Chapter 1
The Crime Beat: Perp Walks
By Dave Krajicek

"Perp walks" have been used for decades, although more frequently in some cities than others.

In New York, the police press information office frequently has placed a courtesy call to reporters when a high-interest suspect was to be "moved" from a precinct stationhouse to a central booking facility.

Photographers and videographers would gather outside the stationhouse to record the "walk."

The courtesy calls set the NYPD apart from most police departments. In other big cities, including Los Angeles and Washington, no such photo appointments are set. Photographers who want a perp walk shot often must wait and hope.

Many police departments have made perp walks obsolete by freely passing out copies of mug shots to the media.

But old-school reporters argue that perp walks can be great theater.

For example, legendary robber Willie Sutton, who knocked over 100 banks from 1925 to 1952, uttered an immortal quote during a perp walk in New York.

A reporter shouted, "Hey, Willie, why do you rob banks?"

Sutton responded, "Because that's where the money is."

Federal authorities have been fond of perp walks since the early years of the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover, who understood the priceless public relations value of an image that showed a cuffed bad guy in the grasp of a federal agent.

In conspiracy and racketeering cases, the feds frequently have offered the media – and the news-consuming public – a graphic of criminal collusion by tethering the alleged conspirators to a single heavy chain before the photo-op.

In 1997, Timothy McVeigh, later convicted and executed in the Oklahoma City bombing case, was subjected to a perp walk nearly three hours before he was officially arrested. McVeigh's attorneys protested that the FBI timed the walk for maximum network TV exposure. McVeigh was surrounded by a dozen FBI agents. They were selected as a reward for collaring McVeigh, a tangential but important aspect of perp walks.

Defense attorneys and minority advocates have long complained about perp walks – lawyers because the photos make their clients look guilty, and blacks because an inordinate number of perp-walk shots show young black men in handcuffs with sweatshirt hoods pulled over their heads, like Grim Reapers.

Some compare perp walks to other forms of public humiliation, such as confinement to stocks or the practice of parading defeated opponents in war, an ancient custom that has regained popularity in the Mideast.

In 2002, federal authorities used perp walks in several white-collar crime cases, including the arrests of John Rigas, former chairman of Adelphia Communications, and two of his sons.

An attorney for the men said, "The Rigases had repeatedly offered to surrender, but were instead roused from their Manhattan apartments at 6 a.m. by federal agents. Later in the morning, they were escorted in handcuffs past news cameras."

Another New York case may sound a death knell for contrived perp walks.
In 1995, a New York City doorman was arrested after a surveillance camera caught him rifling through the underwear drawer and cabinets of a vacationing tenant. The tenant sold the surveillance tape to the local Fox affiliate.

The news director wanted video of the suspect. He called the police press information office, which ordered detectives to walk the perp. The doorman, who was being questioned at a precinct stationhouse, was handcuffed, walked outside, placed in an unmarked police car, driven around the block and returned to the stationhouse.

Fox shot footage of the walk and broadcast it that night.

Charges against the doorman were soon dropped because nothing was missing from the apartment. He sued the city and police for violation of his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable arrest.

A trial court and the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals agreed the police had acted unreasonably and invaded the doorman's privacy by staging a perp walk that was "an inherently fictional dramatization" with "no legitimate law enforcement justification."

However, the court added, "Despite its adverse effects on (the doorman's) dignity and privacy, the perp walk might nevertheless have been reasonable under the Fourth Amendment had it been sufficiently closely related to a legitimate governmental objective."

New York police have been moving to the concept of "legitimate justification" for perp walks. The department says its policy was and is to neither impede nor promote photographs of suspects as they are being moved.

Most journalists oppose any official curtailing of perp walks. The Society of Professional Journalist's Code of Ethics makes these points:

• Journalists should "minimize harm" by balancing a criminal suspect's fair trial rights with the public's right to be informed.
• "Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity."
• "Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone's privacy."