Listening to the police transcript of the interview, I have to say that I get the feeling that Senator Craig did not do what the police said he did.
The cop seemed very eager to sell him on "Just plead guilty and pay the fine, and that will be the end of it." Craig sounded more like someone unjustly accused, and certain that it was just a misunderstanding than someone caught soliciting.
I spent my last two years on the job as a shift commander and then the division commander of the Vice Division in the police department of a very big city. I’d been a cop for twenty-three years before I went there and by that time I thought there wasn’t much I hadn’t seen. Boy, was I wrong.
Before I got there I knew that random and anonymous sex between men took place in public restrooms. I just had no clue how prevalent it was. If anyone is having problems conceiving that this thing goes on, or happens a lot, I can supply details but I’m not looking to gross out the forum if I don’t have to.
But I was always a hands on boss and I spent a lot of time with the troops on the street so I could understand exactly what they did and how they did it. Plus I read every offense report they wrote on each arrest and/or investigation that they conducted.
Caution: Mild gross-out factors in this next paragraph. The squeamish should skip down the page.
All of Craig’s actions were consistent with a man looking to have anonymous sex with another man in a public restroom. Did you notice the mention of the wedding ring being shown under the partition? He had to sit sideways in order to place his left hand under the partition. There is a kind of turn on factor for these guys knowing the other is married and they often will display their wedding band, so Craig doing that is very consistent with this type of behavior and a dead giveaway what he was there for. As well as it being indicative that it wasn’t his first rodeo.
Enough of the gross out factor.
I read the transcript of the tape but couldn’t get the actual tape to play, so my read on what was said is missing the aural clues. But here’s my read. Once the arresting officer realized that he had just arrested a member of the Senate his freak out meter pegged in the red. He had visions of this rich and powerful Senator turning this all around on him and him waking up one day being fired and sued. What does a smart cop do in such circumstances? Get some hard evidence – which at that point in the investigation about all he could hope for was a confession on tape.
Now, he was awkward in how he handled the interview. I would have never let Craig know he was being taped if that is allowed in that jurisdiction. The recorder would have been in my pocket and me and ole Senator Craig would have just been having a conversation between us guys. I would have slipped in a very calm and almost nonchalant Miranda warning and then started playing games with his head. But I think the officer was not an experienced investigator and was a little out of his water. Most vice cops never have a need to interview a suspect to get a confession and I’d put money down on the table that this officer was more than just a little nervous about the situation. I know if when I was working if the troops had called into the office to tell me they had just arrested a Senator my first reaction would be “Please, God, tell me this is a practical joke.”
As for the whole “There'll be a fine. You won't have to explain anything. (inaudible)” wording, I think that was just the officer’s attempt to chill Craig out a little. You have to figure that the good Senator’s freak out meter was pegged as well because he just knew what this would do to his career if it leaked out. It’s a good move to give a crook being interrogated something to hold on to so they concentrate on grabbing that lifeline and forget about some of the other details of their lies There’s nothing wrong with lying to a crook, but almost always the truth works best. You just have to be selective in how much of the truth you tell him. So the officer told the truth “If you just pay the fine this will all be over and done with, and I’m not going to the media.” The untold parts being “but I’m holding on to this tape and if you make a mistake while talking to me I’ll use it to defend my side of the story if anybody ever asks me about it – which is bound to happen because cops gossip like fishermans’ wives and this won’t be a secret for long.”
Craig didn’t give up much of anything on the tape. I think he started to, but the officer didn’t do too good of a job of chilling him out and the Senator wised up and started denying everything. In the end, as evidence, the tape is not very valuable, but I don’t really see anything wrong with what the officer did.
No way this would have ended up with a conviction if it had gone to court...smart lawyer would have cleaned up the mess in no time...problem is, Craig is guilty, knew he was guilty, was hoping to plead out to a lesser charge and then hope the story never came out. It did and he's done.
He can't explain away a guilty plea, no matter how hard he tries.
Another area that I am critical of the arresting officer is the fact that his backup was outside the restroom. It's just good practice to have them closer, but it may not have been possible due to the layout of the place. Still, my troops almost always managed to do that and they never lost a case because it was one cop’s word against that of a defendant. It’s also a safety issue because some of these guys can really freak out when you whip out the badge and they start thinking of everybody back in their hometown finding out what ole Joe really does on his business trips.
Most of these guys jump at the chance to take a plea bargain that keeps them out of jail and out of court. I think it pretty damning that Craig did that – it’s just way too consistent with the post-arrest pattern of behavior that I’ve seen many times.
Also, we would not have arrested anybody doing the same thing that Craig did. I don’t think that his actions would have met the standards of an offense in Texas for a good prosecutable case. Of course we have different laws and case law here. But if Craig had found himself here doing the same thing I think it almost certain that he would have continued and escalated his behavior to the point where he would find himself in handcuffs. These guys are easy to catch and all you have to do is stare back at them when they stare at you – after that the case is on autopilot and they will be committing an offense within moments.
It may not all be due to different laws either. To be honest, sitting in a bathroom waiting for some guy to expose himself to you is not exactly the dream assignment for a cop, not even a vice cop. I was lucky that I had a group of people who would do the job and did it well. But I had more than a few guys tell me “Man, ask me to do anything but that. I’d rather go back to patrol than troll the bathrooms.” There was a little homophobia in that response but a lot more of it was due to a general distaste about hanging out in a nasty bathroom for half the night.
Most vice work is done in response to complaints from citizens about activity they have witnessed (“I got hookers in front of my restaurant all night long harassing my customers!”) and most of the offenses we arrested people for were low-grade misdemeanors. Our usual goal was not to stop the activity, cause nobody can stop it, but to make it go away to someplace else. So often an arrest for an even lower degree of offense would suffice to displace the offenders and their clients. Street walkers would start to wise up and make it hard for us to make a case for agreeing to engage in prostitution. So we would start arresting them for jaywalking, hitchhiking, or walking in the street where a sidewalk was provided. When they got wise to that I got the city council to pass a new law that we used to jokingly call the “Walking Around In Public Acting Like A Whore Law.”
I’m guessing that the officer in Senator Craig’s case didn’t want to spend his entire shift in the men’s crapper in Terminal A. And he really didn’t want the good Senator to show him his wee-wee, nor did he want the Senator to reach out and get personal with his hands. So as soon as the Senator did the peeping through the crack in the door, followed by playing footsie and the hand-jive under the stall partition, the officer decided that was good enough to satisfy the law for the two lesser offenses and he showed Craig his badge.
