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| | Might Does Not Make Right For Orange County Police And Deputy Sheriffs. No Crime In Photographing Sim Hoffman, M.D. On The Sidewalk. Part I.
By Lonce LaMon - August 10, 2012
frankie4 at 8:13 PM August 07, 2012
Los Angeles Times
one thing is for sure the police lie about everything and are nothing but cowards. they are very dangerous and cold-blooded killers. there is no rise in crime or the make-believe gangs. the police are lazy. and want the people to know one thing they are God, do not question, do not protect yourself, do not say anything to a cop or they will murder you, do not call them for help, if your house was broken into to bad they will not help, say something you will end up in prison. its time for the people to wake up get rid of the police unions get real police who care about the people. they get more dangerous every day.
The powerful voice of this young writer, responding in the L.A. Times on Tuesday night to the recent late-July Police killings in Anaheim, California, of two young Latino men, with all of his bad punctuation and grammatical errors, rings through so powerfully to my heart with such an eloquent beauty, that I won’t touch the art of his expression by changing the punctuation or grammar just to suit my educated sensibilities. I will leave his canvas as it is…
This young man’s voice sings with the elements of a disturbing truth. He’s got more guts than I’ve got. My own disturbing truth over an encounter I had with an Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy last May 18th at the Orange County Superior Court Building is finally coming to my throat. But this young man speaks now with immediacy, just two and a
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The truth is that five people have been killed by Anaheim police since January 1st. |
half weeks after Anaheim police gunned down and killed a 25-year-old Latino man, Manuel Angel Diaz, by allegedly shooting him in the back, and then after he fell to his knees, shooting him once again in the head. A second man, 21-year-old Joel Acevedo, was shot and killed by Anaheim Police the very next day.
The Anaheim community of Latinos has erupted in fury and continues to writhe in pain. Protests and riots have ensued. Businesses were vandalized, windows smashed. The truth is that five people have been killed by Anaheim police since January 1st. Many Latinos in Anaheim feel the Police mistreat non-white residents.
Well, as a White Anglo Saxon Protestant, affectionately known as a WASP, who grew up in Orange County in the 1960s, graduated from La Habra High School in the 1970s, and naturally lived in La Habra which has today been nicknamed “Guadalahabra”, I will now tell my story.
I sat down on the seat-wall bordering the sidewalk just at the corner closest to the judge’s underground parking entrance, in front of the Orange County Superior Courthouse in Santa Ana, California, on May 18th 2012. I checked the functionality of my Sony hybrid video-still
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... as a White Anglo Saxon Protestant... who grew up in Orange County in the 1960s... I will now tell my story. |
camera. I needed to check the light-level, the focus, the image movement. So, I just aimed randomly along the sidewalk and ran the video briefly while taking a single still shot. All was working well. I was ready.
I had raced out of court room C-40 and descended the elevator in a mad dash so I could catch Sim Hoffman, M.D., the notorious Buena Park radiologist indicted for over 17 million dollars in workers’ compensation fraud, on camera as he left the building after his court appearance. As an ambitious paparazza and journalist, I knew from past experiences of observing Hoffman, what exit he used and where he parked his car. So, I was prepared with my gear and lying in wait for him.
Suddenly I was startled by the sight of two deputy sheriffs making a bee-line right at me. They were walking swiftly, almost running, from the courthouse exit door. They called out to me. Damn, I thought to myself. They are here to ruin my shoot.
This writer was standing right here where this man is walking (pointed out by the red arrow) when I was inappropriately confronted and harrassed by two deputy sheriffs on May 18th 2012. I was on the sidewalk where I was told both in 2009 and 2010 by sergeants that I was allowed to take pictures. I was preparing to shoot still photographs and video of Sim Hoffman, M.D., the notorious fraud doctor, who is being prosecuted by the Orange County District Attorney's office. Photo by Lonce LaMon, December 23rd, 2009, all rights reserved.
They reached me and one of them asked me what I was doing. I precisely explained what I was doing. The one deputy who was speaking while the other was silent asked to see my identification. I asked him why he needed to see my identification. There was no reason. I was standing on the public sidewalk using a camera as any tourist could do.
The talking deputy, whom I later identified as Deputy Fernando Serrano, ostensibly a Latino man, handed me a paper and demanded to see my identification. He was frighteningly aggressive in his manner and his stance as he stood before me. His aggression was way too extreme given the situation. In that moment my anxiety shot so high I experienced a flight-or-fight reaction. I wanted to run for my own safety. But, instead of running, I forced my rational function to override my irrational instincts and I managed to pull from my purse my International Writers and Photographers Association badge, which I don’t always hang around my neck unless completely necessary as it tends to get caught on my camera when I’m shooting.
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I shot this photograph of Sim Hoffman, M.D. (left) and his attorney Richard Moss (right) leaving the Orange County Superior Court House on August 19th 2011. I was told back in 2009 and 2010 that I was perfectly within my rights to stand on this sidewalk and do my work as a paparazza snapping candid shots of perpetrators of workers' compensation fraud leaving court. Photo by Lonce LaMon, August 19th 2011, all rights reserved.
As I handed Deputy Fernando Serrano my badge, I explained to him that I was completely within my rights to stand on the sidewalk and take photographs without a permit. I was on the public sidewalk, and I had been confronted by deputies back in 2010 while shooting the façade of this same building for the cover picture of my series on the AIG-Matrix embezzlement case in the exact same spot. I had won that argument with the sergeant at the security desk when I explained what I had done. That sergeant replied that I was perfectly within my rights to shoot photos from the sidewalk without any court permit.
Now I was dealing with overly zealous deputies who once again wanted to harass me for doing photography from the exterior sidewalk. I read the paper Deputy Serrano had handed me and pointed out to him that the paper stated no filming, photography, or electronic recording was permitted in the courthouse… The key word was “in”. I showed him the word “in” with emotion. I made a huge point of it to wake him up. I was certainly outside the courthouse.
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I shot this photo of Sim Hoffman, M.D. (left) and his attorney Richard Moss (right) on August 19th 2011 right when they turned the bend out of the court house corridor exit-entrance and stepped onto the exterior sidewalk. Photo by Lonce LaMon, August 19th 2011, all rights reserved.
Here’s what the paper read:
No filming, photography, or electronic recording is permitted in the courthouse except as permitted in the courtroom and designed area consistent with California Rule of Court 1.150 and Orange County Superior Court Rule 180. Any device used to film or record without permission will be confiscated and violators will be escorted from the building by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
Deputy Serrano demanded that he escort me into the courthouse to talk to the security department and to the Media Relations Director, Carol Levitsky. I knew well who Carol Levitsky was, but there was no reason for me to talk to her in this situation and there was no reason for me to talk to the sergeant at security. I knew the rules and the boundaries well from many past experiences. So, I told Deputy Serrano that that wasn’t necessary, that I didn’t want to be harassed by his aggression, and that instead I was going home.
Actually, I wanted to run and felt afraid. I remembered how my past hired paparazzo had been harassed by another Orange County deputy at the back of the court house the year prior while shooting Dr. Thomas Heric coming out the back with his wife after court. That photographer was riddled with anxiety all the way home because the deputy had demanded to take down his driver’s license number.
Photo by Lonce LaMon, January 5, 2010, all rights reserved.
I was all astonishment once again. Don’t these deputies know what paparazzi do? Don’t they check out the National Enquirer in the market check-out lines and see movie stars, like Lindsey Lohan and Mel Gibson, coming out the doors of court houses after they’ve appeared on their drunk driving charges? Don’t they know these pictures are the works of paparazzi? Hello? We stand on sidewalks and shoot our subjects on their way out! It doesn’t get any simpler than that!
“How do I know you aren’t planning on planting a bomb?” Deputy Serrano then said to me.
I was ready to scream. I was also thinking this poor guy can’t tell his rear end from third base. It’s one thing to look like an Osama Bin Laden terrorist, and another thing to look like a typical paparazza photo-journalist. I’m covering fraud! Workers’ Compensation fraud!
In that exact moment I watched Sim Hoffman, M.D. walk right by me within two feet of my body with his attorney, Richard Moss. I wanted to shake this god damned deputy in the worst way! My urge was to follow after Hoffman and tell Deputy Serrano, look, Sim Hoffman and his gang have been indicted for defrauding workers’ comp carriers and TPA’s out of over 17 million dollars (a number which the DA had to choose as a serious limit) and I have to go! I can’t stand here and shoot the breeze!
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I got darned close to Sim Hoffman, M.D. here in dead center on August 19th 2011 on the sidewalk in front of the Orange County Superior Court House. Photo by Lonce LaMon, August 19th 2011, all rights reserved.
But Deputy Serrano wouldn’t let me go. He demanded that I stay and allow him to escort me into the court house. I argued with him. Why did he want to escort me into the court house when I was outside the court house? On the sidewalk! I pointed out to him again that the very paper he handed me stated “No filming, photography… is permitted in the court house….” and I repeated that I was outside the court house. I asked him if he could read English. But he demanded with intimidating and frightening aggression that I had to go with him into the court house.
I actually believed, in that very moment, that if I ran after Sim Hoffman, and defied this Deputy Serrano, he might shoot me in the back. I was dealing with a brute in a Sheriff’s Deputy’s uniform who was not only bursting with aggression, but was also an illiterate.
I further argued. I did not want to be dragged into that court house and be interrogated and humiliated once again. I told Serrano I had not even started to shoot. My subject had walked right by me while my camera was down. But Serrano countered me by stating, “Yes, you were shooting. I saw you shooting along the sidewalk. Now when I take you inside and make you show me what you shot, I will prove that you are lying.”
So, now he was calling me a liar. He was a smart mouthed, disrespectful punk who had no respect for media professionals whatsoever. He had no respect for anyone. This was the kind of cop who treats every person like he or she is an inmate in the
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So, now he was calling me a liar. He was a smart mouthed, disrespectful punk who had no respect for media professionals whatsoever. He had no respect for anyone. |
Orange County jail.
He was too ignorant to know that I had been checking my lens and my light response before Sim Hoffman had even come down the elevator and out the door. He was an uneducated, totally untrained, brutish individual who had no clue of the enormous service journalists do for law enforcement all over the country and the world. He has no clue that journalists are law enforcements’ greatest allies.
He does not know that Sara Ganim of The Patriot-News in Pennsylvania is the journalist who broke open the Jerry Sandusky scandal by interviewing victims and directing them to investigators well before police investigators had a clue of Sandusky’s crimes. Law enforcement depends heavily upon journalists and forges an intimate alliance. But Deputy Serrano obviously doesn’t know this. He thinks journalists are out to plant bombs. And I’m sure he clearly doesn’t know that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were the journalists who broke open the Watergate scandal. He probably wasn’t even born yet in 1973.
One of the other things I feared, after reading the paper Serrano handed me, was that Serrano was going to confiscate my camera. To me this was an incredible threat. I was dealing with such an untrained and unknowledgeable deputy that I knew practically anything could happen.
To lose my high end Sony digital camera or even temporarily have it confiscated would utterly devastate me. I would never be able to replace it in this economy. My cameras are intimately connected to my livelihood. Without my cameras I’m like a carpenter without his hammers.
By now I clung so tightly to my camera bag that I was like a mother clutching her child.
“I saw you filming along the sidewalk,” Serrano went on some more. “You were filming, and it’s allowed to do photography out here, but not to film. No media vans are allowed to park here either. Now if I demand that you show me what’s on your disk I will prove that you are lying.”
Then, he demanded again I come inside the courthouse with him or else. He was relishing calling me a liar once more. He reminded me of Al Pacino in The Godfather with his smart-assed mouth. All the while that he didn’t know what he was talking about.
Photo by Lonce LaMon, January 6th 2010, all rights reserved.
I do not have a film camera. I have a Sony video-still hybrid. It is certainly not a film camera. There are millions of cell phone cameras that can do the same thing as my camera simply at a lower level of quality. So, his idea that I was filming and that one can do photography but not film, was a lot of balderdash.
Why is the Orange County Sheriff’s department hiring these types of personalities? What in the hell is wrong with Orange County law enforcement overall? Why when I do still photography and video outside the Downtown Los Angeles Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center when Kelly Soo Park and her entourage are walking out the exit door, do the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies just stare at me and smile? Why did the Bailiff recently in the court room of Kelly Soo Park’s pretrial proceedings so very politely tell me to take off my hat because hats are not allowed in the court room? Why was he so respectful and polite over my lack of understanding of a certain court room rule, while Orange County deputies are so disrespectful?
Before Serrano was done with me, he demanded I talk to another deputy who was inside the courthouse at the security desk, as the sergeant wasn’t there, and I was handed the exact same message on paper, but this time it was on a blue piece of paper rather than a white one. And again, I pointed out the language of “in the courthouse” and expressed that I was outside of the courthouse on the sidewalk, where a sergeant over a year prior told me I was within my rights to stand and take pictures. But this other deputy insisted, just like Serrano, that where I was standing was somehow “inside the courthouse”.
The beauty of this photograph I shot in the course of my work on December 23rd, 2009, reminds me I should never be harrassed and disrespected by untrained and misguided Orange County Deputy Sheriffs ever. Photo by Lonce LaMon, December 23rd 2009, all rights reserved.
Before I was allowed to leave, after a search for Carol Levitsky could not locate her, I told Serrano that he ruined my work day and my day’s shoot. He replied, “No I didn’t. You told me you were going home!”
Smart-mouthed wise-guy. Just like a street thug out of The Godfather. He took what I said and twisted it out of context. He’s a “nefasto” who always has to have the last word. Why is this type of personality working for the Orange County Sheriff’s department?
to be continued Monday, August 13th, 2012
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