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?

Against Police Misconduct, Divided We Will Fall

I wanted to take some time and explain some things to readers who may wonder about my previous article. I realize that, at first glance, it might have sounded pretty defeatist.

So, let me start by saying that I didn't write it to suggest that people fighting police misconduct should give up, quite the opposite. I wrote it to explain how and why these efforts need to step it up. I wrote it to help focus on the tactics people who defend police misconduct use to bypass local police accountability efforts.

I wrote it to explain that, without addressing the federal and state laws that make it impossible for cities to rid themselves of bad cops, what does it matter if we identify all the bad cops and detail their abuses, or hold protests against them, or even convince city officials that something must be done?

The problem we face is that organizations and individuals dedicated to address police misconduct and brutality just can't bring ourselves to cooperate with each other on a local level, let alone work with similar efforts in other cities to put pressure on state government and federal lawmakers to change the current laws that encourage police abuses.

Many put pressure and blame on police chiefs and leaders without understanding how they are often denied the tools they need to address the problems they are blamed for... Sure, those groups might force one chief to be fired, but it helps little if the next one in still isn't allowed to fire troublemakers just like the last one.

We need to realize that the police have many resources; they have their unions, their 'benevolent' organizations, their memorial groups, their own lobbyists, armies of lawyers on retainer, and countless other support groups, that all work together to pass laws that protect officers from discipline and accountability on a local, state, and national level...

How can any of us, we who dedicate ourselves to fighting abuses of authority, police brutality, and systemic abuses of civil and human rights, hope to fight that power without understanding how effective it is and working together to counterbalance it on the same level?

After all, what good is it if we devote all our resources in divided efforts to force changes at a local level while all those police organizations have the ears and pocketbooks of state and federal lawmakers all to themselves without any opposing viewpoint being heard?

That's the uphill fight we face... and we can't keep pretending that a tiny rally of a dozen people in Seattle, or that a small website written by one guy, or any of these things we do individually are going to accomplish anything lasting on their own. We have to understand the united front we all face when we try to confront police misconduct and how they use that unity to defeat our individual efforts.

But, if we could just get it together and use each others strengths and focus on meaningful goals instead of just being reactive to each individual case of misconduct... maybe we would stand a chance against the daily onslaught of police misconduct and those who seek to perpetuate it.

It's time to face facts. The people opposed to police misconduct cannot hope to make progress unless they can become just as united in that cause as police organizations are in their efforts to help problematic officers avoid discipline for their abuses.

We must accept that, while we remain divided, we will be destined to continue to fail if we keep trying the same failed tactics over and over again…

…and I have to accept that it’s going to take a lot more effort on my part than what I’ve put forward so far in order to have any chance of addressing the seemingly ever-worsening problem of police misconduct.

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.

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.

When Testilying Cops Make No Cents

On February 11, 2005, Tallahasse Florida Police Officers responded to a burglary alarm at Nezha's Subs and Wings and the Magnolia Barbershop. They arrived to see the front door smashed and that both business' cash registers were missing.

Meanwhile, a witness called police to report seeing a man in the median of a nearby street with a cash register so officers investigated and claimed that they spotted a "trail" of pennies leading to a nearby apartment. The cash register matched the type from the Magnolia Barbershop.

Officers discovered the apartment belonged to a Jay W. Smith who was a Florida A&M University student. Four days after the burglary officers visited Smith and asked for permission to search his apartment. When Smith declined they took his drivers license and refused to let him leave while officers attempted to get a warrant.

However, while attempting to get the warrant, officers received a call that the other register was found and they let Smith go and returned his license after making a copy of it for a photo lineup.

Officers contacted the witnesses who claimed they saw a black man, in his late teens to early twenties, with a cash register that night and had them look at the photo lineup. One picked out Smith and the other couldn't pick anyone out of the lineup.

On March 3rd of 2005 Smith was arrested and held in Leon County Jail in lieu of a $2,500 bond which would never be returned to Smith.

He was charged based on a sworn affidavit by an officer named Rodney Fountain, who claimed that Smith stole one cash register with at least $100 in change in it, that there was a trail of pennies leading to his door, and that at least one witness observed him with the cash register and picked him out of a photo lineup.

Seems like an open and shut case based on solid investigative police work, right?

Yeah, probably isn't if you're reading about it here.

Apparently, a few problems with the case became apparent after Smith's attorney did some investigating and found that:

The "trail" of pennies actually wasn't a trail, it consisted of only five pennies that were near Smith's door and in the nearby parking lot. Both of which weren't really near the location where the cash register was actually found, there was no trail.

Oh, and about that cash register... the owner of that cash register told police that night that she cleaned it out before leaving. There was no money, let alone any change, in that cash register that night. Quite the opposite of the $100 in change the officer claimed was in it.

About that witness identification? It appears as though the officers involved neglected to mention that those witnesses both claimed that they couldn't get a look at the person with the cash register because he was wearing a hoodie.

In fact, to make it worse, it appears as though the one witness who did pick Smith's photo had expressly explained to the officer that he didn't see the man's face and could not pick anyone out. But that officer, the same Rodney Fountain, wouldn't accept no for an answer and told the witness to "just pick one", so the witness felt pressured and did what he was told and picked Smith's photo randomly out of the six that were presented to him.

Now, according to a complaint filed on February 9th (pdf) in the US District Court of Florida by the Law Office of James Cook, the City of Tallahassee and several of its police officers are being sued for deprivation of rights, malicious prosecution, fabrication of evidence, false imprisonment, and a slew of other charges over Smith's arrest.

What might have seemed like good detective work was actually a case of evidence fabrication and testilying, a term used to describe when officers lie in court testimony and sworn statements.

Do you think a case like this is rare?

No, Smith was lucky enough to have a defense attorney, Matt Willard, that took the time to look over the evidence and who spotted the anomalies that made him look deeper. If he had an overworked attorney who urged him to take a plea, we wouldn't have ever heard about this case... just like all the others you never hear about.

So now there will be another robbery, the citizens of Tallahassee will be robbed by the officers who lied in order to arrest someone who was innocent. They won't pay if they lose that lawsuit, the city's taxpayers will... so, what incentive did they have NOT to lie?

None, and ultimately, that's why they did.

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...