A Nation Of Laws

Corporate Police Are People, Too

I am pissed off here. The family hired a private prosecutor -- unacceptable! They conducted a private search!

Now, if we let them get away with that, rich people won't go to the cops any more. You know what they're going to do? They're going to get their own lawyers to collect evidence -- and then they are going to choose which evidence they feel like passing on to the DA!

And the next victim isn't going to be rich, like von Bülow; it's going to be some poor schnook in Detroit who can't afford, or who can't find, a decent lawyer.

-- Ron Silver As Alan Dershowitz In Reversal Of Fortune (1990)

SF Weekly recently reported that in July of this year, employees of Apple Computers had impersonated San Francisco Police Department officers in order to gain access to, and conduct a search of, a home in the city's Bernal Heights neighborhood for a new prototype iPhone that had been lost by an Apple employee at a bar in San Francisco's Mission District.

As chronicled by Carl Franzen of TPM ("SFPD: We Stood Outside When Apple's Investigators Tossed Man's Home"), a man living in the house, 22-year-old Sergio Calderon, initially told SF Weekly that six persons, wearing badges and identifying themselves as SFPD, rifled through his belongings and computer and "threatened" him over the missing phone. Calderon told the "investigators" that he had been at the bar where the phone was lost, but did not have the device and knew nothing about it.

In an update with the Weekly, Calderon later clarified that only two of the six "SFPD" who appeared that night entered his home, while the other four waited outside. The two persons who entered the home also asked Calderon if everyone living in the house - including multiple family members of his family - were American citizens. Calderon told SF Weekly all occupants of his house are in the U.S. legally.

One of two persons searching the home, a man who called himself "Tony," provided Caldeon with a phone number. SF Weekly called it and spoke with Anthony Colon, who admitted being a former San Jose police officer, and said he now works at Apple as a "senior investigator" but refused further comment.

The SFPD issued this statement:

After speaking with Apple representatives, [SFPD was] given information which helped us determine what occurred. It was discovered that Apple employees called Mission Police station directly, wanting assistance in tracking down a lost item. Apple had tracked the lost item to a house located in the 500 block of Anderson Street.

Because the address was in the Ingleside Police district Apple employees were referred to Officers in the Ingleside district. Four SFPD Officers accompanied Apple employees to the Anderson street home. The two Apple employees met with the resident and then went into the house to look for the lost item. The Apple employees did not find the lost item and left the house.

The Apple employees did not want to make an official report of the lost item.

As TPM's Franzen continued, "it remains to be established exactly why SFPD officers didn't file an official report and why the department allowed them to escort Apple's private investigators on a search of a man's home... also, more troublingly, it raises the question of whether SFPD has assisted Apple before, off-the-books, how many times, and in what capacities."

All of this begs the questions -- whether America is what it claims to be, a nation of laws which ensure equality and to protect The People by limiting the excesses of greed or power by the state, or private interests.

And, as our Republic appears to sink slowly in the west (which the ancient Egyptians associated with the Land of the Dead) and the fabric of our culture loosens even further ... whether the idea of a nation of laws has ever, really, been true.

And whether, as experience seems to show, the power of the state can be bought like any other commodity, in furtherance of private and corporate interests.

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