From acorns to oaks: Meanwhile, at the state capitol
Bellevue Police Department in Nebraska is reexamining its pursuit policy after a recent incident that could have endangered children at a local school, according to an article published in the Bellevue Leader.
During that pursuit, a man driving a stolen car drove onto a ball field. Even though no children were playing there at the time, the police department decided to evaluate its current policy.
Pursuits have Bellevue rethinking pursuit policy
(excerpt)
"Change comes about from change in the state law, or when we have a pursuit," said BPD Capt. Herb Evers. "If we have a pursuit that goes bad, God forbid we kill or injure someone - an innocent third party for example - that's probably going to change our pursuit policy and I think that has changed other departments' pursuit policies."
Evers is correct. Both the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department have reexamined their policies after serious incidents involving pursuits in their jurisdictions.
And they're not the only ones.
The Bellevue Police Department had its own past incidents which have brought scrutiny by the public into the department's practices.
(excerpt)
"I can tell you without naming names we have had officers disciplined for their actions in a pursuit," he said, pointing out a December 2005 chase where seven officers, five more than the limit of two, chased a man into Iowa.
"The first hint something is wrong is I have seven cruiser tapes on my desk. I'm saying please tell me we didn't have seven cars in the pursuit - we did."
For a variety of reasons, mistakes can be made. And even when mistakes aren't made, things can go wrong.
"Officers will sometimes lose control a little bit because of the excitement or the adrenaline rush, and they have a tendency to go wherever the vehicle goes that they are pursuing, which is really dangerous," Evers said.
"Because that's the idiot, we're the trained people."
The department has increased its training for both its newer officers and its more experienced ones and has an eight-page policy detailing when to begin pursuits and also when to terminate them.
Berkeley is one of the epicenters of the controversy surrounding the Copley Press ruling issued by the California State Supreme Court last summer and so there's been a lot of coverage of the issue in the Berkeley Daily Planet.
Last week, the newspaper published an article on the legislation which was initiated in both houses up at the state capitol. As has been reported, the state senate bill that was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero narrowly passed 3-2 in its first appearance at the subcommittee level and votes were cast for or against it along partisan lines.
Casting supportive votes were Romero, Cedillo Gilbert and Mark Ridley-Thomas, who are all Democrats. Republicans David Cogdill and Bob Margett voted against it.
Still, compromises are expect to be made before the bill comes up for a vote again. Gilbert made that clear when he cast the deciding vote on Romero's bill to get it out of subcommittee.
The battle is expected to just get more fierce in the weeks and months ahead, but the issue is not expected to go away any time soon. And a defeat of either or both bills may just enliven the public debate further.
Controversies like the one that hit Maywood Police Department among others have probably ensured that the discussions will continue to take place. As long as members of the public are pulled over by law enforcement officers or encounter them in the field and wonder if these officers have been fired from other police departments or even from their current one, these discussions will continue. With the environment in California making it tougher for police chiefs and sheriffs to fire law enforcement officers even for extremely serious misconduct, this discussion is one that's becoming more frequent at a very interesting point in history as the pendulum in the state of California begins to do what all pendulums do eventually.
Ed Exley: Why'd you become a cop?
Jack Vincennes: (long pause) I don't remember.
---L.A. Confidential(1997)
If you were to ask the law enforcement agency in your city or county how many officers it employed that were either fired from another agency and lateraled over, or were fired from that agency and then were reinstated, what would that agency's answer be? What could they tell you? What if like in the case of Maywood Police Department and no doubt other smaller agencies, there's a department filled with officers who are employed there after being fired elsewhere?
You certainly wouldn't be told that the officer who stopped and searched your car could have been fired from anywhere for misconduct in relation to searches, or if the officer who took your report was fired for lying on one. The officer who takes the complaint of a Black person could have been one who was suspended there or at another agency for making racist comments about Black people. Hopefully, unlike one real life example, he won't wind up being charged with felony assault with intent to commit bodily harm in relation to an off-duty incident or cause any other serious problems.
Or as happened in one case in Alabama and another in South Carolina, the officer who took a report on a sexual assault crime could himself, be a registered sex offender. Maybe it won't be that bad. Maybe it was an officer who was fired for having sex with rape victims on cases he was assigned to investigate.
It's the public that is asking questions about similar situations and the curtain that shrouds them and it's the public that has been raising concerns about them as well. In the future, it will probably be the police officers themselves having these same discussions. Why? Because most police officers say they frown on this type of misconduct and eventually, they'll be sick and tired of working with officers who have been fired or otherwise severely disciplined for misconduct. At first, it will be a small number that will complain about it while the others watch in silence to see what will happen to them and then gradually more and more of them will step forward, after remembering why they went into the profession in the first place.
Still, it's not clear at this point what will be the final form of both bills and how long either will last in the political arena.
(excerpt, Berkeley Daily Planet)
“It’s clear that there will have to be amendments,” Rashidah Grinag, representative of the Oakland community organization PUEBLO, said by telephone. “A return to the pre-Copley open public hearings may be acceptable to all sides. But release of police disciplinary records is going to be a problem. Attorneys for police agencies told the committee that police would be put in jeopardy if that information was released to the public. They made it pretty melodramatic.”
Grinage also said that police agency attorneys said “we didn’t mind having public disciplinary hearings in the past, but recently, members of the press and defense attorneys have begun to show up to monitor them. So they were saying they didn’t mind having the public hearings, so long as the public didn’t notice them. Now that the public is noticing them, they want them stopped. There’s a lot of irony in that.”
The assembly bill that is a counterpart to Romero's was pulled by its sponsor before the vote was taken and its current status is not known.
A pretty comprehensive analysis of that legislation, AB 1648 can be found here.
More information on both bills including their text can be found here at the ACLU's Northern California Web site.
In Oakland, the ACLU and a community organization, People United for a Better Oakland(PUEBLO) had once given that police department's complaint process a failing grade in a report released in 1996.
Failing the Test: Oakland's Police Complaint System in Crisis
Among other problems, the study noted that police officers failed to tell complainants about Oakland's civilian review board, 95% of the time and only 36% of the officers interviewed knew that complaints could be made by telephone.
Years later, changes were made with Oakland's complaint process, but its civilian review board has faced similar battles to reopening its public hearings as Berkeley.
The San Francisco Chronicle published an editorial last week on the dual bills up in Sacramento. Last week, the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors endorsed the assembly bill, 1648. This action follows an editorial written in support of AB 1648 by the Sacramento Bee last month.
(excerpt, San Francisco Chronicle)
Without these changes, the public is kept from learning about police misconduct such as use of undue force, dishonesty or wrongful shooting.
The police badly need community support to do their job, and this trust is undercut by shielding the public from knowing the facts about misconduct cases. Knowing that the disciplinary process will be in the open may also deter officers from misusing their power.
The court case (Copley vs. San Diego) has effectively kept police disciplinary procedures in the dark, where police unions may prefer. But misconduct records for other public employees, along with doctors and lawyers, are made public, as they should be.
Action Alerts on both bills:
Sacramento for Democracy
California Newspapers Publishers Association
ACLU, Southern California chapter
Desert Sun Editorial
During that pursuit, a man driving a stolen car drove onto a ball field. Even though no children were playing there at the time, the police department decided to evaluate its current policy.
Pursuits have Bellevue rethinking pursuit policy
(excerpt)
"Change comes about from change in the state law, or when we have a pursuit," said BPD Capt. Herb Evers. "If we have a pursuit that goes bad, God forbid we kill or injure someone - an innocent third party for example - that's probably going to change our pursuit policy and I think that has changed other departments' pursuit policies."
Evers is correct. Both the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department have reexamined their policies after serious incidents involving pursuits in their jurisdictions.
And they're not the only ones.
The Bellevue Police Department had its own past incidents which have brought scrutiny by the public into the department's practices.
(excerpt)
"I can tell you without naming names we have had officers disciplined for their actions in a pursuit," he said, pointing out a December 2005 chase where seven officers, five more than the limit of two, chased a man into Iowa.
"The first hint something is wrong is I have seven cruiser tapes on my desk. I'm saying please tell me we didn't have seven cars in the pursuit - we did."
For a variety of reasons, mistakes can be made. And even when mistakes aren't made, things can go wrong.
"Officers will sometimes lose control a little bit because of the excitement or the adrenaline rush, and they have a tendency to go wherever the vehicle goes that they are pursuing, which is really dangerous," Evers said.
"Because that's the idiot, we're the trained people."
The department has increased its training for both its newer officers and its more experienced ones and has an eight-page policy detailing when to begin pursuits and also when to terminate them.
Berkeley is one of the epicenters of the controversy surrounding the Copley Press ruling issued by the California State Supreme Court last summer and so there's been a lot of coverage of the issue in the Berkeley Daily Planet.
Last week, the newspaper published an article on the legislation which was initiated in both houses up at the state capitol. As has been reported, the state senate bill that was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero narrowly passed 3-2 in its first appearance at the subcommittee level and votes were cast for or against it along partisan lines.
Casting supportive votes were Romero, Cedillo Gilbert and Mark Ridley-Thomas, who are all Democrats. Republicans David Cogdill and Bob Margett voted against it.
Still, compromises are expect to be made before the bill comes up for a vote again. Gilbert made that clear when he cast the deciding vote on Romero's bill to get it out of subcommittee.
The battle is expected to just get more fierce in the weeks and months ahead, but the issue is not expected to go away any time soon. And a defeat of either or both bills may just enliven the public debate further.
Controversies like the one that hit Maywood Police Department among others have probably ensured that the discussions will continue to take place. As long as members of the public are pulled over by law enforcement officers or encounter them in the field and wonder if these officers have been fired from other police departments or even from their current one, these discussions will continue. With the environment in California making it tougher for police chiefs and sheriffs to fire law enforcement officers even for extremely serious misconduct, this discussion is one that's becoming more frequent at a very interesting point in history as the pendulum in the state of California begins to do what all pendulums do eventually.
Ed Exley: Why'd you become a cop?
Jack Vincennes: (long pause) I don't remember.
---L.A. Confidential(1997)
If you were to ask the law enforcement agency in your city or county how many officers it employed that were either fired from another agency and lateraled over, or were fired from that agency and then were reinstated, what would that agency's answer be? What could they tell you? What if like in the case of Maywood Police Department and no doubt other smaller agencies, there's a department filled with officers who are employed there after being fired elsewhere?
You certainly wouldn't be told that the officer who stopped and searched your car could have been fired from anywhere for misconduct in relation to searches, or if the officer who took your report was fired for lying on one. The officer who takes the complaint of a Black person could have been one who was suspended there or at another agency for making racist comments about Black people. Hopefully, unlike one real life example, he won't wind up being charged with felony assault with intent to commit bodily harm in relation to an off-duty incident or cause any other serious problems.
Or as happened in one case in Alabama and another in South Carolina, the officer who took a report on a sexual assault crime could himself, be a registered sex offender. Maybe it won't be that bad. Maybe it was an officer who was fired for having sex with rape victims on cases he was assigned to investigate.
It's the public that is asking questions about similar situations and the curtain that shrouds them and it's the public that has been raising concerns about them as well. In the future, it will probably be the police officers themselves having these same discussions. Why? Because most police officers say they frown on this type of misconduct and eventually, they'll be sick and tired of working with officers who have been fired or otherwise severely disciplined for misconduct. At first, it will be a small number that will complain about it while the others watch in silence to see what will happen to them and then gradually more and more of them will step forward, after remembering why they went into the profession in the first place.
Still, it's not clear at this point what will be the final form of both bills and how long either will last in the political arena.
(excerpt, Berkeley Daily Planet)
“It’s clear that there will have to be amendments,” Rashidah Grinag, representative of the Oakland community organization PUEBLO, said by telephone. “A return to the pre-Copley open public hearings may be acceptable to all sides. But release of police disciplinary records is going to be a problem. Attorneys for police agencies told the committee that police would be put in jeopardy if that information was released to the public. They made it pretty melodramatic.”
Grinage also said that police agency attorneys said “we didn’t mind having public disciplinary hearings in the past, but recently, members of the press and defense attorneys have begun to show up to monitor them. So they were saying they didn’t mind having the public hearings, so long as the public didn’t notice them. Now that the public is noticing them, they want them stopped. There’s a lot of irony in that.”
The assembly bill that is a counterpart to Romero's was pulled by its sponsor before the vote was taken and its current status is not known.
A pretty comprehensive analysis of that legislation, AB 1648 can be found here.
More information on both bills including their text can be found here at the ACLU's Northern California Web site.
In Oakland, the ACLU and a community organization, People United for a Better Oakland(PUEBLO) had once given that police department's complaint process a failing grade in a report released in 1996.
Failing the Test: Oakland's Police Complaint System in Crisis
Among other problems, the study noted that police officers failed to tell complainants about Oakland's civilian review board, 95% of the time and only 36% of the officers interviewed knew that complaints could be made by telephone.
Years later, changes were made with Oakland's complaint process, but its civilian review board has faced similar battles to reopening its public hearings as Berkeley.
The San Francisco Chronicle published an editorial last week on the dual bills up in Sacramento. Last week, the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors endorsed the assembly bill, 1648. This action follows an editorial written in support of AB 1648 by the Sacramento Bee last month.
(excerpt, San Francisco Chronicle)
Without these changes, the public is kept from learning about police misconduct such as use of undue force, dishonesty or wrongful shooting.
The police badly need community support to do their job, and this trust is undercut by shielding the public from knowing the facts about misconduct cases. Knowing that the disciplinary process will be in the open may also deter officers from misusing their power.
The court case (Copley vs. San Diego) has effectively kept police disciplinary procedures in the dark, where police unions may prefer. But misconduct records for other public employees, along with doctors and lawyers, are made public, as they should be.
Action Alerts on both bills:
Sacramento for Democracy
California Newspapers Publishers Association
ACLU, Southern California chapter
Desert Sun Editorial
Labels: Backlash against civilian oversight, public forums in all places
posted by Five Before Midnight | 9:37 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home