If a city clashes with its civilian review board, is that a civil war?

Riverside County will be making some serious cuts at the 5% level, according to its midyear report. And what the Riverside County does with just about everything, so does Riverside city so keep a close eye on what's going on until the budget is approved in some form or another by June.




Ramon Hernandez, the former councilman in Colton has plead guilty to the misuse of funds that were used to call phone sex lines.


A Riverside County Superior judge has announced that the two appellate lawyers assigned to Jackson Chambers Daniels, jr. will represent him during his second capital murder trial. Daniels will be tried possibly as early as June for the 1982 killings of Riverside Police Department officers, Dennis Doty and Philip Trust. It's likely however the trial won't occur for at least a year.





The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to file a law suit to reduce the pensions of its sheriff deputies.


The Los Angeles Times stated that if the law suit was successful, over $187 million could be saved and also outlined the histories and relationships of the players involved, as well as outlining the process.



(excerpt)



Though the county will technically name the county's employee retirement system as the defendant, the deputies' union plans to join the case as an interested party and fight the effort aggressively. The union maintains that an entire body of law -- ranging from the California Constitution to case law and an opinion by former state Atty. Gen. George Deukmejian -- protects their pension agreement because the deal was struck in good faith through collective bargaining.

Election-year politics lurked just below the surface throughout Tuesday's debate. Two supervisors, Janet Nguyen and Bill Campbell, are up for reelection this year, and the issue of reforming public employee pensions and reining in their unions plays well with conservative voters.

But the move also infuriated the politically powerful unions that represent firefighters, teachers and public safety managers, in addition to the deputies. There were less-than-subtle suggestions that the unions "would not sit idly by," in the words of Arlene Pavey, president of a group of retired members of the California Teachers Assn., if the county went ahead with the lawsuit.






So far the Los Angeles City Council has not vetoed the Police Commission's recommendation on enforcing one of the most controversial provisions of the city's consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department to reform its police department. The process soon to be going on its eighth year required that financial information connected to its gang and narcotic unit detectives be audited every two years, beginning two years after the en action of this component of the decree.


Community leaders urged the city council this week not to overturn the commission's own vote.



Councilman Jack Weiss has been pushing for the vote, with his critics saying that he's doing so because he has higher political ambitions and is angling for campaign donations from the Police Protective League which represents most of the police officers in the department.


Still, the leaders pressed with even a former secretary of state getting involved.



(excerpt)


Pressure on council members to abandon the veto increased this week as former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and others warned that any such move "would seriously undermine the confidence of the people" in the city's willingness to fulfill a broad set of reforms imposed on the Los Angeles Police Department in 2000 after the Rampart corruption scandal. The LAPD has been under federal oversight ever since.

"The interests should be weighed by the expert body, by the people dealing with this day in and day out," Christopher said. "It would be unfortunate to have someone else substitute their opinion instead."

Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce President Gary Toebben, who also signed the letter, echoed Christopher, saying, "We just have to move forward."

Along with Christopher, who led a major reform campaign after the 1991 beating of Rodney G. King, and Toebben, 15 other prominent civil rights leaders and reform advocates signed the letter, including many who have closely followed developments at the LAPD for years. Los Angeles Urban League President Blair Taylor, United Way Chief Executive Elise Buik and George David Kieffer, who helped write the City Charter, were among the council's critics.

Tim Sands, president of the Police Protective League, which opposes the commission policy, rejected the letter's message, saying that Christopher and the others were more concerned about ending the federal oversight of LAPD than the merits of the plan.

"Nowhere in their letter do the well-intentioned civic leaders suggest that the financial disclosure plan under discussion should be implemented because it will be effective at rooting out or preventing corruption," he said in a prepared statement.


It's a bit troubling when prosecuting agencies like District Attorney Steve Cooley's office get involved and take sides on police issues. Cooley's goal is to get more funding from the police union's considerable campaign chest for his reelection bid, but the message that it's sending is that the county prosecutor is very closely aligned to members of an agency including those who could conceivably be investigated for criminal conduct whether or not this particular mandate of the consent decree is implemented or not. What Cooley should be instead is a neutral party in the matter. His involvement causes a contentious issue to become even more politicized which isn't healthy. It's already provided local columnists with good fodder.

The obvious problem with the city council's belated positions on this issue is that it is belated. When the council voted to accept and implement the consent decree some years ago, they also voted to accept this provision. Where was the debate and discussion back then? And ultimately, whatever the position on this issue, it all comes down to what the federal judge assigned to monitor the department for the duration of the decree decides and he's not been very happy with the city or the department during the past two years so catching him on a good day is going to be challenging.

This component is one of the more questionable mandates in the consent decree because whatever salary supplementation any unit officers are receiving (and this reform doesn't extend to field patrol officers or anyone else), probably wouldn't be stashed in their children's college fund anyway because if they were investigating for grifting at some point, these accounts and others would likely be audited anyway. Or as was done by the officers in the Rampart scandal, the officers involved might simply just spend it.




Perusual, this isn't the only clash between a local government and any form of civilian review mechanism overseeing a police department's personnel investigations. In other words, it's business as usual at different venues from coast to coast, but an interesting theme has emerged and that's where city and county officials throw up their arms at these oversight mechanisms after paying for consultants to perform audits, investigations, reviews, studies or whatever and not liking the news they receive in return. Is it a form of "buyer's remorse"? Perhaps, but then again, be careful what you ask for when claims are made that the intent is to "improve" governmental mechanisms or programs.


None of the truly great dramatists were alive when civilian review mechanisms and their cities started clashing and it's unfortunate that William Shakespeare never directly wrote plays, comedies or melodramas, on these epic conflicts but if you look closer at some of his more famous works, he actually did do this in a manner of speaking.


The Seattle Times published this article updating the situation involving the triangle between the city government, the police department and the Office of Professional Accountability. The latest installment has Mayor Greg Nickels announcing that all of the 29 recommendations forwarded to improve the accountability of the police department will be implemented.


(excerpt)


"The people of Seattle must have confidence in their Police Department because police rely on the community to do their job well," Nickels said.

The panel he appointed issued a report this morning calling for Seattle police officers to face tougher discipline and sharper scrutiny.

"There is oversight in Seattle," the panel's chairman, retired Judge Terrence Carroll said at a morning news conference. "We want to strengthen that and make it better for people and the Police Department."




Here are some of these recommendations. The entire list of recommendations is included in this report.



(excerpt)



Among the panel's recommendations:

• Expanding the role of the auditor. The auditor currently reviews ongoing investigations, and that role should expand to include reviewing past cases and making recommendations to improve the system.

• Increasing the independence and authority of the OPA director. The panel recommended that the OPA office have a separate budget from the Police Department and that its director have the ability to attend disciplinary hearings.

• Charging the OPA Review Board with working with the community. The board, which now has three members, should grow to include five to seven members. The board should have the authority to hold public hearings, review OPA policies and make recommendations for improvement.

• Maximizing public access to information. The panel recommended requiring disclosure of all internal-investigations records to the extent allowed by law while protecting the privacy of officers.



The panel had urged the recommendations to be implemented in toto. It will definitely be interesting to see that happens. My guess? The recommendations will be implemented to fit the comfort level of the Seattle mayor and government. Usually what happens when recommendations of any kind are announced on any issue is that the governmental body congratulates itself as if it did all the work and then implements the easier, less earth-moving ones and shelves the rest of them, hoping that no one is really paying attention to what's not going on. It's interesting from both a politician science and sociological perspective to see how often this scenario has played itself out, from one local government to the next one.


The three recommendations listed above are likely to be particularly troublesome for the city government to accept, but they are nice ones anyway. Perhaps if they would water down the second one into some sort of vague support for "better outreach" meaning that here we are, this is what we do, be satisfied with it, that is all. That might take a little bit of work.







Consultant and University of Arizona Eileen Luna-FirebaughPortland Oregon Independent Police Review had come under fire from City Auditor Gary Blackmer, according to the Portland Mercury. It's not surprising, as her review of the mechanism was scathing. That's not exactly what the city thought they had paid her to do, was to provide an honest assessment? Was a requirement of the task that they had to like what she stated or she was just there to provide their mechanism with a clean bill of health?



It shouldn't be that way. Hopefully, Blackmer etal will just get over it and focus on improving the operations of the Independent Police Review.


Amazingly or not, one of the areas Blackmer sharply criticized Luna-Firebaugh on was her engaging in conversations with members of the Portland community including organizations like Portland CopWatch. As if performing a survey of customer satisfaction with a city service should play no part of an inquiry process, which makes little sense. A commenter at Portland Indymedia wrote the following in response to that.



(excerpt)


As one might expect, Blackmer is not at all happy with this report. One of the problems with it, according to Blackmer, is that Luna-Firebaugh listened to the wrong people... that is, she actually dared to interview people from Portland Copwatch, from African American community groups, from NWCRC, and from other police accountability activists. Here is an excerpt from a confidential draft that Blackmer addressed to Luna-Firebaugh, and cc'd to Mayor Potter, back in November after he realized which way the wind was blowing in this study:

"If your definition of the community is comprised of the groups and activists you listed in your workplan as contacts then we must question the basis of your conclusions. We don't believe that they represent the community at large. Despite our efforts and results over the past five years, many of these people have misrepresented and undermined our accomplishments. During that period we sought to include them and reach common ground, but never satisfied them simply because their "need" is the creation of a complaint investigations body separate from the City of Portland."

I wonder who Mr. Blackmer includes in his definition of "community"? Apparently, not you and me.



That person's right and whether they live in Portland, Oregon or Riverside, California, "community" is a favorite buzzword meaning different things to different people. And as this commenter noted, it may be defined by a city government as essentially people who agree with it. And what comes to light in a comment like that above by an individual like Blackmer, is that what's really at stake in Portland is not a report by an outside consultant, or even the Independent Police Review, the subject of the evaluation. What's really at stake is the issue and implementation of independent civilian review over the police department. In other words, some of the city's residents had asked their government for too much more than it was comfortable addressing so therefore, they weren't really "community" anymore, just troublemakers. That lends support to the contention that at least as far as Blackmer is concerned, Luna-Firebaugh wasn't really hired to provide her honest assessment of what the situation was involving the Independent Police Review.

It's interesting how Blackmer also defines "common ground" as somehow being completely outside of the issue of civilian review. It's often the case that city residents want a stronger, independent form of civilian review and it's also often the case that city and county governments favor a weaker, less independent form if they have to suffer through the process of implementing civilian review at all. Most do it not all that willingly unless they see that their constituents are working towards developing a stronger, independent review mechanism through the ballot initiative process for example, than the city's ready to face. Then they do the "right thing" and implement civilian review on their own terms. That's what Riverside did in April 2000. But what the city has done is struggle with the process since, on just about every front.

Struggling to keep the CPRC in constraints or restraints has been the task the city's set for itself during the past two years, beginning when the commission released its first and only sustained finding on an officer-involved death in November 2005. Some say, that in a sense City Manager Brad Hudson simply did a "pocket veto" of that decision. At the time that Hudson's office essentially did nothing, Hudson attributed it to having only spent a meager six months as city manager and told community leaders that if the same situation arose next time, it would go better.



But that's not what Hudson said in his declaration that he gave in the law suit filed by Officer Ryan Wilson in 2006 through the Riverside County Superior Court, to challenge the finding by the CPRC that his shooting had violated the department's use of force policy. In that declaration, Hudson never mentioned the actual finding released by the CPRC, but stuck to discussing the public report only to say that he never really considered it at all and that it was never included in any discussion or situation involving Wilson after it was released. As you know, then Presiding Judge Dallas Holmes (who later retired in protest of the shut-down civil court system) ruled that it's impossible to hold a "name clearing" hearing in a confidential forum.

Not long after that, the city settled the shooting in question, that involving Summer Marie Lane for $395,000.



So which is real? The explanation provided to community leaders or the one that Hudson signed onto under threat of perjury as part of a civil law suit? Too many questions surround one of the commission's most fundamental purposes and they started being asked more in earnest after three fatal officer-involved shootings took place during a six-month period in 2006. Since then, only one of those shootings as of Jan. 30, 2008 has nearly completed its journey through the CPRC.

At any rate, the CPRC then began the latest leg of its journey as some sort of body that is shared by City Hall and the police department. After all, for a while in 2006 and 2007, there were more city staff members and police department employees at meetings than community members. The commissioners conduct meetings where the majority of agenda items are housekeeping, rather than issues that communities are interested in discussing. The first question people ask about the meetings, is what is on the agenda. They hear it, shrug their shoulders and say that it's not anything that has anything to do with them or their communities.

One of the provisions of the CPRC under the charter amendment which houses it, is that the commission is to advise the mayor and city council on all police/community relations. This is one provision that to this date, has not been utilized at all. In fact, it's the Human Relations Commission which has adopted that role for the CPRC, including its sponsorship of a 2005 community forum on the police department's analysis of its traffic stop study which was issued through a public report. At a recent meeting, the HRC proposed doing the public forums on this particular issue on a regular basis. What's ironic is that there's been more discussion of a police issue that concerns many people in this city and the HRC has discussed it or even invoked the subject while the CPRC has not even mentioned it.

There are comments made during the past several years including by those serving on the commission who believe that the CPRC is just to review complaints or that its "meat and potatoes" is defining and releasing policy recommendations (which paints it more as a mirror to the now-defunct LEPAC). But what needs to be said to these individuals, is to go back and read the city's charter.


The community while still utilizing it to file complaints (except in the Eastside, for a variety of reasons) has pretty much just sat and watched as this has taken place, feeling probably not much different than many people do in Portland.

Luna-Firebaugh's recommending in her report that what Portland's got needs to become more aggressive, more stronger and more independent. By blasting its hired consultant who's carried out the task the city has paid her to do, Blackmer is essentially telling her and the "community" of Portland where to stuff that recommendation. It will be interesting to see how the elected leadership responds including former police chief and current mayor, Tom Potter. So far the official word is that Luna-Firebaugh's report is being taken under advisement. The government has at least a month or so to do that because it's not presenting the report officially in technicolor until Feb. 28.

But what you probably won't see Portland do is do what Luna-Firebaugh recommended and work towards the realization of a stronger, more independent body. If the city residents want that, they'll have to go down another path. And Portland's more progressive in many ways than Riverside is, but it still faces most of the same challenges when it comes to civilian review.


Luna-Firebaugh provided her response to Blackmer's criticism about her taking testimony from community members who have utilized Portland's current process. This forum that took place last was one opportunity for city residents to weigh in on the process involving the Independent Police Review for Luna-Firebaugh. It's the one that apparently got Luna-Firebaugh into trouble.



(excerpt, Portland Mercury)


"It's always difficult to have a performance evaluator come in and look at your agencies," Luna-Firebaugh told the Mercury last week, at a Southeast Portland community meeting co-hosted by Copwatch to discuss individuals' experiences of the review process. "If someone feels a little uneasy, that to me is human nature."

Luna-Firebaugh's interim report found that only about one in four former complainants were satisfied with the oversight process, and only about four percent of complaints that were actually investigated were sustained. The IPR dismissed about 57 percent of its cases without investigation in 2006, says the NWCRC.




It's interesting who in Portland, Oregon is considered to be part of the "community", isn't it?


The City of Riverside has so divorced the communities from its own police oversight mechanism that one of the applicants for the Ward Five position, referred to the body he wants to join as the "Police Review Commission" several times. Given that this applicant is current Ward Five Councilman Chris MacArthur's first choice, someone at City Hall should provide him with the proper name of the organization if they even remember it themselves. Another politicized appointment, exactly what the commission needs but it's the city way. After all, it's not like the Board of Library Trustees got nearly so much attention from the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee until the library and museum renovation project or projects took front and center stage one week. That's often how it is with boards and commissions in Riverside. A controversial issue involving a lot of money and prestige comes up and then there's city officials talking all of a sudden about how important a particular board and commission is and how suddenly important it is to pick just the *right* people to serve on it.

That's exactly how a board and commission's appointment process becomes politicized.

The CPRC has a customer service survey of sorts that is offered to those who file complaints but it's entirely internalized, so consequently there are no statistics or any information provided whatsoever from this body or from those who operate it at City Hall.



Portland Indymedia provided one analysis of Luna-Firebaugh's report that's a bit different than that offered by Blackmer.



(excerpt)



Still, Luna-Firebraugh hastens to add, transparency alone will not be enough to solve all of the problems inherent in this system. As the report notes,

"If a police complaint system is not based on fairness to all, the public, the subject and witness officers, and the city government, all the transparency in the world will not help other than to reveal the worm in the core of the apple." ...Indeed. After the inexplicable killings, the beatings, the pepper sprayings, the racial profiling, and the rampant abuses of power suffered by Portlanders at the hands of the PPB, it is easy to imagine why auditor Blackmer had preferred to play things close to the vest on this. Surely there is a very big worm at the core of this apple, and no one in the city wants to reveal this to the public. (I will let you in on a secret, though. Virtually everyone in the city has seen this worm for themselves; we already know it's there.)

The problem with the lack of transparency, though, is that it leads to a lack of accountability, a lack of respect for citizens, and a lack of improvement. So long as the problems of the PPB can be safely covered up by a collusive oversight process, officers who violate the law are not punished, and the system is never forced to change.

Luna-Firebaugh notes that, among the cases which she and her colleagues reviewed, there were numerous instances where clear evidence of officer misconduct existed, but the IPR failed to substantiate wrongdoing. And again, although it has the authority to investigate claims, the IPR has never once, in all its history, conducted an investigation into police conduct. In other words, even though Portland has an "independent" body of oversight into complaints against police on paper, the reality shows that there is no real oversight.

Clearly, this would indicate a conflict of interests to any reasonable person. No one is looking out for the concerns and best interests of Portland citizens who have been victimized by the police.





Luna's report on the Independent Police Review is here. Blue Oregon also is posting articles on the report and its response.

Portland CopWatch offers its own analysis here. A prior posting already featured its comments on the conflict of interest issue that arises when the city assigns its own attorney to "advise" the civilian review mechanism. That's certainly relevant in Riverside where there's been a lot of speculation about City Attorney Gregory Priamos' sudden interest in the CPRC in terms of where it's based and where it's coming from. As for Priamos since he began showing more interest in what he had pretty much avoided for the first six years since the commission's founding, how has he participated? He wouldn't even allow a CPRC member to place an item on the agenda to discuss hiring independent counsel. Is he there truly to advise, to look out for the city's risk management and civil liability interests, or because someone threatened to hire a separate attorney to do that job if he didn't show up? Any or all of the above?


That was one of the issues CopWatch discussed. Not surprisingly, they pushed for the Independent Police Review to be stronger, more independent as well as expressed concern for what was called a "cozy" relationship between the board and the police department's internal affairs division.


(excerpt)



But the report doesn't go far enough. The mistrust that the community has for the system is based on the IPR's dependence on the Police Bureau (this and other reasons for lack of trust are noted repeatedly in the report).

Yet the report's recommendation is for some investigations to be done by civilian investigators, not all.

The report highlights the "easy" relationship between the IPR Director and the Bureau's Internal Affairs Division. While there is much to be said for this, it ignores the institutional problem of this cozy relationship.

There is no mention at all of the conflict of interest inherent in the City Attorney advising both the Police Bureau when they get sued for misconduct and the IPR/CRC when they investigate misconduct.

There are lots of golden nuggets, including the same recommendations we've made for years for additional "findings" of Policy Failure, Supervisory Failure, and Training Failure, as well as presenting reports to Council annually, and more.


The issues raised here about trust and how it is often based and evaluated on the relationships that civilian review mechanisms have with police departments is a very common one and the questions related to it are asked just about everywhere that there is a form of civilian oversight in place. In Riverside, the commission is a weakened form, getting even weaker thanks to forces at City Hall, and it's one that's entirely dependent on the Riverside Police Department's own internal affairs division on complaints, and to a more limited extent on its investigations into officer-involved deaths.

Some communities have seemingly divorced the commission and police department's complaint systems altogether. This is particularly true of the Eastside neighborhood which went 2006 without filing a single complaint with the police department according to statistics released by the CPRC through its most recent annual report. The reasons why, vary from fears or perceptions of retaliation after filing complaints, to community organizations working in that neighborhood opting out of the process and utilizing some form of working arrangement with the police department.

In others like Casa Blanca, memories persist of the blacklist against its residents that was created by the Riverside Police Officers' Association in the mid-1990s when Jack Palm was president. Also, the majority of complaints that I've heard from that area have involved primarily one or two officers assigned there, which is different than the Eastside for example. Doubts and questions about the process also exist there and in several other neighborhoods as well, particularly due to the city's handling of the CPRC in the past two years.

Comments like those made by Commissioner Peter Hubbard that derided the civilian witnesses of the Lee Deante Brown shooting for example and the silence of the other commissioners in response, don't exactly inspire much confidence in this body as a mechanism that considers what civilian witnesses say especially when it contradicts the versions of events provided by police officers. It wouldn't be surprising if there are civilian witnesses who see the events before and during an officer-involved death who just opt out of being interviewed afterward by investigators. That's what will likely happen if they believe that their versions of a critical incident will be given little credence. If so, then it's difficult to see how that exactly strengthens or validates an investigation in a greater way.

Unlike many officer-involved deaths, the ones involving Brown and Lane occurred in front of quite a few civilian witnesses. But whether or not they were given any credence in the absence of outside evidence (i.e. inconclusive DNA tests with Brown due to problematic sample collecting procedures), depended a lot on who they agreed with. Even here on this Web site.

What was interesting that took place on this site was how there was this call by anonymous individuals in the autumn of 2005 to focus attention on a female civilian witness who allegedly made a 9-11 phone call in the Lane shooting case who agreed with the officer's version of events (as did most of the witnesses in that case) but no similar outcry to pay attention to any particular civilian witness in the Brown shooting case where they all disagreed with the officers' versions of events. Anonymous individuals did the opposite in that case during the spring of 2006 and derided the witnesses of the Brown shooting in much the same way that Hubbard had at one CPRC meeting.

So civilians' participation in that process is apparently only valued based on how much they agree with the police officers' version of events in some circles. If that is indeed the case, then you can't really blame civilian witnesses if they ever do opt out of the investigative process because of the perception that they won't be believed or even listened to. So if the department does wind up with a critical incident being watched by a crowd of people but none of them saw a thing, this might be a major reason why. And that will be too bad if that does happen, for those who desire a thorough investigative process of critical incidents where there are civilian witnesses. But only those people will be concerned about that.

That's all well and good for those who think that way like Hubbard and others, as they are entitled to their opinions. But then to ask civilians who wish to file complaints involving police officers to engage in the process, that only values their input when they agree with the police department or City Hall, much like the case in Portland, is a bit disingeneous. And it's interesting that the city in all of its rush to either break or fix the commission depending on your vantage point hasn't once thought to really examine what the different neighborhoods and their residents even think about the process. In fact, the city has done the opposite nearly every step of the way.

That's the one part of this equation which really hasn't been done yet at or by City Hall. Which is why the parallels between what Blackmer allegedly said about Luna-Firebaugh's inclusion of these perspectives in her report and the complete disinterest by City Hall in the communities' assessments of a very important process are so apparent.




Do you think the police oversight report will lead to change in Portland? You can answer that at a poll that's being conducted here. The jury is truly out on that one, both in Portland but also in Riverside, as this city prepares to issue a report produced by a consultant on recommendations for the CPRC.








Drew Peterson, the former Bolingbrook Police Department sergeant suspected in his wife's disappearance, wants to take a lie detector test on national television. Why the change of heart when he had previously refused to take such a test, is not known. It's also not known if he's still interested in being involved with the "win a date with Drew" program.