Holiday tidings from coast to coast

It looks like members of the Riverside Sheriffs' Association will not be facing criminal charges from the United States Attorney's office after all, according to an article published in today's Press Enterprise.

Federal probe of deputies' union ends

The beleagured labor union celebrated and called the federal agencies' decision to drop the case as a vindication of its innocence of allegations which were made through a series of anonymous faxes that were sent to different stations in the Riverside County Sheriff's Department during at least two separate time periods this year. These faxes were unsigned and alleged that there was corruption inside the sheriffs' association. An investigation was soon initiated by both the FBI and the Department of Labor which included a raid that was conducted on the association's headquarters.

The sheriff's department's response to the news was a bit more guarded.

(excerpt)

Riverside County Undersheriff Neil Lingle said his department had not received official word from the U.S. Attorney's Office that the case has been closed.

"However, we have learned preliminarily that they are not going to seek federal charges because of a lack of resources," he said, without elaborating. "As with all of these types of cases, we will now have to determine if there have been any violations of departmental policy and move forward accordingly."

Michael J. Proctor, attorney for the Legal Defense Fund division of the association, said that on a scale of one to 10, his clients had received a 10 for exoneration as if he were talking about a gymnastics meet. The joint investigation was conducted to determine whether the dues of the union's members placed in the defense fund had been misappropriated by several board members and a former trust officer when they were spent on legal fees surrounding civil and criminal actions involving a former deputy. Hopefully, that wasn't the case. Every member of a labor union including those in law enforcement agencies should be able to trust that their financial contributions are being appropriately spent. When that trust is undermined, it produces a bad situation that isn't completely erased by annoucements such as this one.


Earlier news:

Federal warrant served at Riverside Sheriffs' Association


Everyone will have to wait and see whether this latest development in FaxGate elicits another flurry of faxes during the holiday season.


A former Riverside County Sheriff's Department deputy received bad news when a Riverside County Superior Court jury convicted him of 10 felony charges including conflict of interest, misappropriation of funds and grand theft.

Ex-RCC administrator convicted of 10 felonies


William O'Rafferty who was formerly an administrator at both Riverside Community College and the Ben Clark Training Academy faces up to eight years in state prison. Two other former deputies and administrators, Steve Bailey and Ron Curtin plead guilty to lessor charges and received restitution fines and probation.

Several jurors commented on the case afterwards, according to the news article.

(excerpt)

Three members of the jury said outside the courtroom that they found the evidence against O'Rafferty overwhelming.
Joel Ballina, 53, called the case straightforward.

"There was no way to interpret the law any differently," said Ballina, a maintenance mechanic.

Laury Godwin, another member of the jury, said it was not easy decision, but that she was convinced O'Rafferty "used his role" for his personal financial gain. Godwin said she is a teacher who works for the state and that it was clear to her that O'Rafferty's actions were wrong.

Another member of the jury, Joan McCullough, a homemaker, said it was a tough decision, but that she also believed O'Rafferty was guilty.

McCullough added that she didn't think that Palo Verde and RCC administrators did their jobs well.

"Unfortunately, we don't all believe we broke the law when we park illegally, but we still get the fine and have to pay," McCullough said.


Earlier articles by San Diego Union-Tribune

Defendent testifies at embezzlement trial

Prosecution witness testifies

Further testimony in embezzlement trial




The Los Angeles Times published an article today about how fewer LAPD complaints were upheld pertaining to gender bias while former Deputy Chief Michael Berkow supervised the department's internal affairs division. According to the article, the percentage of sustained complaints in this category decreased from 25% to only 10% during his tenure.

Surprise, surprise.

After all, Berkow is currently under investigation for allegations that he had given promotions to female officers he had slept with. These accusations stemmed from a law suit filed by a female officer which is currently under litigation and they erupted into the public sphere after court records in that case were made public.

The reaction even among those in the department was immediate.

(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)


"The public should be real concerned," said LAPD Det. Art Placencia, president of the Latin American Law Enforcement Assn. "That's a real big red flag. They did a mediocre job."

Placecia's association has filed discrimination claims against the department. He also said that the department was reluctant to sustain complaints involving discrimination because of fear that the city would then have to pay out on discrimination law suits. During a six year period which included Berkow's tenure, not one discrimination complaint was sustained.

Another attorney who has also represented LAPD officers in similar cases also said that this development is a big concern, because it showed that the sustain rate of particular complaints went down at the same time the head of the internal affairs division may have been engaging in similar misconduct.

The sustain rate on complaints in the LAPD was lower overall than in previous years even though the number of complaints filed has increased, especially since the department committed "stings" to improve the process as required under its federal consent decree.

(excerpt)

In its annual report to the Police Commission, the group reported a sustained rate on complaints of 36% in 2001 and 26% in 2002. In the year Berkow joined the department, 2003, the sustained rate stayed at 26%. It dropped to 23% in 2004 and to 21% in 2005, the last year for which the report was filed.


As far as those people in Savannah, Georgia who now employee Berkow are concerned, they have decided to wait and see how it all turns out before deciding whether or not to keep him employed in their midst.


Coverage in Savannah, Georgia:

(courtesy of Savannah Now)

City Manager delays decision on city's new police chief

(excerpt)

Absolutely, something will be done. But the case needs to go through its course."

---Savannah City Manager Michael Brown, Dec. 20



Apparently, Brown and the city he manages hired Berkow sight unseen, not even knowing about his alleged affair with a subordinate until this week.

"We knew he had marital difficulties. We did not ask these firms to get into personal lives," Brown said. "In hindsight, I see it as a factor in his job. It does call into question his judgment."

Beware of things that come in strange packages and that includes lateral officers even at the top of the chain of command and the background checks of lateral candidates may not catch everything, especially if the agency that last employed them no longer wants to keep them. It's not clear yet exactly what was the case involving Berkow.

Savannah's city council apparently had little clue of what was going on but the city's mayor, Otis Johnson planned to brief them during a meeting behind closed doors.

(excerpt)

"I don't know what effect it's going to have on the department," the mayor said about the revelations.

"But it's my expectation that Berkow is going to work his you-know-what off to prove that he's worthy of remaining here. That's what I expect."

One city official described the embarassing episode as a "soap opera" while another asked for a thorough investigation adding that he didn't believe that Brown's investigation had been thorough enough.

Lee Deante Brown: The CPRC

"Never mind!" Alice said in a soothing tone, and, stooping down to the daisies, who were just beginning again, she whispered, "If you don't hold your tongues, I'll pick you."

---Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There



Carroll of course must have been a regular visitor to RiverCity during its earliest years, and when the noted differences between the attitudes of its abolitionist founders and those who lived there during the early 1900s, began to unfold. During the early 20th century, Riverside was a city were the Ku Klux Klan regularly held rallies and the racist film that celebrated the Klan, Birth of a Nation premiered at the Loring theater. Inspired(or rather depressed) by what he saw, he wrote a third book in his "Alice" series that has never been released. It could even be waiting for a local historian to come along and unearth it.

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday season, it is appropriate to give thanks to what you have and that includes municipal entities such as civilian review boards.

Riverside first created its version of civilian oversight in 2000 through city ordinance. That ordinance was passed 5-2 and put into place the nine-member body that exists today. The only city council member of that group still sitting on the dais today is Ed Adkison and he was one of the two who voted in opposition.

In 2004, about 60% of the city's voters placed the commission in the Riverside City Charter in an attempt to provide some protection for it from the whims of the city's elected government. At the time, the majority of the city council opposed the CPRC. Most of them had recently won their seats on the dais, and all of those underplayed their opposition to it. In fact, at least two candidates made comments in the Press Enterprise that they didn't care either way about it shortly before election day. However, when they took office, that quickly changed. Different city council members, most notably Art Gage, who once called the commission a "piece of junk" tried to take action against it, particularly during the budget hearings on how the city should spend its general fund.

Providence of some sort was clearly at work because at the same time city officials were turning against the CPRC, another committee consisting of city residents was at work trying to create a list of amendments to add to the city charter through public vote. One of the members, Art Garcia, decided that since other city boards and commissions were included in the charter, perhaps the time was right to add the CPRC to that list. And the rest as they say, is history.


According to the charter, the Community Police Review Commission performs a variety of functions. One of the most important ones is the following:


(d) Review and investigate the death of any individual arising out of or in connection with actions of a police officer, regardless of whether a complaint regarding such death has been filed.


The first officer-involved death to be investigated by the CPRC was the shooting of Laotian-American Vanpaseuth Phaisouphanh in June 2001.The first briefing by the Riverside Police Department was done in front of a packed city council chambers, including many distraught and upset members of the Laotian-American community in Riverside. Their anger increased when Chief Russ Leach made the controversial decision to have an RPD officer stand next to him while he addressed the commission with his back turned away from the audience.

"What do you think we're going to do? Throw knives at you," people in the audience shouted.

The official explanation of why Leach needed to have a police officer stand next to him differed depending on whom you spoke with. A representative from Leach's office said that the decision had been made by former captain, Richard Dana. Dana said that yes, it had been his decision but the officer had misunderstood his instructions which were to stand in the back of the chambers and not next to Leach.


Asian American Riverside: Wat Lao

(excerpt)


(1) On June 10, 2001 , a young Lao man named Vanpaseuth Phaisouphanh was shot and killed in his front yard by a Riverside Police Department officer. In the days, weeks, and months following his death, members of the Lao community met with city officials and connected with other community members working on police accountability issues. Click here to read the official minutes from an emergency meeting of the Riverside Community Police Review Commission held four days later, on June 14, 2001, in which Lao and non-Lao community members addressed the Commission and RPD Chief Russ Leach.

At the time of this writing (2005), the case is officially closed, having been found in policy by the CPRC and RPD's Internal Affairs. The officer involved in this shooting, Edgar John Porche, has since left the RPD.

Other investigations and dispositions of findings followed, and nearly all of them were that the involved officers were in policy when they shot and killed different individuals. Reports released on most of these investigations can be found at the below link.

Officer-involved death reports

One shooting death that was investigated by the CPRC did not produce a public report. Instead, the commissioners voted to submit a memorandum of understanding because they believed that there was not enough information provided to them by the police department to produce a public report on the shooting of Volne Lamont Stokes. That MOU was the culmination of months of frustration by the CPRC including efforts to address the absence of a statement by one of the involved officers, Tina Banfill Gould, in the department's own criminal investigation. The commissioners voted 8-1 to issue a subpoena for her to appear before the body to answer questions. Banfill Gould appeared twice with her appointed attorney, Michael Lackie and declined at her first appearance to be sworn in.

That led to Leach threatening to discipline her(again) if she didn't appear before the commission and in a rare sign of support, the full city council decided in closed session to take legal action to uphold not just the CPRC's right to subpoena police officers but its own right to issue subpoena power to boards and commissions. Banfill Gould appeared before the CPRC again in December 2004 but exercised her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination for each and every question asked.

The commission did not face further controversy until the 2004 shooting of Summer Lane by Officer Ryan Wilson. The only thing familiar in this case was Wilson because the CPRC had already investigated a fatal shooting involving him in 2003. Three months after his hiring, Wilson and his field training officer, Jose Loera had shot and killed Robert McComb after he allegedly aimed a handgun at them after a pursuit.

The first bone of contention for the CPRC involved the briefing on the preliminary chain of events by the police department, which erred on one very important detail in its presentation. At the briefing that took place on Dec. 22, 2004, the department representative said that Wilson had shot at Lane while he was on the ground behind her vehicle and she was in the process of backing into him. This misinformation had been provided despite the fact that it contradicted the correct information which had already been included in two intradepartmental memos circulated by the Officer-Involved Death Team. These memos clearly stated that Wilson had walked behind Lane's stationary vehicle up to her window before firing three shots at her from several feet away. News of the actual chain of events first became public at a CPRC briefing held regarding its own investigation in September 2005 and shocked many people, only because they had believed the initial version of events related by the department.

The CPRC concluded after conducting its own investigation and also reviewing the police department's own investigation and review that the shooting had violated the department's use of force policy.

Civil litigation was filed in connection with the Lane shooting by her family members. It would be the first law suit filed against the city which involved an officer-involved death in quite a while but it would not be the last one. The city government including the city attorney's office became aware that the CPRC's decisions could put it at risk of civil liability. The CPRC's finding on the Lane shooting was forwarded to city manager, Brad Hudson but instead of making his own decision, he simply allowed Leach to make the decision. Not surprisingly, Leach backed his own department.

Then along came the Lee Deante Brown shooting.

On April 3, Brown was shot to death by Officer Terry Ellefson after allegedly grabbing Ellefson's department issue taser and lunging at him with it. The shooting happened in broad daylight on University Avenue in the Eastside, and attracted a crowd of over 100 people who loudly protested it after it happened.

Initial information was that the accounts provided by the witnesses contradicted those provided by both Ellefson(who as it turned out was another familiar name as this was his second fatal shooting in five months) and Officer Michael Paul Stucker. When the investigations by the CPRC and the RPD were conducted, that would continue to be the case. Only it would also be clear that even the officers' statements contradicted each other.

The department would err again, when it presenting a similar briefing on the Brown shooting. For one thing, the briefing stated that Stucker had pulled out his baton to hit Brown before he had seen Brown with Ellefson's taser. However, Stucker told the department's investigators that he had seen the taser first and then pulled out his baton in response, according to transcripts of that interview. Stucker also told investigators that he had seen that a light on Ellefson's taser was on but did not say whether it was the laser sight or the power indicator light. In the briefing, the department representative said that it had been the power indicator light, which would not have been visible to either officer if Brown had been pointing the taser at them as Stucker had claimed. It was never stated by the shooting's investigators why they stated that the power indicator light was what Stucker had seen.

During the briefing and in some of the intradepartmental memos that were included in the case book, those who provided narratives of the Brown shooting often put statements of fact in their versions which could not be traced to a single eye witness or police officer in the entire file.

And there was more, including confusion surrounding the circumstances of how Stucker was shocked by a taser probe apparently coming out of no where. Though at least in this case, similar confusion was reflected in Stucker's own interview as to where this errant taser probe had come from that clearly was the source of the electric shock that coursed through his body for a period of time. The source of the electric shock or the probe was never clearly stated in the investigative report but appeared most likely to have been from Ellefson's own taser. Ellefson had fired and cycled his taser at least twice, noting in his own statement to investigators that it appeared to have little effect on Brown's behavior.

The CPRC was first briefed on its own investigation into the Brown shooting this past November, but it was not the usual briefing that had been provided by one of its investigators from the Baker Street group because it was only preliminary in nature. A second briefing including a form of reinactment and recreation of the circumstances of the shooting was scheduled to be conducted in January, barring any unforseen developments.

Judging by the expression on city manager, Brad Hudson's face when I addressed the issue of the CPRC at a city council meeting, it appears indeed possible that something is coming up on the horizon. If that is so, after reading the three case books on the shooting, I would not find that at all surprising. A shooting which only produces questions and a department that has to provide answers will eventually collide, with the CPRC perhaps caught in the middle.

The Brown shooting could also be the first opportunity the city and department could take the lessons both had learned from the Lane case and put them to use.

What makes all this reminscent of Carroll's book about Alice's journey through the looking glass is that like the story in that book, the actions of the CPRC and those who seek to determine its direction and its fate are all about a game of chess.



In other news, Al Sharpton and Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association continue to spar over what will be the final result of the criminal investigation into the Nov. 25 shooting of Sean Bell, 23, by five New York City Police Department officers, according to the New York Daily News.

Palladino predicted there would be no indictments by the criminal grand jury. Sharpton thanked him for pointing out the obvious and explained that Palladino's confidence in the outcome of an investigation which has yet to be completed is why so many people distrust the investigations of officer-involved shootings. To them, as he said, the relations between police departments and the county prosecutors who are supposed to be investigating them are what, too cozy? Comments like those made on a radio show by Palladino often contribute to that perception.

Then inexplicably, Palladino went on to complain about a jury pool being tainted by the media coverage of the incident. So does he think that perhaps there might be a trial after all? There will, or there won't be, "when the dust finally clears".

Union president predicts no indictment in Bell shooting case



The Los Angeles Police Department has finally released a statement on its investigation into the allegations raised against former Deputy Chief Michael Berkow, albeit a very brief one here.

The dollars and sense of sexual harassment

A former LAPD deputy chief admits that he had an affair with a subordinate employee, during a deposition that was taken two months ago, according to the Los Angeles Times. The deposition arose from a law suit filed by another officer, Ya-May Christie, who accused him of rewarding female subordinates who had sex with him with promotions.

(excerpt)

In the deposition, Michael Berkow, who is married, said he met Sgt. Andrea Balter in 2003 and had sex with her over the next three years. Until January 2005, she worked for the internal affairs division as an advocate, a kind of internal prosecutor handling police misconduct cases, including those involving inappropriate sexual relationships.

Berkow's attorney, Clint D. Robison, said his client did not report the relationship to his commanding officer, Police Chief William J. Bratton, because although Berkow was Balter's ultimate boss, she did not report directly to him. "In his opinion, [the relationship] wasn't reportable," Robison said.


Reaction from the city council in Los Angeles was predictably harsh.


(excerpt)

"These developments are very disturbing and are shocking to me," said L.A. City Councilman Jack Weiss, who heads the Public Safety Committee.

"There is no question this is quite serious. This is the top official in the department charged with monitoring the behavior of cops."


His grasp of the obvious has been repeated by others who ask how a person who headed a division that investigates the misconduct of police officers including sexual misconduct be able to do that while engaging in that behavior himself? Well, maybe it's those who work in the department and elected city officials who oversee its budget who are asking that question. For most everyone else, it's rhetorical at best.

And while Berkow even after he has admitted engaging in some sexual misconduct is still called "hard-working" and a "dedicated professional" by his boss, Chief William Bratton, it's unclear what is being said about either the women who were involved in the misconduct with him or the woman who may have blown the whistle on it. But then whistle blowers in any law enforcement agency are often harshly received by just about everyone inside it. Although there were some complaints here about the double standards that exist with how Bratton refers to Berkow in comparison to comments he made about an officer who was caught on videotape performing a chokehold on a handcuffed teenage Latino in a holding room.


Berkhow now works in Savannah, Georgia and the city manager there, Michael Brown, told the Los Angeles Times that the city knew that Berkhow had engaged in an onduty affair and wished that more details about Berkhow had been known before his hiring. Although it has been said many times when hiring laterals, law enforcement agencies are taking a calculated risk at hiring someone who may be proven, but who could also be fleeing accountability for misconduct in the original agency. So did those at the LAPD know about Berkhow's proclivities(as one commenter at the LAPD's blog suggested) and foist him on an unsuspecting Savannah? At any rate, those in Georgia are now in the know.




Across the country in Queens, New York, another law suit filed by a female police officer alleging sexual harassment against her supervisor was settled for $250,000 according to the New York Daily News


City of New York settles law suit with NYPD officer


Aneta Kwiatkowski filed the law suit against the city, alleging that Sgt. John Dorst sexually harassed her by forcibly kissing her and repeatedly demanding sex, telling her “it’s going to be the best one minute of your life.”

Naturally, Kwiatkowski herself is now under investigation by the same department, which so often happens in cases like this. Anyone who doubts it? Here are three words: Sgt. Christine Keers.

Keers, a former Riverside Police Department officer, sued the city of Riverside in the mid-1990s alleging sexual discrimination, harassment and retaliation. The “retaliation” according to her law suit took place when criminal charges were filed against her and she was arrested by the same individuals in the department that she had filed grievances against even though the Riverside County District Attorney's office had admonished the department not to take action until its instruction.

The city of Riverside litigated Keers' law suit for a while, then settled it for a large sum of money. As is the case of racism, sexism existing in the city's departments, costs the tax payers. Those "inside jokes" and "harmless" banter exacts different costs. It damages the working relationships between men of color and women and other officers within an agency. It damages sometimes beyond repair, relationships between the law enforcement agencies and many of the communities they serve. And it takes a wallop to the taxpayers' wallets when racism and sexism that exist inside law enforcement agencies are litigated in court.

Several months ago, the city of Riverside decided to pay out the $1.65 million jury's verdict in the racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation lawsuit filed by Officer Roger Sutton. In part, that was because Sutton's attorney tried the case on paper, while the city's outside attorney tried its case entirely on often contradictory verbal testimony and when that didn't work, he just picked up mud and threw it, to see where it would stick. After the first week, the jury was probably onto what he and his team were doing. After all, the panel of 10 women and two men, most of whom were White were actually much smarter than most of their critics here and other places thought. Those who called them "idiots" base their knowledge on what was in the rumor mill than what took place in a courtroom.

Someone once said that perhaps female officers should receive two department-issued tasers. One to be used in the field and one for the workplace. That is probably too drastic a measure and tasers are not without considerable controversy, but it did raise the issue of how it's often the female officers who are expected to be the ones that handle themselves in situations where male officers behave badly as if in many cases, these same male officers are no more than adolescent boys who are incapable of behaving professionally in a workplace where women are present. And while looking at the exhibits of sexist and sexual cartoons, drawings and other items that accompanied Keers' complaint, it is clear that it appears that some of the men working around her were no more mature than if they were still teenagers. However, it's not simply immaturity that drives this behavior, it's done to send a message to these women that they may be police officers, but they will never be as good as their male counterparts and by being police officers, they are encroaching, even trespassing in what is still a male domain. And it is true that there is often a threatening undertone to all the behaviors involved with sexual harassment. That is often why when women complain about sexual discrimination and harassment, they are retaliated against. More attempts by those inside the agency to exert control over their trespassing into the male domain of law enforcement. But one cynical attorney representing another female officer had one word for retaliation: Damages.

That was certainly true in the Sutton case which involved racism, rather than sexism.

It is important for all law enforcement agencies to not only have a sexual discrimination and harassment policy in place, but to make sure that it is effectively implemented and without fear of retaliaton.

The National Center for Women in Policing has information at its Web site on what to do if you are a law enforcement officer who is sexually discriminated and/or harassed in the workplace.

Recognizing sexual harassment

What to do about it



It also discusses forms of retaliation that those who complain about it may face from supervisors or other officers.

(excerpt)

Shunning/ostracizing - no one will talk to her; or she is prevented from receiving information important to the performance of her job or important to her personal safety.

Stalking/harassing incidents - obscene telephone calls, telephone calls where the caller says nothing, hang-up calls at all hours of the day and night, threatening or harassing letters or notes, damage to her automobile, articles left on her desk or in her work area that are intended to intimidate or harass.

Becoming the subject of rumors of sexual activity or other demeaning information.

Being held to a higher standard of performance - her evaluation reports become more critical and she is held to a different standard than others.

Harassing internal affairs complaints are filed against her by members of the organization or by citizens who have been enlisted to help the harasser.

Denial of training opportunities.

Denial of transfer to specialty jobs.

Denial of promotion.

Failure to provide back-up in emergency situations. This is the ultimate form of retaliation.

When it becomes apparent that she will not receive backup in a timely manner, the woman often leaves the organization because she is in fear for her life.


If you read Keers' original law suit, you would learn that she faced nearly all the behaviors on this list and then some. Similar behaviors were also reported by former officer, Rene Rodriguez and Sutton when they took complaints about racism to their supervisors. Rodriguez finally stopped coming to work in part because he began to fear for his life, according to a complaint he sent to the state's Fair Employment and Housing Commission.

Keers also expressed fear in her law suit. At some point, she received numerous hang up phone calls and messages by unknown individuals on her answering machine which were threatening and nature and referred to her as a "bitch".




In New York City, both sides of a law suit against the city and its police department, claimed victory after a jury reached its verdict in a civil trial conducted in U.S. District Court, according to the International Herald Tribune. The trial stemmed from a law suit filed in relation to demonstrations conducted in 1999 protesting against the NYPD shooting of Amadou Diallo.

Jury reaches verdict in NYPD law suit case

(excerpt)

The verdict left the city claiming victory.

The city's corporation counsel, Michael A. Cardoza, told The Associated Press the city was vindicated against claims that for more than two years there were "winks and nods" as police carried out an unwritten policy to lock up all arrested protesters.

He said the jury had flatly told the plaintiffs they were wrong.

"That's big news," Cardoza said. "The plaintiffs prevailed in part, no question about it, but on the huge overwhelming part of the case the plaintiffs lost."

Jonathan C. Moore, a lawyer for the demonstrators, said the trial was limited to liability so a second trial would have to be conducted to determine damages, unless settlements were reached on behalf of some 30 people who claim to have been improperly arrested during that period.

Moore said he was disappointed that the jury did not conclude that the city violated the rights of those who were arrested between 1999 and 2001.

"It's unfortunate that a lot of plaintiffs will go uncompensated," he said.


The jury did find that the city violated constitutional rights during a period of time in 2001 when it introduced a written policy stating that people arrested at demonstrations were required to be locked up rather than issued citations to appear in court. Conflicting testimony was provided by former police employees as to whether or not that policy had been informally introduced during the massive demonstrations against the Diallo shooting two years earlier.

Skating on ice and through consent decrees

The Vera Institute of Justice’s analysis of Pittsburgh’s consent decree is pretty interesting reading. It is an excellent and thorough analysis of the consent decree that existed between the city of Pittsburgh and the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division between 1997 and 2002.

Pittsburgh was home to the first law enforcement agency to be placed under consent decree in relation to an investigation into its patterns and practices. This probe took place not long after the American Civil Liberties Union had gathered hundreds of complaints by the city's residents alleging acts of misconduct committed by police officers including the use of excessive force and racial profiling. After the ACLU and NAACP filed a class action law suit involving 66 plaintiffs, both invited the Justice Department to investigate its complaints and that division soon initiated its own investigation under a relatively new piece of legislation that had been passed by the U.S. Congress in 1994.

The history of Pittsburgh, a city of mainly Black and White people was very different in many ways from that of Riverside, California, thousands of miles away. However, in many ways the events that led that city into its consent decree were similar to those which preceded Riverside's own contentious journey towards that process. Riverside was also a member of an elite club of law enforcement agencies which had garnered the attention of several divisions under the Justice Department, but it was actually the State Attorney General's office which imposed a decree and in deference to the wishes of a rather distraught Mayor Ron Loveridge, referred to its own process in softer terms, calling it a "stipulated judgement".

The city of Pittsburgh bit the bullet and pledged to implement its consent decree fairly quickly, in comparison to Riverside, which threw a couple of temper tantrums(and that is not counting those during the actual 18 month negotiation process) and repeated the mantra that had been used by Pittsburgh's own city officials, "Why us?"

Why not? The city had received a failing score in its pattern and practices investigation with the following parties getting the lowest scores in ascending order: Then City Attorney Stan Yamamoto, Then City Manager John Holmes, the city council and the police department. After the document was signed, the face of city government began to change fairly quickly, as fed up voters sent many an elected official packing and Yamamoto and Holmes were sent off to new jobs during the first year of the judgement.

Not too long after these episodes of angst, pique and indecision had worn themselves out, the city council finally voted 6-1 in March 2001 to enter into the ahem, stipulated judgement.

Like Pittsburgh, Riverside had a new chief at the helm of its police department after it had sent former Chief Jerry Carroll packing and after some political musical chairs involving the final three finalists for the position, chose Russ Leach. And after a period of years, the name of the police chief was finally painted on the door at the department's Orange Street station. It appeared that the revolving door which led to the department's administration had stopped swinging...for a while at least.


Like Riverside, Pittsburgh had also put in place a civilian review board called the CPRB. It had been created through a voters' initiative and had passed overwhelmingly despite a campaign against it launched by the current mayor's administration and surprise, surprise, the police labor union. The city residents who were interviewed for the Vera Institute's study of Pittsburgh's consent decree said that they trusted their review board more than they trusted the city(not police) division that investigated complaints against the city's police officers. They also said that they wished that their own board which lacked subpoena power, was a stronger model.

Riverside waited until 2004 to take its own civilian review board to the voters, and they too passed an initiative in this case, to put it in the city's charter.

In the wake of the implementation of Riverside's own CPRC, many of the same sentiments that were expressed in Pittsburgh have been expressed especially during the past year when it faced intense micromanagement by a newly emerged quartet in the city of Riverside.

All federal consent decrees pertaining to law enforcement agencies are based on investigations into patterns and practices in involved agencies and are based on the Law Enforcement Misconduct Statute which is the text taken from Section 14141 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.


Ҥ 14141. Cause of action

(a) Unlawful conduct

It shall be unlawful for any governmental authority, or any agent thereof, or any person acting on behalf of a governmental authority, to engage in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers or by officials or employees of any governmental agency with responsibility for the administration of juvenile justice or the incarceration of juveniles that deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

(b) Civil action by Attorney General

Whenever the Attorney General has reasonable cause to believe that a violation of paragraph (1) has occurred, the Attorney General, for or in the name of the United States, may in a civil action obtain appropriate equitable and declaratory relief to eliminate the pattern or practice.


The Justice Department provides this useful FAQ on DOJ pattern and practice investigations . One of the questions it addresses is how are agencies selected by its civil rights division for further examination? After all, the department receives many requests from individuals and organizations asking it to investigate law enforcement agencies in different cities, counties and states. The investigations are conducted by the United States Attorney's office in conjunction with the civil rights division and usually end up being settled by the federal parties and the involved jurisdictions with an agreement drawn up of a list of reforms to implement within a frame of time, usually five years.

(excerpt)

Q: How does DOJ decide which law enforcement agencies to investigate?


If the initial review uncovers information tending to support the existence of a pattern or practice violation, authorization may be sought from the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division to conduct a pattern or practice investigation.

We have more credible allegations of a pattern or practice that warrant investigations than we have been able to pursue. We exercise our discretion to prioritize certain investigations or certain types of allegations. In general, we consider a variety of factors, including the seriousness of the alleged misconduct, the type of misconduct alleged, the size and type of law enforcement agency, the amount of detailed, credible information available and the potential precedential impact.

So far, our investigations have focused on allegations of excessive force, including associated search and seizure issues, and racial or ethnic discrimination in traffic or pedestrian stops. All types of law enforcement agencies have been investigated: state, urban, suburban and rural. We have investigated both large and small agencies.


Riverside was unique even among the group of law enforcement agencies under scrutiny by the Justice Department, in that it was also receiving scrutiny from a state agency as well. Many people watched the two investigations unfold and wondered which one if either would prevail. Few people doubted that the police department would be placed under a consent decree of one form or another fairly soon considering all the investigating going on. In the end, the state got there first, or as one letter writer in the Press Enterprise called him, "that carpetbagger of the North".

Five years eventually passed and many of the same reforms that were implemented in Pittsburgh were done in Riverside. As the end of both decrees neared, Black city residents in both cities expressed more concern than those who were White that the reforms may not stay in place once the governing agency went away and that it would instead be business as usual. In both agencies, police officers had expressed the opinion that the oversight by outside law enforcement agencies was a very negative thing and when both decrees were lifted, the sentiments expressed in the media and other places by several police officers was that the yoke had been lifted off of their backs. Not much said in either city about how it was merely one process that had ended and another equally important one that was beginning. A transition more than a finite process. But then the elected officials in at least one of the two cities had problems understanding that as well.

An RPD officer working at City Hall had said the following in 2002 to someone entering the building to attend a city council meeting. Just wait until 2006 and things will go back to the way they were. Well, four years have passed and it remains to be seen what will happen in a police force where most of the officers don't have memories of a department that existed pre-consent decree and the collective memories of those who do has grown considerably smaller in five years, much to the frustration of the reminents in both groups who probably still vent here and there about it.


The Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights critique of consent decrees provides an interesting look at how the different presidential administrations have affected the Justice Department's ability and willingness to conduct pattern and practices investigations of law enforcement agencies.

When George W. Bush ran for office, he had promised the National Fraternal Order of Police that these investigations would only be conducted when absolutely necessary because in general, he did not support outside interference by federal agencies of local governments and their law enforcement agencies. And the statistics showed that fewer of these investigations were initiated during his terms of office than had been done under former President Bill Clinton.

As of 2003 total, the following agencies were under investigation by the Justice Department:

Charleston, WV
Cleveland, OH
Detroit, MI;
Eastpointe, MI;
City of Miami, FL;
New Orleans, LA;
New York City, NY (two investigations: one regarding use of force, one regarding the street crimes unit and stop and frisk practices)
Portland, Maine;
Prince George's County, MD;
Providence, RI;
Riverside, CA;
Schenectady, NY
Tulsa, OK

Others:

Columbus, OH
Los Angeles, CA
Cincinnati, OH


Now on to some more skating...


Press Enterprise writer, Dan Bernstein wrote a good column which included news about a previously undiscovered quartet in the city's midst. Not the much ballyhooed GASS quartet, which by now, had changed its acronym to one that more closely resembles a popular game fish but that’s another story.

It's not the other quartet that has brought such difficult times to the Community Police Review Commission this past year and plans to continue into the new year.

Actually, it's the new ice skating quartet from the Riverside Police Department.

What’s up in Riverside?

(excerpt)

Picture Sasha Cohen without the talent, carolers, skates or the benefit of sunshine. What have you got?

A quartet of Riverside's finest, "figure skating" on the downtown rink. At 3 or 4 in the morning! On duty!

"Fairly decent rumor," e-mailed RPD Chief Russ Leach.

"However, it was late November, not December, and they kept their boots on. Think they would be stupid enough to skate in socks?" (Wouldn't touch that one with a 10-foot club.) Story continues that the chief got wind of the ice-capade and entertained the skaters with a spirited reading from the Riot Act. (He did not deny it.)


So, were they squeezing in some clandestine training for the individual, pairs or the newly created team synchronized skating event? After all, you don't want your rivals, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department Twinkletoes or the Corona Police Department's Dancing Axels to know your best routines.

I guess this discovery means they are out of the medal hunt...for now.


Bernstein also wrote about how the recent firing of former Riverside County Sheriff's Department Asst. Sheriff Stan Sniff did not pass the “sniff” test. After seeing how past employees who ran against incumbant sheriffs have fared, it shouldn't be that surprising that there may be something fishy going on here. I guess there will be more to come about this episode.

Speaking of election years, one is coming up with the day of first reckoning set in June to take place in an odd-numbered city ward near you. If we can't get this election done right, there will be run-offs in November.

Let the games begin.

"It's just a joke." and other excuses

VideoGate continues in San Francisco

Up to 35 San Francisco Police Department officers will be disciplined for their participation in a series of videos and could receive anything from written reprimends to 10-day suspensions. Seven could face termination. This scandal broke about a year ago, after videos surfaced on the internet created by police officers and were viewed by many as being racist, sexist and homophobic in their content.

(excerpt)


Chief Heather Fong, SFPD: "When officers come to work, their job is to perform the functions and responsibilities of their responsive positions. And when they are at work and engaged in activity that is not consistent with the duties that they have chosen to engage in, in terms of protecting the public, that is a problem. I don't expect officers to come to work and spend time doing things that are not work related. I don't believe that the public expects that either."


The officers involved in the Bay Area’s version of VideoGate defended their actions calling them an “inside joke”. As far as excuses go, this oft-used and very handy one used by those who engage in racist, sexist and homophobic behavior is truly pathetic.

It serves merely as an extension of the “lighten up, can’t you take a joke” attitude that men of color, women, gays and lesbians hear from those who tell jokes that are at their expense. Excuses like these also are made to try to keep individuals from asking why it is that these police officers, along with countless others from other law enforcement agencies, express their humor along racist, sexist and homophobic lines in the first place. The fact that law enforcement officers are calling these videos an "inside joke" is proof that it is their department's culture and how it views race, gender and sexual orientation which drives them to express themselves in this way.

Humor is the mirror into a person's soul, so often any racism, sexism or homophobia that rests there will be manifested through jokes like the following:



"What's the difference between a Jew and a pizza? A Jew screams when you put it in the oven."

--Riverside Police Department, 1990s.



"That's what they get for hiring the handicapped."

--Riverside County Sheriff's Department, 1990. It was made by a deputy who was responding to an apology that his breakfast order was delayed. The cooks were all Latino. The use of humor that ties in people of color with the disabled(as if they are two discrete categories that don't intersect) with the intent by those who make the jokes to denigrate both is worthy of its own discussion. See the term, "Jerry's kids" that was commonplace in the Riverside Police Department from 1999.



"If it will make them feel better, tell them we shot here with black bullets."


---Riverside Police Department, 1998 allegedly spoken by Sgt. Gregory Preece to Officer David Hackman after the shooting death of Tyisha Miller.


"NPI, my brother,"

---Riverside Police Department, 1998 allegedly said by Officer David Hackman in response to Preece's "black bullets" comment. "NPI" means "no person involved" and is often said by law enforcement officers in response to the death of a person of color.

"The only way Native Americans will see law enforcement is from a jail cell."

--Riverside Police Department, 2000, after other comments about taking liquor to a career fear at a federal Indian school in Riverside, to "soften" them up.

"Women with small breasts love me because I fuck them so hard, their boobs pop out."

---Riverside Police Department, 2003 out in the field



"This is like living under the Third Reich"

---San Jacinto Police Department officer to two Riverside County Sheriff's Department deputies stationed in Perris, 2003 at a diversity training class, to ridicule a presentation on hate crimes given by a representative from the Anti-Defamation League.



Whether it is dressing in blackface and afro wigs and participating in racist floats in Queens, New York or making racist comments and jokes after an officer-involved shooting of a Black woman in Riverside, California, these jokes seem to be part and parcel of what experts refer to as “police culture”. What’s ironic is that even after engaging in this behavior or defending those who do even if it is only through their silence, many police officers then scratch their heads and wonder why it is that men of color, women, gays and lesbians do not trust them or their intentions. They wonder why men and women of color show up by the hundreds or the thousands and march in protest of shootings or incidents of alleged misconduct against individuals in their communities. The fact that many of them still wonder shows how much more insulated police culture has become in many law enforcement agencies.

At the same time many of the comments and jokes were being made in the RPD, State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, whose office investigated the agency, had this to say about what was going on in the department:


"I decided there were systemic problems with the Riverside Police Department," Lockyer said.

"There were a lot of instances in which African-Americans were beaten, Hispanics beaten and tossed in the lake, and Gays and Lesbians harassed and beaten."


During the same time period, that Riverside County Sheriff deputy made references to Latino men being "handicapped" to two other deputies who laughed in response, the same was said to be happening to Latino men and women including one video-taped incident in 1996 which made international news. More video-taped incidents of deputies beating and kicking Latinos including one taken near Temecula would follow. Often words said as a joke from one officer to another or others can and often do translate into actions by those in that agency against the butts of those same comments, "inside" jokes and yes, videos. And often, it is when controversial incidents of alleged police conduct occur that the existence of this humor and the belief systems which manifest it first comes to light, from underneath the rocks and behind the dark corners. Then, the agency's management which often ignored this behavior for years is left to explain it.

Not every law enforcement officer in every law enforcement agency engages in making racist, sexist and homophobic comments and jokes. But most of these officers do hear jokes being made, as was evident by the testimony given by RPD officers of all races on this subject during the trial involving Officer Roger Suttons' racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation law suit last year. How do these officers respond? Do they tell those who do make these jokes that the comments are offensive to them and to knock it off? Do they listen in silence, and make similar comments inside their heads? Do they laugh along with the jokes, like the deputies mentioned above did, in two circumstances including once at a diversity seminar which makes you wonder how they behave in private.

And how does management handle this situation? Do they act like Fong did, with some understanding that jokes, comments and offensive videos can undermine the often tenuous relationship between straight people of color and gays and lesbians and place the entire agency in a bad light? Do they understand that jokes, comments and videos that are racist, sexist and homophobic often make the work of building bridges with these communities more difficult? Do they ignore this conduct except when expectations are made that they do act by others? Do they say one thing in public and practice another in private? What do they do?


Kudoes to Fong. Here is a police chief who stands up to this odious behavior and the culture which spawned it, even at considerable political risk to herself especially since she is a woman of color in a profession dominated by White men especially at its top. Too often police chiefs bow to the pressure placed on them by the employees they have been charged to lead and do nothing, except talk in general about how appalling this behavior is and make vague promises about cultural sensitivity training. However, here is a chief who decided that enough was enough and did what needed to be done.

And you can bet that she probably won’t be handing out awards to them a few months down the line either.

Chief Heather Fong bio



The father of Sean Bell, 23, who was shot and killed by five New York City Police Department officers on Nov. 25 in Queens has spoken out. William Bell joined the chorus of people asking for the ouster of NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly as well as an independent investigation of his son’s death.


Newsday: Bell’s father speaks out

(excerpt)


“We just want justice for our son," he told reporters, his eyes shielded behind dark glasses.


His appearance came after a march and rally that drew thousands of protesters to 5th Avenue, where they participated in a “silent march” led by community and religious leaders.


New “York Daily News: Thousands rally against shooting

(excerpt)

Rev. Al Sharpton led the march along with Bell’s family including his friend, Trent Benefield, who marched by wheel chair due to injuries suffered in the shooting.


“Some people thought it more important to stand with the families of the victims on this Saturday than to give Santa Claus some money," Sharpton said shortly before the march began.
"Unless Santa Claus got some justice, we don't need Santa Claus."


The march had some critics.

(excerpt)

"Sharpton's march is intended to deny the officers involved their civil rights," said Detectives' Endowment Association President Michael Palladino. "He's trying to convict them in his own kangaroo court. He should just let the investigation proceed."



More on Stanley Rubenstein, the lawyer who represents Bell's family and both Benefield and Joseph Guzman, who were wounded in the shooting, including his comments on the alleged "fourth man", the subject of a manhunt in Queens by the department's ahem, internal affairs division.

Michael Daly, of the New York Daily News in his column, Amid anger, a 'regal' presence writes about Nichole Paultre-Bell's grace under pressure, including at Saturday's march and rally. On her left finger, was the gold band that Bell would have placed on her finger. It had been found along with its mate inside the bullet-ridden vehicle by police officers. The rings were delivered to her after she had requested them from the department. Now, she wears one, the other she placed on her fiance's finger as he lay in his coffin.

(excerpt)

When the tensions were mounting and passions were rising, this woman who had lost more than anybody went on television with words that leave every peace-loving soul in this city in her lasting debt. She said that her overall view of the police had not changed, that she did not hold every cop responsible, that she still believed justice would prevail.

"I'm really not angry," she said. "I'm more just trying to be strong and we just want justice. ... That's what we're praying for."

Prayer will have to help, as for her and her family the most difficult days still lie ahead.

Rallies and retirements

Thousands of people showed up to march down 5th Avenue in New York City to protest against the Nov. 25 fatal shooting of Sean Bell, 23, by five New York Police Department officers.

Among those in attendance were community leaders, religious leaders and elected officials including at least one from the United States Capitol, according to the Boston Herald.

Thousands protest NYPD shooting

(excerpt)

“This is not just a New York City problem,” said U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, who was near the front of the march. “This march gives people a chance to speak out.”

And they spoke out through their silence, and their numbers. Many carried signs and others just marched quietly down the streets of the city, amidst the tourists and shoppers who watched them, some of them taking photographs.

March coverage:

New York Times: Protesters take to streets


Rev. Calvin O. Butts, III comments on the NYPD officers who killed Bell here. He calls them "ignorant savages" and other commentators call them "animals" or "pigs", but they're not any of these things, any more than are the people who are dehumanized by law enforcement officers who label them in a similar fashion as not being human. Animals are animals. People are people.

To call them that reduces people to the level of those police officers who call people of color either "savages" or "animals", a behavior which itself has been the subject of many protests including those which erupted after the fatal shooting of Tyisha Miller by four Riverside Police Department officers in 1998.

Not that there aren't law enforcement agencies who don't ultimately reward that type of behavior in their officers when they think people aren't paying attention and that's a large part of the issue. There are some things that money can't fix and one of them is a department's culture particularly if it permeates into its management.



Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle handed a pink slip to one of his management employees this week, according to the Press Enterprise, an action which perplexed many people.


Assistant Sheriff Stan Sniff who had headed field operations for the entire agency was handed his walking papers. This action sent shock waves throughout the halls of power in Riverside County.

Roy Wilson, a county supervisor had this to say in the news article.


"I was shocked," Supervisor Roy Wilson said of Sniff's departure.”


His colleague, Marion Ashley was also dismayed.


“Everyone knows Stan and thinks the world of him," Ashley said. "It's hard to understand but we don't know everything that went on."


Ashley did say that the board had no power to investigate the actions of another elected official and Doyle's people say that he is in an unfair position because he is not allowed to comment or discuss personnel matters.

At least one individual interviewed said it was a strategic move on Doyle’s part because Sniff was planning on running for sheriff in the next election.


"The department has been robbed of a very ethical, honest, intelligent leader," Dye said.


Usually Riverside County agencies simply banish those who politically oppose their elected bosses. Did Doyle go one step further? Stay tuned.




Press Enterprise columnist Cassie McDuff explores the issue of work-related disability retirements and why so many of them are being given to Redlands Police Department officers in her latest article here.

(excerpt)

“Statewide, the rate of public-safety disability retirements is 30 percent to 40 percent, according to the California Public Employees Retirement System.
Redlands is known as a safe community, with an enviably low crime rate compared with neighboring cities. So why do its police suffer an inordinate number of work-related injuries?
You could understand if San Bernardino police officers were getting hurt frequently, with that city's gang problems and high crime. But Redlands?”


McDuff urged the city of Redlands to investigate why so many of its police officers had received disability retirements and then to do something about it. If she can track down a copy of the Riverside Police Department's Annual Report from the Chief(which was done only one year), she would find that the number of disability retirements given to police officers between 2000-2002 easily outnumbers age-related retirements. Some have blamed that high number on a purported post-Miller exodus or purge, but that is just speculation on their parts.

So it doesn't seem that uncommon, what does is that here, people are actually scratching their heads over it.

Internal cares and affairs

News broke that four out of the five New York City Police Department officers who shot at a trio of unarmed Black men inside a vehicle had not completed mandatory firearm training, according to this article.

That shooting, which occurred outside of a Queens strip club on Nov. 25 killed Sean Bell, 23, on his wedding day.

The allegations were made by Marquez Claxton, who founded an organization of Black former and current police officers called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.

Claxton said that four out of five of the involved officers had only completed one of the two required annual "training cycles" involving the use of firearms.

(excerpt, A.P. wire story)


"When you fail to attend these training cycles, tragedies occur," Claxton said.


Trent Benefield, one of Bell's friends who was shot by the police officers said to the New York Daily News that he had not known the men firing at them were police officers.

(excerpt)

"I opened the door and jumped out and started running," said Benefield, who had already been shot in both legs as he sat in the back of Bell's Nissan Altima in Jamaica, Queens. "I took about 25, 30 steps before I was hit again."


Needless to say, the investigation into this NYPD shooting is ongoing.


At Democracy Now, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez discuss the video footage taken from surveillance cameras at the train station close to the shooting. That video shows a civilian and two Port Authority police officers narrowly missing getting struck by NYPD bullets.

Flying bullets at train station

(excerpt)

Gonzalez said.

"And the video that was made available to me by a source shows there’s a Port Authority police -- two cameras. And it shows, as we saw in the video, that one elderly gentleman with his luggage was -- the bullet almost hit him in the head, because you actually see the trail of the bullet shattering the glass and right at the eye level of the man, right in front of him. And he drops his luggage and runs. And the two Port Authority police nearby scampered away. One actually has filed for a line-of-duty injury."


Gonzalez is a busy man, because while wearing his cap for the New York Daily News, he spoke with the alleged "mystery man", Sean Nelson here.

(excerpt)

I thought they [police] were trying to kill us all," Nelson said as he recalled how bullets went "whizzing by my head" as he and several bystanders to the incident ran up Liverpool St. in an attempt to escape the gunfire.

According to his account, Nelson had been out with Bell shopping for wedding rings earlier that day, but had not attended the stag party in Queens. He did stop by later and the account of events he related was much different than that given by NYPD representatives.

(excerpt)

"Then I see this guy running past me and across the street toward Sean's car with a gun in his hand," said Nelson. At this point, he was standing 25 feet away from Bell's car.

"The man with the gun never yelled 'police,'" Nelson said, backing up similar claims by Benefield and Guzman, both of whom were wounded in the shooting.
Nelson recalls exactly what words the man with the gun did scream out, but said he will tell that only to a grand jury.

"Sean's window was closed anyway and I'm not sure if he heard," Nelson said.

Rallies planned in protest of the Bell shooting include a silent march down 5th Avenue led by Al Sharpton on Saturday, Dec. 16 and "Black Thursday" , a rally planned near Wall Street on Thursday, Dec. 21.

Sex, lies but so far, no videotapes as yet another scandal rocks the beleagured Los Angeles Police Department, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Scandal at the LAPD. In other news, rain is wet.

Chief William J. Bratton once again appeared before the media cameras to explain that yet another high-profile internal investigation was being conducted by his department as it looked into allegations that former Deputy Chief Michael Berkow helped secure promotions and gave preferential treatment to female officers that he slept with.

Bratton refused to comment besides calling Berkow a hardworking, dedicated officer.

(excerpt)

"It's all being handled," Bratton told The Times. "It's all being investigated."

I'm sure it's being "handled", but it remains to be seen whether it is actually being investigated.

And this is not a joke, but at the time just before he left the agency, Berkow headed the department's Internal Affairs Division. One of the individuals of the Los Angeles Police Commission agreed that's a bad state of affairs.

(excerpt)

"The nature of the allegations would be serious for any rank, said Commission Vice President Alan Skobin, "but they are of even greater concern when it's a person in charge of internal affairs."

You think?

A Riverside Police Department officer was arrested and faces criminal charges in San Bernardino in connection with alleged workers compensation fraud.

RPD officer arrested in fraud case

Officer Laura DiGiorgio was arrested by investigators with the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office and faces up to 13 felony charges. This comes in the wake of an ongoing investigation into the Redlands Police Department and whether or not it fraudulently gave out work-related physical disability retirements to several officers who had been the subject of internal investigations and/or discipline by the department.

Still in Riverside, the Community Police Review Commission, the RPD and City Hall, set to lyrics and coming soon to a public venue as the multiple investigations of the fatal shooting of Lee Deante Brown continue.

"Oh, and while the king was looking down,The jester stole his thorny crown.

The courtroom was adjourned; No verdict was returned.

And while Lennon read a book of Marx,

The quartet practiced in the park, And we sang dirges in the dark.

The day the music died."

----American Pie by Don McLean who as far as I know never visited RiverCity.

To be continued...

Lee Deante Brown: "Shots fired."

The fatal officer-involved shooting of Lee Deante Brown is currently under investigation by the Riverside Police Department, the Community Police Review Commission, the Riverside County District Attorney's office and the FBI.

The police department's own criminal investigation is documented in three binders and numerous CDs, all of which are public records. Reading through these records has provided few answers, many questions. Perhaps that is the nature of most investigations of this type and any confusion elicited from them is the norm, not the exception.

Maybe the Brown investigation simply stands in a category of its own. Thanks to the existence of the CPRC, the shooting and its handling have become more transparent, hence the confusion has as well.

The department had hoped that the recordings from both officers' equipment would clear up the matter, but if the FBI is still in the house, obviously it is not all that impressed with that evidence. On that matter, the department has yet to provide a transcript of Officer Terry Ellefson's recording as it has for Officer Michael Paul Stucker. It only decided to transcribe Ellefson's recording after the CPRC had requested a copy of it. A space remains empty, but reserved for it in one of the investigation binders.

The initial facts of the shooting, like many others before it, were sketchy, as shown in an intradepartmental report that captured that uncertainty as part of its initial chronology of events.

This report stated that both officers had deployed their tasers at Brown because he was resisting arrest. The initial information on the shooting itself was as follows.


“When the tasers were not effective, Officer Ellefson fired two rounds from his handgun striking Brown twice.”


It is not clear where this preliminary information came from, but it apparently is based on material that was provided before the Officer-Involved Death Team began conducting interviews with the officers and the eyewitnesses to the shooting. What stands out in this bare-boned account is that there was no mention at that point about one of the tasers being lost and picked up by Brown, only that both were used but had been ineffective.


The intradepartmental report also included a basic chronology of events.


Department’s initial timeline:

13:52 Officer Paul Stucker to handle call

13:54 Stucker changed location to Welcome Inn of America

13:55 Ellefson dispatched to assist Stucker

13:57 10-33 call by Ellefson to restrict radio channel to emergency use only

13:58 Shots fired by Ellefson



After Riverside Police Department officer, Terry Ellefson fired twice at Lee Deante Brown, police officers began arriving at the epicenter of the department's latest shooting, the Welcome Inn of America at the corner of University Avenue and Ottawa. Witness John Gonzalez who watched the shooting from the second floor level of the Budget Inn across the street, said that at some point he had seen Ellefson walk towards his squad car and remove a backpack from its trunk, before walking away with another officer. Other witnesses had said after the shooting, that Ellefson who had been wearing a dark colored baseball cap was with another group of officers.

Immediately after the shooting, Ellefson and his partner Officer Michael Paul Stucker were still issuing verbal orders to a prostrate Brown for several minutes. Both officers still viewed him as a threat to their safety according to statements they provided for the Officer-Involved Death Team.

Stucker told investigators that he had warned other individuals about the taser being in Brown's hands. He had first made a comment in relation to that about a minute after the shooting, according to a transcript the department had made of the recording taken from his digital audio recorder. It is not clear whether Stucker had made that comment to Ellefson or another police officer.

But Stucker said he had warned Ellefson, in his interview when he had been asked if he had still considered Brown a threat after the shooting.


"Actually I voiced to Terry after that, that he might still be a threat because the taser I saw in his hand immediately before he was shot was no where in sight. I believed he still had it in his hands. He was curled up with his hands tucked underneath him. So I actually told Terry 'he's still got the taser in his hands. Be careful.'"


Det. Mike Medici asked Stucker a question.


"Okay, so last you saw of him, the taser was actually in his hands?"


Stucker answered.


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


After the medical personnel had arrived, Stucker had also told them to exercise caution when dealing with Brown as he told investigators during his interview.



"...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."


So according to Stucker' own words, he was issuing warnings on the location of taser, sight unseen which seems prudent under the circumstances if he had believed that the taser was a threat. Even when pressed by the investigators, he told them he had never really seen the taser after the shooting, which is a little different than what Ellefson had to say on the subject.

Ellefson was also interviewed by investigators who asked him where the taser was after the shooting. Ellefson told them that his best memory was that it was near Brown's right arm, which was next to the right side of his body.
Both officers had said in their statements that even after Brown had been struck by two bullets from Ellefson's gun, he continued to move. At one point, he had even risen partially up on his arms or hands, while lying on his stomach.

When Ellefson was asked about what happened with the taser, he responded that it had been on the ground next to Brown when he had braced himself up on his knees and the balls of his feet, after the shooting. Both officers were still giving him commands but Brown was not complying. According to Ellefson, Stucker was the one who took action at that point.


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


Stucker does not mention this part of the incident at all during his interview with investigators, which makes sense because even when the medical personnel arrived, Stucker had told them to be careful of Brown because he still had the taser in his hand.

Ellefson is heard on his recording telling an unidentified individual that Brown had come up at him with the taser right before he told someone that he had shot downward twice. Three sergeants submitted reports on the shooting, including two who had conversations with Ellefson. Both of those sergeants reported that Ellefson had informed them that he had fired twice in a downward trajectory. Another sergeant mentioned in his own report that one of those two sergeants had relayed similar information to him.

None of them mentioned a taser.

Brown was shot close to room #7 of the motel. Police photographs show him lying on his back and several medical personnel trying to save his life. One of Ellefson's bullets had first struck his left rear bicep, continued through his arm where it exited before striking him in the left side of his chest. Inside his body, it lodged in the right ventricle of his heart. Massive bleeding likely resulted and the few heart beats that Brown had left simply sped up his death. Within 45 minutes of the shooting, Brown would be declared clinically dead at a nearby hospital.

The staples in his left chest attest to a last ditch effort by emergency physicians to ward off death that was ultimately futile. Another bullet had penetrated near his right breast and its outline could be seen where it had attempted to exit through his right side, quite a bit lower and to the right of the entry wound. Both bullets were extracted by the medical examiner but bore little resemblance to their original state. Both had entered front to back and traveled downward, according to the medical examiner's report.

Lacerations and bruises were on his shins and above his knee, apparently from several blows delivered by Stucker's expandable baton. Several small punctures and burn marks were attributed to the approximately seven taser cycles attributed to both officers' tasers, according to their statements and information that was downloaded from both tasers. Older bruises and abrasions that had already scabbed were also recorded, along with a fresher injury on his forehead, just below the hairline area.

Ellefson's taser was shown in front of room #9 some distance to the east of where the shooting had occurred, in several crime scene photographs that were taken. It was an X-26 model with its cartridge missing.

Most of the evidence was discovered where Brown had fallen, although several items including the two spent shells from Ellefson's gun were located near or in the alcove to the west of the building. That was where Stucker had first encountered Brown after arriving at the motel. Pieces of taser cartridge doors and one taser cartridge attached to taser wires were photographed, along with two pairs of handcuffs. One of those was covered in blood, with one of its links open. Clearly that had been the handcuffs that Ellefson had tried to use unsuccessfully with Brown. Another pair of closed handcuffs covered with rain drops that were located nearby belonged to Stucker.


Officer B. Anderson arrived onscene after having been called to assist Stucker with a suspicious subject at 1:57 p.m. When he arrived, he saw both officers with their guns drawn giving verbal commands to Brown who was lying on the ground.

According to the transcript of Stucker's recording, both officers repeatedly gave him commands, from about 10 seconds before the shots were fired, until several minutes afterward. The commands before the shooting were for Brown to put his hands behind his back, although Ellefson had told investigators that he had also told Brown to drop on the ground.

Stucker mentioned in his report that people gathered at the site of the shooting afterwards and began screaming at both officers. Other police officers who arrived later would provide the same accounts in their reports.

Those officers who had been called at various stages of the incident to assist the officers also appeared but were then used to "control" a large crowd of over 100 angry people that had materialized at the corner of University Avenue and Ottawa after the shooting. Several officers tried to move them away from the crime scene, and then finally called for reinforcements.

The onlookers screamed at Ellefson and Stucker for having shot Brown, calling them murderers according to one police report. In cases like this, 1998 seems like yesterday.

At some point, the supervisors began arriving too.

Sgt. Brian Kittinger who had been assigned to the Special Investigations Bureau had been driving in an unmarked vehicle down University close to Ottawa at about 1:59 p.m. He noticed that there were police cars with sirens on in the parking lot at the Welcome Inn of America so he stopped there to offer assistance after he had turned on his radio to get more information. Kittinger was the first supervisor of any type to arrive at the scene of the shooting. When he first walked up, he saw Brown lying on the ground on his back with a handcuff around his left wrist and taser wire wrapped around that same arm. The medical personnel had just arrived onscene, and Kittinger saw Ellefson and Stucker standing by Motel room #8. Ellefson told Kittinger that he had shot two rounds in a downward direction. Sgt. Russell Shubert who had arrived by that point was questioning Stucker, who indicated to him that he had not fired his gun. Kittinger remained at the scene until Sgt. John Capen’s arrival.

Capen had been near the Galleria at Tyler at about 1:57 p.m. when he received a call from Ellefson and Stucker requesting supervision. He arrived at the motel by 2:06 and Shubert informed him that Ellefson had told him that he had fired twice at Brown striking him twice.

Shubert arrived, after having responded to a “shots fired” call he had received, at about 2:00 p.m. He saw the Riverside Fire Department’s units responding to Brown’s medical needs. He also had a conversation at some point with Ellefson about the shooting.


“Officer Ellefson advised me he had fired two rounds in a southern direction and the trajectory was downward.”


It wasn't until the interviews were done with both Ellefson and Stucker that the alleged role of the taser as a deadly weapon in the hands of Brown took a prominant place in the department's investigation. As a result, the taser was tested after several fingerprints were discovered on it but the results were inconclusive. So the department turned towards more advanced forensic technology.

A sample for DNA testing was collected from Ellefson’s taser the day after the shooting and also later from Brown. Some time later, DNA samples were taken from both Ellefson and Stucker. A police report that was dated June 6 stated the following.


“DNA report from Officer Ellefson’s taser is pending until completion from the D.O.J.”


On Oct. 16, CPRC executive director, Pedro Payne sent an email to Internal Affairs Division Lieutenant Ed Blevins, who forwarded it to Det. Rick Cobb, asking him if the DNA test results had been released by the Department of Justice. Cobb responded by email to Payne’s request by stating that he had spoken to Dave Woo at the D.O.J. and Woo had told him that the testing would take two more weeks.


However, as of Dec. 13, the space in the department’s investigative case file which was reserved for the DNA test results remains empty.

Few answers, more questions and much more to come as the investigations surrounding the Brown shooting continue. CPRC investigator Butch Warnberg will return to Riverside next month to present the second briefing on his ongoing investigation.

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.