Show me the money: City Hall, the CPRC and the settlements

Some city council actions took place at last night's meeting. The coverage of these meetings has pretty much been reduced to briefs. More wheelchair ramps are being built courtesy of Jon Lonsway's lawsuit which forced the city to either build new ramps in the intersections or redo the faulty ones it had already constructed.

Earlier, the city said it was building the ramps because it's the right thing to do and besides, they had won every lawsuit filed against him by that troublemaking Lonsway, but if they had been interested in doing "the right thing", they wouldn't have been sued and lost a lawsuit over a simple thing like installing wheelchair ramps so that those who use them don't have to risk their lives and safety navigating the streets because they couldn't access the sidewalks.

Thank you Lonsway.





The report that is an analysis of the operations of the Community Police Review Commission is still in progress until a final draft will be released. Between the politicization of the appointment process and the dilution of its effectiveness by City Hall, the word "community" has pretty much been as absent from the city's vernacular from it as it's missing from some of the signs on the sixth floor of City Hall. All this is going on while the city's paying out quietly on at least three wrongful death lawsuits involving fatal officer-involved shootings.

Here are the payouts so far:



Summer Marie Lane (December 2004): $395,0000



This shooting death received a sustained finding of a violation of the police department's use of force policy from the CPRC, but the officer involved, Ryan Wilson, was exonerated by the police department, a finding upheld by the city manager's office which left the final decision up to the police chief, according to a declaration released by City Manager Brad Hudson in the case of Ryan Wilson v the State of California.

Douglas Steven Cloud (October 2006): $800,000


The settlement involving the Cloud shooting, which is one of the largest amounts paid out by the city on a wrongful death lawsuit in recent history, was being finalized even before the CPRC received its initial briefing on its own investigation by Butch Warnberg last week. It likely would be the first time the CPRC deliberated over an officer-involved death that was already paid out by the city. By its actions, it appears that the city didn't want to wait to see what would happen once the CPRC released its finding, let alone take the case to trial in U.S. District Court.



Lee Deante Brown (April 2006): TBA

The settlement is still being ironed out on the lawsuit filed in relation to the Brown shooting case. It's expected to be less than that paid out in both the Cloud and Lane cases, but the question is as follows.

Why is the city paying out a dime on a lawsuit after both the CPRC (minus one commissioner) and police department have exonerated the actions of the officer involved? Why indeed?

So when all is said, done and paid out, it didn't matter in the end except perhaps in the dollar amount with the Brown settlement that City Hall took the actions regarding the CPRC that it has done in the past two years. If the commission sustains an allegation of excessive force against an officer for a fatal shooting, the city pays out. If it doesn't, the city pays out. If it hasn't had an opportunity to determine either way, the city pays out.

The city just pays out.

Perhaps the turning point could have been the tremendous $1.64 million the city was forced to pay out when it got its ass handed back to it by a jury on a plate during the trial involving Officer Roger Sutton's racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation lawsuit. The city had multiple opportunities to settle that case or even to pay out a 2004 arbitration award that at $200,000 was much smaller than the eventual payout.

That was one of the few personnel lawsuit cases involving the police department that became a lawsuit which the city didn't pay out, a decision it no doubt regrets.

It's particularly interesting in the case of Cloud, which already has sparked concerns about how the situation was assessed and ultimately how it was handled. How police officers could arrive at a scene in large numbers, guns drawn after receiving a radio call that a robbery was in process. However, when several of them take a closer look at Cloud in his vehicle, they approach it and attempt to remove him with one officer serving as "lethal cover". Then that officer apparently admits in his own interview that even though he had taken a protective position for the other officers who couldn't do so while they were busy trying to remove an injured Cloud through a car window, he had holstered his weapon to assist in that ultimately fruitless effort which led him to say, "it wasn't working".

Which of course left the situation without a backup officer in case it needed one.

This just moments after 11 officers in six vehicles had arrived within seconds of each other after being radioed that a man was fleeing in a car of that description from a robbery. Each of the four officers who stood next to Cloud's car was asked what they thought was meant by the robbery call over the radio and they said that they believed or it was implied that a weapon was involved, likely a gun. One officer, Brett Stennett, said that he believed he was in "mortal danger" when he struggled with pulling Cloud out of the car, yet he had no "lethal cover" part of that time.

It also might have increased the probability that a tragedy would have occurred and who it would have impacted would have depended on whether Cloud had been armed with a gun or not especially considering that the fact that there were officers with body parts in and out of Cloud's vehicle. These officers could have been startled by a sudden rev of the vehicle engine that could just as easily occurred when they lost their grip on his body, it fell back in the seat and his foot possibly on the accelerator given that it was still revving after Cloud was shot five times. It didn't necessarily mean he was trying to flee the scene in a car that was essentially pinned to a downed palm tree and badly damaged by the collision. It just meant that his foot was on the pedal.

Cloud wasn't armed so he was shot and killed in a sudden discharge of bullets, but if he had been armed and able to get to his weapon and it had been a gun, it's more than likely that one or more of the officers who tried to pull him out of the vehicle could have been shot and killed especially after Vazquez had holstered his own weapon. That's something for those on the CPRC to think long and hard about before refusing to "look back in hindsight" using much more time than the officers involved in the shooting incident took. Examining an officers' actions and yes, judging them is something some of the more recent appointments especially appear loathe to do but if this is a situation where the officers themselves may have used tactics that put themselves at risk, do the rules change or remain the same? If they're loathe to examine an officer's actions more carefully when a member of the public is killed, will they still hold the same attitude when officers' actions might have played a role in endangering themselves if the situation actually had been what they had said in their interviews that they believed it to be?

It's never clear how the department approaches these issues including the use of tactics because almost all of its process is internalized and hidden from the public by a shroud of confidentiality laws. However, if it's indeed true that the investigators were telling at least one witness at the struggle at Home Depot involving Cloud and some other individuals is true, then it doesn't inspire much faith in that process. According to Warnberg's report, one of the eyewitnesses, J. Taliaferro said that when investigators from the Officer-Involved Death Team interviewed him, they had said that Cloud "pulled a shotgun and is now under a sheet".

Say what?

As it turned out, there were no weapons found at either location linked to Cloud. No weapons, let alone a shotgun were ever reported being seen by any officers who were pulling Cloud out of his vehicle and Cloud never pulled a gun or a shotgun on any of those officers nor did he branish one. It's not clear why investigators would make a statement like this which was not the truth, but it creates concern and probably perceptions that from day one that there were efforts to write this shooting off as justifiable. It's hard to read it any other way especially since it wasn't based on truth or any evidence uncovered in the investigation as far as can be seen.

Hopefully, the CPRC will further research this issue through the interviews of this witness and the Officer-Involved Death Team's investigation to see if this statement actually was made by investigators and if so, why. If it was an attempt to illuminate the situation, it couldn't succeed. It's hard to picture them giving much thought to the issues arising from a shooting if they would even say that a shotgun had been involved in the absence of any evidence supporting that contention.

At any rate, statements like that if they are made don't exactly present a good picture of an investigation that is going to do much to illuminate any issues that might arise with tactics including officer safety. But this is yet another reason why the power to investigate officer-involved deaths was included in the ordinance which created the CPRC and is now included in the language which placed the CPRC in the city's charter in November 2004 if the city's still scratching its head wondering why it happened. The city can dilute the ability of the commission to utilize this power as it sees fit but it hasn't yet been able to erase the need for such a power to exist because it's too busy building the argument of why it's so necessary in the first place.

The other threat illuminated by the officers more so in the original briefing given by the department in November 2006 to the CPRC, was that the car was going to hit them, which is why they had fired their weapons at Cloud.

However, according to his statement, Officer David Johansen approached the car by walking in front of it even though he said the engine was running at the time. Both Officer Bryan Crawford and Officer Brett Stennett were filmed walking around in front of the Toyota Celica to get to the driver's side by a surveillance camera. This was done within seconds of the actual shooting yet like in the Lane shooting, the officers shot from the side of the car into the driver's window.

There are contrasting accounts of exactly when the engine was running or started running during the incident by different eyewitnesses and police officers and it appears from Warnberg's report that all of the officers except Vazquez who either were involved in the shooting or witnessed it (as opposed to just hearing the shots) gave multiple voluntary interviews to investigators. Stennett was interviewed both on Oct. 8, 2006 and July 5, 2007 for example.

One of the most interesting aspects of the officers' interviews involved that of Crawford who was asked what he would do if he had been the first officer at the scene of the crash. He said that if he knew there was a suspect in the car, he would have approached it as a "high risk" stop.

This is described in a footnote included in Warnberg's report as a "tactical method trained upon and utilized by police officers to enhance safety for themselves and the public during the stopping, approaching, removing and disarming of suspects in vehicles". Was this done or directed by Vazquez who apparently along with Stennett was the first officer on the scene? That may be one issue that's examined further by the CPRC during its review.

There will be more developments in this shooting case ahead as the CPRC has just begun its review of it even as it's clear that the city's about to close the book on Cloud.

In San Bernardino, Cassie MacDuff, a Press Enterprise columnist, writes a man that lost a portion of his property to street widening without even being notified about it let alone compensated.



(excerpt)



One day last summer, Lawson got a phone call from a Matich Corp. official saying his driveway would be blocked beginning the next Monday to install curbs and gutters.

Lawson protested that he had not been notified and needed access for the tractor-trailers that use his yard daily.

The Matich official seemed sympathetic and invited Lawson to company headquarters. But once there, Lawson said, company officials' attitude changed. They shouted him down and told him the work would begin regardless.

Matich Corp. President Stephen Matich didn't return my call seeking comment Monday.

When the work began, Lawson said, his mailbox was knocked over and left on the ground, the driveway had to be graded and other damage fixed.

Worse, losing 14 feet from the front of his property has made it difficult for truck drivers to get into the yard because their trailers hang out into the street when they stop at the gate to use the security keypad.

IVDA executive Don Rogers and counsel Tim Sabo on Monday morning blamed the problem on an overzealous contractor and admitted work shouldn't have been done before the agency bought the land from the property owners.



A San Bernardino County Sheriff deputy has been charged with extortion in connection with a man from the San Manual Band of Mission Indians.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



On Jan. 15, Ray Carr Green, a 45-year-old Lake Arrowhead resident, contacted sheriff's officials and said that Laurent tried to extort him during an on-duty contact, Beavers said.

Laurent promised not to pursue criminal charges against Green in exchange for money and property, Beavers said.

Beavers would not specify the crime being investigated by the deputy, the amount of money or the nature of the property.

As detectives with the sheriff's Specialized Investigations Division looked into the felony allegations, Laurent was placed on paid leave.





As payouts in racial and gender discrimination lawsuits in the Los Angeles Fire Department increase, the bias office which investigates these types of complaint is having its budget cut. It would make sense to address the problem rather than just to cut the operating budget of the division set up to handle the complaints.




The Albany Times-Union Editorial Board takes on both the city and county law enforcement agencies for how they conduct bodily searches. It stated that both the city council and county legislatures as well as the county prosecutor had to provide an accounting to the public about the practices of the involved law enforcement agencies.

Why? The editorial provided two examples.




(excerpt)



One case involves a man with a record of drug convictions who was stopped by investigators from a special sheriff's department detail that had been keeping an eye on Albany's downtown bus terminal. It happened two years ago, when the suspect, Tunde Clement, got off the bus one Monday morning in March. Before long, he found himself handcuffed, charged with resisting arrest, and on his way to a station, where he was stripped and searched for drugs. Then, without bothering to seek a warrant, deputies took him to Albany Medical Center Hospital where he was forcibly sedated by doctors, while his rectum and digestive system were examined. No drugs were found.

The second case involves a 28-year-old single mother from Ravena who was stopped one evening by officers of the Albany Police Department's Street Drug Unit as she drove through West Hill to pick up a friend. The woman, Lisa Shutter, was ostensibly pulled over for a traffic infraction, but says one of the officers told her that she fit the "profile" of a drug suspect. Her vehicle was searched, her cellphone seized and private numbers searched. She was subjected to a body search on a public street. She claims one of the male officers slid his hand inside her underwear. When she later complained about her treatment, she says she was told to refer her allegations to the department's internal affairs unit rather than the city's civilian police review board.

What makes these two cases even more outrageous is that they are far from isolated. Civil rights advocates and defense attorneys have been complaining about the sheriff's department unit for years, and seven years ago the state's highest court condemned the search tactics as it overturned the conviction of a bus passenger arrested for possessing three ounces of cocaine.






The city of Atlanta is looking for an executive director to oversee its civilian oversight mechanism. Given the corruption uncovered in that city's police department that's been commented on by the United States Attorney's office that is currently investigating it, any civilian oversight mechanism will have its work cut out for and that goes double for its executive director.



The Executive Director will be responsible for the development,
implementation and management of a comprehensive oversight of law
enforcement strategy aimed at successfully supporting the CRB. The
Executive Director will work closely with members of the CRB and
supervise investigative and administrative staff responsible for the
intake, dissemination and administration of citizen complaints and
investigations of law enforcement officers. The director will
facilitate all aspects of public hearings, make findings and
recommendations to the CRB regarding disposition of the complaints and
assist the board in developing policy recommendations to law
enforcement agencies.

The director will be responsible for developing
and managing a budget for the CRB and will serve as the CRB's liaison
to the City of Atlanta Administration.


$76,873.00 - $117,945.00


Web site






In New York City, Police Detective Hispolito Sanchez spent his second day on the witness stand as his 911 recording where he yelled "shots fired" several times was played in court.



(excerpt, Newsday)



Prosecutors played the recording during Sanchez's second day of testimony. The detective was heard telling the operator he was an "undercover police officer" but didn't appear to have a fix on his location, saying only that he was "around the corner from the Kalua Club."


On direct examination, Sanchez described how he heard shouted commands, followed by a crash and then gunshots on Liverpool Street, where Bell was shot dead by police. His description of commands was at odds with that of Lt. Gary Napoli, who testified last week at state Supreme Court in Kew Gardens that he heard none before the shooting began.

Sanchez, who didn't see the shooting, said that it might have taken about six seconds without a pause. Earlier prosecution witnesses said Bell's car collided with a police van before the shooting began.



Also testifying was Lt. Michael Wheeler who arrived at the scene after the shooting and was told by Det. Michael Oliver who is on trial and who had fired his gun 31 times that he couldn't remember if he had fired his gun or not.



The New York Daily News relates the confusion that erupted after the shooting through the 911 phone call made by Sanchez.



(excerpt)



Chaos and confusion were evident in the back and forth with the female operator, who kept demanding a clearly unprepared Sanchez for an address and one point asked him for no apparent reason, "Are you a male black?"

"We're at 143rd, on the corner," Sanchez was heard saying. "I'm an undercover police officer. Shots fired. Shots fired. I'm around the corner of Kalua strip club."

"143rd what?" the operator demanded. "143rd place? 143rd street? 143rd Avenue? 143rd and what?"

"Kalua Club," Sanchez replied.

Unable to wrest an exact location out of Sanchez, the operator then asked, "Who shot them?"

"Is an MOS (member of service) involved?" she asked, using the radio handle for cops in the field.

"I don't know at this time," Sanchez replied.

Seconds later, Sanchez came up with what turned out to be a wrong answer: "You have two perps shot."

While Sanchez was heard asking somebody for a cross street, the operator again asked Sanchez again for information he still could not provide.

"Sir, in order for me to help you, you have to have an address," she said. "Who's down? Is an MOS down?"

"I don't know at this time."

"Sir? You don't see a building number or anything?" the operator said. "Who's down? Is an MOS down?"

No cops were down. Bell was dead and his two friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were badly wounded.

Sanchez's 911 call was played after he said the gunshots were "continuous but sporadic."



After the shooting, the police frantically searched for a gun in Bell's car. It's known now that they never found one.




Errol Lewis, columnist with the New York Daily News discusses all the trial's ghosts.




The same day as the second week of the Bell trial, was the day that two other New York City Police Department officers plead not guilty to charges stemming from an alleged incident where they handcuffed a 14-year-old boy, then beat and kicked him.




The Voto Latino blog reflects on Maywood's police department, otherwise known as the "second chance" agency.



This article discusses the relationship between corrupt local governments and how that can seep into law enforcement agencies as happened in Maywood, California, Kandleton, Illinois and in West Hackensack, New Jersey where the county prosecutor wound up seizing control of the police department.