Anaheim Prostitution Bust : Police Defend Use of Bogus NBC Press Pass

Responding to a scathing television editorial, the Anaheim Police Department on Tuesday defended a detective’s use of a phony NBC press credential to persuade a prostitution suspect that he was not an officer.

A commentator for KNBC-TV, the network-owned station in Burbank, on Monday criticized the Police Department as unethical after a detective posed as an NBC cameraman during an investigation of what was said to be an escort service. The station said it denied a Police Department request four months ago to use the counterfeit credential in clandestine investigations, a charge the Anaheim vice officer denied.

Along with a phony driver’s license, the investigator showed the prostitution suspect, whom he later arrested, a counterfeit press pass, one of scores seized by Anaheim police detectives in a 1984 forgery case, said Lt. John Flanagan, commander of the Anaheim vice and narcotics detail. He said Orange County Superior Court Judge James O. Perez signed a court order releasing the fake press credentials to police on June 28, 1984, for use in undercover operations. Perez said he could not immediately recall the case.

“It was only used as (identification). We don’t see that as being offensive to anyone except the prostitute, and certainly not unethical, as (KNBC commentator) Jack Perkins alleged. Especially since the law says we can lie in search of the truth,” Flanagan said.

NBC’s “statement that we asked their permission (to impersonate an employee) and were denied is totally false. We didn’t feel it was necessary in the first place to ask their permission.”

Flanagan said that it wouldn’t happen again but that officers will continue to use other phony identifications.

The public’s trust in journalists would not have been an issue, he added, had the television station itself not publicized the incident in the broadcast. “Up to that point it was between Anaheim police and (the suspect),” he said. “It was their idea to break this on the public.”

KNBC-TV News Director Tom Capra said Tuesday that the station was as concerned about its credibility as a news organization as it was outraged about the impersonation itself.

“It certainly touches on the credibility of NBC when police are posing as employees,” Capra said. “It makes us less effective as a news-gathering organization. We do depend on the public’s perception that we are honest, objective news gatherers. Criminals don’t talk to you if they think you’re going to turn them over to the police.”

Capra said the station’s legal department informed him that the law was not at issue. But they told him the station could have sought a court order restraining officers from impersonating NBC employees had the Police Department not indicated after the editorial that they would refrain from using the bogus credential.

“This is definitely an example of the police stepping over the line in what is a proper undercover operation,” said Joan W. Howarth, who until recently was the American Civil Liberties Union’s attorney on issues of police practices. Howarth, who now handles ACLU death penalty cases, said the law does not clearly define the issue, but impersonating members of the media by government agents of any sort “impedes” the principles of an independent press.

“It isn’t your typical First Amendment problem, but it affects it,” Howarth said. “Police departments more and more are using undercover operations to trick suspects into committing a crime. And although that’s permissible in certain narrow situations, it’s completely outrageous for them to use documents from a known company. Above that, of all the different types of companies or industries, the press should be the most protected from that kind of abuse by police officers, because journalists depend on the trust of the people they’re interviewing.

“If you have Anaheim P. D. pretending they’re from NBC, and LAPD pretending they’re with ABC, and the CHP pretending they’re with People magazine,” Howarth said, “pretty soon you are not going to have anyone willing to talk to reporters.”

Flanagan said that of the scores of phony press credentials from a wide range of media, the department had only used the NBC card because “it was the only one that looked legitimate.”

Capra said the station learned of the impersonation when the woman arrested by Anaheim police at a motel last Saturday night telephoned a KNBC reporter and said she felt she had been “entrapped.”

Flanagan said police set up a meeting with an employee of an Anaheim escort service for that night, at which the detective identified himself with the phony press credential. Prostitutes often require identification to make sure the customer is not a police officer.

The woman then allegedly offered him sex for money and was arrested on misdemeanor solicitation for prostitution, Flanagan said. He said that officers use false identification routinely and that several Orange County businesses have “offered” to provide the department with company identification badges.

Anaheim police detectives have used myriad disguises and ruses to secure an arrest, said one Anaheim officer, who asked not to be identified. After locating a stolen car in an apartment parking lot, he said, undercover officers wearing hard hats and construction clothing told residents they needed to move their vehicles for repavement of the driveway. Then they waited until someone moved the stolen car and arrested the driver.

Another officer said detectives have dressed like mail and package couriers to confirm the identity of an arrest target. They also have dressed as fire department paramedics and scared suspects out with the false alarm of a blaze.

Flanagan said the ruse of an NBC camera operator was considered almost foolproof, and less likely to be questioned by a prostitution suspect than a vocation such as a carpenter, engineer or executive.