Reforms and regulations

The Press Enterprise is running a poll on whether or not people believe that the newsletter circulated by Riverside city councilman, Steve Adams and a recent civic event unfairly highlighted him at tax payer expense?

The poll is being conducted here. Several responses so far are here. And the disapproval towards Adams' action is so far leading over the thumbs up response.



An interesting article in the Los Angeles Times about how some private companies and firms have been donating hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of money and equipment for the Los Angeles Police Department to use in investigations directly related to these corporations.


Firms' donations to LAPD spur concern


Some say that these donations, most of which are through the Los Angeles Police Foundation help provide the resources to fight crime. Others say that it sends a message that if you want better law enforcement particularly in the investigations' division, you'd better pay for it.


(excerpt)



"This runs counter to the notion that public safety is provided equally to all and not just those rich enough to afford it," said Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause. "Our police are not a private security force, and therefore police services should be funded by the public and not private interests that stand to benefit directly."

Unlike law enforcement agencies in other big cities — for example, New York — some of the LAPD donations were solicited by various police officials outside the framework of the department's independent police foundation.

Donors who want to give to the New York Police Department are told to go through the separate New York Police Foundation, which was established in 1971 after the Knapp Commission uncovered widespread corruption in the department.

"Our police department cannot accept donations," said Gregg Roberts, executive vice president of the New York Police Foundation. "We were created to be a hedge against corruption. By having donations go through us, we take out any implication of impropriety."



The New York City Police Department apparently learned the hard way that to put it mildly, police departments have to tread cautiously in this area.

In Los Angeles, there is also the issue of police department representatives soliciting donations outside the foundation. The case that attracted the most attention was that involving the cigarette company, Phillip Morris USA. Apparently, they contributed $50,o00 to an ongoing investigation looking into illegal behavior associated with their product, but it was LAPD Chief William Bratton himself who solicited the donation.

Ironic considering how many lives are lost each year in connection to the use of cigarettes. Enough to populate a city about the size of Riverside. Efforts by Phillip Morris USA and companies to try and prohibit the sale of their products to minors for example, are offset by the advertising tactics these companies use to lure minors to use their products. Still, Bratton solicited the corporation for money to assist with the LAPD's investigation.

Bratton said he did nothing improper and that all donations are approved by the city council, but still it left a bad taste in the mouths of many of money changing hands between police departments and corporations for the purposes of financing criminal investigations.



The LAPD is also addressing the issue of racial profiling, according to another article in the Los Angeles Times, which was large enough to fit a postage stamp worth of information inside it.

(excerpt)


The new guidelines include a checklist to ensure that officers are asked whether they knew the race of the motorist before making the traffic stop and whether race was a factor in the decision to pull over the motorist.



I wonder what the answer to that last question will be. But the creation of this checklist and other measures is in line with the reforms mandated by the department's consent decree with the Department of Justice.

The Riverside Police Department had to take similar measures when it had entered into its stipulated judgment with then State Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office. Another task that it had to complete was the creation of annual reports involving the collection of data for traffic stops. The police department would compile the statistical information on the race and gender of people stopped by police officers both in the patrol and traffic divisions and then have Professor Larry Gaines from the California State University, San Bernardino analyze it.

Even though Lockyer's office had alleged that the police officers had been conducting traffic stops that violated state laws and the state's constitution, Gaines never found any evidence to prove that racial profiling was going on.

The last report was completed and submitted to the city council and released to the public in 2005. There had been a public forum on that event and an interesting thing happened involving Gaines. When asked about whether or not he had found evidence of profiling, Gaines said he had not but he then admitted that he had not found evidence to prove that it wasn't happening either.

After the dissolution of the stipulated judgment, Police Chief Russ Leach promised community leaders that the annual studies would continue, the one difference being that rather than having Gaines do the analysis, that responsibility would be rotated among different experts on the issue of racial profiling and traffic stops.

In a letter dated Aug. 4, 2006, Leach stated that $25,000 from the city's general fund had been allocated for the March 2007 traffic stop study. However, that date came and went and there was no traffic study released. And there won't be one released this year, according to Asst. Chief John DeLaRosa who stated that rather than conducting the studies annually, the department would be conducting them less often because there was no significant difference from one year to the next involving the statistics and Gaines had found no evidence of racial profiling.

Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis claimed he had nothing to do with the department's operations so he knew nothing about the status of the traffic stop study. Maybe he just sticks to trying to reconfigure the department's upper management level. His boss, City Manager Brad Hudson didn't appear to know much about what the annual studies actually involved, which wasn't that surprising given that the subject has little or nothing to do with economic development projects.

Still, it's not clear whether the studies will be conducted biennially, every five years, once a decade or so forth. Perhaps they are still trying to figure that one out and hoping no one else will ask about it.

Next up, what happened to the $25,ooo allocated for the study then?




Two police officers in Bridgeport, Connecticut who were busted for drinking alcohol on duty had histories of complaints received while on duty, according to an article in the Connecticut Post.

Officer Hugo Stern had about five and he was exonerated on all of them.

However, Officer Brian Parker kept his department's internal affairs division quite busy, having received over 25 complaints. About 20 of them were determined to be unfounded by the police department. The other five were not sustained. Here's the litany.

(excerpt)


Over the years, allegations by civilians against Parker include six complaints of excessive force; seven allege conduct violations of department policy; three with abuse of power; three with illegal search-and-seizure; two with unjustified action; one with false arrest; and one with inaccurate reporting. Charges were not identified in two cases.



Given the sheer number of complaints against Parker, it's probably time for the police department to reevaluate its complaint process including the personnel investigations conducted by the department.

And guess what? Now, Chief Bryan T. Norwood has decided he wants to fire both officers, in part because especially in the case of Parker, they have extensive complaint histories. Apparently it matters now that the two men got caught drinking while in uniform by a reporter that they had problematic employment histories.

But Norwood should realize and maybe he has is that members of the public laid out the bread crumbs for him to realize he had an officer in his employment with serious problems. Actually two of them. Don't blame the public for your agency's own apparent failure to not only pay little heed to them, but to have something in place, called an early warning system.



Another article in the Connecticut Post on Bridgeport deals with the issue of domestic violence among law enforcement officers. It appears that the city council will be reviewing for approval a zero-tolerance policy involving officers who commit domestic violence and that those who do will be terminated from their jobs under this policy.

This policy was sparked in part because acting chief, Anthony Armeno had been docked vacation pay but not fired for allegedly assaulting a fellow employee. Another officer, Dougles Bepko was given a seven month suspension without pay for being charged with domestic violence after punching, hitting and kicking his girlfriend. If convicted, he'll be canned.

Only about 45% of law enforcement agencies in the country have policies addressing in house domestic violence.