Going down memory lane: New York City and Riverside
Aug. 9, 1997-Aug. 9, 2007
New York City, New York
The New York Daily News ran this article on Abner Louima who was subjected to brutal attack by several New York City Police Department officers in the bathroom of one of the agency's stations.
It relates what happened after the officers assaulted Louima and sodomized him with a broom handle, warning him that if he told anyone about it, they'd kill him. His colon was torn apart and his bladder, ruptured. One officer, Justin Volpe had taken the broom handle stained with feces and Louima's own blood, then broke Louima's tooth with it after pushing it at his mouth.
Years later, Louima still bears scars inside and out.
(excerpt)
"If God forgives, I have to be able to forgive," Louima told the Daily News. "But I cannot forget. Sometimes I have nightmares ... or I see a police officer and I start shaking all of a sudden."
After the brutal attack came the cover up, though not for long.
(excerpt)
"I thought that when Abner Louima was dragged into that filthy bathroom, we were all dragged in there," said former federal prosecutor Kenneth Thompson, who delivered the opening statement at Volpe's trial. "A helpless man in handcuffs in a New York City police stationhouse. It could have been any of us."
"Louima is to police-community relations what Selma was to the voter rights movement," said the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Most of the officers except a supervisor either plead guilty to crimes or like Volpe were convicted in a trial. Volpe will be in prison until 2025. The others had their convictions overturned on appeal, which often happens to law enforcement officers in these circumstances.
Looking back at the incident that shook the NYPD to its core, are the columns that were written by New York Daily News columnist, Mike McAlary who won a Pulitzer Prize for them but later died of colon cancer at 41 years of age.
McAlary broke the story after receiving an anonymous tip and visiting Louima in the hospital. Here, is what he wrote about that initial encounter.
In it, he documented Louima's experience at the hands of the NYPD.
(excerpt)
"The white cops started with some racial stuff," Louima whispered. "They said, 'Why do you people come to this country if you can't speak English?' They called us niggers.
"A cop said to shut up. I didn't think he was talking to me. He pushed me to the ground and handcuffed my hands. Two cops put me in their patrol car and drove me to the corner of Glenwood and Nostrand. There was another car there. They kicked and beat me with their radios. They were yelling, 'You people can't even talk English, I am going to teach you to respect a cop.' None of the cops had their nametags on. They put me back in the car and drove me to the corner of Glenwood and Bedford. They met two other cops and beat me again. This time in the legs, too."
Then, he said, he was driven to the 70th Precinct stationhouse, led to the duty sergeant's desk and strip-searched.
"My pants were down at my ankles, in full view of the other cops. They walked me over to the bathroom and closed the door. There were two cops. One said, 'You niggers have to learn to respect police officers.' The other one said, 'If you yell or make any noise, I will kill you.' Then one held me and the other one stuck the plunger up my behind. He pulled it out and shoved it in my mouth, broke my teeth and said, 'That's your s--t, nigger.' Later, when they called the ambulance, the cop told me, 'If you ever tell anyone . . . I will kill you and your family.' "
Louima is lying in critical condition in Coney Island Hospital's trauma unit with a pierced lower intestine and a torn bladder. His doctor told me it would take three or four months for him to recover. His left hand was shackled to the bed. A cop sat guard across the room.
If his story is true, a lot of cops should go down. Some cops, the good ones, are already outraged and tipped me off to this horrific incident late Monday night and yesterday morning.
In fact, McAlary said there were no shortage of police officers in the NYPD who were willing to share what they knew about the incident. Local prosecutors in Brooklyn called it not a case of corruption but of torture. It was both.
The act of sodomizing Louima was torture, but the fact that it was allowed to happen in the bathroom of a police station filled with police officers is corruption. Why else would Louima's torturers felt comfortable enough to commit an act of brutality hiding in plain sight?
What can be said of the department's initial efforts to cover up the brutal act, so that there would be no effective or just, let alone objective internal investigation?
Fortunately, Louima and some officers disgusted at the behavior in their midst refused to stay silent.
(excerpt)
"His family saw him get in the police car in perfect health," said Carl Thomas, Louima's other lawyer and a Brooklyn prosecutor until three years ago. "The next thing we know, he is in the hospital with a lacerated bladder and pierced intestine. This is worse than the stun gun case in Queens. What were these cops thinking? How can you do this to another human being? And how many people did they do this to before?"
This is a story to stop the city.
It didn't stop it right away. In another column, Volpe insisted he was innocent of this horrible crime, saying I will be vindicated.
(excerpt)
Volpe was controlled and soft-spoken. He plays the victim well. He is a weightlifter and built like a fire hydrant. It was easy to see him as some version of Mark Fuhrman on steroids.
"It didn't happen the way they are saying," Volpe said. "Now I know what it's like to be falsely accused."
"Then what happened?"
"It wasn't me."
"Then who was it?"
"If it happened, it wasn't me," he said. "It will all come out. I will be vindicated. It's like a nightmare and I can't wake up."
Soon, the truth became known about what Volpe and the other officers had done. Numerous protests filled the streets of New York City in response to this incident just as they would be filled again after the shooting of Amadou Diallo by four NYPD officers in 1999. Federal investigations would be launched for both incidents.
McAlary also wrote a column about the experiences and reactions by the paramedics who came to pick up Louima after he was sodomized and take him to the hospital.
(excerpt)
"Louima was in there alone," Pagan has said. "We didn't even see him at first. He got up when Frank went over. Louima had a swollen face, that was all we saw. No blood. No smell."
The paramedics said cops told them that the prisoners were hurt in a riot and that they were cop fighters.
"The cops told us nothing about rectal trauma or homosexuality," Pagan said, referring to police claims that Louima's injuries resulted from homosexual activity.
The paramedics wanted more information. "What happened to you?" Birnbaum asked.
"I am not going to say anything here," Louima said.
"You gotta tell us what happened," the paramedic said. "What's wrong with you? We can't help you unless you tell us where it hurts."
"Wait till we get to the hospital," Louima whispered.
Louima did relate his experience. After one hospital nurse saw him, she called the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau, not that it did much good at that point in time. That division would only respond after news about what had happened to a man in its midst had begun to travel around the world.
Even with all the reports of brutal incidents and corruption reported involving police officers and sheriff deputies all around the country, it's hard to believe that something like this could happen in the midst of a police station involving officers who obviously believed that no accountability would come to them even if they had been caught. They trusted greatly in the department and the profession's wall of silence separating them from any wrongdoing they have done on the job.
In this case, the brutal act apparently crossed some line set by at least several police officers who reported either anonymously to the media or perhaps even within their own agency. In the latest update on Louima written by the New York Daily News, they give updates on several key people involved in this episode and several of the "whistle blowers" in the NYPD were promoted to the sergeant positions including one with a history of discipline but none of them were currently still working with the agency. Either they were on some sort of extended leave or they had left the agency.
People often ask if what happened to Louima could happen in any other law enforcement agency, or has it? Could it happen here? And if so, how would officers respond to other officers committing this brutal misconduct? Would they report it to their supervisors or anyone, or would they simply look the other way and not say anything?
And if it was reported to a law enforcement agency, would they investigate it immediately, or would they ignore it? Would those entrusted with investigating suspected misconduct by police officers in a law enforcement agency look the other way and pretend there was nothing to look at?
Which would it be? What about in Riverside? How would it fare?
Other sources:
Newsday: Louima: 10 years later
New York Post: Louima's haunted, high life 10 years later
(excerpt)
Sgt. Zehnder, a department training instructor, offered a sobering dose of reality. For every 100 candidates, maybe 10 will eventually make it through the training academy and then to the street.
About 23% of candidates never get past a multiple-choice basic knowledge test. Forty percent fail the physical training workout -- a mix of calisthenics, agility and running drills. But no other test comes close to producing the failure rate -- seven in 10 -- than the department's background check and polygraph exam.
"I can't tell you how many candidates I've lost," recruiter Luke Jancsek said of those caught lying. Many, he said, try to conceal the frequency of past drug use, some of which would not necessarily disqualify them. "I want to smack 'em in the head sometimes."
Look on the bright side. That will save you from smacking their heads when they falsify a police report or lie on the witness stand at a court proceeding. Which is worse, catching them before you hire them or later on?
Have electricity rates got you down, in Riverside? If so, the Press Enterprise this morning will tell you that your higher utility bills for this summer weren't all in your head. They were actually real.
Fortunately at least one city councilman realizes that they were and is trying to pass a resolution to overturn part of a rate increase approved by the body months ago to help finance power plant projects needed to prevent future blackouts.
Frank Schiavone has proposed that resolution and it will be discussed this Tuesday.
The impact from the city council's action on implementing a recommendation of the Board of Public Utilities has been measurable all around.
(excerpt)
Resident Ken Rotker, who lives off Tyler Street on the other side of Highway 91 from the Galleria at Tyler, couldn't agree more.
In July 2006, he used 2,396 kilowatt-hours of electricity and paid $307.43. For July 2007, he used 2,164 kilowatt-hours and paid $416.20.
That's a 50 percent increase per kilowatt-hour, the amount of electricity used to burn 1,000 watts for one hour.
Rotker said the city-owned Riverside Public Utilities should have done a much better job anticipating the impact of the rate increase on residential customers.
"There's almost malfeasance in office for the way this thing was handled," he said Friday.
Dave Wright, the utility's general manager, said his rate-increase presentation last December should have included an explanation of how much summer bills would jump.
"It didn't prepare customers for the high summer bills compared to the winter bills," he said.
It's just the right time to fix things too, given that we've begun a trio of election years in what might be the most interesting cycle of elections in many years.
The family who got lost in the bamboo forest of the river bottom have been rescued.
The purpose of the Community Police Review Commission by first ordinance and then city charter, is to,
(excerpt)
"promote effective, efficient, trustworthy and just law enforcement in the City of Riverside, and to bring to the attention of the City its findings and recommendations in regard to law enforcement policies and practices. Further, it is the purpose of this Ordinance to ensure good relations between those who enforce the laws and the diverse populace whom they serve so that the public will take pride in local law enforcement and those who enforce the laws will take pride in their service to the public."
Riverside adopted that ordinance in April 2000 and the city's voters put it in the city's charter as an amendment in November 2004 after witnessing the politics being played with yet another form of civic expression manned by the city's residents.
The ongoing discussion on the fatal shooting of Lee Deante Brown has been tabled for now and there's some focus on its other activities.
The commissioners who currently serve on what's left of this commission are drafting the annual public report, albeit months after its due date. One issue that comes to head in it is the explanation as to what it represents.
In one statement, the commission is seen as representing the community's perspective on the complaint process, hence its name, Community Police Review Commission with the words, "community" and "review" underlined. Yet, if you go up to the sixth floor of City Hall, look on the walls for signs directing you to its current location, a small cubicle squeezed between the city's treasury and finance divisions.
The signs you find, will read "Police Review Commission" with nary any evidence that the word, community was ever included. That could be a Freudian slip on the city's part, but it's emblematic of what's been going on in the past several years. Last week, the city manager's office announced that it hired an ex-police officer and part-time attorney from Pomona's law enforcement agency to manage it. Add to that the seven commissioners on it who come from some sort of law enforcement background, it's safe to say that it's probably no longer necessary to put the word "community" back on the sign.
A report given later this month by a consultant who also is a retired law enforcement officer may help or hinder it further based on the recommendations that are reached. However, if there are any that can help make it stronger and more independent, odds are very high that those recommendations wouldn't be implemented by the triad in city government who appear more intent on weakening it further in the wake of the increased civil litigation in relation to at least four incustody deaths.
So far, the community has been left out of this entire process which began 18 months ago and is expected to continue, as surely as the word that represents them has been missing from the signs on the sixth floor at City Hall directing visitors to the CPRC's current cubicle.
No part of the city government that is elected by the people of this city and no city employee who is paid by the sales taxes generated by the people has at any one point in the process asked the community members for their input on this process.
And the CPRC is a good example to show how much the city government and its direct employees value public input both in terms of how it handles its boards and commissions as well as the boards and commissions themselves. After all, the city manager's office has already tried to micromanage two others, the Human Relations Commission and the Human Resource Board, but in their cases was not successful either because of it misread the charter in the case of the HR Board or was stopped by Mayor Ron Loveridge as with the HRC.
The bright side is that at least the public will be invited to attend the meetings where the latest round of changes will be announced regarding the CPRC. The public may even be given a couple of minutes to cram comments about 18 months of changes until it's shushed by the elected officials. But once again, with the city council's blessing, the city manager's office has placed further restrictions on a construct of public participation.
Complaints are beginning to be routed elsewhere besides the CPRC including to the county grand jury, the state attorney general's office and the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Special Litigating Unit as well as others. Only time will tell if those are worthwhile avenues to seek redress for allegations of police misconduct. But people say that they've lost faith in a process they now believe belongs to City Hall and the police department.
Questions about the city manager's handling of the complaint findings especially when different ones are reached by the CPRC and the police department arose during attempts to obtain related statistical information for the annual public report.
A nervous assistant city manager, Tom DeSantis appeared to try to field efforts away from getting the information asked for by the CPRC by telling its members they really wanted something else. However, three commissioners stood firm. Conflicting information has come out of the city manager's office regarding the collection of these statistics.
First, DeSantis insisted last year in writing and in public that his office didn't collect or retain these statistics. Allegations arose during several public meetings last year that he prohibited former executive director, Pedro Payne from compiling them. Then this year, outgoing interim executive something or other, Mario Lara said that the office did keep records, but qualified that statement to that it kept some records at a later meeting with DeSantis in the room. So will the office produce these statistics and if no, what will the next excuse be?
With this, the city manager's office is continuing into its second year of micromanaging the CPRC to control it and the department it oversees.
As goes the CPRC, so will the police department which is why the CPRC is the canary in the mine.
New York City, New York
The New York Daily News ran this article on Abner Louima who was subjected to brutal attack by several New York City Police Department officers in the bathroom of one of the agency's stations.
It relates what happened after the officers assaulted Louima and sodomized him with a broom handle, warning him that if he told anyone about it, they'd kill him. His colon was torn apart and his bladder, ruptured. One officer, Justin Volpe had taken the broom handle stained with feces and Louima's own blood, then broke Louima's tooth with it after pushing it at his mouth.
Years later, Louima still bears scars inside and out.
(excerpt)
"If God forgives, I have to be able to forgive," Louima told the Daily News. "But I cannot forget. Sometimes I have nightmares ... or I see a police officer and I start shaking all of a sudden."
After the brutal attack came the cover up, though not for long.
(excerpt)
"I thought that when Abner Louima was dragged into that filthy bathroom, we were all dragged in there," said former federal prosecutor Kenneth Thompson, who delivered the opening statement at Volpe's trial. "A helpless man in handcuffs in a New York City police stationhouse. It could have been any of us."
"Louima is to police-community relations what Selma was to the voter rights movement," said the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Most of the officers except a supervisor either plead guilty to crimes or like Volpe were convicted in a trial. Volpe will be in prison until 2025. The others had their convictions overturned on appeal, which often happens to law enforcement officers in these circumstances.
Looking back at the incident that shook the NYPD to its core, are the columns that were written by New York Daily News columnist, Mike McAlary who won a Pulitzer Prize for them but later died of colon cancer at 41 years of age.
McAlary broke the story after receiving an anonymous tip and visiting Louima in the hospital. Here, is what he wrote about that initial encounter.
In it, he documented Louima's experience at the hands of the NYPD.
(excerpt)
"The white cops started with some racial stuff," Louima whispered. "They said, 'Why do you people come to this country if you can't speak English?' They called us niggers.
"A cop said to shut up. I didn't think he was talking to me. He pushed me to the ground and handcuffed my hands. Two cops put me in their patrol car and drove me to the corner of Glenwood and Nostrand. There was another car there. They kicked and beat me with their radios. They were yelling, 'You people can't even talk English, I am going to teach you to respect a cop.' None of the cops had their nametags on. They put me back in the car and drove me to the corner of Glenwood and Bedford. They met two other cops and beat me again. This time in the legs, too."
Then, he said, he was driven to the 70th Precinct stationhouse, led to the duty sergeant's desk and strip-searched.
"My pants were down at my ankles, in full view of the other cops. They walked me over to the bathroom and closed the door. There were two cops. One said, 'You niggers have to learn to respect police officers.' The other one said, 'If you yell or make any noise, I will kill you.' Then one held me and the other one stuck the plunger up my behind. He pulled it out and shoved it in my mouth, broke my teeth and said, 'That's your s--t, nigger.' Later, when they called the ambulance, the cop told me, 'If you ever tell anyone . . . I will kill you and your family.' "
Louima is lying in critical condition in Coney Island Hospital's trauma unit with a pierced lower intestine and a torn bladder. His doctor told me it would take three or four months for him to recover. His left hand was shackled to the bed. A cop sat guard across the room.
If his story is true, a lot of cops should go down. Some cops, the good ones, are already outraged and tipped me off to this horrific incident late Monday night and yesterday morning.
In fact, McAlary said there were no shortage of police officers in the NYPD who were willing to share what they knew about the incident. Local prosecutors in Brooklyn called it not a case of corruption but of torture. It was both.
The act of sodomizing Louima was torture, but the fact that it was allowed to happen in the bathroom of a police station filled with police officers is corruption. Why else would Louima's torturers felt comfortable enough to commit an act of brutality hiding in plain sight?
What can be said of the department's initial efforts to cover up the brutal act, so that there would be no effective or just, let alone objective internal investigation?
Fortunately, Louima and some officers disgusted at the behavior in their midst refused to stay silent.
(excerpt)
"His family saw him get in the police car in perfect health," said Carl Thomas, Louima's other lawyer and a Brooklyn prosecutor until three years ago. "The next thing we know, he is in the hospital with a lacerated bladder and pierced intestine. This is worse than the stun gun case in Queens. What were these cops thinking? How can you do this to another human being? And how many people did they do this to before?"
This is a story to stop the city.
It didn't stop it right away. In another column, Volpe insisted he was innocent of this horrible crime, saying I will be vindicated.
(excerpt)
Volpe was controlled and soft-spoken. He plays the victim well. He is a weightlifter and built like a fire hydrant. It was easy to see him as some version of Mark Fuhrman on steroids.
"It didn't happen the way they are saying," Volpe said. "Now I know what it's like to be falsely accused."
"Then what happened?"
"It wasn't me."
"Then who was it?"
"If it happened, it wasn't me," he said. "It will all come out. I will be vindicated. It's like a nightmare and I can't wake up."
Soon, the truth became known about what Volpe and the other officers had done. Numerous protests filled the streets of New York City in response to this incident just as they would be filled again after the shooting of Amadou Diallo by four NYPD officers in 1999. Federal investigations would be launched for both incidents.
McAlary also wrote a column about the experiences and reactions by the paramedics who came to pick up Louima after he was sodomized and take him to the hospital.
(excerpt)
"Louima was in there alone," Pagan has said. "We didn't even see him at first. He got up when Frank went over. Louima had a swollen face, that was all we saw. No blood. No smell."
The paramedics said cops told them that the prisoners were hurt in a riot and that they were cop fighters.
"The cops told us nothing about rectal trauma or homosexuality," Pagan said, referring to police claims that Louima's injuries resulted from homosexual activity.
The paramedics wanted more information. "What happened to you?" Birnbaum asked.
"I am not going to say anything here," Louima said.
"You gotta tell us what happened," the paramedic said. "What's wrong with you? We can't help you unless you tell us where it hurts."
"Wait till we get to the hospital," Louima whispered.
Louima did relate his experience. After one hospital nurse saw him, she called the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau, not that it did much good at that point in time. That division would only respond after news about what had happened to a man in its midst had begun to travel around the world.
Even with all the reports of brutal incidents and corruption reported involving police officers and sheriff deputies all around the country, it's hard to believe that something like this could happen in the midst of a police station involving officers who obviously believed that no accountability would come to them even if they had been caught. They trusted greatly in the department and the profession's wall of silence separating them from any wrongdoing they have done on the job.
In this case, the brutal act apparently crossed some line set by at least several police officers who reported either anonymously to the media or perhaps even within their own agency. In the latest update on Louima written by the New York Daily News, they give updates on several key people involved in this episode and several of the "whistle blowers" in the NYPD were promoted to the sergeant positions including one with a history of discipline but none of them were currently still working with the agency. Either they were on some sort of extended leave or they had left the agency.
People often ask if what happened to Louima could happen in any other law enforcement agency, or has it? Could it happen here? And if so, how would officers respond to other officers committing this brutal misconduct? Would they report it to their supervisors or anyone, or would they simply look the other way and not say anything?
And if it was reported to a law enforcement agency, would they investigate it immediately, or would they ignore it? Would those entrusted with investigating suspected misconduct by police officers in a law enforcement agency look the other way and pretend there was nothing to look at?
Which would it be? What about in Riverside? How would it fare?
Other sources:
Newsday: Louima: 10 years later
New York Post: Louima's haunted, high life 10 years later
In Las Vegas as well as other large cities, recruiting and hiring police officers is a difficult task, according to U.S.A. Today.
Background checks and polygraph tests winnow out most of the applicants who apply including 70% of those who apply to the Las Vegas Police Department.
(excerpt)
Sgt. Zehnder, a department training instructor, offered a sobering dose of reality. For every 100 candidates, maybe 10 will eventually make it through the training academy and then to the street.
About 23% of candidates never get past a multiple-choice basic knowledge test. Forty percent fail the physical training workout -- a mix of calisthenics, agility and running drills. But no other test comes close to producing the failure rate -- seven in 10 -- than the department's background check and polygraph exam.
"I can't tell you how many candidates I've lost," recruiter Luke Jancsek said of those caught lying. Many, he said, try to conceal the frequency of past drug use, some of which would not necessarily disqualify them. "I want to smack 'em in the head sometimes."
Look on the bright side. That will save you from smacking their heads when they falsify a police report or lie on the witness stand at a court proceeding. Which is worse, catching them before you hire them or later on?
Have electricity rates got you down, in Riverside? If so, the Press Enterprise this morning will tell you that your higher utility bills for this summer weren't all in your head. They were actually real.
Fortunately at least one city councilman realizes that they were and is trying to pass a resolution to overturn part of a rate increase approved by the body months ago to help finance power plant projects needed to prevent future blackouts.
Frank Schiavone has proposed that resolution and it will be discussed this Tuesday.
The impact from the city council's action on implementing a recommendation of the Board of Public Utilities has been measurable all around.
(excerpt)
Resident Ken Rotker, who lives off Tyler Street on the other side of Highway 91 from the Galleria at Tyler, couldn't agree more.
In July 2006, he used 2,396 kilowatt-hours of electricity and paid $307.43. For July 2007, he used 2,164 kilowatt-hours and paid $416.20.
That's a 50 percent increase per kilowatt-hour, the amount of electricity used to burn 1,000 watts for one hour.
Rotker said the city-owned Riverside Public Utilities should have done a much better job anticipating the impact of the rate increase on residential customers.
"There's almost malfeasance in office for the way this thing was handled," he said Friday.
Dave Wright, the utility's general manager, said his rate-increase presentation last December should have included an explanation of how much summer bills would jump.
"It didn't prepare customers for the high summer bills compared to the winter bills," he said.
It's just the right time to fix things too, given that we've begun a trio of election years in what might be the most interesting cycle of elections in many years.
The family who got lost in the bamboo forest of the river bottom have been rescued.
The purpose of the Community Police Review Commission by first ordinance and then city charter, is to,
(excerpt)
"promote effective, efficient, trustworthy and just law enforcement in the City of Riverside, and to bring to the attention of the City its findings and recommendations in regard to law enforcement policies and practices. Further, it is the purpose of this Ordinance to ensure good relations between those who enforce the laws and the diverse populace whom they serve so that the public will take pride in local law enforcement and those who enforce the laws will take pride in their service to the public."
Riverside adopted that ordinance in April 2000 and the city's voters put it in the city's charter as an amendment in November 2004 after witnessing the politics being played with yet another form of civic expression manned by the city's residents.
The ongoing discussion on the fatal shooting of Lee Deante Brown has been tabled for now and there's some focus on its other activities.
The commissioners who currently serve on what's left of this commission are drafting the annual public report, albeit months after its due date. One issue that comes to head in it is the explanation as to what it represents.
In one statement, the commission is seen as representing the community's perspective on the complaint process, hence its name, Community Police Review Commission with the words, "community" and "review" underlined. Yet, if you go up to the sixth floor of City Hall, look on the walls for signs directing you to its current location, a small cubicle squeezed between the city's treasury and finance divisions.
The signs you find, will read "Police Review Commission" with nary any evidence that the word, community was ever included. That could be a Freudian slip on the city's part, but it's emblematic of what's been going on in the past several years. Last week, the city manager's office announced that it hired an ex-police officer and part-time attorney from Pomona's law enforcement agency to manage it. Add to that the seven commissioners on it who come from some sort of law enforcement background, it's safe to say that it's probably no longer necessary to put the word "community" back on the sign.
A report given later this month by a consultant who also is a retired law enforcement officer may help or hinder it further based on the recommendations that are reached. However, if there are any that can help make it stronger and more independent, odds are very high that those recommendations wouldn't be implemented by the triad in city government who appear more intent on weakening it further in the wake of the increased civil litigation in relation to at least four incustody deaths.
So far, the community has been left out of this entire process which began 18 months ago and is expected to continue, as surely as the word that represents them has been missing from the signs on the sixth floor at City Hall directing visitors to the CPRC's current cubicle.
No part of the city government that is elected by the people of this city and no city employee who is paid by the sales taxes generated by the people has at any one point in the process asked the community members for their input on this process.
And the CPRC is a good example to show how much the city government and its direct employees value public input both in terms of how it handles its boards and commissions as well as the boards and commissions themselves. After all, the city manager's office has already tried to micromanage two others, the Human Relations Commission and the Human Resource Board, but in their cases was not successful either because of it misread the charter in the case of the HR Board or was stopped by Mayor Ron Loveridge as with the HRC.
The bright side is that at least the public will be invited to attend the meetings where the latest round of changes will be announced regarding the CPRC. The public may even be given a couple of minutes to cram comments about 18 months of changes until it's shushed by the elected officials. But once again, with the city council's blessing, the city manager's office has placed further restrictions on a construct of public participation.
Complaints are beginning to be routed elsewhere besides the CPRC including to the county grand jury, the state attorney general's office and the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Special Litigating Unit as well as others. Only time will tell if those are worthwhile avenues to seek redress for allegations of police misconduct. But people say that they've lost faith in a process they now believe belongs to City Hall and the police department.
Questions about the city manager's handling of the complaint findings especially when different ones are reached by the CPRC and the police department arose during attempts to obtain related statistical information for the annual public report.
A nervous assistant city manager, Tom DeSantis appeared to try to field efforts away from getting the information asked for by the CPRC by telling its members they really wanted something else. However, three commissioners stood firm. Conflicting information has come out of the city manager's office regarding the collection of these statistics.
First, DeSantis insisted last year in writing and in public that his office didn't collect or retain these statistics. Allegations arose during several public meetings last year that he prohibited former executive director, Pedro Payne from compiling them. Then this year, outgoing interim executive something or other, Mario Lara said that the office did keep records, but qualified that statement to that it kept some records at a later meeting with DeSantis in the room. So will the office produce these statistics and if no, what will the next excuse be?
With this, the city manager's office is continuing into its second year of micromanaging the CPRC to control it and the department it oversees.
As goes the CPRC, so will the police department which is why the CPRC is the canary in the mine.
Labels: corruption 101, CPRC vs the city, recruitment
posted by Five Before Midnight | 1:36 PM
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