Recruitment wars and wares

The LAPD is offering financial incentive for recruitment assistance from anyone who can help it find and hire new officers to work for its agency.

The department’s decision to offer money, was at least partly in response to the news that when it came to recruiting new police officers, not only had it fallen short of its own goals but it was also losing ground to the aggressive recruiting tactics of its neighbor, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Sheriff tops LAPD in new hires


LASD sheriff, Lee Baca managed somehow to turn around the usual hiring problems in his own agency by offering better salaries to start working for him than recruits would receive if they joined the LAPD. This action was done to offset what the agency called the downside of working for the LASD. Mainly, in that new deputies begin their tenure by working inside Los Angeles County's over-crowded and over-stressed jail system for about two years. Working the jails had been apparently been a deterrent to many recruits coming to work in the Sheriff's Department, Baca stated. A hefty pay raise provided by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors softened that blow although it hasn't addressed the problems in the jails.

Now it's the LAPD's turn to play catch up. On its list of strategies is meeing with the LASD to find out what has made its recruitment drive a success. Good luck there.

(excerpt, Los Angeles Times article)


Sheriff's Recruitment Unit Lt. Joe Fernnell said his job these days is more like that of a college football scout, with his recruiters scouring job fairs across the country for viable candidates, going into schools and colleges and exploiting family ties to the department while pitching the department's family atmosphere and starting pay of $53,000 to $59,000.


"I'm not about to tell you my secrets, because then our competitors would be using them next week," he said.


Police Chief William Bratton and his department blame the shortage in officers on the lack of trust that people of color have towards the LAPD and law enforcement in general. So Bratton has been speaking out on that issue, hoping to change some minds and perceptions. In other words, he is hoping that the members of his audience have short memories and have forgotten about Eulia Mae Love, Rodney King, Stanley Miller, Margaret Mitchell and others. Not to mention the Rampart scandal, the Pena shooting and the videotapes, three. Those memories do more than just linger.

Still, Bratton has taken his mission to the golden streets of L.A. And that includes giving speeches on radio stations.


"We're hiring," Bratton said on KPWR-FM (105.9), whose tag line is "Where Hip-Hop Lives."

"Particularly in the minority communities in this city that have had tensions between the LAPD and minorities historically, if you want to make a difference, be the difference," he told listeners. "So come and work it from the inside out."


The question Bratton doesn't answer is whether those officers will have more power to make a "difference" when they hop on board or less. When it comes to resisting change, the law enforcement culture is often cruelest to its own.

Bratton then moved onto an appearance on Rick Dees’ radio show.

"We want women. We want Latinos. We want African Americans, and right now we are struggling, to be quite frank with you," Bratton told Rick Dees on Thursday on KMVN-FM (93.9).

Bratton, fix your agency, don't fight the federal government's reform process and maybe then, they will come. Maybe.

LAPD recruitment Web site

Here is one recruitment call by a former LAPD officer who worked in its 77th division. I once met a Black officer who worked this assignment whose story about trying to report racism within that division and the retaliation he said that he faced would curl anyone's teeth. Like I said, Bratton, do the work in your agency and maybe then they will come.

The LASD has had its own struggles recruiting new deputies to create a workforce of 10,000 sworn employees as is detailed here.

(excerpt)

Despite their proximity and the common public service calling of their law enforcement mission, Fennell says that Sheriff Baca's Los Angeles County agency doesn't see itself competing for talent specifically against the Los Angeles Police Department.

However, he says, "We're competing with everyone in law enforcement, and we're all drawing from the same applicant pool," along with other government agencies and the private sector, says Fennell.

Some of the LASD recruitment tactics include using billboard space in California and Nevada along with regular advertising to attract applicants and working in partnership with local professional sports franchises including the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Still, more than one quarter of the applicants received by the recruiting division of the LASD come from its referral program. That is a quality it shares with many other law enforcement agencies.

Further east, the Riverside Police Department is still struggling to recruit men of color and women of all races to work in its agency. Between January and and September 2006, the department had experienced no net growth for either male Latino officers or female officers, according to two separate EEOC reports drawn during those time periods.

The RPD has traditionally struggled with hiring men of color and women to fill its ranks and more importantly, keeping them. Even a generous labor contract recently approved by the city, may do little to buck this trend unless the department's personnel and training division takes this task and its challenges seriously. With Capt. Mike Blakely at its helm, that remains to be seen whether that will happen.

After all, with former captain, Lee Wagner and former lieutenants Ron Orrantia and Alex Tortes as historical references, it's difficult to remain optimistic about this staffing reassignment that took place fairly soon after the dissolution of the stipulated judgement between the city and State Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office in March. Capt. Pete Esquival who had held the position less than a year had many plans to implement in this division, but not enough time to do so.

Hopefully, at the department's next quarterly report before the city council, Blakely's plans to improve the recruitment, hiring and retention of the men and women who will staff the department will be given a prominant role in the presentation and he will be able to tell the elected city officials and the public exactly what those plans are in great detail.

Small inroads have been made in terms of hiring men of color in the past two years. Even before the fatal shooting of Tyisha Miller by four officers in 1998, the department hired few Black officers, according to EEOC reports released biennially during the 1990s. Miller's shooting and its aftermath served as a deterrent to people of color particularly Black men in terms of working in this police department. When allegations of racism within the department were reported by former officer, Rene Rodriguez on 60 Minutes in 1999, these issues that the department was struggling with in the wake of a controversial shooting had been aired in front of a national audience. The hiring trends after that mirrored the reality of that public disclosure of problems within the agency.

In the past several years, the department has made small gains in hiring Black male officers and it has tripled its number of Black female officers. The number of Asian-American officers increased as well, in a city where Asian-Americans are one of the fastest growing racial groups. These increases were in part because efforts were made in recruitment and also because the actual numbers of these officers is very small. The percentage of Latino officers is less than half of the Latino representation in the city's population and the retention rate for female Latino officers is among the poorest of any group of officers in the department.

In the autumn of 2005, the city council approved a package of recruitment incentives including $5,000 signing bonuses both to the recruit hired and the person who recommended him to the agency. The department also created 25 new entry level positions and filled them fairly quickly. A hiring fair held last July at Bordwell Park brought 150 men and women in to take their written exams. About 20% of those applicants were women and about 1/3 of them were Latino men or women. Where they'll wind up at the end of an arduous process remains to be seen.

The news about female officers continues to be poor.

The latest from the department is that four female candidates have been hired, which sounds very good. However, it's too early to get excited about this development because none of them had been through the department's "pre-academy" phase yet. Last winter, anywhere between three to six female candidates dropped out just during this phase with the exact number depending on whom you ask because the department claimed in a CPRA request response that it didn't have documents of record in relation to this issue. The nine female officers that were hired in January were allegedly down to zero by the end of February. About half of them allegedly dropped out during the "pre-academy" phase while others dropped out while attending the peace officer academy.

The "pre-academy" phase lasts about a week, the week before the recruits that were hired enter into the peace officer academy. It involves each recruit being shown first-hand how the department operates and what the job entails by other police officers. Leach told the city council in October that it allowed the department to see which ones would drop out before the department had invested too much money in their training. This made this phase of training appear to be more of a weeding out process than anything else.

Retention programs including mentorships that have worked so well in other law enforcement agencies are absent at the RPD. During Esquival's tenure, there had been plans to create programs for both women and men, but it is not clear whether those programs have come to fruition.

The objective #1.5 of the department's Strategic Plan which states that efforts are to be made to create a police department that better represents the city that it serves has clearly been reduced to representing simply a "general idea" and not a goal in ways many of the other objectives have not been. One word being batted around this year that went unmentioned last year, was that it wasn't about quotas, even though no one had held the department's feet to the fire about having to hire a specific number of either men of color or women. "Quota" of course is the strawman of choice for many individuals and leaders of organizations who do not wish to diversify their ranks, but simply want to remain as agencies which are primarily White and male.

The city council does not appear enlightened on the issues involved with improving recruitment and retention either, as shown by Councilman Steve Adams who had called retention programs including mentorships "remedial training for those who can't cut it" at a Sept. 10 city council meeting. His comments did generate some applause from a group of White police officers in attendance and a few head shakes from other people watching. It's been really odd and disheartening to see how other modern day law enforcement agencies eagerly embrace the advancements made in improving recruitment and retention of police officers that the RPD appears to still be running away from or in the case of the city's leadership, ridiculing.

Shades of Diallo: "We are not target practice."

“We are not target practice.”

Those words were spoken by Abner Louima yesterday, in an article published by the New York Daily News, in response to the Nov. 25 fatal shooting of Sean Bell, 23, by five New York Police Department officers.

Louima: How many people have to die?


Louima, who now lives out of state, will travel to New York City to participate in a rally to be held on Dec. 16. It’s been nearly 10 years since he was beaten and sodomized with a broom handle by several officers inside the bathroom at one of the department’s precinct stations.

In the article, Louisma explained why he was returning to the city where it happened.

(excerpt)

“It is something I have to do," he said. "I am a survivor. In my case, many people who I didn't even know were marching for me."


On Nov. 11, over 75 community and religious leaders including the congressman who represents Queens protested against what they call a “parallel investigation” being conducted by the police department in its attempts to track down what it said was the fourth man seen fleeing the scene of the shooting, purportedly with a gun. In recent weeks, officers allegedly with the department's internal affairs division have been arresting and detaining young Black men in Queens and interviewing others about the mystery man.

Bishop Lester Williams was particularly critical calling those conducting this investigation, “a rogue group of policemen”.


“They are not being questioned at a precinct because if they were, their attorneys would get involved," Williams said. "I think it's reprehensible and is a violation of our constitutional rights. The police seem to think they can do what they want, like it's a police state."



The NYPD continues to state that there is no other investigation besides that conducted by its Internal Affairs Division.



Juan Gonzalez, a columnist for the New York Daily News criticized the NYPD for making the assertion that a fourth man had been seen leaving the scene of the shooting. However, within its preliminary investigative report, there was little mention of this mystery man. In fact, according to Gonzalez's column, the "sources" of that information couldn't even agree on whether said man of mytery was getting into or out of Bell's vehicle.


An unnamed NYPD source also supplied Gonzalez with the following information:


(excerpt)

Videotapes obtained by cops from two surveillance cameras at the Port Authority's Jamaica Ave. AirTrain station a half block away from the shooting site reveal that one of the bullets fired by the five cops narrowly missed striking a civilian and two Port Authority patrolmen who were standing on the station's elevated platform.

None of the members of the surveillance team that was backing up the undercover cops in the Kalua Cabaret that night was wearing an NYPD raid jacket, and none of the three cars used by the nine-member team was equipped with a portable police light that could alert civilians they were police.


Because of a communication foulup, a female detective and a female investigator who were part of the backup team and parked on 95th Ave. - a block from the shooting - had no idea the other members of the team had moved in to make an arrest. After the shots erupted, the two female cops received a cell phone call from another team member that the shots involved their team.
The female team members radioed a "10-13" [assist officer] call on their police radio, but they could not tell dispatchers their exact street location. They then raced to Liverpool St. by such a roundabout route that Internal Affairs investigators have dubbed theirs the "useless" car.




In Huntington Beach, California further developments have emerged in the controversy surrounding this city's police department and its practice of training its officers to find contraband by having other police officers plant it first in unsuspecting motorists' vehicles. After rethinking the issue, the police chief has decided that this practice is probably not a great idea.

The policy came under fire after Thomas Cox filed a complaint with the department after he saw an officer toss a gun in the trunk of his vehicle and then watched in horror as another officer "found" it, as detailed here. He filed a complaint against the police officers involved but received written notice that the officers had been exonerated of any alleged misconduct.


The Orange County Register's editorial board condemned the practice in its editorial, Don't plant junk in the trunk.

(excerpt)

"We're also disturbed by reports that Officer Knorr was laughing at the suspect while he did this. There's certainly nothing illegal about police acting in such an unprofessional way, but this behavior – and the lack of punishment for it – should not make Huntington Beach residents feel any better about their department.

It should go without saying that when a person is pulled over for a violation, that he or she should not have guns, drugs, fake drugs or anything else planted in the car. And those arrested should be treated fairly and respectfully.
Fortunately, Chief Small has decided to change the "training" policy.

But it's one more reminder of the need for more oversight over the way law enforcement operates in this county.

Amen to that.

The law suit, Ryan Wilson v the City of Riverside (RIC456429) is currently off-calendar in Riverside County Superior Court which means that both parties are probably in settlement talks outside the logjammed civil courts. The court minutes provided for the latest hearing on the writ of mandamus that was scheduled for Dec. 8 instead state:

HEARING ORDERED OFF CALENDAR: AT REQUEST OF PARTIES
HEARING RE STATUS CONFERENCE SET 02/16/07 AT 08:30 DEPT 02
NOTICE WAIVED.

If it settles the case, the city council will have two choices. Will it grant Wilson, a police officer with the city, an administrative hearing or will it compel the Community Police Review Commission to nullify its sustained finding of excessive force against him regarding the Summer Lane shooting?

Time will tell.

Good news for both parties which are actually on the same side for different reasons that it is now apparently outside a courtroom.

The curious thing about this law suit is that even though the city and Wilson have found themselves on opposite sides of the courtroom, they are actually on the same page. If Wilson wins, the city government wins.

What may lose is a process that was supported by 60% of the city's voters in 2004, if the city decides in secret to nullify the CPRC's hard work to save itself from civic liability in connection with the Lane shooting. Lane's family filed a law suit against Wilson and the city, a case which has been moved to U.S. District Court. This law suit also survived recent attempts by the city's attorneys to get it tossed out for not being filed in a timely fashion. The city failed and the case will proceed. In its wake, are at least four other law suits or claims for damages that have been filed against the city in connection with three other officer-involved deaths. All three of these deaths have been investigated or are currently being investigated by the CPRC.

The law suit filed by the family members of Lane would be the reason why the city may act against one of the commissions that it created in 2000 and one where decisions are made by city residents who volunteer their time to peform a valuable service. The law suits which have followed or are sure to follow are reason enough for the city to stick to that path, if its number one priority is to reduce the civic liability it faces in connection with officer-involved deaths.

However, it is one thing to ignore or reject a commission's finding which the city and police department essentially did in the case of Lane. It would be another, to disrespect the process enough to nullify it out of existance. Riverside's city manager has essentially already done that and made it clear through his actions and his comments at a recent public safety committee meeting how little his office values the CPRC's contribution in the area of investigating officer-involved deaths.

Now, apparently it may be the city council's turn to decide what it will do.

Most likely, that will be bad news for the CPRC in the short term and the police department in the long term. However, it shall make for a very interesting election year.

Shades of Diallo: Have you seen the mystery man?

The New York Times received a copy of the New York Police Department’s preliminary investigative report into its fatal shooting of Sean Bell, 23, and noticed that one very important detail was missing in eyewitness accounts as well as in the report itself.

If you guessed that it was the so-called fourth man, who was the focus of an intensive dragnet in Queens, you are correct.

Neither the mystery man in black, nor the one wearing a beige coat who was allegedly seen fleeing the scene of the shooting purportedly with a gun are discussed in great detail in the 23-page preliminary report. The report of a mystery man had originated with comments made by Michael Palladino, who is president of the Detectives' Endowment Association and then soon after, was also related by police representatives, who had attributed these accounts to several eyewitnesses.

preliminary investigative report


This mystery man was the subject of a catch and release operation involving young Black men conducted by the department’s (cough) Internal Affairs Division(cough) in Queens, which resulted in the detention of several individuals and the questioning of others. One individual, Jean Nelson, was detained as the definite mystery man but was later released. The department has been much more quiet on the topic ever since.

(excerpt from article)

It includes no meaningful discussion of a fourth man, a mysterious figure who some in the Police Department have suggested may have been present along with the three men who were shot. None of the witnesses whose accounts are in the report speaks of someone who may have fled — perhaps possessing a gun — and there are no indications that the police at the time were seeking anyone who may have left the scene.

It is not clear whether the witnesses who the department had cited as sources of the information involving the fleeing mystery men were among those whose interviews were included in this preliminary report. However, one would think if they had related such crucial information on this incident to the NYPD that it would not only be included, it would be prominantly placed in the report.


Queens’ District Attorney Richard E. Brown said that the preliminary report will be the starting point of his own investigation, in which the evidence produced will be taken to a criminal grand jury. It includes eyewitness accounts by civilians and statements by the law enforcement officers who were at the scene but did not fire their weapons. Only Brown's office will be able to interview the five involved officers.

Among the other items of notice included in this report was the revelation that after the 50 shots were fired, the involved officers told sergeants afterwards that they did not have any idea how many times they had fired their own weapons. One officer said that he was not aware if he had fired any bullets at all. That was the detective who had fired 31 times, emptying two magazines into Bell's vehicle. The undercover officer who had shot his gun 11 times had also emptied his own gun. The report also stated that this officer had consumed liquor earlier while inside the strip club but it didn't state what kind of liquor and how much. Another undercover officer said in his statement that he himself had consumed two beers.

Trent Benefield and Bell had both been handcuffed after the shooting despite suffering serious gunshot wounds. According to a statement given by Benefield, he had not known that the man who had initially opened fire on the vehicle was a police officer.

(excerpt)

Mr. Benefield said a man he had not seen before stood in front of Mr. Bell’s car and simply opened fire, striking Mr. Guzman once, and that Mr. Bell then repeatedly drove forward and in reverse and collided with other vehicles in an attempt to drive away. His account differs from the accounts of some police officers that the detective opened fire after Mr. Bell’s car had struck him, crashed into a police van, and then nearly hit him a second time.



Lt. Jerry Napoli said in his statement that the three men in Bell’s vehicle knew that he was a police officer because he made eye contact with one of them. However, Napoli was unable to explain what exactly drove his assertion to investigators. He had spent the duration of the shooting hiding underneath the dashboard of one of the department's three vehicles as his charges shot at a group of unarmed men.

Reminscent of former Riverside Police Department sergeant, Gregory Preece who had stood by his squad car and watched as four of his charges with a combined work experience of 10 years shot 24 times at a Black woman in medical distress inside a car, and also at each other given that they were in a cross-fire situation. Preece was fired for his role in the incident, in July 1999.

When Preece arbitrated his employment termination, it was revealed that his performance evaluations had indicated that Preece had difficulty acting as a supervisor over the officers he had once viewed and perhaps still did, as his peers. In two cases, Preece had failed to report misconduct alleged against his officers to his supervisor. In one of those cases, two police officers were eventually prosecuted by the Riverside County District Attorney's office for assault under the color of authority after they along with another officer beat an intoxicated Latino man and tossed him in a lake. Both men plead guilty to those charges and received slaps on the wrist.

With this in mind and given Napoli's conduct during the incident, I wonder how his performance evaluations read in hindsight?


And so with that, the mystery behind the mystery man in black or wearing a beige jacket or hiding behind the grassy knoll continues.




In an exclusive interview with Essence magazine, Nichole Paultre, who was Sean's fiancee talks about how she had changed her legal name to match his, in a sense taking back something which had been stolen from her. A judge granted her request.

(excerpt)

Nicole, the 22-year-old mother of the couple’s two young daughters, was overcome with emotion Thursday afternoon as she stared at the paper with her new name. As her mother and Jada looked on, she could barely contain her happiness. After Sean’s death, she said she had thought her chance to be Nicole Bell had been stripped from her forever.

"I was speechless," Nicole told ESSENCE of her reaction to the news. "It’s a great feeling. This is what we wanted. This is in honor of his name."

Sometimes it's through the smallest actions, that the families of those who have been shot and killed by police officers try to find some way to pull some order out of chaos into their lives. When Tyisha Miller was shot and killed by four Riverside Police Department officers in 1998, she had been attending continuation school to earn her high school degree. Her teachers spoke about how she was the first one to come to class each day, and the last student to leave. She was nearing completion of her degree when the shooting happened but the school ensured that her family would receive the certificate which documented her efforts. A high school diploma was given to her family members during one of the weekly demonstrations that took place during that long year. Her family smiled throught their tears having gotten a small piece of their daughter, sister, niece and cousin back.

The NAACP also held its first organized demonstration on Saturday, Dec. 9 as detailed in this Newsday article.

Hundreds of protesters marching four abreast, held signs stating that they were marching for justice, and yelled "no justice, no peace" and "50 shots, that's not hot".


(excerpt)

The shooting has prompted continuing community outcry. At Saturday's demonstration, Tajuana Mcleod, 32, an accountant from Jamaica, held hands with her daughter Khayla, 7.

"I'm here because I have a teenage son," Mcleod said. "They shot in cold blood, and we don't want that to happen to anyone else."


The new Black Panther Party also held a march at the same time, and the two passed each other on the streets. This organization called for a 50 day boycott of businesses not owned by African-Americans. Two protest movements in conflict with one another as they had been in the 1960s and 1970s.

Hundreds demonstrate against shooting

The blogsphere is still humming with activity over the NYPD shooting.

Bill's Big Diamond Blog discusses both the demonstrations on Dec. 9 and the NYPD report discussed in the New York Times article. The shooting is also being discussed at R. Enochs and Robert's Rationale where there is a commentary on the logistics behind prosecuting law enforcement officers for onduty shootings.

This article at the Empire Zone is also taking more comments on the NYPD preliminary report into the Bell shooting.

More drops in the bucket

A San Bernardino County supervisor is taking fire for some comments she made, while joking with other county employees, according to this story in the Press Enterprise.


(excerpt)

"After I said, 'Get home safe, get home alive,' I said, 'Shoot first, ask questions later. I will take care of the lawsuits,' " Gonzales said in a telephone interview Thursday.

She added that she was joking when she said the comments, which were her last before she left the stage.


The comments were made by Josie Gonzalez during a training session with county employees on how to deliver good customer service.

Luis Carillo, the attorney for a United States Air Force captain who was shot by a San Bernardino County Sheriff deputy earlier this year did not see the humor in Gonzalez’s words.


(excerpt)

Whether it is serious or not, you don't want to spread the word that it is OK to shoot people," said Luis Carrillo, the attorney for U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Elio Carrion, who was wounded by a sheriff's deputy in January.

"It is totally outrageous," Carrillo said when told of the supervisor's comments. "That is not what we need from elected officials."


Carrion's shooting was captured on video and the footage was aired throughout the world.

Deputy Ivory J. Webb, jr. who shot Carrion faces criminal charges in San Bernardino County Superior Court. No doubt he and his attorney probably didn’t find Gonzalez’s comments funny either.

Next time, you feel tempted to make a comment like this as a "joke", don't or at least reserve these conversations to closed sessions when you are discussing civil law suits filed in connection with your county's law enforcement agency. That way, you can joke about it quite frequently and not be written up in the daily newspaper.




The Los Angeles Police Department is back in the news again, with you guessed it another videotaped incident. This time, however the department took quick action and arrested the officer involved, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.

LAPD officer arrested in attack on teen


On the tape, Officer Sean Joseph Meade, 41 is apparently shown applying a “chokehold” on a handcuffed teenaged Latino man inside a holding room.

Chief William Bratton condemned the behavior, had Meade taken into custody and even contacted the FBI.

(excerpt)

Bratton said the alleged attack on the teenager was "without any physical provocation."

"Based on what I and my command staff witnessed on the video, we felt the behavior was nothing that we as a department can tolerate or condone," Bratton said.


A former LAPD chief criticized the department. Bernard Parks, now a councilman, said that this latest incident indicated serious problems inside the department.


"It is apparent that there is a crisis in the LAPD."


As someone who led that agency for five years, one would think Parks would probably be in the know.

The latest incident prompted some discussion at the LAPD’s own blog

“Policegirl” left a comment in support of Meade.

"This seems completely out of character for the Sean Meade I know. Before he is tried in the court of public opinion, please be respectful of the fact that he not only has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, he has friends and family who may be reading this blog. Let the investigation and the law take its course.”


Maybe this is the “Sean” you didn’t know, the side of him he shows when his friends aren’t around. In this case, the video camera was not his friend.




The intrigue continues out in Redlands, with the investigation into allegations that the department was giving out its work-related disability retirements in a fraudulent fashion. An investigation into this matter is ongoing, but recently the city cleared Capt. Thomas Fitzmaurice of any wrongdoing in an investigation stemming from a conversation that Head of Administrative Services Marjie Pettus had with former City Manager John Davidson.

In that conversation, she had alleged that Fitzmaurice was “dirty” and had heard that he lied on the witness stand during court proceedings. Davidson had believed that the comments meant that Fitzmaurice was a “Brady” officer although the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office denied there were any Redlands Police Department officers on the county’s “Brady” list.

Is anyone actually on the "Brady" list that still has a job at a law enforcement agency? If these agencies were handling any police officers determined to have perjured themselves properly, there wouldn't be such a list because they would all be unemployed. Perhaps with work-related disability retirements as the city of Redlands moves away from Fitzmaurice and towards its next administrative investigation.

A separate but related investigation into whether or not the department is misusing its disability retirements is still being conducted, after allegations of possible fraudulent behavior were raised after at least three officers retired this year after being investigated for allegations of misconduct.

One officer was allegedly given a work-related disability retirement after facing discipline and possible termination after being investigated by the department for viewing adult-related internet sites on the job. Another was given a retirement in lieu of being disciplined for what was called "a number of alleged violations of departmental policy". A third was given a retirement within a week after the city settled a law suit filed against him.

In at least one of those cases, a retirement was allegedly given even after a doctor said that that officer had not experienced significant medical impairment.

Retirement deals probed

An expert in the article said that at least 66% of all retirements by Redlands' police officers were work-related disabilities, a figure he believed was excessive. A more normal range would be between 30-40% of all retirements.

The curious thing about this situation is that there is a law enforcement agency actually being investigated for how it's been handing out disability retirements to its officers. Several years ago, the city of Riverside was handing out similar retirements like candy, most notably to three of the five police officers involved in the shooting of Tyisha Miller in 1998. One of them, Michael Alagna had allegedly suffered a shoulder injury several days before the shooting. Two years after being fired for his role in the shooting, Alagna was reinstated and later given a work-related disability retirement due to an injury that hadn't even kept him out of work that long if even at all. If that injury had been truly incapacitating in order to necessitate a retirement, he probably would have been on the injured list and consequently would not have been working on Dec. 28, 1998, the last day he would ever report to work. But he did work that day and fired at least five shots from his gun at Miller allegedly with his "bad" shoulder.

Alagna's retirement

Despite suffering what the city of Riverside represented as a career ending injury, Alagna was hired several years ago as a sheriff deputy up in San Joaquin County. He still collects his retirement from his stint in Riverside, while working in law enforcement some place else. The Press Enterprise criticized the practice of "double dipping" which is legal in this editorial, but it didn't challenge the legitimacy of what was done in terms of whether Alagna's injury really had prevented him from working as a police officer while in Riverside.

Reaction in San Joaquin County

Alagna's former colleagues Wayne Stewart and Gregory Preece also received cash payments and similar retirements. Stewart received his plus $100,000 in cash after the city council had initially voted in an earlier closed session to appeal his reinstatement at the court of appeals. When people stopped protesting at City Hall about Stewart's reinstatement, the city council quietly ended the case just after Labor Day in 2003.

More recently, former officer, Tina Banfill Gould received a disability retirement after having been threatened with termination, suspended, threatened with termination again and then finally retired in March 2005 not long after she refused to answer questions from the Community Police Review Commission after it had issued her a subpoena to appear before it. The discipline centered around her decision not to be interviewed in a particular room at the investigation division's headquarters after being involved in a fatal onduty shooting.

While this is going on, legitimate work-related disability claims go ignored, drag through the system or the employees have to deal with red tape before even being able to receive medical treatment, let alone receive a retirement as several city employees explained during the period of time the city was granting these ahem, retirements. Several of them even complained to the city council.


A detective in the Riverside Police Department has started a new Web site to document the history of this police agency. You can read about it here.

Det. Mike Eveland's site:

RPD remembers

Eveland includes an article about an old departmental program called Policemen: Agents of Change, which was implemented in 1974 in attempts to improve relations between the RPD and Latino communities in Riverside including the Eastside and Casa Blanca. One of its officers, Gerry Carroll who discussed his own experience in the Eastside later was appointed as police chief some years later.

Agents of change program

It's too bad the department doesn't have a program like that today. Usually police officers ask that city residents walk in their shoes. Here was one program where apparently the shoes were on the other feet. Apparently, the officers who participated in the program were none the worse to wear for it.

Shades of Diallo: Rallies and razors

Hundreds of demonstrators crowded the streets of New York City yesterday, clustering in Manhattan in protest of the NYPD shooting of Sean Bell, 23, and two of his friends on Nov. 25.

Rev. Al Sharpton and the city’s community leaders had announced plans to hold a march along 5th Avenue later this month, but it appears as if people were not willing to wait that long to take it to the streets. When people want to march, they will march rather than wait to be instructed on where, when, why and who to follow.

Crowd rallies to protest NYPD shooting

Rally against NYPD shooting


Fueling the demonstration was news that two more friends of Bell, Terry McKenzie and Gerald Williams, were arrested and taken into custody for an ongoing narcotics probe. Apparently, this development is not related to the NYPD's apparent probe into the going ons in Queens through its Internal Affairs Division.

The protest, itself was protested by the Detectives’ Endowment Association President Michael Palladino, who after having warned people not to jump to conclusions about the shooting has continued to do so himself. Why not, as it appears that everyone surrounding Sean Bell is under greater scrutiny by the police department than the five officers who shot 50 times at a group of unarmed men and the lieutenant who hid and listened even though he believed his officers were in mortal danger.

(excerpt, New York Daily News on rally)

Noting reports that Bell and his two pals who survived the 50-shot police barrage had been targets of an NYPD narcotics probe, Palladino said, "The magic question on the shooting is, 'What do these three men do? How did Bell plan to pay to get married and raise his children?' "

No, actually the main question here is, was this shooting justified and did the officers who shot Bell comply with NYPD departmental policy? That is the department's focal point of its investigation as it would be for any other department in a similar situation and it should remember that. But at least, Palladino put it out there about what he thinks the investigation is actually about, which appears to be something very different. He is in the sense, a defense attorney.

Here's one suggestion to Palladino, his union and the other police unions: Do not shave your heads.

Over 200 members of the Riverside Police Department's rank and file did that to protest the firing of four officers who shot and killed Tyisha Miller in 1998. The National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives detailed that here.

(excerpt)

Disciplining supervisors and managers for the actions of their subordinates is not common and is often met with great opposition. The most notable case was in the aftermath of the tragic shooting of Tyisha Miller in Riverside, California.

The Riverside Police Chief not only fired the officers who shot and killed Ms. Miller, he also fired the sergeant that supervised the shooting scene…citing the sergeant’s failure to provide leadership contributed to the death of Ms. Miller.


The chief’s decision was not viewed as popular and met with extreme opposition. The opposition was so fierce that officers in the police association shaved their heads in protest and spent thousands of dollars to initiate a door-to-door marketing campaign against the chief. In the end, the police association lost the campaign and the community demanded change

Change came to Riverside, slowly and in part due to a consent decree imposed on the city of Riverside by the state's attorney general office in 2001. The Department of Justice also investigated the police department, after the Congressional Black Caucus led by Rep. Maxine Waters became upset by what had happened in Riverside, including the officers' decision to shave their heads.

That took place after the four officers who shot Miller were fired by then Chief Jerry Carroll in June 1999 and began small, with a small group of detectives who were featured in an article of the Press Enterprise.

After this, heads quickly became balder throughout the department’s field operations division, and by the month’s end, at least 2/3 of the department’s patrol officers had joined in the protest by taking a razor to their heads. A great number of officers had allegedly shaved their heads at a local high school during a meeting held by the leadership of their police association. The Press Enterprise photographer caught them as they were leaving the meeting and right on the front page of the metro section the next day, was a group of officers leaving the building. Former police officer and current councilman Steve Adams also had attended that meeting just to see what was going on. He left the high school with his own hair intact.

A week later, the city council chambers downtown were packed with bald heads, as several retired police officers representing them used words instead of razors to demand that the city council reinstate the fired officers. They told the city council that they might not be there next time the city council needed their assistance as it had in 1998 when the mayor and several city council members were held hostage at City Hall by a former city employee.

Complaints soon began to come in of Black and Latino motorists who were intimidated of being stopped by these bald officers especially more than one of them. A climate of fear struck those communities, whether that was the intention of those who shaved their heads or not. A group of community leaders at one point asked Attorney General Bill Lockyer to get the governor to activate the National Guard to police the streets.

When I first saw three of them one night, I thought maybe they had shaved their heads because they were suffering an epidemic of scabies at the police department. It took several minutes for me to realize what they had really done. Even after the shooting, the number of bullets fired, the racist jokes and comments that emerged, this action by the officers still left me and others in a state of shock.

After much protest, the majority of the officers did grow their hair back by summer’s end and not because the weather was getting colder. Some of them deeply regretted doing it. Others blamed it on herd mentality. At least one person reported that an officer had apologized to them for doing it.

Even with a department still in the process of much needed reform, it is difficult to imagine them doing the same thing today. For one thing, they are smarter and much more politically astute than their predecessors. One can hope that they are also more enlightened about adopting what may be viewed as racist symbols and more interested in voting among its own leadership through ballots, not razors.

The stipulated judgement between the city and the state required that its diversity training include a module on the community's reaction to the shooting of Miller and its aftermath including the head shaving.

This department's current union's leadership is at least making forays into different community gatherings, can Palladino say the same?

Riverside's reform process at the halfway mark, November 2004, according to the Los Angeles Times.


Riverside released from stipulated judgement in March 2006.

Grace among tragedy is a column about reaction to Nichole Paultre's quite plea for justice in the shooting death of her fiance, Bell. People always seem amazed when the relatives of those who are shot to death by police officers conduct themselves as Paultre did. They need to get out more because Paultre's behavior is not rare. Just the other day, the media wrote stories about the "family" of mothers whose sons have been killed or brutalized as in the cases of Abner Louima by the NYPD. And this circle of women don't belong to the only family.



Meanwhile, in Riverside, here is a letter sent recently to the city government on the need for mental health crisis intervention training in the police department.


Hi,

I am writing to voice my support of the development and implementation of mental health crisis intervention training in the police department. I spoke on this issue during the city council meeting on Nov. 14 and at several other meetings. The police department has taken critical steps in this direction but it needs the support of the other two partners in the ongoing reform process, the city government and the community members.

When I requested information from the police department on its policies, procedures and training involving the mentally ill, I received copies of two departmental policies. One of those was policy #4.50, which addressed the procedures involved with doing 51/50 detentions. This policy was created in 1984, revised in August 1986 and received its approval by signature through former Chief Ken Fortier sometime in the 1990s. If these policies were automobiles, I guess they would be considered classics by now.

From what I understand, patrol officers in the police department currently receive four hours of training in the form of dealing with 51/50 calls pursuant to what is mandated by the state’s Peace Officers Standards and Training in Sacramento. Both officers who were involved in the April 3 shooting of Lee Deante Brown had received this training, including one who had received it about two weeks before the shooting, according to training records submitted with the department’s investigation on that shooting.

Many law enforcement agencies are starting to implement more training to address how their sworn employees engage the mentally ill populations in their cities and counties. One of the first cities to implement this training was Memphis , Tennessee in the late 1980s. Many others have followed suit, often after a high-profile incident involving police officers using lethal force against a mentally ill or disabled individual. Often there is more than one fatal incident before that action is taken.

In 2001, it was determined that one out of every ten calls that law enforcement officers responded to as first responders involved people who were mentally ill. That number has certainly increased in the five years since then, as the population of mentally people who have discharged from mental hospitals and institutions grows, in response to deinstitutionalization measures imposed several decades ago and other factors. According to statistics, about 1/3 of homeless people are mentally ill and another 1/3 of them have ingested drugs which diminish their capacity and their ability to respond to an officer’s verbal commands. Those two populations of course also overlap one another, as appears likely in the case of Brown.

Other individuals suffer from medical conditions that in certain circumstances may affect or diminish their mental capacity including diabetes, autism, hypoglycemia, thyroid disorders, epilepsy and many others not to mention that prescribed medication for medical conditions can have a similar effect. Individuals who are cognitively or mentally disabled and elderly people experiencing senile dementia or other medical conditions have also been killed by officers who use lethal force, in other cities as well.

The common thread among many people is that relatively few of us in our society are completely untouched by one or more of these issues including people in our city. It’s difficult to find anyone who doesn’t have a parent, sibling, grandparent, child or other relative or friend who is not affected by these issues. I have talked with many people who are concerned about this issue and how it is handled not just by our police department, but our city government. It is important for the city’s leadership to take the initiative to participate in this process, not to micromanage any city employees or departments, but to inquire, research, discuss, provide insight and express support of the creation and implementation of mental health training.


Those of you who have read the Community Police Review Commission’s public reports that it issues on its investigations of officer-involved deaths will also be aware that this body has also voiced its support of the department’s efforts to create and implement a mental health crisis intervention program through its written public reports on the officer-involved deaths of Todd Argow and Terry Rabb. If you have not yet read these reports yet, they are available online at the CPRC’s Web site or through hard copies distributed at its office. These issues were prevalent in discussions of these incidents as well. The CPRC is a vital voice in the process as well, given that about 60% of the voters opted to put it in the city charter in 2004.

Argow was a former city manager employed by several medium-sized cities in California who suffered from severe depression and was shot and killed after he came out of a residence with an unloaded gun, which he aimed at a police officer. Before the shooting, there was a period of time when the department had attempted to communicate with Argow where the existence of more extensive mental health crisis intervention training and/or better partnerships with mental health organizations, both public and private may have assisted the officers in that process.

Rabb was a diabetic, who suffered an episode of severe hypoglycemic shock which rendered him unable to respond to verbal commands given by two police officers. They tried to restrain him when he didn't obey their verbal commands and after one of them attempted a carotid restraint, both of them placed him in handcuffs and sat him on the ground. Rabb suffered cardiac arrest several minutes later. Although the information had been dispatched that Rabb suffered from several medical conditions, one of the officers allegedly made comments when he first arrived that Rabb appeared to be on an illegal drug, either cocaine or PCP, whereas it was clear that the medical personnel who accompanied the officers realized that Rabb was actually suffering from what's called “hypoglycemic unawareness” due to an extremely low blood sugar(a reading below 20 in his case), according to their interviews with the CPRC investigators.

I spoke with individuals who are diabetic, all of whom had experience similar episodes and were unable to think rationally or coherently. They easily related to what Rabb was likely experiencing and provided valuable information on what this situation is like to the person experiencing it and also how they might present themselves to those who are trying to help them. The ability to assess a situation involving an individual who may be mentally or medically ill is an important skill for a police officer, who is most often the individual who is the first responder in many cases.

The commission is currently investigating the Brown shooting and received a preliminary briefing on that process by its investigator, Butch Warnberg last month. According to Warnberg’s preliminary report, Brown had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and had been prescribed medication at some time to treat his illness. His toxicology test results will be discussed at the next briefing by the CPRC’s investigator on this shooting.

Capt. Pete Esquival, formerly assigned to the department’s personnel and training division provided valuable insight to the CPRC in its discussions of these issues that arose during the process of it drafting public reports on the Argow and Rabb investigations. He did the initial work on researching the development of training for the police department until he was reassigned. In conversations with Esquival, he had expressed concern and great interest on this issue.


Many cities and counties across the United States have already implemented these programs to assist their law enforcement agencies in interacting with those who are mentally or medically ill and more agencies are addressing this issue. Most of these programs are based on two models. The Crisis Intervention Team model is a commonly used program by many major cities including Akron , Ohio , Cincinnati , Ohio , Columbus , Ohio , Houston , Texas , Salt Lake City , Utah , Portland , Oregon , Memphis , Tennessee , Louisville Kentucky among other cities and counties in other states including Colorado , Georgia and Maine . The creation or expansion of the crisis intervention teams were critical components of federal consent decrees imposed on several cities including Los Angeles and Cincinnati . The LAPD had also received a recommendation to consolidate its new CIT program with preexisting programs including its SMART program which is based on a different model..

Under the crisis intervention team model, law enforcement officers receive 40 hours of specialized training which encompasses a wide variety of topics, including mental illnesses, treatments and how to interact with the mentally ill including those who are combative or violent. The city of Riverside was first exposed to the CIT model when representatives from the Memphis Police Department gave a presentation on their program to the Mayor’s Use of Force Panel in 1999.

The co-partner model is one utilized by several law enforcement agencies including those in the city of Long Beach, Los Angeles(through SMART) and in San Diego County which pairs up law enforcement officers with mental health professionals.

The challenges discovered with both models which have been evaluated and studied both within the cities and counties that utilize them as well as in general, are to ensure that there are enough teams staffed to serve the needs of the law enforcement agency and the city’s communities in terms of interfacing with mentally ill individuals especially in jurisdictions where there are high populations of people and/or large geographic areas. Challenges also arise in terms of ensuring that there is adequate staffing in terms of having these teams available 24/7 or as close to that as possible especially during evenings and weekends. Some of these issues and others are raised in the following article.

Dying for treatment: Mentally ill and the police

However, the studies conducted, particularly on the crisis intervention team model have yielded positive results, in that often there is a lower rate of excessive force or even use of force incidents involving the mentally ill and fewer fatal incidents. It is important for there to be medical organizations, private (which is most often the case) and/or public in the development or implementation of these training programs and that community involvement in the process is encouraged. These elements and others have helped make other programs successful.

Further analysis of the recommendations to the LAPD on its mental health training programs as part of its consent decree, in 2002 are included in the below report and provide insight into the issues pertaining to the creation and implementation of mental health training programs in law enforcement agencies in general.

LAPD recommendations on mentally ill training programs


The creation and implementation of a mental health crisis intervention program including training needs to be a major priority for the police department and for the city for many reasons. The creation of mental health training is not an indictment against any particular fatal shooting or other incident involving use of force. It is a tool that officers can use in situations involving individuals who are mentally ill, medically ill, mentally disabled or otherwise unable to understand let alone respond to their verbal commands. The department should be supported by the city, including the elected city government in its efforts to update its training in this critical area.

Developing this training is part and parcel of the philosophy of community policing which is an integral element of many of the objectives of the department’s Strategic Plan. It helps foster community trust in the police department and is another way for the community to remain vested in the process. It also provides police officers with additional tools to assist them in addressing incidents involving the mentally or medically ill. Many police officers who have use lethal force leave their agencies within five years of the incident as has been the case in relation to several shootings involving this police department since 2001. Some police officers never recover from these incidents. Community members who lose loved ones and those who witness these fatal incidents do not recover either.

If you are interested in more information on this issue, I can provide you with many online resources to read, depending on your area of concern and interest.


Sincerely,

From sea to shining sea

Marie Rose Dorismond made a 28 hour pilgrimage to New York City, by bus to attend the funeral of Sean Bell, 23, who was shot and killed by five NYPD officers. Her son was Patrick Dorismond who was also killed by NYPD officers several years ago.

She was traveling by Greyhound at the age of 59, to offer her support to Bell's family members as someone who had been in their shoes, according to an article in the New York Times.

Police shooting reunites circle of common loss

(excerpt)

"I don’t know what I would have done without them,” Mrs. Dorismond, a Haitian immigrant who came to New York at 18 to study nursing, said of the relatives of Amadou Diallo and others who died in encounters with the police.

“Nobody can understand that pain but me, Mrs. Diallo and the others. When it was my turn, everybody came.”


So she traveled to the place where she had lost her own son, to offer comfort to other women like her, who are also members of what is a growing family, whose members are decided not by blood, but by fate.

Even though most of their loved ones' deaths resulted in large cash settlements from the city to resolve civil litigation, that doesn't soften the blow for members of this "family" who reunite at funerals to support its newest members.


Also, discussions at the Empire Zone at the New York Times, on the shooting and its aftermath continue and comments come in including this one by a former NYPD detective.

A former detective's plea

(excerpt)


"I wish we all could spend time in a uniform as a cop to give us a better understanding of the type of decisions and consequences that are associated with just trying to do this dangerous and often stressful job. Although during my shooting I fired only three times after being blindsided by an array of bullets during an undercover sting, I can definitely relate to the fear that can contribute to what appears to be excessive behavior under the circumstances. There’s no room for error, and it happens so fast. "


Nichole Paultre, who was Bell's fiancee told the media that she was not angry with the police officers who shot and killed him.

Fiancee of Sean Bell not angry at police


(excerpt, International Herald Tribune article)


"I'm really not angry," a subdued Nicole Paultre told CNN interviewer Larry King in her first extensive comments since fiance Sean Bell's killing Nov. 25. "I'm more just trying to be strong. We just want justice.... That's it, and that's what we're praying for and hoping for."


In the New York Daily News, Bell's friend, Joseph Guzman, who was also shot by police, said that he didn't want any violence committed in his name or on his behalf. Guzman is still hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

Bell's friend speaks out


"You could put this in the newspaper," Guzman said as he grasped the hand of a Daily News reporter. "I took 16 shots, but a superstar died that night."

Trent Benefield, who was also shot by the same police officers who took the life of his friend also spoke out in the same newspaper. He was shot three times, and delivered his statement from a wheel chair.

My friend is dead


The NYPD claimed yesterday that one of its confidential informants had purchased crack cocaine from Bell, but the department stated that it did not arrest him at the time because it was interested in learning who his suppliers were. Bell had been arrested twice in the past year, according to the department. The lawyers for Bell's two surviving friends said that the NYPD was going after the victims to avoid addressing its own role in the shooting.

Al Sharpton has announced that there will be a march down 5th Avenue on Dec. 16 to protest the shooting. Bell's family will participate and will march alongside him. Sharpton had distanced himself from an earlier march sponsored by the New Black Panther Party, but apparently has decided that marching is the appropriate reponse to take, after all.

Al Sharpton to march

(Excerpt, New York Daily News)

"Last year [transit workers union leader] Roger Toussaint shocked the city," Sharpton said. "This time we will."


A closed door meeting was held with select people from what the newspaper called a "Who's Who" of community leaders. Discussions of civil disobedience melded with talk of asking for the resignation of NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Calvin Butts, of the Abysssinian Baptist Church in Harlem was one of the most vocal.

"That might be something we need to consider," said Butts, who organized a public hearing in Harlem last week to discuss police abuse. He said he was surprised by the big response his hearing evoked.

"There are a number of people who have had encounters with the police," Butts said. "These are truly horror stories that happen every day in communities of color."



Michael Daly of the New York Daily News, in his latest column writes about NYPD officer, Maryann Andrews whose husband, Det. Rodney Andrews and his partner Det. James Nemorin were shot to death. She returned to her job, but continues to mourn her husband at the same time Paultre mourns the loss of her fiancee.


Anguish of a good cop

(excerpt)

She doesn't want people to feel sorry for her," a longtime detective recalled yesterday. "She came to work and she did her job. It had to be hard on that woman. Most people would lay down and not do anything."

The detective then repeated that highest praise among dedicated cops.

"She does her job," he said, adding, "Maryann's aces."



In California, other police agencies came under scrutiny, including one in Orange County. Only that agency came under scrutiny when alleged misconduct was found to have occurred, only it wasn't treated as misconduct.

A man arrested during a traffic stop recently filed a complaint against officers at Huntington Beach Police Department because he alleged they planted a gun in his vehicle, which was “discovered” during the traffic stop. The department found that his allegation was true, but exonerated the officers involved.

Say what?

Yes, it’s true that the department exonerated the officers, citing a little known policy that permits, even encourages its officers to engage in this practice, for training purposes, according to an article in the Orange County Register.

Huntington Beach Police Department officers plant evidence as part of training exercise


Thomas Cox said he stood and watched as an officer tossed a gun in the trunk of his Hyundai. A few minutes later, an officer “found” the gun.

(excerpt)

"I was thinking, 'what the hell is this?'" said Cox, a 45-year-old construction superintendent. "I thought I was going to get a weapons charge. I thought I was going to get my ass kicked."

An officer found the gun minutes later, Cox said.

"That's not my gun!" Cox said he shouted.


Planting evidence in unsuspecting people’s cars to train officers how to find contraband not surprisingly had its critics.

(excerpt)

"I've never heard of anybody doing that," said George Wright, chairman of the Criminal Justice Department at Santa Ana College. "You're using someone else's property, and that can lead to other problems. … What if someone forgets about the gun and just leaves it behind?"

Still, Chief Kenneth Small defended his officers.

(excerpt)

"I didn't feel comfortable holding one officer accountable for it when others were doing it as well," Small said. "I think the department did something wrong because we didn't make sure people understood what our policy really was."

As if that’s the only problem here.




In Riverside County, a former Riverside County Sheriff's Department deputy landed a sweet-heart deal after pleading guilty to two charges of residential burglary and three charges of indecent exposure and faces a little more than a year in state prison.

Originally, John Wayne Leseberg, who had worked for the department for 15 years, had been charged in the sexual assaults of three women and the sexual harassment of an elderly woman.

If convicted, he would have faced up to 15 years in prison. Of course, the Riverside County District Attorney's office and Leseberg's own attorney had different explanations for the sudden decision to bring this case, one of a series of different cases involving deputies in the courts right now, to an end.

Ex-deputy pleads guilty in sexual assault case


In Rivercity, questions keep emerging in the officer-involved shooting death of Lee Deante Brown, including the issue of taser, taser who's got the taser.



After the shooting, where was the taser?

(according to transcripts of interviews by investigators):


Det. Mike Medici: "Okay, so last you saw of him, the taser was actually in his hands?"

Officer Paul Stucker: "I couldn't see it but I thought the taser was in his hands."




Officer Terry Ellefson: "At one point, I remember Officer Stucker came in and kicked the taser away from him."

Lee Deante Brown: Anatomy of a shooting

Witness Lynette Wilsey: “You know what? It’s like this. I’m not for sure if the other one shot him or the other one shot him. But does it matter?

Det. Rick Cobb: “Actually it kind of does. We want to know exactly who did it


“Who” in this case was Riverside Police Department officer Terry Ellefson. “Him” was Lee Deante Brown, a Black man in his early 30s who was shot and killed by Ellefson at the Welcome Inn of America in the Eastside neighborhood last April.

What else happened during the two and a half minutes that lapsed between Officer Michael Paul Stucker’s arrival at the Welcome Inn of America and Brown’s shooting, depends on whom you ask.

And ask, they did, the detectives who were assigned to investigate the shooting. They spoke with many civilian witnesses as well as police officers. What resulted was many different accounts of the same shooting, with many differences within them and between them, according to the interview transcripts.

Lynette Wilsey was one of those witnesses. An African-American cleaning woman at the motel, she had been removing graffiti from inside one of the rooms with the manager when she had first seen Brown acting strangely. After she heard him screaming outside, Wilsey had walked up to him and told him to calm down. One of the residents had told her that Brown was on angel dust. She had tried to give him some water but he tossed it aside.

Wilsey stood five feet away from Brown when Officer Michael Paul Stucker first arrived. Stucker had left his vehicle and walked up towards Brown, commanding him to put his hands on the wall. Brown had told the officer, “no”.

Brown had been tased and then struck by an officer’s baton. At some point, Wilsey heard someone scream, “It’s a gun,” after Ellefson had pulled out his gun.


“And then all of a sudden, I heard pow, pow! And the officer shot him! And he didn’t have to shoot him. He was laying right there.”


At first, Wilsey did not believe what she had just seen, then reality set in.


“I thought it was a taser. But it wasn’t a taser. It was the damn gun.”



Rachael Nichole Bacon was in her room at the motel when she first saw Brown outside her window. She said that she believed that Brown was mentally ill, by the way he was acting.


“But just the way he was talking to himself, you could tell that he was mentally ill and needed help.”


Rachael left her room after hearing Stucker yell, “Get down the ground”. She then saw Brown lying face down on the ground and Stucker pointing something toward Brown and yelling at him to “stay on the ground or I’ll shock you again.”

Rachael said that the second officer arrived, and both officers tried to handcuff Brown. At one point, he had been sitting on the sidewalk with one handcuff on, screaming “Mariah, Mariah”. Mariah was his daughter, it turned out. She said both officers tased him and that she heard a woman screaming, “you don’t have to shock him like that”. Then she saw one officer hit Brown with his baton three to four times. One of the investigators asked her if she could hear the taser at that point.


“I couldn’t. I just heard the slamming of the night stick. I couldn’t hear the tasering anymore.”


At one point, Brown had been on his knees and ducking his head, according to Rachael.


“I don’t know what the guy did wrong. I didn’t see any weapons. And he was on the ground when they shot him.”


When the first shot was fired, Rachael turned around to look at her kitchen stove believing that something had “popped” there. Then she heard the second shot and knew who had been hit.



Across the street, maintenance man John Gonzalez was making repairs in a room on the second story of the Budget Inn. He first noticed the activity at the other motel when he heard a police siren and saw a squad car arrive. He saw Stucker standing near a prone Brown. Then the second officer arrived wearing a dark colored baseball cap and ran towards Brown. Both officers moved on Brown and wrestled with him, with Brown squirming, kicking and moving his arms. The officers managed to get one handcuff on his wrist.

After the struggle, both officers moved back and away from Brown, who sat on the ground waving his arms at both of them and yelling. Ellefson discharged his taser and Gonzalez could hear the discharged electricity and saw that it did not affect Brown at all. Further attempts to tase Brown did not work, and both officers then knocked Brown down. Stucker stepped back and pulled out his retractable baton. Brown was sitting and Stucker struck him several times on the legs.

Ellefson then stepped to the right and in front of Brown, drawing his gun. Gonzalez saw a handcuff dangling from Brown's right wrist but nothing in his hands.


“And as he was down on the ground, that cop pulled out his gun and shot him twice from about this close.”

Brown fell on his left side, his face hitting the ground.


“He shot him twice and that was the end of that. And it shocked the big cop. He was kind of like, ‘whoa, what was the hell was that,”



Kenneth Williams had been talking to Brown before he flagged down Stucker and told him that he believed Brown to be on “water”. Williams had seen Brown jumping on vehicles and acting in a “crazy and strange way”. Stucker approached Brown who was lying in a fetal position, with a taser in his hands. He ordered Brown to get up and put his hands against the wall six to eight times, before Brown stood up and took a step towards him. Stucker then discharged his taser.

Brown fell on the ground and was on his stomach as Stucker commanded him to put his hands behind his back. Brown complied, then Ellefson arrived. He knelt down and put on knee on Brown’s back and managed to handcuff one wrist. Brown twisted away then jumped to his feet. Ellefson discharged his taser.

Williams said that Ellefson then hit Brown with his baton before doing a contact tasing on his neck. After that, Ellefson stepped back and fired one shot, hitting Brown in the shoulder. Brown spun around and went down on one knee, but jumped back up and took a step towards Ellefson who then took out his gun and shot him again, in the chest.




While working the day shift in the Canyoncrest neighborhood, Officer Michael Paul Stucker had been monitoring his radio, listening to a flurry of calls about a Black man acting strangely while traveling down several streets including University Avenue. Reports came in that he was screaming, jumping on vehicles, exposing himself and blocking traffic. Stucker was heading down University Avenue when he was flagged down by Kenneth Williams. Stucker told investigators that the man had walked up to him and said, “Yeah, there’s this guy acting really strange. You need to do something.”

Stucker alerted the dispatcher of his arrival at the scene. He did not know much about Brown except what had transpired on his radio.

”I don’t know his name. I was never able to get a name.”


Stucker removed his M26 taser from his car. He did not wear a holster to carry it in, but kept it in the car. Before this day, he had never discharged it in the line of duty, despite being certified to use a M26 taser for several years, according to his training records.

Approaching Brown, Stucker noted that he was on the ground, waving him away. He then retreated to an alcove out of sight. Stucker followed, and saw that Brown was leaning against a wall as if to avoid detection. Stucker ordered Brown to put his hands against the wall. Brown ignored him and kept yelling “mumbo jumbo”. Brown yelled about God, Jesus, and what turned out to be his young daughter Mariah.

Stucker continued to order Brown to put his hands on the wall. At some point, Stucker had also activated his department issued digital audiorecorder, deciding that this situation didn’t look good. He pointed his taser at Brown who yelled back that he didn’t want to get shocked. Stucker continued ordering Brown to put his hands on the wall.


“He took a step towards me and I had to deploy my taser.”


Which Stucker did. One electrode hit Brown and the other landed on the ground. Brown stiffened and fell on the ground. Ellefson arrived at about that point, handcuffs in hand and proceeded to approach Brown. Ellefson told Stucker to turn off his taser so he could safely handcuff Brown. Brown began to resist and although Stucker said he heard the first handcuff “click”, Brown then twisted away and sat up, facing both officers.

Stucker heard Ellefson deploy his taser but was uncertain whether it was a contact tasing or one where the probes were deployed. Stucker then decided to remove his taser’s cartridge to facilitate a contact strike. Brown then grabbed him on the arm and Stucker received an electric shock which entered through one arm and exited down the opposite leg. Stucker quickly left Brown, turning his back on him while he tried to figure out where the shock came from. There, in the knuckle of his left little finger, was a taser probe embedded in his skin.

Stucker then turned back around and saw Brown sitting on the ground, either squatting or sitting on his butt with his legs extended in front of him. He held Ellefson’s taser in his hands. He put his own taser in the small of his back and reached for his baton. Stucker said he didn't know if the cartridge was still attached or not, but he could see a light.


“And as I pulled out my extendable baton, extended it and I hit the suspect on the lower part of the leg, below the knee twice. And as I’m preparing to do it again, I hear two gunshots and Terry is standing immediately to my right.”


At the beginning of his interview with investigators, Stucker also said the following.


“So he was standing up and the two shots went. He fell forward and continued to move around.”

Towards the end of the interview, Stucker said this.


“Yes, he remained on the ground, fell forward and with his back to---to where Terry and I were standing.”

Stucker was asked by the department’s investigators why he had not shot Brown.


“I didn’t shoot because I had a baton in my hand and because I had a baton in my hand.”


Stucker had said that he saw the taser in Brown's hand and then pulled out his baton. However, at the briefing the department gave to the CPRC in April, its representative had said that Stucker had drawn his baton first.

After the shooting, Stucker said that he had believed the taser was in Brown’s hands but because the hands were tucked underneath him, Stucker was unable to see it.



Ellefson arrived at the Welcome Inn Motel of America after being dispatched, and activated his audio recorder. He saw Brown lying on the ground and Stucker aiming a taser at him. Ellefson heard the taser cycle and that wire leads were attached to Brown’s body. He approached Brown from the rear with his handcuffs in his right hand. Lying on his stomach, Brown appeared to comply. Ellefson told Stucker to turn off the taser. Ellefson then put his body weight on Brown’s back and placed the handcuff on his left arm.

Brown then began to struggle, causing Ellefson to lose his grip. Ellefson then stumbled backward, trying to maintain his footing. Brown then turned back and faced both officers. After taking a step back, Ellefson them drew his taser and deployed it, from about six feet away. The taser cycle had no effect on Brown, which led to Ellefson activating it again and still, Brown had no reaction.

Ellefson removed the cartridge from his X26 taser and moved towards Brown to attempt a contact strike, which he applied to his upper shoulder. Brown still showed no reaction to the taser. Ellefson struggled with Brown and they began to go to the ground. Ellefson applied the third contact strike to Brown, after Stucker warned him to watch out for Brown’s loose handcuff flailing about. Then Ellefson realized he no longer had his taser in his hand.


“I had a firm grip on my taser and the next thing I knew, I did not have my taser in my hand anymore.”

Brown was in a crouched position, but Ellefson couldn’t see Brown’s feet and he couldn’t see his taser either. He then saw Brown reach down between his feet and pick up his taser. Ellefson moved away from Brown, but couldn’t see where the taser was aimed.


“I was focused on the taser so I didn’t see where it was pointing.”

As he moved away, he said that Brown moved as well.


“The suspect stood—kind of pushed forward and lunged toward me with the taser.”

Ellefson then pulled out his gun and shot Brown twice in his center mass, from the hip. Brown was about two feet away from him at the time. It was Ellefson's second fatal officer-involved shooting in five months.


Both Stucker and Ellefson had activated their digital audio recorders. Stucker’s recording was transcribed by the department and submitted with the rest of the investigative case records. Oddly enough, the department never transcribed Ellefson’s recording and only decided to do so after the CPRC requested a copy of it.

Stucker’s recording consists of him largely giving commands at Brown including to put his hands on the wall, to lie still or to put his hands behind his back. He also warned Ellefson approximately 15 seconds before the shooting to watch out for Brown’s loose handcuff which he was swinging as a weapon. Ten seconds before the shooting, he and Ellefson are still issuing commands at Brown to put his hands behind his back. Then the shots are fired. Afterwards, the two officers are still ordering Brown to stay down and put his hands behind his back.

About one minute after the shooting, Stucker mentions the taser for the first time, saying that is in Brown’s hand. In his interview, Stucker had said that he never saw the taser after the shooting but that he believed that it was in Brown’s hand, which were tucked beneath his body out of sight. Det. Mike Medici asked Stucker if the last time he saw Brown, was the taser in his hands.

“I couldn’t see it but I thought the taser was in his hands.”



Stucker said in his interview that he warned both Ellefson and the paramedics that Brown still had the taser in his hands.


“We—we even once the medics got there, we were warning them as they were coming up, ‘hey, this guy has been very combative and he still has a taser in his hands.”


Ellefson was not certain where the taser was after he had shot Brown, but his best memory was that it was in Brown’s hand by his right side.

“At one point, I remember Officer Stucker came and kicked the taser away from him.”

Ellefson's X26 taser was photographed lying on the ground in front of Motel room #9. It was missing its cartridge.


A partial transcript of Ellefson’s recording by the CPRC includes statements made by Ellefson before the shooting. Ten seconds before he fired his gun, he had grabbed hold of Brown’s loose handcuff. When asked by investigators if he was giving commands before the shooting, Ellefson told them that he had been ordering Brown to get on the ground.

Four and a half minutes after the shooting, an unknown person asks Ellefson where his taser is and Ellefson responds, “Right there.” Ninety seconds later, he tells someone that Brown picked up the taser. Nearly eight minutes after the shooting, he tells an unknown person that Brown came up with the taser and he shot downward. Three minutes later he repeats himself.

“Two shots, trajectory downward.”

Two sergeants who were onscene after the shooting told investigators that Ellefson had provided some details about the shooting.

Sgt. Russell Shubert said that Ellefson had told him that he had fired two rounds in a southern direction, and the trajectory was downwards.

After the shooting, many of the witnesses were upset and even Stucker noticed that an angry crowd of local residents had gathered, yelling and screaming at the police officers. Reinforcements were called to come to the scene to deal with the crowd.

During interviews, several witnesses expressed similar feelings, and the way the investigators responded reveals a lot about the dynamics of an agency assigned the task of investigating its own who use lethal force.



Det. Mike Medici(to Lynette Wilsey):

"Okay and whether my partner is there or not at the time. Sometimes you don't realize who's standing by you or not when things--when shit hits the fan if you will, okay? So I tase you and it doesn't affect you. And I bring my stick out and I stick you. And in this case, maybe it affects him, maybe it doesn't. We don't know that yet. But let's say it doesn't. Okay? I'm out of--now what?

"...Okay, I'm not saying that is what happened. But what happens and you give me a situation where that gentleman takes my stick from me? What happens when I got a guy that's six times my strength now?"


Det. Rowe to witness Rachay Lear:

"He just--why--why--why would the officer just pull out his gun and shoot the guy if he's just sitting on his butt doing nothing."

Lear:

"Because to me, I feel like he just got frustrated with shocking him or something. Like, this isn't working, something is going to have to work."

Shades of Diallo: Not to wed but to mourn

Hundreds of people congregated for Sean Bell's funeral in the same church he was to have been married in last Saturday. On Nov. 25, Bell, 23, was shot and killed by five New York Police Department officers who between them fired 50 shots at his vehicle.

During what should have been the first week of his marriage, his family prepared to bury him. Two of his friends still are hospitalized with injuries sustained from multiple gunshot wounds. His fiancee Nichole Paultre became a widow, before she ever was a wife.The minister, Lester Williams, who was to pronounce them man and wife, instead delivered Bell's eulogy. He asked mourners to focus on Bell's life, rather than his tragic death.

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls. The bell tolls for Sean. The bells are ringing outrage," he added.

Dozens of people marched around the church, but police barricades stretching two blocks away kept the crowds away.


USA Today: Sean Bell's funeral

New York Times: Bell's funeral

New York Daily News: Bell's funeral

NYC Indymedia: Sean Bell funeral photos

(excerpt, USA Today)

"They took his life, but we can't let them take his legacy," the Rev. Al Sharpton said, repeatedly greeted with cheers and "Amens" from the overflow crowd. "We must give Sean a legacy. A legacy of justice, a legacy of fairness. We don't hate cops, we don't hate race, we hate wrong."

Paultre wept at the cemetary as Bell's body was placed in the ground for burial. Many of the 200 onlookers were wearing buttons bearing Bell's image.

Sean Bell's burial


Police officers had been conducting a series of raids in Queens searching for the elusive man in black and the even more elusive gun they believed he carried while allegedly fleeing the scene of the shooting. Now, they are searching through sewer grates in what many has criticized as attempts by the NYPD to divert attention away from itself and onto those its officers shot when a sting operation being conducted involving prostitution at a local strip club turned ended in a deadly shooting.



In the New York Times, the NYPD defended the raids it had conducted in Queens.


“The N.Y.P.D. Internal Affairs Bureau is conducting appropriate follow-up inquiries and providing all information to the Queens district attorney,” the department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said.

Okay, so it was the Internal Affairs Division, which was created to investigate allegations of misconduct including criminal behavior against police officers that is now arresting civilians, detaining others and interrogating them in their homes? That is doubtful.

Queens is heating up, as a protest led by the new Black Panther Party and other organizations led hundreds of people in the streets. Other Black leaders including Al Sharpton stayed away even though many of the comments made at the protest mirrored those he and other leaders had made earlier.

Rally of rage

Malik Zulu Shabazz, national chairman of the New Black Panther Party, grasped a megaphone with one hand and pumped his fist with the other as he addressed the raucous rally.

"On the charges of outright assassination of young black men, how do you find the NYPD?" Shabazz asked. "Guilty!" he answered, quickly echoed by the crowd.
Shabazz then asked the same question about Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. "Guilty!" came the replies.


Later on Friday, the police department announced that it had located its mysterious man, Jean Nelson, in black. However, his attorney told the New York Daily News that his client witnessed the shooting but was unarmed and not involved in the incident.

Mystery man allegedly found


WABC said that it had exclusive information here on the shooting investigation. Included in the article is information on the numerous 911 phone calls that were made and on ballistic evidence recovered from the scene including 41 discharged 9mm casings and 15 deformed bullets including one from the nearby AirTrain terminal. During the shooting, two Port Authority officers there narrowly avoided being hit but suffered minor injuries from glass shattered by bullets.

The debate about whether the shooting had anything to do with race continues here. Mayor Michael Bloomberg continues to deny that it does, because the police officers who shot at Bell and his friends were members of different racial groups.

A leader of a civil rights organization disagrees.

(excerpt, AP story)

"It doesn't matter what color cop it is," said Michael Meyers, the executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. "The overwhelming number of victims of questionable police shootings have been young black men."

And Texas A&M sociologist Joe Feagin warns that minority officers are not immune from stereotypes, based on race.

"Even if you're an officer of color, you're in a whitewashed world," he said. Those officers, Feagin said, may see black people as more dangerous than white people.


The issue of how police officers are trained to deal with different situations was also discussed.

"The training issue is a big issue," said Karen Blum, a professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. "Even if you took race out of this picture, these officers were not trained well in how to respond in this kind of situation."

This debate probably mattered little to the hundreds of mourners at Bell's funeral who gathered to say goodbye to a man who was killed on his wedding day.

In the weeks ahead, these questions and more are sure to be asked by many, over and over again as they have been in many a fatal encounter between a young Black man and the NYPD police department.



Across the country, in Riverside, questions are being asked along similiar lines about the fatal shooting of Lee Deante Brown earlier this year.

The transcripts of those who were interviewed by investigators, whether they were civilians or police officers, yielded interesting information about the moments that preceded Brown's shooting. They also produced many questions, fewer answers.

Civilians disagreed with civilians. Civilians disagreed with police officers. Police officers disagreed with police officers. Police officer disagreed with belt recording. Investigators explain shooting circumstances to civilian witnesses. And in the middle of all this confusion, lies the truth.

The Brown shooting is being investigated by the police department, the Community Police Review Commission and the FBI.


Witness Lynette Wilsey: “You know what? It’s like this. I’m not for sure if the other one shot him or the other one shot him. But does it matter?

Det. Rick Cobb: “Actually it kind of does. We want to know exactly who did it.


To be continued...

Shades of Diallo: Who are the victims?

On the day that Sean Bell was to be buried, the New York Police Department made several announcements as tensions increase in Queens in the wake of several raids conducted by the NYPD which is still searching for the elusive man in black it claims was fleeing the scene of the shooting, purportedly carrying a the "smoking" gun, according to the New York Daily News.

Actually, witnesses had described the "man in black" as wearing a beige jacket and it was the police department's assertion that he was fleeing with a gun.

The raids lead to six arrests on weapons related charges but no gun was uncovered, and no mystery man was either. People in an already tense neighborhood decried the raids and several called them efforts to "blame the victims".

Apparently, one suspected "mystery man" was uncovered, named Jean Nelson who had attended the stag party in question.

(excerpt)

Nelson - a 27-year-old known on the street as M.O. - was one of several men who gathered for Bell's bachelor party at the Kalua Cabaret strip club in Jamaica before the fatal police shooting.

Cops picked up Nelson early yesterday, then kicked him loose without charging him - leading a high-ranking law enforcement source to say he was not the mystery man.

Later, Nelson was picked up again and rushed off in a police car, along with several other neighborhood residents.

(excerpt)

The aggressive tactics infuriated black residents in Jamaica, who are seething over the fatal police shooting of yet another unarmed black man.

"I think what they are doing is repulsive, disgusting and deplorable," said Bishop Erskine Williams Sr., whose son was among those nabbed Wednesday and yesterday during the raids.

"They are trying to put together something to cover up an assassination and an execution of this young boy," said Williams, who has been acting as a spokesman for Benefield and Guzman.

William's son, Erskine, jr. was picked up allegedly for failing to pay a $25 trespassing fine as was his friend, Jameek Benston. LaToya Smith was not charged with any crime when the police came looking for her, nor was she asked about a gun. She did allege that officers questioning her about Bell's friends had told her that if she didn't tell them what they wanted to her, she would get five years.

If the United States Department of Justice is sitting on the sidelines watching as this takes place, it should think about doing an independent probe on the NYPD for this reason alone.

All this running around looking for a gun that if found is too far away from the epicenter of the shooting to prove anything except there are guns in Queens, simply to get out of trying to figure out why one officer broke his cover, another exhausted two magazines of his weapon and the supervising officer was not only shirking in his responsibilities over his officers, but he was hiding underneath the dashboard even while believing(in error) that they were in horrible danger.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is skipping the funeral at the family's request. No memorial of a son's death should become a circus. Thankfully he agrees.


Some say here that the NYPD has actually shown marked improvement in the past several years, according to the International Herald Tribune. Statistics show that officer-involved shootings are down and the average number of shots fired per shooting stands at about 3.8 bullets, which is down from five bullets which was the average last year.

(excerpt)

"Our officers have shown, I think, tremendous restraint over time involving the use of force," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said this week.

This is of course, in the wake of a shooting that expended 50 bullets, nine more than what was expended in the shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999.

New York Civil Liberties Union head, Donna Lieberman has called for an independent probe of the Bell shooting.

"The shooting has to be looked at in that context," she said. "This is a time when the city should try to learn what went wrong — not be defensive, but try to identify problems and solutions."


The issue of how the department's special divisions including the narcotics and vice units should operate in neighborhood has also been the topic of much discussion and debate.

(excerpt, International Herald Tribune)

"Special units often become detached from the normal chain of supervision," said Samuel Walker, a police policy consultant and professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. "There's an attitude of, 'We can do what we want.'"

Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer who teaches police studies at John Jay, said the NYPD's reputation is deservedly high among most experts, but he also noted that special units had been involved in several of New York's troubling incidents.

"They tend to be in more dangerous situations," Moskos said. "But I don't think the local beat cops would have shot Diallo. They know the area better. There's less fear."


Fortunately, the NYPD is taking some time away from conducting sweeps, to re-evaluate how it operates its undercover units as related here.

Several high-ranking officers in the NYPD announced that there will be a committee convened to examine the recruitment and training of its undercover officers as well as look into a rule that doesn't mandate that undercover officers have their breath tested for alcohol concentration while onduty.

(excerpt, Xinhua)

"Obviously questions have arisen concerning our undercover procedures," said Kelly. "I want to take a fresh look at it, clean sheet of paper, examination of it. We have undercover operations in several of our bureaus and we want to make sure our procedures are appropriate, that our policies are appropriate and I think these are the right people to do that."

In Syndey, Australia, there is news that the NYPD continues to circle its wagons, here. At the New York Times blog, Empire Zone, there are many blogs listed where this shooting is being discussed including this one, Five Before Midnight.

Statistics on fatal officer-involved shootings mentioned in International Herald Tribune article:

New York City: nine shootings, with an average of 0.25 shootings per 1,000 officers.

Philedelphia: 19 shootings

Las Vegas: 12 with an average of 5.5 shootings per 1,000 officers

Riverside(not in article): 3 with an average of 7.9 shootings per 1,000 officers(10.5 shootings per 1,000 officers in 12 month period).