REASONABLE SUSPICION?

Rod Amis Says He Was Arrested Because Cops Saw A Black Man Handing Seven
Dollars to a White Man. Police Say the Arrest Wasn't About Skin Color, It
Was About Drug Dealing.

It was almost too easy. The two New Orleans Police Department officers
looked out their passenger-side window and saw green currency in the air,
passing from one hand to another.

It was May 19, just past midnight, and NOPD officers Steven Lindsey and
Joseph Lusk were working the night shift for the Eighth District -- the
French Quarter station. With Lindsey at the wheel, the car approached the
corner of Dauphine Street and Esplanade Avenue, right outside a Circle K
store. There, the two officers saw what they describe in their Incident
Report as "a hand-to-hand transaction, believed to be drug-related, between
a white male and a black male standing at the corner of Esplanade and
Dauphine." The black male was Rod Amis; the white male was his 28-year-old
roommate. Both were taken away in handcuffs.

"I knew something was going on," Lindsey testified in court this past
Thursday. "I saw money changing hands. It was the jerkiness of their hand
motion that set us off."

News of Rod Amis' arrest flew through the Faubourg Marigny. One man shook
his head when he heard about it. "People talk," he says, "and we all know
who's into drugs. Rod isn't."

"I can't remember Rod doing anything besides just drinking a beer," says
Jim Thorrick, Amis' former landlord. "He's an intelligent, fairly well-read
guy who used to sit on my porch and smoke cigarettes, talk to people."

Passing the time in Orleans Parish Prison was much more difficult,
especially for a 51-year-old man who'd never been arrested before. "Days
inside last like months," writes Amis in a detailed chronicle of his stay
that he posted onto his Web magazine (www.g21.net/mars353.htm).

In Amis' online 'zine, he describes his mind-numbing OPP routine. "We get
up at four in the morning if we want to eat breakfast, we call out the last
three digits of our case numbers twice a day, we walk single file
everywhere we go." If the single-file line comes to a halt, inmates must
face the wall and stare at it without talking, he writes.

Ten days after his arrest, Amis' bond was reduced, slashing his bail from
$3,000 down to $400, with the caveat that he submit to weekly drug tests.
His friends ponied up the cash, and finally Amis heard what he says
everyone waits for -- his own name called over the tier's public address
system, a pause, and then the words, "roll out."

Once free, it seemed as though Amis couldn't walk down the street without
being asked about his arrest. "I was really embarrassed at first," Amis
says. "Who wants everybody to know that you just got thrown in jail?"

Amis is well-known in the Marigny and the French Quarter from his various
jobs -- Internet whiz, bicycle deliveryman, bartender. One co-worker
connected Amis to lawyer Evelyn Adams, who became "absolutely convinced" of
his innocence. She's now his defense attorney.

Michelle Embree, who met Amis while he was tending bar at the Spotted Cat
on Frenchmen Street, heard about his arrest and immediately got on the
phone. "We didn't think he'd have a fair shake if he couldn't pay for
decent defense," says Embree. At the end of May, she organized a drag-show
fundraiser to help him pay for his bail and legal fees. In the lower
right-hand corner of the fundraiser's flyer was a photo of Amis and the
words "Proceeds benefit Rod Amis -- another victim of NOPD's crime
fabrication dept."

Strong words. That's because, says Embree, "There was no reason for the
police to arrest him. To me, it sounded like they were suspicious of a
white man and black man interacting."

On May 19, Rod Amis -- when instructed to do so -- leaned against the squad
car, spread his legs, and prepared to be patted down by Officer Lindsey.

He had originally planned to be out on a date that night, but the woman
he'd asked had called at the last minute to reschedule their plans. So he'd
been sitting at home, having a cocktail, when his roommate convinced him to
get out of the house and go to a friend's party on Dauphine Street. Amis
insisted that they not arrive empty-handed. "We had to buy beer to bring
along -- it's only good form," he says.

The two roomies set off for the party around midnight and stopped en route
at the Circle K. There, Amis says, his roommate handed over seven dollars
- -- his share of the 12-pack -- and stayed outside to smoke a cigarette.
Amis walked in and found the beer coolers locked -- not unusual for that
time of night. He asked the clerk, a new hire, to open up the cooler for
him. She flatly refused, telling him they weren't selling beer, he says.
"She was fairly rude, and I thought she just had an attitude about me."

Amis gives the clerk's name. When approached at Circle K last week, the
clerk says she remembers that evening -- because she'd watched the arrests.
"He would have had to wait until I could go around to the back to get the
beer," she says. But he simply didn't stick around long enough for her to
do that, she says.

Amis says that he was the only person in the store at the time and that she
didn't tell him to wait. Instead, he says, he walked outside, told his
roommate what had happened and returned the seven dollars.

Then he saw an officer emerge from the fully marked NOPD squad car, which
was parked near the corner on Dauphine Street, in the same space where
squad cars often park while their occupants are getting cigarettes, snacks
or cold drinks. This time, it was Officer Steve Lindsey, says Amis, and he
was yelling, "Hey you, brother -- come over here."

Amis walked toward the car, and Lindsey asked him what he had handed the
other guy. "Seven dollars," Amis told him. "We were going to buy beer, but
the clerk told me they aren't selling any." On the witness stand last week,
Lindsey testified that Amis had offered him that reason, but he'd told him
to save it for court.

Amis says that Lindsey then asked, "You ever been arrested before?" Amis
told him no. He says that Lindsey replied, "I find that hard to believe,"
and told Amis to spread his legs and lean against the car. As Amis was
being frisked, he saw his roommate take off running, only to be tackled by
Lusk.

Inside the roommate's pocket was a Carmex container. The officer opened it,
revealing a small baggie of white powder.

The officers handcuffed both men and advised the roommate that he was under
arrest for possession of cocaine. Amis, who had only cigarettes, $15, and
housekeys in his possession, was told that he was under arrest for
possession with intent to distribute -- in other words, drug dealing. If
convicted, state mandatory minimums specify that the most lenient sentence
he could receive is a two-year prison sentence.

Amis' roommate insisted to police that Amis didn't give him any drugs,
something he later repeated in a sworn deposition.

"We think he did," Lusk replied, and placed them both in the squad car.

After the arrest, Lindsey and Lusk entered Amis' money into evidence along
with some items from his roommate: the Carmex container and its contents,
and a brown wallet containing about $50.

When the pair entered Orleans Parish Prison, they were searched again.
There, says the roommate, deputies removed seven dollars in cash from his
right-front pants pocket. He has a receipt from the OPP property room for
that amount.

It was the beer money Amis had handed him, he says.

By late May, word of Amis' arrest had even spread to San Francisco, where
Amis had lived and worked throughout the 1990s. When the news reached radio
station KPOO, they aired a report about it.

News director Harrison Chastang remembers Amis, who freelanced for the San
Francisco Bay Guardian, worked on high-profile political campaigns and
wrote Internet columns until that boom ended. "Rod was your average
hard-working guy, doing the dotcom thing," Chastang explains. Chastang says
that he should have been surprised to hear about Amis' arrest. He was not.
"Black men in this country know that this could happen to any of us," he
says solemnly.

This sentiment is nothing new -- it has often been portrayed in movies,
expressed in the media, and complained about in corner bars. Amis
understands why the cops might feel the need to ask him questions. But, he
believes, they made quick assumptions that an older black man talking with
a younger white man on a corner could only be a drug dealer.

NOPD spokesperson Capt. Marlon Defillo disagrees. The NOPD, he says, is a
nationwide leader in combating racial profiling. "We think we do a pretty
good job in making sure that our officers are properly trained to look
beyond a person's race," Defillo says.

Racial-profiling allegations are most common during drug patrols and
arrests, says Monique Dixon, a staff attorney for the D.C.-based
Advancement Project, which recently worked with two religious coalitions to
create a proposal for neighborhood-police partnerships in New York City.

In New York, the clergy are asking the New York Police Department to issue
"stop receipts" to anyone who is stopped and questioned by the police
department, even if they aren't arrested. These receipts, which are already
being used in Baltimore, allow communities of color to better track any
disproportionate stops, Dixon says.

Segments of police-officer training might also need to be scrutinized to
see if they reinforce stereotypes, say Dixon. For instance, some urban
departments have target-shooting simulations where most of the figures that
they shoot are people of color. "These subtle things can make a difference
once that officer leaves training and goes out in the field," Dixon says.

Defillo insists that an arrest such as this has nothing to do with race,
but was rather based on the officers' "reasonable suspicion" that they'd
witnessed a drug deal.

Whether the officers had probable cause to arrest Amis is now a matter for
the courts. Last Thursday, in front of Criminal District Judge Camille
Buras, Lindsey and Amis each took the stand to give an account of what
transpired outside the Circle K. Buras will rule on Thursday on whether the
matter will go to trial.

Evelyn Adams, Amis' attorney, took a few minutes to discuss the case after
she had exited the courtroom. As much as she believes in her client's
innocence, she says, she doesn't think that the officers were either
malicious or deliberately racist.

"It's hard to speculate," Adams says. "I think the officers thought they
saw something, and they didn't see what they thought they saw."

Many times, says Adams, officers follow their gut instincts and they're
right. But she says a case like this should prompt the officers and the
department to ask themselves whether the race of the defendants caused the
officers to reach any automatic assumptions.

"This case makes it apparent why some of those assumptions are improper,"
Adams says.