rec.boats.paddle 

subject:Olympic Clip of Cops Beating Davey Hearn!

7/31/1996 

Jeff Potter asked:

This is probably deadhorseoldhat, but I was quite shocked by the clip on NBC WW
profile of DH showing 6 cops angrily leaping into floodwaters to snatch his boat,
then jumping him to jerk his paddle away all while he offered no resistance. 
DH was 100% diplomatic in his remarks about the incident and the cops' "mistake".
A perfect gentleman. But the video said it all. 
Or did it? It was so brutal and bizarre that maybe there was more to the story?
Had DH been baiting them and warned previously? Was there debate about
whether the river was closed? (DH said the river wasn't closed, but the cops
thought so, so out with the batons...) Rather hard to believe DH was baiting
them. But how did video get on the scene, how did so many cops gather, why the
helicopter?

Richard Hopley replied:

In a recent issue of AMERICAN WHITEWATER (the Journal of the AWA) is an 

extensive article by John Weld on the few paddlers who boated the Potomac on 

January 19th and on the Hearn arrest.

I was supposed to be a witness at Davey's trial, until the judge acquitted him 
without bothering to hear the defense, because the river (under the jurisdiction 
of the MD Dept. of Nat. Resources) had never been closed, and the NPS cops 
entrapped Davey by ordering him out of the MD DNR jurisdiction into their own, 
then arresting him.

There were many law enforcement and rescue personnel at the riverside that day, 
due to a bit of bad judgment on the part of a kayaker who had a bad swim, and 
then slipped away to avoid the authorities, without informing his paddling 
buddies.  So his buddies reported him missing, the chopper went up, and the 
authorities were all excited.  I talked to the chopper pilot during the trial -- 
he is a reasonable, intelligent, and well-meaning man, but with the "protect-and-
serve" philosophy that we need to be protected from ourselves and should not be 
permitted on the river in such dangerous circumstances.  This is a cogent view in 
jurisdictions where rescue personnel are *obliged* to put themselves at risk to 
help *any* endangered citizen, even those who choose to endanger themselves.   
Potomac area paddling organizations are working with the NPS and local rescue 
squads to resolve this question.

In this case the chopper circled Davey as he tried to surf the Wave of the Decade 
(which only appears when the Potomac is around 19' on the Little Falls Gauge, and 
was the whole reason Davey was out there) while NPS cop Lt. Stover bullhorned 

from the bank for him to come ashore.  Stover was at a dangerous place to land, 

and Davey paddled a couple hundred yards downstream and came ashore in the 

safer slackwater where the video was shot.  Stover came roaring past me at a good 

30 mph on a 200-yard drive, jumped out of his car, ran to the riverbank, slipped, 

and fell on his ass in the water (this was shown out of sequence on the NBC clip).  

*Then* he jumped up, no  doubt angrier still after looking so foolish before us and 

his associates, and grabbed Davey as Davey tried to take a stroke or two to evade 

this obviously dangerous lunatic.  Whether that constituted "resisting arrest" or whether 

"resisting arrest" describes the facts that he could not fall out of his boat when they turned 

it over (we wear thigh straps specifically to prevent us from falling out when the boat is 

upside down) and that he did not release his paddle when they grabbed it (it was 

velcro-ed onto his hands with pogies, I think) was never made clear.  Prior to Stover's 
splashdown Davey was sitting politely talking to two NPS cops, clearly neither 
trying to flee nor posing a threat to anyone else.  I think the whole thing was 
about Stover's pride and arrogance; he became angry in the first place because 
Davey did not obey his illegal and dangerous order, and then furious after he 
foolishly fell into the near-freezing water.  The rest of the law-enforcement 
officers behaved perfectly reasonably until the Lieutenant arrived on the scene, 
at which point I guess they felt obliged to assist their commanding officer.

Aside from Stover's behavior, which I said in an unpublished letter to the editor 
of the Washington Post is "not the quality of law-enforcement behavior which we 
have a right to expect", there are I think, some big questions here about the 
training of the NPS cops who are policing the riverside.  The DC-area canoe club 
Canoe Cruisers' Association leads downriver trips twice a year through the 
metropolitan stretch of the Potomac, called "Know Your River" trips, for local NPS 
employees, but no Park Police are known to have ever signed up, and these guys, 
policing the riverbanks, seemed to know nothing of paddling and paddlers.  They 
thought they had jurisdiction over the river, they thought Davey was in danger, 
they thought he was in a kayak, they though he would fall out when they upturned 
his boat, they thought he refused to relinquish his paddle...  I had subsequent 
conversations with paddlers who had been sightseeing that day, as I was, who 
watched the NPS order in a dangerous helicopter evacuation of a "victim" who could 
have just crawled across a ladder or a board stretched between the shore and the 
island where he was trapped; easier, cheaper, quicker, and safer.  Park Service 
employees were also unaware that there has never been an accident involving a 
decked boater in the local Potomac, or that the local boaters have rescued many 
hikers, fishermen, and rock-scramblers who have fallen in -- rescues that don't go 
on record because the rescue squads were not mobilized, whereas an unnecessary 
"rescue" by the squads *is* recorded as a rescue.

Am I getting carried away?  I do go on, don't I?  This is a big issue and deserves 
better treatment than this off-the-cuff stream-of-consciousness, but I'll post it 
anyway.

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