Early warning is better than no warning?

The New York Times published an update on a developing story involving a New York Police Department officer who was stopped by police while driving a car that just earlier, had been involved in the shooting of another officer. Now, Officer Jacqueline Melendez Rivera faces charges of aiding her husband who faces charges of attempted murder.


Crisis of family and badge


(excerpt)


Officer Rivera said she had not seen her husband since his arrest, and that she would not know what to say to him even if she did.


“Me loving him does not condone what he did, bringing me down in this mess,” she said, her voice cracking. “Everybody’s affected. Not just him. Officer Suarez and his family. My family. My kids. The job that I worked at for 13 years. Everybody’s in pain.”



Rivera had been the subject of several complaints involving inappropriate behavior involving minors but the complaints had not been sustained. So if there was trouble in her background, like is the case of many law enforcement agencies, her employers either didn't see it or chose not to see it. Was she another example of why it's important for police departments to not only have "early warning systems" in place but to utilize those that actually work?

After all, Inglewood Police Department officer Jeremy Morse had at least 12 reported incidents of excessive force allegations during the three-year period leading up to the incident where he was caught on a camcorder punching teenager Donovan Jackson. After that incident, the department was to have put in place an early warning system, but has it?

In 2003, four civil rights law suits were filed against the city of Inglewood for failure to flag problem officers who had prior complaints filed against them, according to this newsletter article published by the Police Assessment Research Center. Two officers named in the law suits were Morse and Bijan Darvish who had also faced criminal charges in relation to the Jackson incident. According to the law suits, those two officers faced at least 10 complaints together or separately over a 30 month period but only one of of them had been sustained. So it appears that at least for Morse and Darvish, the community that they both policed in had a somewhat different perspective on their behavior over a period of time than their employers did.

But does Inglewood's police department have an early warning system? That's a good question in the light of the fact that just recently, about a dozen officers were implicated in a sexual misconduct scandal during a federal investigation into a money laundering and prostitution ring.

The Los Angeles Police Department which is serving its sixth year of a five-year consent decree imposed by the federal government is still hung up on how it's going to implement a computerized form of an early warning system that flags officers based on a list of criteria that addresses both good and bad behavior. At the rate this department is going, expect to ring in a new decade and still see the department dragging its old-guard feet on this one.

The early warning system is built on the belief that 80% of the misconduct in a department is committed by 20% of its officers or less or it tackles the problem from more of a "bad apple" approach rather than a systemic one. Or it is an attempt by law enforcement agencies to prove that it's not a systemic one by tackling it? At any rate by 1999, nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies serving cities larger than 50,000 had one in place, according to the Justice Department.

In San Francisco, the news wasn't so good for that department's early warning system, according to a 2006 article in the San Francisco Chronicle.


Early warning system outdated, ignored


An investigation conducted by the newspaper discovered that the early warning system used by the San Francisco Police Department since 1985 was out of date and routinely ignored by the department's supervisors.


The study's findings


(excerpt, article)


-- The department's system for monitoring the use of force relies on thousands of paper records filed at headquarters and at stations across the city, making it difficult to review an officer's record or analyze trends. Other large departments -- including Miami-Dade, Pittsburgh and Phoenix -- use computer-based systems.

-- Officers are required to report when they use force, but not all do. The Chronicle found significant incidents when force was used and not logged, including cases where the city paid thousands of dollars to settle lawsuits.

-- The department acknowledges that repeated use of force is a warning sign and keeps a watch list of officers who report using force three or more times in a quarter. But dozens of officers appear again and again on that list.

-- There is a separate system for keeping track of officers who get frequent citizen complaints, but it recently lapsed for more than a year without anyone asking about it.

-- The system's weaknesses have been the subject of highly critical reports from outside the department, but city elected officials have failed to successfully press for changes in the way the department deals with problem officers.


The newspaper had its own database of officers who had registered a lot of force incidents, with one having received 58 in nine years, another, 28. The officer with 58 incidents had been flagged by the department's early warning system nine times.


However, very little research had been done on whether these warning systems work. But one thing for sure is that if the department and city or county only gives them lip service then they are pretty much finished before they've even begun.


The National Institute of Justice and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services attempted to tackle this complex issue and financed a study.


Early warning systems: Responding to the problem officer



This study surveyed 832 city and county law enforcement agencies and examined different early warning systems used by many of these agencies.


Some of the findings of the study addressed the type of officer who was flagged by an early warning system, in that male officers were overrepresented, female officers, underrepresented and there was not much difference by race and ethnicity.

The study did note that there was a slight tendency for officers in the early warning system to be promoted to higher positions than those who were not. Those conducting the study did advise that further research be done to determine whether the department was inadvertently or otherwise rewarding officers for exhibiting the same behaviors they were also flagging them for in determining whether to monitor them under the early warning system.

The study did conclude that the early warning systems did reduce citizen complaints against those police officers as well as other behaviors that had caused them to be flagged.

It would be interesting to see how Riverside Police Department's early warning system would fare under a similar study. Riverside was eligible to participate in the study, but was still developing its own system at the time the study was being conducted. It took quite a while for that process to work its way through the department and then through LEPAC where it was also reviewed. It was also mandated under the city's stipulated judgement with the state.

The problem with the early warning system for the average city resident is that it is a process that is entirely internal and thus insulated from public scrutiny, even in statistical form given how City Attorney Gregory Priamos prohibits the release of even statistical information even when it is allowed under state law. So most people in the community tend to look at it with a skeptical eye, because even after the five-year stipulated judgement imposed by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, there still is not much trust between community members and the department's most insulated processes.

Communities have always had their own informal "early warning systems" long before it became standard police practice in the larger agencies to create them. Long before the implementation of these systems became part and parcel of federal and state consent decrees. After all, it was the Mayor's Use of Force task force which came up with a recommendation in its final report to create such a system which was watered down a bit during its evolution but was ultimately implemented in some form.

It's probably a good bet that by the time a department gets around to flagging an officer in the early warning system that the community has known this officer may have been a good candidate for years. It's probably an even better bet that the officer's colleagues in the department knew even longer than that, but what the community often doesn't know is whether or not these same officers alert their supervisors of these problems, try to deal with the officer themselves or just ignore them. And if there are problems with an officer, just ignoring them is not doing that officer any kindness. In fact, it is making their situation worse.

So an early warning system done by computer may be a way to address or circumvent the reality that often times, what one officer may see in another, or a community may see in an officer in its midst is not visible to those operating inside a department and making the decisions regarding whether an officer will be promoted, where he or she will be assigned and even about the disciplining of an officer. How does a system like this which tracks potentially problems not visible to the human eye impact the actions that may need to be taken at the point in an officer's career when addressing problems may make the most difference?

A computer system which is impartial and immune to police culture keeps track of and monitors what human beings are unable or perhaps unwilling to see with their eyes. And although a computer may be immune to the culture which surrounds it, those who enter data into it probably are not. But what is done with the information delivered by that computer and how is it used to determine whether or not there is a problem or a trend indicating a problem? What is the difference between a series of incidents flagged by a computer and a problemic pattern of behavior or trend? It would seem that one of the most difficult problems with learning how to implement a new early warning system would be in the ability of supervisors to identify certain trends in their officers from analyzing computer data.

What if by the time an officer starts getting a rash of complaints, it's become much more difficult to address any problems?

These are some of the many questions people have about these systems and their effectiveness.

Because what if by the time a department's computer finally tracks and flags a problem which the department does not have the ability or the time to see, it's too late to intervene in the situation?


University of Nebraska, Omaha Criminal Justice professor Samuel Walker and Geoffrey P. Alpert conducted the above study. It is also available here.

An interesting story about Alpert, who specializes in use of force issues, is that when he was invited to speak in Riverside, he politely declined. He explained that he was on his way to China to give a lecture on police practices there and would thus be unavailable. He did add that he believed it would be far less difficult to lecture on the police practices used by the United states to individuals speaking a different language and living in a communist country than it would be to provide the same lecture in Riverside, California.

Ouch.


To film or not to film is the question asked in the New York Times Blog Talk section when a federal judge ordered the New York City Police Department to stop routinely filming gatherings of people including those at demonstrations. A ruling issued by the judge on a case that was 35 years old stated that police officers may only film at large gatherings if there is a reasonable suspicion that unlawful activity might occur.

Canary in the Mine? Not sustained

The judges are coming to Riverside from the outside to handle the overwhelming case load that is in the criminal court system, according to today's article in the Press Enterprise. I guess that means that divorces, adoptions, custody battles and probate hearings will continue in the family courts uninterrupted.


Retired judges drafted to address caseload



Two retired judges have been temporarily added to the roster bringing the sum total of judges and commissioners up to 71 out of the 135 that are needed to handle a backlog of 1,000 cases. The Riverside County District Attorney's office points fingers at the judges and the defense attorneys point fingers at the District Attorney's office. And round and round and round it goes.




Former Riverside County Sheriff Department and Riverside Community employee, Bill O'Rafferty's sentencing has been postponed, according to this article in the Press Enterprise.

Instead of sentencing O'Rafferty, Judge Erik Michael Kaiser will consider whether or not he will be receiving a new trial, after one of the jurors wrote a letter to the court expressing concern about a conversation that took place during jury deliberations. Apparently, one of the jurors had a connection to law enforcement which he or she didn't reveal when questioned during jury selection.


(excerpt)


Peter Murray, O'Rafferty's attorney, said the Jan. 12 letter to the court indicated that the juror was concerned about a conversation that may have suggested one of the jurors, who remarked about "the concept of good cops and bad cops," may have a connection to law enforcement.

"What this raises is what exactly went on in that jury room that is causing this juror such angst. That needs to be explored," Murray said.

"The question here: Is there cause to disclose the information that could lead to the potential of a new trial," he said.

In Riverside, prospective candidates in the upcoming city election are still taking papers. Ward 1 resident and former Community Police Review Commission member Mike Gardner apparently will be facing off with incumbent Dom Betro this June. He will join local attorney Letitia Pepper and anyone else willing to compete for the position of presiding over what developers and city officials have referred to as the "jewel of the city".

The Community Police Review Commission has updated its findings online. What was interesting to note during the past year was how many of those allegations received "not sustained" findings. Of the complaints surveyed from January to November 2006, there were 62 allegations receiving that finding. The definition of a "not sustained" finding is one where "the investigation produced insufficient evidence to prove or disprove the allegation".

The three largest categories receiving those findings are the following.

Discourtesy: 21

Improper procedure: 18

Excessive force: 10

It's not surprising to see improper procedure and discourtesy allegations top the list because more complaints are filed and placed in these two categories by the police department's Internal Affairs Division than in any of the others. It's also not that surprising to see that the number of not sustained excessive force allegations have placed that category in third place, given that there was actually a similar trend in 2005 when seven not sustained findings were reached for excessive complaints. What is somewhat surprising is the higher number of not sustained findings for complaint allegations.

Without knowing what the findings reached by the police department were for these allegations and what the city's final disposition is, it's hard to compare the trends seen in the CPRC's findings with those reached during other stages of the process. The only complaint where a comparison could be made was one that was deliberated by the CPRC in November and covered 10 allegations involving four police officers. For that complaint, the CPRC determined that all 10 of those allegations were not sustained. However, a letter written by the city to the complainant was included as part of a Pitchess motion in a related criminal case. According to that letter, each of the 10 findings was determined to be exonerated by the city, which means that very likely the department exonerated the officers as well.

It's hard to make an evaluation on any one complaint even one involving many allegations of misconduct. What is interesting about this situation is that not only did the CPRC and the city/police department disagree on the findings on the allegations, but they disagreed with the quality of the investigations as well. The CPRC determined that the investigation failed to reveal enough evidence to reach a finding, yet the department had no such difficulty. Most of the time the CPRC determines that enough evidence is provided by the police department's own investigation to reach a decision on a complaint finding, according to statistics provided by six years of annual reports.

When asked about the nature of not sustained findings, members of the CPRC have said that it is often a case of having to evaluate the versions of the account provided by the police officer(s) and complainants unless there are witnesses, audio recordings or other evidence to assist them in this process. For the police department, the task of evaluating statements by the different parties appears to be much simpler.

One obvious way to address this dilemma would be to require police officers to activate their department-issued and quite pricey digital audio recorders during all professional contacts with the public and not just those initiated by police officers, as is mandated by the current policy. The majority of contacts made by police officers with the public are initiated by the public through calls for service and if that trend is also noted in similar statistics regarding filing complaints, then many of the complaints investigated do not have the benefit of recordings which may assist greatly in making a determination on an allegation.

The CPRC forwarded two recommendations to the police department asking the department to expand its audio recording policy, the last time was 2005. Both times, the police chief and the police union said no. Although there are probably some officers who engage in this practice because good officers know the recordings can both help them in criminal cases and protect them from any false allegations made against them so they switch them on accordingly. Hopefully, the numbers of good officers who engage in this practice will grow to the point where the policy recommendation and the issue of policy expansion itself will be moot.

Having more statistics would be more helpful.

I sent the city manager's office a CPRA request asking for the statistics on the instances where the CPRC and the police department's Internal Affairs Division both forwarded different findings, both in terms of numbers and percentages. I also asked for those same figures in regards to whether the city manager's officer backed the CPRC's finding, the department's finding or came up with an independent finding. I received a letter back from this office informing me that the documents, thus the statistics, I had requested did not exist.

They don't exist? How could that be?

City Manager Brad Hudson and his employees had been working in Riverside for a year at that point and still hadn't figured out that such information deserved to be recorded? It's a little late for them to plead ignorance on the importance of record keeping, like they did with their handling of the Summer Lane shooting which back then they essentially blamed on being the new kids on the block, even though Hudson at that point had six months experience with the city. Next time would be different in terms of the decision making process you'll see, they said. With three cases in various stages in the process, we just might.

The more likely explanation is that they didn't and don't keep records of this information because if the records don't exist, they can't be disseminated to the public which is entitled to read them under the CPRA and thus the actions of this office can't be scrutinized and those performing these actions can't be held accountable for them. In other words, these two men do not want the public who pays their salaries and funds both the city manager's office and the police department through shopping locally to know what it is that they are or are not doing. Now, the two men are joined by an interim executive director who when asked what his qualifications were to be in that position, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis essentially answered, he used to work for me and he'd sat in a few meetings with the police department's representatives on the issue of citizen complaints.

If you exclude the fact that the current acting executive manager used to work for either Hudson and DeSantis like nearly every management employee in City Hall has these days, his qualifications pale beside those of the man he replaced. Former executive director, Pedro Payne had been trained to do his job by former commissioner and retired police chief, Bill Howe for over six months.

After witnessing the actions of Hudson and DeSantis during the past year, this explanation appears very plausible as to why the statistics apparently were not recorded. It has been disheartening to watch, as well as disheartening to realize that many of the city employees who espoused their support for a stronger, more independent investigative and review process even arguing for independent legal counsel in several cases, never meant a word they were saying and apparently were biding their time to take action.

The questions remain, is there any way for the CPRC and its executive director to obtain this critical information, or to keep records of these statistics themselves? After all, former interim city manager Larry Paulson and City Manager George Carvalho kept these records, in fact the CPRC included some of these statistics in its earlier annual reports. But then there was a reason why Carvalho is considered one of the best city managers in the state and the country and Hudson is considered an above average economic development director.

This along with the questions above are ones for the ages, right up there with one burning question that still puzzles me, which is how DeSantis managed to procure a concealed weapon permit from the Riverside Police Department without even living within the city limits and thus within the department's jurisdiction. A gun permit he probably would still have, if the Press Enterprise had not been curious enough to check out who at City Hall was taking out these permits.

How could that be? It's like someone said, you could write a series proposal, submit it to one of the Big Three and here comes your next soap opera. O.C. watch out! It's no longer on the air but it did manage to establish a record for itself besides being the television show that Councilman Frank Schiavone once wanted the city attorney's office to sue.

Quartets and questions

The election season in Riverside officially opened on Feb. 12 and the candidates have begun to pull papers at City Hall and are beginning to hold fundraisers to garner endorsements and earn money.

Harry Karuni, a candidate for the seat in Ward 5 which will be vacated by Councilman Ed Adkison spoke at a community meeting this morning to a packed room at the Coffee Depot. He was endorsed up front by Human Relations Commissioner Chani Beeman and questioned by other individuals.



Harry Kurani campaign bio




In Riverside, there are two types of candidates and elected officials. Those who place emphasis on the building of the infrastructure of the city's basic services including police, fire, parks, public works, utilities, streets and libraries. The other type of candidate and the dominant force on the current city council are those who focus on development and more importantly, redevelopment, the city be damned. It's not very rare to see a candidate who balances the two interests but it's very rare to see one of them win, because if you're not for development, development and more development, then you're not going to attract their financial support of your political campaign.

That's one reason why the most recent city council elections have involved more fundraising as well as spending among candidates. And there are no caps on how much money can be raised by candidates at the local level.

There was mention of city council members being handpicked by development, and perhaps there is truth to that. But even grass-roots elected candidates have found themselves pulled in that direction as has been seen with Councilman Dom Betro, who one could argue is more focused on development and developers than the others, mainly because his territory which is the downtown is seen by developers as the jewel of the city. This latest city council brought former Economic Development Agency head, Brad Hudson, on board to engineer the proposed five-year Riverside Renaissance project. The other major short-term development project is the University Charette, which proposes major changes to the strip connecting the University of California, Riverside to downtown, yet for some reason apparently forgot to include its plans for parking in the project proposal unveiled in the Eastside several months ago. Oops. If you build it, they may come, but "they" need a place to park their cars.

His speech appeared prepared like he's been prepped but he didn't know much outside his support for public safety and traffic control and neither of those issues really in depth. He didn't appear to know about the Community Police Review Commission or even what it was called, until reminded of its name by someone in the audience.

Karuni will be holding a campaign fundraiser on Feb. 15 to launch off his campaign bid. He's the latest in the Michael Williams Company stable of elected officials, which include councilmen Betro, Ed Adkison, Frank Schiavone, Steve Adams and candidate Rusty Bailey, who has already been endorsed by the new quartet.


That new quartet(hint, the acronym spells a game fish) continued its ongoing tiff with a local gadfly by calling up the police and having two of them and a sergeant serve as escorts at a city council subcommitee meeting. Councilmen Ed Adkison, Frank Schiavone and Art Gage(former quartet member) were part of the Land Use committee which was discussing the placement of restrictions on roosters in several rural areas of the city. So quick to call the police to eject a gadfly, so slow to approve them a livable working contract. Why to both? Because of unchecked development and efforts to silence its critics or reduce the forum they can participate in, especially if they apparently pulled papers to run against one of your own.

But what is being lost in the vast expenditures involved with the recently passed Riverside Renaissance?

One thing, was the 25 police officer positions that were promised by the latest city council to supplement the 25 positions approved in the autumn of 2005. Currently, the department has 11 vacancies according to its personnel and training division and is already lagging behind the tremendous growth of this city, not to mention the growth that will be part of this renaissance. If you read the text that was included in the original law suit written by then State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, you will see that there was a lot of references to the failure of the department to implement many programs including community policing due to inadequate staffing. Some mistakes like City Manager Brad Hudson made when he withdrew these new positions should only be made once if that and enough should be learned from the experience not to repeat them.

Another thing, are the city residents who lost their homes including one man who was in tears, to eminent domain to make room for the new fire station which was supposed to be built on Olivewood under the renaissance plan. Those plans quickly fell through and now that land is being offered to private developers. If that is true, then essentially the city has violated its promise not to take people's homes away to provide land for private development less than two years after it made that promise. Perhaps that land needed to be sold to developers to offset the money that the city needed to pull in from selling the park land associated with the land swap that Betro went retro and stopped to save his political campaign.




The Los Angeles Police Department got a fairly good progress report from its monitor who was assigned to oversee its implementation of reforms as part of its federal consent decree. Work was still needed in several areas including the implementation of its early warning system, which still lags behind its scheduled completion.

But the department will be able to change the way it gathers data for its racial profiling audits.


LAPD tries racial profiling study


(excerpt)


In his quarterly report on the department's compliance with a federal consent decree mandating LAPD reforms, Independent Monitor Michael Cherkasky said the agency might be able to meet the requirement for checking on racial profiling by methods other than the one currently used to collect data.

"It is the monitor's belief that the dollars that would need to be spent in continuing the current method of collection and aggregation can, in fact, be better spent on enhancing the city's ability to detect, investigate and prevent biased policing," Cherkasky wrote.

That opens the door for the city to propose alternatives such as installing video cameras in all patrol cars, though any change would require final approval from Cherkasky, the Justice Department and a federal judge.




The department also conducted an audit of its complaint process to see if officers and their supervisors were following policies regarding the accessibility of citizen complaint forms. Alas, the department only found full compliance in 74% of its facilities and in some of them, the person trying to get the complaint form was unable to even get the form. Rather embarassing to score less than 95% six years into a five-year consent decree. It's kind of like getting anything less than an "A" on a health inspection form at your restaurant.

Riverside is closing in on its first anniversary of being decree-free and with the exception of one belated quarterly report, there hasn't been much news by the increasingly removed department on that front. And what has been provided outside of the top-secret chief's advisory board hasn't been much, and it's not easy as one member found out to ask too many pressing questions on a board which vets its membership roster twice annually.

The department will maintain and expand both its field and investigations division to match the area and population growth of this city through immigration and annexations. Well, no, only 30 new positions have been approved since 2005 and last summer, 25 proposed positions were allegedly taken off the table by Hudson who decided the city didn't need them.

The department will implement new training as needed, which is a componant of several objectives in the strategic plan. Well, the only training information the community is privy to learning about is the stop-start process involving the implementation of mental health intervention training. Originally, it appeared that the department would go with the crisis intervention model implemented in Memphis, Cincinnati and many other cities. Then the process stalled in the summer time when Capt. Pete Esquival was shipped off to Magnolia Center with the beleagured Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez and replaced by Capt. Michael Blakely who had spent most of the duration of the period of the stipulated judgement heading the traffic division. Then the mental health training was reborn as a model similar to LAPD's SMART co-partner version. A meeting was to take place several days after the public safety committee meeting and the timeline for its implementation is still being worked out.

Objective #1.5 which is the "general idea" that the department should more closely reflect the diversity in the city that it serves still has no clear vision but the department's numbers have improved in the past year somewhat. There are no plans to create programs to address retention issues because even though many larger agencies have embraced them in the modern era, this city still is stuck in the past and views these programs as "remedial training for those who can't cut it".

Then there is the recommendation that the Community Police Review Commission should be stronger and more independent. People in this city have championed that cause and city and police leaders including Chief Russ Leach had pushed for its independence and power when they needed to do so. Unfortunately they didn't appear to really mean it as the actions directed by City Hall and the police department this past year have clearly shown. They dusted off the "killing it through kindness" strategy used against LEPAC in the 1980s and 90s and brought it back to life here. With the city facing five, possibly six law suits(depending on whether litigation is filed in the shooting of Joseph Darnell Hill) for wrongful death, what choice did the city have?

It would be refreshing if this city would actually deal with these issues in an open and honest fashion, outside the watchful eye of an outside agency. Unfortunately, that day hasn't arrived yet. And when the city's risk management division makes decisions, neither the public nor the department will benefit. Just like the city should explain why it's not approving staffing positions for the police department in both its field and investigations division so it can match the growth of the city around it. Unfortunately, it appears that this day hasn't yet arrived either.


Though the current situation could be worse, as it appears that what was clearly the original plan, which was to essentially weaken the CPRC by banning it from conducting its own independent investigations of officer-involved deaths has at least slowed for the time being. Actions that it is very doubtful, they would have dared taken a year ago, which further questions their legitimacy.

It is only the involvement of community leaders especially those who are outside the normal crowd, many of whom have been as publicly silent on this issue as the council members they support. Concern and dismay on the recent actions by the city have spread city-wide and there is concern that the CPRC should be able to currently able to both continue its investigation of the Lee Deante Brown shooting and officer-involved deaths in general. However, if the police department and city manager's office have it their way, the CPRC will have to wait 3-6 months or longer, to initiate its own investigations until after the police department has conducted its own.

A good degree of credit goes to Councilman Andrew Melendrez who has provided a venue for discussion on the CPRC through his public safety commitee, where last month the partners in the process to implement changes to its operations finally held a meeting where their partners in the reform process, the community, could attend to at least bear witness to what had already been done.

With the year anniversary of the consent decree upon this city, it's fitting that the Brown shooting is coming up for its final briefing by CPRC Investigator Butch Warnburg at the general meeting later this month. The department has promised the disclosure of new evidence that will cast this shooting in a new light. This likely includes the reveal on the long-delayed DNA test that was conducted on Officer Terry Ellefson's taser. But if it's reflective of the past, it's more than likely that this piece of evidence too will raise more questions than answers. That's usually the nature of things.

Louder than words: edicts and ethics

There was some interesting letters in the Press Enterprise's Readers' Forum about the ongoing war of words between the Riverside County District Attorney's office and the judges of the Riverside County Superior Court. Actually, as one person stated, it's a one-way battle because judges are more restricted in what they can say on issues than district attorneys who spent most of the past eight years or so outside of Riverside.


Readers' Forum


There's a particularly good letter by former prosecutor and current defense attorney Jeffrey A. Van Wagenen, Jr. who stated that both sides need to stop throwing potshots at each other and work together to address the issue.


(excerpt, letter)



...Our justice system works only so long as the people we serve have faith and confidence in us. The only thing that has been accomplished over the past few weeks is that we have caused doubt, dismay and distrust in those who need us.

If we would spend as much time trying to fix the problem as we spend trying to fix the blame, then maybe we could work together to begin to restore the public's confidence in all of us.


Now that this has been said, it may be time to deal with some of those "faith and confidence" issues.



The new ethics complaint process in Riverside got off to a rocky start when the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee heard its first complaint against a councilman, in this case Dom Betro. You can read about it here. Councilwoman Nancy Hart substituted in for Betro, not that it made much difference because the entire city council had already taken action against complainant Letitia Pepper at a city council meeting two weeks ago. It had essentially made its decision before being asked to make its decision.

Having not been a witness to the events in question, I found the DVD presentation of unconnected events at the city council meeting to be more confusing than illuminating. But the process that followed put that presentation to shame, in terms of not so much resembling an ethics complaint hearing, as a high school lunch room. In a sense, it's not about whether or not the complaint was sustained or unfounded, with merit or without merit, because that's a decision left to the committee to make under the current process. It was the process itself which should be open to input by city residents that showed obvious problems.

Instead of spending any real amount of time deliberating the evidence, all three council members, with Mayor Ron Loveridge wisely sitting this discussion out, just complained about the complainant. Her behavior was on trial, not Betro's. Which was interesting because they had complained about being questioned on their objectivity and then proceeded to show why those concerns were warranted, especially in terms of comments made by two council members afterwards.

Since the majority of those in community leadership positions who supported an ethics code and complaints process for good reason also support Betro politically, no questions will be raised about the process until it involves a complaint against Councilman Art Gage or Steve Adams or someone else they oppose and that's not really fair to those councilmen anymore than it is fair to give Betro a pass.

After viewing what was provided for evidence, I decided that though it would have been nice if Betro had taken a higher road and apologized for his comments like Councilman Ed Adkison usually does when he loses his temper in public and like Betro ordered police officers to serve as his personal bouncers. As for any action against him, it's probably not going to happen from the new quartet and it would pale next to the reality that Betro put a side of himself on cable television that day that is more politically damaging than any censure by a consensus city council could ever be. And it's interesting how often it is in the political arena that things work out that way. The Betro which used to be above this behavior is apparently a distant memory but often power does change people.

As for the Market Street development, which Press Enterprise reporter Doug Haberman appeared to explain or defend, it would be sensible to keep an eye on any property transactions that come out of that piece of land. Before Betro went retro, the sales of that property were allegedly supposed to be used to restock several other city funds which were never earmarked for developoment expenditures but have been tapped to fund the Riverside Renaissance. One such fund that was used to purchase businesses on Market Street through wide-spread eminent domain was the totally unrelated sewer fund, which alas, didn't have enough funds left after the purchase of those properties to actually be used to well, fund sewers. It makes you wonder if any city funded or invested account is safe from being used in the way it was never intended to be used. If I were in the position where any of that money had been set aside for my benefit, I would want to do an audit of any involved accounts to make sure all the money was still there.



While police union leaders are celebrating a judge's decision to keep the Berkeley Police Commission's hearings closed, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is doing the opposite and urging its disciplinary hearings to be reopened for its Office of Independent Review, according to the Los Angeles Times.


Sheriff, supervisors urge public hearings to be reopened


Baca's request was followed by support provided by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Michael Gennaco who heads the Office of Independent Review and his attorneys on staff have been barred from hearings, which he has said undermines his ability to perform the duties of his office.


(excerpt, article)


County Counsel Raymond G. Fortner Jr. said the California Supreme Court's ruling in Copley Press Inc. vs. Superior Court of San Diego County does not require the closure of commission hearings. He argued that attorneys from Gennaco's office already had "full and complete access" to Sheriff's Department personnel records and were professionally bound to keep such information confidential.

"There is, I respectfully submit, no basis for the exclusion of any attorneys for the county, whose duties and responsibilities involve them in the center of these proceedings," Fortner wrote.


Bob Baker, the president of the Los Angeles Police[Department] League issued the following press release which showed his disagreement with the county's view of Copley.


(excerpt)


"On August 31, 2006, the California Supreme Court affirmed that peaceofficer have rights to have their personnel matters adjudicated in confidentiality. Holding open meetings regarding officers' personnel matters violates the statutory and contractual rights of the officers who are compelled to appear publicly at the inquiries. The court responded to convincing arguments on behalf of peace officers.

Peace officers, like other employees, have the right not to have their reputations dragged through the mud unnecessarily. And, as we have seen in the Officer Garcia case, these cases are often heavily politicized. The media and others seem to be compelled to use privatepersonnel information to sit in judgment on officers who have broken no laws or policies.


The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights wrote an article on its blog questioning the merits of the Copley decision.


Copley decision good for cops?

(excerpt)


Now, the Police Officers Association wants us to believe that their focus is on maintaining the confidentiality of the police officers, and protecting them from publication of frivolous or unwarranted charges. That is one way to look at. Or one could look at this as a shield for those who continue to abuse their authority.

Are we asking to know the personal details of the officers’ records? No. We are merely asserting that if there are officers who have had disciplinary actions taken against them due to use of excessive force, then we have the right to know the names of these officers.


The debate continues, but even as various boards and commissions have been hit by turmoil in California, up in Tacoma, Washington, a new one was born when that city's council voted to implement its model created through ordinance at its Feb. 13 meeting.




The probe into the dumping of a paraplegic man on skid row in Los Angeles is widening as the city attorney's office begins its own investigation of the incident that shocked people around the world, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.

A surveillance video showed representatives of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center pushing a man on a stretcher at the Midnight Mission where they remained for several minutes before putting the man back in the ambulance. This led the city to believe that the hospital wasn't just leaving patients on skid row but transferring them there, which meant it was potentially violating federal laws.


Probe into dumping of paraplegic man continues


(excerpt, article)


Jeffrey B. Isaacs, head of the Los Angeles city attorney's criminal and special litigation branch, said he believes that the attempt to drop the man off by ambulance at the mission represents a violation of federal law because the patient did not meet basic discharge requirements.

"You cannot transfer a patient to an institution like the Midnight Mission," Isaacs said. "This seems to be a transfer, not a discharge. Based on initial information, he was in no shape to give any authorization."

Louder than Words: Two steps forward, one back

The University of Illinois newspaper printed an article about civilian review coming to small communities in that state. Although civilian review mechanisms are not yet popular in Illinois, that is beginning to change as more and more cities and towns begin dialogues and debates on this important issue.


Another civilian review mechanism coming to Illinois



Ricky Baldwin, who chairs the Champaign Couny Coalition for Police Review had this to say.

(excerpt)


"There is a democratic principle involved," he said. "Even if there were no incidents, police still need oversight. They have a very broad authority, they're armed, they can arrest people and put people in jail. It's very important that they do everything right and that they have the trust of the community."



And in cities and towns in Illinois just like in other states, people believe that establishing civilian oversight is one way to develop trust within communities towards police departments through giving them a voice in the process.

Urbana may establish a civilian review board by later this year. The issue of how to go about doing that will be coming to the city council in that city later this month or in March for further discussion.

Dusty Rhodes writes about her resolution on writing about the civilian review process in Springfield, Illinois.


Keeping a resolution



Riverside has spent the past few months, actually the past year showing how unprepared its current leaders, not to mention the city manager's office was to fully implement charter-mandated civilian review in this city. No doubt, it will continue to do so until it has come full circle. But in other states, it appears that the important lessons are being learned early on.


The news isn't as good in Berkeley, home of one of the most powerful if beleagured commissions in the state which saw a judge uphold the closure of its hearings earlier this month, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.


Berkeley can't hold public hearings



Excellent news, as stated by the Berkeley Police Officers Association's attorney after the ruling. For that organization, that is true but only in the short term. The erosion of public trust in this law enforcement agency will be felt over time. Civilian oversight was born in places like Berkely for a reason, and it is spreading nationwide, one David in a field of Goliaths at a time, for a reason. That reason will not go away with the loss of powers by several civilian review mechanisms that are challenged by those who fear them the most.

Instead, it is efforts like those made by the police unions which only reinforce and serve as testament as to why they exist at all. With every one that is stifled like Berkeley for the short term, five more will spring up in its place for the longer. It's great advertising and in the long run, very helpful to the process especially in terms of educating the public as to why civilian review is important even if it's less helpful at building trust between communities and law enforcement. But then when it comes to the fears associated with building that trust, as evidenced in these battles against civilian review, the communities don't corner the market on that.

City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, a city attorney who at least is familiar with standing up for some form of accountability had this to say about the ruling.


(excerpt)


But Berkeley City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said Monday that the city may appeal the ruling.

"This is a sad day for public accountability," she said. "The decision therefore shields police conduct from public scrutiny even though police officers wield awesome and intrusive powers and even though other public officials have no such protection."


Oakland and San Francisco closed their hearings after the Copley decision and they have remained that way ever since.



Election, the series premiere


Whoo hooo! Stand aside Survivor and American Idol, the reality show which will have them all beat premiered yesterday at City Hall when the election season officially began.

The official season of city elections was kicked off yesterday when the city clerk's office began receiving papers filed by city residents interested in running for four city council seats up for grabs this year.

For candidates living in Wards 1, 3 and 7, the filing deadline is March 5. For those wishing to run for the Ward 5 spot, the deadline has been extended until March 14 because it is what they call, an open seat due to Councilman Ed Adkison's decision not to seek another term, at least on the city council. But, for all practical purposes, all the seats are open to anyone who has the willingness to audition for the greatest show in town.

Of course, it takes a lot of money to win a seat, so it helps to have good fundraising skills or to be connected with those who do.

The initial election will take place on June 5, with any runoffs taking place in November.

It will be interesting for all the talk that's been going on about who wants to run, to see who will actually put their hat in the ring.

Three incumbants have already declared an interest to run, that being Dom Betro(Ward 1), Art Gage(Ward 3) and Steve Adams(Ward 7).


As to how the candidates will present themselves on the issue of civilian review and the implementation of it in the city of Riverside amidst a climate at City Hall which remains hostile to it remains to be seen.

Adams said at the public safety meeting last month that he fully supported the CPRC and had since before his election, even though he received over $10,000 in financial contributions from the Riverside Police Officers Association which opposes it. He avowed that the city council has been fully supportive of civilian review and would continue to do so at that meeting, which I suppose means that Adams has come a long way from his action of providing a tepid second to Councilman Art Gage's motion to reduce the CPRC's operating budget by 95% at the budget reconciliation hearings in 2004. No doubt, he will continue to espouse his commitment to the CPRC during his upcoming campaign.

Gage who is running to hold his seat in Ward 3 did say initially that he was open to civilian review when running for office, even though he also received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the RPOA, which vets its prospective candidates carefully on the issue of the CPRC, according to individuals who have undergone their past interview process for endorsement. Gage proposed several motions in 2004 to reduce the CPRC's budget by up to 95%, but didn't receive much support in the wake of a threatened veto by Mayor Ron Loveridge who has never actually used that mayoral power.

Gage would go on in a public meeting to call the CPRC a "piece of trash" or "junk" depending on people's recollection of that day, but at least he's honest, in that other city council members may not call it that but may issue directions to city employees to treat it like that.

Betro ran on a grass-roots platform in 2003 which included supporting civilian review culminating in his support of the ballot measure to include it in the charter, but don't expect to see the same campaign run by him and his supporters this time. He's the incumbant and his primary supporters have staked their positions out well since his last election so expect them all to use this election to prepare for the next step, which is in accordance with the political rulebook in Riverside. Betro will probably attract a lot of campaign contributions from development interests, much more than last time, especially as is often the case, his ward turns out to be an expensive prize to win.

His tendency to incite the public to fight his own battles for him was not only apparent at a recent city council meeting, but also last autumn when he berated people at a community meeting last fall to challenge the RPOA, who during its last election had fielded a candidate against him. Don't be surprised if his silence on the issue of the CPRC changes after March 5, when he knows who he must run against to keep his seat. Whether or not his opposition is backed by the police unions will probably dictate his strategy in this area.

If he remembers his roots, it might be a more interesting contest. Will that happen? Not likely and not if he wants the majority of the city council and most importantly Loveridge to back him for the 2008 mayoral race if he decides to go that route. After all, he told the Inland Empire magazine that anything's possible after 2007. Don't be surprised if Gage has something to say about that which is why the election preseason appeared to be more about them running against each other than any rivals they might face in their respective ward bids. If both of them still want to be mayor, expect the gloves to come off well before 2008.

Not too many candidates have announced yet, mainly Riverside Poly High School teacher Rusty Bailey, who has already drawn the endorsements of Mayor Ron Loveridge and four city council members which was done more as an indictment against his rival Gage for breaking ranks with the new quartet than as an endorsement of an untested political novice.




Coming soon to a state legislative agency near you may be the issue of civilain review, as detailed in the following resolution that was passed by a committee from the state's Democratic Party.


Support of Public Law Enforcement Accountability for the Use of Lethal or Excessive Force

WHEREAS our government and law is constituionally founded "by the people and for the people" and the power and authority of each branch of government emanaes directly from its citizens and for its citizens' benefit; and

WHEREAS law enforcement personnel in its furtherance of their duties utilizes deadly force which many times raises the concerns in the communities in which this deadly force is used; and

WHEREAS to provide transparency and integrity in law enforcement in these communities and to determine whether the use of such deadly force is justified

BE IT RESOLVED that the California Democratic Party calls for the establishment of citizen review boards open to public participation and with full public transparency for the investigation of all incidents of law enforcement use of lethal or excessive force, and to ensure public confidence in law enforcement.

The RPD by the numbers: Through the ranks

Last week, the Press Enterprise wrote an article about how dozens of prospective police officers showed up at Bordwell Park in the Eastside neighborhood of Riverside to take their physical agility tests on a newly constructed course at the park. The idea to build a course at a local park came out of the department's personnel and training division earlier last year. If the applicants pass this part of the process, they must still undergo background checks and psychological examinations to gain entrance into the Ben Clark Police Training Academy.


Applicants for police positions christen agility course



What will that entry class look like? Will it reflect the increasing ethnic and racial diversity of the city? Will there be any women? What will the average ages of these future police officers be in a department that is very much on the young side and has been since undergoing an 80% turnover in employment earlier in this decade?

When the Riverside Police Officers' Association was undergoing its biennial labor contract negotiations last summer, several of its representatives said that one of the reasons it was so important to have a strong, high-paying and benefited package to offer new recruits was because of the increasing competition among law enforcement agencies for men of color and female applicants. They were right and it will be interesting to see what the union's role is in terms of how diverse the department becomes as it has laid some foundation with these comments.

The police department competes with other law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties for new officers. In recent months, both the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department have given huge increases in salaries and benefits to their sworn employees as they both compete with each other over a similar hiring pool to fill vacant positions within their respective agencies. City Manager Brad Hudson threw in comparisons with agencies in San Bernardino County and few people took them seriously.



Today's Riverside Police Department


Last week, I received a copy of the latest EEOC report from the city's Human Resources Department which contained statistics from the Riverside Police Department. These statistics were compared with those provided by Human Resources in January 2006, and some trends were noted.

By gender, women continue to struggle in terms of even having their departmental representation approach the national average which fluctuates between 13-16%. As long as the department sees the implementation of Strategic Plan #1.5 as an elective or something that can be cast side as a "general idea", that will continue as it's already been a trend for many years. Attitudes towards women in law enforcement have to really change and not just be given periodic lip service.

It will be very difficult to improve the hiring and retention of female officers without a specific action plan with incremental(short-term) and long-term goals attached to it by a leadership which has a long-term commitment and vision of the process and who will be able to withstand a lot of criticism. The hiring of women of color also needs to take into consideration barriers that exist in terms of recruitment and retention of members of racial groups that are not White and the planning and implementation needs are important here also.

The Police Chief magazine published an article in 2002 that was titled "Recruiting Women to Policing: Practical Strategies That Work" and written by Donna Milgram, the executive director of the Institute for Women in Trades, Technology, and Science in Alameda, California. In her article here, she includes strategies for recruiting female officers including a checklist that can be used by law enforcement agencies who recruit through the internet.

But mainly Milgram writes that recruitment needs to be examined in a different way than in the past to be successful.


(excerpt, article)


When police departments substantially increase their female applicant pool, they typically hire more female recruits.1

The key to achieving this increase is implementing women-specific recruitment strategies such as having a recruiting Web page for women or sponsoring a police career orientation for women. In the marketing world this practice is called "segmenting your market" based on demographics, and the accompanying "targeted marketing" strategies that result are considered to be the most effective.

Viewing recruitment as marketing may require a major paradigm shift for many law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement has traditionally regarded policing as a "calling" rather than a career choice. Nevertheless, that culture is slowly changing as police departments have struggled with a drastically decreased number of applicants in the past five years. While the events of September 11 have resulted in a spike in the number of public safety applications, it is unlikely that police agencies will return to the time when recruitment meant placing an advertisement in the local paper or having a display at the school career fair.



The Department of Justice has a resource guide for recruitment, hiring and retention of female officers here which is very detailed in its strategies.

Here are some more ideas on how to tackle this issue by a former male police officer. Norm Stamper, a retired police chief from Seattle provided some possibilities in his book, Breaking Rank on page 119.

One of them was to send female police officers to the schools beginning at the elementary school level, which the police department should already be doing and provide opportunities for girls and women to spend time with female officers.

He also suggests what he calls innoculating the female candidates who attend the academies against "conformity behavior" and to teach them skills to confront male officers who behave in sexist ways. He also suggested providing childcare centers for officers around the clock to assist officers especially those who are single parents.

He also suggested a few other things probably just to get his point across.


(excerpt, Breaking Rank)

"For the male who sits back, crosses his arms, rolls his eyes, and suggests that women should make the coffee or sweep out the command van? Bring out the two-by-four. If that doesn't work, show him the door. For the cop who thinks it's funny to call women 'split tails'? Forget the two-by-four."



A bit strong, but one way of saying it won't be like the "good old days".


After they are hired, the movement of female officers through the ranks often depends on their racial background.

White women who enjoy racial privileges similar to White men move up in the ranks whereas women in other racial groups don't, albeit at a slower pace than White men do. That is also in part due to the more successful(only relatively speaking) recruitment and retention of White female officers in comparison to Asian-American and Black female officers who for the most part have only been in the department for five years or less. The department has only one Asian-American female officer hired in the past year and two out of the three Black female officers are relatively recent hires. The retention of Latina officers traditionally has not been nearly as good as their male counterparts and it is less clear what the experience levels of the five Latina officers who are currently employed than it is for the Asian-American and Black female officers.

The hiring of male Latino officers has been slower than it should be, but still much more successful than the hiring of Latinas, which shows that gender and its combination with racial identity still is very much a factor in the recruitment and hiring of officers. The retention of male Latinos appears to be better than that of African-Americans, Asian-Americans and White women, but still needs to be addressed because it might be just as vulnerable to decreases if attention is not paid to it as it has been in the past.

Latinos continue to have difficulty moving up the chain of command but have made progress on the male side. Alhough they have made inroads especially at the top of the chart, with both deputy chiefs being Latino, they are still far underrepresented in terms of their representation in the city's population. Much more work has to be done to increase this racial group's representation in light of the fact that Riverside will sooner than later be a majority minority city, meaning that there won't be a single racial group that holds a majority and Whites themselves will be minorities. And most of the time spent by the officers in the police department are in neighborhoods that are predominantly Black and Latino.

For women of color, the issues are both recruitment and retention. For White women, the issues are more retention and promotional. Mentorship programs have been successfully utilized in law enforcement agencies across the country and their effectiveness has been backed up by research studies performed by different organizations. White men who have risen through the ranks have traditionally benefited through informal mentorship programs and any upper management officer who claims that he got there on his own is probably lying. Creating programs for all officers would help all of them, bring a formerly closed off process into the open and would comply with state laws in effect after the passage of proposition 209 in 1996, effectively putting that old strawman argument to rest.

White women progress from the officer level to the detective level, though according to 2006 statistics they still languish at low percentages in the field training officer classification which is otherwise buried amidst the "officer" statistics. What may factor into their movement into as well as their experience in the detective division may be the fact that since 2000, many detectives are actually assigned to the field division to serve as more experienced and seasoned officers on the night and weekend shifts in that division. Some of them may wait a long time before actually being assigned to an investigation division either in the General Investigations Bureau or the Special Investigations Bureau.

There's no statistical breakdown within the "detective" classification that helps determine the racial and gender breakdown of detectives assigned to investigations vs field operations and the length of their stints in both divisions. There is also no racial and gender breakdown for assignments to various teams within these investigation divisions. In recent years for example the department's Homicide unit was predominantly White and male as have been the sergeants assigned to supervise it.

The difficulties of White female officers are moving from the lower ranks up to the initial supervisory rank of sergeant and then very much so when they hit the glass ceiling at the level of lieutenant. The sergeant position is probably the most challenging and difficult in law enforcement, partly in terms of moving up from being an officer's peer to being their supervisor overnight especially in a smaller agency like the RPD where you can't easily be assigned in an area separate from where you had previously been assigned. Most new sergeants as do lieutenants first work in graveyard assignments in the field operations division.

The promotion of female officers may also be hindered by the existing reality that there are many lateral assignments including SWAT/Metro, motorcycle, canine, aviation and others which are almost exclusively male. Consequently, this provides male officers with much more opportunities to gain experience through these assigments, which although several have low turnover, more male officers fill those openings than female officers. Currently, there is one female motor officer in the traffic division and no female aviation, canine or SWAT officers and there are very few female field training officers according to statistics provided in 2006.

This is important to note as several of the recent sergeant positions have gone to officers who have had experience on the SWAT team and other special units.

Black male officers have experienced slow movement through the ranks, with one recently being promoted to lieutenant from an assigment in the Internal Affairs Division. That unit staffs about a half-dozen sergeants and one lieutenant and it would be interesting to see what the racial and gender breakdown is for that unit given the number of sergeants and even lieutenants who have been promoted out of it. One may suspect that a major reason to take what one would think is an unpopular assignment would be because it may provide promotional opportunities.

Unfortunately, as long as councilmen like retired RPD officer Steve Adams herald back to the days of the good old boy networks of the past and spout off comments in public meetings that retention programs including mentorships are "remedial training for those who can't cut it", don't expect much progress in this city. As long as Chief Russ Leach calls his pre-academy training phase, where quite a few women have dropped off, as a weeding program that's main benefit is that it saves the city a lot of money, don't expect much progress in this area.

Only several years ago, Leach made some inroads in the promotions of Black and Latino men and even some with women. And on one occasion, he defended his promotion of Capt. Jim Cannon against criticism by disgruntled White male lieutenants as he should. That's what makes his recent attitude expressed by his recent comments surprising. Though not nearly as surprising as his recent actions of "me too"-ing Adams at several public meetings.

Gender breakdowns within racial classifications were not provided by rank because as mentioned above, with the exception of White women, women of color have not progressed through the ranks. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that the department has had difficulties recruiting and hiring women of color let alone retaining them long enough so they can move up through the ranks if they choose to do so and meet the qualifications for each rank.

Asian-American officers while increasing in numbers somewhat and proportionally a great deal still have not broken through the ceiling into the detective division. It's hard to say why without knowing how long these officers have been in the department, whether they were academy graduates who were hired or officers who lateraled from other law enforcement agencies.

The reason there are no American Indian officers included in the statistics are because there are no officers in this racial class and there hasn't been since the retirement of Lt. Alex Tortes in December 2005. When he was an officer, he was pretty much the only representative in his racial group, although White male officers who were upset at his promotion to lieutenant in 1999 allegedly labeled him African-American for their own reasons.

There are also no "other" classifications of officers that include any officers in them according to the report. If officers are biracial and some are, they usually pick one racial group to identify under or the agency does for purposes of the EEOC reports which are required under federal law.



Officers: 229(+11 since January 2006)

Male: 209(+11) 91.3%

Female: 20(0) 8.7%


Asian-American: 8(+2) 3.5%

Black: 18(+2) 7.9%

Latino: 50(+4) 21.9%

White: 153(+3) 66.9%



Pilots:5(-2) All White males




Detective: 70(0)


Male: 60(-2) 85.7%

Female: 10(+2) 14.3%


Asian-American: 0(0) 0%

Black: 3(0) 4.3%

Latino: 9(-1) %12.9

White: 58(+1) 82.9%


Sergeant: 55(+2)


Male: 50(+2) 91.0%

Female: 5(0) 9.0%


Asian-American: 0(0) 0%

Black: 4(0) 7.3%

Latino: 9(+1) 16.4%

White: 42(+1) 76.4%


Lieutenant: 21(+3)


Male: 21(+4) 100%

Female: 0(-1) 0%


Asian-American: 0(0)0%

Black: 2(+1) 9.5%

Latino: 4(0) 19.0%

White: 15(+2) 71.4%


Captains and Deputy Chiefs: 8(0)


Male: 7(-1) 87.5%

Female: 1(+1) 12.5%


Asian-American: 0(0)

Black: 1(0) 12.5%

Latino: 3(0) 37.5%--two deputy chiefs

White: 4(0) 50%

The other memorial

U.S.A. Today published an article last week on suicide among law enforcement officers. Within any 24 hour period, one law enforcement officer will kill him or herself, according to statistics provided at several Web sites addressing the issue. Three times more officers die from suicide than they do from other dangers of the job, yet this issue gets far less attention, perhaps in part because of the stigma associated with suicide in general and law enforcement in particular. And how many people know that there are memorials dedicated to police officers who have taken their own lives?


Suicide rates jolt police culture


(excerpt)


The International Association of Chiefs of Police is circulating a proposal, obtained by USA TODAY, to make suicide prevention tools available to all of the nation's nearly 18,000 state and local police agencies.

"Current police culture … tends to be entirely avoidant of the issue," leaving suicidal officers with "no place to turn," a draft of the proposal says.

The suicide foundation says it has verified an average of 450 law enforcement suicides in each of the last three years, compared with about 150 officers who died annually in the line of duty. Douglas says no more than 2% of the nation's law enforcement agencies have prevention programs.

Suicide rates for police — at least 18 per 100,000 — are higher than for the general population, according to Audrey Honig, chief psychologist for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.



Allen Kates, who is the author of the book, Cop Shock: Surviving Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, runs this Web site which provides information about this serious nationwide problem. He has a question and answer section which addresses the prevalence of suicide in law enforcement in comparison with that of the general population.


(excerpt)

Is police suicide an epidemic?

Is police suicide an epidemic, as I often hear? I don't know. Suicide among law enforcement affects many people within a community, which satisfies the definition of epidemic. But what number or percentage fulfills that meaning? I think the word "epidemic" is used far too often and too loosely for us to label police suicide as an epidemic.

Do more police kill themselves than are killed on-the-job?

More police officers today commit suicide than are killed by criminals. This is true. We can't ignore it, but I don't think it helps us understand why police officers kill themselves. I don't think the numbers are as meaningful as the fact that rescuers in our society, people who are trained to help others who are suicidal, do not apply their training to themselves.

Is police suicide greater than the national average?

I've read that the suicide rate in Chicago is five times the national average while in Los Angeles the suicide rate is below the national average. How can you determine a national average for police suicide when the statistics are so broad from city to city and from small town to small town?In 1997, (according to the Census Bureau), the general population experienced 20.2 suicides per 100,000 people.

For the same year, according to the same source, the suicide rate for police officers was 18.1. In other words, 127 officers took their own lives that year. So, it appears that the suicide rate for police officers is below the national average - at least for 1997. But let's muddy the waters a little. In San Francisco, over a ten-year period, from 1987 to 1997, the general population's suicide rate was 21 per 100,000. For police officers, the rate was 33.3 per 100,000. Groups that track police suicides estimate that a police officer kills himself or herself every 24 to 52 hours.

What statistics do not show.

Statistics do not show the number of retired officers who kill themselves. Statistics do not show the suicides that are covered up by fellow officers or departments in order to validate the deceased's insurance or to avoid embarrassment. Statistics do not show that officers who take their lives as a result of personal stress and/or trauma on-the-job are often forgotten. Unlike the wall of names in Washington of officers killed in-the-line-of-duty, there is no memorial honoring officers who kill themselves. There is no national place for grieving. Taking into account the hidden suicides, what is the real suicide rate? I would estimate that police officers kill themselves at least twice as often as the national average. I can't prove it, nor can anybody else right now. But I think a figure of twice the national average is a conservative estimate.

Suicides are preventable deaths.

Statistics can make you crazy. You can bend them in any direction you wish. Statistics can also demean the human side of the tragedy of suicide. The tragedy is that these are preventable deaths. With knowledge, police families and fellow officers can help prevent suicides.


Dr. Beverly J. Anderson, who is the clinical director of the Metropolitan Police Employee Assistance Program wrote an article on suicide in law enforcement and its impact on other officers who work with the individual who kills him or herself. In her article, she also lists the warning signs which may lead to a suicide.


(excerpt)


1. Personal and financial problems for which the officer feels there are no solutions

2. Increase in alcohol use

3. Work-related problems

4. Divorce or break-up of a relationship

5. Increase in sick days

6. Mood swings

7. Depression

8. Recent death in the family

9. Exposure to a work-related trauma

10. Use of deadly force



This article by policeone.com discusses the difficulty of getting accurate statistics on law enforcement suicide given that many cases are actually categorized as accidents, i.e. from gun cleaning, so any count is probably too low. One of the agencies it refers to is the New York City Police Department which lost 137 officers in the line of duty in 1997 but 300 officers committed suicide during that same time period.

Policesuicide.com provides information on suicide including its myths as well as training resources including how to set up a suicide-prevention program in a law enforcement agency.


The National P.O.L.I.C.E. Suicide Foundation is an organization which addresses this problem by providing among other things preventive training and support services. Some of the resources include F.Y.I. and Train a Trainer seminar programs.


Tears of a Cop is another site with resources including a section on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is a medical condition believed to impact 1/3 of all law enforcement officers. The site also has a blog that details what's going on around the country, particularly the devastating impact of suicide in Florida and efforts to obtain more funding for outreach programs from the state's governor.



Memorials:

PSF: In memory of

Tears of a Cop: Memorial





Yesterday, Riverside held its annual Black History parade and expo in downtown Riverside. Thousands showed up to march or ride in the parade, or to eat barbeque, to watch performers or just to walk around.

City officials rode in fire trucks, City department heads rode in their vehicles to pay homage to a group of people that many say, they spend the rest of the year discriminating against, including in the city's workplace.

As usual, discussions arose about the fates of Black city employees as well as Latino city employees who held management positions in city hall who have been fired, demoted or forced to resign with severance packages since City Manager Brad Hudson and his sidekick, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis came to town.



Riverside's own Black and Latino Hall of Fame:



Art Alcarez, Latino, former human resources director, forced to resign with severance package for unknown reasons though some feel it was for refusing to play ball with Hudson and DeSantis in hiring new employees .


Jim Smith, Black, former budget director and interim asst. city manager, demoted and sentenced to the Orange St. building before being hired by the city of Oakland. Smith was paraded at a city council meeting by Councilman Frank Schiavone as proof of the city's commitment to diversity just before his demotion by Hudson who replaced him with DeSantis.


Tranda Drumwright, Black, former director of housing and community development, fired for undisclosed reasons as an "at will" employee. She alleged that her supervisor told her that she didn't see her as a manager.


Pedro Payne, Black, former executive director of the Community Police Review Commission, resigned to seek better career opportunities according to the city but few people buy that explanation, given the actions taken against him and the CPRC in the past year.


Who will be next?

Of the original list of employees provided after the departure of Alcaraz who was on the list, only two remain with the city. Which one will be the next to go?

Cities commemorate the contributions of Black and Latino individuals in different ways. Unfortunately, the creation of this hall of fame appears to be one of Riverside's ways.

Abuse of Power: Crimes against women

The Los Angeles Times published an article about the latest scandal to hit Inglewood's police department here. About a half-dozen police officers have been placed under investigation for sexual misconduct at a massage parlor and other local businesses. This internal investigation began after a federal probe of a money laundering and prostitution ring was initiated and discovered that law enforcement officers may have been involved.

Ledgers were uncovered which listed the names of people and the prices they paid for sexual favors. Police officers were included in those lists albeit for having received free services probably so they would look the other way. Some of those officers are still in Inglewood but others had retired or lateraled to other law enforcement agencies. Hopefully those agencies have been notified that there is a problem with some of their new employees.

The investigation may include supervising officers as well to see if they were complicit. What will probably happen is that a few scapegoats might get selected for punishment and the department will minimize the scandal to reduce its risk of financial liability. After sitting through six weeks of the trial involving Officer Roger Sutton's discrimination law suit, it was amazing to learn of the marriage that apparently exists between law enforcement and risk management.

The department is also investigating rape allegations made by a woman who was stopped by two police officers.

(excerpt)


In that incident, which is also under investigation by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, a 23-year-old woman alleged that the officers confronted her on Century Boulevard on a Sunday night as she left her hotel to have dinner at a fast-food restaurant. The thoroughfare has pockets that have long been known for prostitution.

The woman, who has said she was in town with her boyfriend to visit her mother for the holidays, alleged that the officers accused her of being a prostitute and demanded that she take them back to her hotel to prove she was not a streetwalker.

At the hotel, according to her attorney, the night manager verified that the woman was from Florida and a registered guest at the hotel. But one officer insisted that she take him to her room while the other officer waited by the patrol car, attorney Dylan Pollard said.

It was there, the woman has said, that she was raped.


Unfortunately, incidents like the ones listed above are apparently not uncommon in law enforcement agencies. Even in Riverside, there were female sex workers who came to community meetings that took place in 1999 and told of how they had been coerced to perform sexual favors involving police officers in lieu of arrest. It's not known whether they took their allegations to the police department and if they had, what response they would have received. Hopefully, one consent decree later, things have changed on that front.

But it all comes down to how much officers in this and other department are willing to report misconduct done by other officers that they may work closely with and depend on for their own safety and how willing supervisors are to not only do their jobs, but also follow through on reports of misconduct they receive from both police officers and other people. What built in protections exist for police officers who report misconduct so they aren't the ones who pay the price for what they saw or heard? Unfortunately, it's not enough for victims to report it as long as the current police culture is in place, because most often, they aren't believed by members of a profession that tend to think these problems do not exist within their ranks.

I guess when it comes to whether or not police officers commit these crimes, the public is supposed to be skeptical that they could do such a thing, but members of this profession do indeed commit these types of crimes. And besides, after an incident I witnessed in the early 1990s involving a Riverside Police Department officer and a woman he had callously shoved out of the driver's side door of his squad car before speeding off after he saw me, it's very difficult to be in the group of doubters. It took me awhile to go from thinking, why can't a man like that get it for free to realizing what it was that he had really done, which was to thoroughly abuse his authority and power as a police officer because not only did he want to, but he could. Unfortunately, this form of abuse and criminal behavior is not nearly rare as it should be in a profession set up purportedly to fight against crime including crime against women.

Other nearby law enforcement agencies including San Bernardino Police Department and the Riverside County Sheriff's Department have had employees prosecuted for rape under the color of authority.

San Bernardino Police Department officer Ronald Vanrossum received 34 years in state prison after pleading guilty to raping about a dozen women during his career. His punishment marks him as an anomaly in the profession.

The following are or were employed by the Riverside County Sheriff's Department when the alleged incidents occurred in recent years.


John Wayne Leseberg

David Kushner

Jeffrey Keith Sanders

John William Burns, Joseph Francis Bessette



The Sheriff's Department is a fairly large agency that employs several thousand deputies both in the jails and in the field. So it's not surprising that a cluster of them would be under investigation for allegations of criminal behavior. Is this law enforcement agency one that experiences more problems than others who have few or no officers facing similar charges? That's not clear but one interesting thing about the cases involving this agency is that many of them whether they involved deputies who allegedly beat inmates in jail or forced women to perform sexual acts on them, were reported by other employees in that agency. Maybe that's the real difference, maybe not.

I attended part of the preliminary hearing involving Kushner who was alleged to have forced several women to perform oral sex on him inside his squad car and was facing numerous felony charges. The women who testified had already been labeled in the media through Kushner's defense attorney as opportunistic liars, but when they testified, most of them broke down on the stand or afterwards, obviously distraught. One woman walked off the witness stand, sobbing and refusing to listen to the pleas of her assigned vicitm-witness representative who trailed behind her.

And Kushner sat there cocky as he had been walking through the area outside the courthouse sizing up every woman he came across. He has reason to be, because if he's indeed guilty, he probably won't face any repercussions for his actions.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Christian F. Thierbach pushed the case to trial, saying that although he doubted the veracity of some of the testimony he had heard, he believed several witnesses. And it comes down to whether or not the women are believed against the words of the officer involved who often receives the benefit of the doubt based on his membership in the law enforcement profession. The vast majority of women who come forward with these allegations are women with criminal records either in terms of drug use or prostitution. Often, this is used against them by lawyers for these officers who say they are lying to avoid arrest. There are likely cases where that might be true, but it's also possible that police officers target these women because they come in frequent contact with them and they understand that if these women were to complain, they would be disbelieved, which is often the case.

After all, most of the time when law enforcement officers do face penalities for crimes of rape under the color of authority, it's when the women they target do not have criminal records. Then they are quick to realize that they are in trouble.

In his case, there was a deputy who had witnessed Kushner inside his squad car with one of the woman. That deputy had not testified during the preliminary hearing. Hopefully, he still has a career left in a profession that punishes those who breach the wall. Others who have come forward have not been so lucky.




The story of the paraplegic man who was dumped by a local hospital at skid row continued, with Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center conducting its own investigation, as stated in this morning's Los Angeles Times.

Not surprisingly, its account differs with what was accounted by witnesses to the incident on Feb. 1. More surprisingly, the hospital has hired a firm to help it deal with the incident and that firm is Sitrick and Co. the very same firm that the city of Riverside hired in 1999 to help its elected officials communicate with the media about the shooting of Tyisha Miller.


Hospital's version of dumping man conflicts with witnesses

(excerpt)

[Hospital spokesman Dan]Springer said the hospital's preliminary investigation showed that a hospital ambulance had tried to take the man early in the morning to the Midnight Mission, which he had listed on hospital forms as his home address. But Springer said the ambulance was turned away because there was no room at the mission.

The man was returned to the hospital's emergency room, Springer said; after a shift change, new personnel tried to take the man to his listed address in the van. Springer said he did not know whether those personnel knew of the previous attempt or that the address was a mission. But Springer said that on the second attempt, when the van neared the mission, the man "asked the driver to open the door and let him out….

He assured the driver that his wheelchair was at his home and that he could propel himself to his home from the park."


The Los Angeles Police Department said that the man had said that he had no where else to go and couldn't stay in the hospital. The Midnight Mission also disputed part of the hospital's story and said that its own surveillance tapes proved differently.

The City Attorney's office is investigating both this incident and other previous ones involving the same hospital.