U of M Cops Can No Longer Issue Bans For Life
David Jesse, former higher education reporter for AnnArbor.com, reported in the Detroit Free Press, that thanks to pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, officials at the University of Michigan have decided to eliminate lifetime bans. Reporter Jesse went to work for the Freep in February of 2011 shortly before a newsroom purge in which AnnArbor.com’s executive team axed one-third of its reporters, as well as the news site’s lead blogger, Edward Vielmetti.
On January 27, 2011, Dr. Mary Sue Coleman issued a directive that the University’s trespass policy be reviewed.
According to documents released by university officials in January 2011, since 2001 Michigan has issued 2,000 trespass citations in effect banning 2,000 individuals from various parts of its campus, including The Diag, University of Michigan Hospital and the UGLI. In comparison, over the “past several decades,” according to the Freep’s reporting, Oakland University has issued 400 persona non grata letters to individuals. Over the past three years, Michigan State University officials have banned just 57 individuals.
Michael Steinberg, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan told the Detroit Free Press, ”We’re concerned that the policy will be abused and that it has been abused.”
An Assistant professor at Wayne State’s Law School, who obviously understands the law, but whose tenure had better not hinge on subject-verb agreement, explained that the University of Michigan’s Trespass policy allegedly neglects to respect due process. “Other potential issues, said Lund, is that officers can issue the warnings without any notice and without any hearing and that the policy allows officers to cite people who are merely suspected of committing a crime.”
When questioned by a Freep reporter in January about the trespass policy, U of M’s Deputy Police Chief summed up the problem, thusly: ”We get a lot of people, of a criminal element, who come on our campus and prey on our students.”
The trespass policy, as well as the actions of campus DPS officers may have cost the University of Michigan $550,000 to settle a lawsuit with Dr. Andrei Borisov. In 2008 Dr. Andrei Borisov, a 15-year employee of U of M who had been raising questions about how some grant money was being used in the pediatrics/cardiology department. Following a meeting in which his superiors asked for his resignation, Borisov said he was escorted to his office by police officers who read a trespass warning to him and then arrested him when he attempted to take his briefcase. Borisov was acquitted of the charges he faced as a result of the incident, said his attorney, Deborah Gordon of Bloomfield Hills. He subsequently filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against U of M which he recently won.
Under the settlement agreement obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, Michigan officials purged negative reviews in the lecturer’s file, as well as the “do not rehire” marker within his personnel record. As a part of the settlement, Michigan officials were forced to post a public apology on the college’s website April 22, 2011 calling events involving Borisov and his former employer “unfortunate and unintended.” The apology also said that, “the University regrets any incorrect information published about these events that harmed Dr. Borisov’s reputation.”
On the heels of that settlement, the trespass policy was revised. This opens the door to about 1,800 adults who have been banned for life from campus. Interim U of M DPS Police Chief Joe Piersante told the Freep, “he expects about 900 people to be notified by the end of the summer that they have been dropped from the list.”
Freep reporter David Jesse writes:
U-M drew criticism from the ACLU of Michigan and other groups for its appeals process. Under the old policy, the police chief was the sole appeals judge. Under the new policy, a person can appeal his or her ban to the police chief and then to the chief’s boss, the associate vice president for operations and facilities.
“(The new policy) reflects the values of the community in a more robust way,” said U-M General Counsel Suellyn Scarnecchia, who rewrote the policy. “It’s more transparent and more detailed.”
Beginning July 1, 2011, people who land on the University of Michigan’s list of people banned from either a building, campus, or all three campuses, will be banned for a maximum of one year, rather than for life.
a2politico: to take you up on your invitation to ‘tell you more”:
I have no specific information or particular feelings about most of the multiple thousand UMich trespassees..
.But the ones I ( following ms kerry d) specifically referred to have been conspicuous public eye and earsores ( bullhorns are sometimes involved) for multiple years in front of a local synagogue, at various cultural events , The COOP, the student assembly , city council etc….
And I ( and I think God too, according to the more sensible theologies i know about) absolutely do not believe in forgiveness when there is no repentence. Neither should the UM.
However, should any of the aforementioned do a public ‘mea culpa’ as was done by one of their former compatriots in a recantation article ( “the Few and the Just” in the Feb 2010 Washtenaw Jewish News) I’d be happy to provide them with scourges, sackcloth and ashes… and maybe even lunch at a nice Jewish deli i know of locally..
Chicken soup and knaidlach are good for even the most twisted souls.
@aaron thanks for your comments, as always. I actually loved the “character suicide” point. How many people do we know who’ve done it, including politicos? However, as the guidelines make clear, you can rip into the pieces, you can rip in the politics, you can rip into the ideas. What you can’t do is rip into the peeps. So rip away. You think the trespass policy should include bans for life? Really? With no due process? Tell me more.
@a2politico…re the editing of my previous comment:
your site /your rules ;, but the people i mentioned by name ( only following the esteemed ‘kerry D’) have made themselves into notorious public figures by word, deed and obnoxious antisemitic signage…and you can’t ‘character assassinate’ those who persist in ‘character suicide’.
A2PNotes: This comment was edited.
The cases of local UM event disrupters (and the support of them by their fawning cheerleaders) are 2 of the best examples of the appropriateness of the UM traspass rule.
Oh and then there’s stalker Andrew Shirvell…also properly “trespassed”.
So on the whole the UM DPS strikes me as more to be trusted than the cranks they “trespass”.
Thank you for covering this most important story, A2Politico.
The Borisov case was just one of many where some of our nation’s top scholars and activists have been the targets of unfair abuse by the DPS. It had become an organization that seemed more to bow to the political intent of the U-M administration rather than enforcing the rule of law in a neutral and evenhaded manner.
I witnessed the DPS in action in 2006 when questionable police conduct ensued at the campus presentation of former Reagan administraion staffer Prof. Raymond Tanter. A local political activist, immigration attorney Blaine Coleman was violently thrown to the ground and was subsequenly treated for a concussion. Dr. Catherine Wilkerson, a physician attempting to give assistance to Coleman, was violently tossed against a wall; about a week after an internal affairs grievance got dismissed that was filed by Wilkerson against the DPS police onsite and about four weeks after the incident the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office issued a criminal warrant against Wilkerson; she was subsequently acquitted after a jury trial prosecuted by then-APA Margaret Connors in which Dr. Aimee Smith, a local Green Party co-chairperson testified; Smith videotaped the incident and an angry onsite officer told her to stop taping after he realized Smith’s videocam was audiovisually recording the incident.
I have heard of other incidents where political activists and minorities, particularly black and Middle Eastern individuals have been targeted for heavy-handed treatment by DPS including inclusion on the “famed” list of banned individuals. County Commissioner Yousef Rabhi had been placed on the list for his political activism.
The acquittals of Drs. Borisov and Wilkerson should be a wake-up call to the U-M administration to abolish its trespass system in its entirety and address real problems – like the situation of former DPS chief Ken Magee and his “disabilty” claim.