Five before Midnight

This site is dedicated to the continuous oversight of the Riverside(CA)Police Department, which was formerly overseen by the state attorney general. This blog will hopefully play that role being free of City Hall's micromanagement.
"The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never, never forget." "You will though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it." --Lewis Carroll

Contact: fivebeforemidnight@yahoo.com

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Location: RiverCity, Inland Empire

Saturday, December 27, 2008

10 Years Later: What do Lockyer (and others) think?

Example



Dec. 28, 1998-Dec. 28, 2008



"When I die, hundreds of people will be at my funeral. Everybody loves me."



---Tyisha Shenee Miller





"It's almost the perfect storm."



---Former Use of Force Panel member Mary Figueroa about the current conditions in the department mirroring those leading to the Miller shooting in 1998.





"People were angry, man. There was a huge amount of distrust. I really thought we were going to have a riot. I was really worried that downtown Riverside would be burned down."


---Use of Force Panel Chair Jack Clarke, Jr.





"Toughest decision of my career."


---Former Riverside Police Department Chief Jerry Carroll about his decision to fire five officers involved in the shooting. He was gone within one year of making that fateful decision.




"To this day, the city does not have a policy on dealing with the same situation."


---Former Riverside Police Department Officer Wayne Stewart who was one of the four officers who shot and killed Miller, his last action while employed by the department.






"The agony had turned into rage."


---Former Riverside County District Attorney's office prosecutor, Mike Soccio who sat on the panel which addressed filing criminal charges against police officers for onduty incidents.




"The city could easily find itself back in that type of situation again."


---Consultant Joe Brann in response to current staffing reductions in the RPD.




"I see us today falling back in the same rut."


---Riverside Police Officers' Association President Det. Chris Lanzillo





"I shall never, never forget." [said the King]

"You will though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it."




---Lewis Carroll






The Press Enterprise takes on the 10th anniversary of the fatal officer-involved shooting of Tyisha Miller. It's a whole series of articles, pictures, diagrams and video-taped interviews of different people but curiously enough, not much from anyone who actually protested in the streets after the shooting that changed the city's history forever. It's strange to see pictures of those who marched, but see them get rendered invisible by the same publication which vilified them in 1998. Not that it's not nice to hear from city officials (who actually were missing in action which is pretty much their behavior lately involving the police department), police management, a couple of police officers and community leaders but if the department and city go back to being hell in a hand basket, none of these people will be speaking with their feet in the streets. Will any of them be speaking about these issues at all?

What has history taught us?

There's a lot of speculation about why so many people from different racial backgrounds, genders, ages, religious and economic backgrounds marched and even some quotes about pending riots and a burning downtown. Yet they didn't really ask anyone why they marched and what brought them to gather by hundreds and even thousands to demonstrate within days of the shooting, for marches that would last a year. And many of these people who came out saw those days coming before many of the leaders did.

The slide show provides the only real opportunity to get any sense of what the populace felt at the time, through snapshots of meetings, protests and Miller's funeral. Something that's missing from the rest of the series, where in contrast you have people talking about what they thought demonstrators were thinking and their own more negative reactions to the prospect and reality of people marching en mass (which happened) or rioting (which didn't) including the often invoked image of a downtown up in flames. But then that was present in the five-year anniversary coverage by the newspaper as well.

Interestingly enough, the same thing happens with the police officers. Several officers who represent management and labor comment on where their department was then and now 10 years later. They provide important perspectives to be sure but like the protesters, many of the other officers who remained or were hired after the Miller shooting, are only shown in the photographs, mostly attending training sessions or showing off video technology as was the case of Field Training Officer Felix Medina and Personnel and Training Officer Erik Lindgren. Though Medina (who ironically attended the same peace academy class as former officer, Paul Bugar) was written about several days ago in the Press Enterprise for his assistance to a family who had their Christmas gifts stolen from their house.

And Los Angeles Times Columnist Steve Harvey had this to say about Lindgren who's a smart officer who thinks outside the box.



(excerpt)



Navel operation: Riverside police used a loudspeaker in an attempt to awaken a suspected drunk driver who had stopped in the middle of the road with a gun in his lap.

When that didn’t work, one cop resorted to one of Riverside’s most famous products: the navel orange.

Officer Erik Lindgren grabbed two off a nearby tree and lobbed them at the car. The first missed. The second bounced off the back the window, rousing the driver. He stepped out of the car and peacefully surrendered himself and his pellet gun.

Press Enterprise columnist Dan Bernstein termed it “a happy chapter of pulp non-fiction.”





The same video technology which consultant and monitor Joe Brann pointed out took them an awful long time to purchase and install. I know that, because it took nearly two years of pushing the city council members (except former Councilman Ed Adkison who was the only elected official who was vocally supportive of the effort) and city manager's office who dragged their heels on that issue for most of that time despite having seed money taken from the city's general fund to pay to equip every squad car with a dash camera.

During two years, I heard every excuse in the book as to why the city couldn't equip these squad cars with the cameras in a timely manner including some really creative ones. It was a blessing when two years ago, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis petulantly informed me I was not to speak to him anymore because he didn't think I was nice and he believed he was nice (although at least one woman out there might beg to differ with that self-assessment). One less layer of absolute metaphoric cow pies to plow through always makes for a much more streamlined fact-finding process.


Tyisha Miller through her family's eyes offers some perspective outside the usual players in offering some insights about her life, that are a bit apart from the earliest Press Enterprise headlines which screamed about her being drunk at the time, yet downplayed her seizure which could have been epileptic considering her family history with that medical condition. And the same District Attorney's office that labeled her the "victim" passed out over 1,000 pages of every negative item they could dig up on Miller including insinuations about her sexual orientation and even notes to go to the principal's office while providing very little to no information on any of the officers who shot her.





Has anything changed in 10 years in the RPD? That question was a major thrust of the series of articles and the article about it was pretty comprehensive. Is it true that what's past is prologue? Or have things really changed inside the law enforcement agency that was thrust in the international spotlight within hours of the shooting? The views tend to be pessimistic and some of them surprised me because some of these people say the opposite in public and it's interesting how the community leaders and police management personnel in the department tend to be more optimistic about the department than the few community members who were interviewed.

It's always been difficult watching community leaders privately fret about what's going on with the police department (and I seem to be a popular venue for that type of venting) who publicly say everything is great because concern about reputations in this city including at City Hall supersedes the truth of what's going on around us. And it amplifies the grand canyon which exists between some of these leaders and the communities they speak for, in terms of perceptions about law enforcement and the police department. It will be great if some of them step up to the plate on these issues that have caused great ongoing concern in the police department.

That's not that surprising if you've been talking to residents from one end to the other about their feelings about the police department, one which quite a few feel has come a long way, but has stalled in recent years due in large part to having a thoroughly disengaged city government (which it just put on blast by not participating in the Press Enterprise articles by choice). Their refusal to do this as civic leaders especially in these difficult times should be grounds for those up for reelection next year not being reelected and recall elections being called for everyone else. It is just so profoundly disrespectful to the city residents and the department by the city council and mayor to behave in such a fashion. It's really inexcusable.

The silence from these leaders who hold the public trust deserves no less than public accountability and asking those running for office next year including Mayor Ron Loveridge who was in office during that era, why they kept their lips zipped on one of the city's most critical episodes of its history, is worthy fodder material for some serious questions on the campaign trail.

Drastic? Perhaps but the city residents incurred a $22 million tab on the reforms implemented in the department due in large part because of gross neglect by the city government and its direct employees in the 1990s leading up to the Miller shooting. This is some of the best money ever spent by the city. There's no doubt about that but it should always be remembered that the city spent this money under duress, under force of litigation and that it had to be pretty much dragged kicking and screaming to do so to make any sort of investment at all. And what the current government has shown publicly since then is that it is not willing to do any more than the same predecessors that some current elected officials have criticized for the actions taken in the 1990s and even earlier.

There's really no words to say just how ashamed of themselves our elected officials should be for their silence which merely reflects the same attitudes which led to the police department's decline in the years before Miller was killed. If they are ignorant about the issues impacting the police department, they should just say so but there's still room to express concern and interest. This city's police department is worth this struggle and the best effort, its employees are definitely worth that and so are the city residents. Maybe they see the loss of a young Black woman who's not a campaign donor, who's not a wealthy developer, who can't help them climb the political ladder as being inconsequential. Maybe the police department's a toy they've grown tired of looking at because there's no marquee signs nearby with their names in the starring roles of some Riverside Renaissance project.

That's the message that through their collective silence, they are sending and their silence on the issue has increased the chances that a similar tragic episode could happen again in the future.


A lot of people (and it's usually the same people) were interviewed for this story on the police department 1o years after Miller's death, and many raised good points. The most notable aspect of it was that it was the Press Enterprise's first honest look at how the department's staffing levels and lack of racial and gender diversity among its employees could create what Mary Figueroa called a "perfect storm" for another tragic shooting and its aftermath which interesting enough was a term used by one of the four officers who shot and killed Miller. Some communities in Riverside are certainly broiling with anger that's still fairly below the radar at the moment. But then that's how the years and months preceding Miller played out. Quite a few of the hot button issues and incidents that are "blowing over" are just stacking up into another pile of kindling.

As noted earlier, not one elected official at City Hall participated in this series of news articles, which again shows a major dysfunction still remains in the city government's relationship with the police department and the community. This dynamic was one of those criticized by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer in his lawsuit filed against the city in 2001 which ultimately led to the stipulated judgment. People reading the article should contact their elected officials and ask them for a response on the police department 10 years ago and in the present especially considering the warning bells raised by individuals in the article, with as diverse perspectives as Figueroa, Brann and Riverside Police Officers' Association President Chris Lanzillo.

One major issue raised by all three of these individuals was the current staffing situation with vacancies for funded positions in both the civilian and sworn divisions, from rank and file, to supervisory to civilian support staff. Vacancies which will only grow as attrition leads to retirements, firings, failures to make probation and resignations including eight officer vacancies which emerged this past autumn. Talk to a different individual and you'll get different statistics on everything from the department's current number of officer vacancies, current averages for officers assigned to patrol shifts to the officer to supervisor ratios on patrol shifts. None of which can be backed by anything in writing, because all the records kept on these issues are for "personal use" only by various members of the department's management.

That needs to change. There needs to be much more transparency to city residents on these issues as this current economic downturn or meltdown as it's been called by various individuals continues until at least late next year (and probably longer than that in the housing market-dependent Inland Empire). In fact, there should have been a public dialogue or workshop on these issues but the city council is so disengaged and apparently disinterested in these issues to not be quoted for these news stories because they believed that this is all ancient history that has nothing to do with them. If they can't or won't comment on a news story, then it's unlikely they will bring any of the issues that are as relevant on Dec. 28, 2008 as they were on Dec. 28, 1998 to any discussion forum.


The city council should sponsor a workshop either through the city council as a whole or through the Public Safety Committee to bring these issues for reporting and discussion. Participants should include city council, the city manager's office, the police management, the personnel and training captain and representatives from the Riverside Police Officers' Association, the Riverside Police Administrators' Association and the SEIU General Unit.

One major issue which should be addressed through this process is the role of community policing both under the strategic plan and any further blue print for its progression produced by the department after December 2009. Chief Russ Leach's statements about creating such a plan is encouraging but needs to involve a lot of the city's residents and not just the usual suspects to provide input on that process. This should also include the futures of community programs which were suspended indefinitely during the budget crisis including the citizens' academy as well as current equipment and technology inventories.

There should be some of blue print plan to what the department will be doing in regarding to the staffing levels of civilian and sworn positions as well as expenditures on equipment, technology and training during the economic downturn along with strategies and some sort of time line for how and when the department will address and correct any deficiencies in these areas. There should of course be no deficiencies allowed in areas of training and equipment and only the minimal levels in staffing civilian and sworn positions.

This committee or the full city council through a workshop process needs to do similar discussion and examination of issues involving any reduction in funding for officer and civilian employee training including but not limited to tactics and use of force. These issues are all very critical and they need to be treated as such. So far, they have not been by the elected leadership, certainly not in public which is the only access to information that the vast majority of city residents enjoy.



Another issue raised is the lack of racial and gender diversity in the police department where the percentage of Black officers is lower than it was in 1998 and the percentage of female officers makes slow climbs and then makes even more dramatic declines over and over again during the past 10 years. Brann's idea of having the department take a look at its poor retention rate for officers of color is a good one and should be implemented. The department's already assigned its audit and compliance panel to do an audit on the department's high attrition and poor retention rates for its female officers. But both of these examinations need to be removed from the insulation of the police department and brought to its outside for a further look.

Several years ago, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department put together what it called a "recruitment, retention and diversity" panel which focused mostly on racial issues in recruitment, hiring and retention with gender secondary but the department appointed different community leaders to participate in meetings to deliberate these issues and issue recommendations through a written report to be reviewed and then implemented by the Sheriff's Department.

The police department needs to do something similar for men of color and women. It's fairly probable that there could be some serious issues uncovered during any audit particularly involving female officers especially considering the city's rush to settle litigation filed by a female probationary officer who was fired on the first day she showed up for a field training assignment. The minute record and document trail on that lawsuit raised red flags as it should.

The panel could mirror that of the Mayor's Use of Force Panel created after the Miller shooting which issued a written list of recommendations in a rather comprehensive report to the city council. The fact is, until the department at the very least starts reaching out to the communities it hopes to recruit from, not just for brief conversations but for involvement in a comprehensive process, these retention rates haven't a prayer of improving any time soon. Exit interviews should be conducted for any and all officers particularly those who are men of color and female who left, resigned, failed to make probation, were terminated or took an injury or stress retirement in the past five years. In addition, exit interviews should be given to men of color and particularly women who passed or failed to complete the field training program as well as to all officers who fail to pass probation while employed by the police department. These exit interviews should be conducted in a manner which protects officers from retaliation including blackballing for any information they report during their interviews.

The Human Resources Board recently stepped up to the plate on several of these issues including asking to receive a report from the police department on its audit involving female officers. Human Resources Director Rhonda Strout and Administrative Analyst Jeremy Hammond didn't look too thrilled at this development. But then this city department has its own problematic history when it comes to hiring decisions at City Hall and the police department including issues going back to the 1990s including but not limited to, problems with nepotistic hirings, problems with ensuring the integrity of urine samples for drug testing and the rather liberal hiring processes involving the city's two public safety departments which were so problematic one decade ago.


Examination of hiring practices involving new and lateral officers including the assurance and insurance that there are no short cuts taken during this process for any openings that are filled, including cuts in funding involving background investigations, psychological testing and the personnel connected with these procedures. Examination should be done of any hiring of any relative of any city employee and elected official of both the city and county to ensure that the city's provisions against nepotism in hiring are strictly adhered to in practice. No background investigations including polygraphs are to be expedited for any reason including in cases involving the rehiring or reinstatement of previous employees including those reinstated in arbitration or through the state court system.

There needs to be an examination of the department's promotional practices at its highest levels in light of the enlightening and embarrassing situation that erupted at a city council meeting in March 2006 involving the allegedly illegal conversion of management positions in the department to serving "at will" until the process was halted by a lot of protest and a belated ruling issued by City Attorney Gregory Priamos. In light of the recent claim for damages and lawsuit filed by two police lieutenants, there needs to be further examination of inappropriate interference by other city employees and/or elected officials in the department's promotional processes. The allegations the two lieutenants raised are very serious and should be addressed.


An examination of the Internal Affairs Division's and police management's handling and investigations of complaints and internal investigations in light of a huge backlog which rivals that of the criminal and civil trials in the Riverside County Superior Court system. The backlog on complaints is to the point that the average time it takes complaints from intake to just being received by the CPRC for its own review process, is well over 100-200 days or higher. This greatly exceeds the 30-60 day guidelines set for category one and two allegations, in departmental policy #4.12. Some people blame this on the CPRC because it's external and easy but actually, it appears that it's the investigations which aren't under the scope of the commission's jurisdiction which may be where the true problem lies. Everything else likely gets backed up behind those investigations, much like the civil trials in the county courts get backed by ill-advised policy making and implementation and a shortage of judicial officers in the criminal courts.

The department temporarily transferred Lt. Mike Cook into that division to help offset the backlog but also transferred out Sgt. Duane May to work in the Traffic Bureau and it's not clear whether that fifth sergeant spot was filled or left vacant. On top of that, the division moved from its more geographically isolated digs on Central Avenue near the Riverside Plaza to the downtown bus terminal putting the investigative division in closer proximity to police officers. Not a good or even informed move on the city's part even to save a little bit of cash. In fact, it just goes to show how out of touch the city manager's office is with police operations and how unwilling the city council is to ensure that its direct employees are properly educated or informed.


These investigations must remain in compliance with the state constitution, the peace officer bill of rights, Governmental Code 3304(d) and Penal Code 832.5, all things they weren't before the stipulated jugment was signed by the city and the state. All efforts must be made to ensure that this process is in accordance to the same laws it allegedly violated before the reforms were implemented involving its operation and staffing. The strategy of creating some sort of group or task force to both tackle the complaint and investigation backlog as well as create strategies to both reduce it and to ensure more streamlined handling of its investigations in the future might be a useful tool for addressing this serious issue.

Perhaps the Public Safety Committee or even the CPRC could serve as a venue for the discussions of the process of bringing this division back online in completing thorough, objective and timely investigations in accordance with these provisions in state law.

The audits of the complaint form access and process which were conducted at least four times annually under the consent decree with the state should be continued.

The department needs to stop jerking city residents around about the much delayed release of a traffic pretext stop study report which was originally financed by the city's general fund in August 2005 and was supposed to be released to the Human Relations Commission and the public in March 2006. If it's not available for public consumption and review, the department needs to provide a detailed, thorough and timely explanation as to what has happened to it and why the three year delay on its release.

Reexamination of the department's audio recording policy, to include recording all professional contacts between field officers and supervisors with members of the public. In the past, these recordings when done have been valuable in helping to determine whether misconduct allegations were true or false so they've proven to be of great value. There should be an auditing process in place to randomly sort and listen to recordings that are not used in evidence in a citizen complaint, internal investigation or any investigation involving an officer-involved death, to among other reasons find incidents which can be useful training scenarios for officers. The department should retain all audio recordings for a period of at least two to five years even as the city has either reduced or is in the process of reducing that period of time to only six months.


The police management, the audit and compliance bureau and all four NPC commanders are to report at least semiannually to the city council at one of its regular evening sessions on progress implementing the strategic plan. The bureau should present an audit of its own operations in implementing this plan as well as the provisions of the stipulated judgment that are still in effect per a vote taken by the city council at a March 2006 workshop. The NPC commanders are to report on their MAP strategies for policing in their respective areas as well as trends noted in those areas including crime statistics.

There should also be at least one public forum on the plan's implementation in at least each NPC per year. This past year, there were three total public community forums. The general one held at Cal Baptist University and forums held in the Central and West NPCs. A forum planned for November to be held in Orangecrest in the East NPC was canceled and has not been rescheduled as of yet.

These are some ideas to start with, in terms of addressing elected officials. More will be forthcoming in future blog postings.




City Council and Mayor:

Phone number: (951) 826-5991




Email:

rloveridge@riversideca.gov

mgardner@riversideca.gov

asmelendrez@riversideca.gov

rbailey@riversideca.gov

fschiavone@riversideca.gov

cmacarthur@riversideca.gov

nhart@riversideca.gov

sadams@riversideca.gov







Former Riverside Police Department Officer Wayne Stewart breaks his silence on the shooting and says that the department still has not come up with training to prevent the shooting that he and the three other officers were involved in the early morning hours of Dec. 18, 1998 and he's actually right. That actually apparent when two other officers shot and killed Douglas Steven Cloud in less time than it took to kill Miller in October 2006. The collision of a medical injury scenario with a situation involving the broadcast of a robbery created a dynamic that wasn't much different from what happened in 1998. Maybe that's why the financial settlement paid out on the Cloud case at $800,000 was second only to that of the $3 million paid out on Miller.


The Riverside District Attorney's office's report on the shooting of Tyisha Shenee Miller provides that office's analysis of how it allegedly was so close but still no dice when it came to its decision on whether or not to file criminal charges against the officers who shot Miller. The United States Attorney's office would reach a similar if much more convoluted finding in 2002 but not before calling the involved officers to appear before a federal grand jury.


The 911 transcripts of her cousin's call for medical assistance, the incident which sparked 10 years of events leading the city and department to where it is today, looking back as some of the same troubling patterns reemerge and reassert themselves.


There are already some comments on the story including this one.



(excerpt)




Mary Figueroa....this has nothing to do with a lack of diversity and adequate staffing. Turning police officers into kindergarten cops for minorities is not going to prevent something like this from happening again. The lesson here is, don't grab a gun if you plan on going out and getting so intoxicated that you may pass out in your car with a gun on you lap. Just so nobody turns this into a racial comment...this applies to whites, blacks, Hispanics, etc. I was tired of hearing about this 10 years ago, and I don't want to hear about it now. Thank you for stirring the pot again, Press Enterprise. You did it to me when I was a young cop years ago and you're still doing it now. Keep it up and maybe you can incite the riot you were uncessful at inciting 10 years ago.




More comments here



(excerpt)



You notice how all these officers found a way to deal with this fiasco after shooting this born loser? These officers all went on with their lives and have been successful.

The fact that 3 of the 4 are active in law enforcement today tells a person exactly what the government and law enforcement structure think of Tyisha Miller and that embarrassingly weak Jerry Miller.

We haven't seen those two pimp daddies, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in town since all the cameras left. Jesse's busy making babies with other women behind his wife's back and Al is still in Harlem smearing pomade in his hair.




Wild and arrogant is not accurate sir. Paul Bugar was intelligent, calm, and easy going. Wayne Stewart was also intelligent and very funny. Alagna was the more experienced of the group and fair to everyone he dealt with. Hotard was a polite kid who put together an interesting "winter" uniform one night for graveyard. They were dealt a bad hand that night paid with their careers. Live on disco saturday night!




Nobody with common sense would describe those officers as wild and arrogant. Ridiculous statement.

I don't care a whit about Tyisha Miller. She was a young welfare momma growing up to be an old welfare momma. She was a member of the Westside PJ's also know as the Westside Project Crips. Terrible Tyee they called her. Read the graffiti if you're not sure. She was drunk, stoned, and carrying two guns for some parolee idiot friend of hers fresh out of state prison. She lived like a fool and died like a fool. I don't want to hear any more about this loser.

Dredging this incident up ten years after the fact makes the P-E look like even more of a small town podunk rag than they already do.


Thank you, for reminding us what happens when time stands still in the minds of some and no growth takes place between the ears.

To be continued...





Bad news for Inglewood's police department, from the Los Angeles Times. Its study determined that its officers have a higher rate of shooting and killing unarmed individuals.

Some of its findings:


(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)



* Five of the 11 people shot and killed by Inglewood police since 2003 were unarmed. They include a man who fled when officers tried to stop him for riding his bicycle on a sidewalk. An officer said he fired when the man reached for a bulge in his waistband, which turned out to be a rolled-up T-shirt.

* Several officers -- including a training sergeant -- have complained about the department's policy on when to shoot, and about a lack of training.

* To investigate shootings by police, the department has assigned the vice president of the Inglewood police officers' union, which advocates for officers accused of wrongdoing, and a detective accused by prosecutors of lying about his own off-duty shooting.

* Two Inglewood officers were involved in using electric Taser guns on unarmed suspects four times in five weeks -- including one man in the genitals -- prompting defense attorneys to call them the "Taser Twins."

Earlier this year, the city hired consultants to review the department's training, policies and procedures and initiated a training program to improve officers' tactics.

Inglewood Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said it was unfair to portray her officers as quick to pull the trigger or excessive in using force.

In some cases, she said, police opened fire only after suspects stabbed officers, shot at them or pointed guns in their direction. The 195-member department responds to more than 130,000 calls each year, she said, usually without problems or headlines.

"We interact with people who are exceedingly violent and resistive to the lesser levels of force, and we don't always shoot them," said Seabrooks, who became chief last year.




But the bad news for Inglewood doesn't stop there. The department's officers have also been involved in a large number of sexual misconduct scandals including some of the following.




(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)


Later that year, an anonymous letter sent to the department's Internal Affairs Bureau prompted a sexual harassment investigation of traffic Officer James Manzi. Manzi, according to an internal affairs report included in court records, played for on-duty colleagues a videotape and an audio recording of himself having sex. Manzi was suspended for 20 days but retired on disability before the discipline was imposed. He declined to comment. In January 2006, another officer was accused of taking a cellphone photograph of an inmate during a strip search. The officer was suspended and then fired for unrelated misconduct. Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said supervisors now monitor strip searches. "That's one of the circumstances where we have to be exceedingly careful because it has the potential to be interpreted as something very demeaning," she said. In December 2006, a woman visiting from Florida claimed that an on-duty Inglewood officer raped her and forced her to perform sexual acts while he kept his hand on his holstered gun. According to a district attorney's report, the woman was standing on a street corner wearing a miniskirt and fishnet stockings when Officers Donvey Lindsey and Brandon Beak pulled up, suspecting she was a prostitute. The officers followed the woman back to her motel and confirmed she was a registered guest, according to the report. Lindsey then followed her to her room, telling Beak that he would check her identification, Beak told authorities. The woman, in a statement to the FBI, claimed she complied with Lindsey's orders to perform sexual acts because he threatened to arrest her.



This isn't even counting the major scandal that erupted involving massage parlors in 2007.






The Web site, Rate My Cop, and Riverside Police Department

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