara O’Brien urged them to accurately relate the concerns expressed last night.

“The fault is that you have no jurisdiction,” said O’Brien. “These community members feel safe enough to come to you with their poignant testimony, but they’re afraid to put it into documentation because they’re afraid of retaliation.”

Brattleboro’s police chief fought establishment of the panel, and convinced the selectboard not to give the committee any independent powers.

The group’s five members are charged solely with facilitating communication between police and community members. However, at a meeting two weeks ago board member Gail Cooper said the town had allocated no money for the committee’s work.