By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Presiding over a traffic docket recently, Montgomery County District Court Judge Brian G. Kim ordered his bailiff to confiscate a cellphone.
It wasn't just any cellphone. It belonged to a Montgomery County police officer. And its seizure has become the latest flare-up in the simmering feud between the judge and police.
The confiscation -- the phone was returned a week later -- prompted the officer to file a lawsuit against the judge and led Police Chief J. Thomas Manger to write a letter to Kim's superior asking what right the judge had to seize the phone.
"In this particular case, I'm not aware of what authority the judge had to do what he did," Manger said in an interview. "If he had no authority, obviously I would have great concern about his actions."
The incident marked the first time that a Montgomery police officer has had a phone confiscated in District Court, said Assistant Police Chief John King, who supervises patrol officers.
"In no way was this guy trying to be disrespectful," King said of the officer.
A Maryland judiciary official said Kim would not comment on the case because it involves a pending lawsuit.
The rocky relationship between Kim and county officers is well known in Rockville's legal circle. Manger and King have met with the judge in the past to discuss some of the approaches Kim has taken to admonish officers who fail to appear for court.
King said several officers believe that Kim has sought to embarrass them publicly without a valid reason.
The phone was taken about 11 a.m. Oct. 10, as Officer Philip Ragan, at the direction of a prosecutor, started to leave the courtroom to call a witness.
"At the time of the taking, [Ragan] was not using the phone, and had merely removed the phone from his belt in preparation to make a call outside of the courtroom," according to the Oct. 11 complaint the officer filed against Kim.
As Ragan was walking toward the door, he flipped his phone open. Kim ordered him to stop, instructed him to hand over the phone and told the officer he could have it back the following Monday, King said.
Ragan, assigned to the Rockville district station, contacted his captain, who notified King about the incident. King said he met with Kim later that day to try to get the phone back. He says Kim's only concession was to return the phone Friday. So King said he left the courthouse empty-handed and dissatisfied.
"I want my guys to be accountable," King said. "But [Ragan] was actually trying to enhance the effectiveness of the court" proceedings.
Montgomery Administrative Judge Eugene Wolfe, the top judge on the bench, returned the cellphone to Ragan on Tuesday.
Wolfe said that cellphone use is prohibited in courtrooms and that judges have ample latitude to set a standard of conduct in their courtrooms.
"I learned that we had his cellphone, and the purpose for which it was confiscated had been accomplished," Wolfe said. "We're not in the business of maintaining people's cellphones."
Ragan declined to comment on the matter in an e-mail, saying only that "the issue has since been resolved."
Manger's letter to Wolfe is the first formal inquiry the chief has made about a judge's conduct. Wolfe said he is looking into the facts of the case before responding to Manger.
The union that represents Montgomery police officers successfully sued Kim last year in a case involving an officer whom the judge admonished for arriving late to a traffic docket and for not taking notes on traffic citations.
"There's this little thing called the Constitution," Kim told the officer during the Feb. 14, 2005, hearing, to which the officer said she arrived late because she had been summoned as a witness for a criminal case before another judge. "The Constitution says, among other things, that every defendant has a right to confront his charger.''
"Okay," Officer Traci Hutzell responded, according to a transcript of the hearing.
"And if that person wants a trial, that person has every right to confront the person charging him or her with a crime. Traffic citation, as minor as it might seem to you, is the charging of a crime. . . . You deny the person the right to trial, you're denying that person a constitutional right. You understand what that is?"
The judge later told the officer he had the authority to "impose court costs on you, individually," for arriving late and dismissed two cases after Hutzell told him she hadn't taken notes on the traffic stops.
"Sir, the officer has no evidence," the judge told one of the people who had been issued citations. "Your case is dismissed. I don't know why you were asked to come to court, there being no evidence."
He told Hutzell she needed a written explanation, from her and her commander, about why she had issued two traffic citations without taking notes on the stops.
Montgomery officers are not required to keep notes on traffic stops. Circuit Court Judge D. Warren Donohue entered an order in favor of the police union in which he quashed Kim's order that the officer provide a written explanation.
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