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HomeMy WebLinkAbout11-12-2002 Articles Page 1 of 1 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 11:40 PM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Cincinnati Human Relations Comm Vows More Visible Role in Police/Corn Relations Panel vows more visible role Police-community relations at issue By Craig Garretson Post staff reporter The Cincinnati Human Relations Commission promised Wednesday to take "a more visible, active and involved role" in dealing with police-community relations and offered praise for efforts to discipline officers involved in the death of an unarmed black man who died in police custody. "The commissioners are going to be more visible and more vocal on issues confronting our city," said Cecil Thomas, the commission's executive director. "We've worked behind the scenes in past years and we'll continue to do that, but at the same time you're going to see them more involved with the community. "If you have a police officer who repeatedly shows a pattern of misconduct, the commissioners will be more outspoken about pointing him out. And if there are people in the comm unity who are being divisive, they're going to point them out, too." AS a first step, commissioners Wednesday praised police and city officials for their efforts to discipline police officers involved in the death of Roger Owensby Jr., an unarmed black man who died in police custody as he was being arrested. In a written statement released Wednesday, the commissioners commended City Manager Valerie Lemmie for releasing the Office of Municipal Investigation and the Internal Investigation Section reports about the death of Owensby, a 29-year-old College Hill man who died Nov. 7, 2000, after struggling with police outside a Roselawn convenience store, and Police Chief Thomas Streicher for moving forward with administrative hearings for seven officers and a former police officer involved in the incident. "We are glad Chief Streicher immediately selected a hearing officer and plans are in progress to hold disciplinary hearings for each officer named in the Owensby case," the statement read. "We further urge City Manager Valerie Lemmie to continue her diligent effort to expeditiously conclude the matter. We are confident that Ms. Lemmie will render a final decision that is reflective of a fair, impartial and thorough review of the facts," They also praised an unknown police officer who reported that one of the officers involved in that incident -- Police Officer Patrick Caton -- allegedly used a racial slur while responding to a radio call earlier this month. Although no one heard the slur, it was caught on Caton's police cruiser's audiotape, and another officer reviewing the tape heard it and reported it to Streicher. "It is good news when officers speak out to make public the fact that a fellow officer has demonstrated disrespect for a group of citizens by using degrading words, such as those used by Officer Patrick Caton. The 'code of silence' where some officers protect each other at all costs does little to move us toward high standards of dignity and respect," the statement read. And the commissioners agreed with OMl's recommendation that Caton --who allegedly punched Owensby in the back after he'd been handcuffed -- be fired. Caton was acquitted in a jury trial for misdemeanor assault, but both reports sus<147,1,1>rained the allegation against him, cit ing testimony from two police officers who were at the scene and said they saw him do it. "Officer Caton, in less than five years with the CPD, has 13 OMI cases, has used racial slurs, and OMI concludes that he has violated several procedures and policies. He like all officers has a right to due process, but unless these facts are proven incorrect, we agree with OMl's conclusion that Officer Patrick Caton should be dismissed from the CPD," the statement read. Another priority for the group will be educating the public about the collaborative agreement struck between the city, the police, the U.S. Justice Department and the plaintiffs of a racial-profiling lawsuit. At a Wednesday press conference, commission chairman Art Shriberg, a professor of leadership at Xavier University, said the commission will work with the Black United Front -- one of the plaintiffs in the recently settled lawsuit -- to educate the community about what the agreement means. The landmark agreement, signed in April, includes a major overhaul of police procedures and practices, such as revising use-of-force rules and a new system to track the behavior of individual officers to identify patterns of misconduct. The settlement calls on the community to work more closely with police in trying to identify and stem problems in poor neighborhoods, and to train "street workers" to help defuse tense situations before police have to be called. "The collaborative agreement is a document of historical significance," Thomas said. "It's capable of mov ing this city forward, once people understand what it really means. Thomas said the commission's 20-member board is the most diverse in the city, drawing people of both genders and all races, religions, socio-economic levels and sexual orientations. "These are very well-educated, very active members of our community who are going to be trying to keep some balance flowing.. Right now, we're really out of balance," he said. 10/18/02 Page l of 2 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 10:35 PM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] LA Board of Sups Presses Sheriff for Explanation of Uninvestigated Claims http://www.latimes.comlnewsl!ocallla-rne-m!sconduct16oct16.story LOS ANGELES Board Presses Sheriff for Explanation County supervisors react to report that 800 claims of misconduct by deputies were not probed by department. By Nicholas Riccardi Times Staff Writer October 16 2002 Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday demanded an explanation of why the Sheriffs Department failed to investigate more than 800 claims of wrongdoing by its deputies. Supervisors also are seeking a legal opinion on whether deputies found to have engaged in misconduct as long ago as 1993 could still be disciplined today. The disclosure of the failure to investigate was made in a report from the Office of Independent Review, a group of civil rights attorneys who investigate the Sheriffs Department and report to county supervisors. The report is slated to be formally released Thursday, but supervisors have a preliminary version, which found that the Sheriffs Department failed to routinely review legal claims of misconduct. The agency has now changed its policy. "We were always under the perception that the department had a handle on this vital issue," Supervisor Mike Antonovich said. State law gives police agencies one year from the time they hear about possible officer misconduct to discipline those in question. The one exception, attorneys said, is when the officers are named in lawsuits and any swift discipline could be used against them in court. After the Office of Independent Review found a failure to review claims, the department began reviewing those filed since January 2001. In his motion, which will be voted on next week, Antonovich asked that county lawyers study the limitations on discipline, including whether information more than a year old can be placed in deputies' personnel file. He also wants the Sheriff's Department to explain how legal claims could go unexamined for so long. "There was a breakdown," he said, "and I would like to know why and who is responsible for not following policy." Supervisors and their aides also raised concerns about the relationship between the Office of Independent Review and Sheriff Lee Baca, who proposed it. The head of the office, former federal civil rights prosecutor Michael Gennaco, meets weekly with Baca, but his new report is the first he has given to the supervisors in the year since they unanimously created the office. Supervisor Gloria Molina, who is Baca's sharpest critic on the board, has asked for her own weekly meetings with Gennaco. "It's too cozy," she said of the relationship between Gennaco and the sheriff, echoing private remarks by several supervisors' aides Tuesday. "At this point in time," said Miguel Santana, Molina's spokesman, "it looks like the sheriff has a closer relationship with Mr. Gennaco than the board does." 0/21/02 Page 2 of 2 Relations between the supervisors and sheriff have been increasingly tense. The board has clashed with Baca over department cost overruns and whether he properly disciplined deputies who were involved in the death of a mentally ill jail inmate. On Tuesday they spent more than an hour criticizing the sheriff's purchasing policy. In an interview last week, Gennaco said he wants to increase his communication with supervisors. He said state public meetings law made it hard to brief the entire board on personnel meetings. "They have a history of dealing with the sheriff that I don't," he said of the board. "1 think it is important for us to hear from them what their issues are." 10/21/02 Page 1 of 2 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 '10:39 PM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Seattle: 150 Protest Police Shootings, Call for Fed Action Seattle Times Tuesday, October 15, 2002, 12:00 a.m, Pacific . 150 protest police shootings, calling for federal action .yo na Klm Seattle Times staff reporter In a four-hour rally-turned-march-turned-vigil, some members of Seattle's black community yesterday intensified their efforts to ensure that nine black men killed by area police in the last nine years are not forgotten. As dozens of police officers on bicycles lined Pine Street in front of Westlake Center, about 150 people across the street at Westlake Park held photos of those who had died and signs that said, "Stop police terror, stop police brutality." Carl Mack, vice-president of the local chapter o f the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, opened the rally asking the federal government to intervene. Citizen inquest juries and police review boards have found that police officers did not violate policy in the shootings, but Mack said there has been a breakdown in the local justice system, most recently in determining that sheriffs Deputy Melvin Miller, who was off-duty, was acting in self-defense when he killed Robert Thomas Sr. on April 7 in a roadside confrontation. "This is not the time to make speeches. We've said everything we're going to say," Mack told the crowd, adding that the NAACP hadn't applied for city permits for the rally or a march. "We're going to march to the federal courthouse because we want the federal govern ment to step in .... And if that means getting arrested, then start with me, right now." Mack led the crowd through the park and walked into the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Pike Street, halting downtown traffic. He was immediately arrested. Afterward, chanting went from, "No justice, no peace. No racist police," to "Free Carl now." The crowd continued up Fourth Avenue to the federal courthouse. Alfoster Garrett of the NAACP then directed the group to march to the Seattle Police Department's precinct on Virginia Street, where Mack had been taken. "If you don't want to stand up for your destiny, then do it for your children," he said. "We're going to stand there until they let him go." With police officers forming a boundary at the entrance, the group of about 100 chanted, listened to speeches and rallied for Mack's release. "Either you stand for something or you fall for everything," said Marguerite Bland, 49, of Seattle, holding the hand of her 5-year-old daughter Lekeisha. "It's essential for survival.. Because of this body she's born in, she's going to be abused and neglected and she needs to be able to stand up and say it's wrong." While most were respectful of the police, Michael Fuller, 46, repeatedly yelled racial epithets at black officers who ignored him. Earlier in the day, attorneys for the Thomas family announced that wrongful-death and personal-injury claims had been filed against the Sheriffs Office, Miller and King County, seeking more than $25 million in damages. Attorney Bradley Marshall said they'll sue the Sheriff's Office and the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office -- which decided last week not to file criminal charges against Miller -- in federal court for misconduct. Marshall and co-counsel Howard Phillips said the Sheriffs Office should have handed its investigation to an independent agency. They also said the inquest should not have been handled by a King County judge and that Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng should not have made the decision about charges because of inherent conflicts of interest. Chanting, "Free Carl. Jail Miller," the crowd in front of the police precinct moved to the King County Jail after word that Mack was going to be booked there for the misdemeanor offense of pedestrian interference. While walking t o ward the jail, David Barfield, 52, of Seattle, blocked traffic at the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Howell Street. He was arrested for pedestrian interference and booked into the jail, said police spokeswoman Deanna Nollette. Mack and Barfield were later released. "The killing of black men has gone on too long," said Madge Thompson, 56, of Seattle. "It's the same battle. It's just a new time and era. "If we keep rallying and keep protesting, eventually they'll stop .... But this is going to be a long, hard fight." Seattle Times staff reporter Leslie Fulbright contributed to this report. Gina Kim: 206-464-2761 or gkim@seattletimes, com. 10/21/02 Page 1 of 3 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 11:26 AM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] '1969York Murder/Civil Rights Trial Concludes; XMayor Aquitted; Others Convicted Ex-mayor acquitted in '69 racially motivated slaying Sunday, October 20, 2002By MARC LEVY Associated PressYORK, Pa. - The former mayor was acquitted and two other white men were convicted Saturday in the shotgun slaying of a young black woman during riots that ripped through the city in '1969, all but closing the books on a crime that has haunted York for more than three decades. The former mayor, Charlie Robertson, 68, and two other men were tried in the death of Lillie Belle Allen, a preacher's daughter from Aiken, S.C., who was gunned down by a white mob July 21, 1969. The other men were convicted of second-degree murder and face sentences of '10 to 20 years in prison.The long-unsolved case is nearly finished: Of the 10 white men charged in the slaying, six pleaded guilty earlier and await sentencing. The final suspect still faces trial.The all-white jury deliberated about 10 hours over three days before reachin9 the verdict. The case was dormant for years before prosecutors opened it again in 1999, saying they had new information. Many in this faded manufacturing city of 40,000 worried openly that the investigation and trial would reopen old wounds. The riots, touched off by simmering violence between white and black youths, left Allen dead, white patrolman Henry Schaad mortally wounded, more than 60 other people injured, and whole blocks burned. It took 400 National Guardsmen and state police troopers to quell the violence. Robertson, a police officer during the riots, went on to become a popular two-term mayor. Prosecutors said the other defendants, Robert Messersmith and Greg Neff, were members of the white gangs that ambushed the car carrying Allen, 27, and four relatives. Prosecutors said Robertson handed out ammunition to at least one of the gunmen to even the score for the shooting of the patrolman three days before Allen was slain. One of the men who pleaded guilty in the case, Rick Knouse, testified that Robertson gave him .30-06 rifle ammunition and told him to "kill as many" blacks as he could. Robertson admitted shouting "white power!" at a gang rally the day before Allen's killing, but denied the other accusations. He has apologized for his views back then, saying the mugging of his father by three black men when he was a youth affected him deeply. Messersmith, 53, was accused of firing the shotgun slug that killed Allen, while Neff, 54, was accused of shootin9 at the white Cadillac carrying Allen, her sister, brother-in-law, and parents. The family was on its way to the grocery store when the car turned into a predominantly white neighborhood where armed youths had girded for war with blacks. The car stalled, and Allen was cut down when she climbed out to take the wheeI.Accordin9 to witnesses, Messersmith later bragged about the slaying, saying "1 blew the nigger in half."Robertson was the first officer to arrive at the murder scene. Though he credited himself with saving the lives of Allen's relatives, he and three other officers did not disarm gang members, take witness statements, or file a report"Everyone knew who was involved," Robertson told Time magazine last year. "But everyone just thought it was even. One black h ad been killed and one white - even?None of the defendants testified at trial. Defense attorneys said there was no definitive proof that any of the defendants killed Allen. And they ridiculed prosecution witnesses, saying those who pleaded guilty in the case were testifying in hopes of winning leniency at sentencing and others had poor memories. The defense also suggested it was too dark the night of the slaying to conclusively identify anyone; former officer James Vangreen testified that the armed gang members looked like "silhouettes."A state police investigation and a federal civil rights probe both ended without charges in the case decades ago. But three years ago, after the city's two daily newspapers provided extensive coverage of the 30th anniversary of the riots, prosecutors reopened the investigation. One man called before prosecutors to tell what he knew took his life the next day. Donald Altland admitted he was present the night Allen was killed, and that he was one of those who shot at the Cadillac. "He just said he felt sorry," his widow, Cindy Altland, said.Three other gang members also had killed themselves since the riots. But authorities arrested nine white men last year, and six of them pleaded guilty in August. A 10th man, arrested in July, is to be tried separately.Two black men were arrested last year and charged with murder in the slaying of Schaad, the 22-year-old white patrolman. They could be tried early next year. For many, York murder case isn't over Defense attorneys set to appeal; slain woman's family considers civil suit By Jennifer McMenamin Baltimore Sun National Staff October 21, 2002 YORK, Pa. -- Walking home from church yesterday morning, Charlie Robertson couldn't go more than a block at a time without someone stopping him to offer congratulations or tooting a car horn in support. He was up till midnight Saturday, answering "hundreds of calls" from friends and strangers in at least six states and as far away as Italy, according to the list he pulled from his suit pocket. 10/21/02 Page 2 of 3 Just hours earlier that day, a jury had acquitted him of murder charges in the 33-year-old race-riot killing of a black woman. Only Robertson walked out of the courthouse a free man. The two accused shooters were convicted of second- degree murder. "So many people called and sent cards, and it helped me stand tall," the former mayor and retired police officer said. "It wasn't easy being there for a whole month," he said of the trial, "but I'm over it, and I just want to live my own life now. I want to do whatever I want to do, held down by nobody." Of the people enmeshed in the case since Robertson and eight other white men were arrested last spring in the killing of Lillie Belle Allen in July 1969, the two-term mayor is one of the few for whom the ordeal appears to be over. Attorneys for convicted shooters Robert N. Messersmith and Gregory H. Neffwill probably be tied up in appeals for years. Messersmith, 53, and Neff, 54, are scheduled to be sentenced in December and face up to 20 years in prison. Six men who pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for their testimony will be sentenced next month. And civil-rights attorneys for Allen's relatives have floated the possibility of filing a civil suit against the city. "We're not going to stop here," Hattie Mosley Dickson, Al[efts younger sister, said at a news conference Saturday night on the courthouse steps. "We are a family that is strong, and w e are going to continue to investigate the rest of the people that was involved in this tragedy of my sister, Lillie Belle. And I know that she would want us to." The all-white jury acquitted Robertson, 68, of charges that as a police officer he offered bullets and encouragement to young white street gang members who later gunned down a black preacher's daughter at a railroad crossing. Allen, 27, was on her way to get groceries when she, Dickson and their family unknowingly strayed into a hostile white neighborhood as the streets of this blue-collar town throbbed with racial strife. She died in a fusillade of bullets after she got out of her family's car to take the wheel from her younger sister, who had fro- zen in panic and could not steer it out of the ne ighborhood, where young men lined the street with shotguns and rifles. Thomas Sponaugle, an attorney for Messersmith, and Harry Ness, Neffs lawyer, said they plan to appeal the convictions on the grounds that lead prosecutor Thomas H. Kelley improperly invoked the Bible in his closing argument last week. Playing down suggestions by the defense counsel that jurors should consider the "different values" and "limited social conscience" of three decades ago in rendering their verdict, Kelley had told the jury: "Every life is sacred regardless of whether things change between 1969 and today. The law has always been, 'Thou shall not kill.'" Sponaugle and Ness then immediately asked York County Judge John C. Uhler for a mistrial. With 12 days of testimony behind t hem and only jury instructions to go before deliberations would begin, the judge told the attorneys that the trial was too far along, Ness said, and did not grant their request. The defense attorneys are hoping to win a retrial by citing case law written from the missteps of Kelley's boss. In 1986, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ovedurned a convicted murderer's death sentence when it ruled that York County District Attorney H. Stanley Rebert had overstepped the bounds of oratorical flair during his arguments. Rebert had told jurors, "As the Bible says, 'the murderer shall be put to death.'" While acknowledging that Kelley had misspoken, prosecutors said the reference in the Allen closing was different. "This wasn't a direct reference to the Bible," prosecut or Fran Chardo said. "We are a basically religious country where a lot of our society is based on a Judeo-Christian background. A lot of things from the Bible have entered our culture and are used in the secular sense." Sponaugle said Messersmith can also argue on appeal that his ability to defend himself was hampered by the 33-year delay in prosecution; that a detective improperly implied during testimony that Messersmith had something to hide when he was arrested; and that a question from Kelley to a defense forensics expert improperly suggested that Messersmith knew where to find guns seized by police from his parents' home in July 1969. "Our defense, given the evidence, was to convince this jury not to convict Bob Messersmith of first-degree murder, and we did that," Sponaugle said. "But I think there are very legitimate issues for appeal." Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun 10/21/02 Page 1 of 3 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 9:12 PM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] LAPD: Bratton To Tally His Forces Bratton to Tally His Forces By Richard Winton and Andrew Blan kstein LA Times Staff Writers October 19 2002 When William J. Bratton takes the helm at the Los Angeles Police Department, his first order of business will be some old- fashioned police work: conducting a dragnet. The incoming chief plans a head count of all 8,944 sworn officers. To do it, he said, he will ask the same questions he has been asking s~nce his days as a Boston police sergeant and that he asked later as head of the departments in Boston and New York: "What are you doing? Where are you hiding? What are you supposed to be doing?" The blunt-talking Bostonian faces significant labor obstacles -- both natural and man-made -- as he attempts to remake the department and get more officers on the streets, say crime experts, police officials and union leaders. Among Bratton's challenges: fighting a tight budget in economically lean times; maneuvering around the limits posed by the department's three-day, 12-hour work schedule; and gaining the respect of rank-and-file officers and the Police Protective League, which represents most of the LAPD's 9,000 officers. The drumbeat of criticism by the league played a key role in the ouster of former Chief Bernard C. Parks after one five- year term. It was the union that demanded and received -- with the blessing of Mayor James K. Hahn -- the three-day work week. Once he has finished the head count, Bratton said, he will re-engineer the department, replacing officers in administrative jobs with civilians and returning sworn officers to the streets, eliminating many specialized units and decentralizing the LAPD by turning divisions into semi-autonomous mini-police departments. Bratton has promised, not only more officers, but also more efficient, cost-effective policing. "There are 9,000 that are so inappropriately assigned at this moment that there's phenomenal room for increased productivity, activity and creativity by a reorganization of the department," Bratton said of the current staffing situation. "The issue here is that, with 9,000, I can do a lot more." That approach has been endorsed by Police Commission President Rick Caruso. "You have to go to the Iow-hanging fruit, where you have sworn officers doing ministerial tasks," said Caruso, citing what he said is an excess of sworn officers in divisions such as internal affairs, audit and consent decree compliance. "The priority has to be, if you have a sworn officer, that officer has to be on the street. You also need to get more sergeants in the field for a supervisory role." About 5,722 officers are assigned to patrol or uniformed functions, with an additional 1,630 in investigative jobs and 1,202 doing administrative duties. Backing them up are 3,181 civilian employees. The challenge of getting more out of a police force that may not grow is similar to the one Bratton faced during his tenure as head of the New York City Transit Police. Speaking of how Bratton handled that challenge, Al O'Leary, a spokesman for New York's police union and an ex-transit official said: "When Bill Bratton arrived, the transit police had a serious morale problem." "It wasn't viewed as desirable to be a transit officer." O'Leary said. "The uniforms were tatty. Officers were bored to death. 10/21/02 Page 2 of 3 "Bill convinced them that the fare evader was the same guy with the felony warrant. He gave officers 9-millimeters instead of .38s, and handed them commando sweaters. Soon the department was perceived as the Marines of New York." Paralleling that situation, morale within the LAPD hit, perhaps, its all-time Iow under Parks, with the Rampart scandal in 1999. As crime has climbed in the last few years, with incidents of serious crime rising 12%, arrests have declined. Police response time citywide has climbed from 7.5 minutes in 1998 to 9.8 minutes this year. Bratton will need officers to make more arrests. His philosophy, tried and tested in New York, is built around enforcing "quality-of-life" laws such as those against loitering, graffiti and prostitution. Eliminating small~time offenses, he argues, reduces the likelihood of more serious crimes. The City Charter gives Bratton virtually unfettered power to shift officers to the streets. But for the first time as a chief, he will have to work with a three-day, 12-hour-per-shift work schedule. "You live with what you have, and try to modiht it when you can," Bratton said. "Three-12 actually has more pluses than minuses." The three-12 system does not require more officers, but Bratton will find it has other consequences, according to Pasadena Police Chief Bernard K. Melekian, who took over a department using the schedule. Officers are more likely to make errors at the end of a long shift, and those who live far away can become disengaged from the community they are paid to police, Melekian said. But Melekian said three-12 has provided a strong boost for morale. Once it is adopted, he warned, there is no turning back. Departments without the schedule are losing officers to those that have it. Bratton will also try to squeeze out more resources by eliminating some specialized units. "He recognizes that, in a department with resources stretched so thin, he needs more generalists and not someone sitting somewhere waiting for something to come down their alley," said David Dotson, a former assistant chief. Dotson said Bratton may be able to find 300 to 500 officers to return to the beat, with fewer specialists and more civilians. But Dotson said many of those on desk duties are there because of physical and, in some cases, mental problems. Even before Bratton's arrival, Parks had allowed vacancies in the specialized units to climb to avoid losses in patrol. At its peak in June 1998, the LAPD had 9,853 officers; as that number dropped, reductions extended to units such as narcotics. As of the end of last year, there were about 350 vacancies in specialized departments. For instance, the LAPD's Juvenile Division has 25 vacancies. Bratton's track record with police unions in New York and Boston involved some early tussles, then good relationships. So successful was Bratton in New York that when he applied for the LAPD job, the Big Apple's police union president was among his references. In Boston, he fought off an early legal challenge by the union to his appointment as chief; in New York, he outmaneuvered the union when it tried to limit his flexibility by changing state law. "He is a very charismatic, forceful leader, and he wants to make changes and when that occurs, there are struggles," said Daniel Fagan, Boston Police Patrolmen's Assn. treasurer. Mitzi Grasso, who will step down as Los Angeles police union president at the end of the year, said change will not come easily. But she predicted that Bratton will succeed because he relates well to ordinary beat officers and knows what they need. "Parks did not like and respect police officers, and he didn't maintain a relationship with his employees," Grasso said. "If you contrast that with Bratton, he does like and respect police officers, and I believe he will establish and maintain those close relations." Grasso predicted that Bratton would change the complaint and disciplinary system, which she said has damaged morale by allowing frivolous claims on par with more serious corruption. "You need an efficient, strong internal affairs group," Grasso said. "Parks turned a huge inefficient group [into] a bigger inefficient group." 10/21/02 Page 3 of 3 Bratton's commitment to patrol goes back to his Boston roots, where, as a sergeant, he broke with department tradition and hit the streets. He plans to use computer modeling of crime statistics -- the CompStat system, pioneered in New York and now used nationwide -- to deploy officers. Bratton said, in New York, too many officers worked day shifts, though many crimes occurred at night. He said he suspects it may be the same in Los Angeles. Shifting bodies can have limited effectiveness, said Joseph D. McNamara, former San Jose police chief, who also served with the New York Police Department and called Bratton a "savvy leader." "it's a great idea to get cops out [on the street]," McNamara said. "But sometimes you cannot do it because they have real disabilities. "And when they have been inside for 10 years, you can't just pluck them back into a car," he added. "They need training, and that costs money." Whatever quick action Bratton takes, his success will ultimately depend on finding more police officers. Few departments have had a tougher time recruiting than the LAPD, which is still is losing more officers than it hires, a trend Hahn thinks Bratton can reverse. In the most recent fiscal year, 449 officers left the department and 356 were hired. Overall, the department is short of its budgeted number of officers by 1,100. Grasso said she expects Bratton to stem that exodus and meet his goal of an increase of 16% to 20% in arrests. Whatever the result, McNamara thinks there is a lot to be said for Bratton's experience. "Anyone who can work for Rudy Giuliani," he said, "can survive anything." 10/21/02 Page 1 of 1 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 12:30 PM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Riverside: Review Board Reports Public Wants More Respectful Policing People want nicer police REPORT: A civilian review panel says lack of courtesy is the public's biggest complaint. BY LISA O'NEILL HILL THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE RIVERSIDE CA 10-22-02 Fewer people would file complaints against Riverside police if officers better explained what they did and apologized if they made a mistake, says the chairman of the city's civilian review commission.in a report written for the City Council, Jack Brewer, chairman of the Community Police Review Commission, said commissioners have found a common thread in the cases they have reviewed. "That is courtesy, or the lack thereof," he wrote. Riverside police Officer Felix Medina, the department's spokesman, declined to comment. Brewer will update the City Council tonight about the commission's progress and findings. Lack of courtesy and officers' poor attitudes also have been noted in the past two citizen surveys taken by the city, Brewer's report notes. "It seems like a lot of the things we have seen would never have gotten to us if somebody had taken the time to explain what was going on better," Brewer said Monday. Don Williams, the commission's executive director, agreed."lf officers just take their time, if they've been a little bit more empathetic, they probably could avoid a lot of the complaints because most of them are attitude-type thing," he said. The president of the Riverside Police Officers' Association could not be reached. Brewer's report also highlights other findings. There have not been as many use-of-force or discrimination complaints filed as commissioners thought there would be, Brewer wrote, and the police chief and his staff have been responsive to the requests of the commission. Since the beginning of last year, the commission has made 13 policy recommendations, nine of which have been put into effect in the Police Department or are being reviewed. Reach Lisa O'Neill Hill at (909) 368-9462 or Ioneillhill@pe.com 10/22/02 Page 1 of 3 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 9:50 AM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] 3 NY Officers Allegedly Faked Accident Reports in Insurance Scam October 23, 2002 NYTimes Three Officers Faked Reports, Police Say By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM E~]/he accident report was crowded with details: the driver had been looking for an address when he hit the brakes for a stop sign on 12th Street in Brooklyn, skidded on salt and sand left behind by a snowplow and slammed into a parked Acura. Officer Jeanine O'Malley of the 61st Precinct in Sheepshead Bay filled out the report. She listed the names of three passengers in the car and drew a diagram outlining how the accident occurred. There was, however, a major flaw, prosecutors said yesterday: the skid and collision never happened. And the driver was not looking for an address, there was no salt or sand, the car never struck a parked Acura. The accident report was one of two dozen fabricated by three veteran officers from the Brooklyn precinct in exchange for cash and prescription drugs as part of an expansive fraud scheme, prosecutors charged yesterday. Officer O'Malley, 35, and two other officers, Susan F. Lavin, 42, and Robert L. Herold, 38, have been accused of making up the reports. Twenty-seven other people were charged with either making false medical or automobile insurance claims based on the sham accidents or with recruiting other people to make false claims. Investigators are reviewing other accident reports filed by the three officers, and they said that as many as 50 other reports may have been invented. In the last two years, the insurance ring made more than $1.5 million in false claims, fraud on a scale that causes insurance rates to climb statewide, prosecutors said. But while the officers played a critical role in the scheme, they sold their services for a pittance -- between $20 and $100 for each fabricated report -- while those who made false claims netted $500 to $1,500, prosecutors said. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes, who announced the charges at a news conference with Chief Charles V. Campisi, the head of the Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau, called the scheme "the 21st century version of a fraud that is as old as the insurance industry." Mr. Hynes said, "It is especially distressing to learn that police officers in whom we put our trust were involved in this particular racket." Chief Campisi said investigators had begun looking into the officers two years ago after getting a tip from a confidential informer. He said they had pored over thousands of accident records dating to 1998. This was the second time in two years that New York City police officers were charged with filing fake accident reports as part of a widespread insurance fraud scheme. In August 2001, two officers were among 67 people indicted in federal court on charges that they took part in a ring that staged 10/23/02 Page 2 of 3 accidents and collected more than $1 million in insurance payments for fake injuries. In July, prompted by the 2001 arrests and the more recent investigation, the department tightened procedures on how officers file the reports and how they are supervised, in part to reduce fraud by dishonest motorists and in part to make it tougher for dishonest officers to file fabricated reports, said one senior police official. The three officers were arrested and arraigned on Monday. They pleaded not guilty, were released on their own recognizance and were suspended without pay by the department. All three officers were charged with numerous counts of insurance fraud, falsifying business records, grand larceny, offering a false instrument for filing and official misconduct. Officers Herold and Lavin were also charged with conspiracy. If convicted of the most serious charge filed against them, they would face 2 1/3 to 7 years in prison. Most of the payments they are accused of taking were made either at the station house or while they sat in patrol cars, the investigators said. "They used their precinct as their personal purse," said an assistant district attorney, Kevin Richardson, who is prosecuting the case. The investigation has not turned up evidence of systemic corruption or other officers involved in such scams, Mr. Hynes said, but detectives are still investigating. Officers Herold, a 16-year veteran, and Officer Lavin, a 15-year veteran, worked in the 61st Precinct Highway Safety Unit. Officer O'Malley, who has been on the police force for 11 years, was a patrol officer in the precinct. Mr. Hynes said there was no evidence that either the medical clinics, to which some of the phony claimants went, or the lawyers who filed suits on their behalf were aware of the fraud. In the 2001 cases, both clinic operators and lawyers were charged with taking part in the scheme. In some instances in the case announced yesterday, the ring solicited people with previously damaged cars, who then claimed that they had been damaged in fictitious accidents, officials said. They were paid cash and generally had their cars repaired at the insurance company's expense. Among the others charged were some who approached the officers and orchestrated the scheme, investigators said. But it could not have gone forward without the cooperation of the officers, the investigators said. The average claim based on a fictitious accident drew $15,000 to $25,000 for the ring, but several drew more than $100,00 in insurance company settlements, the investigators said. They were filed against several insurance companies. In one case, Mr. Richardson said that one of the sham claimants had already suffered a knee injury, apparently while playing sports, but pretended to have been hurt in a car accident, officials said. An insurance company that represented one of the supposed drivers in that fabricated accident ended up paying for the surgery to fix the man's knee, Mr. Richardson said. The 27 others arrested in the case were charged with insurance fraud, grand larceny and falsifying business records. Stephen Flamhaft, a lawyer for Officer Lavin, said that she denied all charges. "Whatever she did, she did because she was told to do it by her supervisor," Mr. Flamhaft said, referring to Officer Herold, who he said supervised his client. Lawyers for Officer Herold and Officer O'Malley declined to comment. Officer Lavin's mother, 10/23/02 Page 3 of 3 Beatrice, said her daughter joined the department 15 years ago after she was divorced, taking the job to support two young children. "1 am in shock about all this," she said. "1 talk to her every day, but I didn't talk to her yesterday, I didn't hear from her. I was scared." 10/23/02 Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson@phila.gov Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 12:12 PM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Use of Police Dogs San Bernardino County Sun Residents speak up on police dog use Fontana PD takes flak for misuse of canines By JANNISE JOHNSON Staff Writer Monday, October 21, 2002 - FONTANA - Members of an activist group are scheduled to meet with Fontana Police Chief Frank Scialdone this week to request a reduction of the department's use of police dogs in nonviolent situations. Kevin Forbes, executive director of East Los Angeles-based Consejo De Latinos Unidos, said his organization's long-term goal is to have police dogs used only in cases involving a violent offender, explosives or narcotics. Forbes and two Fontana residents who have alleged misuse of police dogs over the past two years, spoke briefly at a Honday morning news conference in front of City Hall. The group became aware in July of complaints about the department's use of dogs, Forbes said. Scialdone has defended the use of the dogs, saying they are primarily used in building searches and other crime situations. Forbes praised Scialdone's response to his group's concerns following a two-hour community meeting held in August at the Don Day Co--unity Center. Scialdone met with Forbes after being made aware of a statewide report compiled by the group that included four alleged accounts of police misconduct in Fontana. In those, five people were beaten in the past year, the report alleged. Fontana police use dogs for building and area searches, while investigating alarms (either burglary or robbery) and during the apprehension of suspects, said Sgt. Mark Weissmann, a department spokesman. Police dogs are also used when officers are trying to arrest a barricaded suspect and when they are searching vacant lets for weapons, Weissmann said. Reports are filed when a dog bites someone in the course of duty, he explained. Officers are trained to warn people just before the dogs are used, Weissmann said. "We always tell them we're going to send the dog in,' Weissmann said. "We give them plenty of warning.' Sgt. Michael Stark, a training officer with Fontana's K-9 unit, said dogs are trained to bite and hold the suspect. Officers need to be sure they can see an individual's hands to ensure they don't have weapons, before the dog is ordered to let go. In one incident, Frank Robles said he lost part of his triceps after two police officers used a police dog to detain him. Robles said he had been drinking after a family dinner in Fontana last fall and had his wife drive him home. Fontana police pulled the couple over on Cherry Avenue north of Jurupa, where Robles alleged he was beaten by the officers and bitten by the dog. Robles, who was not at the news conference, has filed a complaint against the police department, Forbes said. A call to a department spokesman late Monday was not returned. Robles is scheduled to appear in court for a pretrial hearing on Nov. 7, Forbes said. He is charged with obstruction of justice, resisting arrest and biting a police dog, Forbes said. Another Fontana resident said Monday her son had been badly mauled after Fontana officers allegedly sent a police dog into the open window of an apartment during a party in October 2000. Guadalupe Torres said her son, Romando Guerra, was at a party when Fontana police arrived. Sometime after the party was in progress, officers sent a police dog into the house and her son was bitten, she alleges. Guerra was arrested for violating his parole and sent to West Valley Detention Center for two months and then to state prison for another 1 years, Torres said. Guerra sustained ligament damage from the dog attack, she said. "The police are acting worse than the animals,' she said. 2 Guerra said she had difficulty reaching the correct department in order to file a complaint and transferred from one department to another, when she called. She eventually stopped trying. Torres said. Torres and others who want to see the department's use of dogs changed plan to demonstrate in front of City Hall tonight at 6:30 p.m., during a candidates forum. Update mailing list Update@nacole.org http://gaR~a.jumpserver.net/mailman/listinfo/update_nacole.org Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson@phila.gov Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 12:15 PM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Chief resigns Jackson police chief hands in resignation Southeast Missourian - Tuesday, October 22, 2002 By Mike Wells - Southeast Missourian Jackson police chief Marvin Sides resigned Monday in the wake of an investigation that supported sexual harassment claims made against him by a female dispatcher. Mayor Paul Sander said the city accepted Sides' resignation in the interest of a quick and thorough resolution. "The message we're sending is that we do not tolerate sexual harassment in the workplace," Sander said. "I think that the public wants and deserves to have action on matters such as these." Attempts to reach Sides for comment late Monday were unsuccessful. He was a 20-year veteran of the department and served the last eight years as chief. Despite the city of Jackson's efforts to educate employees about acceptable behavior on the job -- which include a training video and reminders enclosed with paychecks -- the incident is the third in a series of sexual harassment-related departures from the city's police and fire staff this year. Sides' resignation comes months after two former city firefighters, Mark Owens and Joel A. Bockelman, were dismissed for using the city's Internet service to send nude photographs. A two-day investigation into Sides' case was conducted by clinical psychologist Dr. Steve Cohen of Lee's Suum~it, Mo. He declined to discuss the specifics of the case but said the city of Jackson did all it could to prevent harassment and handled this incident appropriately. "People are going to do what they are going to do regardless of the training and the warnings," he 1 said. Sander said he did not know what the city spent on the two-day investigation conducted by Cohen. Another investigation into the former chief's alleged misconduct is being conducted by the county prosecuting attorney and the Hissouri State Highway Patrel to determine if any criminal charges are warranted, Sander said. Sides is eligible to draw retirement, Sander said. "I don't want to downplay his service," he said. "This was not the way he wanted to end his career with the city of Jackson, and it certainly was not the way we would have liked it to end, either." Capt. Robert Hull will continue as the police department's interim chief, Sander said. In the meantime, the board of aldermen will discuss the subject of replacing Sides and bringing stability to the department. mwells@semissourian.com 335-6611, extension 160 © 2002, Southeast Missourian. This story is available at: http://semissourian.com/story.html?rec-91473 Update mailing list Update@nacole.org http://gamma.jumpserver.net/mailman/listinfo/update_nacole.org Page 1 of 4 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 7:45 PM To: Update@NACOLE,org Subject: [NACOLE Update] LA PChief Faces Huge Challenge; Plans to Use "Broken Windows" Strategy Los Angeles Police Chief Faces a Huge Challenge By CHARLIE LeDUFF NY Times ~]OS ANGELES, Oct. 23 -- The afternoon that William J. Bratton was confirmed as police chief, a man was beaten to death in the South-Central section of this sprawling megalopolis. Robbie Hanzy, an unemployed member of the Rolling 60's Crips gang, was killed by his brother Alton, also an unemployed member of the Rolling 60's, the police said. The fight, the authorities said, was precipitated by an afternoon filled with alcohol and by two men with nothing better to do. The killing was the 97th homicide this year in this part of the South-Central neighborhood, a precinct of fewer than 12 square miles, population 185,000.. It is by any standard, the bloodiest area in the West, infested with gangs, narcotics and armed teenagers. The area is on pace for 120 homicides this year, a 43 percent jump from last year and a 240 percent increase since 1998.. The three- precinct South-Central area reported 197 homicides through Oct. 18. Homicide in the city as a whole is up nearly 19 percent from last year. The reason, the authorities say, is the re-emergence of gang warfare. "The Gaza Strip probably has more deaths, but this is a busy area, and the problem is gangs," said Detective Rudy Limos, the ranking homicide investigator in the 77th Station, which is within South- Central. "How you control it is beyond me." Violent crime is rising around the nation after a decade of striking decreases, and Los Angeles is among the leaders. If things hold to form, this city of 3.8 million people will earn the title of the Murder Capital, succeeding Chicago. A beleaguered citizenry has turned to Mr. Bratton, regarded in some corners to be the most innovative police executive since J. Edgar Hoover and in others to be a man of enormous ego who took too much credit for the precipitous drop in crime in New York City, where he was police commissioner for 27 months. At his confirmation hearing this month, Mr. Bratton seemed well aware that his stewardship of the demoralized and scandal-plagued department may very well be the standard by which his legacy is judged. "This department will be my last police department that I will have the opportunity to work with and lead," Mr. Bratton told City Council members. "1 would like to see it as the capstone of my career." The circumstances he walks into here are the inverse of what he walked into in New York in 1994. The crime rate is skyrocketing, not inching downward, as it was in New York. The economy is busting, not booming. Federal, state and local tax money is drying up, and fewer officers, not more, are on the streets. At the same time, a steady stream of violent parolees is finding the way back to the old neighborhoods. Moreover, Mr. Bratton takes over a damaged force that is operating under a federal consent decree 10/25/02 Page 2 of 4 that punishes overly aggressive officers. By many officers' accounts, the beat cop has virtually stopped working. "Members of this department are demoralized," said Cmdr. Richard Roupoli, assistant commander of the South Bureau, which includes many poor and violent precincts of Los Angeles, including South- Central. "We disbanded our gang units two years ago and then reinstituted them with new people without extensive gang knowledge," Commander Roupoli said. "At the same time, we've got multiple gang wars going on. The result are the murders we're seeing now." When it was learned in late 1999 that a renegade gang unit, the Rampart Division, was planting evidence, racially profiling and, in some cases, unjustifiably shooting suspects, all gang units were disbanded, and the city accepted a consent decree that among other provisions uses monitors to weed out corruption and wrongdoing. In a few months, years of street intelligence was lost, along with the reassigned officers. A strict discipline system was put in place, and nearly 1,000 officers left to work elsewhere. A result, officers said, has been a steadily rising homicide rate. "It stems from an oppressive discipline system," the commander of the robbery-homicide unit, Capt. James Tatreau, said. "Since Rampart, every complaint made, whether by a chronic complainer or nut, meant that it would follow a cop through his career and enter into the mix of promotion or special assignments. "The cops' solution?" Captain Tatreau said. "Stop being a cop." Mr. Bratton said his first priority after being sworn in on Oct. 28 would be ending the smile-and-wave approach to crime fighting. He said he wanted policing based on the so-called broken-windows theory. That idea holds that small quality-of-life crimes eventually encourage greater lawlessness. If graffiti and broken windows are tolerated, for instance, eventually prostitution and drug dealing and companion violence will find their ways to the street corners. It is a concept that Mr. Bratton instituted with great success in New York, where the homicide rate once topped 2,200 a year, almost four times its current level. It is hard to know whether the strategy can translate here. Los Angeles, sprawling over 463 square miles, is a city where community policing is often little more than the lights of a helicopter washing over bedroom windows. New York's five boroughs add up to 309 square miles. New York has 39,000 police officers for a city of eight million people, and Los Angeles has 9,000 officers for four million. "You can only hope he's going to have some kind of effect," Detective Limos said. "Because we don't have many answers." After a decade of declines in crime across the country, crime rates not only here but also in other major cities may have no place to go but up, said Jeremy Travis, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. "It's a bad time right now," Mr. Travis said. "The economy is weakened. State and local budgets are tight, and that hampers overtime flexibility and new hires. There are 600,000 people coming out of 10/25/02 Page 3 of 4 prison every year. Four times as many parolees were released this year than 20 years ago. At the same time, transitional services are cut and people are dumped on streets." The mix, especially here, is a witch's brew. Jobs are disappearing, and welfare changes are leaving marginal people in the lurch. Moreover, 1,000 people a year return to the city streets from prison after having been locked up in the get-tough-on-crime 90's. With violent unrehabilitated felons back on the streets and many officers heading for suburban work, the streets are volatile. "If Bratton can turn it around in this climate, it says he's a great police manager," Mr. Travis said. Mary Phipps, a grandmother from South-Central whose bedroom window faces a wall scarred with graffiti of the simmering war between Bloods and Crips factions said: "Things are out of control. First it's these gangs. And then it's the police out of control, and now it's the gangs again. There has to be someone to put it in balance." At any given time in Los Angeles County, 112,000 young men and women are listed as gang members or "wannabes" in a database created by law enforcement officials. As of Oct. 5, Los Angeles had 517 homicides compared with 436 last year. The police said 75 percent were gang related. "If we could get rid of the gangs, we'd be living in heaven," Detective Limos said. In the county, with more people and a seemingly endless sprawl, homicide is also increasing, but at a rate nearly three times slower than in the city. "There is a whole latitude of policing within the law," Lt. Bob Rifkin, a supervisor in the gang unit of the County Sheriffs Department, said. "But society has to decide the balance between safety and civil rights. How much of one are you willing to sacrifice for the other?" A gang member in Compton, one of 3,000 parolees there, laid out the thinking of the criminal mind in terms of the disarray in the Police Department, as opposed to the Sheriffs Department. "If you're going to mess around," he said, "it's better to do it outside the sheriffs area and in the Police Department's." It is not as though the county is without problems, too. Take the case of Jose Sanchez, 19, who the police said had two things going against him. One was the telltale dead eye that he neglected to cover with a mask before he carjacked and beat a stranger and, second, the wisecrack smile that never left his face. Sheriff's deputies executed a morning raid against him and his crew, netting drugs and automatic weapons. "1 ain't afraid of prison and I ain't afraid of you," Mr. Sanchez said as he left his mother's house in handcuffs. "1 was just on my way to school" 10/25/02 Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson @phila.gov Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 9:05 AM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Integrity Officer blasts Philadelphia Police Drug Unit Supervision, Corruption pic23196.gif pic2(~222.gif pic07129 gif pic02161 .gif pic05535 gif Posted on Thu, Oct. 24, 2002 (Embedded image moved to file: pic23196.gif) (Embedded image moved to file: pic20222.gif) (Embedded image moved to file: pic07129.gif) (Embedded image moved to file: pic02161.gif) Report blasts city drug unit supervision An integrity officer cited "conditions conducive to breeding corruption" and failing to detect it. By Craig R. McCoy, Rose Ciotta and Mark Fazlollah Inquirer Staff Writers In the Philadelphia Police Department's war on drugs, some narcotics officers get caught lying - but they remain narcotics officers. In Philadelphia's criminal courts, police officers don't show up to testify in thousands of drug cases - but their comraanders do little about it. In one case, a narcotics supervisor directed a raid based on a fabricated search warrant - and his officers ended up arresting a "sick and innocent woman." He is still a narcotics supervisor. Those findings are contained in a scathing report issued yesterday by the Police Department's own top watchdog. She warned that while she had not found any rampant corruption in the 601-member Narcotics Bureau, a lack of oversight and accountability has 1 created new potential for scandals like the one that led to the creation of her post. Weaknesses in screening, training, command and discipline of drug officers "have created conditions conducive to breeding corruption and decreasing the likelihood of detection should misconduct or corruption occur," wrote Ellen Green-Ceisler, the department's integrity officer, a position established as a response to the 39th District corruption scandal of the 1990s. Green-Ceisler noted that the unit had more than doubled in size since 1997 and was making many more arrests than ever. But she said failures elsewhere in the city's justice system - including huge numbers of drug cases dismissed in court - had caused "cynicism, resignation, disgust, and anger" among narcotics officers. She added: "As was clearly evidenced in the 39th District and other police scandals, officers eventually feel justified in cutting corners and developing their own set of rules on the street." Green-Ceisler gave the Police Department a preliminary copy of her report in July. In response, the force has already pledged to tighten controls on court appearances, to more rigorously monitor search warrants, and to tighten the use of informants. Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson acknowledged yesterday that much of the report was on target. "There are a lot of things that happened in narcotics with officers who were not disciplined," Johnson said. "But the same thing with homicide, almost any special unit. They treat theirs a little special, a little different." He said he was trying to change the department's culture but was often hamstrung by union rules. The 59-page report is the result of months of work by Green-Ceisler, who was given sweeping powers to ride with drug officers, study department records, and otherwise scrutinize a force whose antidrug efforts had stalled after the 39th District debacle. After public outcry over brazen drug dealing, the city reversed course in 1997 and began an aggressive effort to target narcotics The department more than doubled the size of the elite Narcotics Bureau and once again gave beat cops power to make drug arrests - authority stripped from them after the scandal. Drug enforcement went into overdrive. The department arrested 24,845 narcotics suspects last year - almost triple the figure from five years before and far more than the numbers during the crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s. But, Green-Ceisler warned in her report, the Police Department's anticorruption effort has lagged far behind. 2 "Increased narcotics enforcement efforts," she wrote, "were undertaken without appropriate and effective controls, oversight and monitoring mechanisms to curb and detect potential abuses." The report is laced with examples of narcotics officers and supervisors who have ignored department policies and gone unpunished. It told of a commander who failed to notify the department that he had struck a suspect with his portable radio; of a supervisor who cheated on overtime sheets; of another who lost track of drugs seized in a raid; still another who paid money to a confidential informant without required advance approvals or documenting the payments. The report said narcotics commanders looked the other way while an officer drove to work in private cars that were uninsured, unregistered, and carried counterfeit inspection stickers. Among other criticisms, the report asserts that: The department is ignoring a huge problem: officers' failing to show up for court. Over the last 31/2 years, Green-Ceisler documented 7,269 instances in which Narcotics Bureau officers skipped hearings and trials. The force has no procedure for examining these absences - or for identifying repeat offenders - even though these no-shows are a well-known "indicator of misconduct and corruption," Green-Ceisler wrote. Police join the Narcotics Bureau despite careless and shallow background checks. Once on the job, their training is inadequate and their supervision weak. Officers with political pull among department brass are "parachuted" into this high-prestige unit, lured by lucrative overtime. The report said police had failed to make a change pledged in court after the 39th District scandal: to rotate officers out of narcotics after several years, in order to discourage entrenched corruption. Discipline of errant narcotics officers is "lax and ineffective.." The study said officers had remained in the unit despite striking suspects, losing evidence, and conducting improper searches. Indeed, several unnamed officers were kept on even though they "deliberately concealed incriminating evidence" against another officer that was found during a search of a drug dealer's home. Bureau officers played fast and loose in using informants, keeping them on the payroll even though many were wanted criminals. One of the bureau's three Field Units, which conduct in-depth investigations, had a roster of 27 informants, all fugitives on arrest warrants, the report said. The criticism of use of informants with pending charges drew a rejoinder last night from Johnson, who said: "Sometimes it takes a criminal to catch a criminal. And we utilize that." 3 Lawyer James Jordan, who preceded Green-Ceisler as integrity officer and was the first appointee to the job, said the Green-Ceisler report found that "right now there is no indication of corruption on a significant scale, but we're creating a climate for it." Jordan, now a SEPTA lawyer, added: "It leads you right back to the problems that we in Philadelphia and other cities have seen for the last 30 years. It is deja vu all over again." In the 39th District scandal, six officers were convicted of systemically violating citizens' civil rights, stealing money and drugs, planting evidence, fabricating search warrants, and beating suspects. To settle federal civil-rights suits growing out of that scandal, the city agreed to create the post of integrity officer. It also agreed in court to take other systemic steps to deter corruption. A federal court is monitoring those efforts. Green-Ceisler yesterday delivered her report to the court. The 39th District lesson, Green-Ceisler found, was that "a few corrupt officers can taint the entire Department's reputation, call into question the validity of every narcotics arrest, erode public confidence in the integrity of the force, diminish the depaztment's ability to combat crime and cost the city's taxpayers millions of dollars in litigation settlements." The report did not limit its criticism to police. If faulted the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, saying it routinely left significant police Internal Affairs probes in limbo while prosecutors took months to decide if officers should be arrested. (Through a spokeswoman, District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said she could not comment until she reads the report.) The study is also unsparing in its treatment of Philadelphia courts. In recent years, Green-Ceisler said, thousands of drug cases have been tossed out of court without any substantive hearing on their merits or have been left unresolved because defendants, free on bail, have simply failed to show up for court. "The dysfunctional nature of the overall system has a pernicious effect on the morale of narcotics officers," Green-Ceisler wrote. In interviews, she said, some narcotics commanders and police viewed the " 'war on drugs,' and the criminal justice system, as fundamentally flawed, ineffectual, and unfair." Over time, she said, such officers began to view the system as rigged against them, especially when "notorious drug dealers are repeatedly released from jail despite their best efforts." 4 In one case, her report said, a defendant had been arrested 13 times on felony drug charges within six years. In another, a defendant was out on bail on his sixth narcotics arrest when he was arrested for homicide. One of Green-Ceisler's most striking findings was that narcotics officers had missed court hearings in more than 7,000 cases between Jan. 1, 1999, and June 30 of this year - with no documented excuse. While saying it was widely known that an officer's deliberate failure to testify was a red flag for possible corruption, she also wrote that there was no doubt many police had missed hearings for innocent reasons: because notice to them arrived too late, they were on vacation, or another legitimate reason. But she also pointed out that police supervisors had offered no such legitimate reasons for the absence of police witnesses in more than 7,000 cases. The problem, she said, was that the department had no system to track absences or separate legitimate ones from suspicious no-shows. Since 1997, Green-Ceisler revealed, the department has disciplined only one narcotics officer for missing a court appearance. Contact Craig R. McCoy at 215-854-4821 or cmccoy@phillynews.com. Inquirer staff writers Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. and Nancy Phillips contributed to this article. Highlights of the report ? Many narcotics officers were demoralized by hew arrests were handled in court, with thousands of cases thrown out ahead of trial, and others put on indefinite hold because defendants on bail failed to show up. ? Narcotics officers and supervisors have ignored department policies and gone unpunished. ? Officers fail to show up for court. Over the last 31/2 years, there were 7,269 documented instances in which Narcotics Bureau officers skipped hearings and trials. ? The bureau performs careless and shallow background checks on employees. Once on the job, their training is inadequate and their supervision weak. ? Discipline of errant narcotics officers is "lax and ineffective." {Embedded image moved to file: pic05535.gif) © 2001 inquirer and wire service sources. Ail Rights Reserved. http://www.philly.com eSafe scanned this email for malicious content *** IMPORTANT: Do not open attachments from unrecognized senders *** 6 Page 1 of 3 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 9:44 AM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] LA: Bratton Plans Clean Start: Fighting Graffit to Reduce Crime http:llwww~latimes,comlnewsl!oca!l!a-me-grafitti25oct25004444,0,96537,story?co!!=!a %2 Dhead!ines%2Dcalifornia Bratton Is Planning a Clean Start The police chief, who will be sworn in today, sees fighting graffiti as key to reducing crime. By Megan Garvey LA Times Staff Writer October 25 2002 When William J. Bratton is sworn in today as the Los Angeles Police Department's 54th chief, he inherits an agency accused in recent years of corruption and brutality. Crime is up ~nd arrests are down. Topping his list of priorities? Graffiti. Far from trivial, Bratton said, fighting graffiti is the key to reducing crime overall and solving more serious offenses -- from drug dealing to murder, It is so bad here that after touring the city, Bratton, former head of the New York Police Department, called L.A.'s graffiti the worst he's ever seen. "1 hate it with a passion," he said of the painted blight that scars wails, sidewalks, awnings, windows, mailboxes, signs, freeway overpasses, even trees. More than 30 million square feet of graffiti were painted over or sandblasted in L.A. last year, more than New York City officials cleaned up over four years at the height of their anti-graffiti battle, "It sounds like he's proposing invading Russia in winter," said Mike Davis, a UC Irvine history professor who once found the inside of his mailbox tagged when he was living in Echo Park, But Bratton said fighting graffiti is key to the so-called broken windows philosophy of policing that he plans to import to Los Angeles. The idea is that eradication of petty crimes and unkempt properties creates safer cities. The new chief's anti-graffiti push comes at a time when more is being done to combat tagging in Los Angeles than ever. But will Bratton - strapped by budget constraints -- be able to wring improvement without more money or personnel? On his side are a host of recent initiatives: A 2-year-old law lowers the threshold for felony graffiti offenses from $5,000 in damage to $400. The reward for graffiti tips that lead to convictions was doubled to $1,000. Community-based groups are buying digital cameras to record graffiti -- evidence for police and prosecutors. Still, graffiti fighters say they have lost ground in the war with street vandals. Over the last 18 months, they say, tagging has gotten worse -- even with money to remove graffiti at an all-time high and felony graffiti arrests rising dramatically. "It makes sense to go after graffiti," said Cara Gould, operations director of Homeboy Industries, which holds a city contract for graffiti abatement in some of the hardest hit East L.A. neighborhoods. "We've seen kids die because of graffiti," Gould said. "If one gang goes into another's neighborhood and writes graffiti, it makes them mad and their impulse is to grab a gun and get even." Davis, who has written extensively about local politics and gangs, acknowledged that L.A. has a graffiti problem. But he questions whether, in a city with more territory and only a quarter of the police officers of New York, a war on graffiti might 10/25/02 Page 2 of 3 do more harm than good. Homicides are up, he said, well past 500 people so far this year. "1 can't imagine anything worse than declaring no tolerance of graffiti in terms of mismanaging police manpower," Davis said. Bratton disagreed. To permit vandals and gang members to deface property is "effectively surrendering the authority of government to them," he said. "You cannot let them control your streets. If they're trying to do it by marking the streets with graffiti, then get rid of it." Bratton sees himself as anti-graffiti's "chief cheerleader." He said the city can be cleaned up with greater coordination, as well as a change in attitude by citizens, police and prosecutors. His approach would mark a shift in LAPD thinking. Even activists who fight graffiti each day say they understand police have more important work. But Bratton said he wants "all officers to take cognizance of graffiti and to make arrests when appropriate." He said he may create a specialized division or two within the LAPD to combat graffiti. Bratton's policy is a form of "social jujitsu," said Joel Garreau, who wrote "Edge City: The New Frontier," a book about modern communities. Graffiti is not about aesthetics, he said. "It's the notion that you can demonstrate you are taking back the streets," Garreau said. "It's looking for a place where you can have some social impact quickly so it doesn't seem hopeless to the cops or citizenry," Bratton may make headway by better coordinating the battle. Los Angeles is spending more money on graffiti abatement -- an eleven-fold jump from a $500,000 pilot program in 1994 - - but police and the district attorney's and city attorney's offices do not track graffiti arrests or prosecutions. (The district attorney's office calculated the number of prosecutions after a request by The Times.) There also is confusion over who is doing what. The LAPD's Web site touted its Graffiti Habitual Offender Suppression Team in a news release last year. But LAPD public affairs officers said recently that they were only vaguely aware of what it was. And when Bratton first inquired about graffiti suppression this month, none of his department tour guides knew about the San Fernando Valley-based community tagger task force. At the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department headquarters, a public relations officer said there is no centralized graffiti command. He referred questions about enforcement to each of the 23 county stations. Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Yglecias, who heads the district attorney's community prosecution division, said the agency has "no organized approach or method" for graffiti offenders. Yglecias conceded that he still thinks of graffiti as a misdemeanor crime, despite the passage in 2000 of a juvenile crime bill that made $400 in damage prosecutable as a felony. Felony prosecutions have grown from 67 adults and 160 juveniles in 1999 to 322 adults and 546 juveniles so far this year. About 150 people have been convicted of felony graffiti offenses this year. At the same time, tens of millions of square feet of graffiti are painted over each year. "What I'd like to see is not just the arrests increase," Bratton said. "It's not going to do any good to make arrests if the courts don't have a mechanism for punishment." Interrogating graffiti vandals, he said, will help authorities solve other crimes. New York police officers are believers. After nearly a decade of aggressively pursuing taggers in New York -- the district attorney in Queens, for example, has a special team -- NYPD officers say graffiti arrests have led to the clearance of unsolved murders. 10/25/02 Page 3 of 3 "It's very important to ask the right questions in the right way,' said NYPB Sgt. Bernard Adams, a community supervisor in Queens. When taggers are arrested, Adams said, a special Vandal Squad interviews the suspects. "Unless you know the lingo, these guys won't even talk to you," he said. Bratton said such efforts proved a "phenomenal way to gather intelligence on the gangs in terms of who's using what handles. In some respects, it's like the CIA trying to figure out what Osama bin Laden is doing." Some doubt that what worked with graffiti in New York will have the same effect in Los Angeles. There remain dramatic differences in the size, shape and nature of the nation's two largest cities. New York City goes up. Los Angeles spreads out -- with seemingly endless chances to spray paint at eye level - from downtown walls to the concrete expanse of the L.A. River. New York is a city with building superintendents living in many neighborhoods -- part of the line of defense against vandals. Los Angeles is known for disjointed communities where people may not know their neighbors. In New York, graffiti was unavoidable for both rich and poor. The graffiti-covered subways carried millions of daily riders from all walks of life. When the markings were eliminated, everybody noticed. Here, the worst of the graffiti is concentrated in poor neighborhoods west of downtown, in South Los Angeles and parts of the city east of the L.A. River. Even if dramatic progress is made there, many Angelenos may never see it. But those in the harder-hit areas say giving up is not an option. Sharyn Romano, who started the Hollywood Beautification Team a decade ago, said, "Living with graffiti is oppressive." Residents are afraid to clean it up themselves because they've been threatened, she said. She rejected the argument made by some critics of graffiti abatement that painting graffiti over just creates a fresh canvas. "We've had crime for every day in this city for the past decade too," Romano said. "Would anyone propose just getting rid of the police because they've failed to get rid of crime?" In a stairwell at Hollywood High, her alma mater, Romano surveys the hallways. Running her hand over a banister, she brushed over gang symbols painted and scratched into the surface. "We have to sand this down," she said, her jaw set with determination. 10/25/02 Page 1 of 2 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 9:47 AM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Update: Inglewood Officer Fired for Beating of Teen Caught on Video http /~www~atimes`c~m~news~ca~la~me-ing~e25~ct25~44~4'~'231~853~st~ry?c~=!a%2Dhead~jnes%2Dca~if~m!a Officer in Beating Loses Job Inglewood's police chief fires Jeremy J. Morse, who was videotaped roughing up a teenager in July. Morse will fight the decision. By Daniel Hernandez LA Times Staff Writer October 25 2002 Jeremy J. Morse, the Inglewood police officer facing a criminal trial in the videotaped beating of a handcuffed 16-year-old, has been fired, Inglewood Police Chief Ronald Banks said Thursday. "1 conducted a hearing, and I made my final decision," Banks said. Morse's rough handling of a teenager after a police stop in July was caught on videotape by a bystander, and its broadcast caused a nationwide outcry, claims of police brutality and local protests. A number of law enforcement agencies investigated, and U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft criticized the officer's actions. Police were questioning Donovan Jackson and his father at a gas station. The tape showed Jackson face down with his hands cuffed behind his back. Morse lifted him from behind end slammed him onto the trunk of a car and later punched him in the face. Jackson's injuries were not serious. He has sued the city. Morse was indicted by a Los Angeles County Grand Jury on a charge of assault under color of law, and his partner was indicted on a charge of filing a false police report after the incident. Both officers have pleaded not guilty. The termination was effective Oct. 14, ending Morse's paid administrative leave. His attorney asked Wednesday that the city begin a process of arbitration, which is a standard option for terminated employees, officials said. In the nonbinding process, the city and the Inglewood Police Assn. will pick an arbitrator to review the case and then forward an opinion to City Administrator Joseph T. Rouzan Jr. Rouzan then will either validate the chief's decision or recommend another action. The other officer facing criminal charges relating to the July 6 incident, Bijan Darvish, will meet with Chief Banks today for a hearing on disciplinary charges. Rouzan said Darvish is facing a 10-day suspension without pay for "omission of information" on a police report. The city's actions were taken after a Superior Court judge issued, then lifted, a restraining order in late August, clearing the way for Banks to fire Morse. Banks on Aug. 1 initiated the process that led to the termination. "There are a lot of due process rules," Rouzan said. "They can still wind up appealing this to a state court, and perhaps even further, if their attorneys decide to fight it." Morse's lawyer in the city employment case, who does not represent the officers on their criminal charges, could not be reached for comment Thursday. Darvish's lawyer, Corey Glave, said his client would challenge any disciplinary action against him. 10/25/02 Page 2 of 2 "We are challenging the recommendation of discipline; at some point in time there will be a predisciplinary hearing," Glave said. Representatives of the Inglewood police union, who said the city's discipline action violated the officers' rights under state law, could not be reached for comment. Morse's defense had argued that the Police Department failed to advise him of his constitutional rights before he was questioned, and that Morse had not been allowed to have his attorney present at an interrogation. Morse also said that investigators had kept important documents from his defense. A judge had halted the disciplinary process, but then ruled that the internal investigation had been proper and allowed the city to proceed. 10/25/02 Page 1 of 2 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 9:50 AM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Jeff Eglash Quits as LA P Inspector General's httpJ/www,!atimes.com/news/Iocal/la-me-eg!ash25oct25,0,5917713.story?co!!=!a%2Dhead!!nes%2Dca!ifomia LOS ANGELES Eglash Quits L.A. Inspector General's Job The Police Commission official will leave the oversight position in November. The panel plans an extensive search for his successor. By Matt Lait and Scott Glover LA Times Staff Writers October 25 2002 Jeffrey C. Eglash, the Los Angeles Police Commission's inspector general, said Thursday that he has accepted an offer to work for a private law firm and will resign from his civilian watchdog position by the end of November. Eglash, a former federal prosecutor, said he has made significant strides in strengthening the role and authority of the inspector general's office during his 3 1/2 years on the job, but more still needs to be done to enhance civilian oversight of the historically insular Los Angeles Police Department. "1 feel like I've accomplished some good things here, but I'm anxious to get back to the practice of law," Eglash said. "I'm looking for some new challenges." Eglash's tenure as inspector general coincided with a turbulent time for the LAPD, marked by the Rampart corruption scandal and the subsequent insertion of a federal monitor to oversee sweeping reforms. Eglash expanded the staff of the inspector general's office from 12 to 32, spearheaded the commission's investigation into the Rampart allegations, highlighted problems with departmental investigations into police shootings and produced numerous audits on discipline, use of force and other issues. Joseph A. Gunn, the commission's executive director, said he would miss working with Eglash, whom he described as a man of high integrity. "He has a real passion for the job. He really believed in its mission," Gunn said. Commission President Rick Caruso said the panel plans a comprehensive search for Eglash's replacement. "We're going to find the best person out there for this job," Caruso said. "We're going to start collecting resumes right away." Other city leaders praised Eglash's efforts and said they were disappointed to see him leave. "It is a tremendous loss for public safety and civil rights in Los Angeles," said City Councilman Jack Weiss, who once worked with Eglash in the U.S. attorney's office. "Jeff Eglash came into the inspector general's position at a time when it had been marginalized and there were many who did not want that model of oversight to succeed. Through his hard work and innate fairness, he turned the ship around." Though he sought to maintain a Iow profile on the job, Eglash clashed frequently with department commanders, former Chief Bernard C. Parks and even his own commission bosses. Much of the tension centered on his access to information and authority to independently investigate complaints. At times, he was excluded from LAPD meetings, even ones attended by commissioners or representatives from other city agencies. 10/25/02 Page 2 of 2 "The working relationship was strained, but I think it's improving," Eglash said. "It's still not to the point where I'd like it to be." Many of Eglash's reports and findings put him at odds with Parks, forcing the five civilian police commissioners to choose between supporting their inspector general or supporting their chief. The commission, in a 3-2 vote, sided with Eglash when they ruled that the 1999 fatal shooting of Margaret Mitchell, a homeless woman stopped by officers while trying to retrieve her shopping cart, had been unjustified. The chief said the shooting was within departmental rules. Last year, a similarly divided commission rejected Eglash's recommendations that Parks be disciplined for allegedly making false and misleading statements when he denied having withheld information on the Rampart scandal from the district attorney's office. "They didn't always agree with us on every issue, but we were a voice and the voice was heard," Eglash said. His effectiveness as inspector general was, to some degree, limited by his poor relationship with the chief and other department officials. Parks openly distrusted Eglash, refusing to talk to him or even shake his hand at meetings. The chief and his top commanders attempted to enlist the support of commission members several times when Eglash requested information that the department did not want released. According to several LAPD observers, Eglash has grown weary of his battles with the department officials and has been looking for a new job for many months. At one point, he reportedly considered returning to the U.S. attorney's office. In the end, Eglash decided to join the Washington D.C.-based law firm of Howry, Simon, Arnold & White. He will work at the firm's Los Angeles office. Eglash said he plans to stay on until the end of next month to finish several projects, including an investigation into the LAPD's handling of allegations that a deputy chief was involved in laundering money for the officer's son's multimillion- dollar drug-trafficking ring. "1 think Jeff did an excellent job, faced with monumental impediments and frustrations," said Merrick Bobb, a consultant who monitors the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. "1 think it's particularly sad that he's leaving at this juncture, because I believe the new chief's administration would have worked harder to establish a constructive relationship with the inspector general." The incoming chief, Wdliam J. Bratton, agreed. 'Tm personally disappointed that he is stepping away at this time," said Bratton, adding that the department's relationship with the inspector general's office would improve significantly when he takes over because he believes there should be "more openness and cooperation." In an interview about his departure, Eglash said the federal consent decree, which mandates reforms for the department, has created a huge amount of work for his office, but has helped "cement the role of the I.G.'s office in a very positive way in the governance of the department." He said the consent decree has forced cooperation between the LAPD and the decree's monitor. "The idea is that, when the consent decree is over and the independent monitor goes away, the I.G.'s office will assume the role of the independent monitor," Eglash said. He said he supports an often-discussed proposal to make at least some of the commissioners' jobs full-time, paid positions. And Eglash argued that it might be wise to have the inspector general report, not only to the commission, but also to the City Council. Finally, Eglash said, information about disciplining officers and other police matters should be much more public. "1 think civilian oversight is strong now," Eglash said, "but it could be stronger." 10/25/02 Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson @phila.gov Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 10:02 AM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Councilman calls for hearings on City Narcotics Unit pic05705 gif pic28145 g[f pic23281 .gif p[c16827 gif Posted on Fri, Oct. 25, 2002 Embedded image moved to file: pic05705.gif) /Embedded image moved to file: pic28145.gif) (Embedded image moved to file: pic23281.gif} Ortiz calls for City Council hearings on narcotics unit The councilman was responding to a scathing report compiled by the police integrity officer. By Julia Stoiber, Mark Fazlollah and Craig R. McCoy Inquirer Staff Writers Alarmed by a scathing new report on the Philadelphia police Narcotics Bureau, City Councilman Angel Ortiz said yesterday that he would push for Council hearings on the city's crackdown on drugs. Ortiz, a Democrat who heads the Council committee that oversees police, said he was troubled by the report released Wednesday by the department's own integrity officer, especially its finding that large numbers of narcotics cases quickly collapse when they reach court. In her 59-page report, police watchdog Ellen Green-Ceisler also found that the department had failed to put into effect adequate controls against corruption, even as it has more than doubled the size of the Narcotics Bureau. While arrests have almost tripled in recent years, thousands of cases are being dismissed annually by judges. An Inquirer analysis of court data found that 37 percent of all drug cases ended in dismissal or acquittal last year. And that figure does not include the roughly one in 10 cases yearly thrown into limbo when drug defendants free on bail simply fail to show for court. Green-Ceisler suggested in her report, completed in July, that another key factor in the dismissal rate was the failure of some narcotics officers to appear in court - a contention vigorously disputed by a Narcotics Bureau commander. William Blackburn, a chief inspector of the bureau, said the report erred in suggesting that many narcotics officers were missing court appearances. But Ortiz suggested otherwise, saying: "You have to arrest and then convict. The arrests may not have any substance to them, and that's why they [police] don't show up for the hearings." The report also faulted the Police Department for its failure to track the judicial outcomes of its arrests. On Wednesday, Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said that he agreed with some of the findings of the report, but that his department could not track the outcome of every drug arrest. "There is no way that we can just monitor every single case that happens," he said. "No one can possibly do that. I think the courts should do it and the district attorney should." He added: "A lot of the judges throw these cases out. A lot of these narcotics officers will have four or five cases in a day. If they're not physically in that court at that time, they don't give them the flexibility to be able to come there later on." Mayor Street, contacted as he emerged last night from an anniversary dinner at Temple University for Congreso de Latinos Unidos, said he had heard about the report but had not read it or Wednesday's news article on it. He referred all questions to the police commissioner. When asked if he thought the large number of drug cases being dismissed because police don't show up to testify was undermining his "Operation Safe Streets" antidrug effort, the mayor again referred all questions to the commissioner. The report was the latest in a series of tough critiques issued by Green-Ceisler, whose oversight position was established as part of an agreement to settle a series of federal civil-rights lawsuits stemming from the corruption of narcotics officers assigned to the 39th Police District in Northwest Philadelphia. In the late 1990s, the FBI arrested six officers from the district who were later convicted of stealing money and drugs, beating citizens, faking search warrants, and other crimes. This latest report, though, has stirred the most interest by far. Plaintiffs in the 39th District suits and their lawyers - including leaders of the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union - praised Green-Ceisler for putting the city on notice that corruption might resurface in the narcotics fight. But District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham reacted sharply to the document's stinging criticism. The report by Green-Ceisler, a former city prosecutor, said the District Attorney's Office had let police internal corruption probes languish while they pondered whether to prosecute. "Ms. Ceisler is clueless about what goes on in this office," Abraham said in a statement. "We will not rush to judgment on any investigation, regardless of whether it involves a civilian or a police officer." Blackburn, the operations commander of the Narcotics Bureau, said the 2 report was out of date. "The report is written as though these are the current conditions in Narcotics," he said in a telephone interview yesterday afternoon. "This is not the current status in Narcotics. Before that report came out, steps were taken." For one thing, he said, some of the supervisory lapses cited in the report were fixed in March when Johnson, then acting commissioner, added an inspector to the Narcotics Bureau. At the time, Johnson said: "In 1997, there was one inspector with 200 people. We now have 600 people in Narcotics. It's just too many people for one inspector." Blackburn took issue with the report's finding that over the last 31/2 years, police records listed 7,269 incidences in which narcotics officers had given no reason for being absent from court. The figure was misleading, he said, because the status of officers placed "on call" status - meaning they go about police work outside the courthouse while waiting for a telephone summons to court - was routinely not logged in to the police court-attendance database. After the telephone interview, the department arranged an in-person interview with Blackburn and reporters. At the last moment, the police public-relations office canceled the interview without explanation. Green-Ceisler has declined to grant an interview. Stefan Presser, executive director of the ACLU, which represented plaintiffs in the 39th District litigation, said he had a mixed reaction to the report. On the one hand, he said, he was pleased at the depth of Green-Ceisler's research, saying it "embodied the best" of what the litigants had hoped would come from a watchdog post. On the other, he said he was disturbed at the report's warning that conditions within the Narcotics Bureau might breed a new corruption scandal. Another lawyer for the plaintiffs, David Rudovsky, urged the city to respond to the report, detailing to Green-Ceisler and the federal court what has been corrected and its plan for the rest. "The department has to take the report seriously and take those steps to correct those conditions," he said. Rudovsky added: "We're not where we were before. The essential point of the report is that because of slippage, lack of controls, and lack of oversight, there is now the danger that the kind of scandals we had before can happen again. It's a warning." (Embedded image moved to file: pic16827.gif) 3 *** eSafe scanned this email for malicious content *** *** IHPORTANT: Do not open attachments from unrecognized senders *** Page 1 of 3 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 7:06 PM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Feds Outline Police Department Fixes for Detroit. Many fixes needed Feds outline Police Department fixes Two-year investigation shows Detroit police poorly trained, lax in discipline, use of force By Dav d Shepardson / The Detroit News Spotlight on police problems These are among the federal suggestions and findings: Require all officers to be certified in firearms training at least twice a year. Now only 75 percent are certified annually. i Training in use of force should emphasize using only reasonable force and show officers how to de-escalate confrontations to avoid or minimize force. :/Internal investigators should undergo background checks to ensure they don't have a history of misconduct. I Ensure there is no conflict of interest in probing alleged criminal misconduct by an officer. I Internal inquiries often jeopardize potential criminal prosecutions against officers "because the DPD does not separate the criminal and administrative investigations of potentially criminal incidents." ~ The department "does not investigate complaints filed by complainants who later wish to withdraw their complaint, who are subsequently unwilling to cooperate or whom the (department) is unable to locate." DETROIT -- After nearly two years of investigation, the U.S. Justice Department has found serious and systematic problems in how the Detroit Police Department uses force, trains officers, disciplines them and handles witnesses, The Detroit News has learned. In a series of three confidential letters, the Justice Department has urged the Detroit Police Department to carry out more than 175 recommendations to reform the department's policies on when officers can and can't use force; how and when to detain witnesses; and how to discipline officers. Federal investigators also told the department to improve many facilities, especially lock-ups where suspects are held. The department agrees with all of the federal recommendations and is in the process of applying them, Chief Jerry A. Oliver Sr. said Thursday. "We have made a lot of progress," Oliver said. "Are we there yet? Absolutely not." The Justice Department's ongoing investigation into whether there is a pattern of civil rights abuses by the force, which began in December 2000 after public uproar over a string of police shootings of residents, is the most extensive of its type in federal history. Hundreds of officers have been interviewed, and investigators have reviewed more than 1 million pages of records. Since March, the Justice Department has sent Oliver and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick three letters outlining the police department's problems. The News obtained the March 6 letter that contains more than 50 recommendations. Department executives described the other two letters, bm they wouldn't release them. Investigators' findings include: [ There is no clear policy on when officers should use force. 10/28/02 Page 2 of 3 I - Officers don't get proper training. ~ New officers get little supervision. 1The department fails to check the backgrounds of officers accused of misconduct and the officers in charge of Internal Affairs. Poorly conducted investigations of officers have jeopardized potential prosecutions of officers on criminal charges. i Discipline cases against officers take years to be processed. ~i it is extremely difficult for citizens to file complaints against the police department. Last month, the Detroit Police Department (DPD) established five working groups that include Justice Department lawyers and outside experts to oversee changes in the use-of-force policy, training, facilities, the tracking of officers whose pattern of conduct could put the department at risk for lawsuits and discipline and accountability, Deputy Police Chief Pamela Evans said. Use of force The department has failed to give officers nonlethal tools, such as batons, to subdue suspects without killing them, a 17-page March 6 letter from the Justice Department says. The department "does not define 'use of force,' nor adequately address when and in what manner of the use of less-than-lethal force is permitted," the letter says. "We recommend that the DPD make at least one additional intermediate force option available to all officers ... carried by all officers at all times while on duty" like a collapsible baton. Officers are not required to report many instances when they use force, and those instances are not entered into a database for tracking, the document says. "We recommend that the DPD explicitly require officers to report all uses of force, aside from unresisted handcuffing, regardless of whether there is a visible injury," the Justice Department said. Deputy Chief Evans says a revised definition of an appropriate force by officers is in a new police manual that is under review. The department plans to decide what options for using force should be given to officers, Evans said. Handling of complaints Citizens are discouraged from filing complaints and are sometimes unable to make their grievances heard against the department, the Justice Department says. Anyone seeking to file a complaint at a precinct must get a supervisor to fill one out. Members of the public may not fill one out, and the forms aren't available to the public. Supervisors can resolve complaints informally without reporting them to police leaders. Resolved complaints are supposed to be referred to the Board of Police Commissioners, which often doesn't happen, the letter says. The board itself doesn't make a record of many complaints that it resolves informally. The Justice Department has recommended that the police department allow citizens to file complaints by telephone or mail and that complaint forms should be widely available to the public at libraries and other public buildings. "DPD policy should require officers to provide complete and accurate information regarding the external complaint process," the department said. "Officers should be explicitly prohibited from refusing to accept external complaints and from discouraging members of the public from filing complaints." Evans said the department is in the process of reworking its complaint process. Discipline of officers The Justice Department found a significant backlog of discipline cases. On average, it takes one to two years for an initial hearing to be held about a complaint against an officer and two to three years for cases that are appealed. Some discipline cases have been waiting more than three years for an initial hearing, federal investigators found. "Many command-level officers expressed great frustration with the disciplinary backlog, saying it hinders the ability to impose discipline and significantly reduces the deterrent effect," the letter said. Oliver has pledged to speed up discipline, and the department has increased the number of hearings to about 100 each month -- a threefold jump. 10/28/02 Page 3 of 3 No tracking system determines if an officer has had an significant number of disciplinary hearings, federal investigators found. "The DPD does not have a fully operational ... method by which to identify patterns of problematic behavior by an officer, shift or unit," the letter said. The department hopes to have its system to track problematic officers running by the middle of next year, Evans said. Training of officers The Justice Department also is calling for a revised training manual. "The DPD does not regularly review its policies to ensure their compliance with current law, internal consistency and adequacy in light of risk assessment information," the March 6 letter says. Last month, Oliver proposed a new 1,000-page manual to be distributed to all officers. It is still awaiting approval by the Board of Police Commissioners. New officers, who can attend the Detroit Police Academy at 17 and be an officer at 18, get little field training and often end up on patrol with little supervision, federal investigators found. "Many probationary officers do not have (field training officers)," the letter says. The department also fails to check the backgrounds of officers who are training new recruits, federal investigators found. The department is completing a comprehensive review of its training program including performing checks on training officers, Evans said. Officers get little training, aside from firearms classes, federal investigators found. Only 75 percent of Detroit officers get their annual certification in the use of firearms, investigators reported. The Justice Department recommended that officers who have not been certified be prohibited from carrying weapons. The police department is keeping the firing range open longer and stepping up training to ensure that all patrol officers have the proper skills, Evans said. "We also recommend that DPD provide additional, mandatory, annual, in-service training, including training on the use of force, legal developments, diversity and police integrity," the letter said. Heading to court? The Justice Department won't say if it plans to seek a consent decree, which is an agreement to make changes enforceable by a federal judge. "It seems we're headed toward a consent decree unless we can make a lot of changes," Oliver said. "The Justice Department realizes that they are at 30,000 feet in a sense, and we're at ground zero. We're the ones that have to make these changes. There's been a ton of work done to respond to all of their concerns." Two other Justice Department letters, one sent April 4 and another in June, detail other problems and focus on the widespread detention of witnesses and problems with lock-ups at precincts, Evans said. Daily audits occur at the precincts to ensure that witnesses are not being detained, Evans said. Building new lockups will cost millions of dollars, Evans said. But improvements to the facilities will be made over the next three years, she added, "We're not just trying to build a new police headquarters. We're taking some of the money and dedicating a certain mount to upgrade the precincts, starting with the detention facilities," Evans said. The signers of the three federal letters, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey G. Collins, who lives in Detroit, and Steven H. Rosenbaum, chief of the Justice Department's special litigation section in Washington, declined to comment. You can reach David Shepardson at (313) 222-2028 or ds'hepardson~detnews, com~ 10/28/02 Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson@phila.gov Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 1:14 PM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Rhode Island Brutality settlement Police brutality case settled MICHAEL HOLTZMAN, Staff Writer October 29, 2002 NORTH SMITHFIELD -- The town's insurance company agreed to pay a $7,500 settlement in an alleged police brutality case seven years ago after civil charges were dismissed by a Superior Court judge last week. The case stemmed from a New Year~s Eve arrest in 1995 of Egidio L. Tudino of 1000 Providence Pike by Keith Heroux, a patrolman at that time, who stopped Tudino, who was 46 then, for speeding on Providence Pike (Route 5}. The suit alleged police misconduct, excessive force and use of ethnic slurs against Tudino, who came to this country from Italy in 1966, according to a past news report. "We settled it last week. We offered $7,500, and the plaintiff accepted the. offer," said attorney James Green, claims manager and general counsel for The Interlocal Trust in Pawtucket. The trust represents most of the cities and towns in the state for liability insurance. Green said that, based upon the outcome of the trial and information from The trust's defense counsel, Dennis Baluch of Providence, "I would categorize it as a nuisance settlement to avoid the cost of continued litigation." He added: "I think it's a good result for the town." Green said Baluch would be drafting a settlement that releases the town of all claims. "In exchange for that, we'll make payment of $7,500," Green said. Neither Tudino nor his co-counsels, Judith I. Scott of Westerly or Mark T. Buben of Cranston, could be reached for comment. Baluch said the case was heard over three days beginning Oct. 18 by Judge Richard Israel. It was dismissed upon the conclusion of the evidence presented and a defense motion, Baluch said. "I didn't see that the officer did anything wrong," said Baluch, who declined to discuss other particulars. Tudino's lawyers filed suit on Dec. 30, 1998 -- the day before the three-year statute of limitations expired -- against Heroux, Police Chief Steven E. Reynolds, who became chief on Feb. 17, 1996, six weeks after the incident, and the town's former finance director, Henrietta Delage. A letter to the town said Tudino suffered mental distress from "being cuffed and called derogatory names referencing his ethnic background." The police report of the Dec. 31, 1995 incident said Heroux was patrolling Route 5 about 8 a.m. when he attempted to stop Tudino for speeding. But the driver accelerated to 70 miles per hour and went through a red light before the officer boxed him in behind a van. About 1½ hours later, Heroux issued an arrest sum/nons at Tudino's home, charging him with eluding a police officer, speeding and going through a red light. While Tudino initially pleaded no contest and paid $284.50 in court fines, he subsequently appealed the case to Superior Court, where a 12-person jury acquitted him on Feb. 20, 1977 of the arrest charge of eluding a police officer. The other two moving violations were also dismissed in traffic court upon appeal. Tudino said he never paid the fines when interviewed after his lawyers filed the lawsuit. In a complaint he filed with police on Feb. 12, 1996, less than two months after the incident, Tudino alleged, "As soon as I opened the door he (Heroux) brutally pulled my hand behind my back and put his knee on my back and handcuffed me ..He kept squeezing them tighter." He said Heroux called headquarters after inspecting his car and reported the driver was not the one who had knocked over area mailboxes, which police were investigating as a result of a complaint. Heroux, who had been a lonqtime town patrolman and a detective at the time of the lawsuit, has remained on disability for about two years from an on-the-job injury, officials said. The state retirement board is scheduled to hear Heroux's case on whether to issue a permanent disability on Nov. 8. Town officials have said for months they were attempting to resolve the issue. Both Chief Reynolds and Town Administrator Daniel J. Andrews, the public safety director, said they were aware the settlement with Tudino had been addressed, but they were awaiting written confirmation of the results. ©The Call 2002 Update mailing list Update@nacole.org http://nacole.org/mailman/listinfo/update_nacole.org Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson@phila.gov Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 1:30 PM To: update@nacole,org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Editorial supporting Oversight in Key West, FL Police oversight board will bring department closer to communit GUEST COLUMN Sam Kaufman Committee for a Citizens Review Board ... The criminal prosecutions of four Key West [police] officers and the forced resignation of one other senior officer raise real doubts in our community about the [Key West Police] Department's commitment to address claims of police misconduct. These recent prosecutions have occurred only due to the commitment of ... State Attorney Mark Kohl, who has professionally handled these serious cases of police misconduct When someone in our community is accused of a crime, it should be investigated by law enforcement and then certain cases should be referred to the state attorney. This process should occur regardless of the status of the person being investigated. A police officer should be treated the same way as any other member of the community. The Citizens Review Board (CRB) should not be viewed as some reckless proposal. Rather, it is our community exercising its responsibility to ensure a cooperative and productive relationship between the department and our community's citizens. In response to the lack of oversight by the police department, the Committee for a Citizens Review Board organized a community effort to better the police department by strengthening the relationship between the department and the community it serves, and to help restore the community's confidence in the police department .... In the long run, the Citizens Review Board will foster a closer relationship between members of the community and the police department. The proposed CRB amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot includes a provision for the CRB to make recommendations concerning department policies and procedures that will improve our community's law enforcement. The closer relationship brought about by the CRB will result not only in oversight of the police in order to prevent future misconduct, but also will create a forum for citizens to advocate for officers' needs such as equipment, training and pay. In light of all the potential good that can come from the CRB, it is very disappointing that some, including some members of the Key West Police Department, have chosen to spread misleading and false information regarding the CRB proposal. Now it is important to clarify some of the 1 issues that have been the subject of such false information. One such subject is the estimated cost. Although no one can accurately predict the exact budget for the board, the through-the-roof estimates from [Key West City Manager] Julio Avael have been unfair and deceptive. First, the city manager's estimate was $500,000 for the budget. Now, [he] agrees that the budget will be much less, closer to $170,000. Consider how much the city pays in court costs, legal fees and judgments awarded to victims of police misconduct. The CRB will save the city money by preventing future acts of police misconduct, saving the future legal fees and money awards to victims. Also, our committee ... has been working closely with the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, a national organization that provides training, referrals, information sharing and technical assistance to communities throughout the United States. NACOLE has assisted our committee to formulate a realistic budget for the CRB at $166,000. Another issue is the so-called restrictions to amend the CRB in the future. In fact, the CRB procedures may be developed and amended as long as the substance of the CRB as written in the ballot language is not altered. The city commission may place a ballot question at any election without any costs for the taxpayers. Another misleading issue has been that Dennis Cooper or those of us involved in the CRB Committee will somehow control the selection of its members or even sit on the board. The city commission will select four members of the CRB and three members will be selected by the city co~aission appointees. In addition, no person may serve on the CRB who is involved with civil rights litigation against the city. A very important issue raised by some members of our community, including the state attorney, is the issue of subpoena power. Subpoena power is necessary for the CRB to allow the board to effectively conduct its investigations by compelling testimony and evidence as necessary. The specific concern regarding the CRB's subpoena power is that the CRB may inadvertently immunize a witness who is compelled to testify by the board with the issuance of a subpoena. Subpoena power is strictly limited by the proposed amendment. The amendment clearly states that the CRB shall "exercise its powers so as not to interfere with ongoing investigations and conduct its activities with applicable law." Therefore, the proposed amendment requires a review by the CRB attorney, who must consult with the state attorney before a subpoena is served on any person. This guarantees that no witness will be inadvertently immunized from prosecution. ... The Committee for a Citizens Review Board is confident that the concerns raised are completely addressed by the specific language of the proposed amendment. We encourage everyone to read the entire five-page proposed amendment that will govern the CRB. The CRB can only be a good for our community because it will bring us closer to our police department. It will eliminate speculation in the community that the department is protecting those among its ranks by conducting investigations and proceedings open to the public. Update mailing list Update@nacole.org http://nacole.org/mailman/listinfo/update nacole.org Marian Karr From: jhill'l@utk.edu Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 2:53 PM To: nacole@naco[e.org Subject: Ethics and Integrity Conference, Knoxville, TN Announcement.doc "CITIZENS AND POLICE STANDING TOGETHER FOR SAFER COMMUNITIES" Any assistance you can give me in getting the word out to your colleagues would be greatly appreciated. See attachment below. The conference registration fee is $130, but any participant traveling over 75 miles to Knoxville gets 2 nights in the hotel free. Also, if any citizen participant is a graduate of a citizens police academy or a member of a neighborhood watch group, they get a 50% discount on the fee. A majority of meals are included. Thanks, Mike (See attached file: Conference Announcement.doc} Marian Karr From: John Fowler [john.fowler@Seattle. Gov] Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 3:35 PM To: Suelqq@aol.com Cc: Sam Pailca Subject: Question for the List UO Position Paper doc As previously discussed, attached is an issue and some associated questions .... Sam will also be asking the questions next week .... thanks for the help! John POSITION PAPER Issue: Addressing CompIaints Arising out of Demonstrations, Special Events or Unusual Occurrences Discussion: Political demonstrations and other large crowd events occur frequently in Seattle. Citizen complaints arising out of these events are likewise on the rise. Those complaints that allege individual officer misconduct at such events are classified and investigated pursuant to routine procedures. However, many complaints arising out of demonstrations may appear to allege individual misconduct, but really are complaints about policies and tactics relating to event management, crowd control, arrest philosophy and practice, and use of chemical weapons. Currently these types of complaints are evaluated on a case- by-case basis and documented, but are generally not subject to investigation. We are looking for a better way to receive, review and respond to these types of complaints other than processing them through the current procedures for misconduct complaints. Question: Is this an issue in your city as well? How does your jurisdiction respond to these types of complaints? Under what cimumstances, if any, are these complaints investigated as misconduct complaints? Is the complaint considered to be against individual officers, or the event or incident commander? Does your agency make a distinction between complaints about individual conduct v. policy? What role does your oversight agency currently have in the review of these complaints? What role would you/do you advocate for your oversight agency? What other thoughts, concerns, or suggestions do you have about this issue? Please contact John Fowler, OPA-Seattle Police Department, (206) 733-9355 or .iohn.fowler~seattle.gov with any assistance you can provide. THANK YOU for your time and assistance. Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson@phila.gov Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 2:13 PM To: update@nacole,org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Police Abuse convictions elude MD Prosecutor Results Undercut Prosecutor's Image Johnson Touts Tough-on-Police Record in Pr. George~s, but Convictions Have Eluded Him By Ruben Castaneda Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, October 31, 2002; Page B01 In his campaign for county executive, Prince George's State's Attorney Jack B. Johnson has made much of his efforts to prosecute police misconduct. The Democrat calls himself "the only one" who has stood up to law enforcement misdeeds in a county beset by police scandals and long-standing allegations of brutality by officers. Now, with the election days away, that claim is at the center of a debate about Johnson's performance in office. Johnson has said repeatedly in interviews and campaign appearances that he has prosecuted police only when he saw evidence of criminal behavior. But many police officers and some defense attorneys accuse Johnson of prosecuting police on flimsy evidence for political gain. By charging officers, Johnson has been able to portray himself as tough on police misconduct, even if the charges had no merit, his detractors allege. Whether Johnson was seeking justice, votes or both, his efforts to convict police officers have failed. Since he became state's attorney in 1995, Johnson has had his prosecutors try seven cases of alleged police misconduct. Each time, the defendants were acquitted. Ail but one of the 11 officers Johnson prosecuted remain on the force; none was pushed out because of the criminal charges. Some were promoted after they were acquitted. To be sure, Johnson's task was difficult: Convicting a police officer of official misconduct requires a virtually airtight prosecution, legal experts said. Johnson has pursued many more police prosecutions than any of his predecessors. But Johnson's efforts, his detractors point out, have been marked by poor preparation, weak and contradictory evidence, questionable legal judgment, uncorroborated testimony from a single witness, a dearth of forensic and medical evidence and embarrassing courtroom missteps: In one trial of an officer charged with assaulting a suspect, the star prosecution witness, also a police officer, testified that he never saw the defendant do anything wrong. In another case, a prosecutor told a judge that an officer charged with stealing jewelry and cash from a suspect should testify to prove his innocence -- an argument that ignored the 1 Constitutional protection against self-incrimination. Johnson declined verbal and two written requests to be interviewed for this report. In a voice mail message, Johnson said, "My response is this is old news. People have been talking about it for years. You have written about it. I don~t see me adding anything to what the defense lawyers have been claiming. I'm not going to cor~ment for this story, because I don't think it's worth it. "People will always criticize. The fact that people who are not politically in line with my thoughts would say what they say is of no moment to me. The citizens know my reputation. They have spoken about the fact they have confidence in me, so there's nothing else for me to talk about." Six of the seven police misconduct cases Johnson has brought involved allegations of excessive force. Those are the most difficult cases for a prosecutor to win, according to legal experts. "Juries and judges tend to be very sympathetic to police officers and not so sympathetic to their accusers, who often have criminal records or were caught committing a crime," said Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann, former chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. Rod Uphoff, associate dean and professor of law at the University of Missouri at Columbia, pointed out other hurdles. "You've got a defendant who's likely to be well-represented, in contrast to other defendants who may have an overworked public defender or an attorney who doesn't have the resources to hire private investigators," Uphoff said. "That means the case will be harder to win right from the start." Most of the 11 officers Johnson has prosecuted for official misconduct had powerhouse attorneys paid by the Fraternal Order of Police. In six cases, the defendants chose to be tried by a judge instead of a jury. After a Circuit Court judge acquitted a Riverdale Park officer of assault charges in January, Johnson lashed out at county judges, saying they provided a "safe haven" for police misconduct. But many of the defense attorneys who won their cases said it is not the judges, but Johnson, who is responsible for the string of acquittals. "It doesn't happen that you lose this many cases as a fluke," said defense attorney Robert C. Bonsib, who has won acquittals in two police misconduct cases in the county. "I think the pattern in many of these cases is Jack wants publicity for charging the officers and doesn't care what the outcome is," said Bonsib, who served as deputy state's attorney under Johnson's predecessor and worked with Johnson in the early and mid-1990s. "If he wins, he's a hero. If he loses, he can blame it on somebody else." Cpl. Brian C. Catlett In September 2000, Johnson obtained a highly publicized indictment charging county police Cpl. Brian C. Catlett with voluntary manslaughter for fatally shooting 19-year-old Gary Albert Hopkins Jr. outside a Lanham Hills fire station. Catlett was in his police uniform, moonlighting as a security officer at a dance when a fracas broke out. Catlett called for backup, and Officer Devin C. White used his cruiser to prevent a car from leaving the fire station's parking lot, according to testimony. White jumped out with his gun drawn but allowed a young man to exit the car and walk away, witnesses testified. Then, Gary Hopkins climbed out a passenger window. Witnesses disagreed about what happened next. Some said Hopkins tried to grab the police officer's gun and struggled with him. Others said they saw White point his gun at Hopkins and Hopkins push it away; some said Hopkins had his hands in the air. What is not in dispute is that Catlett fatally shot Hopkins in the chest. In acquitting Catlett, Circuit Court Judge E. Allen Shepherd cited DNA evidence suggesting that White's gun had been touched by the victim, which "directly contradicted" prosecution witnesses. Johnson, however, had not presented the DNA evidence to the grand jury. He said that because the gun was not tested until four months after the shooting, police could have tampered with it, though he presented no evidence of tampering. "They made a presentation to the grand jury that was distorted and unfair," said Bonsib, who defended Catlett. He argued that Catlett would never have been indicted if the grand jury had heard about the DNA. Officer John Rogers In September 1999, Circuit Court Judge Joseph S. Casula acquitted Greenbelt police Officer John Rogers of second-degree assault. Rogers was charged with knocking down a WRC-TV (Channel 4) cameraman at a graduation ceremony at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt in June 1998. The cameraman suffered a broken collarbone. Rogers testified that he put his hand on the cameraman's arm to get his attention, but the man jerked around and fell. The officer said he also fell, landing atop the cameraman. Again, witnesses were split on what they had seen. And Judge Casula, now retired, said in an interview that he gave credence to a deputy sheriff who testified for the defense that the cameraman tripped over his own feet. "I couldn't really say beyond a reasonable doubt that anyone pushed [the cameraman] down," Casula said. Sgt. Christopher Clites A prosecution witness again proved unconvincing when a Circuit Court judge acquitted Riverdale Park police Sgt. Christopher Clifes in January of charges of assault and using a handgun in the commission of a felony. In that case, prosecutors had a single witness and an alleged crime with no injuries. The witness, Ronald Fleming, testified that he was driving on Annapolis Road in the Bowie area in April 2001, when he and Clites, who was traveling on the road with a female friend, became angry with each other's driving. The two drove to a side street. Fleming testified that Clites forced him off the road, got out of his car and brandished a gun in his face. Clites testified that he approached Fleming with his badge in his left hand and his gun in his waistband. Circuit Court Judge Dwight D. Jackson said the sergeant's account was more believable. Sandra Jordan, a former federal prosecutor in the western district of Pennsylvania and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said charging police officers with assault when there is no injury is probably an exercise in futility. "You've got to have evidence of bodily injury," Jordan said. "A person's testimony standing by itself will probably not be enough. You need photographs, hospital records." Officer Vincent D. Lyew In charging Mount Rainier police Officer Vincent D. Lyew with stealing cash, a cell phone, pager and jewelry from a teenager during an arrest, Johnson's prosecutors again relied on a single witness, the alleged victim, who came forward more than 18 months after the alleged theft. In January 2000, Gregory Sobers Hewitt, then 19, was arrested during a traffic stop on charges of possession of marijuana and an alcoholic beverage. Hewitt was a passenger in the car. The charges were never pursued. But in late July 2001, Hewitt called Mount Rainier police and claimed Lyew had taken $300 and other items that had not been returned. Lyew was charged nine months later. During the two-day trial, Assistant State's Attorney Jennifer Japp struggled to introduce evidence. Japp repeatedly tried to ask Mount Rainier Deputy Chief Charles Williams about police training, policies, and general orders. Over and over, defense attorney Lisa L. Hardy objected, and the judge sustained 13 of 14 objections. His patience clearly strained, Judge Thurman H. Rhodes told Japp: "Counsel, this is a theft case. I don't see how this is relevant." When the defense attorney asked Rhodes to throw out the charges, Japp argued that, if Lyew was innocent, he should take the stand and testify.. Exasperated, Hardy looked at Rhodes and said, faintly, "Your honor -- the Constitution," referring to constitutional protections against forcing defendants to testify against themselves. Rhodes nodded in acknowledgment. The judge quickly acquitted Lyew, noting that Hewitt testified that he did not know the number to his cell phone, did not have documentation proving he owned a pager, and had no receipts for the jewelry he said was stolen. Officer Devin C. White Prosecutors primarily relied on a sole witness in charging county police Officer Devin C. White with assaulting a 25-year-old Lanham man, Khalil Majlaton, during a traffic stop in October 2000. White, who was also involved in the shooting incident involving Cpl. Catlett, was indicted on two counts of second-degree assault and a count of malfeasance for allegedly breaking Majlaton's ankle. Circuit Court Judge Sherrie L. Krauser threw out the assault charges because the indictment was obtained after the one-year statute of limitations had expired. She allowed the charge of malfeasance, a misdemeanor with a two-year statute of limitations. The day the trial began, Majlaton in an interview accused Johnson's office of deliberately botching the prosecution by coming to court unprepared. Majlaton said prosecutor Roland Patterson had asked him a day or two before the trial to collect court files and round up prosecution witnesses. Johnson defended Patterson at the time, prompting the judge to question Johnson's grasp of criminal law. In his opening statement, Patterson said White threw Majlaton to the ground while standing on his foot, fracturing the young man's ankle. But Majlaton, Patterson's key witness, gave a different account, testifying that the officer had thrown him to the ground, then lifted Majlaton's leg in the air and twisted his ankle, causing the break. The defense did not call any witnesses. The judge acquitted White and noted that the indictment was defective because it did not describe a crime. Cpl. Joseph C. Partenza And Cpl. Mark Elie Johnson has often spoken of how difficult it is to break the "blue wall of silence," but in two cases, he has had county police officers as his key witnesses. In both cases, the officers who testified for the state provided testimony that ultimately helped the defense. Last March, Johnson indicted county police Cpl. Joseph C. Partenza and Cpl. Mark Elie, on charges that they assaulted a burglary suspect inside the garage of a Chillum gas station in January. The charges were sparked by Cpl. Joseph Diaz, who reported to supervisors that he believed the suspect, Hector Hillan, was bitten hy a police dog and beaten without justification. In the week leading up to the trial, defense attorneys prepped the two officers with mock direct examinations and mock cross-examinations. In contrast, prosecutors didn't talk to Diaz or Millan between the indictment and the trial three months later. Under cross-examination by Elie's attorney, Timothy F. Maloney, Millan testified that he was bitten by the dog just once, not twice, as prosecutors asserted. Diaz testified that he never saw Partenza do anything improper. In early August, Circuit Court Judge Shepherd acquitted both officers of second-degree assault. Overturned on Appeal Johnson came closest to obtaining convictions in a police misconduct case in May 1995, when District Court Judge Frank Kratovil found three officers guilty of beating burglary suspect Henry L. Gray. Gray had suffered a broken clavicle and other injuries after he was caught trying to escape from a Suitland pizza shop he had broken into in October 1994. The officers got an automatic appeal for a Circuit Court trial, where they were tried with a fourth officer. In the Circuit Court trial, which took place before a jury, a defense medical expert testified that Gray would have suffered much more severe injuries if he had been attacked as the key prosecution witness, Officer Kenneth Garland, described. Garland testified that the defendants "whaled" on Gray's face and torso with their slapsticks. A jury acquitted each of the officers. "If what Garland said had occurred, Gray would have had no face left," said David M. Simpson, who defended one of the officers. Retired Judge Casula, who presided over the trial, said he was skeptical of Garland's testimony. Referring to an alleged face kick, which Garland demonstrated in court, Casula said: "Gray would have broken his neck or something. I think [Garland] embellished." © 2002 The Washington Post Company Update mailing list Update@nacole.org http://nacole.org/mailman/listinfo/update_nacole.org Marian Karr From: John Fowler [john.fowler@Seattle. Gov] Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 3:16 PM To: Suelqq@aol.com Subject: Text of Seattle Request Sue .... below is the text in e-mail format v. an attachment. Thank you for your assistance. POSITION PAPER Issue: Addressing Complaints Arising out of Demonstrations, Special Events or Unusual Occurrences Discussion: Political demonstrations and other large crowd events occur frequently in Seattle. Citizen complaints arising out of these events are likewise on the rise. Those complaints that allege individual officer misconduct at such events are classified and investigated pursuant to routine procedures. However, many complaints arising out of demonstrations may appear to allege individual misconduct, but really are complaints about policies and tactics relating to event management, crowd control, arrest philosophy and practice, and use of chemical weapons. Currently these types of complaints are evaluated on a case-by-case basis and documented, but are generally not subject to investigation. We are looking for a better way to receive, review and respond to these types of complaints other than processing them through the current procedures for misconduct complaints. Question: Is this an issue in your city as well? How does your jurisdiction respond to these types of complaints? Under what circumstances, if any, are these complaints investigated as misconduct complaints? Is the complaint considered to be against individual officers, or the event or incident commander? Does your agency make a distinction between complaints about individual conduct v. policy? What role does your oversight agency currently have in the review of these complaints? What role would you/do you advocate for your oversight agency? What other thoughts, concerns, or suggestions do you have about this issue? Please contact John Fowler, OPA-Seattle Police Department, (206) 733-9355 or john.fowler@seattle.gov with any assistance you can provide. THANK YOU for your time and assistance. Marian Karr From: NCWP [womencops@fem[nist.org1 Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 4:37 PM To: womenandpolicing@ls.feminist.org Subject: Women & Policing News Digest Week in Review 10/25/2002 - 11/1/2002 Women & Policing News Digest Nov 1 2002 LAPD Whistle-blower Prison Sentence Overturned; Court's Decision Fails to Remedy Abuse of Protective Orders The 9th circuit federal appeals court overturned the sentence of Los Angeles Police Department whistle-blower Bob Mullally this week. http://www.womenandpolicing.org/article.asp?id 7245 Oct 28 2002 California Releases First Woman Under Battered Women's Syndrome Law Marva Wallace, an abused woman who has served 17 years in California state prison for killing her husband, became the first woman to be released under a state law passed in June that allows inmates to use the battered women's syndrome to seek reversal of convictions for killing their abuser before 1992, when the syndrome was deemed lawful. http://www.womenandpolicing.org/article.asp?id=7221 Oct 25 2002 Sniper Held on Violation of Federal Domestic Violence Law Suspected sniper John Allen Muhammad is currently being held on violation of the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban, also known as the Lautenberg Law, which was passed in 1996 due in large part to the efforts of the feminist movement. http://www.womenandpolicing.org/article.asp?id=7217 Oct 20 2002 Civilian Oversight Group Uncovers Problems in Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office The cutting-edge civilian oversight group formed in 2001 to oversee the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department released information last week disclosing over 800 claims of uninvestigated wrongdoing by deputies during the last decade. http://www.womenandpolicing.org/article.asp?id=7243 Oct 20 2002 Unit Formed to Increase Arrests of Sexual Predators on Los Angeles Public Transit A small unit within the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in Los Angeles has been formed to target sexual predators riding public transportation. http://www.womenandpolicing.org/article.asp?id=7246 Announcements Commercial Alert, a non-profit organization that protects children an~ con~T~uni~ies from commercialism, is looking for police chiefs, law 1 professors, and current and former law enforcement officials to sign on national advertisers, asking them not to purchase ads on police cars. According to news reports, at least 12 municipalities have already bought police cars with ads on them, furnished by Government Acquisitions LLC. Support the National Center for Women & Policing The Women & Policing News Digest is a service of the National Center for Women & Policing, made possible through the support of individuals like you. Please consider becoming a member of the National Center. http://www.feminist.org/store/PreductPelicing_Hembership.asp National Center for Women & Policing a division of the Feminist Majority Foundation Ph {310)556-2526 Fax (310)556-2509 womencops@femlnist.org www.womenandpolicing.org You are currently subscribed to womenandpelicing as: quinn@nacele.erg Te unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-womenandpolicing-3622705S@ls.feminist.org Marian Karr From: KelYyn.Anderson@phila.gov Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 1:21 PM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Salem Oregon Chooses Review Board Members pic15574~§if pic04031 gif pic12052.gif pic27350,gif picO 1150.gif pic16941 gif pic21724.gif p[c13966.9if pic03430 gif pic31107 gif pic30191 g[f pi¢18007 gif picl 1337.gif pie15457.gif pic12287,gif pic27753.gif pic10383 gif pic14945 gif picO8909.~if pic32209 gif picOO758.gif pic24221 gif pic18588,gif picO6422.gif pic24945 §if pic27506 9if pic13030.gif pic16413 gif pic29168 g Jr picOOOOO.gif pic32591 gif pic18762 gif picO 1655.9if pic17410*gif picO6359.§if pic27624.gif pic20537.gif pic21548.gif picO6483.gif pic27595~gif picO4041.gif picO3602.gif pic24350.oif pi¢lO29tgif pic30836.gif picO9374.gif pie11020 gif pic04596 gif pic24021 .gif pic27348.gif pic23199 gif pic19668.gif pic24484.gif pic08281 gif picO4734.gif Salem picks police review board (Embedded image moved to file: pic15574.gif) The citizens will examine alleged misconduct of officers. (Embedded image moved to file: pic04031.gif) TARA MCLAIN Statesman Journal 1 November 5, 2002 (Embedded image moved to file: pic12052.gif) The Salem City Council appointed seven members and two alternates to its long-awaited citizens police review board Monday night. (Embedded image moved to file: pic27350.gif) At least s.x of the nine people are minorities or activists for minority, gay or disability issues. Three are defense attorneys. And none have formal training or experience in law enforcement. (Embedded image moved to file: pic01150.gif) Ail of the members pledged to provide a safe forum where people of all backgrounds can come and be heard, be validated and be appreciated. (Embedded image moved to file: pic16941.gif) Police officers or citizens in a case of alleged police misconduct will come away having learned something new, some said. (Embedded image moved to file: pic21724.gif) The members, chosen by secret ballot, had to win at least five council votes each. They will serve two-year terms. (Embedded image moved to file: pic13966.gif) In the next few months, the City Council will adopt bylaws and the review board will hold its first meeting. {Embedded image moved to file: pic03430.gif) It will complete a four-year process that started with a march on City Hall by residents who felt the police were unfairly targeting minorities. {Embedded image moved to file: pic31107.gif) The board will hear complaints from members of the public not satisfied with the internal investigations by the police of alleged misconduct. {Embedded image moved to file: pic30191.gif) "Ail of us want to be respected and all of us want to be validated, and I would like to be part of a program that does just that," said Alice Wells, a retiree and active community volunteer. (Embedded image moved to file: piclS007.gif) Bernard Somdah said the board will offer a place for Salem's minorities to go when they have no other options. (Embedded image moved to file: picl1337.gif} "My motivation for wanting to serve on this board is not as a personal vendetta," said Somdah, who is African-American. (Embedded image moved to file: pic15457.gif) "I've never gotten a speeding ticket or been arrested. I just want minorities to be heard," he said. (Embedded image moved to file: pic12287.gif) The council interviewed 14 finalists Monday evening. A council subcommittee chose the finalists earlier this fall from a pool of 53 applicants. (Embedded image moved to file: pic27753.gif) Some were born and raised in Salem; others have been here a matter of months. (Embedded image moved to file: pic10383.gif) They have a wide range of experience with police, from Che Walker, who explored a career in law enforcement, to Lindsay Soto, who's never gotten a ticket. Others, including Linda Gertz, have ridden with officers on duty. (Embedded image moved to file: pic14945.gif) The two finalists with actual law enforcement experience ? an Oregon State Police manager and a former police cadet ? did not make the cut. (Embedded image moved to file: pic08909.gif) Many acknowledged that police work is tough and officers are put in complicated situations. They vowed always to consider that while investigating complaints. {Embedded image moved to file: pic32209.gif} "I also have a huge respect for police officers and what they do ? they are good at heart, but often it's just a tone" that they occasionally use that offends some people, said Susan Caballero, an employment specialist at McNary High School. {Embedded image moved to file: pic09758.gif) The police union will negotiate with the council later this month on 2 what kind of training the review board members will get and how personnel records are handled. The union has threatened to file an unfair labor practices complaint against the city if members' concerns aren't addressed. {Embedded image moved to file: pic24221.gif) Councilor Rick Stucky asked how the applicants would handle situations where it was one person's word against another, as may often be the case. (Embedded image moved to file: pic18588.gif) Many replied that the credibility of both sides would be a big factor. But so would carefully listening to all sides and taking in the perspectives of the other board members. (Embedded image moved to file: pic06422.gif) "Everybody deserves a fair shake and a chance to be heard ? police and citizens," said attorney Steven Gotham. (Embedded image moved to file: pic24946.gif) Tara McLain can be reached at (503) 399-6705. (Embedded image moved to file: pic27506.gif) (Embedded image moved to file: picl3030.gif) Police review members (Embedded image moved to file: pic16413.gif) Seven members and two alternates were chosen for Salem's Community Police Review Board: (Embedded image moved to file: pic29168.gif) Sharon Caballero (Embedded image moved to file: pic00900.gif) Occupation: Employment specialist at McNary High School. (Embedded image moved to file: pic32591.gif) Civic Participation: 100 Good People, Salem-Keizer Coalition for Equality, Mano a Mano. (Embedded image moved to file: pic18762.gif) Linda Gertz (Embedded image moved to file: pic01655.gif) Occupation: Associate executive director for YWCA of Salem. (Embedded image moved to file: pic17410.gif) Civic participation: Salem Community Policing Advisory Committee, Salem Interfaith Hospitality Network, YWCA of Salem. {Embedded image moved to file: pic06359.gif) Steven Gorham {Embedded image moved to file: pic27624.gif) Occupation: Attorney. (Embedded image moved to file: pic20537.gif) Civic Participation: Marion-Polk Legal Aid, Marion County mental health advisory board, Salem streetscape committee, indigent defense. (Embedded image moved to file: pie21548.gif) Neva Hutchinson (Embedded image moved to file: pic06483.gif) Occupation: Self-employed woodworker. (Embedded image moved to file: pic27595.gif) Civic participation: Salem-Keizer School District Superintendent's Advisory Board on Diversity, Oregon School Boards Leadership program, Leadership Salem, Oregon Department of Education advisory board, Salem parks board, school budget committee, others. (Embedded image moved to file: pic04041.gif) Andy Simrin (Embedded image moved to file: pic03602.gif) Civic participation: Law-student mentor, various Oregon State Bar committees. (Embedded image moved to file: pic24350.gif) Bernard Somdah (Embedded image moved to file: pic10291.gif) Occupation: Economist for the Oregon Public Utility Commission. (Embedded image moved to file: pic30836.gif) Civic participation: Salem-Keizer School Board's Community Involvement Action Committee and Citizen's Advisory Program, Salem NAACP. {Embedded image moved to file: pic09374.gif) Lindsay Soto (Embedded image moved to file: picll020.gif) Civic participation: Planned Parenthood, Marion-Polk Legal Aid. (Embedded image moved to file: pic04596.gif) Alternates (Embedded image moved to file: pic24021.gif) Che Walker (Embedded image moved to file: pic27348.gif) Occupation: Behavior specialist for PCL Inc. (Embedded image moved to file: pic23199.gif} Civic participation: Works with people with mental and developmental disabilities. (Embedded image moved to file: pic19668.gif) Alice Wells (Embedded image moved to file: pic24484.gif) Occupation: Retired. (Embedded image moved to file: pic08281.gif) Civic participation: Salem Community Policing Advisory Committee, volunteer at Judson Middle School, community mediation. (Embedded image moved to file: pic04734.gif) ~** eSafe scanned this email for malicious content ~** IMPORTANT: Do not open attachments from unrecognized senders Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson@phila.gov Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 1:28 PM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Organized Ring of Officers Arrested in Texas Friday, November 1, 2002 Lawsuit: organized ring of police officers arrested, victimized women HALTOM CITY, Texas (AP) - A federal lawsuit filed Thursday alleges that an organized ring of police officers and jailers arrested women for minor traffic offenses, then sexually victimized them in jail, a Dallas-Fort Worth television reported. According to the lawsuit, at least 10 women and perhaps more than 100 women became victims of three or more police officers and three or more jailers in Haltom City, a suburb on Fort Worth~s northeast corner, WFAA-TV reported. According to a court affidavit, a woman complained that jailer Clint Weaver, using a billy club as a potential weapon, "grabbed me by the hair ... he had a black stick in his hands, and I was terrified." She said she was raped four times in 21 days. A Tarrant County grand jury indicted Weaver, a former jailer, last week on charges of sexual assault and two counts of improper sexual activity with a person in custody. "He was running the jail as if it was a candy store," Michael Pezzuli, the woman's attorney, told the station. "Where he could pick out whatever he wanted, take them out, molest them and put them back in their cells." At least 10 current and former Haltom City Police Department employees are being investigated for misconduct, including an officer accused of molesting a teenage boy. Haltom Police Chief Billy Hammitt did not immediately return a telephone message from The Associated Press for comment late Thursday. John Ross Ewing, 28, of Bedford was arrested Wednesday in connection with a sexual assault of a 16-year-old. The alleged assault occurred last spring while Ewing was off duty, Hammitt said in a statement. Ewing, who had been an officer two years, resigned in August after he became the focus of an investigation into allegations of improper conduct with members of the Explorer post, police said. The Explorer post, operated in conjunction with the Boy Scouts of America, enables high school students to visit and learn about local businesses, such as police or fire departments or law firms. 1 Police would not say if the alleged victim was a member of that group. Ewing's arrest comes on the heels of a probe into accusations that at least eight former and current police employees sexually harassed and abused female jail inmates. A federal civil rights lawsuit was filed in August by the inmates, claiming they were videotaped in the showers and bathrooms from June 2000 to March 2001. Three women have said that female inmates were promised early release in return for sexual favors. The Texas Rangers joined the investigation last month at the request of the Haltom City Police Department, which employs 71 officers and 28 civilians in the town just northeast of Fort Worth. Weaver, a jailer from October 1999 to April 2001, is on two years' probation after pleading guilty this year to official oppression involving one of the plaintiffs. He was ordered to register as a sex offender. Weaver, 22, of Azle is named in the lawsuit. At least three jailers and four police officers, who are not identified in the lawsuit, also are accused. Meanwhile, a former police records clerk, Charlotte O'Kelly, 49, has been charged with distributing confidential police files about a case involving a sexual assault of a child. Last week, Hammitt said he would retire Dec. 31 for personal reasons. Councilman Phil Jennings said he believes police policies and procedures have been too lax but that the city will make changes to prevent similar situations from occurring. "These are the actions of individuals," Jennings said. "These are not the actions of the city of Haltom City. We do not tolerate them .... But you have to realize we live in the real world, and'there are bad people out there." Update mailing list gpdate@nacole.org http://nacole.org/mailman/listinfo/update_nacole.org Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson@phila.gov Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 1:37 PM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Key West FL Oversight Vote pic31322 gif pic30333 gif pic17673 gif pic04664.gif Posted on Sun, Nov. 03, 2002 (Embedded image moved to file: pic31322.gif) (Embedded image moved to file: pic30333.glf) (Embedded image moved to file: pic17673.gif) Key West police review up for vote Proposed charter amendment would create citizen oversight BY JENNIFER BABSON jbabson@herald.com KEY WEST - One of the most controversial items on Tuesday's ballot won't determine the outcome of a political race, but it may create a citizen review board to investigate allegations of police misconduct. The referendum proposes amending Key West's charter to create an independent panel with the ability to subpoena witnesses. Proponents of the board say it's needed after two former Key West officers were charged with making false police reports, two officers were charged with battery, and a supervisor faced misconduct allegations this year. Critics say the amendment would create an entity whose mandate and scope are too vague. Miami voters voted last year to amend their city's charter to create a Civilian Investigative Panel to review complaints and allegations of misconduct against Miami police officers. That panel is allowed to issue subpoenas after consulting with the Miami-Dade state attorney's office and an independent counsel. NOT IN MIAMI-DADE Although activists are pressing the issue in Miami-Dade, county commissioners voted down a proposal in June to place a similar referendum on the ballot there. If approved by the voters this week, Key West's Citizen Review Board would be able to launch its own probe even if other inquiries, such as internal reviews by the police department or probes by the state attorney's office, are already underway. Its findings would be forwarded to city management, local prosecutors and other agencies. Four of the board's members would be appointed by the City Cormmission after being ''nominated by community organizations,'' while three additional members would be selected by the original four from the ''general public.'' Members of the city's police union and Key West Mayor Jimmy Weekley have strongly opposed creating the board, which city officials contend would cost between $175,000 and $225,000 a year to run. LITIGATION FORESEEN If the referendum is approved Tuesday, ''This will likely be tied up in courts for a while,'' said Robert Allen, president of the local Police Benevolent Association. Weekley said this week that he will move to create a different kind of review board, probably without subpoena power, if the ballot question fails. ''What they are proposing is so convoluted, so difficult to understand, it doesn't spell out what charges can be brought against police officers to the review board,'' Weekley said. But activists and residents pressing for creation of the board say it isn't that complicated. ''The idea is to have an independent review process and, as far as some of the details are concerned, they need to be worked out by the board and the City Commission after it's created,'' said Sam Kaufman, a defense attorney and former public defender who helped coordinate the referendum effort.. ''The vast majority of us are reasonable people who will come together and be able to come up with an effective process.'' At a recent meeting in Bahama Village, Peggy Ward Grant, co-chair of a group pushing for the board, said the referendum sprang from a frustration that the city was net taking police misconduct allegations seriously. 'NO REAL EFFORT' ''There was no real effort to sit down and discuss the problem and the feelings that citizens have until we got to this point,'' Grant said. ''The citizens are just not buying it anymore, so they took it upon themselves.'' Earlier this year, after prosecutors began reviewing misconduct allegations, the police department reassigned its primary investigator for internal affairs. Monroe State Attorney Mark Kohl has not taken an official position, although he released a statement saying his office was ''concerned about the subpoena power'' the board would have because it ''may interfere'' with ongoing investigations. Under the charter amendment, the board's attorney would have to consult with the state attorney before deciding whether to grant a request by the board for a subpoena. Kohl also said he was worried that subpoenaing witnesses could confer legal immunity upon those who testify, even though the board would not have the authority to offer such immunity. PETITION DRIVE City commissioners approved a resolution in September to place the question on the ballot after a local committee collected more than 1,300 signatures in favor of a referendum. As advocates on both sides of the issue spar over its implications, the 14-page text of the charter amendment offers a few more specifics. Among the provisions: ? Within two working days of receiving a complaint about police misconduct, the board would be required to notify Key West's police chief. After the board issues its recommendations, the chief would have 30 days to respond in writing. ? Police officials and state prosecutors could seek court orders to challenge a vote by the board to investigate a matter already under their review. ? The board would be allowed to retain the services of an attorney and professional investigators and could conduct inquiries and hearings, although it's expected to ''exercise its powers so as not to interfere with ongoing investigations'' by other agencies. ? City commissioners would appoint the board's original four members from ''community-based civic and social service organizations, including but not limited to: the League of Women Voters, the Key West Business Guild, the Bahama Village Business Association, the NAACP, the Key West Chamber of Commerce, the local chapter of the Florida Bar and local organizations of clergyman.'' ? Members, who would not be paid, would serve for four years. A full-time, paid executive director would be hired, plus the board could retain its own attorney, and clerical assistance would be provided. ? Board members are required to be Key West residents who don't work for the city, don't have immediate family members who do, don't have any litigation filed against the city and ''have good reputations for integrity and community service.'' ? Lawyers who have sued the city on behalf of their clients are barred from serving on the board for two years after their lawsuits have concluded. ? Board members are required to undergo at least 30 hours of training and additional continuing education. (Embedded image moved to file: pic04664.gif) eSafe scanned this email for malicious content IMPORTANT: Do not open attachments from unrecognized senders *** Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson@phila,gov Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 1:40 PM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Letter Re New Haven Officer p~c23811,gif pic31322 gif pic30333 gif pic17673 gif pic04654 gif pi¢15141 gif LETTER City cop's gun safety assignment stirs outrage (Embedded image moved to file: pic23811.gif) (Embedded image moved to file: pic31322.gif) (Embedded image moved to file: pic30333.gif) Letter to the Editor November 03, 2002 (Embedded image moved to file: pic17673.gif) (Embedded image moved to file: pic04664.gif) (Embedded image moved to file: picl5141.gif) As minister in the community, I am appalled and outraged at the most recent turn of events. My deep concern regards New Haven Police Officer Shafiq ~Jodus Sabur, with a history of violations, misconduct and behavior unbecoming to an officer, teaching firearms safety for pay. This is the same officer who gave his brother, a known felon, the gun that his brother used to commit a murder. In this incident, Abdus Sabur failed to report or transfer ownership of the weapon. His punishment was being arrested and given rehabilitation with a few days suspension, with that charge being erased from his record. The next incident occurred Sept. 2, 2000, when he and his partner at the time, Officer Joe Dease Jr., spotted a 19-year-old, Frederick R. James Jr., allegedly in a drug transaction. Abdus Sabur and Dease, rode in pursuit. The chase ended up in a yard of a Redfield Street resident where James was killed while they were trying to arrest him. These officers were cleared of any wrongdoing and sent back on the street. 1 The last incident occurred the morning of Jan. 1, 2001, when Sabur shot out the tires of a car whose driver allegedly was trying to flee a sobriety checkpoint. This was the incident that caused him to be fired. However, 15 months later he was reinstated. I am outraged, because the 19-year-old who was killed on Sept. 2, 2000, was my son. I'm trying to understand where the justice is in rewarding him for his abuse of power and excessive behavior. Why is he constantly afforded chances, while my son will never ever see the light of day again? When will the police be held accountable for their actions? The Rev. Eugene Boyd New Haven *** eSafe scanned this email for malicious content *** *** IMPORTANT: Do net open attachments from unrecognized senders *** Marian Karr From: Kelvyn.Anderson@phila.gov Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 1:44 PM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] Green Bay Officer Fired Again pic24464.jpg Green Bay police officer ousted from force - again {Embedded image moved to file: pic24464.jpg) Patrick Heil (photo by H. Marc Larson) The Police and Fire Commission found Patrick Heil guilty of misconduct Leigh Ann Wagner Kroening News-Chronicle The Green Bay Police and Fire Commission has ruled that a Green Bay police officer reinstated to the force in July after being fired in 1999 should be removed from the department again based on new charges. In Thursday's written ruling, the commission ordered Patrick Hell be "discharged and separated" from the department for two charges of misconduct - one for insubordination and another for dishonesty. A third charge was dismissed. The ruling was based on testimony during a hearing Oct. 1-3. Three years ago, Heil faced a similar hearing for 13 charges of violating department policy. He was fired based on nine of the charges, but an appeals court ordered him reinstated pending the outcome of a full rehearing on the charges. That new hearing was postponed pending the ruling on the new charges. Heil's attorney, Mike Fox, said the outcome was no surprise to him or his client based on the way the matter has been handled from the beginning. "This officer is a good officer, and he deserves better than the way he's been treated," Fox said. "For some reason, this has become a political case, and it should be a cop case." Fox said he will appeal the decision based on the fact it violates the Wisconsin Police Officers' Bill of Rights, which states officers aren't held to the same vulnerability to dismissal as other employees based on their higher exposure to danger. He said there are constitutional issues with the Police and Fire Commission process, which does not allow the defendant to conduct discovery or witness dispositions before the hearing. "We will press this," he said. "We will exhaust every avenue to right these wrongs." Fox said on one level the ruling is a good thing because it opens the door for civil litigation. "The decision levels the playing ground; we can now fight in the civil arena," he said. "They've now put the treasury of the city of Green Bay at risk. If the decision is upheld, then so be it. But if it isn't, we are seeking reimbursement in the millions of dollars." Green Bay Police Chief James Lewis, who brought the charges against Hell, said the officer was terminated immediately after the ruling was issued. He said he is pleased with the decision but regrets it is not the end of the dispute, "which is time-consuming for everyone involved and frustrating and costly for the taxpayers." Lewis said Fox's comment about the possibility of the case ending in civil court with a large monetary judgment in Heil's favor is an "absurd statement." "He'd already submitted his civil case, and us convicting Officer Heil of additional accusations cannot possibly strengthen his case," he said. *** eSafe scanned this email for malicious content *** IMPORTANT: Do not open attachments from unrecognized senders *** Page 1 of 1 From: hector.w.soto@phila.gov <hector.w.soto@phila.gov> To: hector.w.soto@phila.gov <hector.w.soto@phila.gov> Date: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 7:14 PM Subject: 13 officers suspended in Jones case This Story has been sent to you by: he~or.w.soto@phila.gov 13 officers suspended in Jones case Thirteen Philadelphia police officers will be suspended without pay for use of excessive f The full article will be available on the Web for a limited time: http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/4450330~htm (c) 2001 philly and wire service sources. Ail Rights Reserved. 11/5/02 Marian Karr From: legalise_freedom [legalise_freedom@yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 7:14 PM To: legalise_freedom@yahoog rou ps.com Subject: [legalise_freedom] Key West Voters approve Citizen Review Board ........................ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ........................ > Sell a Home with Ease! http://us.click.yahoo.com/SrPZMC/kTmEAA/jd3IAA/FZTolB/TM The voters of Key West approved the creation of a citizen review board. There were 3999 YES votes or 60.58% There were 2602 NO votes or 39.42% Thank you all so much for getting out and voting YES! For more information contact: The Committee for Citizen Review crb@keywestjustice.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: legalise_freedom-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Marian Karr From: Hector. W.Soto@phila.gov Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 9:34 AM To: update@nacole.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] First Response to Victims of Crime Who Have a Disability $RFC822 emi Timely given the questionm raised during Debra Livingston's presentation at the annual meeting. This handbook (NCJ 195500) provides information to help law enforcement respond to victims of crime who have a disability. Law enforcement professionals are offered guidance and tips on approaching and interacting in a sensitive and effective manner with victims who have Alzheimer's Disease, mental illness, mental retardation, or who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, or hard of hearing. The handbook also addresses two federal laws that prohibit discrimination against individuals with disabilities-the Pm~ericans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973-and includes a directory of service providers. Access full text at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/publications/infores/firstrep/2OO2/welcome.html *** eSafe scanned this email for malicious content *** *** IMPORTANT: Do not open attachments from unrecognized senders Marian Karr From: legalise_freedom [legalise_freedom @yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 2:15 PM To: legalise_freedom@yahoog rou ps.com Subject: [legalise_freedom] Key West Vote OK?s Oversight of Police Force The Committee for a Citizen's Review Board A Public Forum Newsletter Key West, Florida November 6, 2002 1) Key West Vote OK~s Oversight of Police Force 2) Voters Approve Oversight Board 3) Voters Endorse Cop Oversight 1) Key West Vote OH's Oversight of Police Force The following article is reprinted in its entirety. It was published as a Florida Section, front page headline article, November 6, 2002, by "The Miami Herald" and was written by Jennifer Babson jbabson@herald.com: ~mlid unusually high turnout on Tuesday, Key West voters overwhelmingly approved a controversial city charter amendment that creates an independent review board to probe allegations of police misconduct. The amendment passed with just over 60 percent of the vote, according to preliminary totals released by the Monroe County Supervisor of Elections Tuesday night. The results include absentee ballot counts. Like a similar amendment approved by city of Miami voters last year, Key West's charter change empowers the city's new Citizen Review Board to subpoena witnesses. "It's a great victory for the community in the city ef Key West, but this work is not completed. This is just the beginning," said Sam Kaufman, a Key West attorney and member of the Committee for a Citizen Review Board, a grass-roots group that lobbied for the ballot questi.on. "We want te come together with the City Commission, the police department, the state attorney's office and members of the community." The battle ever the ballot question was one of the hardest-fought races in the Keys this election season, pitting Key West police and Hayer Jimmy Weekley against activists who argued the department was in need of additional oversight. During the past two years, two former Key West officers were charged with making false reports, two officers were charged with battery and a supervisor faced misconduct allegations in separate incidents. Critics said the amendment would create an entity whose scope was unclear. Homents after it was passed, Weekley hinted that opponents may already be pressing for revisions to the beard's structure - changes that would probably have to be made through another referendum. "Eventually you are going to see a change made to that CRU and how it's structured. It's going to have to be restructured," Weekley told a radio interviewer. On Tuesday morning, Key West police officers clutched signs and chanted slogans en street corners, urging voters to reject the ballot question. The last-minute campaign failed to sway Wayne Hammond, 40, a local musician. "Police in the last two years have been getting away with a little toe much," he said. "The police thought this was an anti-police vote, but it really wasn't." Another resident, Urad Blask, felt and voted differently. "I voted no because I haven't heard the proponents of the review beard provide a system of accountability for the board," said Blask, 39. "The police need some sort of overview, but this is not the way to go." Under the new system, the board's findings will be sent to city management, local prosecutors and other agencies. If approved, the board would not be up and running for at least six months. Hembers would have to undergo 30 hours of training. Four ef the board's members would be appointed by the City Commission after being nominated by community organizations. Three additional members would be selected from the general public by the original four members. Board members, all unpaid volunteers, would eventually serve four- year terms though initially the terms would be staggered. The beard would also have a paid executive director and clerical help and could retain the services of an attorney. City officials estimated the board's operating costs would be between $175,000 and $225,000 a year. The committee that pressed for the ballot question will coordinate the nomination process for prospective board members before their names are forwarded te the City Co~ission. To send your letter to the editor at the Hiami Herald: Editor Tom Fiedler (305) 376-3477 e-mail: tfiedler@herald.com 2) Voters Approve Oversight Board The following article is reprinted in its entirety. It was published as a front page headline article November 6, 2002 by "The Key West Citizen" and was written by Peter Deluca -- pdeluca@keysnews.com: A clear majority of Key West voters voiced their concern about the behavior of the city's police officers Tuesday by establishing a police oversight board. But voters were less decisive on a nonbinding referendum on how to elect their city co~nissioners, with nearly an equal number opting for at-large voting verses the status quo. More than 60 percent of the 6,601 votes cast on police oversight favored a city charter amendment establishing a Citizen Review Board. That board will investigate complaints against Key West police officers and make recommendations to the city, prosecutors or other appropriate agencies. The question, which produced aggressive campaigning on both sides of the issue, was a popular topic of discussion outside the city polling places. William Hernandez, 70, a native conch, supported the review board because he was fearful that too many police officers were getting careless at their jobs. He said he thought some of the "younger cops" needed some more training. When it came to redistricting, Hernandez voted for at large voting because "I want to vote for everybody in the government that has nay effect on my life." Nearly 40 percent of the city's voters agreed with him. But 39 percent opted to stick with the current system under which each district elects its own commissioner. Dulce Lounders, another lifetime resident of the city, said she voted for the police oversight board because she thought it was time for the police to be supervised. Buddy Chavez said that he voted for the board, too, but wasn't forthcoming about why. He did vote for the status quo method of electing commissioners and said "the system seems to be working OK." William Sing, a voter in the llth precinct, voted for the oversight board, because it "is time for the police to be held accountable for their actions." Singh also voted for the so-called "Three-plus- three" method of voting, a concept supported by 21 percent of the voters. Under the three-plus-three method, voters in three large districts would vote for one comsaissioner from their district, and all voters would select the three at-large commissioners. Barry Phillips, an Old Town resident, said he voted against the oversight board because, "the way it's written now is flawed." Phillips said he voted for an at-large system for electing con~issioners because he "doesn't want somebody who lives all the way out in New Town telling me what to do with my life and property in Old Town. I want to vote for everybody running the city that can impact my life." Mayor Jimmy Weekley reacted to voters creation of a Citizen Review Board by focusing on its cost. "Now we have to figure out which city programs we will have to cut to fund the program," Weekley said after the votes were tallied. "The city has no money for this." Weekley, who spoke out against the proposal in the weeks preceding the election, believes the amendment ultimately will go back to the 3 voters for revision. "I guarantee that the rules for this board will have to be changed," he said. "It's not workable as it's written now." To send your letter te the editor at the Key West Citizen: [Five hundred words, max.] Editor Tom Tuell 3420 Northside Drive Key West, Florida, 33040 (305) 292-7777 cltizen@keysnews.com e-mail: info@keysnews.com 3) Voters Endorse Cop Oversight The following article is reprinted in its entirety. It was published as a page one commentary, on November 6, 2002 by "The Key West Keynoter" and was written by Tim HcDonald -- tmcdenald@keynoter.cem: A Key West police oversight board is coming, voters decided in large numbers Tuesday. In balloting in precincts 1 through 10 all of Key West - voters said they wanted an appointed board to investigate complaints against members of the city Police Department. When vote totals were tabulated, 60.58 percent, or 3,999 votes, were in favor efa civilian review board. Opposed were 39.42 percent, or 2,602 voters. What happens now is that the co~ittee that out the issue on the ballot has a self-imposed 90 day deadline to approach groups for possible applicants to the board, hand out applications to those interested, ensure the applications are filled out, and get the completed applications te city officials. At that point, the process is unclear. However, the board would need to be funded in the next budget year, which starts Oct. 1. "It's not going te be our obligation to let people know that it's not workable," said Key West Mayor Jimmy Weekley. "Now the real challenge is what programs will have te be sacrificed in order to budget it." The city has pegged the annual cost at $281,000. The con~mittee that lobbied for such a board has said the figure is far less, though it has not provided its own dollar estimate. In the time running up te the election, the Civilian Review Board had turned into a hot-button political issue, with the rhetoric from both sides becoming increasingly inflarmmatory. The issue that provoked the most emotion was the charge by review- beard opponents that the push for the board was the result of eno man's vendetta against the Police Department. "Absolutely, there's no secret about that," said City Hanager Julio Avael, referring to newspaper publisher Dennis Reeves Cooper's lawsuit against Key West Police Chief Buz Dillon. The ~_merican Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Dillon on 4 behalf of Cooper, publisher and editor of Key West the Newspaper. It charges that Dillon violated Cooper's First ~nenchment rights when he arrested Cooper last June and charged him with reporting details of a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into alleged wrongdoing in the Police Department. Avael told the Keynoter that Cooper's grudge goes back even further, to the time of former Police Chief Ray Peterson. Cooper has written extensively about Avael's alleged involvement with Peterson's departure. Cooper denied the charge, saying only that he was an active member of the committee. Voters won the right to decide for themselves if they wanted to spend some of their tax dollars on the review board only after months of discord, rancor, and walk-outs. Even the process of getting the question to ballot was contentious. Some last-minute legal misunderstandings threatened to undermine the citizen initiative. The Committee for a Citizens Review Board initially filed the wrong paperwork in its attempt to propose a city ordinance. After clarifying the drive's intention to the city, commissioners were told earlier this year by City Attorney Bob Tischenkel they must approve the resolution to get it on the ballot - not vote it down, as they were initially told. Despite passing it unanimously, some commissioners felt there were too many unanswered questions, especially regarding cost. A previous meeting between elected officials and committee members disbanded when committee member Sandy Butler Whyte walked out after a "personal attack," according to committee co-chairman Sam Kaufman. Opponents of the review board appeared to do an effective job of raising doubts among voters; proponents found themselves mostly fending off charges and accusations in the days, weeks, and months leading up to the election. The two sides publicly disagreed over the issues of subpoena power and its consequences, as well as the budget for the proposed board and the method by which CRB members would be chosen. "I believe they are trying to set themselves up as an ongoing committee, and the only way that can be changed is by referendum," Weekley said the week before the election. Review board spokeswoman Whyte accused Weekley and others of trying to confuse the public on the issues. "This is a cor~mittee that is going to come from the citizens," said Butler Whyte. "It is going to be accountable to the citizens, and citizens will have access to the meetings." The State Attorney's Office said it was taking a neutral position on the civilian review board, but emphasized it had concerns about the body's power of subpoena. To send your letter to the editor at the Key West Keynoter: [Five hundred words, max.] Editor 2720-A North Roosevelt Key West, Florida, 33040 (305) 296-6989 keynoter@keynoter.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: legalise_freedom-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 6 Page 1 of 2 Marian Kart From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 8:34 AM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] LA: Police Union & Chief Agree to Overhaul Complaint Process http://www ~at!mes`c~m/news/~ca~/~a-me-brass7n~v~7~ ~27778~2~st~ry?c~!~=!a%~Dhead~ines%2Dca!if~rnia LOS ANGELES Police Union, Chief Agree to Overhaul Complaint Process The accord, which must be approved by Police Commission, scraps controversial system imposed by Bernard C. Parks. By Richard Winton and Andrew Blankstein LA Times Staff Writers November 7 2002 The Los Angeles porice union and Chief William J. Bratton announced Wednesday that they have agreed to overhaul the police complaint system that has been the subject of controversy and consternation among police officers for years. The agreement, which will become official with a special order from Bratton, calls for a new system designed to address minor complaints quickly while ensuring that they are properly tracked and dealt with, say union and LAPD officials. The policy adopts changes proposed by the Los Angeles Police Commission and Mayor James K. Hahn's office in June. It requires the commission's final approval. The agreement allows complaints that supervisors deem minor to be addressed through dispute resolution rather than formal investigation. "Ifs a positive step," said Cmdr. Jim McDonnell, who is heading Bratton's transition team. "It allows for a more reasonable [discipline] standard without compromising accountability, and it sends a positive message to both the officers and the community." Instituted in 1998 by Chief Bernard C. Parks, the department's complaint process has drawn criticism from rank-and-file officers and union officials, who have charged that the disciplinary system seriously damaged morale by treating frivolous claims on a par with corruption. Union officials cited several instances, including investigations of a desk officer who told a woman who complained that laser beams were piercing her brain to turn them off. Under the new system, LAPD officials can apply their judgment to such cases, steering them into mediation rather than a formal investigation and possible board of rights hearing. "Under the old system, a serious allegation of racism, brutality or discrimination was handled the same way as a minor allegation such as an officer's speaking in the wrong tone of voice or [with an] attitude," said union general counsel Hank Hernandez. "With the new process, minor complaints are dealt with in a nondisciplinary form," Hernandez said. Those complaints would be formalized and tracked, Hernandez said. It also allows the person filing a complaint to discuss it with the officer face to face in the presence of a mediator. The reform process began during the tenure of interim Chief Martin Pomeroy. 11/7/02 Page 2 of 2 The acting chief, who replaced Parks in April, began dealing with a backlog of disciplinary complaints. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday agreed to lift a hiring freeze on top positions within the LAPD, clearing the way for Bratton to begin appointing his own management team. The motion allows Bratton to appoint an assistant chief, two deputy chiefs, two commanders, six captains and several civilian police administrators. Bratton is seeking to replace Assistant Chief David Gascon, who retired last week, and to fill several impending vacancies. Assistant Chief J.I. Davis and Deputy Chief Willie Pannell are expected to retire at the end of the year. "We're giving to the chief of police the opportunity to select those people who are going to put together the task of revitalizing the Los Angeles Police Department," said Councilman Tom LaBonge. But Councilman Nate Holden, who voted against the motion, said it gives Bratton the power to drive out those who ran the department under Parks and would hurt officers' morale. "These are loyal, dedicated police officers ... who have been working for this department for many, many years," he said. Other council members said the intent was not to force anyone out. "There is no one being asked to leave by this motion," said Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski. "All we're doing is giving latitude to the chief to look at this command staff and make some appointments," she said. McDonnell said all the positions are either open or will be with planned retirements. 11/7/02 Page 1 of 1 Marian Karr From: Suelqq@aol.com Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 9:38 AM To: Update@NACOLE.org Subject: [NACOLE Update] NACOLE Conference; Meeting; Elections & Spirit of Sankofa Dear Civilian Oversight Cohort, My deep thanks & gratitude to everyone who participated in the conferernce in Cambridge last week. Many new faces and old friends came together to take part in our annual idea-sharing and spirit-renewal. Looking back and moving forward, Sankofa. The Conference Wrap-Up For those who couldn't hang around Sunday for the Conference Wrap-up, General Membership Meeting and the eggs, please know Sunday was a particularly open discussion of who liked what topics/presentations; who didn't, and what we can grow/shape/move to next year. Sankofa One thing I noticed Sunday and want to share: A benefit of NACOLE is that it provides us a safe place to see & work on our own biases. While we all know our duty to be aware of our biases, so we can maintain neutrality and patience, how often do we get to consciously practice this? This sounds corny, but it's very hard, and we all need to look at it internally in order to be the kind of oversight folks we need to be. If a topic or person particularly irks me, there's a great chance they represent an internal "hot button" that I need to explore. Examples: Did I hear were too many cops' voices on panels? If so, do I need to listen more carefully to cops. Was I turned off by some activist? If so, should I listen with more patience to those who exasperate me? Business Meeting & Elections: Bylaws Passed. Many fruitful ideas generated. Next Conference will be in Los Angeles (dates, to be determined). Congratulations to the New Board (which takes office Jan 1) President: Cambridge's Malvina Monteiro (by acclamation!!) VP: Barbara Attard (Berkeley) Sec: Jim Johnson (Cincinnati) Treas: Rose Ceja-Aragon (Denver) Board At Large Bob Aaronson (Palo Alto, Santa Cruz) Eduardo Diaz (Miami-Dade) Teresa Guerrero-Daley (San Jose) Pierce Murphy (Boise Idaho) Dede Wilhelm (Kauai, HI) Denise DeForest (Denver & Omaha) PastPres: yours truly Take care, all, & thanks again. Sue Quinn for NACOLE Board 11/7/02