Oppression Continues in the Courtroom and in Media Coverage: a report back from Tyquan Rivera's pretrial hearing

Rochester Indymedia has resolved to witness Tyquan Rivera's pretrial hearings and trial, first-hand, after observing an ongoing pattern of sloppy and inaccurate reporting of the case by the local corporate media. With the help of a journalist from Boston Indymedia, who was also present on July 1st in Judge Joseph Valentino's courtroom for his rulings, Rochester Indymedia began to notice other disturbingly oppressive patterns developing in Rivera's case, enacted both in the courtroom and in the ongoing corporate media coverage.

When officer DiPonzio was reported shot early this year, Rochester Indymedia wasn't surprised by what we recognized as a full-on media spectacle constructed by local television and print in their early coverage of the story. A survey of stories put out by just one outlet, RNews, within the first month after the shooting occurred, showed that the station had 20 or more stories sympathetic to DiPonzio. We were appalled by this media outpouring of pathos for the injured officer, which was in stark relief to the villainization of Rivera by RNews and others–particularly once allegations of police brutality leading up to the alleged shooting of DiPonzio by Rivera surfaced.

A survey of subsequent coverage from RNews showed that the spectacle's fervor had redoubled with a reporting blitz of community events mounted on DiPonzio's behalf: 3/13/2009, "First Pitch Honors DiPonzio–throws out first ball of the Rochester baseball season"; 3/13/2009, "Kids Save Their Pennies for DiPonzio"; 3/13/2009, "Photos Released of Officer's Recovery"; 3/15/2009, "Injured Rochester Cop Thanks Community"; 3/17/2009, "Pot of Gold Fundraiser for DiPonzio"; 3/23/2009, "Amerks Game Benefits Officer DiPonzio"; 4/01/2009, "Officer DiPonzio Heads Home"; 4/10/2009, "Officer DiPonzio Remembers Day of Shooting"; 4/10/2009, "DiPonzio Drops Puck for Amerks"; 4/11/2009, "DiPonzio Throws Out First Pitch"; 5/08/2009, "Lilac Festival Kicks Off Opening Day–DiPonzio is parade grand marshall"; and 5/18/2009, "Officer DiPonzio Meets Cal Ripken Jr.". This media deluge in favor of DiPonzio was multiplied by all the other corporate-owned television stations and newspapers. Nowhere in the corporate media coverage were the allegations of police brutality on the part of DiPonzio and his fellow Rochester Police Department officers prior to the shooting mentioned.

Another, more current example using RNews is in order. In our report back from last month, Rochester Indymedia reported that Thomas Cassidy, an investigator for the RPD, had a discussion with a 13 year-old boy who allegedly sold Rivera a BB gun for $35. Rochester Indymedia and RNews were both in the same courtroom and heard the same testimony. The difference is telling: RNews claimed that the gun was not only a .22-caliber riffle, but the actual shooting weapon; Tom Cassidy testified he interviewed a 13-year-old boy who said he sold Rivera the .22-caliber rifle used in the shooting. Ben Dean-Kawamura, a reporter with Rochester Indymedia, did a review of corporate news stories regarding last month's hearing and said, "it made [him] sick." He found that RNews, by far, had the worst accuracy with Channel 10, Channel 13, and the Democrat & Chronicle being close runner-ups. That media review can be found at: http://rochester.indymedia.org/mod/comments/display/31678/index.php.

Media spectacle is the shaping of current events into an artificial narrative arc for collective viewing. Mass viewing of a media spectacle serves to reproduce and re-instate conventional social norms (Newcomb, Dayan, Katz et al.). Rochester Indymedia suspects that the way in which the story of Tyquan Rivera and Anthony DiPonzio has been transformed into a spectacle by conventional media has everything to do with shoring up and strengthening a racist social status quo in Rochester. We feel the spectacle is occurring at this time because existing racist norms are threatened with disruption if the news of DiPonzio's and other RPD officers' brutality reaches a wider audience.

Typically, mass media spectacles are constructed with the cooperation of the media and the social actors being covered (Dayan & Katz 1992). Although it is highly likely that DiPonzio's police brutality will come out during the trial, thus far we have been subjected to a torrent of coverage from out in the community framing officer DiPonzio as a fallen hero. At the July 1st pretrial hearing, Rochester Indymedia encountered another disturbing element in the growing and transforming racist media spectacle. The latest act in this spectacle came to us courtesy of Monroe County court personnel, performed live in the courtroom in front of TV and print reporters covering the case.

It was immediately apparent to our Boston Indymedia colleague that the racial and gender dynamics in the courtroom were strange and unbalanced. All of the officers of the court (judge, clerks, law-enforcement deputies, and bailiffs) were white and predominantly men. The only people of color present were not associated with Judge Valentino's court: Rivera and his family, a paralegal from the public defender's office, and two reporters out of the dozen or so media representatives present.

At one point, Rivera's mother, Wanda Lise (pronounced "lease"), was called forward by Judge Valentino to discuss the need for a public defender for her son after the judge announced that George Conaty "Rivera's original attorney" had died. As Lise rose from the gallery seats to approach the bench, about a half dozen fully armed and uniformed, white, male, sheriff's deputies started rising from their seats and nearly surrounded her as she walked down the aisle toward the judge. She had to wedge herself between several of the deputies in order to address the judge a little more than halfway towards the back of the courtroom before being allowed to move closer so the judge could hear her. Lise, a petite woman dressed simply in a tailored white shirtwaist and black slacks, had to crane her neck to see the judge and speak to him from inside the ring of deputies who were all at least a head taller than she.

During that same discussion of who would represent Rivera, Francis Allen, a paralegal from Tim Donaher's office was also called by the judge. Allen, an older African-American woman elegantly dressed in a traditional West African women's attire, was also surrounded and impeded from moving forward to the bench by deputies even after she rose, told the judge that she was Donaher's representative, and had a complete set of court ID tags in full view hanging from a lanyard around her neck. Only when Allen's ID tags were closely read by one of the deputies was she allowed to come all the way forward and take a seat at the defense table to confer with Rivera about his representation for the hearing and upcoming trial. None of the other people present, reporters or court officials (all white save the two reporters of color), received this show of force and distrust from court personnel.

After talking with Allen, Lise, and asking Rivera if he understood what was going on, the judge accepted the change in attorneys. Mr. Culver Barr was named as Rivera's new defense attorney. Mr. Barr requested that the trial be postponed for a few weeks so that Rivera's mother, a mother of three and a health care worker, would have time to gather the funds needed to continue with adequate representation for her son. The judge accepted this and rescheduled the trial for August 25th at 2pm.

At the first pretrial hearing on June 11, 15 year-old Rivera, a small-framed and young-looking person of color, was brought into court wearing handcuffs and leg shackles chained to a belt around his waist. Fortunately, the Monroe County Sheriff's Department's extreme security measures for Rivera were gone from the July 1st hearing. Rivera's restraints were ordered removed at the last court session after Judge Valentino exhaustively explained to the deputies that there was no reason to continue using them if Rivera had a history of cooperating. This led our reporters to believe that Judge Valentino had succeeded in establishing an atmosphere of respect and restraint among the law enforcement officers in his court. However, after seeing the oppressive spectacle directed at Rivera's mother, and even more incredibly towards Allen, an African American officer of the judiciary, it is clear that the Monroe County sheriffs and bailiffs are still all too capable of enforcing and asserting a racist social status quo in the courtroom.

Another disturbing pattern that emerged from our observation of the pretrial hearings was the inappropriate manner in which police officers and the prosecution gathered and presented evidence against Rivera. The previous hearing had to do with the questionable admissibility of the prosecution's "confirmatory identification" (police and community member ID's of Rivera), and a police interview of Rivera shortly after his voluntary surrender to the authorities.

Rochester Indymedia felt that the confirmatory identification given by District Attorney Mike Green's witnesses at the last hearing was very weak because none of the people testifying, police officers or neighbors, knew Rivera's name. Their affidavits and testimony could only identify him as someone named "oohey" or "hooey," or "that light-skinned kid." We understood from a radio interview of a witness at the scene of the alleged shooting in January (which was reported in the same interview as happening after white RPD officers, including DiPonzio, allegedly beat and brutalized Rivera and other young people of color present without cause) that the people who know the defendant in his neighborhood called him "Quan." In addition, it was questionable how well officer Bing Reaves Jr. knew Rivera as he saw him very briefly on three instances over the course of three years. Part of the confirmatory identification procedure is to "establish that the witness is a long-time acquaintance of the person being identified," according to the Seventh Judicial District Law Library. From what Rochester Indymedia understands, it's intended to show that without a doubt, one person knows another. Based on that knowledge, it seemed, without a doubt, that this testimony should have been suppressed.

Judge Valentino ruled that Green's shaky confirmatory identification was acceptable stating that the police procedures for identifying Rivera, "were not unduly suggestive." Among the evidence thrown out from the earlier pretrial hearing was an interview of Rivera taken after he gave himself up voluntarily. The condition of Rivera's surrender to the authorities was that he would not be interviewed by the police at that time. The police agreed to these terms given by the defense attorney and then brazenly went ahead and questioned him anyway when they took him into custody.

It should be noted that Rivera did not turn himself in to authorities to confess to the crime. The police had been tearing his neighborhood apart looking for him, so he decided to turn himself in. Rivera has always maintained his innocence.

At the July 1st hearing we also learned that Mr. Conaty, before he died, had filed a motion to suppress any evidence found through a search conducted by police at 65 Dayton St. on the day of the shooting on the grounds that the mother may have been coerced by police into allowing a search and/or that police conducted a search without a warrant and before consent was given. The judge felt that he didn't have enough information to make a ruling and stated that he needed more information. Mr. Barr reported to the court that he had an affidavit from Lise regarding the matter and wanted the court to reconsider the suppression motion. The defense alleged that Rivera's mother was held for many hours by the RPD and coerced into giving consent to police to enter her premises without being told why she was being held and without receiving advice about her rights concerning the search of her home and its contents. Mr. Barr said, in a press conference just after the hearing, that this evidence would be significant if allowed by the court because a rifle was seized during the alleged improper police search. The judge considered the new information and scheduled another pretrial hearing on July 21st at 2pm to resolve the matter.

Rochester Indymedia's guest journalist from Boston commented that there seemed to be no questioning of, or consequences for, improper police conduct in Rochester. The out-of-town journalist wondered why no one in the local judiciary, media, or community was even asking why the police could do these improper searches and interrogations with impunity. The only personal and professional consequences for the police and the D.A., if they didn't play by the rules, was to have their evidence and testimony thrown out of the case. That leaves a wide margin for police discretion when it comes to terrorizing neighborhoods of their choosing.

This "anything goes" police culture may have been the precipitating factor that coalesced into the shooting of officer DiPonzio. If the officers who answered the call at the house where Rivera and his friends were gathered hadn't thought they could get away with brutalizing these young folks without any repercussions (protracted and violent beatings by RPD officers as reported by the eyewitness to the radio station), then Rivera's alleged retaliation against officer DiPonzio may never have occurred in the first place.

Rivera, in a phone call to Mr. Barr after hearing that Mr. Conaty had died, expressed sadness and compassion, telling Mr. Barr to, "Keep your chin up." Mr. Barr expressed that his client was doing "OK" in light of the circumstances.