Police Misconduct - Widespread or Deep-seated?

While the National Police Misconduct NewsFeed project has just begun to give us a glimpse at the possible breadth of America's police misconduct problem, it sometimes fails to show just how deep it runs perhaps.

Sure, when most people think of police departments where corruption and misconduct run deep, we think of big cities like Chicago, Oakland, New York, or Philadelphia. So, does that mean smaller cities and towns are exempt from the problem of deep-seated police corruption and a culture of misconduct?

Furthermore, when we see more than one story of misconduct being reported from a specific location, is this just coincidence, or is this indicative of a deeper, more disconcerting problem?

Still sound confusing? Then consider some of these cases, buried deep within the police misconduct news feed:

Spring Lake Police Department in North Carolina was told it's officers may no longer make felony arrests in 2007. But recently things have gone from bad to worse as two of it's officers have been arrested on multiple felony charges and the state's district attorney is promising even more arrests while also admitting that he has to dismiss a majority of the misdemeanor charges filed against suspects by the department as well.

To sum it up, the department is so corrupt, so inept, that it cannot be trusted to even make a simple misdemeanor arrest, effectively shutting it down and forcing an already thinly stretched county sheriff to pick up the extra slack.

Think of it... an entire department of bad or inept cops. Would that make you feel a bit less secure if you lived there? No? How about this...

Cuyahoga County Sheriff Gerald McFaul left the Sheriff's Department in tatters as he resigned under civil and criminal allegations of nepotism, political favoritism, and a publicized search of his office and home by FBI and IRS agents.

After his departure the county requested an audit of the department and has recently found out that nearly half of their officers were never given civil service exams but instead were hired at the recommendation of friends and family within the department... in fact, many were members of the sheriff's own family or recommended by them without any other real qualifications. But since they've been employed for so long, the county can't fire them.

Still not wondering how entire departments could be problematic like this? Here's some more...

Since the beginning of this year, 1/3 of Smith Township's police department, near Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, have been arrested on criminal charges that include burglary, assault, perjury, and drug possession. One officer alone was accused of assaulting a 59 year old man and later accused of attacking a 19 year old fast food worker while on duty, just because he thought the kid was talking about him.

Then last week they found themselves in the crosshairs of a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging excessive force was used when officers arrested a couple after a concert. Smith Township's residents have taken to describing their police officers as incapable of controlling themselves and scary...

Would you be scared living there too? No? Well how about here...

Greece New York's Police Department is missing most of it's command staff, including it's chief, as they are suspended pending criminal and civil charges... in fact, many of the department's police officers are too. Things have gotten so bad in Greece that state officials have come down to do a complete audit of the department that has been in the news, in a bad way. So often, in fact, that the city recently canceled a ceremony that was supposed to honor the department because, well, I guess there wasn't anything left to really celebrate about it.

Does a police department with nothing left to honor make you think twice about how your own police department might operate behind closed doors? No?

Then I have one more place to tell you about... the place where cops like those who end up listed on the news feed go...

Because, if you've ever wondered where all the cops fired for misconduct go when they try to find a new job in law enforcement, wonder no longer... they went to the Maywood Police Department in California where they nicknamed themselves "The Police Department of Second Chances"...

Well, looks like they'll be hoping for third chances now that the effort to cut costs by lowering standards and recruiting officers from disciplinary hearings instead of job fairs and academies has resulted in a blistering audit by the California State Attorney General who found an environment of gross misconduct and widespread abuses against the citizenry.

So, would you want to move your family to Maywood and trust their safety in the hands of a department full of "second chances"?

As I said, the news feed does give us a glimpse into how widespread the problem of police misconduct is... but, just how deep does it run in each police department? Maybe that will become more clear in time as well.

In the meantime, maybe we should all start asking ourselves this question about our own local police force... before your department ends up in my feed too.

Is Reporting Police Misconduct Career Suicide?

On December 23, 2008, King County Sheriff’s Deputy Brian Bonnar was acquitted of federal deprivation of civil rights charges that were filed against him on allegations that he had used excessive and unnecessary force when he arrested 41 year old Irene Damon. After reading the verdict, the judge in this case offered a stinging rebuke for Bonnar by suggesting that despite the jury’s decision that there was ample evidence that Bonnar’s conduct was not appropriate.

On March 13, 2009, King County Sheriff’s Deputy Don Griffee was acquitted of fourth degree assault charges that were filed against him on allegations that he had punched 21 year old Johnny Bradford while he was handcuffed in the back seat of a cruiser. Despite the verdict, jurors said they felt that Bradford’s testimony was believable, but that Griffee had offered a case of plausible deniability that prevented them from finding him guilty beyond all doubt.

On February 26, 2009, King County Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Schene plead not guilty to fourth degree assault charges that were filed against him on the basis of a video recording of him kicking, punching, and manhandling 15 year old Malika Calhoun in a holding cell. The video was released to the media a day later and it sparked outrage all over the world which prompted the US Department of Justice to consider pressing federal civil rights violation charges against Schene.

These cases are not uncommon in that there were allegations of abuse leveled against police officers.

These cases are not noteworthy just because they all came from the same precinct and police department.

Nor are they uncommon because of the results in which evidence and testimony that would convict a normal person were insufficient to convict a cop. After all, when 73% of white Americans do not believe police officers ever use excessive force, it’s nearly impossible to find an unbiased jury pool out there.

No, these cases are incredibly unique in the world of police misconduct in that, in each of these cases, it was a police officer who brought these allegations to the attention of their department, that the department listened to the officers who complained and investigated the accusations, that the department recommended charges in response to them, and did not silence the allegations and punish the officers that reported them.

Yes, these cases are incredible in that the officers who reported them didn’t face retribution for doing so… at least not that we can tell yet. But, will that culture within that department last after the sheriff is gone? Or will the union work to shift things back to an environment where officers are afraid to tell the truth in fear of retaliation from fellow officers and supervisors?

Indeed, a good portion of the reason why police officers do not report incidents of misconduct isn’t just because of the cultural pressures not to snitch that their fellow officers put upon them. It’s that the “no snitching” culture is actually enforced by practice within police departments across the US and that it’s expected that officers who report misconduct will be punished by their departments and eventually forced out or fired on allegations that normally wouldn’t result in termination.

That fact was recently reinforced when a reader commented to a story we published in February detailing the surprising number of police department heads who have been embroiled in allegations of misconduct in recent months. That reader posted this in response to that story:

"I can explain why most good officers do not step forward. I was an officer that stepped forward to report about one of the Chiefs on this very list and now I will never be a police officer again.

No agency would take me and it has caused many sleepless nights for me but I have come to terms with the fact that I did what was right. Seeing the justice that was done here makes me feel like I did right but that isn’t good for a person who has only police work to fall back on.

Reporting abuse over another cop, let alone a chief, is career suicide."

At first the reader who posted this wished to remain anonymous and not have the details of what he was referring to made public, and for good reason. But now he’s given us permission to tell the rest of his story of how police officers in America are usually treated when they try to bring misconduct allegation to light.

Here’s what he told us about what happened to him in a follow-up email:

"I was employed in Roberts, Wisconsin for a few years as a patrol officer. All was well until the day that the board decided that the part time police chief job needed to be full time.


The village board decided to hire Ricci Prein and all seemed well at first. At least until one evening when I found Chief Prein drinking while working on a squad car in the municipal garage. I found this to be a compromising position so I reported it to the board.


From that day on I was written up for any crazy thing such as the squad car being on the low end of full gauge or the oil dipstick, or not getting trash to the curb by 3 am when it got picked up at 3 pm that day.


I was also written up on several occasions for my military reserve service and when he was told he was wrong for doing so he still refused to retract anything. The harassment finally got so bad that one day I decided it was enough and I resigned from the department.


After my resignation I was unable to find a job for many years because of the things he would tell prospective employers about me. I tried to take it to court but the fact that I had no money and no lawyer in the area would handle it because of conflict of interests, I gave up. I was still lucky enough, if you call it that, to be called to active duty in the current war 2 times, which helped pay bills."

This, sadly, is what usually happens when officers report incidents of misconduct, whether it’s against another police officer or a supervisor. There are few real protections against retaliation for reporting misconduct and there is little impetus to change that since city governments benefit from this culture of retribution since it prevents officers from testifying in civil rights violation cases that could cause embarrassment to local governments and loses in court.

Most of the time, the story ends there. The police officer never finds work again and the culture of corruption continues on unabated and even more secure after examples have been made of officers who dared to cross the blue wall of silence.

But not in this officer’s case:

"After my deployments I returned home and wondered how to address this. I finally decided to run for the village president position (mayor). I won the election and there by became Prein's boss.


Now, I didn’t do anything to him personally, all I did was bring current concerns to the village board as should have been done in the first place when I reported the issues I had seen. I even abstained from any votes pertaining to those allegations. All this being said and done, the board finally made the decision that he was wrong all the time in the past and that he needed to be fired."

Ricci Prein was eventually fired in July of 2008 on five counts of misconduct in office, seven months after the village board laid out their case against him, and years after this officer first made his concerns known to the village board. However, he proved he wasn’t done getting back at that officer yet.

The officer’s name is Eric Fisher and he had recently run for re-election as village president. He might have won if it weren’t for constant public attacks made by ex-chief Prein made via letters to the editor in the local paper that not only attacked Fisher, but also his wife. That election ended yesterday with Fisher losing to his rival by 44 votes.

So, yes, Fisher is right in that, in most cases, reporting police misconduct can be a matter of career suicide. When we ask ourselves why officers won't report the misconduct they see and we say that it's because they are bad officers, we should remind ourselves of what happens to the good ones and how little support they receive from their community. For us to have better expectations from them, we must expect to support and reward them ourselves.

But, fortunately in this case, Fisher found another calling and this story still has a positive ending where most might not. Fisher now works at a high school with special education children. While it doesn’t pay what a police officer gets, it’s something that Fisher can put his determination towards good use once again.

He ended his story by saying this:

“I can never be a cop again, but hey, I love what I am doing now and hopefully when we recover completely from all this I will finish my degree in teaching and become a full time teacher."

While police unions would use cases like this as an argument that they need even more layers of appeals and protections to fight allegations of misconduct made against officers, this isn’t true. The answer to the problem of retaliation against officers who report misconduct isn’t to make it harder to discipline officers found to have committed acts of misconduct.

The answer is simple actually. As Karl Mansoor, an ex-police officer and law enforcement ethics instructor who fought his own battle against retribution for reporting misconduct, tells his readers… the answer is to make the complaint, investigation, and disciplinary processes transparent to the public in order to remove the incentives that keep misconduct and the retribution suffered for reporting it a secret.

The best solution to the problem of police misconduct and the culture of silence prevalent in police departments across the nation is to shine a little light on them.

Who Do You Call On A Cop?

Police culture's "Blue Wall of Silence" -The most effective no-snitching campaign in history.

One question that I've asked myself over and over again ever since I became a victim of police misconduct is what will I do when it happens again?

More specifically, would I do anything differently while it was happening to me again... and, perhaps more importantly, what would I do when I saw it happening to someone else?

I'm not alone in this, as a reader's recent letter illustrates:

"I have also been the victim of police excessive force and their arbitrary charging practices.

In my case, I was brutally grabbed by the windpipe by a police officer who outweighed me by at least 50 pounds. I was thrown face down onto the street, handcuffed, and kicked in the face and ribs while I was on the ground.

This all transpired after I had the audacity to yell out the word "Hey!" as exited from a restaurant where I encountered five police officers in the parking lot who were beating a teenage girl they had on the ground whom (I later learned) they were attempting to arrest for loitering.

Apparently, the cops took offense at my taking offense at the treatment that they were giving the young lady, all on the utterance of a single word of protest (and being in the wrong place at the wrong time with that opinion)."

I spent the night in jail on an "opposing a police officer" charge. To make matters worse, while I was locked up, different cops kept coming by and abused me verbally... in the hope that I would get angry enough to give them the excuse to take some other physical action against me.

The charges against him were dismissed, but that will never dismiss what it's done to him even though this happened many years ago.

"I've since witnessed numerous other incidences (of police misconduct) in other cities that I have lived in. But I now know enough to keep my mouth shut and to just stay out of it.


I admit that I feel pretty damned ashamed that the police – who are supposed to be the "good guys" – have intimidated me to the extent that I actually fear them enough to not want to speak out publicly against such abuse.


...when the cops are breaking the law, who do you call?"

While at first glance his response to being a victim of misconduct might seem detestable, but actually it's quite reasonable... there's no shame in it.

After all, ask yourself that same question, who would you trust to call on the police when the police act like criminals?

That's the question, isn't it? Who do you call when the police are brutally assaulting someone? Who do you cry out to for help while they are beating you? Sadly, the answer should be nobody.

See, you cannot intervene in an act of police misconduct without becoming another victim of it, and once you are arrested and beaten too your testimony would be discredited by police. Any hope the original victim had of the truth coming to light will have evaporated as soon as you stepped in to stop it. By intervening you do more harm than good... unless you're a cop... but cops hardly ever intervene except to help with the beating.

This is the sinister nature of police misconduct that I always seem to fail at explaining. It's the very heart of just how badly police misconduct shatters a victim's trust in our system of justice, in our society as a whole. This is at the heart of why it's so life-shattering... after a cop victimizes you, you'll never have anyone you can turn to for help again, nor anyone you would call to help someone else aside from yourself.

It's also hard to explain to others how it would be difficult for most victims of police abuse to call the police if we witnessed a crime or even if we were the victims of crime... after all, how will you know if a good cop will come to help or a bad one will come to victimize the victim, or you, even further?

Trust me, once you learn and understand what sadism some officers are capable of, you would balk at taking that risk again too. I know I don't want to go through being beaten up, arrested on a false charge, and then abused in jail without any access to medical care again... would you?

But the damage done by police misconduct goes even beyond that... think of all of the friends of victims who also have doubts about calling the police after they see how their friends were mistreated by police officers... and wonder at how that number of people grows exponentially as more and more victims are created each day by the police.

Police officials and politicians often bemoan the "culture of no snitching" which is prevalent in our cities these days, wondering at what causes it... not being able to understand why their citizens don't want to talk to their police officers.

Perhaps, for the answer to that question, they have no further to look than their own police departments.

Maybe the very first question that they should ask is... who would they trust to call on their police when their police act just like the criminals they are supposed to arrest?

A Month of Police Misconduct in the News

If you haven't noticed, I started using Twitter (here) around the beginning of last month as a sort of extension for this site, a sort of "headline news feed" of sorts. Specifically, I use it to post any news articles that I come across that are related to police misconduct or detainee abuse.

It was an interesting month's worth of effort, but ultimately there wasn't enough interest to justify the time it takes to write up the feeds, few people were actually reading them. (though, one person did write to say they did find them interesting, thanks for that!)

But, even though I'm going to stop using Twitter since there aren't many people reading the feeds, the practice of recording these articles did help me notice something interesting...

Over the month-long effort of tracking stories of police misconduct and detainee abuse I've recorded at least 79 unique stories of police misconduct or detainee abuse.

Yes, 79 incidents reported in the news in one month's worth of time.

Of these reports:

• 10 articles covered 15 separate officers who were convicted of criminal acts. 2 of those officers will return to work with the same department after conviction.
• 29 stories that covered the trial, arrest, indictment, or charges filed against 39 police officers and 3 police chiefs.
• 12 stories about civil rights lawsuits against police departments, 3 of which resulted in awards totaling $1,625,000.
• 28 stories detailing accusations of police misconduct, 8 of which were captured on video.
• 3 Articles detailing investigations into jails accused of violating the rights of prisoners, including one against Seattle's King County Jail which is already under federal oversight for past rights violations.

Further breaking these down I found that, of these stories:

• 10 covered cases of alleged murder or attempted murder. 8 of which resulted in at least one death.
• 11 concerned allegations of or convictions for sexual abuse of children.
• 24 involve allegations of police brutality.
• 8 deal with allegations of domestic violence
• 14 cases where entire teams, sections, or an entire department has been accused of systematic abuses. One of which has a city contemplating dissolving their police department.
• 2 involve questionable police actions taken against people who report on issues of police misconduct.
• 3 involve police departments who were forced to rehire officers after sustained findings or convictions for misconduct.

I could go on, but the point is that all of these stories that I tracked for a month involved serious allegations and 10 of which resulted in actual convictions.

Many articles I didn't track involve officers accused of petty offenses and acts of misconduct like traffic accidents, falsifying overtime records, or other interdepartmental infractions. Also, there are undoubtedly several I missed because there are so many different keywords to track and filter.

So, are these just a few bad eggs in an otherwise healthy basket? Are 79 distinct cases reported in the press in a single month a sign of a healthy law enforcement system in the US?

Even though I'm going to stop using Twitter, I still think it's important for me to continue keeping count in order to see just how pervasive and systemic police misconduct really is in the US and give a summary each month. So I'll be recording what I find in a database in order to generate some useful statistics on police misconduct in America. Statistics that nobody else has really bothered to gather in any serious way up to now.

What do you think?

Stay tuned...

Why Seattle Police Misconduct Cannot Be Fixed In Seattle

What I'm about to tell you might be hard to swallow, but it is entirely truth. The problem of police misconduct in Seattle, and most cities in fact, cannot be solved at a local level alone.

Specifically, no matter how much pressure you put on local politicians and officials. No matter how bad a reputation the city develops through damning story after story of egregious abuse landing on the front page of local papers. No matter how many videos of cops beating on innocent citizens make the rounds across the nation to draw condemnation from the world...

In fact, even if all the politicians and officials in the city wanted to fix the problem of police misconduct, even if we could make them want to change the way officers are investigated and disciplined... They are utterly powerless to do anything substantive about it.

Why?

First, we have to understand the currently flawed system that allows officer after officer to avoid discipline, even when the city does try to fire them.

The OPA:
Complaints are received and investigated by the Seattle Police Department Office of Professional Accountability (OPA). Once a complaint is received the OPA has 180 days to investigate or it's an automatic exoneration.

During that process the complainant is asked to make a recorded statement about the complaint and from there the accused officer is interviewed and has a right to present their side of the case during the investigation.

OPA investigators are rank and file officers who are pulled off the streets to serve in the OPA for a limited period of time, so often the complainant is interviewed in an aggressive manner while the accused officer is asked questions in a more favorable manner.

After all officers who may have witnessed an incident are interviewed, any other witnesses are interrogated, and any evidence is reviewed, the OPA investigators will issue a preliminary finding.

Once a finding has been reached, that result is reviewed by the civilian auditor who either approves the finding and disciplinary action that is recommended by the OPA or makes her own recommendation that is registered along side the recommendation made by the OPA investigation.

The Chief of Police:
After the OPA and auditor present their findings and recommendations, the chief of police reviews the file and makes his own tentative conclusion as to whether the allegations and findings are sustained or not and, if sustained, what disciplinary action will be pursued.

Ultimately, regardless of what the OPA, auditor, or anyone else suggests, the chief has final word and authority on what the findings will be and what disciplinary action will or won't occur. But, chiefs of police in Seattle quickly find that no matter what, they still don't have much control over departmental discipline, and that's because of all the protections officers find upon the multiple levels of appeal available to them.

The First Level of Appeal:
If the chief of police finds that the allegations were sustained the accused officer is provided a chance to appeal that finding with the chief during what is called a Loudermill hearing.

During the Loudermill hearing the accused officer can dispute any of the findings during his meeting with the chief with the assistance of a police guild representative. This is a one-sided appeal, the accusing party is not given a chance after the initial complaint and investigation to rebut any claims made by the officer.

If, after a Loudermill, the chief still finds that the complaint was sustained he can impose a disciplinary action of his own choosing, based on recommendations presented or he can change his mind and decide a different level of discipline.

This Loudermill hearing is actually a first level of appeal since the disciplinary finding had already been made and this is the officer's chance to challenge that finding directly to the chief without the complainant being represented in that hearing to offer a counter-argument or explanation.

Once the disciplinary action is decided upon, the officer and the police guild have at least 4 more additional layers of appeal they can proceed with to either appeal the sustained finding or appeal the disciplinary action.

The Second Appeal Level:
The next appeal layer is the police department's own Disciplinary Review Board which appears to utilize arbiters to determine who wins the appeal, but is otherwise not detailed in any way that the public can scrutinize.

The latest case overturned by the Seattle Police Department's Disciplinary Review Board involved officer Don George who won in arbitration with an arbiter who normally represents employees in labor rights cases, that hearing was binding for the city and resulted in his being rehired after he was fired. Again, only the officer gets to present his case, not the person filing the complaint.

The Third Appeal Level:
The third layer of appeal is the city's Public Safety Civil Service Commission which is comprised of four people. One appointed by the mayor, one by council, one by the union, and one by the other three members. Currently there are more police supporters on the board than anyone else, so appeals here generally rule in favor of the police. Again, while the city is represented, only the officer gets to present his or her side of events, not the actual complainant if that complainant is not the city itself.

The last publicized case to be overturned by Seattle's Public Safety Civil Service Commission was that of Felton Miles who was fired after being indicted for felony harassment of his ex-wife and her then boyfriend. A jury deadlocked on convicting Miles for the felony charge and, before another trial started, he was allowed to plea bargain the charges down misdemeanor harassment.

The commission then reviewed the case and decided that the department would not have been able to fire Felton for a misdemeanor and shouldn't have fired him for being indicted for a felony. That ruling forced the city to rehire him and pay his back wages, benefits, and other penalties.

The Fourth Level of Appeal:
The fourth layer is the state of Washington's Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC). This commission consists of labor rights attorneys who generally favor employees and unions in disputes against government entities like the city of Seattle. Yet again, the person who filed the complaint is not represented here, just the officer and the city.

I'm not aware of any appeal that made it this far without already being overturned by an appeal to the department or city commission. However, union complaints about bargaining rights and civilian oversight are heard on this level as well and all of those complaints have gone against the city, forcing Seattle to keep police misconduct investigation records confidential from it's own civilian review board.

The Fifth Level of Appeal
Finally, the officer can file a civil suit against the city in federal court. Yet, even in these proceedings, the actual complainant is never represented or present to rebut any claims made by the accused officer, it's just the officer's word against the city's investigative findings and history of disciplinary actions in similar cases. So if the investigation was flawed, didn't ask the complainant the right questions, or the discipline doesn't fit with how the department disciplined other officers in such cases, the city will lose that suit.

When cities in Washington lose on a federal level it's commonly referred to as a matter of discrimination in that the officer will claim that they were singled out for termination when other officers guilty of similar or worse abuses were not disciplined in a similar manner, if at all. Given the lax history of discipline, this is a very easy case to make unfortunately. When officers win at this level they often win more than victims of police brutality win in civil rights violations cases brought before the federal court. (think millions for "wrongfully" fired officers vs the highest paid civil rights violation / police brutality case out of Seattle in the last decade was only $280,000)

Summary
As you might be able to figure out by now, even if the city had a very well thought out complaint process and disciplinary guidelines that excluded personal bias in favor of the officer that the current process is laced with, they still face the task of defending their findings through several layers of appeal through which an officer and their hired defense lawyers can hone their defense and get their story just right.

In the end, it is exceptionally rare that an officer is found guilty of misconduct that results in termination by the time the preliminary investigation is complete.

Even more rare is it that the recommended findings aren't overturned by the chief after a Loudermill hearing.

Exceedingly more rare is it that the disciplinary action isn't overturned by the department's own Disciplinary board.

Even more rare is it that a case making it to the city's board isn't overturned by the biased committee members there.

If, by some odd chance, the case makes it to the state's PERC appeal level, I've not heard of a case that wasn't overturned there by the labor rights activists who dominate that committee.

Finally, on the federal level, unless the city has consistently dealt with the same action with the exact same disciplinary action each and every time, the city stands to lose their case and may be forced to pay the officer's back pay and a punitive award in the millions.
During all these appeals the city has to pay for lawyers to represent the city and the union pays for the officer's lawyers in nearly every case, and when the city loses they have to pay costs for both sides, plus any punitive damages awarded to the officer upon successful appeal.

Obviously, this makes disciplining officers a losing proposition for the city, and makes covering up abuses a much more cost-effective choice.

After all, most civil rights cases against the city for police brutality only result in low-six figure settlements in the rare case that they win against a city motivated to hide evidence of abuse, often making a lost civil rights case far less expensive than it costs to try and discipline an officer and lose on appeal.

So, in the end, the problem of police misconduct in Seattle cannot be solved on the local level. There is no incentive for city officials to enact a real effective disciplinary process and ample incentive for the police department and city to work together to hide cases of abuse and leave the abused victims out to dry... It's just cheaper that way.

If Seattle Can't Fix It, Who Can?
The problem of police misconduct in Seattle must be solved at the state and/or federal level first by reducing the number of appeal options available to officers with sustained findings of misconduct and to make that appeal process more fair and balanced by offering the accused a way to present their case without fear of intimidation and false counter suits.

For the civil employment appeal system to be fair to victims of police misconduct, the victim must be represented at these appeals with lawyers of the same caliber as those hired by the union and must have the same access to evidence and witnesses that the police officers and the union have available to them... and the whole process must be transparent to the public to avoid any corruptible influence or bias that is currently embedded throughout all layers of appeal.

Only then is it possible for the city to create a real effective system that investigate complaints in a non-biased manner which gives the victim a chance to challenge testimony provided by officers who were involved in harming the victim and their accomplices.

Only then will the city have real incentive to do that, until then we're just spinning our wheels and will never see a true system of police accountability... police accountability in Seattle must start from the top, at the state level, before a local grass-roots effort can affect any real change.

Until then, police officers have no incentive whatsoever to not abuse the citizens of Seattle aside from their own consciences... and we've seen how ineffective relying on that can be.

Where Norm Stamper Gets It Wrong

Image of Norm Stamper, retired Seattle Police Department Chief of Police

Normally, I respect and agree with most of what ex-Seattle Police Chief, and current member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), Norm Stamper has to say about the issue of police misconduct and brutality. He has a pretty firm grasp, as an insider, of many of the issues involved in the complex issue of how American policy and culture itself enables and encourages police brutality.

However, in his latest piece over at The Huffington Post, I found some fault with what he had to say about the shooting deaths of four Oakland police officers earlier this week and how he believes we should react to it.

Mind you, I agree that we shouldn't seek to connect too closely the deaths of those officers and the hardship it brings to their families with the severe problems with police brutality and misconduct in Oakland. I also agree that we should treat their deaths as we would any other regrettable and senseless loss of life done intentionally to another human being...

After all, we don't know what kind of police officers they were, whether they were good or bad... and it doesn't matter anyway because no matter what they didn't deserve to be killed. They deserve all the respect that any other person should get when they die. However, it's clear that we never do treat police officers like we do other people, and Norm doesn't want us to.

Just consider the response to their deaths so far... consider, for how much coverage we might think the shooting death of Oscar Grant in Oakland at the hands of a police officer received, the coverage of the shooting deaths of four Oakland Police officers was 10 times as prominent in the mainstream media than was the highly publicized death of Oscar Grant. (yes, I counted)

Sadly, Norm pushes that this is how it should be and advocates that we should enshrine them just for being police officers, just because they died performing what he feels is the most harrowing job in the US...

But it's not the most harrowing job in the US...

Sure, Norm does acknowledge that more people die on the job in other fields than police officers do, that's something I made clear a few months ago when I researched the latest statistics available to us from the US government.

In per capita death rates per occupation in 2007 (the latest stats available), law enforcement doesn't even crack the top four:
1. Fishing and Fishery Workers (111.8 per 100,000)
2. Logging Workers (86.4 per 100,000)
3. Aircraft Pilots and Flight Engineers (66.7 per 100,000)
4. Structural Iron and Steel Workers (45.5 per 100,000)
...
Law Enforcement (20.2 per 100,000)

Law Enforcement deaths barely inches into the top ten in total deaths per occupation in 2007:

Deaths by Occupation for 2007

But, as I said, Norm acknowledges this... what he is mistaken about is this:

"It doesn't occur as often as most are led to believe, certainly not as frequently as it does on TV. There are a good number of riskier occupations--mining and construction, farming and firefighting come to mind, as does fishing on the Bering Sea in the dead of winter. But there is no job, other than soldiering, where one's life can so quickly be cut short--at the hands of another. Sudden, violent death is an occupational hazard for police officers."

Here, Norm is quite mistaken in his argument that we should automatically honor police more than any other person in their deaths because they are more likely to be murdered on the job than anyone else...

Here, he's clearly wrong:

Job site deaths sorted by number of homicides

You are more likely to be murdered working as a retail clerk or manager than you are to be murdered while working as a cop. Since this is the case, I wonder why I don't see Norm arguing that we should be erecting shrines, dedicating moments of silence, and creating hundreds of Retail Clerk Memorial Funds like law enforcement officers have?

Indeed, in those numbers we see that murder isn't even the top cause of death for all law enforcement fatalities... that would be automobile accidents.

So, Norm's argument that officers who die on duty should be memorialized as heroes just for being police officers due to the risks they take by becoming police officers seems hypocritical, sadly. As I said, they should be given no less respect than any other person in their deaths...

But, part of the whole problem with police misconduct is that we raise police officers up to the level of heroes in our society, we are told to trust and respect them just for being police officers, we give their testimony more sway in courts of law and courts of public opinion just for being cops, and we are told that we should memorialize them more than any other person when they die...

...even though they are just as human and fallible as the rest of us.

The problem, you see, is as Norm says it is, that insular police culture of "Us vs Them", that culture that makes officers believe that they are better than the rest of us, that we are less human and less worthy of respect than they are...

It is that culture which enables and encourages police brutality... and by telling us we should respect those four officers who died in Oakland more than we respect Oscar Grant or any other person who dies at the hands of another simply feeds into that culture of superiority and abuse... it only serves to grow that notion of "Us vs Them".

Especially when the argument used to convince us that we should treat police officers differently than ordinary people is flawed in it's own right.

Why Threatening Bad Cops Makes No Sense

Depiction of a group of vigilante "baldknobbers" from the 1919 movie "The Sheppard Of The Hills".
Baldknobbers were groups of vigilantes in Arkansas and Missouri who were responsible not only for attacking horse thieves, but also murdering their critics and their families, as well as several racially motivated lynchings in the mid to late late 1800's and early 1900's.

An act of police misconduct is nothing more than vigilantism. In fact, there is no difference between a police officer beating someone they suspect might have committed a crime as a form of "street justice" or you beating someone up if you suspect they committed a crime.

When the world sees acts of police brutality, it evokes a strong reaction on several levels for most people. It makes us fear what police could do to us, it makes us wonder at the kinds of people we entrust with the power to enforce our laws, it causes us to question whether our justice system is still just, and it creates a sense of outrage that a person can get away with a crime just because of their chosen occupation.

Needless to say, there are numerous reasons why videotaped images of a 15-year-old girl being attacked by King County Sheriff's Deputy Paul Schene sparked strong emotions across the globe. It also takes little effort to understand the outrage the video of Oscar Grant's death created when it made it into the public square.

So strong, in fact, that the lawyers for Schene and Mehserle both reported that those officers, their families, and the lawyers themselves began to receive death threats after the stories went public.

But... what does it make any of us if we lower ourselves to the same level as an officer who we believe has committed a crime when we seek to circumvent the law and threaten the lives of those officers, their families, and those who's job it is to defend them in court?

Does it not make us exactly the same as those officers when we stoop to their level and try to be judge, jury, and executioner just like they did?

After all, how just is it when we seek to answer an injustice with injustice?

Aside from the ethical considerations, making threats against officers accused of misconduct is ultimately counterproductive on a number of levels... worst of all these is that it gives police unions the ammunition they need to pressure legislators into enacting new laws that let them hide acts of misconduct and escape justice without any public scrutiny...

In other words, threatening officers such as Paul Schene and Johannes Mehserle not only makes you the same as they are... it gives the future Schenes and Mehserles the ability to do the same things those officers are accused of without the fear of being caught...

Threatening officers accused of misconduct creates more misconduct, not less. It creates more injustice, not less. It gives them more power, not less.

It is, ultimately, wrongheaded to seek to become that which you seek to fight. Just as it is wrong for a police officer to resort to illegal tactics in the course of their job, it is wrong for us to resort to illegal tactics to answer those acts of injustice. In other words, it is wrong for us to become them in answer to what they have done.

So, for any of you out there who might think about threatening an officer who was accused of misconduct, or their families, or their lawyers.... please don't, because all that will accomplish is to create more monsters and make it harder for us to spot acts of misconduct... not to mention that it turns you into the very same monster that you seek to fight.

Don't believe me? Just see what happened in Baltimore when an officer received threats after a video of him attacking a teenager was released to the public.

Sure, the system as it is might let all these officers get away with such upsetting acts... but the answer is to fix the system so that they are treated like any of us are when we stand accused, not think yourself above it like those officers did when they broke the law under the guise of enforcing it.

If you think otherwise, you might as well put on one of their uniforms now, because you're more like them than you'll ever know.

What Do We Tell Our Children About Police Brutality

From early childhood our children are taught to trust the police. We tell our sons and daughters that if they are lost that they should look for a police officer to get help. Our schools warn our children to be wary of strangers and to seek the police if a stranger tries to lure them away...

But, more and more, I worry that the strangers we should warn our children to stay away from might include those that wear a police uniform as well.

After all, how do we reconcile the contrasts between the picture of a friendly officer helping a child, like illustrated above, and that of the brutal reality of a child, (now identified as Malika Calhoun) being viciously beaten by a sheriff's deputy on the news as we've all seen recently?

Our children give us questioning looks when seeing this or hearing discussions about it. They are confused, they are told to trust the police but here is a police officer harming a child... or other stories that have also been in the news recently:

• Washington DC officers accused of stealing toys meant for underprivileged kids.
• A Palm Beach Sheriff's Deputy wanted for allegedly raping a child.
• A Police chief in Virginia caught in an online child sexual solicitation sting.
• A police officer from Alabama accused of transporting kids across state lines to rape them.
• A King County Sheriff's Deputy videotaped brutally attacking a 15-year-old girl.

How do we explain to our children why they should trust the police after they see or hear stories like these? Should you tell them they should still trust the police when they know of family members who have been abused by the police or even when they see police brutality themselves like these fifth graders did in Seattle?

Or, should we be teaching them something else in the light of this brutality, that they should treat the police as they do any other stranger, as unworthy of their trust?

Seattle and King County are prime examples of how difficult it is to honestly tell a child they should trust police when we know our city and county cannot even fire the officers that they know are dangerous and supposedly want to fire.

For just one example take the case of King County Sheriff's Deputy Denny Gulla, who has been accused molesting three different 14-year-old girls but who remained a deputy even on top of other complaints like assaulting prisoners, making a pass at a high school senior, videotaping a gang beating for his training video and pulling over his lover's husband and threatening to shoot him in the "mother-fucking face."

As far as we know, he's still a deputy in the King County Sheriff's department since it was only last year that they finally put him on a brady list, but still couldn't fire him. How do we tell our children to trust the police when the one they trust could be officer Gulla or the officer who beat that young girl?

All these stories, when also tied to one's like officer Gulla, show that some deeply disturbing people can become police officers and remain in authority even after developing a history of alleged abuses against children.

Which leads me to wonder whether I would be a responsible parent for telling my children to trust the police instead of fearing them like they should any potentially dangerous stranger on the street.

After all, it's been proven that even the strangers in uniform can harm our children as much, if not more than, any other stranger who offers candy to children in a dark van could.

Perhaps it would be more responsible for us to instill in our children the cold hard realities that most of us already understand... that the police are not here to protect and serve us...

the police are here to protect and serve themselves.

Until that changes, until a real system of accountability and disciplinary transparency is created, none of us are safe... not even our children.

So, what do you plan on telling your children?

What Happens To Justice When There Is No Video

 

Map of vistors reviewing our post about the video of King County Sheriff's Deputy Paul Schene beating a 15-year-old girl

The video of a 15-year-old girl being ruthlessly beaten by a much larger King County Sheriff's Deputy sparked interest across the globe, as it rightly should. Many don't believe that such abuse happens, and even with such videos there are many who still say that the girl, and any others brutalized by police, must have deserve it for some reason or another.

It makes us mindful of how far a climb we still face in convincing people that police accountability and transparency is necessary to protect the public from those that are entrusted with power to enforce our laws, lest they become lawless themselves. When even brutal videos like this cannot persuade many that abuse happens and shouldn't happen... what else can we do?

But more to the point, and I hope those reading excuse my brutal frankness, the girl that you see in that video is lucky.

No, she is not fortunate for being assaulted by a deputy that refused to control his rage, even when he knew full well that his actions would be recorded. But she is fortunate that her case was one of the very few that are recorded by video... and doubly so that this video actually made it into public view.

For every one case like this, there are hundreds that are not filmed, that are not witnessed, and that never reach the light of public view.

Even so, even when cameras record police brutality here in Seattle, Washington (in the middle of King County), and even when an internal investigation concludes such assaults were excessive force, and even when, as was true in Schene's case, the officer is less than truthful about such events, such as what happened in Mark Hays' case here in Seattle last year... there is still often no justice to be had.

If having video is a steep hill, imagine the cliff one faces when the brutality or mistreatment they suffer at the hands of police or jail guards is not recorded. imagine how hard it is to keep that to yourself for the rest of your life while knowing that if you tell others you'll be judged to have "deserved it somehow."

Imagine never being able to trust in the police again, knowing that you could never call them if you were the victim of a crime out of fear of being attacked again.

Imagine, being one of the hundreds whose story is never told, who never find justice, who never have lawyers take their case, or people all over the world demanding justice for them... but, of course, justice is not just a sack of money given to a victim to pay for their medical bills and the suffering they went through at the hands of the police. Nor is it just about holding the officer who did the crime to account.. it's more than that.

In response to the video I received a few messages from readers who felt the need to tell their own stories, one of which agreed to have it published...

I forgot the year but it was in the mid 80's. I wish I would have done something about it then but I was young and stupid.

I had been at the J&M cafe in Pioneer Square with fisherman friends from Alaska. We drove up to capitol hill, (a section of Seattle), to a house where a guy I met lived to see if his sister wanted to come with us for a little more fun on the town.

We pulled up to the house and I got out of the passenger side of the vehicle and went up to the house, knocked on the door and a guy answered and said no one was home.

I walked back to the car and got in and the driver started the car and all of a sudden police lights went off behind us. We had not moved at all. The police officer went to the driver's window and asked for license and registration. He immediately came to my side and tapped on the window. I rolled it down and he said step out of the vehicle.

I had a lit cigarette in my hand and as I got out he said put that cigarette out. I took one more puff and threw it down and the next thing I know the officer jumped me and threw me to the ground. (He) started hammering my face in the pavement as he kept saying "I said get your hands behind your back!" My hands were already behind my back but he kept beating me!

As he continued the beating he put the handcuffs on and pulled me up by my hair. Another officer had arrived and grabbed me and slammed me on the hood of his patrol car. A car was coming down the street and he immediately grabbed me by the hair again and walked me to the middle of the road. He slammed me on the hood of the oncoming car after they came to a stop. And he yelled! "This is what your going to look like if you don't get the fuck out of this neighborhood!"

They loaded me into a squad car and charged me with resisting arrest and threatening an officer. My face was covered with blood. They released me in the middle of the night from a holding cell with no medical attention.

I had a public defender come to my court hearing sometime later. He said that the officers statement reflected his concern that I was going to burn him with my cigarette. I remember the judge as she looked at the paperwork shaking her head and then calling my attorney up for a private conversation. At that point all charges were dismissed and my attorney said that's it, it's over. The charges were dropped.

I wish there was something to this day that I could do about it! They should have paid for what they did. God knows how many more people were beat by those officers. This had a profound effect on my life and the fact that I have no regard for law enforcement.

Thanks for providing a venue online to share this information. This is the first time I have talked about it since the incident.

You see, justice is supposed to be about returning a victim's life to as close to as it was before that person became a victim of another person's crime. It's also supposed to act as a deterrent for others who might think of committing the same crime in the future.

Yet, for victims of detainee abuse, there is never either, even when they win a civil suit. Because effective reforms never come that would help prevent future attacks. Officers often remain on the force to attack others in the future. And the victim must now face the world with the understanding that, while police might be there to protect others from criminals, nothing really protects them from the police.

Without reforms, there is no justice... and without video, for many, there isn't even acknowledgment that they were the victim of a crime... there is never anything even close to a normal life ever again.

The girl you've seen in that video still faces a tall hill to find a life that approaches normal again, even though she's lucky that the video was recorded and released... The rest of us, in the absence of video, still sit at the bottom of a cliff wondering if change will ever be possible when videos like this can't even move a molehill.

Patronage vs Misconduct - A Tale Of Two Cities Part 1

The Vice of Injustice and Virtue of Justice
frescoes at the Arena Chapel in Padua by Giotto

On January 30th, The Dallas Morning News broke a story about how two of four Dallas Police officers fired on 1/29/09 had actually been fired at least one other time previously but were reinstated upon appeal... and that one of those two, officer Fernando Perez, had actually been fired and reinstated twice before this latest disciplinary action.

Officer Perez had a history of misconduct that stretched back to 1991 when his field trainer recommended that he be fired while he was still a probationary officer because of poor performances when he interrogated and interviewed people. Other allegations included using racial epithets, failing to help a fellow officer as he was being beaten outside a bar, conducting illegal searches, excessive force, inappropriately conducting a 114 mph chase for a non-violent suspect, and misuse of police equipment.

But, repeatedly, a civil service review board would reduce the disciplinary findings and force the department to rehire him...

The other officer who was fired and rehired before being fired again, Sr. Cpl. Anthony Williams, was featured again in an article devoted entirely to him on February 22 which detailed a long and tortuous history of allegation after allegation of sexual misconduct that would only be met with minor disciplinary actions, if any at all.

But when Williams was finally fired the first time in 1996 for having sex while on duty, he was reinstated to continue with his 20 year career of abuse. This year he was finally fired... not for sexually abusing someone, but because he failed to respond to an emergency call while he was arguing with a woman who he had been having an affair with amidst allegations that he was doing so while on duty.

Why? Because Williams had the whole sexual misconduct game down pat by always targeting women that investigators would have a hard time taking seriously and women who would be afraid to complain about it. So, he was fired for failing to respond to a call instead of for the allegations that he was, again, having sex while on duty.

So, why has it been so hard for the Dallas police to fire problematic officers? Because of protections put into place to stop the systems of patronage, where politicians would fire public servants and staff offices with friends and supporters, and enforce a public service system based on merit.

However, in many localities, as police unions grew in power with their sought-after endorsements they were able to alter the civil review board memberships and change the rules that govern them in their own favor. This problem is exacerbated when we also add in the legislation police unions have been able to pressure lawmakers into passing in most states that keep misconduct and disciplinary records secret. This combination makes it nearly impossible to know who is ultimately to blame when repeat offender officers remain employed despite a clear history of abusive behavior.

Even so, it's still clear that some sort of system which prevents the political manipulation of civil servants, especially the police, is still necessary even when that system appears to be so easily corrupted into a safe haven for abusive officers. An example of the need for a system that protects officers from political abuses becomes clear when we look at what has been happening in the second city in this series.

To be continued...

Flowing From The Top - A Disturbing Trend Or More Of The Same

Original Post 02/15/09 - 21:47
Updated 02/18/09 - 10:05
While part of what I do here involves scanning various news outlets for stories of police misconduct and detainee abuse. As such, sometimes I notice certain trends. While it's true that the number of stories of police abuses by officers in general appears to be constantly rising, overwhelmingly so in fact, I noticed another more disturbing trend possibly developing.

Perhaps you noticed it too, if you did then you might know why it is so disturbing. But if you haven't noticed it, here's a list of a few of the stories that make up this potential trend:
.....

Sheriff Mike Carona

Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona was convicted in January of one count of witness tampering out of several other counts that were brought against him in a case where frustrated jurors claimed that, while they though he was not innocent, the feds failed to prosecute their case sufficiently over claims that he participated in a six year scheme to cheat his way into office just to enrich himself and his friends.

Police Chief Dexter Yarbrough

In January, ex-Chicago police officer and now suspended chief of the Colorado State University Police Department, Dexter Yarbrough, was under investigation into an undisclosed number of undisclosed complaints, rumored to deal with allegations of harassment, fraud, and threats, when a story in the university's newspaper brought some of the allegations against him to light.

Not only was Yarbrough the chief of police, but he also taught law enforcement classes there where a student recorded some of his lectures that appeared to advise aspiring law enforcement officers that it's ok to bribe informants with drugs, that brutality is normal, and that "they (women) want the dick".

Police Chief Manuel Cachopa

Stoughton Mass Police Chief Manuel Cachopa, who was fired recently after being convicted of being an accessory after the fact in an extortion case where he attempted to coerce a victim of police misconduct into not filing a complaint against one of his officers. He's facing up to seven years of prison for that.

Early in February an ex-officer won a $165,000 civil suit against the town for his being fired by the chief in retaliation for his part in the investigation against the chief.

Police Chief Sam Granato

Yakima Washington police chief Sam Granato is now facing allegations of sexual misconduct from a female police officer on top of existing allegations of retaliation against employees and a ruling against him over charges that he discriminated against a female officer by moving her out of the detectives division.

These allegations apparently aren't the first as others now appear to be coming from his previous post in Texas that he threatened a lieutenant there.

Police Chief Willie Fuller

In January of this year, Virginia Commonwealth University Police Chief Willie Fuller was arrested for allegedly using his computer to solicit what he believed to be a 14 year-old girl for sex in an online sexual predator sting operation.

Acting Police Chief Travis Glass

The former acting chief of Ferndale Washington Police Department has filed a lawsuit against the city in response to the city's lawsuit against him and those cases have passed back and forth between the federal and superior court a number of times now as lawyers continue to battle over what the proper venue might be.

The former acting-chief, Lt Travis Glass, allegedly agreed to resign as a result of an unspecified investigation into misconduct allegations against him in February of 2008 that were rumored to deal with accusations of sexual misconduct, but he never signed any agreement to that effect and sued the city for wrongful termination after he resigned. The city sued him for failing to abide by the agreement he orally agreed to when he resigned but never signed.

Police Chief Kecia Powell

The city of Culver Oregon was forced to disband their police department in January in the hopes of saving money by contracting out their police services while their police chief, Kecia Powell, was facing misconduct charges for abusing city-issued credit cards to pay her own bills.

Police Chief Jeffery Shaw

As of February 8, Northfield Police Chief Jeffery Shaw is facing decertification of his law enforcement certification, which would make him ineligible to continue on as chief of police in the small Vermont college town.

The revoking of his certification is the result of an ongoing investigation over possible criminal charges stemming from his signing off on training that allegedly never occurred for himself and his officers when they took over emergency medical services for the city, without completing the training required to be EMTs. He apparently also has enough gaps in his training that make him ineligible to be certified as a police officer.

Police Chief Wayne Tucker

In late January 2009, Oakland California Police Chief Wayne Tucker resigned after an FBI investigation into allegations against the director of his Internal Affairs department was announced. That officer, Captain Edward Poulson, is accused of ordering subordinates to cover up his involvement in beating a suspect so badly that he died a month later of his injuries... the chief picked him to head the IA department even after his own advisers warned him about the problems with his choice, which means most of the department and the chief were aware of the problem.

Police Chief Ricci Prein

Police Chief Ricci Prein of Roberts Wisconsin was fired in July 2008 on five counts of misconduct that included poor conduct towards village officials, making harassing phone calls to off-duty officers, ordering officer not to enforce closing laws agains a bar he frequented, and using his departmental computer to browse porn online.

Police Chief Greg Kroeplin

Canby Oregon Police Chief Greg Kroeplin is facing an independet investigation into FBI allegations that he intentionally concealed allegation of steroid abuse by one of his officers. That officer, Jason Deason, was arrested in February of this year on allegations that he illegally bought steroids while on duty and tipping off his dealer to pending busts as a result of that FBI investigation.

Police Chief Dave Willoughby

In January, The Police Chief of New Richmond Ohio, Dave Willoughby, is suing the state's bureau of criminal investigations for their treatment of him when they raided his house in search of evidence as part of their investigation of him on charges of menacing, harassment, and voyerism. The embattled chief says being the subject of a police raid was dehumanizing, though has not commented on how many similar raids he may have ordered during his time as chief.

Sheriff Greg Bartlett

Morgan County Alabama Sheriff Greg Bartlett was ruled in contempt of court last month when he refused to abide by a court order to feed his prisoners meals that met national standards for nutrition under a state program that let sheriffs take home any extra money that they saved by skimping on prisoner meals.

Sheriff Mike Burgess

Custer County Oklahoma Sheriff Mike Burgess was charged with coercing his female prisoners into participating in a sex-slavery operation that was run out of his jail.

In January he was found guilty of 13 felony counts and the jury recommended that he serve 94 years in prison for his crimes, but now Oklahoma officials don't know where to detain him safely while he awaits his long appeals process.

......

Yes, if you didn't figure it out, the apparent trend is that there's been an astonishing jump in the number of convictions, cases filed, and investigations into alleged misconduct by top leadership in police departments and sheriff's offices across the United States.

This jump is stunning simply because it forces us to question whether the old assumption that cases of misconduct are caused by "just a few bad apples". After all, when the top leadership of an organization appears to be corrupt, we must question whether or not the entire organization is corrupt, or at least accommodating towards corruption, as well.

The true and most disturbing part of this apparent trend becomes clearer when we examine just how such people rose through the ranks of police leadership and became heads of their respective departments. After all, if police misconduct was just a matter of a few bad apples, how did so many bad apples rise to the top?

One possibility, and the strongest I think, is seen in the way many police chiefs deal with misconduct within their own departments when it becomes difficult to fire officers in municipalities with strong police unions or when government officials put pressure on departments to cover up abuses out of litigation fears.

Instead of wasting energy trying to enforce disciplinary actions against problematic officers when that discipline will only be overturned when the union appeals to a public employment board, chiefs often resort to the tactic of promoting those officers to desk jobs, which get them off the streets and minimizes the potential for those officers to interact in ways with the public that exposes the department to litigation.

That might seem like an ideal solution, until we look at what happens next. Once problematic officers fill out more of the police leadership ranks than officers who advanced through their merits, rank and file learn that the best way to advance is to misbehave, they learn that misconduct is not only tolerated, but rewarded.

Further destroying such departments is that corrupt officers gravitate towards corrupt leaders, and corrupt leaders tend to favor officers who think like they do and they also tend to push away honest officers, which means all those higher ranking officers tend to reward the more aggressive and belligerent officers while punishing the honest cops who would tend to report abuse instead of being quiet about it or even participating in it.

We see examples of this often in cases where entire elite policing units get wrapped up in scandals, many of those caught mention a culture of permissive behavior that encouraged and rewarded abuses.

Worst of all, and what has led to this seemingly expansive list of police chiefs caught in the act of misconduct is that these high ranking officers, who were promoted due to misconduct, do eventually become eligible to be police chiefs due to their supervisory experience that would never have been gained if misconduct had resulted in discipline instead of advancement.

So, what does this mean? That it can't be just one bad apple when a police chief is caught participating in acts of misconduct. It means there is likely a culture of misconduct which raised that person to their position and that this person likely nourished their own culture of misconduct along the way as well.

It means, frighteningly enough, that for every one bad leader, there are likely multiple departments with cultures of misconduct that include the department that the chief or sheriff ended up leading as well... It means that the problem underlying that single leader's corruption is far more expansive than most realize at first glance.

That should give anyone pause whenever they hear of a single case of corrupt police leadership... let alone the striking number of cases that have come to light recently.

What do you think? Leave a comment below to let me know.

When Assault Becomes Murder - An Analysis of the Oscar Grant Shooting

The videotaped shooting death of Oscar Grant by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle has stirred angry demands for criminal charges from the public as BART officials and the Alameda County District Attorney have dragged their feet.

Officials claim that they need more time to investigate what the public has already seen... a police officer shooting an unarmed man who posed no threat in the back, in cold blood.

The BART police department, transit authority, and District Attorney, Tom Orloff, have all made it clear that they are desperately seeking evidence to absolve the officer by floating speculation that it was an accident of some sort or that there was some justification for the shooting that wasn't captured on the three different videos that have been released to the public... videos that all show the same thing... an unjustified killing.

Fellow police officers have also tried to do the same by floating the theory of "taser confusion" as cause for this killing, suggesting that it's easy to confuse a brightly colored device that is lighter than, has a different grip than, and is supposed to be carried on the opposite side than a service weapon.

Even if we accept this dubious possibility the death is still a criminal matter by way of shear negligence. But there's another disturbing aspect to this death which makes it a crime of intent. it is an aspect that has been entirely missed so far, but was ultimately the series of actions that needlessly put Oscar Grant in harm's way that night.

To understand what caused the arrest of Oscar Grant to spiral downward into murder we need to examine the actions of the other officer, not just Mehserle's. It was this officer who escalated the arrest of an unarmed and cooperative suspect into a use of force situation without any apparent reason whatsoever, and that is what ultimately cost Oscar Grant his life.

The Analysis
Note: the following analysis is of this third video from KTVU shot from the train by a cell phone camera. Even though it's quality isn't as good as the others and I can't embed it here, it's important to use this as an index because it starts before the others and shows the unnamed officer strike Grant in the face, which is likely what caused others to start filming.

An analysis of this video shows that:

At mark 00:10 an unidentified bald officer walks up and punches Oscar Grant in the face. This is obvious in the video as the officer's arm moves forward and Grant's head snaps back and Grant begins to collapse. After striking Grant the officer moves him to a seated position and Grant puts his hands up palm forward in supplication, the officer orders another man to sit and then leaves after a few seconds.

At 01:23, after the bald officer returns he appears to order the detainees arrest, this is apparent as the officers were talking with the suspects until the bald officer marched back over. At this point Mehserle moves Grant to a kneeling position and pulls Grant's arms behind him, there is no sign of resistance at this point.

However, at 01:26 Mehserle pushes Grant face first to the ground while the bald officer plants his knee on Grant's neck, which causes Grant to involuntarily squirm due to the pain of that maneuver. Up to this point there appeared to be no threat posed by Grant to justify the use of this tactic.

At 01:28 Mehserle makes a furtive grab for his service weapon, but then stops.

At 01:45 Mehserle grabs at his service weapon again, this time he continues to try to pull it from the holster for at least 2 full seconds, ample time to have figured out that this was not a taser which is held in a different type of holster and has a different feel.

Four seconds later, at 01:49, the bald officer shifts his stance to the other side of Grant to put himself out of the line of fire, but resumes his pain compliance hold with his knee on Grant's neck while Mehserle pulls his service weapon from the holster. This would indicate that the order to fire, whether it was to fire a taser or the Mehserle's service weapon, came from the bald officer.

At 01:51 Mehserle gets into his stance and aims his weapon at Grant while the bald officer maintains his hold. If this was in prep for the application of a taser the bald officer would have moved away now to avoid getting shocked.

At 01:52 Mehserle fires a shot into Grant's back as the bald officer continues to hold him face down on the floor of the station.

It's only one second later, at 01:53, that the bald officer finally stands up and steps away from the mortally injured Grant.


The Conclusion
The actions of the unnamed bald officer's aggressive use of force, both when he punches Grant in the face at the beginning of the video and when he needlessly employed a pain compliance move on a suspect that was otherwise cooperative, are what ultimately led to Grant's death. It is why there must be criminal charges in this case, a case of assault that resulted in the death of an unarmed person...

To understand this, consider that the unnamed officer is seen "taking a knee" on Oscar Grant's neck. This police tactic is relatively new and used often as a pain compliance move that both immobilizes a suspect and causes severe pain in order to, supposedly, force dangerous suspects to comply with orders that would allow for restraints to be applied when they otherwise wouldn't.

Clip taken from the arrest of Mike Ladd at an anti-war march in Seattle on 03/2007. Charges against Ladd for resisting arrest were later dropped when this video proved the application of the officer's pain compliance holds prevented Ladd from following commands to put his hands behind his back.

The problem with this hold is that it does such a good job of immobilizing a suspect that it often renders them incapable of following commands to put their arms behind them so cuffs can be applied, especially if the person held has tried to catch their fall when thrown to the ground and ends up with an arm trapped underneath them when the hold is applied.

More than this, the hold causes so much pain that most people can't help but kick their legs and squirm in pain as a reflexive response to that pain, which often causes officers to use even more force to enact an arrest, including the use of another pain compliance tool called a taser.

The last image recorded on AP photojournalist Matthew Rourke's before he was arrested in St. Paul as documented here. It shows how suspects will often react involuntarily to the application of this painful move.

This problem with the "taking a knee" on a suspect's neck has been documented before and has resulted in suspect being cleared of resisting arrest charges upon review of video evidence before, yet the tactic remains a favorite of police officers everywhere. As seen numerous times in St. Paul during the RNC protests.

It was the other officer's rush to use force to enact the arrest of the otherwise non-threatening Oscar Grant and that officers rush to needlessly use a pain compliance hold on a person who presented no threat that set into motion the series of events which cost Oscar Grant his life on New Years morning... irregardless as to whether the bullet that tore through his back was fired accidentally or on purpose.

In other words, the two officers involved with detaining Oscar Grant intended to hurt him without justification that night, and that's considered a crime called assault. And when the crime of assault results in a death, that's considered murder, even if the death was the ultimate intent of the two officers involved or not.

Updated 17:39 01/11/09

Worst Police Misconduct Video of 2008 Reader Poll

So much happened in 2008 and it seems like we've been losing the battle against police misconduct because of all the stories we've seen...

Or is it just that these stories have always been here and that we're just now hearing more about the stories that usually get covered up thanks to brave citizens out there who videotape the police when they misbehave and because surveillance technology has become so ubiquitous?

Do these show us how bad misconduct is, or how much misconduct out there happens without us ever knowing about it?

So, let's take a look back at the stories of police misconduct in video that happened in 2008...

After watching these feel free to vote for the worst... not just by how much brutality officers display, but also the level of disregard for society and the law they show and how badly their actions violate the public trust that was granted to them.

VIDEO 1

West Palm Beach Florida officers repeatedly and viciously punch a handcuffed robbery suspect in the head until he falls to the ground face first. Then, if that wasn't enough, while he's face down on the ground they kick his head hard enough to make it visibly bounce in the video. Truly disturbing to watch... at least it was for me.

VIDEO 2

NYPD officer body-checks a bicyclist at a Critical Mass ride in New York City. The officer initially claimed the rider attempted to assault him and filed charges against him... at least until this video surfaced. Now the officer has been indicted for providing false testimony.

VIDEO 3

Then there's the video of a Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff's deputy dumping a paralyzed man out of his wheelchair at a Tampa area jail because she didn't believe he was paralyzed. Even after dumping him out she never stops to think that maybe she's wrong as she began to rifle through his clothes while he laid on the floor with broken ribs.

VIDEO 4

NYPD officers repeatedly striking a man's legs during an arrest. Officers claimed he was resisting and attempted to hit them with an umbrella while the victim and his relatives say he was stopped by police suspecting he had alcohol when he tried to bring ice into a park on July 4th.

VIDEO 5

Even though this incident occurred in November of 2007, the video was not made available until February of 2008. This video captures a portion of the beating Mark Hays suffered at the hands of the Seattle Police Department's "elite" Anti-Crime Team not even two months after the ACT got bad press for beating a Canadian couple for jaywalking. This incident was also sparked by Hays and his friend jaywalking in front of an unmarked ACT SUV and escalated from there.

VIDEO 6

This other Seattle Police video came at the very beginning of the year on January 1, 2008. Marcell Richardson was trying to get into a local McDonalds after he had to step out and shut off his car alarm when police decided to shut the place down for crowd control. Officers stopped Marcell and when he tried to explain he had already ordered food he was pepper sprayed and grabbed. He became disoriented and he ran. Officers caught him and then punched and pepper sprayed with a large OC canister until he was left face down on all fours gasping for air and apparently compliant. But that wasn't enough for the officers who then fired a taser into his back. Prosecutors later dropped the obstruction and resisting charges they filed against him.

VIDEO 7

In a case that highlights the amount of animosity the police have for news reporters, Denver police officers arrest and choke ABC reporter Asa Eslocker during the Democratic National Convention for standing on a public sidewalk while trying to do a report.

VIDEO 8

In this double-feature, highlighted by Amy Goodman's reporting on the video of her own arrest as well as video of the violent arrest of Democracy Now! producer Nicole Salazar provide just a highlight of Minneapolis and St. Paul police abuses that included the arrests and assaults of several credentialed reporters during the Republican National Convention in 2008, including several videographers and a reporter from The Stranger from Seattle.

VIDEO 9

The well publicized incident in Philadelphia where several officers pulled three suspects from a car and brutally kicked and beat them. Officers claimed they were suspects in a shooting but never found a gun until several weeks later, supposedly, and conveniently, under a blanket in the field next to where the beating took place.

VIDEO 10

This shocking video shows Stark County Ohio Sheriff's Deputies forcibly stripping a female detainee who was arrested after she called police to stop a relative who attacked her. After a complaint was filed by her husband the police exonerated all officers, saying the abuse never took place... until this disturbing video surfaced that is.

VIDEO 11

This video shows a Shreveport Police officer attempting to interview a DUI suspect turn off the video camera and then turn the camera back on again to show the handcuffed woman laying on the floor in a pool of her own blood. The officer claimed that the woman just fell down... The officer was eventually fired after an investigation showed the shocking extent of the woman's injuries from the officer beating her. No criminal charges were filed though.

VIDEO 12

This video captured during the 2008 Democratic Presidential Debate at Hofstra University shows Iraq War veteran Nick Morgan's head being crushed by a Nassau County New York police horse's hoof. Sgt Morgan suffered a broken cheekbone and permanent brain damage from the incident and from a subsequent denial of medical care when he was arrested after being trampled and knocked unconcious. The veterans were merely asking to be let into the debate so they could ask the candidates a question about the Iraq war and how veterans would be taken care of after they returned home.

VIDEO 13

One of the more infamous officers of the year was Baltimore Maryland's officer Salvator Rivieri who was caught on this video in the summer of 2007 harassing and then assaulting a teenage skateboarder. When the video was released in 2008 the national news picked up the story, which prompted another video to be released by a artist who was threatened by the same officer at the same location that same summer.

The officer got a paid vacation and a lot of attention... so much so that the police department used it as an excuse to keep the names of officers involved in shootings or misconduct secret from the public... talk about the police learning the wrong lessons.

Note: This reader's poll has ended and the results will be posted shortly in a different article.