From the Manassas News and Messenger:
Published: August 14, 2009
The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday filed a motion to dismiss charges against four Hispanic men arrested for loitering near the Coverstone apartment complex in Manassas earlier this year.
In the papers, filed in Prince William General District Court, the ACLU challenges Prince William County’s loitering ordinance, saying the law is “unconstitutionally vague,” and allows police to target “disfavored groups.”
According to the court documents filed by the ACLU, Alberto Miguel Arias, 35, Juan Canseco-Rodriguez, 51, Jesus Velasquez Lopez, 43, and Isreal Lopez Amador, 36, were arrested for loitering on May 5.
According to the ACLU, the men were part of a larger group of men standing on the sidewalk near a bus stop outside Coverstone Apartments, where they lived, when police officers approached them on May 5.
The police officers asked each of the men for identification. The men who were unable to prove they lived in the apartment complex were charged with trespassing and the men who could prove they were apartment complex residents were charged with loitering, according to the ACLU.
Prince William County police late Friday said they had no information available about the case.
According to online court documents, Arias, Canseco-Rodriguez, Lopez, and Amador were all charged with loitering.
According to the Prince William County code, loitering is a Class1 misdemeanor, punishable by up to 12 months in jail and/or a fine of up to $2,500.
Nancy Lyall of Mexicans Without Borders said the four men charged with loitering contacted the group shortly after their arrests.
Nancy Lyall of Mexicans Without Borders said the four men charged with loitering contacted the group shortly after their arrests.
“We don’t understand the reason for the arrests,” she said. “They were standing in a public area.”
Lyall said the group received several complaints of police arresting day laborers in the Coverstone area this spring, but hadn’t heard of any recent arrests under the county’s loitering ordinance.
“We believe these individuals were targeted because of their ethnicity,” stated ACLU of Virginia Legal Director Rebecca Glenberg in a statement.
The four men are due in Prince William General District Court on Sept. 1 for a hearing on the loitering charges.
I decided this one couldn’t be summarized. Was this predictable or what?
Does anyone else wonder who else was involved in this case? I drive in that area frequently. I always see Hispanic men. I never see cops or people being arrested.
Stay tuned. This case should bring out the hounds of Hell and some lively red circles beating the war drums.
Meanwhile, who pays for this? Just askin’. I know who I would like to send the bill to.
Ah, the good-old, worthless ACLU, at it again! I hear they’re also interested in the Obama administration’s use of cookies for browser caches. We should use stimulus money to cover the court costs!
Type or did they intend on repeating it…
Nancy Lyall of Mexicans Without Borders said the four men charged with loitering contacted the group shortly after their arrests.
Nancy Lyall of Mexicans Without Borders said the four men charged with loitering contacted the group shortly after their arrests.
Anyway… “We don’t understand the reason for the arrests,” she said. “They were standing in a public area.”
Can someone please explain PWC loitering law to me? I’ve tried to look it up but can’t seem to find anything.
Moon, did Chief Deans guys cross the line?
I don’t like the sound of this. I wonder if the department simply drops the charges if we can avoid the law suit. We have better things to do with our tax money. Like Hello, I’d like to hear more about this loirtering law. Since when did we have this? People who are standing close to other people are not a menace to society? What if it’s just one person standing alone? Is it okay for a man and a woman to stand next to each other out of doors? Or is this law homophobic?
I hope this is not another one of those stories where people on this blog take sides because of ethnicity. That’s B.S. I would be upset if I got arrested for talking to my girlfriend, or for talking to my friends out of doors. It’s a free country.
To start with, they can only arrest and prosecute if the Apartment complex posts signs and wants charges pressed. They were not on public property.
The ACLU really is a worthless asinine organization.
Were they on the sidewalk or private property?
I could only find one person under VA Courts in this case the charge was 16.16 a County Code, last amendments in 1980.
http://epwsgdp1.courts.state.va.us/gdcourts/caseSearch.do
Sec. 16-16. Loitering.
Any person who remains or loiters on property, whether such property is publicly or privately owned, in such a manner as to impede or hinder the passage of pedestrians or vehicles, or in such manner as to interfere with or interrupt the conduct of business, or who remains or loiters on such property knowing that an offense is being committed, or under circumstances which justify a reasonable suspicion that such person may be engaged in, or is about to engage in, a crime, or with the purpose of begging, shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor; provided, however, that such person shall have first been instructed to move on by a law enforcement officer and shall have failed or refused to comply with such instruction.
(Code 1965, § 13.1-44; Ord. No. 80-10-33, 4-1-80)
State law references: Obstructing free passage of others, Code of Virginia, § 18.2-404.
http://www.municode.com/Resources/gateway.asp?pid=14114&sid=46
Years ago Fairfax Co would not charge under their loitering laws, they would only charge under trespass if you had a complaining witness that was willing to go to court and testify. I was told that the judges did not like the Constitutional issues associated with the loitering law.
Well there you go. Try to enforce some order in the county to improve the quality of life by not having large groups of men standing on street corners, and here’s what you get! Now all you anti-Resolution types can finally tell me how all the problems could have been handled differently, and yet what should have been done here? Please, tell me that you have a solution that works, and won’t involve the ACLU, MWB, or the SPLC. I defy you! We’re going to have to learn to take the criticism and move on, but we must improve the quality of life in this county from the citizens’ perspective by any means required, or none will want to move here.
40years-
Thanks for posting. Anyone that has driven by Coverstone or the “infamous” PW Pkwy & Rt. 1 7-11’s knows that the crowds of men are there in hopes someone will pick up them up for work(i feel this falls in the begging category). They should be here and have the proper documents to work in this great nation LEGALLY, and then there’d be no reason what so ever for them to loitering/trespassing. Who the hell wants to get out of their car and be swarmed with those trying to get you to hire them? Various pictures of this blatant wrong doing of these men can be found here.
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/561176744SAXMFv
I saw one man so drunk one day down at Rt. that his amigos tied him to a tree to keep him from falling over he was so drunk. This is sick.
How the hell dug up Nancy Lyall?
Right now, we are observers like you are SA.
Hello, I have no idea. This was all news to me. No inside track, I am sorry to report. I was unaware that anyone had been arrested out there.
I find it all very strange considering location, loitering laws, ACLU, etc. I never knew people had been arrested, much less that the ACLU was involved.
I am not surprised however, that this area has ‘unrest’ or a ‘challenge’ given the amount of attention it has attracted over the past 2 years. Something was bound to happen.
40 years, thanks for the legal information. n
The news article is the first I’ve heard of these arrests as well. But given the amount of press the Immigration Resolution and the Coverstone 7-11 have gotten, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that the ACLU might be interested in our county’s actions. We’ve drawn a big old target on our backs.
SA, if immigration status had never been blabbed about continuously and factored into the resolution, this case would probably never had materialized. These men would probably have been looked upon as loiterers and not Hispanic loiterers. Immigration status would be moot and the ACLU would be uninterested. Thank you, Greg, I knew you could waste more of our tax dollars!
had=have
Does this mean that when I walk my dog I should have my ID on me or face possible arrest for loitering?
40years-
Thanks for posting. Anyone that has driven by Coverstone or the “infamous” PW Pkwy & Rt. 1 7-11’s knows that the crowds of men are there in hopes someone will pick up them up for work(i feel this falls in the begging category). They should be here and have the proper documents to work in this great nation LEGALLY, and then there’d be no reason what so ever for them to loitering/trespassing. Who the hell wants to get out of their car and be swarmed with those trying to get you to hire them? Various pictures of this blatant wrong doing of these men can be found here.
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/561176744SAXMFv
I saw one man so drunk one day down at Rt. that his amigos tied him to a tree to keep him from falling over he was so drunk. This is sick.
How the hell dug up Nancy Lyall?
That should be WHO the…Nancy Lyall?
IVAN,you probably should especially if you live in the city. 😉
I got a grief for not having my driver’s license on me and I was a PASSENGER.
I worked in DC in the 80’s when their were many Jane/John Doe’s, I’ve always carried my ID on person so I would not become a Jane Doe. However, just for a trip as a passenger to the other side of town, I hardly felt I need my license. However, the officer felt differently.
Censored,
Don’t you mean that if the men had NOT been Hispanic the ACLU, and certainly the MWB crowd wouldn’t have been notified in the first place. What, do they all have the MWB phone number tattooed somewhere? It’s like being in a legalized gang. Whether you are right or wrong there’s a hundred people ready to come to your defense. It’s just a phone call away. Try that as a non-minority! It should be the individual versus the law, not the hordes versus the law at every run-in. How about we rewrite the loitering laws to make them well defined to further prevent this nonsense. Be careful what you wish for!
@Censored bybvbl
I don’t think so regarding the ACLU not being involved if it weren’t for the resolution, etc. Look what happened to the City of Manassas – they attracted the attention of the ACLU and other groups 2 or 3 years ago when they tried to enforce overcrowding rules – and that was well before the resolution. I’m sure the ACLU would have been involved irregardless.
Besides, how much you want to bet Nancy Lyall notified the ACLU about this. It’s just the thing they want to do – play it up for all the publicity they can get. And, free legal representation.
So basically if you’ve established a clean and orderly upscale neighborhood there is no legal way of maintaining it? It used to be that if some jerk put a car up on cinder blocks in his front yard it was looked down upon, and now people would support them as it was their right. What is the point of making an effort to educate yourself in hopes of obtaining a good job so as to move your family into a ‘better’ neighborhood when those neighborhoods have been reduced to eye-sores by those few exercising their ‘rights’? It seems that instead of shooting for a higher goal in life people are trying to emulate those from the third world as if to say they are in sympathy with them. America didn’t become a great nation by not trying to improve.
Gainesville, was that the ACLU who had a case against the City or was it the Justice Dept or some other govt. agency? I can’t remember.
Didn’t the ACLU go after Santa Claus a couple of years ago? Or was that some other farce of an organization. At any rate the ACLU is not what it once was.
There’s no doubt in my mind that good ole Nancy, et.al. picked up the “hot line” that dials straight into the ACLU. Geesh,how much money will be wasted in the court room. More wasting of tax payer dollars. I don’t think anyone group has the market cornered on wasting tax dollars.
Further, notice that the report was from the ACLU’s point of view. We need another Chief Dean presentation I guess. This one sided, whoa is me BS, has got to be countered some how.
@Moon-howler
Well, I’m not sure exactly who was involved (it might have been more than one organization initiall). Irregardless of who was involved, really the main point I was making was that the resolution wasn’t even in effect at that point (and it was the City of Manassas anyway) – and also when the city changed their rules, that didn’t even stop the lawsuit from happening! So mostly what I was saying was even if the charges are dropped, I’m sure the ACLU will still keep some lawsuit going against the county for racial profiling or some such thing. And I still think that the ACLU would have been contacted on this even if there never was a resolutio.
@Second-Alamo
Yes, it looks like we’ll need another press conference by Chief Dean in the next few days to clear this up, once again!
And the only one’s that are going to make any money off those wasted taxpayer dollars are the lawyers on both sides!
@ Second Alamo
A legalized gang? SA! They have as much right to exist as say HSM. Surely you will admit that Latinos have the right to form an organization that advances causes that they find important? Who else locally would you call if you were Latino and felt you had been wrongly accused?
The ACLU inquired about but didn’t become involved in the City of Manassas suit. The Equal Rights Committee (private organization partially funded by HUD) and the Washington Lawyers Group were involved in the City suit. Don’t forget that the overcrowding complaints in the City were lodged overwhelmingly against Hispanics.
SA,
“It should be the individual versus the law…”
You’re right. And the individual’s actions should matter as well. Somewhere along the line ethnicity played too large a role and I think it made governments shy away from stricter enforcement of laws already on the books. If people get nervous about their neighbors’ ethnicity and call in a disproportionate share of thinly veiled, unsubstantiated complaints based on that factor, governments will just say “whoa – this is a lawsuit waiting to happen” or ,perhaps, they’ll forge ahead and get sued.
MH,
If those Latino based organizations didn’t practice racial profiling (meaning that they automatically assume the person has been wrongly accused because they’re Latino), then I wouldn’t have as much of a problem, but that isn’t the case. So we wind up fighting them even though there is no merit to their case.
“Who else locally would you call if you were Latino and felt you had been wrongly accused?”
Any number of organizations for sure! Now I have a question for you:
Who else locally would you call if you were White and felt you had been wrongly accused? Hmmmmmmm???
I would call a lawyer or the ACLU, for starters.
That’s just it, not many free legal services available for the majority, and the ACLU would put your case at the bottom of their list if not at all. You see, only those in the minority are ever wronged according to those type organizations.
Everyone needs to note that the Anti blog is not taking a position on this action. We are simply sitting back and providing a place for our contributors to discuss the situation, at this point.
It seems that some vital information is missing from the story though. One might start by asking why Anti-bvbl is the only blog providing ‘bandwidth’ for this story. What seems to be out of place here? (whistling and looking around)
I am not sure that is a fair assessment, SA. What came first, the chicken or the egg? We assume that just minority cases get picked up by the ACLU. How about that kid up in Alaska? (the kid and the drug poster) I think they also have taken up for the KKK. They are the group everyone loves to hate until you end up wronged by your govt. I am glad they are around, even though I hate them 98% of the time.
SecondAlamo, the ACLU deals with issues that involve civil or constitutional liberties and has done so since its founding in 1920. I doubt very much that the majority of their cases have involved non-white clients. You are either incredibly confused about this group, and thinking it is some other organization, or you just don’t bother with history at all, or maybe both. The ACLU’s focus on cases involving First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and other constitutional rights have taken them all over the political map. In fact they have stood out for defending the free expression rights of groups who the vast majority of their members would oppose, like the KKK as Moonhowler mentions. Famously, when they stood up for the rights of members of the American Nazi Party to march in Skokie, Ill, a community that was majority Jewish and with some 4,000 Holocaust survivors, they took a massive loss of their membership. They are the closest things to Constitutional purists we have in this country. If they have an Achilles heel on the Constitution it would be the 2nd Amendment, but even there they couch their less-than-zealous involvement in those cases in terms of legal interpretation of that Amendment that is not out of the mainstream. I think they are weak on that interpretation, and that it is obvious that the 2nd Amendment refers to individual rights (whether anyone likes it or not), but that is the only place that I would question their purist adhesion to the Bill of Rights.
If you had not characterized “minority” in racial terms with your previous post on white people, you would have been closer to the truth. What the ACLU has often stood for is the minority’s constitutional right against a majority, for example the famous cases of Jehovah’s Witnesses forced to salute the flag even in violation of their religious beliefs. Maybe you don’t care about Miranda rights, or free speech rights, or violations of constitutional protections on search and seizure etc, but for those of us who do, the ACLU has been in the forefront of those cases. I don’t have to love all their clients to see the value in the work they do.
I agree with Justin. I hope they just drop the charges instead of dragging PWC through the media muck once again. It’s not worth it for a stupid loitering charge.
Anyone know if the cops asked the guys to leave before charging them? If not, doesn’t make much sense to charge them with loitering.
There’s good and bad in all organizations, but the ACLU seems more radically liberal than needs be to support constitutional issues. As you say they supported the KKK, and I see no reason why the the citizens of this nation have absolutely no right to prevent certain behavior if 99.9% of the people are against it. That’s where the ACLU stands up in defiance of the vast majority based on their interpretation of what our forefathers would have wanted. Even free speech should have nationally agreed upon limits regardless of the those at the ACLU.
About the case at hand, anti-loitering laws have at times been ruled unconstitutionally vague by the Supreme Court. There is also a history of anti-loitering and vagrancy laws being used against particular groups (blacks in the South for example, or union activists). Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested for loitering in a courthouse . They have been used against constitutionally protected rights of assembly. That’s past history.
Currently they have been most controversial in terms of communities’ efforts to prevent gang activity. The Supreme Court has forced jurisdictions to rewrite loitering laws in some famous cases, meaning not that they had to abandon them entirely, but change them so they were not unconstitutionally vague. Poking around, I found this quote from the opinon in Chicago v. Morales (1999):
“Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said, “The freedom to loiter for innocent purposes is part of the liberty” protected by the U.S. Constitution. People in Chicago who stop to “engage in idle conversation or simply enjoy a cool breeze on a warm evening” should not be subject to police commands, said Stevens, joined in full by Justices David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
Then…”In separate opinions, three other justices joined the majority but rejected the idea that loitering is a constitutional right. Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and Stephen Breyer rejected the Chicago ordinance because it did not focus on specific criminal conduct. Justice O’Connor suggested that Chicago lawmakers should redraft their anti-gang laws to make it illegal to loiter in order to “establish control over identifiable areas or to intimidate others from entering those areas.”
And the dissenters….In a highly critical dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said, “I would trade my rights to loiter any day in exchange for the liberation of my neighborhood.” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate dissent, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
I am only quoting these at length to show there are reasonable ways to agree or disagree with loitering laws. Personally knowing their long and discriminatory history (along with vagrancy laws), I would want them to be written and enforced in an incredibly careful way. I want more information about the case at hand to make a judgment. But just to take the men who were actual Coverstone residents. Do we really want to say that people who live in a place can’t stand out in front of it? Were they doing any of the sort of things specified in loitering laws, eg. impeding passage? Was there any evidence of criminal intent? Do the PWC police go around checking the IDs of anyone standing near bus stops? There is no legal obligation in the United States to carry ID when you are on foot like that. I sincerely hope there never is.
It’s sort of the bad news that goes with the Constitution. It protects the rights of all sorts of people that most of us think are jerks. That is why we generally hate the ACLU often; they protect people we dislike.
I could never say it as eloquently as Leila but they really are Constitutional purists. I rarely like the decisions arising out of cases the ACLU brings about. For starters, it is very difficult to get them to take a case. They really do protect us from ourselves and protect the rights of the minority not to be toppled by the majority.
Now in this present case, I don’t even know the facts. I am not even sure what is printed on the page is a fact. I just ran in to it last night before I shut down. I had no idea anyone had been arrested, even. I think the silence on the subject from most of the people it involves or who are usually quite vocal on the subject is just deafening.
That’s just simple statistics! The great majority of overcrowded houses WERE occupied by Hispanics – there’s no doubt about that. It stands to follow then that complaints would be mostly against Hispanic occupied houses. If all of the sudden there was a huge number of overcrowded houses occupied by white people, making noise 24×7, tossing out trash 7 days a week, etc. – I’m sure then there would have been a huge number of complaints against houses occupied by white people.
You can’t compare that to profiling as in pulling over people speeding, when the overwhelming majority of people pulled over are one ethnicity, whereas most likely there’s equal numbers of people of all ethnicities speeding. That’s racial profiling, the overcrowding issue was not racialo profiling.
Do you really think the lawsuit will be dropped if the charges are dropped. I’m sure it won’t be. Manassas City quickly changed their rule on overcrowding and the lawsuit continued anyway. These groups love to make headlines, and they’ll still go after the county and the police for it even if the charges are dropped – I’m quite sure of that.
I can remember asking my mother, as a child, about the word loitering and what it meant. I must have been learning to read. I had seen it over the dog food bags outside the local A & P. She said it was to keep the men from loafing around on the dog food bags outside the store.
I am confused about the differences in the charges. To me, it seems logical that the owner of the property would have to make the charge of ‘loitering.’ It is possible to be guilty of loitering on public property?
I actually think of loitering in the old fashioned way, when it was used to get people to quit hanging out.
Over-crowding in the county is not just an Hispanic thing. In my neighborhood, white and black people do it too. Even if you can’t count heads, count the cars. When people have to park in front of other people’s houses, maybe that means too many people live there.
Second Alamo, if you really believe what you say, then your quarrel is with the U.S. Supreme Court, not the ACLU. There are some restrictions on free speech, for example yelling fire in a crowded theater, certain kinds of pornography, conspiracy etc.
However from what you wrote SA, I guess you want “behavior” (including speech from what you said!!!) opposed by the “vast majority” to be able to be prevented under law. I would note at first you say 99.9 percent of Americans then you say “vast majority.” Wow, that’s pretty damn loose. So if atheists want to publish their arguments and stand up for their rights and atheism is opposed by the vast majority, in a Second Alamo America, all those court decisions protecting the constitutional rights of atheists according to the First Amendment could be overturned on that basis. The famous ACLU case before the SCs that protected the rights of Jehovah Witnesses to not salute the flag, at the time an incredibly unpopular minority stance, should also be thrown out. Nobody should be allowed to be a conscientious objector in a war if the “vast majority” support the war. Nobody should be allowed to be a Communist and express those views if the “vast majority” object to Communist views, as they clearly do. All of the above have been the topic of Supreme Court cases, but in SA Land, none of these rights would be protected because SA is a firm believer in the majority regardless of the fact that our Constitution explicitly protects the rights of minorities. But then the US Constitution couldn’t actually exist in SA Land. For obvious reasons, it would be null and void.
For me, that isn’t the America I want to live in. I understand, for example, how repellant it is to the “vast majority” of Americans when somebody burns a flag. (A pretty rare occurence in fact, but even so). But I respect the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled twice that that is constitutionally protected political speech (if it isn’t, what is for heaven’s sake?). For me, that is what makes the United States a very special society indeed because many countries do ban such actions.
I just wanted to note that that absolute flaming liberal Antonin Scalia joined in both opinions protecting flag burning as political speech.He has described himself as “handcuffed” by the First Amendment on the issue.
Leila,
Who exactly wrote the Constitution, and do you think that some of the things that take place today based on the Constitution’s interpretation would have been the intent of those who wrote it? I’d have to say absolutely not. You mentioned there are restrictions on free speech, and that is what I’m referring to. I just think that there should be a few more. Who decided those existing restrictions in the first place? I don’t believe George Washington came up with the list for if he had it would be a bit longer relating to todays society. BTW, I’m exercising my free speech, so lighten up!
In Leila Land anything goes! Sort of like Mexico I guess, but then I think people in PWC want a little more of SA Land, and less of Leila Land, or so it seems!
SA, I haven’t interfered with your speech, I have just taken you at your word(s). If you don’t wish to be taken seriously in what you say then I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware you were doing stand up. Silly me! I thought you actually believed that most clients of the ACLU are non-white, and that the cases of white people would be put on the back burner if even taken, or that if a “vast majority” of Americans object to a behavior it should be banned, regardless of First Amendment protection.
Obviously the framers of the Constitution could not have anticipated its later interpretation If you want to go with only what the Framers knew about and referred to specifically, you couldn’t apply the Constitution to most of modern life. However in its history, the Court the court hasn’t moved to restricting FA protection. Instead it has generally moved more and more to protecting unpopular political and religious views, eg. atheists, Communists, Nazis, Jehovah’s Witnesses, flag desecrators, etc. The ACLU had a lot to do with that. Which of those or later decisions do you oppose?
Also, when you say you support “a few more” restrictions on free speech (and presumably other constitutional rights), what are you referring to? Who and what do you want to ban? Are you with, for example, some of your compatriots who believe that non-citizens should not have the right to hold demonstrations, carrying flags etc? I remember that argument on BVBL from the time of those mass rallies of Latino immigrants (legal and otherwise). Is that one of yours? It isn’t constitutional, but we’ve already seen that isn’t exactly a sticking point for you.
I am not putting words in your mouth, maybe you fully support the non-citizen demonstrators’ right even if you object to their position, but I am just trying really hard to see what form of widely despised political speech or other Constitutionally protected behavior you want to see banned.
SA, exactly where have I stated anything goes? And in what realm are you talking about? Are you capable of saying anything that isn’t hyperbole?
I believe I have said I agree, again with the outrageous Communists and libertines on successive Supreme Courts, that our First Amendment protects free expression and religion to a very very high degree, with only the most extreme of exceptions.
SA, sometimes you just have to say the majority be damned. I think we would still have segregated schools in the South if we had gone with what the majority at the time wanted.(It seems that much of the hullabaloo being raised by the far right-wing now is because they’re afraid of slipping into minority status. Wink. Don’t be too quick to throw away minority rights.)
PS: I have to say SA, that I also found it amusing that the second rule of SA posting kicked in as well. After hyperbole, throw in Mexico. Your attempt here and in so so many cases to bring up Mexico as some sort of epithet is so charming. Never mind most Latinos in this area are not Mexican, not even close. Never mind Mexico is hardly the most lawless place on the planet, again not even close. Never mind that in fact Mexico restricts many things that the US allows! It is just a favorite recipe of yours, add Mexico and stir! Tasty!