Good Cops: One expert's look at police accountability and review
A long-time barber who spent decades cutting hair in the Eastside neighborhood of Riverside is hanging up his razor.
George Magaña's Three Palms Barber Shop has been a fixture on Kansas Avenue and many people, both regulars and newcomers came from miles around to have their hair cut.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
After today, Nguyen and dozens of other longtime customers won't have a choice. They'll have to find another barber.
Magaña, 72, who has cut hair at the Three Palms since 1962, will be hanging up his scissors for good.
"My wife and family said 'It's time,' " Magaña said, taking a break from giving Nguyen his "Marine-style" do. "They worry about me, especially driving home at night.
"And it's hard on the legs, the arms and the eyes," he said.
In San Bernardino, the Human Relations Commission is hearing complaints about police response times, according to the Press Enterprise.
(excerpt)
Commission Chairman Terry Elliott and Commissioner Kenneth Wells said they asked for the report in response to Westside residents' complaints that police take much longer to respond to calls from the largely black and Latino neighborhood than to those from elsewhere in the city.
Elliott said the commission will take up the issue Jan. 9 under its mandate to monitor allegations of race- or class-based discrimination.
"The police say they're always running behind because they're short of people, and they have to have protocols for prioritizing calls. I'm specifically looking at those protocols," Elliott said. "A call might be a low priority to them, but then it escalates, and they have to roll a whole army out there."
Lt. Scott Paterson, a San Bernardino Police Department spokesman, said dispatchers and field supervisors treat all five of the city's patrol areas equally, according to policies that seek to use officers' time most efficiently.
"The department doesn't treat one part of town differently from another," he said. "That's just not the way we do things."
The average response time for police calls in San Bernardino is about five minutes but it can vary a great deal, according to at least one HRC commissioner, Kenneth Wells.
(excerpt)
Wells said he has received many complaints from Westside residents recently, and they match his own experience. When he moved from the Westside to a home in northeastern San Bernardino two years ago, he immediately noticed a difference in police responsiveness, he said.
As a Neighborhood Watch captain in his old neighborhood, he learned that the best way to get a timely response, even to urgent calls, was to recruit several neighbors to telephone at once, Wells said. Otherwise, he said, he typically waited three and four hours for an officer to arrive.
"Where I live now, when I call, they show up right away," he said.
Westside residents are set to meet with city leaders including Mayor Patrick Morris with a United States Department of Justice mediator at their side to recommend policy changes and to address concerns about the police department.
The residents of San Bernardino are also exploring the option of installing a mechanism of civilian oversight over their police department's complaint process. The city does have a Board of Police Commissioners as it's called in place that was established in 1972. It was defanged in 1991 so that it couldn't process citizen complaints involving officers and it isn't currently funded by the city's annual budget. That means that it's essentially a convenient prop for people in government to admonish residents for not using but the residents know that its basically meaningless as an agent of accountability for their police department.
There are elements in Riverside's own government that probably glance over at what they might see as the model of perfection in San Bernardino and perhaps that's the direction in which Riverside's own commission is slowly heading. But if that's true, all that awaits at the end of the road is proof positive that Riverside hasn't learned a thing since it was in the international spotlight after a controversial officer-involved shooting by four Riverside Police Department officers on Dec. 28, 1998. And it's been an awfully long road to travel just to make that point.
David A. Harris looks at issues like civilian review in his book, Good Cops which is very good reading, including an excerpt on the Riverside Police Department's own experience with outside oversight from 2001 to 2006.
Part One of this series.
Harris also like many authors of books about issues in policing discusses the "us vs them" component of police culture between police departments' officers and the communities they police particularly when controversial incidents including excessive force incidents and onduty shootings take place that often show the tremendous gap that exists between the two entities. Harris also discusses the "culture within a culture" that permeates law enforcement agencies that sets up an "us vs them" dynamic of a different kind, between department management and the rank and file officers, most often through their union representation leadership. The public generally is only aware of this particular dynamic when controversy breaks after a police-related incident such as an officer-involved death.
Riverside saw both dynamics play out in full after the shooting of Tyisha Miller which placed then-Chief Jerry Carroll in a role of duality, the kind that often ends the careers of police chiefs before they would probably wish to step down. Neither of these dynamics were unique in Riverside's history and Carroll was not the only chief to face them. In fact, he was at least the third chief in a row during a period of less than 10 years.
The police chief is in the role of promoting accountability of both his or her department and of the investigations it conducts into controversial incidents, and insuring that he or she is also looking out for the officers under the command. The police officers through their union usually count on his or her fairness, or even loyalty and if they feel that their chief is favoring the community over them, they will act out as was seen in Riverside in 1999 culminating in an ill-advised head shaving campaign, particularly after Carroll fired the four officers and their supervisor after the department conducted its own internal administrative investigation of the shooting.
The community is pretty much as steadfast in its determination for accountability for a process that many of its members believe has little or none. The growth of civilian review nationwide is a reflection in large part of the lack of confidence that communities in these cities and counties have in the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate their own people in a fashion that is both accountable and transparent. If you listen to or review comments made by community members during this process in just about any of these cities or counties, you will find it said over and over again, I don't trust the ability of the police to police themselves.
A lot of this can be attributed to the cultures in police departments mentioned above, including what is called the "us vs them" mentality that is the backbone of it and them. That's one of the components that Harris addresses continuously in his book on the subject of preventive policing, in terms of reconceptualizing and redefining that profession.
There's an obvious difference between the relationship between the community and a police chief and the police chief and the department's police unions. Only the latter can hold the career of the police chief in their hands, through "no confidence" votes and other campaigns. Though technically only a city manager can fire a police chief in a city like Riverside that works directly under him or her like he can any other department head, the reality can be very different. How many chiefs have really been fired because police unions say or state that they no longer have confidence in them? How many mutinies or threatened mutinies within police agencies have led to the ousters of chiefs? How many chiefs have survived a "no confidence" vote from the rank and file?
In these situations, even all the support a community can offer is meaningless, as has been found in many cities including Riverside. Although with Carroll's ouster (as happened with other chiefs before him to the point that they stopped painting the chief's name on the door at the department's administrative headquarters), he had also lost support from the city government which in Carroll's case was actually negotiating with a group of the department's sergeants behind Carroll's back in attempts made to promote them, even adding new lieutenant positions if necessary as Mayor Ron Loveridge had said.
Three powers enjoyed by police chiefs to varying degrees depending on the jurisdiction are the ability to hire, fire and promote and it's not surprising that once Carroll discovered that one of those was being circumvented, he decided to take a retirement after probably one of the worst years in his professional life. Whether or not that was the only power he had that the city circumvented will probably never be fully known.
The dynamics which played out in Riverside were hardly new. In fact, it was just the opposite. The only police chief which seems to ride out controversy fairly well is current Los Angeles Police Department Chief William Bratton who also has headed other agencies including the New York City Police Department but left before the era which included the 1997 torture of Abner Louima and several controversial onduty shootings including the 1999 fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo. In Chicago, a new police chief was hired from the outside to head that city's scandal-plagued police department.
Randy Rider, the president of the National Internal Affairs Investigators Association comments about the role his division plays in instilling what he calls, morality and morale in police departments across the land. The role it should be playing anyway. It comes out of discussion elicited by an ethics course being taught to law enforcement officers by former Minneapolis Police Department officer and current author, Michael Quinn.
Quinn wrote the book, Walking with the Devil: What Bad Cops Don't Want You to Know and Good Cops Won't Tell You which upset a lot of his supervisors in Minneapolis, but attracted the attention of many readers when it was published in 2005.
(excerpt, Officer.com)
Send a positive message. Think of morals and morale. If WE have a problem then all of US must participate in the process of change. Obtain input from the line officer up. Even the old guys (like me) will take change differently if it is presented positively.
Take a look at the synonyms for moral. MORAL, ETHICAL, VIRTUOUS, RIGHTEOUS, NOBLE mean conforming to a standard of what is right and good.
MORAL implies conformity to established sanctioned codes or accepted notions of right and wrong (the basic moral values of a community).
ETHICAL may suggest the involvement of more difficult or subtle questions of rightness, fairness, or equity (committed to the highest ethical principles).
VIRTUOUS implies the possession or manifestation of moral excellence in character (not a religious person, but virtuous nevertheless).
RIGHTEOUS stresses guiltlessness or blamelessness and often suggests the sanctimonious (wished to be righteous before God and the world).
NOBLE implies moral eminence and freedom from anything petty, mean, or dubious in conduct and character (had the noblest of reasons for seeking office).
With the definition complete, what do these terms mean to us as investigators? Will our jobs be easier? Will the chief sleep easier at night? If handled the right way we will all rest better.
But is it handled the "right way" or is it all just wishful thinking?
Quinn, who left his department after 25 years in law enforcement, focused his book on the police culture and the code of silence it requires to live and move about within it. He viewed it as part survival mechanism, part crutch. He added that it was an inevitable part of being a police officer, as part of one as the badge and the gun, but he said that it needed to be constantly analyzed and the role it played in an officer's work because once it became part of "the road" for officers, it was destructive, corroding relationships between officers and between officers and the communities. Everybody in the organization knows about it, but doesn't talk about it out in the open. Communities discuss it, especially when there's controversy, like in the case of Louima who was taken into a bathroom in a precinct station, held down, tortured and sodomized by an officer holding a plunger which one of the involved officers then allegedly paraded around the station house with to show other officers.
People were shocked that something like this could take place inside a station house, but in order for it to have happened, the officers had to have believed that they could commit such a despicable act without getting caught literally in their own workplace. That belief comes to them courtesy of the Code of Silence, which dictates that officers do not tell on each other, even in many cases, when criminal conduct is taking place in front of them.
It didn't work completely in Louima's case, because the columnist of the New York Daily News who first broke the story stated that among those who tipped him off were several unnamed NYPD officers. But if this is the case, it's an unfortunate state of affairs that an incident like this comes to light and to a police department's attention, after officers anonymously leak information about a criminal act in their midst to a media outlet. Score one more point, for the code.
Pile that point with the rest of them. Too often even criminal behavior in law enforcement isn't reported until it spills out in a way that can't be ignored, something that isn't surprising according to the 1994 report released by the Mollen Commission. This body headed by Judge Milton Mollen in 1992 was set up to investigate allegations of corruption in the New York City Police Department. And what would be one element that needed to exist to fuel corruption inside a law enforcement agency set up to fight crime? The Code of Silence.
The 1994 Mollen Commission report (large pdf file)
In his book, Quinn discusses "creative report writing", "testi-lying" or adding charges of resisting arrest and battery of officers in cases where injured individuals are brought back to the station after being arrested. After all, the only ones out there who will be there for officers are other officers, and the message as Quinn puts it that resounds over and over, is we take care of our own. Otherwise known as the "us vs them" mindset that in cases like these are aimed not just at communities, but even more so at a department's management including its internal affairs division. Maybe that's one reason why interviews with these divisions are compelled and officers are often required to respond to questions asked by investigators inside these divisions unless they want to be fired. In theory even with the Code of Silence, this should work, because after all, it's all about silence or remaining silent to protect other officers? Compelled interviews are one tool used to break the code.
But Quinn also states that the Code of Silence is also based on lies and deception. How far does that go, is the question that is asked? Does it go as far as the interrogation room at an internal affairs interview? Only those who use it know for sure.
Quinn also makes many references to this report when analyzing the code and how it impacts the performances of law enforcement officers inside law enforcement agencies especially when it comes to confronting or even just reporting corrupt, unethical and even criminal conduct that occurs in their midst.
(excerpt, Mollen)
Honest officers who know about or suspect corruption among their colleagues, therefore, face an exasperating dilemma. We perceive that we must either turn a blind eye to the corruption we deplore, or risk the dreadful consequences of reporting it. The commission's inquiries reveal that the overwhelming majority of officers chose to live with the corruption.
A survey by the National Institute of Justice asked questions of law enforcement officers from many different agencies whether misconduct including that involving criminal behavior by other officers was reported.
The 2000 National Institute of Justice study: Police Attitudes Towards Abuse of Authority (pdf version)
The 2000 National Institute of Justice study: Police Attitudes Towards Abuse of Authority (text version)
Not surprisingly, the findings it produced were very interesting.
(excerpt)
Key findings: The results of the survey indicate that the majority of American
police officers believe that:
--It is unacceptable to use more force than legally allowable to control someone
who physically assaults an officer.
--Extreme cases of police abuse of authority occur infrequently.
--Their departments take a "tough stand" on the issue of police abuse.
--At times their fellow officers use more force than necessary when making an
arrest.
--It is not unusual for officers to ignore improper conduct by their fellow
officers.
--Training and education are effective ways to reduce police abuse.
--A department's chief and first-line supervisors can play an important role in
preventing police from abusing authority.
--Community-oriented policing reduces or has no impact upon the potential for
police abuse.
It also produced contradictory statistics on how officers' perceived the role played by the Code of Silence inside their agencies.
(excerpt)
More than 80 percent of police surveyed reported that they do not accept the
"code of silence" (i.e., keeping quiet in the face of misconduct by others) as an
essential part of the mutual trust necessary to good policing (see exhibit 3).
However, about one-quarter (24.9 percent) of the sample agreed or strongly
agreed that whistle blowing is not worth it, more than two-thirds (67.4 percent)
reported that police officers who report incidents of misconduct are likely to be
given a "cold shoulder" by fellow officers, and a majority (52.4 percent) agreed
or strongly agreed that it is not unusual for police officers to "turn a blind eye" to other officers' improper conduct (exhibit 3).
A surprising 6 in 10 (61 percent)
indicated that police officers do not always report even serious criminal
violations that involve the abuse of authority by fellow officers.[9]
These figures are probably on the low side because those who follow the code don't tend to trust people outside of it so consequently, may choose not to share that with "outsiders".
Quinn tends to look towards law enforcement agencies and their management for accountability and particularly within each officer within his audience when it comes to how each one saying, "not in my presence you don't" to other officers. Meaning that the best way to institute the change of the police culture including its Code of Silence was for officers to change themselves.
But he said that police ethics couldn't be taught inside a classroom because the officers knew all they had to do was say the "right things" and they would get through it just fine without behavioral change. He volunteered to teach a class in Minneapolis himself and shared one of his experiences in his book.
(excerpt)
"So it was pretty boring stuff until I brought up a tactic Chicago crack dealers were using to corrupt street and narcotics officerss. An angry shift commander immediately stood up and berated me for even insinuating that one of his officers could be corrupted by money. Taking no pity on him, I congratulated him on what must be his great leadership skills. Then I quickly reminded him it was an officer from his shift who was recently sent to prison for demanding sex from female traffic offenders.
He was quiet for the rest of the hour."
Quinn's attention to civilian review for example is minimal. He didn't view it as a mechanism in his city that many officers would fear, only because he believed that civilians on the board were easier for the police management to con than investigators from inside the police department. He focused his attention inward at the members of the profession he had once worked in. Whereas Harris addressed outside mechanisms of accountability and reform like civilian review and consent decrees imposed by federal and state agencies, Quinn focused on the responsibility of a police agency from top to bottom. That's not surprising considering that Harris is a lawyer while Quinn was a police officer for several decades.
To be continued.
Another Los Angeles County fire department will be paying out for racism within its ranks according to the Los Angeles Times.
This time Pasadena's fire department was hit by a $1.17 million jury's verdict from a civil trial stemming from a law suit filed against the city by a Black firefighter.
(excerpt)
A jury awarded $1.17 million Friday to a black former Pasadena firefighter who said he was forced to retire after complaining for five years about other firefighters leaving blood, urine and feces in his bedding and scrawling a swastika on his equipment.
The penalty was just the latest case of a black firefighter alleging discrimination against a fire department in Los Angeles and surrounding communities.
According to Carter Stephens' suit, supervisors and co-workers also put mucus on his uniform and a captain referred to him by the "N" word.
Stephens, 55, said he felt vindicated after enduring racially-motivated attacks for five years.
"The general thought was, 'You just have go ahead and take a beating. Maybe it'll stop,' " he said. "That's what I tried to do. But it wouldn't stop."
Stephens said he filed numerous complaints to his supervisors, but instead of getting better, things got worse.
The housing market bust had plenty of help according to a local realtor.
Visitors this week have included the following.
City of Riverside
County of Riverside
University of California, Riverside
Los Nettos
Food and Drug Administration
Inktomi Corporation
Empire Federal Credit Union
Dynasty Suites Riverside
LG DACOM Corporation (South Korea)
Utah Educational Network
Asurion Corporation
George Magaña's Three Palms Barber Shop has been a fixture on Kansas Avenue and many people, both regulars and newcomers came from miles around to have their hair cut.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
After today, Nguyen and dozens of other longtime customers won't have a choice. They'll have to find another barber.
Magaña, 72, who has cut hair at the Three Palms since 1962, will be hanging up his scissors for good.
"My wife and family said 'It's time,' " Magaña said, taking a break from giving Nguyen his "Marine-style" do. "They worry about me, especially driving home at night.
"And it's hard on the legs, the arms and the eyes," he said.
In San Bernardino, the Human Relations Commission is hearing complaints about police response times, according to the Press Enterprise.
(excerpt)
Commission Chairman Terry Elliott and Commissioner Kenneth Wells said they asked for the report in response to Westside residents' complaints that police take much longer to respond to calls from the largely black and Latino neighborhood than to those from elsewhere in the city.
Elliott said the commission will take up the issue Jan. 9 under its mandate to monitor allegations of race- or class-based discrimination.
"The police say they're always running behind because they're short of people, and they have to have protocols for prioritizing calls. I'm specifically looking at those protocols," Elliott said. "A call might be a low priority to them, but then it escalates, and they have to roll a whole army out there."
Lt. Scott Paterson, a San Bernardino Police Department spokesman, said dispatchers and field supervisors treat all five of the city's patrol areas equally, according to policies that seek to use officers' time most efficiently.
"The department doesn't treat one part of town differently from another," he said. "That's just not the way we do things."
The average response time for police calls in San Bernardino is about five minutes but it can vary a great deal, according to at least one HRC commissioner, Kenneth Wells.
(excerpt)
Wells said he has received many complaints from Westside residents recently, and they match his own experience. When he moved from the Westside to a home in northeastern San Bernardino two years ago, he immediately noticed a difference in police responsiveness, he said.
As a Neighborhood Watch captain in his old neighborhood, he learned that the best way to get a timely response, even to urgent calls, was to recruit several neighbors to telephone at once, Wells said. Otherwise, he said, he typically waited three and four hours for an officer to arrive.
"Where I live now, when I call, they show up right away," he said.
Westside residents are set to meet with city leaders including Mayor Patrick Morris with a United States Department of Justice mediator at their side to recommend policy changes and to address concerns about the police department.
The residents of San Bernardino are also exploring the option of installing a mechanism of civilian oversight over their police department's complaint process. The city does have a Board of Police Commissioners as it's called in place that was established in 1972. It was defanged in 1991 so that it couldn't process citizen complaints involving officers and it isn't currently funded by the city's annual budget. That means that it's essentially a convenient prop for people in government to admonish residents for not using but the residents know that its basically meaningless as an agent of accountability for their police department.
There are elements in Riverside's own government that probably glance over at what they might see as the model of perfection in San Bernardino and perhaps that's the direction in which Riverside's own commission is slowly heading. But if that's true, all that awaits at the end of the road is proof positive that Riverside hasn't learned a thing since it was in the international spotlight after a controversial officer-involved shooting by four Riverside Police Department officers on Dec. 28, 1998. And it's been an awfully long road to travel just to make that point.
David A. Harris looks at issues like civilian review in his book, Good Cops which is very good reading, including an excerpt on the Riverside Police Department's own experience with outside oversight from 2001 to 2006.
Part One of this series.
Harris also like many authors of books about issues in policing discusses the "us vs them" component of police culture between police departments' officers and the communities they police particularly when controversial incidents including excessive force incidents and onduty shootings take place that often show the tremendous gap that exists between the two entities. Harris also discusses the "culture within a culture" that permeates law enforcement agencies that sets up an "us vs them" dynamic of a different kind, between department management and the rank and file officers, most often through their union representation leadership. The public generally is only aware of this particular dynamic when controversy breaks after a police-related incident such as an officer-involved death.
Riverside saw both dynamics play out in full after the shooting of Tyisha Miller which placed then-Chief Jerry Carroll in a role of duality, the kind that often ends the careers of police chiefs before they would probably wish to step down. Neither of these dynamics were unique in Riverside's history and Carroll was not the only chief to face them. In fact, he was at least the third chief in a row during a period of less than 10 years.
The police chief is in the role of promoting accountability of both his or her department and of the investigations it conducts into controversial incidents, and insuring that he or she is also looking out for the officers under the command. The police officers through their union usually count on his or her fairness, or even loyalty and if they feel that their chief is favoring the community over them, they will act out as was seen in Riverside in 1999 culminating in an ill-advised head shaving campaign, particularly after Carroll fired the four officers and their supervisor after the department conducted its own internal administrative investigation of the shooting.
The community is pretty much as steadfast in its determination for accountability for a process that many of its members believe has little or none. The growth of civilian review nationwide is a reflection in large part of the lack of confidence that communities in these cities and counties have in the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate their own people in a fashion that is both accountable and transparent. If you listen to or review comments made by community members during this process in just about any of these cities or counties, you will find it said over and over again, I don't trust the ability of the police to police themselves.
A lot of this can be attributed to the cultures in police departments mentioned above, including what is called the "us vs them" mentality that is the backbone of it and them. That's one of the components that Harris addresses continuously in his book on the subject of preventive policing, in terms of reconceptualizing and redefining that profession.
There's an obvious difference between the relationship between the community and a police chief and the police chief and the department's police unions. Only the latter can hold the career of the police chief in their hands, through "no confidence" votes and other campaigns. Though technically only a city manager can fire a police chief in a city like Riverside that works directly under him or her like he can any other department head, the reality can be very different. How many chiefs have really been fired because police unions say or state that they no longer have confidence in them? How many mutinies or threatened mutinies within police agencies have led to the ousters of chiefs? How many chiefs have survived a "no confidence" vote from the rank and file?
In these situations, even all the support a community can offer is meaningless, as has been found in many cities including Riverside. Although with Carroll's ouster (as happened with other chiefs before him to the point that they stopped painting the chief's name on the door at the department's administrative headquarters), he had also lost support from the city government which in Carroll's case was actually negotiating with a group of the department's sergeants behind Carroll's back in attempts made to promote them, even adding new lieutenant positions if necessary as Mayor Ron Loveridge had said.
Three powers enjoyed by police chiefs to varying degrees depending on the jurisdiction are the ability to hire, fire and promote and it's not surprising that once Carroll discovered that one of those was being circumvented, he decided to take a retirement after probably one of the worst years in his professional life. Whether or not that was the only power he had that the city circumvented will probably never be fully known.
The dynamics which played out in Riverside were hardly new. In fact, it was just the opposite. The only police chief which seems to ride out controversy fairly well is current Los Angeles Police Department Chief William Bratton who also has headed other agencies including the New York City Police Department but left before the era which included the 1997 torture of Abner Louima and several controversial onduty shootings including the 1999 fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo. In Chicago, a new police chief was hired from the outside to head that city's scandal-plagued police department.
Randy Rider, the president of the National Internal Affairs Investigators Association comments about the role his division plays in instilling what he calls, morality and morale in police departments across the land. The role it should be playing anyway. It comes out of discussion elicited by an ethics course being taught to law enforcement officers by former Minneapolis Police Department officer and current author, Michael Quinn.
Quinn wrote the book, Walking with the Devil: What Bad Cops Don't Want You to Know and Good Cops Won't Tell You which upset a lot of his supervisors in Minneapolis, but attracted the attention of many readers when it was published in 2005.
(excerpt, Officer.com)
Send a positive message. Think of morals and morale. If WE have a problem then all of US must participate in the process of change. Obtain input from the line officer up. Even the old guys (like me) will take change differently if it is presented positively.
Take a look at the synonyms for moral. MORAL, ETHICAL, VIRTUOUS, RIGHTEOUS, NOBLE mean conforming to a standard of what is right and good.
MORAL implies conformity to established sanctioned codes or accepted notions of right and wrong (the basic moral values of a community).
ETHICAL may suggest the involvement of more difficult or subtle questions of rightness, fairness, or equity (committed to the highest ethical principles).
VIRTUOUS implies the possession or manifestation of moral excellence in character (not a religious person, but virtuous nevertheless).
RIGHTEOUS stresses guiltlessness or blamelessness and often suggests the sanctimonious (wished to be righteous before God and the world).
NOBLE implies moral eminence and freedom from anything petty, mean, or dubious in conduct and character (had the noblest of reasons for seeking office).
With the definition complete, what do these terms mean to us as investigators? Will our jobs be easier? Will the chief sleep easier at night? If handled the right way we will all rest better.
But is it handled the "right way" or is it all just wishful thinking?
Quinn, who left his department after 25 years in law enforcement, focused his book on the police culture and the code of silence it requires to live and move about within it. He viewed it as part survival mechanism, part crutch. He added that it was an inevitable part of being a police officer, as part of one as the badge and the gun, but he said that it needed to be constantly analyzed and the role it played in an officer's work because once it became part of "the road" for officers, it was destructive, corroding relationships between officers and between officers and the communities. Everybody in the organization knows about it, but doesn't talk about it out in the open. Communities discuss it, especially when there's controversy, like in the case of Louima who was taken into a bathroom in a precinct station, held down, tortured and sodomized by an officer holding a plunger which one of the involved officers then allegedly paraded around the station house with to show other officers.
People were shocked that something like this could take place inside a station house, but in order for it to have happened, the officers had to have believed that they could commit such a despicable act without getting caught literally in their own workplace. That belief comes to them courtesy of the Code of Silence, which dictates that officers do not tell on each other, even in many cases, when criminal conduct is taking place in front of them.
It didn't work completely in Louima's case, because the columnist of the New York Daily News who first broke the story stated that among those who tipped him off were several unnamed NYPD officers. But if this is the case, it's an unfortunate state of affairs that an incident like this comes to light and to a police department's attention, after officers anonymously leak information about a criminal act in their midst to a media outlet. Score one more point, for the code.
Pile that point with the rest of them. Too often even criminal behavior in law enforcement isn't reported until it spills out in a way that can't be ignored, something that isn't surprising according to the 1994 report released by the Mollen Commission. This body headed by Judge Milton Mollen in 1992 was set up to investigate allegations of corruption in the New York City Police Department. And what would be one element that needed to exist to fuel corruption inside a law enforcement agency set up to fight crime? The Code of Silence.
The 1994 Mollen Commission report (large pdf file)
In his book, Quinn discusses "creative report writing", "testi-lying" or adding charges of resisting arrest and battery of officers in cases where injured individuals are brought back to the station after being arrested. After all, the only ones out there who will be there for officers are other officers, and the message as Quinn puts it that resounds over and over, is we take care of our own. Otherwise known as the "us vs them" mindset that in cases like these are aimed not just at communities, but even more so at a department's management including its internal affairs division. Maybe that's one reason why interviews with these divisions are compelled and officers are often required to respond to questions asked by investigators inside these divisions unless they want to be fired. In theory even with the Code of Silence, this should work, because after all, it's all about silence or remaining silent to protect other officers? Compelled interviews are one tool used to break the code.
But Quinn also states that the Code of Silence is also based on lies and deception. How far does that go, is the question that is asked? Does it go as far as the interrogation room at an internal affairs interview? Only those who use it know for sure.
Quinn also makes many references to this report when analyzing the code and how it impacts the performances of law enforcement officers inside law enforcement agencies especially when it comes to confronting or even just reporting corrupt, unethical and even criminal conduct that occurs in their midst.
(excerpt, Mollen)
Honest officers who know about or suspect corruption among their colleagues, therefore, face an exasperating dilemma. We perceive that we must either turn a blind eye to the corruption we deplore, or risk the dreadful consequences of reporting it. The commission's inquiries reveal that the overwhelming majority of officers chose to live with the corruption.
A survey by the National Institute of Justice asked questions of law enforcement officers from many different agencies whether misconduct including that involving criminal behavior by other officers was reported.
The 2000 National Institute of Justice study: Police Attitudes Towards Abuse of Authority (pdf version)
The 2000 National Institute of Justice study: Police Attitudes Towards Abuse of Authority (text version)
Not surprisingly, the findings it produced were very interesting.
(excerpt)
Key findings: The results of the survey indicate that the majority of American
police officers believe that:
--It is unacceptable to use more force than legally allowable to control someone
who physically assaults an officer.
--Extreme cases of police abuse of authority occur infrequently.
--Their departments take a "tough stand" on the issue of police abuse.
--At times their fellow officers use more force than necessary when making an
arrest.
--It is not unusual for officers to ignore improper conduct by their fellow
officers.
--Training and education are effective ways to reduce police abuse.
--A department's chief and first-line supervisors can play an important role in
preventing police from abusing authority.
--Community-oriented policing reduces or has no impact upon the potential for
police abuse.
It also produced contradictory statistics on how officers' perceived the role played by the Code of Silence inside their agencies.
(excerpt)
More than 80 percent of police surveyed reported that they do not accept the
"code of silence" (i.e., keeping quiet in the face of misconduct by others) as an
essential part of the mutual trust necessary to good policing (see exhibit 3).
However, about one-quarter (24.9 percent) of the sample agreed or strongly
agreed that whistle blowing is not worth it, more than two-thirds (67.4 percent)
reported that police officers who report incidents of misconduct are likely to be
given a "cold shoulder" by fellow officers, and a majority (52.4 percent) agreed
or strongly agreed that it is not unusual for police officers to "turn a blind eye" to other officers' improper conduct (exhibit 3).
A surprising 6 in 10 (61 percent)
indicated that police officers do not always report even serious criminal
violations that involve the abuse of authority by fellow officers.[9]
These figures are probably on the low side because those who follow the code don't tend to trust people outside of it so consequently, may choose not to share that with "outsiders".
Quinn tends to look towards law enforcement agencies and their management for accountability and particularly within each officer within his audience when it comes to how each one saying, "not in my presence you don't" to other officers. Meaning that the best way to institute the change of the police culture including its Code of Silence was for officers to change themselves.
But he said that police ethics couldn't be taught inside a classroom because the officers knew all they had to do was say the "right things" and they would get through it just fine without behavioral change. He volunteered to teach a class in Minneapolis himself and shared one of his experiences in his book.
(excerpt)
"So it was pretty boring stuff until I brought up a tactic Chicago crack dealers were using to corrupt street and narcotics officerss. An angry shift commander immediately stood up and berated me for even insinuating that one of his officers could be corrupted by money. Taking no pity on him, I congratulated him on what must be his great leadership skills. Then I quickly reminded him it was an officer from his shift who was recently sent to prison for demanding sex from female traffic offenders.
He was quiet for the rest of the hour."
Quinn's attention to civilian review for example is minimal. He didn't view it as a mechanism in his city that many officers would fear, only because he believed that civilians on the board were easier for the police management to con than investigators from inside the police department. He focused his attention inward at the members of the profession he had once worked in. Whereas Harris addressed outside mechanisms of accountability and reform like civilian review and consent decrees imposed by federal and state agencies, Quinn focused on the responsibility of a police agency from top to bottom. That's not surprising considering that Harris is a lawyer while Quinn was a police officer for several decades.
To be continued.
Another Los Angeles County fire department will be paying out for racism within its ranks according to the Los Angeles Times.
This time Pasadena's fire department was hit by a $1.17 million jury's verdict from a civil trial stemming from a law suit filed against the city by a Black firefighter.
(excerpt)
A jury awarded $1.17 million Friday to a black former Pasadena firefighter who said he was forced to retire after complaining for five years about other firefighters leaving blood, urine and feces in his bedding and scrawling a swastika on his equipment.
The penalty was just the latest case of a black firefighter alleging discrimination against a fire department in Los Angeles and surrounding communities.
According to Carter Stephens' suit, supervisors and co-workers also put mucus on his uniform and a captain referred to him by the "N" word.
Stephens, 55, said he felt vindicated after enduring racially-motivated attacks for five years.
"The general thought was, 'You just have go ahead and take a beating. Maybe it'll stop,' " he said. "That's what I tried to do. But it wouldn't stop."
Stephens said he filed numerous complaints to his supervisors, but instead of getting better, things got worse.
The housing market bust had plenty of help according to a local realtor.
Visitors this week have included the following.
City of Riverside
County of Riverside
University of California, Riverside
Los Nettos
Food and Drug Administration
Inktomi Corporation
Empire Federal Credit Union
Dynasty Suites Riverside
LG DACOM Corporation (South Korea)
Utah Educational Network
Asurion Corporation
Labels: Making the grade, public forums in all places, racism costs
posted by Five Before Midnight | 9:00 AM
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