Canary in the mine: Minority report, part two

Bud White: Why are you doing this? The Nite Owl made you. You want to tear all that down?

Ed Exley: With a wrecking ball. You want to help me swing it?


----L.A. Confidential(1997)





City Hall, Fifth Floor Conference Room

Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2007




(Interior-small room with a conference table in the middle, with chairs around it. Chairs also line the room on both sides alongside the walls. A nearby table holds the remnants of a meal of sandwiches, vegetables and cookies eaten by those sitting at the table.)


Community members enter the conference room and sit down. The commissioners are already present having just completed a closed session. Also present are representatives from various city departments, who consist of the designated "stake holders" of the CPRC. The soon to be ex-interim executive something or another, Mario Lara sat quietly during most of the meeting, with his boss, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis sitting nearby.

DeSantis had taken a sabbatical from attending meetings, but apparently the news about Commissioner Jim Ward's long-awaited minority report on the contentious shooting brought him back into the fold.

Lee Deante Brown, a mentally ill African-American was shot by Riverside Police Department Officer Terry Ellefson at the Welcome Inn of America on April 3, 2006. The CPRC and the department both initiated their investigations though the department began defending this shooting within the first days of an investigation that would officially take many months to complete.


Over a year later after Brown was shot, the CPRC is still discussing both its majority and its minority report. Of course, during that year the CPRC had been subjected to what Press Enterprise columnist Dan Bernstein referred to as a "hollowing out" by what some have called, the triad. An executive manager was forced to resign and no less than four commissioners followed suit within a three month period in 2006 and 2007 as a result of the city's campaign to redefine and remold the commission into an entity that would be less threatening to it and also to enhance its ability to escape large payouts involving law suits filed in connection with the police department's recent rash of incustody deaths.

Currently, there are at least five law suits that have been filed in both federal and state court in connection with the deaths of Brown, Summer Marie Lane, Terry Rabb and Douglas Steven Cloud. Firms outside Riverside County have been circling Riverside like sharks in recent months , looking for cases to litigate involving the police department in the areas of incustody deaths and excessive force cases.

Replacing the departing commissioners were five new commissioners including several political appointments. Replacing the departed director, was an interim who's main qualification for the position is that he's worked under DeSantis for a while. This interim will be replaced by former law enforcement commander and soon-to-be executive manager of the CPRC, Kevin Rogan.

On Wednesday night, what was left of the city's commission played to a conference room that was filled with community members also known as those who are not designated "stake holders" and representatives from the city manager's office, the city attorney's office and the police department otherwise known by the city as the "stake holders" of the CPRC. That's the triad that people have been talking about for the past 18 months.



At a meeting on Aug. 8, the CPRC had received for the first time, the minority report authored by Commissioner Jim Ward. In it were the questions he and others had asked during the process of drafting the majority public report. Questions that were never answered.

Fast forward a couple of hours plus a couple of motions that were voted upon.

Most of the community members are gone, having decided that when it comes to the Brown case, no one discussing it knows what they are doing and it was time to take the CPRC back to meetings for further discussion. Several got tired of watching CPRC Chair Brian Pearcy grasp for straws when trying to explain while six civilian witnesses failed to see the taser in Brown's hand. Pearcy's latest theory was that the taser was black and the pavement where Brown was at, was black so there was no contrast to allow for anyone who wasn't an officer to see the taser.

That might have worked except for one thing. The pavement at the Welcome Inn of America where the shooting took place wasn't black. Right after Pearcy presented his latest theory, several members of the Eastside Think Tank shook their heads and said, the pavement's actually white. What is he thinking? They got up and left soon after.

Still, the black pavement scenario, though not exactly reality based, still went slightly better with community leaders than the statements made by Pearcy, a former Los Angeles Police Department officer, that the taser was black, Brown was Black and thus the taser could not be seen because there was no light background to provide a contrast.


After watching the last community member shake his head and walk out of the latest special meeting held by the Community Police Review Commission, the commissioners continued their five-month discussion of the fatal officer-involved shooting of Lee Deante Brown and the one thing that came out of the latest discussion is that it will be continued.

Some commissioners like Jack Brewer and Steve Simpson balked at the thought.



"Stop diddling," Simpson said.



Still when several commissioners tried to bring the process to a grinding halt, they did not have the votes to do it. Ward used the meeting time to bring up several issues of concern in his 10-page minority report.




The Tasing of Officer Michael Paul Stucker



In his minority report, Ward stated that it wasn't clear exactly how Stucker came to have a taser dart embedded in his fifth finger. After all, the autopsy report appeared to account for all the taser darts. This is where all four taser darts allegedly were fired according to the coroner's report.



After all, two probes or darts per cartridge, two cartridges fired, each from a different taser. That equals four darts total.





1)Paired puncture wounds on left side of chest with small associated cutaneous burn marks consistent with taser darts



2) Puncture wound on posterior aspect of left forearm with small associated cutaneous burn marks consistent with taser darts





That's three out of four of the possible taser darts. The fourth dart was actually located as well, according to the same report.





(excerpt, coroner's report, by M. Scott McCormick, M.D.)







"Embedded in the blue belt on the left side is a taser dart with a short length of copper extending from it. The dart appears to penetrate through the belt but does not appear to penetrate through the jeans beneath it."





With all four probes accounted for as having struck Brown's body or clothes, where did the one which hit Stucker's hand come from?



Was it from Stucker's taser? After all, in his statement, he did say one probe fell off of Brown's body. The problem is, when Stucker was allegedly shocked by a taser, he had already removed the cartridge from his own to apply a contact tase at that point to Brown. So did it come from Ellefson's taser as has been asserted? And if it was, how did it become stuck in his hand?

The department stated that photographs were taken of Stucker's taser injuries and that he had gone to a hospital for treatment but these photographs apparently were never included in the investigative report received by the CPRC.



Those are questions that should have been asked and answered. They were asked, but never answered.




Ward had long expressed doubt about this version of events because he said that it didn't fit the timeline set by Ellefson's taser device. Although the taser's clock was off putting the time of its use before that of the device utilized by Stucker, it did establish a timeline set by seven deployments in about 47 seconds. The first three deployments were believed to be taser probe firing and cycling.



They are as follows:





(excerpt)




13:48:30 (first deployment of darts)



13:48:36 (Second cycle)



13:48:39 (Second cycle is interrupted by third cycle)



13:48:49 (contact tase mode)



13:49:00 (contact tase mode)



13:49:11 (contact tase mode)




13:49:17 (contact tase mode)




Ellefson said that he administered three attempts at contact tasing in his statement. Stucker said that he was shocked by a taser probe in his hand for an unspecified period of time which may have been as long as 14 seconds, he turned around to address it and then turned around again, and saw Brown squatting on the ground with Ellefson's taser in his hand.



Pearcy said in his response to the issue that Stucker likely had his back turned about five seconds before reengaging with Brown. However, the time line states that Stucker had his back turned between 18-42 seconds(depending on who did the final two deployments), possibly including at the time he was allegedly yelling at Ellefson to watch for the loose handcuff on Brown's wrist. The inability of both the CPRC and the department to sychronize the time lines of Ellefson's taser with the belt recordings of both officers makes this difficult to determine. By itself, the taser time line raises more questions about the events leading up to the shooting than it answers.

At the time, the CPRC investigator was preparing to give his second briefing, then Executive Director Pedro Payne was trying to track down Ellefson's missing transcript. Apparently, there was space saved for it right next to where Stucker's transcript was kept but that space was empty. He emailed the department and received a response back on Nov. 17 from Capt. Mike Blakely that was Cc-ed to then Deputy Chief John DeLaRosa and Lt. Ed Blevins who heads the Internal Affairs Division.





(excerpt, email)





Pedro,



A transcription of Officer Ellefson's belt recorder was not made. The criminal investigators are arranging for this recording to be transcribed, and I will insure that a copy of that transcription is sent to you as soon as it's available.




The transcript became available at the end of February 2007, and when it was received, it had been reviewed and signed the previous day by Ellefson. A similar document was now included that was signed by Stucker the same day for a transcript that was already at least six months old. The department apparently never really explained while it had transcribed Stucker's belt recording and handed it over to the CPRC in the autumn of 2006 with the rest of its case file yet according to its own words, had not even transcribed the belt recording of Ellefson, the officer who fired the shots that killed Brown.

That question and other related questions were asked. They were not answered.



Taser, taser, where's the taser?


Ward raises the issue in his report about the taser in terms of when either officer first mentioned that it had been lost, then grabbed by Brown. He noted that the first commands given to Brown by both officers after the shooting never mentioned the taser. Stucker had ordered Brown, "hands behind your back" The same commands that he and Ellefson had given just before the shooting. After the shooting, Stucker was telling Brown to "stay down".

In fact, none of the complaints either officer gave before the shooting mentioned the taser either. Ward said he found it odd that the taser was first mentioned 56 seconds after the shots had been fired. After all, when Brown had allegedly been swinging the loose handcuff around, Stucker had warned Ellefson about that as it had been happening.



"It was a quick draw and shoot situation..."

Ellefson had said these words in his statement to investigators some hours after the shooting had taken place, and finished the statement by adding that he had no time to align his gun sights on the target. He had shot from the hip, according to his statement. However, Ward noted in his minority report that Ellefson had said several times to individuals including supervising sergeants that he had shot "downward" or "two shots trajectory downward". Two sergeants had submitted reports that Ellefson had told them he had shot twice at a downward trajectory.

That assessment matches that made by Applied Graphic Sciences illustrator Doreen DeAvery that the trajectory was likely downward but in her assessment, Brown had to be sitting or squatting when shot. Five out of six civilian witnesses and Stucker had said that Brown was in that position at the time of the shooting.

Ward's report generated some discussion but although several commissioners lined up to concur with his report in some areas, others felt that the discussion even with so many questions left unanswered had continued long enough.

When the door is finally closed on the Brown shooting after over one year, the next one on deck for the CPRC will be the October 2006 shooting of Douglas Steven Cloud by Officers David Johansen and Nicholas Vasquez.When asked the status of that case, Lara just looked blankly ahead. Some expect this case to be even more contentious than the Brown case has been and with the city worn out after one year spent after the Lane finding remolding the CPRC in preparation for these cases, it remains to be seen what it has left in its arsenal to address Cloud.







The strike force is coming, according to the Press Enterprise.


This is a emergency team of 12 retired judges who will be conducting trials in Riverside the next several months to hopefully reduce the backlog of cases. They will be focusing on the oldest cases. This strike force has been in the lexicon at the courthouse for weeks, with a mixture of awe and skepticism in people's voices, but the judges seem happier.


Of course, there's still few people in the criminal justice system taking responsibility for this mess but the fingers still keep getting pointed elsewhere by its parties. Until this attitude changes, don't expect this situation to come close to being remedied, even by 100 strike force judges.



(excerpt)



There's no shortage of finger-pointing when it comes to Riverside County's congested court system.

The county currently has funding for 76 judges and commissioners to serve a population of 2 million; a study of judges' workloads concludes the county should have 133 judicial positions.

Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco blamed the judges. "It's great to clear the backlog, but we are going right back to where we started if we don't fix the long-term problems," he said.

Specifically, Pacheco said previous efforts to crack down on continuances have been unsuccessful.

Riverside County's Presiding Judge Richard Fields said the latest effort is different.

"We will be enforcing it, and we intend to stick with it," he said. While the judicial system faces challenges, "they will only be met when all participants view themselves as partners in insuring that our limited resources are used wisely" Fields said.

Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle, who oversees the jails, called the justice system "completely broken."

"If the system is working properly, those people should be getting their day in court expeditiously," Doyle said.





Red County, a Republican blog, published a posting about a fundraiser held by Ward Five city council candidate Donna Doty Michalka and the $40,000 she received in donations.



The University of California, Riverside has taken its wallet out and plunked down at least $30 million to buy Creekside Terrance for faculty housing.