How to undermine civilian review and other lessons
There's been a lot of discussion about what is necessary to create an independent and viable form of civilian oversight but lately there's been discussions about how to dismantle a civilian review board in light of the recent chain of events impacting the city's police commission. However, the interesting thing about this discussion process was that after individuals listed all the steps they would take to do this, they experienced what is called a "click" moment. They realized that the lists they compiled appeared to closely match the actions taken against what used to be known as the Community Police Review Commission during the past year.
It began on Nov. 9, 2005 when the CPRC voted unanimously that Officer Ryan Wilson had violated the department's use of force policy when he shot and killed Summer Marie Lane in December 2004. That finding was forwarded to City Manager Brad Hudson's office where it met up with the finding from the Riverside Police Department which had exonerated Wilson. Back in those days, the community believed that the CPRC's finding would get an equal chance to be heard as that given to the police department. Of course as everyone knows now, that didn't happen. Hudson simply handed off the responsibility to someone else, blaming his own recent hiring by the city for that action. Of course, he hadn't exactly been new as he had been employed by the city council for six months at this point.
The final decision was given to Chief Russ Leach just as it would have been if the CPRC had never come into being and he did what any police chief would do which is to back his own investigation a second time. After all, he had done just that before delivering the department's finding to Hudson's office. The decision had been handed off to an employee who had essentially already made that decision without any information from the CPRC.
There was an issue with the year-long time line given to discipline officers after an administrative investigation and the interpretation of what constituted that time line would change greatly in the year to come.
After that decision by Leach, the city government closed for the holidays apparently free of secret meetings and civic intrigue involving the CPRC. That would have to wait a year but plenty would happen before what's been called, the December Surprise.
The chair and vice-chair of the CPRC met for the very first time with representatives from Hudson's office, the city attorney's office and the police department in January 2006 to hash over the CPRC's sustained finding and the resultant decision. What was so interesting was that the city attorney's office had for years ignored the CPRC and in fact, had refused to participate in a public workshop with the body in 2004 citing confidentiality issues. Well, whatever those confidentiality issues were, they magically vanished in 2006 after the latest round of officer-involved shootings happened, because then Asst. City Attorney Susan Wilson began attending meetings addressing the drafting of the public report in the 2005 incustody death of Terry Rabb.
Of course, when Lee Deante Brown's shooting came up for public discussion, City Attorney Gregory Priamos began appearing at CPRC meetings, joined by Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis. Curiously enough, something else happened at around that time. DeSantis began to take a deeper interest in the operations of the police department not long after the Brown shooting and that interest appeared to intensify after the autumn shootings of Douglas Steven Cloud and Joseph Darnell Hill.
Civil litigation was filed in these deaths as it had been in Brown's case and also in the cases of Rabb and Lane. Five law suits involving four deaths in two years. Okay, maybe six if litigation is initiated or has been in the Hill case.
This increased involvement or what some called interference incensed the labor unions which represented the employees of the police department and confused community members who looked or read about it all and thought, okay there's already leadership in the department so why is the city taking over that role in certain areas? Why isn't the city manager's office allowing them to just lead if the concerns about DeSantis' actions involving the Riverside Police Department are valid?
Why not indeed?
The community just assumed that DeSantis was so interested in the police department either because he secretly wished he were in law enforcement himself or he thought there were problems there and his boss, Hudson, wanted him to play close attention to its operations to minimize the expenditures the city paid out in civil litigation costs, given that the law suits involving wrongful deaths were increasing and the larger law firms from outside the county were beginning to circle the city and its department. The name, Terry Rabb, drove at least one firm into a frenzy and at least two law firms filed litigation in that case with a third expressing interest and wondering out loud if Rabb had any more family members willing to sue the city.
Apparently, the Brown and Cloud shootings were picked up quickly by law firms and also resulted in civil litigation being filed. Five law suits involving wrongful death allegations is probably enough to keep any city attorney and risk management division up at night. But if they indeed were kept up late, apparently there was some thinking going on.
And the community was thinking as well, after witnessing one year worth of behaviors involving the CPRC which intensified after the trio of shootings by the police department's officers that took place last year.
Here are some of the suggestions offered up by individuals on how to undermine the operation of the CPRC. Whether they actually do undermine the process or not either collectively or individually is subject to interpretation by different people with varying opinions who offered them. Whether these actions or changes have taken place or not is much more clear and in most cases, objectively measured.
Others are just guesses. Whether or not they've happened may never be known.
Ignore a sustained finding from the CPRC on an officer-involved death and then tell the community you will decide differently next time a similar case comes to your office.
Explain your inability to make a decision on a technicality. Then rewrite whatever's needed to support that line of reasoning.
Refuse to keep or deny that your office keeps a statistical record of how many times the CPRC and the police department reach different findings and the percentage of times the city manager's office decides in favor of each agency or offers a compromise involving the final dispositions of citizen complaints.
Forbid the CPRC's staff members from maintaining statistical records involving the differential findings.
Change your interpretation of state law seemingly on whim, i.e. G.C. 3304(d), meaning one day, it's the criteria which determines when the timeline begins that's important. No wait, now it's actually the waivers included in the law's text that matter more.
Begin holding meetings among select members of the commission which keep the rest of them in the dark.
Cut off your executive director from the community by banning him from doing outreach.
Make the executive director "at will" then restrict his abilities to carry out his job responsibilities so he resigns to "seek out better career opportunities". Replace him or her with an interim who has no training whatsoever to fulfill the written job responsibilities of the position.
Create conditions so chaotic that the majority of the commission's current membership resigns or decides not to accept a reappointment. Foster an environment that discourages commissioners from community-oriented backgrounds from remaining. Replace them with commissioners from law-enforcement backgrounds.
Politicize the appointment process by allowing only or mainly candidates with ties to City Hall through prior board and commission experience to be selected for interviews. Allow the city government to use the commission process to pay and repay political favors to one another, i.e. I won't vote against your candidate if you put someone I want on next time.
Allowing commissioners to be appointed or choosing to appoint those who are in potential "conflict of interest" situations including having received campaign contributions from police unions or are actively involved in labor relationships with the city or the police department.
At the screening level for appointments, keep the pool of candidates to be interviewed small. Keep them mostly limited to candidates who address the mayor and/or city council members on a first-name basis during the interview process.
Reduce the racial and gender diversity of the commission's membership, encouraging a status quo of mainly White male commissioners. Ensure that you have commissioners who actually believe a black object is rendered invisible in a Black person's hand.
Have new commissioners chair committees and try to change meeting format rules when they are still asking questions about CPRC operations, i.e. does the commission have subpoena power.
Place a police officer in public or closed sessions when commissioners deliberate on complaints. One past time appears to be counting how many times commissioners look at the police officer sitting in the room during open discussions on the Brown shooting case whenever any of them says something.
Have a city attorney present at the meetings and not also provide the commission the option of independent counsel without ties to City Hall.
Equate concern and outreach to communities with bias against the police department.
Discourage commissioners from asking hard and critical questions. Marginalize those who do.
Provide a location for the CPRC which is hard to find or inaccessible to the public. Its current location is a small cubicle on the Sixth floor of City Hall blocked with a cordon and next to a sign reading "Police Review Commission"[sic] that points in the wrong direction.
Halt the progress or delay the issuance of the annual report, both in terms of the written product and the presentation to the city council.
Hold secret elections involving the chair and vice-chair outside of a public meeting and make the election process so confusing neither the commissioners, staff or the public understand it.
Allow the subcommittees to go fallow due to lack of quorum or other reasons. Schedule them when few commissioners let alone community members can come to them.
Schedule the general meeting before 6 p.m. when few people can attend.
Meet with community leaders, assure them you're concerned about it and then fail to hold followup meetings on the "progress".
Institute a process to examine or make changes needed to the CPRC that either lacks community input or is heavily weighted towards actions or recommendations by City Hall. Don't ask the executive director, commissioners and least of all the community what each think you should do. Tell them what you are going to do, preferably after you've done it.
Fail to adequately research officer-involved death cases either due to lack of ability to commit the time or lack of interest. Allow new commissioners to deliberate cases without training them.
Do not keep their training up to date. Do not ensure training of newer commissioners. Make sure your executive manager is the least qualified and least trained person in the process during the time period one of the department's most contentious shooting investigation and review processes is taking place.
Do not adequately inform new commissioners of the time commitment or underestimate the hours per month needed to do the job.
Tell everyone the annual budget of the CPRC is equitable to previous years and adjusted for inflation when in reality, its starting budget is $20,000 less than it received only several years ago.
Have commissioners chair or participate in meetings before they receive training on the Brown Act and parliamentarian procedures.
Try to deemphasize the powers that the CPRC has. Start throwing buzzwords like "advisory" around regularly.
Do not do outreach or greatly reduce the outreach to the community. Ensure that the acting executive manager is never seen by the community. Segregate said manager from the rest of his staff, ensuring that physically he's closer to his direct boss than his support staff.
Do not limit your actions of micromanagement to the CPRC. Include and increase them in the police department, which should be easier to do given the support you will win from its employees for actions taken involving the CPRC.
Do all of the above or any combination thereof to show the community in many different ways how scared the city is of its own police department six years after a process instituting wide-sweeping reforms was instituted. That's puzzling because on the surface, the department appears to have done nothing to warrant that lack of confidence by the city and had made some positive strides.
Weakening the CPRC is the same as issuing a "no confidence" vote against the Riverside Police Department. An unwillingness to increase its staffing to meet the needs of a growing populace and an expanding city and keeping it properly equipped and trained also sends that message.
A city and a police department that is fully confident in its abilities does not fear strong, independent civilian oversight. It welcomes it. Do either in Riverside truly welcome it?
Hire a skywriter to advertise that "no confidence" vote in the police department. Bill it under Riverside Renaissance.
Those were just a few of the suggestions that were offered up during these discussions. More will be posted later on, in part two of "How to undermine civilian review and other lessons" as they come in.
Kristina Chew has a blog, Autism Vox, that includes a post on the recent case involving an autistic man who died in the custody of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. It's part of a series of articles that she's written on the death of Raymond Lee Mitchell last July from what law enforcement officers labeled "Autism induced excited delirium disorder".
There's an interesting discussion in the comments section as well.
There was an article in the Albuquerque Journal that's no longer available online but it addressed the hiring of new officers who weren't so new by that city's police department.
The city hired 15 new officers, but seven of them brought baggage to their new job in the form of having been charged with criminal offenses in the past or having faced civil litigation. One of them was even investigated by the FBI.
The police chief in Albuquerque reassured everyone that he would hold these officers as he does his others to high professional standards. That would almost be believable if his agency and the city which runs it applied that standard during the hiring process. Perhaps Chief Ray Schultz should include Maywood Police Department in his studies of how other agencies handle the hiring process. Maywood Police Department, if you remember, is currently under investigation by the State Attorney General's office, several federal agencies and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.
(excerpt, Albuquerque Journal)
In its investigation, the Journal found that:
* Two of the transferred officers have been arrested on DWI charges.
One was convicted of aggravated DWI in 1996. That same officer was also convicted of criminal trespass in 1989. Since his troubles with the law, APD officials said, this officer enlisted in the military, turned his life around and is a "decorated war hero."
The other officer had his DWI charge dismissed in 2001 when prosecutors failed to comply with the six-month rule to bring the case to trial. This officer also pleaded guilty in 2000 to a charge of a minor being in a liquor establishment, false evidence of age or ID and improper use of an ID card.
* One officer was arrested in 2004 on charges of evading, eluding or obstructing law enforcement and charges of disorderly conduct. His charges were dismissed by the prosecutor.
* One officer was demoted from his former agency and was investigated by the FBI on accusations that he stole from the department's evidence room. The District Attorney's Office declined to prosecute, saying there was not enough evidence.
The officer was also involved in the domestic incident, and, after he punched holes in the wall, his wife filed for a protection order "from domestic abuse." It was granted by a District Court judge. The officer also had his wages garnisheed for not paying child support.
* One officer cost his former employer "a five-figure settlement," according to plaintiff's counsel. He and other officers were sued in federal court in 2003 for going into someone's home without a warrant and making a false arrest.
* A New Mexico State Police officer left his agency while he was under investigation for being paid twice while on the job. State Police officials said last month that, had he stayed, he would have been fired.
* Two officers are co-defendants in a pending District Court lawsuit in which they have been accused of repeatedly failing to arrest or seek charges against a man on numerous domestic violence violations. The man has been accused of killing his former father-in-law and brother-in-law, and seriously injuring his ex-wife. The civil case has been sent to a judge for a ruling.
For years, APD has accepted officers from other agencies. Unlike new cadets, the experienced officers go through an abbreviated training academy.
The new officers are on a one-year probation.
Castro said that APD will continue to check into the officers' backgrounds and that, if APD finds something that they did not reveal during the hiring process, they could be terminated.
Hiring laterals from other law enforcement agencies offers some benefits. More bang for the buck in terms of injecting more on-the-job experience into the officer ranks especially in police departments whose average level of experience isn't very high. And in a sense, they are a proven entity in that they have worked years in law enforcement before switching jobs.
However, they also carry risks with them, in that often, police officers don't leave law enforcement agencies to go some place but to leave where they are at. Often, the agencies that employ them are only too happy to get rid of them, so much so that they might overemphasize their positive attributes and underplay their negative ones to get them off of their hands.
Even Riverside's police department has experienced its own struggles, having hired a lateral in 1997 who was on the Warren Commission's list of officers who were disproportionately represented in both shootings and misconduct allegations. That officer was retired out in 2000 leaving behind one officer-involved shooting and numerous internal investigations including one in relation to the Tyisha Miller shooting in 1998.
Another lateral hired from the Rampart Division in the LAPD in the spring of 1999 retired 3 1/2 years later with at least two law suits filed against him for allegations of police misconduct.
A third lateral hired from the LAPD was also investigated for racist comments he made after the Miller shooting. He resigned from the department in 2000, lateraled to two other law enforcement agencies in central California and is currently being prosecuted for felony assault and battery charges in Orange County stemming from an incident at a baseball stadium several years ago.
Where did these officers come from? And what kind of reviews and recommendations did their former employers give them that brought them to Albuquerque? Hopefully, by this time tomorrow the answers to one of those questions in one case will be answered as this article appears to be part of a series.
In Los Angeles, Chief William Bratton has appointed Deputy Chief Michael Hillman to head the Critical Incident Management Bureau.
The city council appeared unimpressed and said after his latest presentation on the May Day incident, more questions needed answers.
(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)
Some council members suggested that a long-term problem with Los Angeles Police Department culture was involved. Councilman Bernard C. Parks showed a video from community members suggesting that the melee was the latest in a series of excessive-force incidents during Bratton's nearly five-year tenure.
"We need to hold those accountable across the line for use of excessive force, regardless of rank, regardless of position," Councilman Ed Reyes said. "There is real evidence that individuals did not treat the community as human beings, with dignity or respect. We anticipate that the real accountability will come with time."
As for Parks, what have you done as police chief to address the police culture in your department that you complain about now that was there all the years that you spent working in it? How many times did you block or impede the investigations involving the Rampart Scandal and the implementation of the federal consent decree that was imposed as a result? What were your officers doing at demonstrations that took place at that time?
Because your constituents can just as easily show videos about the LAPD's handling of several demonstrations in 2000 and the images would pretty much look the same.
Dana Parsons of the Los Angeles Times wrote an opinion piece on police commissions in Los Angeles County and had some recommendations.
(excerpt)
I hear that, but a review board with credible and courageous members wouldn't be impotent. If its only contribution were that of "conscience of the community," the panel would still be serving a purpose.
Of course, the sheriff and D.A. would like nothing better than a commission that couldn't do anything. And, yes, it may be difficult to recruit members who felt they had no real authority.
But, like I said, there's no perception that law enforcement is running amok. What's needed is a stalwart commission unafraid to challenge or criticize law enforcement when necessary. It should focus on brutality or harassment allegations or, as in the case that spurred the current discussion, the death of an inmate in Sheriff Department custody.
If the commission's only "power" would be to point fingers or express outrage, there's nothing wrong with that. After all, the D.A. and the sheriff both are elected and react to public critique.
The way things stand now, the departments typically investigate themselves. We know how that works.
Give me a commission with heavyweights, give them access to police reports and turn them loose.
The sheriff and D.A. should have nothing to worry about. I'll repeat what I wrote in 1991 when I first trotted out the idea: In the best-case scenario, we'd have a civilian commission that never had to meet.
That's something that no city that has implemented civilian oversight has seen yet. Rumors are coming out of the LAPD that Deputy Chief Cayler "Lee" Carter was made a scapegoat for the May Day incident because he's African-American. Apparently, according to one account that's been going around, he was actually in an office listening to the radio when the LAPD Metro officers charged MacArthur Park.
The trial of former San Bernardino County Sheriff Department deputy, Ivory J. Webb continued as other deputies testified on the stand about Webb's state of mind after he fired three shots at U.S. airman Elio Carrion. It was Press Enterprise reporter John Berry's turn to blog about the trial.
(excerpt)
Charles Carter, the first of two deputies to pursue Corvette driver Luis Escobedo and passenger Elio Carrion on Jan. 29, 2006, said he spoke with Webb moments after Webb shot Carrion in the chest, shoulder and leg.
"I asked Webb if he was OK," Carter testified. "He said, 'No.'"
A time line of the shooting and the investigation is here. More information on Carter's testimony is here.
An update on the Koufax Blog Awards stated that "Five Before Midnight" has been nominated for four awards. They are for best single issue blog, best blog covering local/state issues, best blog deserving of greater recognition and best commentary.
It began on Nov. 9, 2005 when the CPRC voted unanimously that Officer Ryan Wilson had violated the department's use of force policy when he shot and killed Summer Marie Lane in December 2004. That finding was forwarded to City Manager Brad Hudson's office where it met up with the finding from the Riverside Police Department which had exonerated Wilson. Back in those days, the community believed that the CPRC's finding would get an equal chance to be heard as that given to the police department. Of course as everyone knows now, that didn't happen. Hudson simply handed off the responsibility to someone else, blaming his own recent hiring by the city for that action. Of course, he hadn't exactly been new as he had been employed by the city council for six months at this point.
The final decision was given to Chief Russ Leach just as it would have been if the CPRC had never come into being and he did what any police chief would do which is to back his own investigation a second time. After all, he had done just that before delivering the department's finding to Hudson's office. The decision had been handed off to an employee who had essentially already made that decision without any information from the CPRC.
There was an issue with the year-long time line given to discipline officers after an administrative investigation and the interpretation of what constituted that time line would change greatly in the year to come.
After that decision by Leach, the city government closed for the holidays apparently free of secret meetings and civic intrigue involving the CPRC. That would have to wait a year but plenty would happen before what's been called, the December Surprise.
The chair and vice-chair of the CPRC met for the very first time with representatives from Hudson's office, the city attorney's office and the police department in January 2006 to hash over the CPRC's sustained finding and the resultant decision. What was so interesting was that the city attorney's office had for years ignored the CPRC and in fact, had refused to participate in a public workshop with the body in 2004 citing confidentiality issues. Well, whatever those confidentiality issues were, they magically vanished in 2006 after the latest round of officer-involved shootings happened, because then Asst. City Attorney Susan Wilson began attending meetings addressing the drafting of the public report in the 2005 incustody death of Terry Rabb.
Of course, when Lee Deante Brown's shooting came up for public discussion, City Attorney Gregory Priamos began appearing at CPRC meetings, joined by Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis. Curiously enough, something else happened at around that time. DeSantis began to take a deeper interest in the operations of the police department not long after the Brown shooting and that interest appeared to intensify after the autumn shootings of Douglas Steven Cloud and Joseph Darnell Hill.
Civil litigation was filed in these deaths as it had been in Brown's case and also in the cases of Rabb and Lane. Five law suits involving four deaths in two years. Okay, maybe six if litigation is initiated or has been in the Hill case.
This increased involvement or what some called interference incensed the labor unions which represented the employees of the police department and confused community members who looked or read about it all and thought, okay there's already leadership in the department so why is the city taking over that role in certain areas? Why isn't the city manager's office allowing them to just lead if the concerns about DeSantis' actions involving the Riverside Police Department are valid?
Why not indeed?
The community just assumed that DeSantis was so interested in the police department either because he secretly wished he were in law enforcement himself or he thought there were problems there and his boss, Hudson, wanted him to play close attention to its operations to minimize the expenditures the city paid out in civil litigation costs, given that the law suits involving wrongful deaths were increasing and the larger law firms from outside the county were beginning to circle the city and its department. The name, Terry Rabb, drove at least one firm into a frenzy and at least two law firms filed litigation in that case with a third expressing interest and wondering out loud if Rabb had any more family members willing to sue the city.
Apparently, the Brown and Cloud shootings were picked up quickly by law firms and also resulted in civil litigation being filed. Five law suits involving wrongful death allegations is probably enough to keep any city attorney and risk management division up at night. But if they indeed were kept up late, apparently there was some thinking going on.
And the community was thinking as well, after witnessing one year worth of behaviors involving the CPRC which intensified after the trio of shootings by the police department's officers that took place last year.
Here are some of the suggestions offered up by individuals on how to undermine the operation of the CPRC. Whether they actually do undermine the process or not either collectively or individually is subject to interpretation by different people with varying opinions who offered them. Whether these actions or changes have taken place or not is much more clear and in most cases, objectively measured.
Others are just guesses. Whether or not they've happened may never be known.
Ignore a sustained finding from the CPRC on an officer-involved death and then tell the community you will decide differently next time a similar case comes to your office.
Explain your inability to make a decision on a technicality. Then rewrite whatever's needed to support that line of reasoning.
Refuse to keep or deny that your office keeps a statistical record of how many times the CPRC and the police department reach different findings and the percentage of times the city manager's office decides in favor of each agency or offers a compromise involving the final dispositions of citizen complaints.
Forbid the CPRC's staff members from maintaining statistical records involving the differential findings.
Change your interpretation of state law seemingly on whim, i.e. G.C. 3304(d), meaning one day, it's the criteria which determines when the timeline begins that's important. No wait, now it's actually the waivers included in the law's text that matter more.
Begin holding meetings among select members of the commission which keep the rest of them in the dark.
Cut off your executive director from the community by banning him from doing outreach.
Make the executive director "at will" then restrict his abilities to carry out his job responsibilities so he resigns to "seek out better career opportunities". Replace him or her with an interim who has no training whatsoever to fulfill the written job responsibilities of the position.
Create conditions so chaotic that the majority of the commission's current membership resigns or decides not to accept a reappointment. Foster an environment that discourages commissioners from community-oriented backgrounds from remaining. Replace them with commissioners from law-enforcement backgrounds.
Politicize the appointment process by allowing only or mainly candidates with ties to City Hall through prior board and commission experience to be selected for interviews. Allow the city government to use the commission process to pay and repay political favors to one another, i.e. I won't vote against your candidate if you put someone I want on next time.
Allowing commissioners to be appointed or choosing to appoint those who are in potential "conflict of interest" situations including having received campaign contributions from police unions or are actively involved in labor relationships with the city or the police department.
At the screening level for appointments, keep the pool of candidates to be interviewed small. Keep them mostly limited to candidates who address the mayor and/or city council members on a first-name basis during the interview process.
Reduce the racial and gender diversity of the commission's membership, encouraging a status quo of mainly White male commissioners. Ensure that you have commissioners who actually believe a black object is rendered invisible in a Black person's hand.
Have new commissioners chair committees and try to change meeting format rules when they are still asking questions about CPRC operations, i.e. does the commission have subpoena power.
Place a police officer in public or closed sessions when commissioners deliberate on complaints. One past time appears to be counting how many times commissioners look at the police officer sitting in the room during open discussions on the Brown shooting case whenever any of them says something.
Have a city attorney present at the meetings and not also provide the commission the option of independent counsel without ties to City Hall.
Equate concern and outreach to communities with bias against the police department.
Discourage commissioners from asking hard and critical questions. Marginalize those who do.
Provide a location for the CPRC which is hard to find or inaccessible to the public. Its current location is a small cubicle on the Sixth floor of City Hall blocked with a cordon and next to a sign reading "Police Review Commission"[sic] that points in the wrong direction.
Halt the progress or delay the issuance of the annual report, both in terms of the written product and the presentation to the city council.
Hold secret elections involving the chair and vice-chair outside of a public meeting and make the election process so confusing neither the commissioners, staff or the public understand it.
Allow the subcommittees to go fallow due to lack of quorum or other reasons. Schedule them when few commissioners let alone community members can come to them.
Schedule the general meeting before 6 p.m. when few people can attend.
Meet with community leaders, assure them you're concerned about it and then fail to hold followup meetings on the "progress".
Institute a process to examine or make changes needed to the CPRC that either lacks community input or is heavily weighted towards actions or recommendations by City Hall. Don't ask the executive director, commissioners and least of all the community what each think you should do. Tell them what you are going to do, preferably after you've done it.
Fail to adequately research officer-involved death cases either due to lack of ability to commit the time or lack of interest. Allow new commissioners to deliberate cases without training them.
Do not keep their training up to date. Do not ensure training of newer commissioners. Make sure your executive manager is the least qualified and least trained person in the process during the time period one of the department's most contentious shooting investigation and review processes is taking place.
Do not adequately inform new commissioners of the time commitment or underestimate the hours per month needed to do the job.
Tell everyone the annual budget of the CPRC is equitable to previous years and adjusted for inflation when in reality, its starting budget is $20,000 less than it received only several years ago.
Have commissioners chair or participate in meetings before they receive training on the Brown Act and parliamentarian procedures.
Try to deemphasize the powers that the CPRC has. Start throwing buzzwords like "advisory" around regularly.
Do not do outreach or greatly reduce the outreach to the community. Ensure that the acting executive manager is never seen by the community. Segregate said manager from the rest of his staff, ensuring that physically he's closer to his direct boss than his support staff.
Do not limit your actions of micromanagement to the CPRC. Include and increase them in the police department, which should be easier to do given the support you will win from its employees for actions taken involving the CPRC.
Do all of the above or any combination thereof to show the community in many different ways how scared the city is of its own police department six years after a process instituting wide-sweeping reforms was instituted. That's puzzling because on the surface, the department appears to have done nothing to warrant that lack of confidence by the city and had made some positive strides.
Weakening the CPRC is the same as issuing a "no confidence" vote against the Riverside Police Department. An unwillingness to increase its staffing to meet the needs of a growing populace and an expanding city and keeping it properly equipped and trained also sends that message.
A city and a police department that is fully confident in its abilities does not fear strong, independent civilian oversight. It welcomes it. Do either in Riverside truly welcome it?
Hire a skywriter to advertise that "no confidence" vote in the police department. Bill it under Riverside Renaissance.
Those were just a few of the suggestions that were offered up during these discussions. More will be posted later on, in part two of "How to undermine civilian review and other lessons" as they come in.
Kristina Chew has a blog, Autism Vox, that includes a post on the recent case involving an autistic man who died in the custody of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. It's part of a series of articles that she's written on the death of Raymond Lee Mitchell last July from what law enforcement officers labeled "Autism induced excited delirium disorder".
There's an interesting discussion in the comments section as well.
There was an article in the Albuquerque Journal that's no longer available online but it addressed the hiring of new officers who weren't so new by that city's police department.
The city hired 15 new officers, but seven of them brought baggage to their new job in the form of having been charged with criminal offenses in the past or having faced civil litigation. One of them was even investigated by the FBI.
The police chief in Albuquerque reassured everyone that he would hold these officers as he does his others to high professional standards. That would almost be believable if his agency and the city which runs it applied that standard during the hiring process. Perhaps Chief Ray Schultz should include Maywood Police Department in his studies of how other agencies handle the hiring process. Maywood Police Department, if you remember, is currently under investigation by the State Attorney General's office, several federal agencies and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.
(excerpt, Albuquerque Journal)
In its investigation, the Journal found that:
* Two of the transferred officers have been arrested on DWI charges.
One was convicted of aggravated DWI in 1996. That same officer was also convicted of criminal trespass in 1989. Since his troubles with the law, APD officials said, this officer enlisted in the military, turned his life around and is a "decorated war hero."
The other officer had his DWI charge dismissed in 2001 when prosecutors failed to comply with the six-month rule to bring the case to trial. This officer also pleaded guilty in 2000 to a charge of a minor being in a liquor establishment, false evidence of age or ID and improper use of an ID card.
* One officer was arrested in 2004 on charges of evading, eluding or obstructing law enforcement and charges of disorderly conduct. His charges were dismissed by the prosecutor.
* One officer was demoted from his former agency and was investigated by the FBI on accusations that he stole from the department's evidence room. The District Attorney's Office declined to prosecute, saying there was not enough evidence.
The officer was also involved in the domestic incident, and, after he punched holes in the wall, his wife filed for a protection order "from domestic abuse." It was granted by a District Court judge. The officer also had his wages garnisheed for not paying child support.
* One officer cost his former employer "a five-figure settlement," according to plaintiff's counsel. He and other officers were sued in federal court in 2003 for going into someone's home without a warrant and making a false arrest.
* A New Mexico State Police officer left his agency while he was under investigation for being paid twice while on the job. State Police officials said last month that, had he stayed, he would have been fired.
* Two officers are co-defendants in a pending District Court lawsuit in which they have been accused of repeatedly failing to arrest or seek charges against a man on numerous domestic violence violations. The man has been accused of killing his former father-in-law and brother-in-law, and seriously injuring his ex-wife. The civil case has been sent to a judge for a ruling.
For years, APD has accepted officers from other agencies. Unlike new cadets, the experienced officers go through an abbreviated training academy.
The new officers are on a one-year probation.
Castro said that APD will continue to check into the officers' backgrounds and that, if APD finds something that they did not reveal during the hiring process, they could be terminated.
Hiring laterals from other law enforcement agencies offers some benefits. More bang for the buck in terms of injecting more on-the-job experience into the officer ranks especially in police departments whose average level of experience isn't very high. And in a sense, they are a proven entity in that they have worked years in law enforcement before switching jobs.
However, they also carry risks with them, in that often, police officers don't leave law enforcement agencies to go some place but to leave where they are at. Often, the agencies that employ them are only too happy to get rid of them, so much so that they might overemphasize their positive attributes and underplay their negative ones to get them off of their hands.
Even Riverside's police department has experienced its own struggles, having hired a lateral in 1997 who was on the Warren Commission's list of officers who were disproportionately represented in both shootings and misconduct allegations. That officer was retired out in 2000 leaving behind one officer-involved shooting and numerous internal investigations including one in relation to the Tyisha Miller shooting in 1998.
Another lateral hired from the Rampart Division in the LAPD in the spring of 1999 retired 3 1/2 years later with at least two law suits filed against him for allegations of police misconduct.
A third lateral hired from the LAPD was also investigated for racist comments he made after the Miller shooting. He resigned from the department in 2000, lateraled to two other law enforcement agencies in central California and is currently being prosecuted for felony assault and battery charges in Orange County stemming from an incident at a baseball stadium several years ago.
Where did these officers come from? And what kind of reviews and recommendations did their former employers give them that brought them to Albuquerque? Hopefully, by this time tomorrow the answers to one of those questions in one case will be answered as this article appears to be part of a series.
In Los Angeles, Chief William Bratton has appointed Deputy Chief Michael Hillman to head the Critical Incident Management Bureau.
The city council appeared unimpressed and said after his latest presentation on the May Day incident, more questions needed answers.
(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)
Some council members suggested that a long-term problem with Los Angeles Police Department culture was involved. Councilman Bernard C. Parks showed a video from community members suggesting that the melee was the latest in a series of excessive-force incidents during Bratton's nearly five-year tenure.
"We need to hold those accountable across the line for use of excessive force, regardless of rank, regardless of position," Councilman Ed Reyes said. "There is real evidence that individuals did not treat the community as human beings, with dignity or respect. We anticipate that the real accountability will come with time."
As for Parks, what have you done as police chief to address the police culture in your department that you complain about now that was there all the years that you spent working in it? How many times did you block or impede the investigations involving the Rampart Scandal and the implementation of the federal consent decree that was imposed as a result? What were your officers doing at demonstrations that took place at that time?
Because your constituents can just as easily show videos about the LAPD's handling of several demonstrations in 2000 and the images would pretty much look the same.
Dana Parsons of the Los Angeles Times wrote an opinion piece on police commissions in Los Angeles County and had some recommendations.
(excerpt)
I hear that, but a review board with credible and courageous members wouldn't be impotent. If its only contribution were that of "conscience of the community," the panel would still be serving a purpose.
Of course, the sheriff and D.A. would like nothing better than a commission that couldn't do anything. And, yes, it may be difficult to recruit members who felt they had no real authority.
But, like I said, there's no perception that law enforcement is running amok. What's needed is a stalwart commission unafraid to challenge or criticize law enforcement when necessary. It should focus on brutality or harassment allegations or, as in the case that spurred the current discussion, the death of an inmate in Sheriff Department custody.
If the commission's only "power" would be to point fingers or express outrage, there's nothing wrong with that. After all, the D.A. and the sheriff both are elected and react to public critique.
The way things stand now, the departments typically investigate themselves. We know how that works.
Give me a commission with heavyweights, give them access to police reports and turn them loose.
The sheriff and D.A. should have nothing to worry about. I'll repeat what I wrote in 1991 when I first trotted out the idea: In the best-case scenario, we'd have a civilian commission that never had to meet.
That's something that no city that has implemented civilian oversight has seen yet. Rumors are coming out of the LAPD that Deputy Chief Cayler "Lee" Carter was made a scapegoat for the May Day incident because he's African-American. Apparently, according to one account that's been going around, he was actually in an office listening to the radio when the LAPD Metro officers charged MacArthur Park.
The trial of former San Bernardino County Sheriff Department deputy, Ivory J. Webb continued as other deputies testified on the stand about Webb's state of mind after he fired three shots at U.S. airman Elio Carrion. It was Press Enterprise reporter John Berry's turn to blog about the trial.
(excerpt)
Charles Carter, the first of two deputies to pursue Corvette driver Luis Escobedo and passenger Elio Carrion on Jan. 29, 2006, said he spoke with Webb moments after Webb shot Carrion in the chest, shoulder and leg.
"I asked Webb if he was OK," Carter testified. "He said, 'No.'"
A time line of the shooting and the investigation is here. More information on Carter's testimony is here.
An update on the Koufax Blog Awards stated that "Five Before Midnight" has been nominated for four awards. They are for best single issue blog, best blog covering local/state issues, best blog deserving of greater recognition and best commentary.
Labels: Backlash against civilian oversight, business as usual, CPRC vs the city, What is past is prologue
posted by Five Before Midnight | 2:49 PM
<< Home