Riverside's grand jury takes on the public defender's office

The Riverside County Grand Jury has decided to conduct a probe into the county's public defender office after allegations had been raised of serious problems involving its operations, according to the Press Enterprise.


Grand Jury probes public defender's office


The news is hardly surprising given the nature of the allegations which have come out of that county department lately but it does highlight the seriousness of yet another crisis to add to those already faced by an overwhelmed criminal justice system that seems to be perpetually 1,000 felony trials behind schedule.


Senior public defenders are and have been leaving by the droves and morale within the beleaguered agency is at an all time low, which was illustrated in a column last week submitted by one of the employees, Daniel Schmidt who hopefully will still have a job after writing that pointed column.

Schmidt who also apparently contacted County Supervisor Roy Wilson stated that the caseload for all the attorneys was tremendous and that many attorneys who left the office simply handed off their cases to others, causing the criminal cases to take months or years to go to trial.


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"Can you imagine the human cost of delayed justice, loss of rights, unwarranted convictions, and unnecessary incarcerations that result from the ineffective assistance of counsel?" Schmidt wrote.



Promotions were slow in coming and management positions countywide had been left open, other public defenders alleged. Some called for an audit of the office.


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Former Deputy Public Defender Melanie Roe said Thursday she could account for at least 20 attorneys including herself who have left the Indio office since 2005.

"The Indio office is decimated and something needs to be done immediately," Roe said. "If the Board of Supervisors doesn't act, I think the judiciary needs to get involved, or the state Bar."

She said she left because of what she called poor management of the office.


Another attorney was quoted in the article that she left because her complaints about problems were not being taken seriously.


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"I did not leave because of money, caseloads, or an over-zealous district attorney's office," wrote Heather Moorhead, who left the office in February for a position with the Orange County Alternate Defender office. She said she pointed out problems to her supervisors, but believes she was ignored.


"I left because the office was slowly and consistently creating an environment of incompetence that I could not be part of," she wrote.


The public defender's office had been fraught with problems when its current head, Gary Windom came into his position in 1999, but it appears that the situation is at least as serious now as it was back then.

Speaking of public defenders, there are many blogs on the internet written by public defenders working at the county or federal levels. Here's a sample of them.


Public Defender Dude

P.D. Stuff

A Public Defender

There are even blog awards for public defenders here and a guide where you can also find more blogs by public defenders.




Problems continue in Colton after the city terminated its police chief, Kenneth Rulon after among other things he received a no-confidence vote from his department's police union and had been investigated for retaliating against officers who filed complaints against him.

He had alleged that he was being retaliated for reporting illegal activity by a former city councilman to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.

The San Bernardino Sun's editorial board supported Rulon's departure from the city's employment ranks.


Cause enough for Rulon's ouster


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None of this is to say whether Rulon was a bad cop or a good cop. But being a chief requires, first and foremost, the ability to lead. And the city has ample reason to oust a chief when that core ability is compromised. As much as we would hate to see someone railroaded out sheerly because they had become unpopular, more than if they had actually done something wrong, it is extremely difficult to lead a department once the base of trust has been eroded. And it is even harder to win it back.

Colton's city manager, Darryl Parrish continued to defend his decision to fire Rulon in the local press even as community leaders continued to support Rulon because of his work to implement community policing and youth programs in the local community. But community leaders can't and don't keep police chiefs employed, the rank and file officers do as this case clearly showed. That's why many police chiefs don't interact with the communities as much as they could or should. Why should they, if their job security comes from other corners? They should because it promotes better communication and perhaps better relations between the community and the department.

Maybe Rulon wasn't a good police chief. Maybe he just wasn't a good politician. And when it comes to having to choose between a good chief and a good politician, many people including myself would much rather see the former although those individuals have a much tougher row to hoe.

Another police chief, William Bratton of the Los Angeles Police Department just received word that he will only be receiving a "mild rebuke" from that city's police commission according to this article in the Los Angeles Times.

The incidents in question involved comments he made made to two councilmen who also happened to be former LAPD officers including Bernard Parks who headed that department for five years before Bratton took over. Bratton had allegedly told the two of them that they didn't know what the hell they were talking about after they complained about the LAPD loosening its drug restrictions policy regarding the hiring and screening of prospective hires.

Five council members in total signed the complaints which were sent to the commission.

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In a letter to council members that was obtained by The Times, the commission said it had looked into whether Bratton has engaged in "a pattern of making discourteous remarks," and decided that the chief's actions should be classified as "nondisciplinary — Employee's Actions Could Have Been Different."

"This means the commission determined that the accused employee ideally would have acted differently, but that his actions do not rise to the level of misconduct," Police Commission President John Mack wrote to council members.

Bratton said he felt his relationship with the city council in Los Angeles had improved since he first arrived from heading two police departments back on the east coast.

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"I think, after some initial missteps in coming into town, the relationships across the street are very good," he said.

"We will agree to disagree from time to time and from time to time we will jab each other in the nose. You have a little scrape here and there, but right now is a good time."I get along with pretty much everybody," he added.

Zine and Huizar said Tuesday they were willing to put the matter behind him.

"I think what the chief said was inappropriate," Zine said. "But I think he has learned from this."

In Salt Lake City, Utah, the newspaper there has written an editorial stating the importance of civilian review over the police department in that city.


Police laundry: Review board's reports should be aired



The Salt Lake Tribune's board supports the existence of the city's civilian review board but argued that not enough is being done to bring information about its operations and complaint findings to the public. In fact, the city was trying to do the opposite, which isn't surprising because Salt Lake City isn't alone in trying to veil its board in secrecy.



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According to city documents, the impartial, autonomous board composed of 14 civilians serves to "enhance the trust between the police department and the community."

But while it sounds good on paper, the board is a paper tiger. No teeth. It reviews cases and makes recommendations, but unless the police chief agrees with its findings, the board's detailed reports never see the light of day.

We can understand why the board's findings aren't binding. But we can't fathom why the police chief must concur for the official report to be released to the public. Why not release the board's findings, and if the chief disagrees, he can write a dissenting opinion and attach it to the report?

This misguided policy belittles the board and scuttles its mission, sowing distrust and providing cause for claims of a cover-up. It defeats the very purpose for having a board.



But then that's what many cities and counties do despite protests from the communities that live within them. They try to come up with as many different ways that they can to "defeat the very purpose of having a board".



An update on Columbia, Missouri and its quest for a civilian review board. The community wants one but the city does not, saying it's not needed. An article in the Columbian Missourian suggests otherwise, as a consultant stated in a report that the complaint system needed to be completely revamped.

Aaron Thompson who was hired as a consultant made an odd statement when giving his assessment of the situation.

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"The system is not broken," Thompson said Sunday by phone while driving to Columbia, "But it's going to take a lot to fix it."

That might just be the quote of the day.

Sounds like Thompson's saying that it is indeed broken or a mess in a manner that won't upset city officials. But anyway, Thompson does offer a list of recommendations for fixing the problem which include creating a "professional standards unit" to handle the complaints that come in from citizens as well as those that don't and improving both the documentation of the complaints and also the communication regarding complaint investigations between the department and members of the public.

One of the purposes of the unit would be to remove the handling of the majority of complaints from the department's field supervisors so they could go out and supervise officers.

For all the enthusiasm the city manager and police chief met this report, the one thing that its findings make clear is that there really is a need for civilian review in Columbia, as there is in many other cities. Because it's easy to act interested in a report for a day or a week or even a month, but what of the long haul?

After all, the Riverside City Council acted enthusiastic about its promises to implement continued oversight of the implementation of the Strategic Plan by the police department, for oh, about a month before the whole process fell by the wayside for oh, a few more months. What's happened in both Riverside and Salt Lake City has made it clear that it's critical for the communities to be engaged in the process for the long term.

The Los Angeles Times published some letters from the public on the Maywood Police Department which is the subject of numerous investigations after it was disclosed through an article published by the newspaper that over one-third of its officers had been fired from other police departments.

One of them was a rebuttal from a sergeant who works for Maywood Police Department who seemed to take a stance that yes, there are problems but every department has problems.

No sergeant, not every department has problems to the extent of those uncovered in your agency and are you spending as much energy trying to do your part to change its future as you are trying to defend its past. The former attitude is what the Maywood Police Department and the community it protects and serves needs right now. The latter is an attitude that just fosters the atmosphere that this scandal-plagued agency has surrounding it now.