Part 1
By John B. Greet
According to the California
Innocence Project
“Police misconduct encompasses
illegal or unethical actions or the violation of individuals’ constitutional
rights by police officers in the conduct of their duties.”
Black’s Law Dictionary defines
misconduct, in this context, in part as
“Any unlawful conduct on the
part of a person concerned in the administration of justice which is
prejudicial to the rights of parties or to the right determination of the
cause.”
These definitions, and others
we might find, come close. I would personally define police misconduct as
“Any willful or negligent
violation of an applicable policy, rule, or other regulation; or of any
statutory or case law, when committed by a sworn or civilian, paid or
volunteer, police employee.”
This article deals primarily
with misconduct committed by sworn police officers.
Regardless of the source, and
there are many, I think most people can agree that police misconduct boils down
to a violation of both public trust and professional standards. Misconduct can
take many forms and span a wide spectrum of seriousness.
Some Examples
An officer who, absent a
reasonable justification, fails to file or correct a police report in a timely
manner has committed misconduct, because there exists a policy requiring that
he or she do so.
An officer who parks his or her
car in a red curb and then enters a restaurant to have a meal has committed
misconduct, because there exists a policy prohibiting that and because it is a
clear abuse of his or her authority.
An officer who uses excessive
force in making an arrest has committed misconduct, because there exists a
policy prohibiting that, because it is a clear abuse of his or her authority,
and because it may ultimately be deemed unlawful.
An officer who violates the
civil or constitutional rights of others under color of authority has committed
misconduct, because there exist policies prohibiting that, because it is a
clear abuse of his or her authority, and because it is a violation of both
state and federal law.
Given the number of policies,
rules, regulations, and statutory and case laws that apply to law enforcement,
the number of ways an officer might commit some form of misconduct is
considerable.
Proving and Documenting Police
Misconduct
As I have written in the past,
all police misconduct is wrong and, if proven, should result in the strongest
sanctions that policy and/or law allow. Not all questionable conduct is
automatically misconduct, however, and not all misconduct rises to the level of
a tort or a crime.
As with any offense committed
by anyone else, an offense of police misconduct must be proven to a reasonable
and objective standard before the officer can be punished. I would not presume
to claim that we discover all police misconduct which actually occurs nor that
it all can be proven. Unfortunately, police agencies and the governments of
which they are a part can only deal with the misconduct which comes to their
attention and can only punish the misconduct which can be proven objectively.
Condemning misconduct is
proper. By the same token it seems unreasonable to paint the entire law
enforcement profession, or an entire police department, with a broad brush of
condemnation, because of misconduct committed by a relative few.
To my mind, though, the true
challenge is less in proving misconduct than in accurately documenting the
degree to which it occurs, particularly at the state and national levels.
At LBPD, there exist thorough
Internal Affairs records for every officer who has ever had a formal complaint
filed or opened against him or her. The longer an employee serves, the larger
such files typically, and unfortunately, become. Not necessarily because each
officer commits increased amounts of misconduct, but because they often receive
complaints whether those complaints are valid or not and each complaint has to
be investigated, and each investigation thoroughly documented.
Part of the Internal Affairs
Division’s responsibility is to accurately track complaints against officers in
LBPD and to provide regular and thorough summaries to Chief Luna and his Command
staff.
According to California law,
Internal Affairs files are considered part of police officers’ confidential
personnel records, thus they are not made available to the general public.
Officers have the right to review their own files (under supervision) and
department supervisors, managers, and executives may review them as needed. On
occasion, the City Manager and elected Mayor, Councilmembers, and City Attorney
may also review these files.
To my knowledge, however, there
is no government-managed statewide or nationwide database which tracks police
misconduct. Given the violation of public trust which misconduct represents,
this surprises me. At the very least, State Attorney’s General should collect
related data and then voluntarily share it with the U.S. Attorney General for
the same purpose…tracking police misconduct and analyzing the types that occur
and the discipline typically imposed.
Who Does Misconduct Harm?
First and most importantly, the
recipient of the officer’s misconduct is harmed, whether physically,
financially, or by being unlawfully deprived of his or her rights to some
degree.
Government is harmed. Elected
officials are often extremely frustrated with police misconduct, especially the
very serious sort, which often results in claims against the city for monetary
damages. The Mayor and Council have to approve the settlement of these claims
or agree to have the City Attorney litigate them in the event of a lawsuit.
Payouts for officer misconduct can –and do- cost the city millions and millions
of dollars.
Other cops are harmed. Few
people are more frustrated and angered by bad cops than other police officers.
Those few bad cops among them only make their own jobs that much harder and,
often, far less safe. Given the officers killed and assaulted statistics I
reported in my last Op-Ed, no professional police officer wants his or her job
made any harder or any more uniquely hazardous than it already is.
The people in the community are
harmed. The general public is especially justified in being angry and
frustrated with bad cops. As is well known, the police derive their authority
from the very public they serve. The public asks a great deal of its police
officers and provides them with a great deal of trust, authority, and resources
so they can meet the community’s policing needs. When the police violate their
community’s trust, they slowly begin to lose the public’s support. Without the
public’s moral and financial support, cooperation, and voluntary consent to
submit to police authority, local police departments simply cannot function
effectively and, in severe cases, may be disbanded altogether.
In Part 2 of this article, I
will discuss in greater detail some attempts to quantify and analyze police
misconduct in the United States and highlight some violations of public trust
by former Long Beach Police Officers.
In Part 3 of this article I
will suggest some ways to improve police-community relations, generally and
propose some ways police oversight in Long Beach may be improved.
Op-Ed:
Police Misconduct Harms Everyone, Part 2
By John B. Greet
In Part 1 of this series I
offered several possible definitions for police misconduct and discussed
several of the more general aspects of the topic.
In this part of the series I
list a few specific examples of prior incidents of misconduct at the Long Beach
Police Department (LBPD) as well as some attempts to quantify and analyze
police misconduct throughout the nation.
Examples of past misconduct
Throughout LBPD’s history there
have unfortunately been a number of examples of severe misconduct by its (now
former) officers.
In 2013 a former detective was
arrested and prosecuted for using her position to help a criminal street gang.
In 2013 a former officer
pleaded guilty to several counts of sexual misconduct.
In 2012 a former officer
charged with assaulting his wife was sentenced to 12 years and four months in
state prison.
In 2010 a former officer
pleaded guilty to stealing firearms.
This was not intended to be a
complete or comprehensive listby any means. There are many other regrettable
incidents of proven misconduct by former LBPD officers and, in most every case,
the misconduct occurred while the officers were on duty.
Perspective
Habitual critics of the
department often seem to take great pleasure in posting more comprehensive
lists of this type but seem strangely reluctant to acknowledge that in each
case of police misconduct there exist department policies that prohibit all of
it.
Similarly, these critics often
lack a certain measure of perspective. Instances of any degree of proven
misconduct arguably represent less than 1% of the total activity in which LBPD
officers engage throughout any given year. While all misconduct is wrong and
should be condemned, proven misconduct at LBPD is neither an “epidemic” nor
even “common.” Misconduct is the notable exception to the vast rule of
professional police activity in Long Beach.
As a moderately productive
patrol officer at LBPD, I typically engaged in about 60-70 policing activities
per shift (parking and traffic enforcement, subject contacts, arrests, calls
for service, investigations, reports, etc.) At the time there were about 850
sworn officers in the department. For the sake of argument, let’s say the average
activity level for each officer was 50 per shift, times 850 equals 42,500
police activities per shift department-wide, times about 180 work days per year
equals 7.7 million police activities department-wide per year, times 20 years
equals 154 million police activities over 20 years department-wide.
I challenge anyone to develop a
comprehensive list of proven LBPD misconduct incidents over 20 years, total
them up, compare them with 154 million, and try to convince any reasonable
person that proven misconduct at LBPD is an “epidemic” or even “common.”
Attempts to quantify and
analyze police misconduct
There have been several rather
ad-hoc attempts to quantify and analyze police misconduct over the years in
both the public and the private sectors. In my opinion, none of them have had
much long-term or truly probative value.
Public Sector
The U.S. Department of Justice,
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has conducted a number of surveys and
published reports broadly related to the topic but, to my knowledge, does not
oversee any continuous program to collect and analyze data related to police
misconduct throughout the United States. I believe it should do so. I do not
think the BJS has the constitutional authority to mandate that state and local
agencies share their misconduct complaint data but I do think those agencies
should agree to do so voluntarily.
The State of California
licenses all state and local police officers in the state and also sets
standards for peace officer training through its Commission on Peace Officer
Standards and Training (POST). For this reason and others I think all such
agencies should be required to share their misconduct complaint data with the
State Department of Justice (DoJ). To my knowledge this does not occur and
beyond sometimes investigating crimes committed by police or accepting
misconduct complaints under very limited circumstances, the State DoJ does not
appear to collect any comprehensive data on police misconduct.
The Los Angeles County District
Attorney’s Office has a Justice System Integrity Division which is responsible
for investigating and prosecuting any allegation of criminal misconduct
committed by a peace officer within the county, whether on or off duty.
Investigators and Deputy D.A.’s from this Division also respond on all
officer-involved hit shootings in the county and investigate them concurrently
with, but independently from, the involved agency and, in the case of
fatalities, with the County Coroner’s Office. Again, though, the District
Attorney does not appear to collect or analyze data of officer misconduct
within the county.
Private Sector
The most common result of a
standard Boolean search related to Officer Misconduct reporting and tracking
appears to be a project the CATO Institute currently produces called the
National Police Misconduct Reporting Project (NPMRP.) NPMRP began in 2009 as a
private project but the owner transferred the rights to CATO in 2012. NPMRP
offers a number of valuable resources and provides a “Daily Feed” of misconduct
reports from around the nation. Although part of the original intent of NPMRP
was to document police misconduct on an ongoing and comprehensive basis, the
project has produced only two such reports, in 2009 and 2010, and no reports at
all since CATO assumed control of the effort in 2012.
Unfortunately, as a serious
study of police misconduct NPMRP has limited value because its reports only
document alleged misconduct and from only a small percentage of the total
agencies throughout the nation. There is no data on the results of any
subsequent administrative or criminal investigations, and only sparse data on
the arrests, convictions, and incarceration rates of former police officers.
Sadly, these reports are far from the comprehensive or objective sort that
might provide serious public policy researchers with much in the way of
valuable information.
In Part 3 of this article I
will suggest some ways to improve police-community relations, generally and
propose some ways police oversight in Long Beach may be improved.
Editor's note: the views
expressed in this OP-ED do not necessarily reflect those of the Long
Beach
Post, its staff, or its ownership. To submit a letter to the editor or an
OP-ED, please email editor@lbpost.com .
