Canary in the Mine: The deposition

The Press Enterprise wrote an editorial about the runoff elections that will take place in Riverside this November, hoping that they would be cleaner. The board hoped that there would be no more smear tactics used by candidates and no more internet vitriol, things that it had criticized in the past albeit in a very selective manner.

This editorial actually has some sensible advice, which is surprising given the board's track record in Election 2007 part one, but it does bear consideration.


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Candidates should also offer ideas for improving the public perception of the City Council. The contention that the current council acts without seeking public input was a constant theme during the campaign and might explain why none of the three incumbents running won an outright victory. Granted, races with multiple challengers often lead to runoffs. But a large number of candidates running against incumbents can also indicate public dissatisfaction.



The grasp on the obvious expressed here is commendable. This is a message that the editorial board should have espoused the first time around but better late than never, from this internet site.




Linda Soubirous was sworn in at the city council meeting as the newest member of the Community Police Review Commission and Councilman Frank Schiavone swore he had no idea that she had received at least $130,000 from the Riverside Sheriffs' Association and $30,000 from the Riverside Police Officers' Association when she ran against Bob Buster for his Riverside County Board of Supervisors position. I almost believed him for several seconds.

I mean, Councilman Art Gage and I'm sure Councilman Dom Betro knew as well and neither are the Ward Four elected representative nor have they expressed interest in running for a seat that Soubirous had allegedly been considering before throwing her hat, albeit briefly, in the California State Assembly race.

No word yet on the quid pro quo political appointment which was likely promised in response to council members who might have otherwise questioned the conflict of interest issues with Soubirous' appointment but with yet another commissioner expected to resign, it should be apparent soon who that lucky person will be and from what ward.

Schiavone redeemed himself somewhat by his quest to take on Union Pacific Train Company which has shamelessly turned the city's streets into its personal parking lots and blocked intersections into arenas for road rage motorists to vent their frustration at each other. His latest plan is to hold a governmental affairs committee meeting later this month to discuss the issue.

Frank took some exception to this editorial by the Press Enterprise tsk tsking the city council for daring to think it could throw fines at the mighty railroad companies but it remains to be seen what will happen next in the ongoing saga of Schiavone, the little engine who maybe can, against the big railroad barons.

But while he's off doing something about the train jams, the law suit filed by Officer Ryan Wilson continues to wind its way through the Riverside County Superior Court system and the Community Police Review Commission continues to get hollowed out by City Hall, even as it prepares to interview unsuspecting finalists for the CPRC executive manager position all day Wednesday.

People have been talking about this law suit and running off to read its contents including a deposition given last February by Chief Russ Leach. The attorney interviewing him was Michael Lackie who was representing Wilson in his litigation.

Leach's deposition provides an interesting look at the duality involved with being the head of a law enforcement agency, in terms of representing yourself to the public on an issue one way and representing yourself to another crowd as being on the opposing side when it comes to the CPRC, its independents and those pesky community watch dogs. To be all things to all people, while riding the fine line between being supported by your employees or "fired" by them must be difficult straits for anyone in that position.

It also provides a chronology of Leach's love-hate relationship with the seven-year-old panel. At first, Leach appeared to like it especially when it was chaired by retired police chief, Bill Howe. He said that the commission sent some good policy recommendations to his office and a few were implemented.


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"it was no harm. It was a good advisory commentary."



However, things soured a bit later on when the CPRC began to more aggressively assert itself when it implemented one of its powers that was given to it first by ordinance then through the city's charter amendment passed by the city's voters. Not content to wait six months until the department completed its own investigation, the CPRC began sending out its own investigators after Riverside Police Department officers were involved in incustody deaths. Even when that happened, Leach and the police department did not raise objections to that practice as long as the CPRC issued findings on incustody deaths that like the police department, exonerated the officers of any misconduct. That happened five times under the new system without a peep from the police department or Leach. In fact Leach on one occasion compelled one of his officers, Tina Banfill Gould, to appear before the CPRC to answer questions after she had been subpoenaed.

That all changed with the shooting of Summer Marie Lane, the individual who was shot and killed by Wilson in 2004. How much things have changed as a result is only beginning to be realized as community members begin connecting the dots.



Leach continued to tell community members how much he supported an independent and strong CPRC and even the city didn't raise any qualms about the CPRC conducting its own independent investigations. Obviously that irked Leach more than he let on in public, certainly more than he let on to the communities including individuals who read his words and were kind of shocked by a side of him they had never seen before.

Leach makes it clear how his views of the CPRC have changed if indeed he ever really supported it, and why.


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"It was not until they got involved in conducting their own investigations of these officer-involved shooting deaths when the communication process broke down."




Actually, it wasn't until the CPRC came out with its differential finding that the whole entire process broke down in his eyes and had Leach even bothered to ask Howe what his views on the Lane shooting are, he might be disappointed. A shooting Howe still has very strong feelings about to this day.

Leach obviously holds Wilson in high esteem, certainly at least during this deposition where he's in a room being questioned by the RPOA's attorney of choice, not an enviable position for a police chief. He also said that he would promote Wilson "no matter what the public said". Yet then he said that the public would make him "a bit miserable" if he did, so that would make him more hesitant. It's as if Leach can't make up his mind on this issue even as he's sitting under the spotlight of Wilson's attorney. Leach clearly blames the community that's paying attention to what his department does in the wake of a consent decree for his apparent inability to promote Wilson yet he himself says that he would promote him regardless of public sentiment.



But Leach and the others aren't attacking the finding directly, in fact they aren't attacking it all. They are for some bizarre reason attacking a public report issued by the CPRC which has no lasting purpose except to provide information to the public on the shooting itself. Any finding it gives is preliminary, but as confused and stupid as Leach clearly believes the community to be on these issues, it's his boss, Hudson who confused the two in his own declaration.



Still, the strategy of those who are contending that Wilson was damaged by a finding or a report that was completely ignored, according to testimony by Hudson and Leach too, is to say that it damaged him by proxy, meaning that it tainted him based on its impact on the community. The problem with that assertion is that the community was actually reacting to factual information it received for the first time on the shooting in the last week of September 2005, not to the finding itself which would come along nearly two months later. Another obvious problem is that Leach who is going to bat for his officer makes it clear how little the CPRC's findings or any of its discussion on the Lane shooting has had and will have on his officer's upward trajectory through the ranks. Hudson in his own declaration where he contradicts statements he had made to community members, makes it clear that the CPRC played no role and was not even serving in an "advisory" capacity when the city, not the department, made its decision on the Lane shooting.

One council member asked, are we in trouble on the Wilson case. The answer for the city is, no. The answer for the community through the hollowing out of its civilian oversight process that was initiated in response to the CPRC's bold decision and defiance of the department's own finding, is yes. And if the CPRC's parallel history with its ill-fated predecessor LEPAC is any indication, ultimately the same answer applies to the police department as well. That's the greatest value of this law suit, not what it will do for Wilson, but the spotlight that it's putting on how and why the campaign against the CPRC by the city and department began. Expect more of the same especially when the city files its own legal briefs next month.


Leach testified that a third shooting by Wilson would be a "bit overwhelming". After all, he had already been involved in two shootings, Leach said, "the public watch dogs know that." One wonders how much time he's spent thinking about this subject. After the CPRC released its finding, Wilson was assigned to the department's POPs team, which specifically addresses quality of life issues first, and is dispatched to 9-11 calls second. That assignment paints a picture of the department's management having given this unpleasant possibility a great deal of thought.



Is Leach wrong to be concerned or at least think about it? After all, a study done by the Los Angeles Times involving Los Angeles Police Department officers involved in multiple shootings tried to quantify the probability that officers would be involved in future shootings based on their past ones. It found the following statistics including one that states that the vast majority of officers in the LAPD never fire their guns in the field. The fatal shooting rate/1000 officers, a standard often used for comparison, in the LAPD is lower than that in the Riverside Police Department.





Probability that officer is involved in one shooting: 1 in 10

Probability that officer involved in one shooting will be involved in a second: 1 in 5

Probability that officer involved in two shootings will have a third one: 1 in 3

In the 1990s, if an officer had three shootings in the LAPD, he or she could also be included on the Christopher Commission list of officers, which in a sense provided an "early warning system" for that agency before it ever had one. One former Riverside Police Department officer, Bill Rhetts, was hired from the LAPD despite his inclusion on that list. Perhaps it's just the LAPD that doesn't believe that officers placed on this "list" or others like it are outstanding officers. How does the Riverside Police Department rank against an agency notorious for avoiding serious reform or postponing it as long as possible?

Leach raises areas of concern he believe might be expressed and in other contexts have been expressed by community members including at public forums, in dismissive fashion. But after all, the community members aren't in the room with him when he's being deposed but Wilson's attorney who also represents the RPOA is there. So is Leach performing or is this how he's felt about the community's concerns about the department's reform all along?


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"I think that a third shooting, again an awful lot of pressure about, you know we didn't learn anything during our five-year consent decree and we're failing to follow the guidelines of our own early warning system and that we've created a situation where we have an officer in their view is proven to be a quick shooter and some liability issues may arise from that."

The fact that the police chief would use the defence of whether or not they could be criticized for not learning anything during their five-year consent decree period in itself begs the question, has the department indeed learned anything? That's a question often asked, and Leach's own words in a sense became a self-fulfilling prophecy merely because he said them, as discussions in the past couple of days have centered on that question.



Within any critical incident including an officer-involved shooting lies the opportunity for a department and the mandate to indeed ask itself, what have we done here, what can we do to prevent future shootings, what can we do to improve tactics or training, do any policies need to be reexamined or even rewritten? This type of defensive rhetoric by Leach is disturbing in that it makes one wonder whether this highly insulated and internalized process of engaging in the examination of critical incidents is being followed. After all, if a police department including its leadership is spending a lot of its time and energy insisting from the get-go such as the initial briefing before the CPRC that its officers actions were justified, then how does it drop this defensive attitude and circling of the wagons long enough to engage in the process of critical incident review? How can the community truly know if such processes are even taking place at all?



For example, how many of the three shootings last year even underwent a critical incident review? The community has no way of knowing how many times this has happened. The community does have the opportunity to count how many times the police department has engaged in defensive behavior regarding its officers who have been involved in these shootings whether it's homicide sergeants rebutting Press Enterprise articles by telephone after they've been published as apparently happened in the Lee Deante Brown shooting case or departmental representatives misstating factual information in both the Lane and Brown shootings and defending the officers' actions at these briefings before they're even done with their investigations which take months to complete. Examples of how long these investigations can actually take are the Douglas Steven Cloud and Joseph Darnell Hill shootings which have both taken eight months so far.


Officer-involved shootings are potential flags for the department's computerized Early Warning System as they should be. Whether or not the ultimate decision is made to exonerate the officer or not, shootings still impact the officers who pull the trigger on different levels, physical, mental and/or emotional, which could potentially affect their job performance or their psychological well-being. In part, the EWS is set up to monitor patterns in a particular officer that might reflect problems in their behavior over time. If Wilson, Officer Terry Ellefson or any other officer involved in multiple incustody deaths over a relatively short period of time is flagged by the EWS, that's not the community's doing, but the department's.

And according to at least one study done on the effectiveness of the EWS models, officers who are flagged and tracked by these systems are actually slightly more likely to be promoted by their police chiefs than they would be if they weren't in these systems. Quite a few officers who were involved in one, even two incustody deaths have been promoted within the ranks of the police department regardless of the community's reaction to those deaths.

For example, the incustody death of Hector Islas in 1997, led to protests in the community but at least three of the six officers involved in that incident have been promoted at least once since then. The officers involved in the death of Derek Hayward in 1994 have both been promoted at least twice since then despite a federal jury returning a $715,000 verdict against them. Both the officers involved in the 1998 shooting of Obea Tucker have been promoted at least once.

An officer involved in a controversial dog bite incident in the mid-1980s that nearly led to riots in the community has been promoted numerous times since then.

Whether there is community outcry or not about the individual incidents appears to make little to no difference in the decisions made by those police chiefs who have promoted them. The same will ultimately be true about Wilson. In fact, cynical community members may argue that Wilson actually enhanced his promotional chances by being involved in two shootings within a three-year period. That deduction may be based on how many times it's happened in past years with other officers.




Leach was displeased with three commissioners including Jim Ward, Sheri Corral and the departed Bonavita Quinto-MacCullum who had expressed enthusiasm about her future on the commission before abruptly deciding against seeking a reappointment in a decision that stunned community members.

About one commissioner who hasn't joined the exodus of those who have left the commission in the past six months, Leach had this to say.




"I personally join with my police association in not only requesting but urging that [he/she] be removed from the panel."

Neither party mentioned in this statement has come out in public and announced any plans to expel anyone from a body that they now essentially control. If they didn't in a sense control the CPRC, then neither Leach nor the RPOA would make statements like this one. But what is really fascinating about Leach's words here is that he's done something that chiefs of law enforcement agencies rarely do and that's closely identify himself with his agency's rank and file labor union.

Most often, chiefs maintain an independence from their agency's labor unions and separate themselves to project that independence that they need to be able to make the difficult decisions that they often have to make which upset the labor unions representing the officers who serve under them. Not that the unions and management should be at each other's throats because that's not healthy either but it's clear that Leach at least outside of the glare of public scrutiny knows which side his bread is buttered on. Unfortunately, the message projected by a statement like this one is that he's beholden to the labor unions. And it makes it apparent that Leach is caught in the middle of a power struggle between the police unions and the city manager's office.

In the 1990s, according to David Thatcher of the Urban Institute who did a study on the Riverside Police Department, the police unions clashed with City Manager John Holmes on several occasions whenever there was a void in management or management was compromised by external factors. If this is indeed history repeating itself or history itself was an aberration, then who is really micromanaging Leach? Is it really DeSantis or do different factions take turns in their clashes with each other?

The deposition clearly pits Leach against his boss, City Manager Brad Hudson who is claiming the opposite as fact than Leach is saying in his depositions. Both are providing conflicting answers to the same questions. When Leach takes sides, he does what any chief working under the culture of law enforcement does, he circles the wagons around himself and his officers and against his own boss and the community.

The community naturally is left wondering, okay which Leach is the real Leach. The one who supports the efforts of watch dogs as partners in the ongoing reform process as related by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer in an op-ed piece he wrote in the Press Enterprise or the one who views them as ignorant nuisances whenever they are out of earshot? Is the real one behind door number one, two or perhaps door number three?

The answer is the same for all police chiefs it seems. All of the above and then some.

At any rate, as a city, we've seen this all before. The hollowing out of an already weak civilian oversight mechanism. A shooting rate that's increasing and higher than the national average. Conflicts between the police unions and the city manager's office. A future chief rising through the ranks, who was only a sergeant a few years ago.

What is past is prologue. What will the future bring when all the parties involved seemed so intent on reliving the past, following closely on the grooves etched that brought us to where we are now. Still it does remain unwritten, for now but it certainly isn't very encouraging.

In San Bernardino, the prosecution continues to try the case of a former San Bernardino County Sheriff's deputy who shot Elio Carrion three times after ordering him to rise. The Press Enterprise published an article about the latest events in the prosecution's case.


Ivory J. Webb is standing trial on attempted voluntary manslaughter and other related charges. On Tuesday, expert witness Joe Callanan continued to testify about the tactical decisions made by Webb leading up to and including the shooting.


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Webb told at least one officer at the scene that Carrion lunged at him. Later, Webb told investigators that Carrion had moved one hand toward his jacket, as if reaching for a gun.

Callanan testified that he sees no evidence of either.

"There is no body movement to suggest that an attack is under way," he said under questioning by San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Lewis Cope.

Instead, the videotape shows an officer who is completely out of control, Callanan told the jury.

"I don't see any compliance with training," Callanan testified.

"I know this (sheriff's) agency. They don't train you to do this."