When David meets Goliath: Why the police unions are the best thing to happen to civilian oversight, part two

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."

---Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum




Orange County Register Columnist Steven Greenhut chimed in on the outcry against the actions against the state's law enforcement unions who not only shut down a vote in an assembly committee but apparently pressured that committee to shut down the access that the public would normally have to the one-sided debate on S.B. 1019.

Hundreds of police officers appeared in Sacramento to oppose the bill.


(excerpt)


There were perhaps hundreds of them in attendance – mostly big, burly white men, dressed typically in sport coats that were emblazoned with pins from the cop agencies and government unions they represent. Quite frankly, they strutted around like they owned the place, which is pretty accurate given that they basically do own most of the legislators.



Actually, if they had "owned the place", they probably would have called in their objection to the bill from home base rather than appeared in person in such large numbers hundreds of miles away from where many of them are located. Doing this might have been intended to show strength but oddly enough, it showed just the opposite. It was an act born of desperation by individuals who feared that lobbying their position away from the capitol wasn't nearly enough to protect their interests.

Fear is what has made them issue statements included in emails making the rounds that were sent to state legislators that say if you don't do this[vote against S.B. 1019], we'll do this[push for term limits] when one has nothing to do with the other on its face. It can only be looked at as a scare tactic by people who are apparently more frightened by accountability outside their sphere than was previously thought.



Greenhut in his column described the process that most of the public was not even allowed to see because among other things, the public access camera was turned off by the committee during the hearing. The public was not allowed to see that only those who opposed the bill had reserved seating while those who supported it were left scrambling for seats and were even pushed away from seats that were reserved by members of the committee for law enforcement officers only.


(excerpt)


SB1019 would let municipalities decide whether or not to have open disciplinary hearings, and it created a special protection by allowing a police chief to allow certain information to be secret because of its sensitive nature. The chairman claimed that he didn't like the bill because it allowed cities to set their own standards and that he preferred a statewide standard. Yet Solorio opposed the previous bill also, which included those exact standards he now said he wants. Welcome to Alice in Wonderland, where words don't mean anything in particular, but rather are spin to excuse a preordained conclusion.

As far as wanting more amendments, a frustrated Romero told the committee: "I introduced this bill months and months and months ago. … Not one amendment has ever been offered to me. Not one paragraph, not one sentence, not one word, not one syllable." What was offered from two leading police organizations: a direct threat to legislators that the groups would oppose term-limits reform (that's hitting below the belt, given that legislators desperately want to stay in office longer) if this legislation ever becomes law.

Backers of the bill assembled a wide range of supporters. The list of opponents consisted entirely of police organizations, unions and government groups.

What is it they fear?

The Orange County Sheriff's Department was represented at the hearing, and opposed the legislation, as was the Orange County District Attorney's Office. Ironically, opponents argued that SB1019 isn't needed because cities already have civilian oversight of law enforcement. Yet O.C.'s sheriff and D.A. also testified at the county Board of Supervisors meeting in opposition to civilian review.

They don't call it the Secrecy Lobby for nothing.

What a disgusting outcome. In a free society, the law should tilt in favor of oversight, in favor of the public's right to know. In all the discussions at the hearing, the voice missing from the debate, Romero pointed out, was the public's. "The people were absent."

Our voice is still missing, but it's never too late to raise it.




Romero, "the people" weren't invited to this dialogue only those who aren't interested in compromise, but only want what they want, when they want it. And if you don't hand it over to them on a plate, they'll tell you what the "or else" means, in this case threatening to use their muscle to push for term limits which can be seen as nothing else but a naked attempt at intimidation far beneath the characters of those who wear uniforms and police the streets. But again, fear does strange things to people and law enforcement's reaction to something that scares them from outside themselves is to circle the wagons around them even tighter and as always, lash out in some form.

Most often, their actions are at their own expense. Police officers during the quiet times work hard to build bridges with the community and no where has that been seen more than in Riverside. However, it's a lot harder to build a bridge than it is to damage or destroy one and that's also true, metaphorically speaking. When fear threatens to rear its head again as it was last week, that becomes especially apparent to everyone.

The people, whose taxes pay the salaries of those who conduct it were not included or given consideration. The taxes which pay for the construction and upkeep of the building which serves as its venue. The people who even pay the salaries of those who were invited as "special guests" of the chair of the committee.

You can call the process that took place a lot of things and its critics have, but don't call it democratic.

And like Greenhut said, the behavior shown at the state's highest office was motivated by fear. It's a very sad thing to see hardworking law enforcement officers who act bravely in many other circumstances show what's akin to raw fear at a state's highest venue but it is what it is. And one of the things that it is, is great advertising for the importance of civilian oversight and increased transparency over the processes which govern the investigations of law enforcement officers. It's like running an infomercial on why civilian review boards and commissions are crucial that's free and that will ultimately prove to be effective.

It's likely that each time this bill or another comes up, we'll see more of the same, given that at least one state representative Gloria Romero hasn't backed down on her efforts to bring this issue to the table. She plans to reintroduce an amended version of the bill in upcoming weeks. It's fairly predictable what will happen then.

Every time, police unions lash out in this matter towards civilian review, another board or commission is usually born first in the minds of the residents of a city, county or town that witnesses their behavior, then not long after, it becomes reality. That's why police unions are the best thing that happened to civilian review although that's probably not their intention.

Interestingly enough, the two lead investigators of allegations of police misconduct including criminal violations are the police agencies and the county prosecutors and neither entity wanted this bill to pass. Outside of these two interest groups, few to no organizations were in opposition to S. B. 1019.



Opponents of S.B. 1019 are included here.


(excerpt, partial list)


OPPOSITION : (Verified 5/7/07)

Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, Inc.
California Association of Highway Patrolmen
California Fraternal Order of Police
California Narcotic Officers' Association
California Peace Officers' Association
California Police Chiefs Association
California School Employees Association
California State Employees Association
California Statewide Law Enforcement Association
League of California Cities
Long Beach Police Officers Association
Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association
Los Angeles Police Protective League
Orange County Employees Association
Organization of SMUD Employees
Peace Officers Research Association of California
Riverside Sheriffs' Association
Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs Association
San Bernardino Public Employees Association
San Diego County Court Employees Association
San Luis Obispo County Employees Association
Santa Ana Police Officers Association
Santa Rosa City Employees Association
Southern California Alliance of Law Enforcement




Neither the police officers or the county prosecutors apparently want the public to know what they are doing to hold each other accountable. What is laid bare through this episode for all to see is that the interdependency between law enforcement agencies and prosecutory agencies that in a sense must exist for them to do their jobs makes the processes they use to investigate officers or maintain a check and balance against officer misconduct fraught with potential bias and other problems.


And if you ever needed evidence that county prosecutors were as ill-suited to hold law enforcement agencies and officers accountable as many of those agencies appear to be, witness the marriage of convenience between the two entities in opposition to a bill which would bring transparency to the process that only exist because members of the public don't trust either one of them to do this job. One of those "marriages" exists between the Orange County Sheriff's Department and the Orange County District Attorney's office, according to the Orange County Register.






Michael Schlosberg, from the ACLU Northern California's Police Practices subdivision, wrote a preview of what was to come when S.B. 1019 reached the floor of the assembly subcommittee.




(excerpt)


And, just four years ago, following a series of hearings throughout the state, then-Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson authored three relatively modest pieces of legislation to promote accountability. The bills would have mandated that police departments develop early warning systems to track problem officers, have a location where citizens could file complaints outside of the police department, and create some minimal whistleblower protections for police officers. All three were opposed by the police lobby and all three failed.

This time, however, this situation is different. There is a wide coalition from newspapers, to civil rights organizations, from libertarians to progressive law enforcement and oversight professionals supporting SB 1019. Also, this time the police associations' aggressive opposition has not been kept behind closed doors, but has become public for all to see.

Two organizations, prior the Senate vote on the bill last month, threatened to torpedo term limit reform if SB 1019 passed out of the legislature. Senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), exposed the threat on the floor of the senate and the bill passed by a narrow 22-11 margin.

Now SB 1019 heads to the Assembly Public Safety Committee where its members - including San Francisco's own Fiona Ma - are sure to face similarly strong pressure from the police lobby. Assembly member Ma has yet to indicate which way she will vote.




The Modesto Bee also provided a preview here.



(excerpt)



The good guys won a few early rounds for the public's right to know. But secrecy is a tough, determined foe, and right now the fight is too close to call.

As we shared earlier, the state Senate last month approved Senate Bill 1019, which would overturn a bad court decision and restore the public's access to information about serious police misconduct, such as excessive force and corruption.

The bill made it through the Senate by a 22-10vote, despite opposition by powerful police unions as well as our two senators, Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, and Jeff Denham, R-Merced.

The Senate did the right thing. After all, the only people who stand to gain by covering up serious misdeeds are the minority of bad cops on our police forces; good, honest cops should have nothing to fear.

We hope the Assembly will follow the Senate's lead. Tuesday, the bill is scheduled for consideration by the Assembly Public Safety Committee, where the secrecy lobby will try once again to block it. We hope the committee, which includes one of our assemblymen, Greg Aghazarian, R-Stockton, will advance SB 1019 to the next round and eventual approval by the full Assembly.




This publication's correct. Good police officers aren't the ones who have anything to fear from this bill. The majority of police officers in most law enforcement agencies do not habitually receive complaints nor do they accumulate large numbers of sustained complaints.

No, the ones who have the most to fear from S.B. 1019 are the ones who are habitual offenders and the good police officers who listen to them and believe that behavior is deserving of a merit badge.

But despite the lobbying done by the police unions who mostly represent the rank and file officers, the ones who fear this bill the most are those who manage and supervise them and the agencies that employ them. You see, if there was more available information on sustained complaints, it might become more apparent even at the statistical level that many law enforcement agencies weren't properly tracking or addressing the officers who cause the majority of the problems in their agencies. It might be clear from a statistical level, whether or not the majority of these officers were ever even disciplined.

For example, if a police chief says that the majority of the time, he institutes training as discipline to officers who have committed misconduct. Yet, statistics show that he or she hasn't given out training to any officer but either takes no reportable action or issues written reprimands.

The city and county governments fear bills like S.B. 1019 as well for reasons related to risk management and civil liability issues in relation to litigation filed against them for police misconduct including excessive force. That is why the League of California Cities is on the list of organizations in opposition to this bill.

As you can see in at least one city, the employees who were hired to supervise the head of the police department are apparently, actually trying to oversee and perhaps even run the agency itself for reasons known only by them and guessed by everyone else.

But who does it appear that it's more important to protect, the good officers or the bad ones?


That's the crux, in that if it's true that 20% of a department's officers commit 80% of the misconduct, that is one thing. But if it's abundantly clear that the police agencies seem more intent on protecting those officers in the minority who commit a lion share of the misconduct than those in the majority, something much larger is at work here than just the commonly tossed about "bad apple" theory that is used as a reason for explaining 100% of all misconduct that occurs. Instead, it would be evidence of a more systemic problem within that particular agency or law enforcement in general.



The Sacramento Bee wrote an article about threats the Professional Peace Officers Association made if the bill were to pass the assembly.



(excerpt)


The threat came from John Stites, president of the Professional Peace Officers Association, in a group e-mail that a law enforcement lobbyist forwarded to some legislative staffers. The e-mail eventually made it to legislators and the media, including the Los Angeles Times.

Stites said in the e-mail, "Ensure that it be understood that this will only be the beginning."

Democratic leaders in the Legislature are backing an effort to amend the term limits of lawmakers. A Californian can serve six years in the Assembly and another eight in the state Senate. An initiative crafted by the Legislature for voters to consider next year would allow a lawmaker to serve either in the Assembly or the Senate for 12 years.

That issue had nothing to do with Senate Bill 109 by Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles. SB 109 has everything to do with the records of discipline investigations by agencies such as the Los Angeles Police Department. The department, taking advantage of a controversial court ruling that allowed law enforcement agencies to seal their discipline records, now prohibits access to records that reveal the decision-making process in any given case. Romero's bill is of particular importance to the state's largest city, where the police handling of high-profile incidents seems to be a never-ending subject of controversy.

Romero publicized the e-mail from the police group linking its threatened opposition to term limits if her disciplinary bill continues to live. The Senate recently passed it with a slight majority, and it awaits an uncertain future in the Assembly.

So next year, if you see advertisements with police officers in uniforms decrying changes to term limits, look for the subtext of another message at work: Police unions telling the Legislature, "Don't mess with us or we'll mess with you."




The need to do do this comes from two things. It comes from anger and it comes from fear. Which emotion is the stronger one in this case remains to be seen, not if but when this bill comes back, because indeed it will until the eventual day when it is passed.


The San Francisco Sentinel published an article about how similar tactics had been used but failed when S.B. 1019 went before the state senate where it passed after receiving votes from both sides of the aisle.


(excerpt)


On June 5, SB 1019 passed the California State Senate despite, or maybe because of an emailed threat to link the bills passage to law enforcement opposition to term limit changes. We reported earlier about how the President of the Professional Police Officers Association (PPOA) and the Southern California Association of Law Enforcement (SCALE), wrote an e-mail to a chief lobbyist of multiple high-profile law enforcement organizations with the following passage:

“As I have said all along, PPOA and SCALE adamantly oppose this legislation to the point that if it is passed we will move quickly to oppose any term limit reform legislation publicly. There is no compromise on this. Ensure that it be understood that this will only be the beginning. I do not know how I can be more clear on this issue.”

When that happened in the Senate, it was the subject of discussion at a Democratic caucus, and the bill passed on a 22 to 11 vote, with 4 Republican Senators joining 18 Senate Democrats. Only one Democratic Senator, Lou Correa, voted against it. At the time, Romero said:

“This is one where it did come up in caucus. The members were a bit amazed in looking at this [holding email in her hands] but what I think this email threat shows the extent to which the bill’s positions were distorted and intimidation was used to the extent that when they thought it was perhaps going to garner passage on the floor today, they resorted to this type of bold obloquy blackmail. This is just reprehensible, it shouldn’t occur in a democracy.

“So, I guess you can expect term limits to be opposed heavily by this group. That’s the threat they clearly have here in their email message, but I intend, I asked for them to come in and speak with me about this. The President of the Senate has asked them to come in and speak to him about this. I intend to ask each and every member of this legislature to denounce this type of unethical, illegal bullying behavior. This should have no place in the Capitol.”

The threat didn’t work in the California State Senate. It shouldn’t in the Assembly. I wouldn’t expect many Republicans to support the bill, although four principled Republican Senators did so in that house. I would expect Democrats to support this measure in the Assembly. They ought to at least tell us where they stand, and why.



It's not clear what "worked" in the assembly, but this tactic did fail in the senate vote. In fact, it actually enhanced the chances of the bill passing because it provided the state senators as well as members of the public a lesson in exactly why civilian oversight of law enforcement agencies is so important. The actions of several law enforcement organizations hit that point home so well, in fact much better than any of S.B. 1019's allies ever could. Sometimes as unfortunate as it is to see the police unions resort to this behavior, there is a silver lining attached to it as shown through the passage of the senate bill.

Maybe next time, the assembly can find the same courage and resolve to stand up to it. And maybe the more moderate members of the involved law enforcement organizations can stand up to those who use those tactics and say, let's not repeat that behavior because that is not who and what we are and what being a police officer represents to us.

After all, do we want people to think we use these same tactics on the job because it's likely that this is the impression that we are giving?

After all, the impression that is already given the public is that the police officers protect their own especially those engaged in misconduct because of the "blue wall" and that have great difficulty in investigating and even policing themselves. Perhaps it is those internal struggles which the police agencies and their unions do not want the public to see and they believe that inhibiting transparency will keep the public from finding out. Unfortunately, when scandals break like those involving the LAPD, the New Orlean Police Department, the Atlanta Police Department, the Maywood Police Department and countless others, they are on display in technicolor for everyone to see.

Take Atlanta for example. Narcotics officers involved in criminal conduct including most likely murder in relation to the shooting death of an elderly Black woman whose house they lied to a judge to break into. Further probes by outside agencies showing how widespread this behavior may be in conjunction with years of complaints by city residents that were ignored. Put all that together with a sustain rate on citizen complaints that never rose above 3%.

All of a sudden, it appears that because of outside involvement, the internal affairs division of the Atlanta Police Department is under scrutiny as well, years after Human Rights Watch first noted these same problems on its Shielded from Justice report on Atlanta.

S.B. 1019 will be back in some form. That much can be said for sure and in large part, it's not despite the tactics that the law enforcement unions chose to exercise, it's because of them.



Another day, another Los Angeles Police Department officer arrested under investigation for alleged misconduct, according to the Associated Press. This time it was Officer Brian Lawrence Gossh who was busted for driving under the influence of a substance.

A corruption probe that was too long in coming continues in Maywood Police Department according to the Los Angeles Times. It was only through an investigative reporting series done by this newspaper that the department and the city that runs it were shamed enough to realize that yes, there was serious corruption in its ranks. Corruption born of hiring a force, one-third of which including its police chief are either rejects of other police departments or convicted criminals.

It's strange how when the public suddenly becomes aware of embarrassing information about a law enforcement agency that all these other agencies including the State Attorney General's office, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office and the Department of Justice decide that it's time to look into the situation.

These and other reasons are why S.B. 1019 and the dialogue it initiated until it got onto the floor of the assembly's subcomittee matters. The tactics used by the police unions to block its passage is proof positive that it does matter. It also taught the public an important lesson that if someone tells you to not look behind the curtain, it's time to take a look. Hopefully, next year all sides of this issue will be able to appear in the same venue for a discussion void of attempts to shut it down, fear or intimidation and allow the bill to succeed or fail on its own merit.