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"I don't like this book because it don't got know pictures" Chief Rhorerer

“It’s becoming a disturbingly familiar scene in America - mentally unstable cops”

“It’s becoming a disturbingly familiar scene in America - mentally unstable cops”
“It’s becoming a disturbingly familiar scene in America - mentally unstable cops”

City Councilman Wants To Strengthen Civilian Panel That Oversees Alleged Police Misconduct



PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – A city councilman is floating a potentially controversial idea: putting more teeth in the city’s Police Advisory Commission, the civilian panel that studies allegations of police misconduct.

The Police Advisory Commission was created by executive order of then-Mayor Ed Rendell in late 1994, to look into citizen’s complaints of police misconduct.

City Councilman Curtis Jones says the commission needs to be strengthened with more funding. “We’re going to work with the administration and the FOP, other stakeholders who have brought many of these concerns about the Police Advisory Commission to our attention, to try to take something that is good and make it better.”

Mayor Nutter, whose legislation created the commission two decades ago, isn’t aware change is needed. “I’ve not heard any complaint, either from citizens or the PAC.”

Changes that Jones may push for include better funding and speeding up the time the commission takes to complete investigations. And he wants it made permanent through a change in the city charter, which would have to be approved by voters. This past week, Jones delayed his planned formal introduction of the measure.

The head of the FOP, John McNesby, objects to the Councilman’s effort. He says any funding increase should go to the school district, rather than a commission that, “serves no purpose.”


Police chief retiring in Conn. town hit by scandal


EAST HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — The mayor of a Connecticut town roiled by the arrests of four police officers accused of tyrannizing Latinos says the retirement of the police chief is a selfless act intended to help the town heal.

East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. said Monday that the retirement of Chief Leonard Gallo will give the police department an opportunity to move forward with new leadership.

Four officers were arrested last Tuesday by the FBI. All of them have pleaded not guilty.

Gallo has been chastised by federal civil rights investigators for creating a hostile environment for witnesses. His lawyer has acknowledged that last week's indictment refers to him as an unnamed co-conspirator.

Maturo says Gallo informed him of his decision on Jan. 27, and his retirement will take effect Friday.

Albuquerque's settlement costs rise in 2010, 2011

The Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —

Over the past two years combined, the city of Albuquerque has paid out more than $8 million to settle police misconduct cases.

The Albuquerque Journal reports (http://bit.ly/yx9Fmk ) that in the previous eight years, the city had paid nearly $10 million to resolve such cases.

Mayor Richard Berry has done away with his predecessor Martin Chavez's policy of settling a limited number of cases.

Chavez, now running for Congress, in the past has defended his limited settlement policy and has said the city prevailed in almost every case instead of paying out.

But Rob Perry, Albuquerque's chief administrative officer, said the Chavez administration saddled Berry's team with a high number of unresolved cases and said that while payouts have gone up, the city could have lost more money in some cases if it had gone to trial.

All but five of the 60 payouts in 2010 and 2011 stemmed from cases that were initiated during Chavez's tenure as mayor, Perry said. The city felt it was in its best economic interest to settle some of the cases, he said.

A statement from the president and vice president of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association says the policy shift amounts to a lack of support for police officers from the city administration.

There are cases stacking up that were initiated since Berry took office.

There were 20 police shootings between January 2010 and August 2011, 15 of which were fatal, and they have spawned at least a half-dozen lawsuits.

Chavez's no-settlement policy wasn't hard and fast, especially toward the end of his time in the mayor's office.

In July 2009, the city agreed to pay $575,000 to settle a civil lawsuit brought by a woman who said she was taken out of a hospital and raped by an on-duty Albuquerque police officer.

Chavez's last year in office, 2009, saw a handful of cases settled. More than $2.7 million was paid out that year.

Meanwhile, it is not unusual to have cases carry over to a new administration.

When Chavez took office for the second of his three mayoral terms at the end of 2001, there were numerous police misconduct cases already sitting on his desk from former Mayor Jim Baca's term. All but one of the cases resolved during Chavez's first two years in office were filed under Baca.

Attorney Joe Fine, who has represented clients in police misconduct cases, said the no-settlement policy contributed to a lack of accountability among Albuquerque officers.

"Mayor Chavez's policy of not settling police misconduct cases might have saved the city money on a short-term basis, but if this penny-wise, pound-foolish policy had continued, it would have resulted in more needless injuries and, in the long-run, a greater financial loss," Fine said.

Perry said addressing the accountability issue was among the reasons for changing the policy, but that does not amount to a lack of support for officers.

"We support our officers, but when it comes down to financial decisions, those are not made by the officers," he said.

The city is likely to continue considering officer misconduct claims on a case-by-case basis, Perry said. After an onslaught of revelations involving police misconduct, the possible underreporting of crimes and secret undercover operations funded by a prominent businessman, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton said Saturday that an outside review of the force is imminent.

·         The mayor said he signed a contract with a Washington-based organization called Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) last month, and that it will be given free rein to review operations of the Memphis Police Department starting this week.

·         "We've been negotiating this for almost a year," said Wharton. "It's not a reaction to recent events, but maybe we need to expand that scope."

·         It's important to note that PERF doesn't come into a city with the intent to investigate corruption, Wharton said, but rather to look for systematic gaps or weaknesses in organization, personnel and employment.

·         With the first month of the year not even over, Memphis police officers so far in 2012 have faced charges of shoplifting, harassment, computer fraud, child sex and attempting to buy drugs.

·         Most recently, officer Melvin Robinson was arrested Thursday for allegedly putting what he believed to be 10 kilograms of cocaine in the back of his squad car. He faces federal drug charges and was relieved of duty with pay pending an investigation.

·         Wharton didn't mince his words on the subject.

·         "I can't tell courts what to do, but he should be fired with absolutely no possibility of reinstatement even if the charges are reduced," he said. "It should be done as quickly as possible and will be."

·         A month ago, another officer, Michael Sinnock, was charged for allegedly trying to buy marijuana and hydrocodone while on duty. In November, officer Tramaine Johnson was arrested in Nashville for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia during a routine traffic stop. And in October, officer Eric Johnson was indicted as part of a 25-person drug ring that trafficked more than 2,200 pounds of marijuana.

·         Part of the solution to the problem of police misconduct, Wharton said, is a more stringent screening process for prospective officers.

·         And Memphis Police Association president Michael Williams agreed.

·         "When they lowered the standards a couple years ago, they got a lot of officers that are not living up to what is expected of us," said Williams, referring to lessened education requirements that were later reinstated.

·         Still, most of the approximately 2,400 MPD officers "do what they are supposed to do," said Williams.

·         On the subject of the 79,000 crimes recorded in the last five years as "memos" rather than full police reports, Wharton's message was one of reassurance.

·         The Commercial Appeal quoted Police Director Toney Armstrong saying hundreds of the memos should have become "full-blown reports," which would have been included in statistics. But even if they had, Wharton said, crime statistics still would have shown a marked decline.

·         The mayor added that department officials had not been trying to manipulate numbers to show lower crime levels.

·         "If someone wanted to really juggle numbers, I think they could have found a better way than to write a memo and leave it for whole world to discover," he said.

·         Despite former police director Larry Godwin's assertion that the memo review was an attempt by the new regime to tarnish his name, Wharton said it wasn't personal.

·         "The Memphis Police Department can't run a city by looking backwards, trying to vilify someone," he said.

·         Yet Wharton was less specific when discussing findings from a recent audit of the department's undercover unit, specifically businessman Nick Clark's loans to the department amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars for secret operations, as reported by The Commercial Appeal on Friday.

·         "Why I was not shocked by that operation is that as a former defense lawyer, I know it would be the epitome of naivete to think a big-city police department does not have a real sophisticated 'front' operation.

·         "I'm letting the police work. I don't think it's proper for a mayor to know all the inner workings of undercover operations. ... But if we need to do this going forward, it will be done with the right precautions."

Cranston police find 25 more unrecorded complaints

police officials say they've discovered another 25 complaints against officers that weren't properly recorded and they're trying to figure out why.

The Providence Journal reports ( http://bit.ly/x9WK0A) that the complaints include allegations of excessive force and misconduct that were not properly recorded between 2006 and 2009. That brings the number of missing complaints that have been found to 66. The additional 25 complaints were found in the two years since an audit of the police department's internal affairs office.

Col. Marco Palombo says police officials are searching for explanations.

Most of the complaints were made during the tenure of former Police Chief Stephen McGrath, who didn't respond to a request for comment by the newspaper.

Albuquerque Police Misconduct Payouts Soar

By Jeff Proctor
Albuquerque Journal, N.M.

The cost totaled $8 million in 2010 and 2011 combined compared with just shy of $10 million paid out in cop cases over the course of the eight years prior.

Police misconduct cost Albuquerque taxpayers more than $8 million in 2010 and 2011 combined.

That's compared with just shy of $10 million paid out in cop cases over the course of the eight years prior.

Shortly after taking office in December 2009, Mayor Richard Berry did away with his predecessor Martin Chavez's general policy of not settling police misconduct cases -- a practice harshly criticized by a federal judge. The change was condemned by the police union, but praised by lawyers who represent plaintiffs.

Chavez, now running for the congressional seat that represents Albuquerque, has been a strong defender of his limited settlement policy.

"We already know (the policy) has been incredibly successful financially for us," he said in 2005. "Instead of paying out on every case, we're prevailing in almost every case."

But Rob Perry, Albuquerque's chief administrative officer, said the Chavez administration saddled Berry's team with a high number of unresolved cases and said that while payouts have gone up, the city could have lost more money in some cases if they had gone to trial.

The city has spent at least $19 million on police misconduct cases in the past decade. That includes fees and costs for plaintiffs' attorneys, but not what the city has spent on its own lawyers. Those figures were not available.

Berry directed Perry, who was then city attorney, and others to review the nosettlement policy and decide whether considering officer misconduct claims on a caseby-case basis might work better.

"We had a lot of major cases in the pipeline," Perry said, adding that all but five of the 60 payouts in 2010 and 2011 stemmed from cases that were initiated during Chavez's time as mayor.

"We had hoped that the previous administration would've dealt with them, but it didn't. It appeared clear that the liability was going to be fairly strong against the city in a lot of these cases ... It was a difficult decision, but we thought it was in the city's best economic interest to settle."

Only two of those 60 cases went to court -- a 2002 civil rights claim in which a man was traumatized by police questioning him in his home about a crime he was never suspected of committing and a 2009 officer-involved shooting.

The latter resulted in a $4.25 million judgment against APD -- which was reduced to $417,000 because of a state law that caps payouts -- and a stern dressing down from a state District Court judge who said the department's policies are "designed to result in the unreasonable use of deadly force."

City Councilor Ken Sanchez said he favors considering each case on its merits, but settling 58 of 60 cases is "a problem," he said.

"It seems like we've just gone from one extreme to another," Sanchez said.

Perry acknowledged that the shift in policy is at least partially responsible for an increase in payouts under Berry.

A statement from the president and vice president of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association says the policy shift amounts to a lack of support for police officers from the city administration.

"We are trained to make life-altering decisions in an instant," says the statement, which is signed by union president Joey Sigala and vice president Felipe Garcia. "When that instant becomes clouded by the sensationalism of these claims and the feeling that (officers) will receive no support from the city administration, it can cause hesitation. This hesitation can potentially cost (officers) their lives and the lives of those they are sworn to protect."

There are cases stacking up that were initiated since Berry took office.

There were 20 police shootings between January 2010 and August 2011, 15 of which were fatal, and they have spawned at least a half-dozen lawsuits.

Perry said he couldn't comment on the pending lawsuits, but said the city will carefully consider each one.

"If they are close calls where reasonable minds could differ, those cases should be heard in open court," he said. "Because there have been a lot of serious allegations (made by critics of APD and the shootings) maybe that's something that's best decided in the full light of day."

Some exceptions

Chavez's no-settlement policy wasn't hard and fast, especially toward the end of his time in the Mayor's Office.

For example: In July 2009, the city agreed to pay $575,000, including attorney fees, to settle a civil lawsuit brought by a woman who said she was taken out of a hospital and raped by onduty Albuquerque police officer David Maes.

Deputy City Attorney Kathryn Levy said at the time that the settlement represented "an extremely limited exception" to Chavez's no-settlement policy.

Earlier that year, the city reached a $685,000 settlement in a lawsuit filed by the family of Randi Regensberg, a 21-year-old woman who was killed in a murder-suicide by her estranged boyfriend, Cory Kotrba, in 2006. At the time of that settlement, Levy said the policy didn't apply since the lawsuit was not alleging excessive force and it dealt with systemic issues.

In 2005 and 2006, the city paid more than $900,000 to settle claims of sexual assault brought by women against former APD officer Christopher Chase, who was convicted criminally of criminal sexual penetration. Chase's actions also cost the city more than $1 million after a federal jury verdict.

Chavez told the Journal in 2005, after the first settlement in the Chase case, that he was fine-tuning the nosettlement policy.

"That still brings to the fore the question of what happens when there's clear liability. I have no interest when you get a creep like Chase, making a victim go through the rigors of proving liability."

Chavez's last year in office, 2009, saw a handful of cases settled. More than $2.7 million was paid out that year.

Meanwhile, it is not unusual to have cases carry over to a new administration. When Chavez took office for the second of his three mayoral terms at the end of 2001, there were numerous police misconduct cases already sitting on his desk from former Mayor Jim Baca's term. All but one of the cases resolved during Chavez's first two years in office were filed under Baca.

Gumming up courts

CAO Perry said the most important factor in doing away with the no-settlement policy was "doing what's right for the taxpayer."

In contending some cases would cost taxpayers more if they went to trial, Perry pointed to the wrongful arrest of Gabriel Gonzales in 2005. Gonzales had confessed to murder, Perry said, but was later proven innocent. He sued the city.

In July 2010, the city agreed to a structured settlement that cost $1.2 million including attorneys' fees.

"If we had gone to trial there, we very well could've lost $2 million, plus another $500-$700,000," Perry said.

The city's reputation in federal court also weighed on the decision, he said.

In December 2008, U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo found that: "Refusing to make a good-faith effort to settle cases, while at the same time declining to devote the resources necessary to perform the additional trial work generated by this refusal, can be seen as an effort to avoid the burdens of litigation altogether so as to deprive the plaintiff of his day in court. Such a 'no-litigation' policy reflects a high degree of culpability, is unfairly prejudicial and interferes with the judicial process."

Armijo's 39-page opinion came in the lawsuit filed by Justin Graham over a March 23, 2004, incident at his home. A jury returned a verdict awarding Graham more than $35,000 in damages.

Armijo found that delays by the City Attorney's Office in preparing the case for trial, coupled with the city's "no settlement" policy in cases alleging police misconduct, left Graham with virtually no means of resolving his claims efficiently.

The policy of taking to trial any civil rights claim against APD inevitably means more pretrial legal work for the city, Armijo noted.

Chavez said at the time that: "The policy has served the dual purpose of avoiding the expenditure of tax dollars on frivolous lawsuits and shedding light on police practices."

No accountability

Albuquerque attorney Joe Fine, who has represented clients in police misconduct cases, said the no-settlement policy contributed to a lack of accountability among APD officers.

"Mayor Chavez's policy of not settling police misconduct cases might have saved the city money on a shortterm basis, but, if this pennywise, pound-foolish policy had continued, it would have resulted in more needless injuries and, in the long-run, a greater financial loss," Fine said. "While in the short-term the city is likely to pay less money by applying a 'no settlement policy,' in the long-term, the culture created would result in more unjustified police shootings and more money spent by taxpayers.

"Mayor Berry's policy of settling meritorious police misconduct cases and holding police officers responsible will erode the culture of non-accountability created by the (policy) and will result in fewer unjustified shootings and a substantial savings to taxpayers."

CAO Perry said addressing the accountability issue was among the reasons for changing the policy, but he said that does not amount to a lack of support for officers.

"We support our officers, but when it comes down to financial decisions, those are not made by the officers," he said. Perry said the city is likely to continue considering officer misconduct claims on a case-by-case basis.

He said it's too early to say whether the shift in policy has worked.

"We're continuing to learn, but it's hard to look at an objective decision about whether you should settle or try cases based on two years with backlogged case," Perry said. "If settlement vs. nosettlement works as a global approach? We would need more than two years to see."


California cops shoot and kill fellow officer suspected of sexual misconduct while trying to arrest him



The officer was manning a DUI checkpoint when the shooting occurred shortly after 1 a.m

By The Associated Press / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS


SANTA MARIA, Calif. — A police officer under investigation for sexual misconduct with a teenage minor was shot and killed while on duty by fellow officers Saturday as they tried to arrest him on California’s central coast, authorities said.

The officer was manning a DUI checkpoint when the shooting occurred shortly after 1 a.m. He was declared dead after emergency surgery at Marian Medical Center, Santa Maria police Chief Danny Macagni said in a statement.

The officer, a four-year Santa Maria department veteran, had just learned of the internal investigation of an alleged sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, and it became necessary to arrest him immediately, Macagni said.

“We had no choice,” Macagni said in video of an afternoon news conference posted by KCOY-TV. He said investigators had evidence “that demanded that we go out and take this officer off the street immediately.”

Supervising officers were sent to make a felony arrest, but he struggled with them when they arrived, first putting up a physical fight, then firing his gun but hitting no one, Macagni said.

“He chose to resist, he drew his weapon, a fight ensued, he fired his weapon,” the chief said.

Several officers came to help the police making the arrest, and one of them shot the suspected officer in the chest once, Macagni said.

Detectives had begun investigating the alleged relationship on Thursday night, and minutes before the shooting had confirmed that an “inappropriate” and “very explicit” relationship had been going on, Macagni said.

He said he could not give details because of the sensitivity of the investigation, but “there was some witness intimidation involved” and the arrest couldn’t wait for a more proper time or place.

“The information that we had in hand demanded that we not let him leave that scene, get in a car, drive somewhere, it would put the public at risk,” Macagni said at the news conference. “We just did not know what was going to happen, we did not expect him to react the way that he did.”

Macagni said police had expressed condolences to the officer’s family.

The officer who fired the fatal shot, an eight-year department veteran, has been placed on administrative leave, and the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department was investigating the shooting, Macagni said.

The name of the officer killed has not been released because some family members were still being notified, and the name of the officer who fired the shot was withheld while the incident was under investigation, police said.

Santa Maria is a city of some 100,000 people about 60 miles northwest of Santa Barbara and 160 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.