Commendations and conditions
A grand jury in New York City has reached a decision on whether or not indictments will be filed against any of the five New York City Police Department officers in connection with their involvement in the fatal officer-involved shooting of Sean Bell last Nov. 25.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown has scheduled a press conference for Monday, March 19 at 11 am(EST) when he will announce the grand jury's decision which will remain sealed until then.
New York Times: Grand jury reaches decision
However, attorneys representing the police officers said in a CNN article that at least three police officers have been indicted. The names mentioned were undercover detective, Gerscard Isnora, Det. Michael Oliver and Officer Marc Cooper.
Cooper's attorney, Paul Martin, said that his client had been asked to surrender to authorities on Monday. It was not known what criminal charges the three men would face or whether any other officers would also be indicted.
The three officers mentioned as being indicted by CNN were also the three individuals who had fired the most shots, 46 out of the 50 that were fired.
Yesterday, the New York Times published an earlier update on the status of the grand jury deliberations.
Grand juror witness testifies
Apparently, a new witness had emerged at the 11th hour and described what he saw the night of the shooting. According to the Times article, the grand jury heard this witness, a male Spanish-speaking individual for about an hour before resuming its deliberations. The man had come to the police department two days ago to report that he saw a fourth male Black individual with a gun leaving the scene of the shooting.
(excerpt)
Michael J. Palladino, the president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, said he had been told that the new witness testified today.
"I am hearing he went in and he was in there about an hour or so, and he left the location," Mr. Palladino said. "And I believe they are deliberating again.”
Palladino said he didn't know what the man testified to or who he was, but that he had heard that the man had told the department that the unidentified fourth man had shot once or twice with his gun before fleeing in a building.
However, according to this article in the New York Daily News, the hour the new witness spent testifying was a "waste of time" adding that apparently none of the jurors had questioned him.
The New York Times Blog Talk ran a poll based on interviews with city residents about the upcoming decision by the grand jury whether or not to issue criminal indictments in the Bell case.
According to its poll, about 57% of those interviewed supported filing criminal charges against the involved officers. About 32% said it was a "tragic mistake" and charges should not be filed.
According to the Gothamist, the city remains on alert in anticipation of the grand jury's decision. In this article, attorneys for the police officers said that the two individuals "most vulnerable" for indictment were undercover detective, Gerscard Isnora, who fired the first shots and Det. Michael Oliver who fired the most shots, 31 total at Bell's car.
A poll was also conducted at this site as well, with the question being , what do you think the grand jury will do. So far the tallies are as follows:
No criminal charges: 43%
Indict two officers: 21%
Indict all five officers: 14%
Indict one officer: 11%
Indict more than two officers: 7%
And for those who want to know how the New York City grand jury process works(or doesn't), here's an explanation by a prosecutor from the Kings County District Attorney office.
In Denver, there has been a 23% increase in complaints filed against officers in that city's police department according to an annual report completed by monitor Richard Rosenthal. An article was published about it in the Denver Post.
Complaints up in Denver
Rosenthal attributed the increase in complaints to an improved system of filing complaints against police officers that has undergone changes during the past year.
However, in several incidents Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman gave lighter discipline to his officers than had been recommended to him by Rosenthal. One of those incidents involved a tasing of a man who had been arrested.
(excerpt)
"It jolted all the way through my body down to my toes and my feet," recalled Kenneth Rodriguez, 46, of Tucson. "He just held it and held it."
In the case involving Rodriguez, who had been tased by Officer Randall Krouse after Krouse had said, "understando taser?" At the time he was tased, Rodriguez had been handcuffed as shown on a videotape and was being escorted. He did jail time after a different officer reported that he had assaulted another officer. That report proved to be false after an investigation into the incident was conducted.
Rosenthal supported a 60 day suspension for Krouse, while Whitman only wanted to give him a 10 day suspension and five additional days of working without receiving his salary.
In 2004, the city council approved recommendations by a 38-member panel which focused on the department's use of force policy and related training issues.
In 2005, members of Denver's Copwatch organization expressed frustration here after their meeting with Rosenthal, when he had said that he was not going to investigate the controversial shooting of Frank Lobato. They criticized the city's reform plan which was passed by the city's voters was inadequate.
Still, Rosenthal praised the system as working in the case of Rodriguez, according to this article in the Rocky Mountain News.
(excerpt)
Krouse's report said Rodriguez pushed a reserve officer into a wall.
Rosenthal said it didn't happen. Instead, he concluded that Krouse was faced with a prisoner who "was not completely cooperative" and decided to use the high-voltage Taser gun.
Under Denver police policy, an officer is not allowed to Taser someone in the neck except when "deadly force" is warranted.
That was not the case with Rodriguez. He was handcuffed, in custody and no threat, Rosenthal said.
On Feb. 27, four city residents were ejected from city council meetings after several city council members ordered police officers to escort them outside. Actually, it was only three of them because when police officers approached Marjorie Von Pohle, 90, to escort her out, she told them they would have to carry her. So the city council allowed her to stay if she kept quiet.
The situation began during the city council's afternoon session when Councilman Frank Schiavone had asked people in the audience to come on down to the podium to present evidence of instances when the city had used eminent domain to seize single-family homes. Perhaps Schiavone was surprised and even dismayed when several audience members took him up on his challenge. However, none of them got very far in responding to his question perhaps because he hadn't meant it to be treated as a serious request for information but as a final statement from the dais against criticisms of the city council's practices.
Yolanda Garland spoke several words before several council members including Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison yelled that she was out of order. When she turned around and said something to the city council in response, they ordered the police officers present in the chambers to remove her. Three others responded in shock and were also subjected to being escorted out and banned from attending the evening session. Only none of these individuals knew this because they had left before the city council had made the decision to ban them, so several returned later to attend the evening session.
Several spoke at later meetings and said that they had received fresh letters from the city attorney's office threatening them with arrest if they "disrupted" a future meeting. At least one individual noticed that the letters had been forwarded to Chief Russ Leach at the police department. Does this mean that they are "under investigation" and this information will be disseminated widely around City Hall outside their presence or is it to discourage further participation from them at future meetings because they may believe this to be so?
The ACLU's interpretation of the letters is that it appears to be the latter.
Every witness asked about the incident blamed what happened on Schiavone's ill-advised decision to challenge members of the audience by appearing to provide them with a venue to answering his question and then withdrawing it when he didn't like what they were saying. Several said that they believed he and other council members provoked them. But it wasn't known until later how hard the city council members had tried to get the four individuals not only arrested but apparently charged with criminal offenses.
At a discussion that took place at a community meeting, it came out from individuals that the city had tried very hard to find officers who would arrest the four individuals including two elderly women. One individual also mentioned that even the office of Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco had been notified but that office declined to act. Community members commented on the professionalism of the involved officers especially in comparison to the behavior of several of those sitting on the dais. Even those kicked out commented on how well they had been treated.
All the police officers who attended the community meeting attributed the peaceful nature of the expulsions at the meeting to the professionalism and experience of Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez who oversaw the police officers and supervising officers involved. Dominguez is the highest-ranking police officer in the department who has maintained close ties with the communities that the department serves and who has made the effort to reach out to community members, in a department where it appears that more and more its management has become insulated and isolated from both the communities and from public meetings.
It's not lost on the community that several high-ranking officers who maintain relationships with the community have not been kept front and center where they belong but have been shunted off elsewhere almost as if they're old sweaters to be stuffed in mothballs. The community has been following these incidents very closely and commenting on them, perhaps not to the city and department leadership as it should but still, discussions are taking place.
Then there are those police officers holding high positions in management who are never seen by members of the public, not at community meetings or any other venue and some who were, but who aren't as much anymore. Most people wouldn't even recognize them on the street, let alone really know who they are, where they've come from and what they are doing. The public should know who is in charge making decisions that impact the operations of the police department, but there is less and less being seen of those individuals. In fact, the number one question I receive on a daily basis is, where is Leach these days? No day goes by where I'm not approached or contacted by an individual with that question at least once. People do notice he's rarely seen at public events these days and they do miss that interaction.
I like others who attended the community meeting sent in a commendation letter involving Det. William Rodriguez, Sgt. Phil Neglia, Det. Kathy Nelson and Dominguez to Leach and his media relations officer Steven Frasher on March 1. However, there was no response back from that office in terms of whether the request for commendations was even received, let alone accepted. So presumably it was accepted, because perhaps they would respond if it had been rejected.
But I still had to ask myself, how could that be? Do they not believe that the actions of these officers were worth commending, that these officers themselves were worthy of commendation or was it something else? Was it who was being commended? Was it wrong to remind the department that there are leaders within it who are engaging with communities by singling several of them out for attention? Would it have been more appropriate to support the honoring of an individual who instead of building relationships with communities had denigrated them instead? What kind of officer does the police department's management deem praise-worthy?
Maybe they should post a list of qualifications. Even so, I would still not have any idea why Dominguez and the other officers would not meet them. But then I don't have any clue as to why many actions reported for commendations are met with great fanfare and ones like the one described here are not.
At any rate, there was no response of any kind from its top office and for a department that encourages commendations to be offered involving its employees, that just seemed kind of odd. Or maybe the department is used to awarding officers and receiving commendations about its officers for how many arrests they make or how many stolen cars that they recover that it's ill-equipped to offer the same to police officers who didn't make arrests, but resolved the situation involving where they had been given lemons and made lemonade.
The Community Police Review Commission held its annual elections for chair and vice chair. Well, kind of. The votes were cast in the CPRC office by paper ballot by at least seven commissioners over a month ago, after they had been told that only the seven commissioners serving at that time would be allowed to vote.
Not so, said interim CPRC manager, Mario Lara who backed by both Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis and City Attorney Gregory Priamos explained that all nine members including the two new appointments would be voting. Priamos provided some convoluted explanation as to why the CPRC had to take action at this week's meeting if only voting to take no action until next time.
And that's what they had to do because no amount of persuasion would motivate new commissioner Steve Simpson from casting what would have been the tie-breaking vote. Simpson wanted to wait until he'd seen both candidates in action before voting.
Commissioner Jim Ward, one of the finalists for chair, asked questions about changes in the process but didn't get very far. Ward is currently tied with Les Davison for the chair position at 4-4. Brian Pearcy has apparently been elected vice-chair over Jack Brewer with a 5-3 vote.
"You see the city attorney and the assistant city manager walk in and you know this is going to be a mess," Ward said.
Well, you know at the very least that the CPRC will be micromanaged some more.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown has scheduled a press conference for Monday, March 19 at 11 am(EST) when he will announce the grand jury's decision which will remain sealed until then.
New York Times: Grand jury reaches decision
However, attorneys representing the police officers said in a CNN article that at least three police officers have been indicted. The names mentioned were undercover detective, Gerscard Isnora, Det. Michael Oliver and Officer Marc Cooper.
Cooper's attorney, Paul Martin, said that his client had been asked to surrender to authorities on Monday. It was not known what criminal charges the three men would face or whether any other officers would also be indicted.
The three officers mentioned as being indicted by CNN were also the three individuals who had fired the most shots, 46 out of the 50 that were fired.
Yesterday, the New York Times published an earlier update on the status of the grand jury deliberations.
Grand juror witness testifies
Apparently, a new witness had emerged at the 11th hour and described what he saw the night of the shooting. According to the Times article, the grand jury heard this witness, a male Spanish-speaking individual for about an hour before resuming its deliberations. The man had come to the police department two days ago to report that he saw a fourth male Black individual with a gun leaving the scene of the shooting.
(excerpt)
Michael J. Palladino, the president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, said he had been told that the new witness testified today.
"I am hearing he went in and he was in there about an hour or so, and he left the location," Mr. Palladino said. "And I believe they are deliberating again.”
Palladino said he didn't know what the man testified to or who he was, but that he had heard that the man had told the department that the unidentified fourth man had shot once or twice with his gun before fleeing in a building.
However, according to this article in the New York Daily News, the hour the new witness spent testifying was a "waste of time" adding that apparently none of the jurors had questioned him.
The New York Times Blog Talk ran a poll based on interviews with city residents about the upcoming decision by the grand jury whether or not to issue criminal indictments in the Bell case.
According to its poll, about 57% of those interviewed supported filing criminal charges against the involved officers. About 32% said it was a "tragic mistake" and charges should not be filed.
According to the Gothamist, the city remains on alert in anticipation of the grand jury's decision. In this article, attorneys for the police officers said that the two individuals "most vulnerable" for indictment were undercover detective, Gerscard Isnora, who fired the first shots and Det. Michael Oliver who fired the most shots, 31 total at Bell's car.
A poll was also conducted at this site as well, with the question being , what do you think the grand jury will do. So far the tallies are as follows:
No criminal charges: 43%
Indict two officers: 21%
Indict all five officers: 14%
Indict one officer: 11%
Indict more than two officers: 7%
And for those who want to know how the New York City grand jury process works(or doesn't), here's an explanation by a prosecutor from the Kings County District Attorney office.
In Denver, there has been a 23% increase in complaints filed against officers in that city's police department according to an annual report completed by monitor Richard Rosenthal. An article was published about it in the Denver Post.
Complaints up in Denver
Rosenthal attributed the increase in complaints to an improved system of filing complaints against police officers that has undergone changes during the past year.
However, in several incidents Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman gave lighter discipline to his officers than had been recommended to him by Rosenthal. One of those incidents involved a tasing of a man who had been arrested.
(excerpt)
"It jolted all the way through my body down to my toes and my feet," recalled Kenneth Rodriguez, 46, of Tucson. "He just held it and held it."
In the case involving Rodriguez, who had been tased by Officer Randall Krouse after Krouse had said, "understando taser?" At the time he was tased, Rodriguez had been handcuffed as shown on a videotape and was being escorted. He did jail time after a different officer reported that he had assaulted another officer. That report proved to be false after an investigation into the incident was conducted.
Rosenthal supported a 60 day suspension for Krouse, while Whitman only wanted to give him a 10 day suspension and five additional days of working without receiving his salary.
In 2004, the city council approved recommendations by a 38-member panel which focused on the department's use of force policy and related training issues.
In 2005, members of Denver's Copwatch organization expressed frustration here after their meeting with Rosenthal, when he had said that he was not going to investigate the controversial shooting of Frank Lobato. They criticized the city's reform plan which was passed by the city's voters was inadequate.
Still, Rosenthal praised the system as working in the case of Rodriguez, according to this article in the Rocky Mountain News.
(excerpt)
Krouse's report said Rodriguez pushed a reserve officer into a wall.
Rosenthal said it didn't happen. Instead, he concluded that Krouse was faced with a prisoner who "was not completely cooperative" and decided to use the high-voltage Taser gun.
Under Denver police policy, an officer is not allowed to Taser someone in the neck except when "deadly force" is warranted.
That was not the case with Rodriguez. He was handcuffed, in custody and no threat, Rosenthal said.
On Feb. 27, four city residents were ejected from city council meetings after several city council members ordered police officers to escort them outside. Actually, it was only three of them because when police officers approached Marjorie Von Pohle, 90, to escort her out, she told them they would have to carry her. So the city council allowed her to stay if she kept quiet.
The situation began during the city council's afternoon session when Councilman Frank Schiavone had asked people in the audience to come on down to the podium to present evidence of instances when the city had used eminent domain to seize single-family homes. Perhaps Schiavone was surprised and even dismayed when several audience members took him up on his challenge. However, none of them got very far in responding to his question perhaps because he hadn't meant it to be treated as a serious request for information but as a final statement from the dais against criticisms of the city council's practices.
Yolanda Garland spoke several words before several council members including Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison yelled that she was out of order. When she turned around and said something to the city council in response, they ordered the police officers present in the chambers to remove her. Three others responded in shock and were also subjected to being escorted out and banned from attending the evening session. Only none of these individuals knew this because they had left before the city council had made the decision to ban them, so several returned later to attend the evening session.
Several spoke at later meetings and said that they had received fresh letters from the city attorney's office threatening them with arrest if they "disrupted" a future meeting. At least one individual noticed that the letters had been forwarded to Chief Russ Leach at the police department. Does this mean that they are "under investigation" and this information will be disseminated widely around City Hall outside their presence or is it to discourage further participation from them at future meetings because they may believe this to be so?
The ACLU's interpretation of the letters is that it appears to be the latter.
Every witness asked about the incident blamed what happened on Schiavone's ill-advised decision to challenge members of the audience by appearing to provide them with a venue to answering his question and then withdrawing it when he didn't like what they were saying. Several said that they believed he and other council members provoked them. But it wasn't known until later how hard the city council members had tried to get the four individuals not only arrested but apparently charged with criminal offenses.
At a discussion that took place at a community meeting, it came out from individuals that the city had tried very hard to find officers who would arrest the four individuals including two elderly women. One individual also mentioned that even the office of Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco had been notified but that office declined to act. Community members commented on the professionalism of the involved officers especially in comparison to the behavior of several of those sitting on the dais. Even those kicked out commented on how well they had been treated.
All the police officers who attended the community meeting attributed the peaceful nature of the expulsions at the meeting to the professionalism and experience of Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez who oversaw the police officers and supervising officers involved. Dominguez is the highest-ranking police officer in the department who has maintained close ties with the communities that the department serves and who has made the effort to reach out to community members, in a department where it appears that more and more its management has become insulated and isolated from both the communities and from public meetings.
It's not lost on the community that several high-ranking officers who maintain relationships with the community have not been kept front and center where they belong but have been shunted off elsewhere almost as if they're old sweaters to be stuffed in mothballs. The community has been following these incidents very closely and commenting on them, perhaps not to the city and department leadership as it should but still, discussions are taking place.
Then there are those police officers holding high positions in management who are never seen by members of the public, not at community meetings or any other venue and some who were, but who aren't as much anymore. Most people wouldn't even recognize them on the street, let alone really know who they are, where they've come from and what they are doing. The public should know who is in charge making decisions that impact the operations of the police department, but there is less and less being seen of those individuals. In fact, the number one question I receive on a daily basis is, where is Leach these days? No day goes by where I'm not approached or contacted by an individual with that question at least once. People do notice he's rarely seen at public events these days and they do miss that interaction.
I like others who attended the community meeting sent in a commendation letter involving Det. William Rodriguez, Sgt. Phil Neglia, Det. Kathy Nelson and Dominguez to Leach and his media relations officer Steven Frasher on March 1. However, there was no response back from that office in terms of whether the request for commendations was even received, let alone accepted. So presumably it was accepted, because perhaps they would respond if it had been rejected.
But I still had to ask myself, how could that be? Do they not believe that the actions of these officers were worth commending, that these officers themselves were worthy of commendation or was it something else? Was it who was being commended? Was it wrong to remind the department that there are leaders within it who are engaging with communities by singling several of them out for attention? Would it have been more appropriate to support the honoring of an individual who instead of building relationships with communities had denigrated them instead? What kind of officer does the police department's management deem praise-worthy?
Maybe they should post a list of qualifications. Even so, I would still not have any idea why Dominguez and the other officers would not meet them. But then I don't have any clue as to why many actions reported for commendations are met with great fanfare and ones like the one described here are not.
At any rate, there was no response of any kind from its top office and for a department that encourages commendations to be offered involving its employees, that just seemed kind of odd. Or maybe the department is used to awarding officers and receiving commendations about its officers for how many arrests they make or how many stolen cars that they recover that it's ill-equipped to offer the same to police officers who didn't make arrests, but resolved the situation involving where they had been given lemons and made lemonade.
The Community Police Review Commission held its annual elections for chair and vice chair. Well, kind of. The votes were cast in the CPRC office by paper ballot by at least seven commissioners over a month ago, after they had been told that only the seven commissioners serving at that time would be allowed to vote.
Not so, said interim CPRC manager, Mario Lara who backed by both Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis and City Attorney Gregory Priamos explained that all nine members including the two new appointments would be voting. Priamos provided some convoluted explanation as to why the CPRC had to take action at this week's meeting if only voting to take no action until next time.
And that's what they had to do because no amount of persuasion would motivate new commissioner Steve Simpson from casting what would have been the tie-breaking vote. Simpson wanted to wait until he'd seen both candidates in action before voting.
Commissioner Jim Ward, one of the finalists for chair, asked questions about changes in the process but didn't get very far. Ward is currently tied with Les Davison for the chair position at 4-4. Brian Pearcy has apparently been elected vice-chair over Jack Brewer with a 5-3 vote.
"You see the city attorney and the assistant city manager walk in and you know this is going to be a mess," Ward said.
Well, you know at the very least that the CPRC will be micromanaged some more.
Labels: Black city employee watch, business as usual, officer-involved shootings
posted by Five Before Midnight | 4:13 PM
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