When people ask me what I do for a living, their follow-up to my response is usually something like "That's interesting. How did you get involved in that?"
Admittedly, the tone of that question makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. I've never felt that what I do is unusual, and I didn't choose this career in order to be unique. I guess the question reminds me that most kids don't grow up wanting to start nonprofit organizations that teach people how to assert their constitutional rights during police encounters. It's difficult for me to give a short answer, even when I want to.
But then again, I've always enjoyed my Flex Your Rights (FyR) story. So here's the long answer…
The Story of Wayne
As an undergraduate at the University of Maryland at College Park I was awakened early one Saturday morning by Wayne, my close friend and fellow student. After initially snapping at him for disturbing my weekend sleep-in, Wayne calmly asked me to come to his dorm room as soon as possible.
"What’s wrong? What's up?" I asked half-concerned and half-curious.
"Just come over."
That ended the conversation. I put my shoes on and walked briskly to Wayne's Cumberland Hall dorm.
His room had been ransacked. All of the dresser draws had been pulled and the contents dumped on the floor. Anything that could be opened, tossed, or dumped on the floor was. I noticed that both his and his roommate's mattresses had been stripped and their sides ripped open with a knife.
Gloomily, Wayne and his roommate explained to me what happened the night before. Their initial goings-on were typical of college student life: video games, beer drinking, and pot smoking.
Somebody outside of the room smelled something and called the police. (Wayne never learned who called the police, but our school's rules require that residence assistants call the police -- without a warning or further investigation -- if they suspect they smell marijuana.)
When two officers knocked on his door to investigate, Wayne let them in. When the officer said, "I smell marijuana. Where are you hiding it?" Wayne responded with a defeated shrug, "We don’t have any more. We smoked it all."
"Then if you’ve got nothing to hide, you won't mind if we search your room?"
"No."
Wayne's admission and consent gave the officers more than enough legal justification to search his dorm. The search turned up a small pipe with marijuana residue. Consequently, he and his roommate were placed under arrest, fined hundreds of dollars and required to perform dozens of hours of community service. The university also kicked them out of campus housing and required them to submit to random urine testing for two semesters.
During his fateful police encounter, Wayne had waived his rights repeatedly, without knowing it. At the time, I wasn't even aware that he had waived his rights and probably wouldn't have handled the situation any more deftly. All I knew was that if I hadn’t been studying, I could have easily been there too.
The excessiveness of the police search, plus the severity and multiplicity of the legal and campus penalties imposed on my friend, gave me a small but bitter taste of legal injustice. I had no idea then that the incident in Wayne's dorm room would become such a defining moment in my life.
A Strange [In]Turn
I come from a family of successful small business people, so entering the business school my sophomore year at UMCP seemed like a natural choice. But after excelling at my at freshman "core" curriculum -- which included sociology, philosophy, psychology, government, and a writing course -- I hit a sophomore slump.
Though I enjoyed some of my business marketing and management classes, I followed my heart and became a sociology major. This was a wise choice, and my improved grades reflected a renewed enthusiasm for my schoolwork.
Admittedly, much of sociological study involves reading and writing about obscure thinkers with obscure social theories. Nevertheless, I was fascinated by ideas about the historical uses of social stigma and labeling by the powerful to control and oppress the less powerful. It was easy for me apply these ideas and see the institutional hypocrisies and inequities of the modern criminal justice system.
Fascinated by the world of ideas and public policy, I took a semester off to intern full-time at the Cato Institute, a public policy think tank in Washington, DC.
For me the most stimulating and memorable part of the internship were the lunch-time lectures by the resident scholars. I particularly recall the talks given by constitutional scholars Roger Pilon and Timothy Lynch. One of their recurring themes was that the war on drugs had carved out dangerous exceptions to Bill of Rights' protections that were permitting police to adopt more invasive and controversial police tactics.
At Cato, I learned about Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM). A DC-based lobbying group, FAMM is dedicated to the repeal of mandatory minimum sentencing laws -- severe judicial penalties that are regularly imposed on non-violent drug offenders. Originally intended to catch drug kingpins, mandatory sentencing laws have mainly succeeded in locking up non-violent Americans at unprecedented rates.
With my Cato internship ending and on the verge of graduation, I called FAMM and offered to volunteer at their upcoming annual conference in Rosslyn, VA. I had no idea how profoundly this experience would affect me.
There, I met former prisoners who served mandatory minimum sentences, and I met family members -- including young children -- of prisoners currently serving mandatory minimum sentences.
I listened aghast to incredible stories of persecution and injustice committed against ordinary Americans by our own government. Without a doubt, what these people were fighting against was then and is now our nation's greatest threat to human rights and a free society.
When I got home I broke down and cried my eyes out. Then I had an epiphany: I was going to sped the next part of my life working to change our nation's drug laws.
I spent that summer interning with FAMM. In addition to copying, filing, and dropping off information packets, I ghostwrote an op-ed piece that appeared in the Washington Post.
Entitled "Savage Sentences", the article was in response to the drug allegations against then candidate George W. Bush who seemed to have forgiven himself for his "youthful indiscretions." We urged Bush to forgive other young drug offenders currently serving harsh mandatory minimum sentences for first-time drug offenses.
While interning with FAMM, I spent many evenings volunteering with the Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet), which was sponsoring the fledgling group Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP). With DRCNet's help, SSDP was rapidly emerging as the preeminent national student group working to oppose the war on drugs.
Propelling SSDP's growth was its stance against a new drug law that Congress passed in 1998. The law, which came to be known as the Higher Education Act drug provision, cuts federal financial aid to low-income students with drug convictions.
Fixing One Problem, Finding Another
After my FAMM internship, DRCNet hired me as the campus coordinator for the CHEAR campaign to repeal the student drug provision. My job was to organize campus leaders and get their student governments to pass resolutions condemning the law. We then used these resolutions to pressure members of Congress to support our bill to repeal the law.
During my time on the campaign we got dozens of student governments to pass resolutions condemning the law, and we successfully pushed for a hearing and a vote within the House Judiciary Committee. The vote lost, but it generated a lively partisan debate over the issue.
Working to change drug laws -- or any laws -- is exhausting. Progress is incremental at best, and victories are rare if ever: Legislators love making laws and will not give up on theirs without a fight, no matter how bad its consequences may be. One of my other key responsibilities as campus coordinator was to identify and cultivate victim spokespersons. In this respect my proudest accomplishment was recruiting Marisa García -- a Latina victim of the law who became its most outspoken critic in the media.
She and other victims spoke at congressional hearings and were featured in major television and print publications, including CNN, The New York Times and Rolling Stone Magazine.
While interviewing Marisa and dozens of the law's victims, I recognized another social problem that was inseparable from the one I was working to fix.
Like Marissa, most victims of the student drug provision had been pulled deeper into the criminal justice system because they naively waived their constitutional rights during their fateful police encounters. Most had been convicted for marijuana possession and contacted us for information about their financial aid status.
On every call I'd say, "Tell me about the police encounter." The stories replayed like a broken record. And almost every story involved the victim or the victim's friend consenting to a police search. Eventually, during most of these calls I found myself delivering 20-minute know-your-rights lectures.
I was frustrated by how little most people knew about their constitutional rights during police encounters and by the lack of centralized web-based information on the topic. The bright spots were the ACLU and National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) "bust cards" and a few informative but obscure websites created by criminal defense attorneys -- but this was not enough.
I became a student of police encounters, and began compiling the disturbing facts, statistics, and general information that now appears on this website. I sent out questionnaires to dozens of criminal defense attorneys and followed up with phone interviews asking about their clients' most common mistakes and misperceptions about police encounters.
The defense attorneys confirmed my assumption: When confronted by the police, most people have little or no idea how to assert their constitutional rights. Specifically, most people will waive their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights by consenting to searches and talking to police when they have every right to refuse. Compounding the problem, people who waive their rights usually end up in more legal trouble than those who assert their rights.
This educational venture and website needed a name. On June 12th, 2002 Flex Your Rights Foundation, Inc. was officially incorporated in the District of Columbia, and one year later the IRS recognized our tax-exempt status.
Officer Friendly on the Scene
I'm not shy, but I was amazed at how intently people listened to me when I gave my know-your-rights sermons. But lecturing at people was not fun for me, and I felt a growing sense of frustration at my inability to communicate a simple message.
Worse, I felt like I had little credibility to speak authoritatively on this matter.
I had become a big fan of the TV show COPS and learned to appreciate the subtle legal tricks police use to get people to waive their rights. So I got a short haircut and walked into an obscure warehouse that sells uniforms to every police officer and security guard in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. I told them I was playing a police officer in a play and needed to look the part.
This was before 9-11, so the salesman was very accommodating.
"Sir, do you need a police badge with your outfit?"
"Yes. Yes I do."
"And handcuffs too?"
"Of course, thank you."
Officer Friendly was born, and through word of mouth our training series had become a sought after event for student groups and drug policy conferences looking for interesting speakers.
In that first year I flew to schools such as Ohio State University and University of Wisconsin-Madison to give know-your-rights lectures in front of packed lecture halls. I also performed at concerts and drug policy conferences sponsored by the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), NORML, and SSDP.
Becoming Officer Friendly was exhilarating and made me feel like a rock star, but the limits of this role-playing approach soon became apparent: I couldn't be everywhere at once. FyR needed to figure out how to spread Officer Friendly's gospel farther and wider -- without having to put him on an airplane.
BUSTED is Born, Officer Friendly Retires
As soon I started performing the Officer Friendly routine I was able to visualize it as an instructional movie. The only problem was that FyR had no money -- and I had no idea how to make a movie.
Keeping an eye on the DC independent film scene, I met filmmaker Roger Sorkin at a small independent film festival. I was impressed by his documentary, For Which It Stands, about the U.S. flag-burning debates. The movie was powerful and persuasive, and it showed me that Roger could do a lot with little.
Supportive of FyR's vision and knowing that we had nothing (including a completed script), Roger offered encouragement and advice as I sought project funding. So immediately after I received word that MPP was awarding FyR with our first major grant to produce BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters, I called Roger and hired him as our director.
And then many miracles happened and BUSTED, the first completed movie of our planned series of instructional videos, was produced.