Looking for Answers After Journalist's Arrest

HARTFORD — Civil-rights groups, legislators and news organizations across the country are looking for answers following the arrest of Ken Krayeske, a photojournalist and blogger who was apprehended by Hartford police Jan. 3 during Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s inaugural parade and detained for 13 hours on a $75,000 bond.

Krayeske, who served as the campaign manager for Green Party gubernatorial candidate Clifford Thornton last year, has since started his own news blog, the40yearplan.com, on which he has criticized politicians, including Rell and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), for their views. Rell and her Democratic challenger, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, agreed to exclude Thornton from last year’s gubernatorial debates, drawing public ire from Krayeske.

In a police report posted online by The Hartford Courant after the arrest, Hartford police said Krayeske had approached the inaugural parade on a bicycle "at a high rate of speed" and dropped his bicycle near the parade, showing "aggressive behavior" before he was apprehended and charged with breach of peace and interfering with an officer.

Police later acknowledged they had received a briefing on individuals who might either pose a threat to the governor or disrupt the parade.

Five days later, state legislators held a press conference at the State Capitol in which they questioned the appropriateness of a list that would include Krayeske, a political activist who they said was not breaking the law and posed no threat to the governor. Photographs on Krayeske’s Web site showed that he had taken several photos of the parade from the same vantage point before being apprehended and witnesses said he was not causing a disturbance.

State Rep. Mike Lawlor (D-99), one of the lawmakers who organized last week’s press conference, said Wednesday he is still pressing police and the governor’s office for answers. "There are two big problems here," he said. "Number one is putting [Krayeske] on a list and number two is the fact that he was arrested for no reason."

Lawlor said he has made phone calls to police to determine just what transpired before Krayeske’s arrest. He said a briefing was held the morning of the inauguration in which police were given a threat list of six or seven people who might pose a physical threat to the governor. Krayeske was not on that list. Police then received a document including a full-color photograph of Krayeske with descriptions of three prior situations in which he had been arrested for civil disobedience, including one instance in which he sat on a sidewalk at the New London Naval Submarine Base to protest the launch of a nuclear submarine.

Lawlor said he himself has been arrested before for civil disobedience and that Krayeske is an activist who has invoked his constitutional right to free speech on numerous occasions, but that doesn’t make him a threat. "The state police put this thing out there in which they may not have actually said he was a threat, but I think people came away with the sense that he was a big problem."

Krayeske had previously confronted Rell and her campaign staff on different occasions during the 2006 gubernatorial campaign without police involvement, but Lawlor said it appears obvious someone didn’t like his tactics. "It seems to me like someone from the governor’s security detail [a division of the Connecticut State Police] showed up at the police briefing and made a big deal out of Ken," he said.

In response to Krayeske’s arrest and the revelation that a list of "people of concern" may exist, Rell sent out a letter last week to Department of Public Safety Commissioner Leonard Boyle to review Krayeske’s arrest and find out why the journalist’s background information was provided to Hartford police. "In this environment of heightened security, the use of information must be balanced with the individual rights of our citizens," Rell wrote. "In providing security and protection, we cannot permit the rights of individuals to be trampled."

Lawlor said the existence of a threat list is not the problem. Rather, it’s the idea that officials are compiling lists of people who pose merely a political threat. "There’s definitely a list of people who pose an actual threat to the governor," Lawlor said. "All prominent politicians have a group in that category. Nobody in the world has a problem with the cops keeping track of that category. Ken was not on that list. He was in a different category, which may have existed only for that one day."

In fact, Lawlor said, Krayeske may have been the only person on the list, but that doesn’t change the fact that police singled him out, arrested him and held him for 13 hours on a $75,000 bond.

Despite being held for that long on such a large bond — misdemeanors such as breach of peace typically carry a bond of $1,000 or less — police eventually released Krayeske on a written promise to appear in court, holding him just long enough to keep him away from the governor’s inaugural ball. Krayeske is scheduled to appear in court in Hartford Jan. 30. He is being represented by attorney Norman Pattis of Bethany.

Lawlor reasoned that the inaugural parade and ball constituted the state’s first major event since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and that law enforcement officials may not have been properly prepared, but he said that does not excuse Krayeske’s treatment. "The explanation may very well be that there was just some really poor judgment on the part of one or more people involved in this — or who knows, maybe the governor’s security detail does have a list."

Though Lawlor is concerned about the implications Krayeske’s arrest have on civil rights, he said he believes the episode can ultimately serve to strengthen the state. "As scary as it is that law enforcement has a lot of new technology, the counterbalance is that bloggers and civil liberties advocates all have new technology, too. The accountability in this case flowed from The Hartford Courant putting the police report on the Web site to Ken putting the photos up on his Web site and I think, in a very real way, the police have learned a lesson.

"It’s not the good old days any more," Lawlor added. "If you overstep your bounds, you’re going to be accoutable by citizens who have the ability to get the message out very quickly. There’s a balancing effect here between journalists, government officials and legislators and it’s fascinating."