Californians Aware 2007 Audit: Does the RPD make the grade?

A few blog postings ago I posted the wrong cell phone number for Ward One Councilman Mike Gardner. The correct one is 941-7084. Give him a call if you have concerns, ideas or questions on issues or about what you'd like to see happen in Ward One and the city.





Californians Aware, a government watchdog organization, has come out with an updated audit taken of law enforcement agencies across the state to grade how well they comply with state laws governing the release of public information to those who request it.


The analysis and conclusion of the 2007 study showed that some of the law enforcement agencies improved from the grades they received last years. Some of them received even lower grades.

But it's hard to look at what happened this year without looking at last year's audit report first.



Overall, the average grade received by law enforcement agencies in the state, was an F+ for the 2006 audit, as most of the agencies including nearly all of them in the Inland Empire scored very poorly. Some of those which got extremely low grades like the Riverside County Sheriff's Department's administrative headquarters in Riverside weren't graded this time around, but two others were with mixed results.

A short list of law enforcement agencies and their scores which included one grade apiece for legal compliance and customer service are included on the analysis and conclusion page, with brief comments. At Banning's police department for example, the auditor said that the department representative raised her voice and was rude.


The highest scoring department with a 94 grade which means it got an A- was a small agency called the Dixon Police Department.


The information requested orally or in writing included police reports, crime information and economic statements of interest. It also included some of the following information and for all of it, provided an analysis involving all of the responding agencies.

The information immediately below was taken from the original 2006 audit.


(excerpt, 2006 study)




The Written Request to Police and Sheriff’s Departments

6.Thirteen percent of the departments refused to accept the auditor’s request letter.

7. The record of asset forfeiture fund distribution was made available by almost 36 percent of the departments. Another almost 16 percent of departments made no response at all, and still another almost 10 percent stated they had no documents responsive to the request.

8.Statistical data on complaints about officers were presented by almost 40 percent of departments. Another almost 15 percent of departments made no response at all, and still another almost 14 percent stated they had no documents responsive to the request.

9. The salary schedule for peace officer positions was made available by almost 47 percent of departments. Another 13 percent made no response at all.

10. Actual earnings information for (unidentified) officers was said to be confidential by almost 32 percent of departments. Another 15 percent made no response at all, but still another 15 percent made the information available.

11. Worker’s comp claims made by (unidentified) officers were said to be confidential by more than 42 percent of departments. Another 14 percent made no response at all, but still another 10 percent made the information available.

12. Second job (outside employment) information for (unidentified) officers was said to be confidential by almost 43 percent of departments. Another almost 15 percent made no response at all, but still another 10 percent said that no documents existed responsive to the request. Only 6.5 percent (12 of 184 departments) made the information available.

13. The most recent death in custody



Here you can do a search to see your city or county's law enforcement agency performed in the audit in 2006.





Here are some grades for agencies in Riverside County for 2007. The first grade is for legal compliance, the second for customer. The third in parentheses is the grade received for the 2006 audit. The above link will lead to a search engine for all agencies audited during the 2007 study.

Only two Riverside County agencies were tested again, and Banning's was the true success story, while Riverside's police department dropped its score even lower.



Riverside Police Department: F, C, (D+)

Banning Police Department: A+, A+ (F-)



The 2007 analysis and conclusions report provided some interesting information. Here are several of the conclusions reached this time around.


(excerpt)


1. Small Is Dutiful

Generally speaking the smaller departments seemed to perform notably better than the largest. Police departments with 200 points or more (combining their legal compliance and customer service performance) were those in the cities of Banning, Coronado, Half Moon Bay, Lincoln, Rocklin and Santa Rosa. Only a few points below were Brentwood, Campbell, Davis and Redding.

The biggest department with a score in this high range was the Contra Costa County Sheriff. Otherwise, some of the largest departments did not have impressive composite scores: Los Angeles County Sheriff (125 out of a possible 210), Riverside Police Department (126), San Diego County Sheriff (Vista and San Marcos stations—125), and San Francisco Police Department (110). One explanation might be that the smallest departments have much less crime to deal with, but then their records staff would normally be much smaller as well.

At any rate, it is clear that a department need not be huge or even of medium size to do a first rate job in comp lying with the public records law and dealing with information requests courteously, professionally and promptly. On the contrary, departments toward the large end of the spectrum often have the farthest to go in meeting these standards.


2. A Distrusted Public
About half the departments audited demanded to know the auditor’s name, affiliation or purpose for requesting the information, or some combination of these disclosures. Making these revelations a condition for obtaining the kind of information requested here violates the Public Records Act. Departments can ask the purpose of the request in order to help the requester, but cannot insist on knowing. And yet that point either has not been included in many departments’ training or has been allowed to be forgotten. The result often unmistakably conveys distrust to the requester and may intimidate pursuit of the inquiry altogether.

This “Who wants to know?” response is justified by some as necessary to keep criminals from getting information that could threaten someone harm or frustrate the successful completion of an investigation. But the Legislature’s solution for that concern is to allow departments to withhold certain otherwise public information based on either or both of those rationales, depending on the facts of the particular case. And in such rare instances the denial of access must extend to all requesters, including the press, and must not depend on the requester’s identity, affiliation or purpose. The Legislature has pre-defined the level of information all citizens are presumed to have a right to, and they have the right to remain silent about who they are and what they mean to do with the information.




Locally, the Riverside Police Department's 2007 audit is here along with notations on how it scored on individual categories used as criteria on a scoring scale for its final scores. It's total score is 41 +75, which actually gives it a 116 total, not a 126 if you add up the points.


The auditor from the San Bernardino Sun who wrote the report made the following comments on his experience.


(excerpt)



The Riverside PD charges 40 cents for the first page of crime reports and 10 cents for each additional page. Their fee policy is online at http://www.riversideca.gov/rpd/MngtSvs/ms_faqs.htm I did not receive a response to my written request. For my verbal request, I was given a copy of only the cover page for a crime report that was redacted except for the time and date of the incident, arrest charge and time and date of the report. ***Amended Nov. 24 with fees. Riverside PD responded to written request sent via certified mail dated Nov. 9.



Here's the audit report performed by a Press Enterprise reporter in 2006 for comparison.


One of the most interesting parts of this earlier audit that stands out is this one statement.


(excerpt, 2006 audit)



NOTE: These items were collected, but for research only (not graded):

“Most recent summary of officer discipline statistics (See Penal Code Section 832.7(c ).”

Statistical Data on Officer Discipline : Yes, it exists and is available



Here is P.C. 832.7 (c).



(excerpt)


Any department or agency that employs peace or custodial officers may disseminate data regarding the number, type, or disposition of complaints made against its officers if the information is in a form that does not identify the individuals involved.



Statistic information is a category which falls under this definition of releasable data. Unfortunately, it's not clear whether the city's legal division even remembers that it's included and allowable for release under state law. One would think not, because that office denied the request for the same statistical information that Californians Aware stated should be "disclosed" and in fact, was disclosed according to the 2006 audit to a Press Enterprise employee by a representative of the police department.



The reason why this response provided in the 2006 audit on that issue is significant is two-fold.

It's the response that adheres to state law and it is the opposite of what you will likely receive from City Attorney Gregory Priamos in writing if you request this exact information through the California Public Records Act request as I discovered in the summer of 2005.

So the auditor asks for this information which is as PC 832.7 (c) exempted from state law for nondisclosure but if you're a Riverside city resident and you submit the request for the same information, you will be told in writing that your request was denied pursuant to PC 832.7, the same law containing a clause authorizing that the release of this statistical information is indeed legal. If you don't believe what I'm saying, try to submit such a request yourself and see what written response you receive.

Around July 31, 2005 when I asked Chief Russ Leach in writing for this information, I received instead that letter from Priamos denying my request. Leach told me that it wasn't the department's decision to deny the release of that information but that it was directed to do so by Priamos' office. The simple fact is, that Priamos either opts not to release the information to the public upon request, or at least he is not clear in his direction to the police department to do so in a way that's not selective if the information received by the department representative which was then passed along to the auditor in the form of the requested information is any indication.

What's odd about denying this information from the public, is that during 2000-2001, the police department through former Capt. Richard Dana, who headed the personnel division, used to hand off quarterly reports containing statistical information on the department's internal investigations, complaint investigations, types of allegations, dispositions and discipline actions to the Human Relations Commission. That stopped when Capt. Pete Curzon, who has since retired, took over that responsibility and ceased releasing those reports but only because according to him, the department was changing the format in terms of how these reports would be released to the Human Relations Commission and the public.

The RPD never ever released another public report containing this information again to the Human Relations Commission and didn't give any explanation as to why it had really stopped doing it. But apparently, in 2006, while Californians Aware was doing its initial audit, someone else asked for this same information and as stated received a much different response.

Is there really a contradiction in whether or not the RPD releases these types of statistics as shown when I requested them both orally and in writing and what's stated clearly in the 2006 audit report when the Press Enterprise representative performing the audit asking for the same information requested it from a department representative? Why did the department really stop releasing this public information?

One way to see if that's the case is to contact both the auditor and representatives from Californians Aware who did the study to verify that this is the case. Checking whether or not this information was requested as part of the 2007 audit and if so, what the results were would be very helpful as well.

Then as Houston says, there's a problem. In Riverside. The department has a fairly good record on CPRA requests in different areas but there's still several including providing the above statistics that it still needs to work on to raise its audit scores the next time around. Will it take action to do so as was clearly the case in Banning's police department? That remains to be seen.





How things can change in just a few years, was shown when Mayor Ron Loveridge invited the Rev. Jesse Jackson to attend a round table discussino at the Fair Housing office to discuss the impact of foreclosures in the Inland Empire and across the nation.

Sub-prime mortgages caused many of the foreclosures, and the majority of people obtaining these loans were middle-class Black and Latino home owners.


(excerpt)


Director Rose Mayes invited Jackson to speak late last week, in the wake of President Bush's proposal to freeze interest rates for certain subprime mortgages.

Jackson said that plan was "like an umbrella, when we need a tent." He urged local residents who support a widespread restructuring of loans to rally en masse, as if it were civil or voting rights they were fighting for.

"What started as local exploitation is now a global economic crisis," Jackson said.

Illinois' attorney general is investigating a lender who steered a black family with a six-figure income to a subprime loan while a white family making $30,000 got a prime rate, Jackson said. Lenders in California should be put under the same scrutiny, he said.

Comparing Riverside and San Bernardino to cities such as Newark, Memphis and Denver, Jackson elicited a "whoa" from someone in the crowd when he mentioned 53 percent of all loans given to blacks in America are subprime. The loans typically include an initial fixed interest rate that quickly balloons, often without the borrowers' knowledge.








Cassie MacDuff, a columnist with the Press Enterprise writes about how Yucaipa residents are battling high-density development projects in their city.

Residents crowded a recent meeting with not one of them speaking in favor of the latest project.



(excerpt)



A standing-room-only crowd turned out to denounce it at a public meeting at Yucaipa City Hall on Thursday night.

Many were veterans of the 1999-2000 fight against Robinson Ranch.

Tempers remained in check. But those who spoke made it clear that hillsides covered with houses and apartments, and big-box retailers on the flat parcels, are not what they have in mind for the largely untouched area.

Many said high-density housing is out of character with surrounding neighborhoods, where one or two homes are built per acre.

Resident Anne Birge called the attempt to cram 4,159 homes on 522 acres "unmitigated, unforgivable greed."

Others warned that traffic on already-congested streets would become impossible.

Former Redlands planning commissioner Caroline Laymon said the project bordering south Redlands would irreparably damage both cities, which cherish their small-town atmospheres.

Former county planning commissioner Theresa Kwappenberg said low-income housing belongs in city centers where bus lines and other services are within walking distance, not in a rural area several miles away.

An amateur astronomer, George Lessard, said glare from the development would render his home observatory useless.

The developer was not at the meeting, and no one spoke in favor of the project.