Fairfax County needs to fire the good ole boy running our police department and hire this guy

Head of LA's police commission on reform: 'You have to change hearts and minds'

by A Martínez and Dorian Merina  

Matthew Johnson is president of the Los Angeles Police Commission. Johnson was elected president of the commission in September 2015.Maya Sugarman/KPCC

From Chicago to South Carolina, New York to Cleveland, police shootings and questions of how and when officers use force are drawing increased scrutiny.

Here in L.A., it's a topic that we've been taking a close look at, as well. KPCC's investigation, Officer Involved, found that over a five-year period, from 2010 to 2014, at least 375 people were shot by on-duty officers from multiple agencies in Los Angeles County. To date, no officer has been prosecuted for the shootings.

L.A.'s police commission is one group that reviews and adjudicates such incidents. The commission is a civilian-led body that oversees the LAPD. It has five members who are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council.

The Commission's new president Matthew Johnson, the board's only African American member, says he has two top goals for his new term: reducing crime and bringing down the number of police shootings. Take Two's A Martínez sat down with Johnson to talk about police reform, body cameras and the influence of racial bias.

And he started his conversation talking about his two top goals: reducing crime and bringing down the number of police shootings. Click the arrow above to hear the interview.

Highlights from the interview:

Through November 7, 2015, homicides in L.A. were up nearly 12 percent (11.7%) violent crimes were up over 20 percent (21%), compared to 2014. Has the department explained to you what the root of that increase is?

Frankly, no one really knows the answer. But let's put it in perspective: we are still at historic lows, even though we saw those rises in 2015 over 2014, we're still at historic lows. Should we be panicking? No. But should we be concerned? Absolutely. If you look at the crime figures from the first half of the year, we were seeing numbers that were way more significant in terms of increases than where we ended up. So a lot of the tactics that the [police] department has deployed to combat this rise in crime are showing that they're working.

Over the past five years, police in Los Angeles County have fatally shot black people at triple the rate of other races, such as white and Hispanic people. That’s according to our data at KPCC and the coroner’s reports on fatal police shootings. When you hear that number, what do you think?

It brings me back to why I agreed to take on this position in the first place. It's a huge problem, it keeps me up at night and it's why I'm sitting in this chair. The problem is exacerbated with the African American community, for sure, but we need to lower the number of officer-involved shootings across the board. One of the areas of training that we're spending a lot of focus on is anti-bias training because a lot of these issues are subconscious. We need to figure out ways to train our officers to recognize that bias. When they see an African American person doing something, they see a white person doing something, when they see an Hispanic, often times the same act is perceived differently – and that's a subconscious thing that's not necessarily a conscious thing – the goal of that training is to eliminate or at least help recognize where that bias could come into these situations.

In our reporting at Southern California Public Radio, we've also profiled officers who have taken great risk or faced dangerous conditions in order to perform their duty. How would you say police officers are doing in LA?

I've spent a lot of time with police officers since taking this position...and the consistent thing  that I get is that they're doing this for the right reason. They're doing this for the same reason I'm on the police commission. They have a desire to help improve our society, to help make a difference. So it's very painful for them to be in this environment right now, where there's such distrust. And they want to change it.

In a year from now, or two years from now, what would you use as a gauge to say that things are turning out the way you want them to, that [these reforms] have been a success?

I've set very concrete goals. Do I think we'll be able to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish in a year? I would like to say yes, but I think that's probably a little unrealistic. Within two years if we don't see a significant drop in use of force incidents, I will have considered my tenure a failure...You can't do it overnight, it's not just [sitting] someone in a classroom for three hours and they walk out and they're a changed person. We're talking about a significant amount of training that 10,000 officers have to go through.

Virginia should do this but it won't.....money talks in Virginia, loudly

Maryland panel recommends major changes to police practices

By Ovetta Wiggins

Washington Post

A Maryland legislative panel on Monday offered sweeping changes in police policies, including giving officers periodic psychological evaluations and allowing the public to attend police trial boards.

Under the proposed changes, residents would also be given more time to file brutality complaints.

The Public Safety and Policing Work Group voted to submit 21 recommendations to Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) and House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) for the General Assembly to consider. It spent the past six months reviewing police practices and devising ways to improve police-community relations.

“It’s a very strong working package of proposals for reform,” said Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Montgomery), a member of the panel.

As the national debate continues over the use of force by police officers, particularly against minorities, the recommendations send a strong signal that efforts to bolster criminal justice and police reforms will take place in Maryland during its 90-day legislative session.

Criminal justice reform advocates said they were pleased with many of the proposals, specific¬ally those that would create more transparency when police officers are accused of wrongdoing.

“It’s a really good first step, and we look forward to working with the General Assembly to strengthen it,” said Sara Love, the public policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland.

An official with the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police said the union will work with the legislature to ensure that police officers receive due process and are treated fairly. The union has concerns about the psychological evaluations, and a recommendation would change how quickly officers must cooperate with internal investigations.

The panel called for reducing the state’s “10-day rule,” which gives officers 10 days to get a lawyer before cooperating with an investigation, to five days.

“This is just the beginning of the process,” said Vince Canales, president of the state police union. “We know there are potential changes coming up in the legislative session.”

The panel’s recommendations are the third set of proposals from committees recently investigating criminal justice and policing issues in Maryland. A second committee made recommendations on the use of police body cameras, and a third recently submitted a 10-year, $247 million plan to reduce recidivism and the state’s prison population by focusing more on community-based programs.

The legislature’s focus on police reform this session will unfold as juries in Baltimore decide the fate of six officers who were arrested in connection with the death of Freddie Gray.

Gray, 25, died in April after his spine was severed while in police custody. His death sparked riots in Baltimore and renewed calls from criminal justice reform advocates for the state to review policing practices.

[Judge declares mistrial in case of officer charged in Freddie Gray death]

Busch and Miller created the panel after the unrest, hoping to repair the relationship between the police and the community, which is fraught with distrust.

“The workgroup heard from almost 100 witnesses and incorporated many recommendations from members of the public and law enforcement,” Busch and Miller said in a joint statement. “We believe these recommendations will make measurable progress in improving policing practices in Maryland.”

The panel was expected to finish its work in December, but it ran into trouble reaching a consensus on a number of issues, including mandatory psychological evaluations for officers.

Police officers are given evaluations before they join the force, but Sen. Catherine E. Pugh (D-Baltimore), who was a ¬co-chairman of the panel, wanted routine psychological evaluations. Del. Curtis S. Anderson (D-Baltimore), who also served as co-chairman, said he thought officers should have to undergo regular evaluations, much like they have to requalify to be able to use their service weapons.

But the idea ran into resistance from the state police union.

“I think mental-health issues are a concern and something that should be addressed,” Pugh said.

After a lengthy debate Monday about whether psychological evaluations should be required every five years, the panel voted instead to require officers to receive them periodically and after “traumatic” incidents.

The panel also called for the creation of an independent Maryland Police Training and Standards Commission that would focus on setting standards and training for all police agencies.

Panel members said they repeatedly heard complaints about a lack of uniformity in standards in departments across the state.

The police training commission would also develop and require “anti-discrimination” and “use of force de-escalation” training for all officers. It would also set up a confidential early intervention policy for dealing with officers who receive three or more citizen complaints within a 12-month period.

The panel suggests that the commission require annual reporting of “serious” officer-involved incidents, the number of officers disciplined and the type of discipline that was given.

Other recommendations include developing a police complaint mediation program, creating recruitment standards that increase the number of female, African American and Hispanic candidates, and offering incentives, including property tax credits and state and local income tax deductions, to officers who live in the jurisdictions where they work.

Ovetta Wiggins covers Maryland state politics in Annapolis.

The point is that the White House sees that the nation needs police reform

At State of the Union, Seattle held up as model for police reform

by David Kroman

President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of U.S. Congress. Credit: Lawrence Jackson

When President Obama gives his final State of the Union address tonight, a select group of people will join his wife Michelle as a living illustration of his agenda during his final year in office. The tilt will be toward social justice: a voice on criminal justice reform, an advocate for homeless veterans, a Syrian refugee, an opioid reform advocate, an empty seat for victims of gun violence.

Joining them will be Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole, Obama’s choice as the face of federally driven reform in a major city’s police department. Specifically, the Obama administration has singled out O’Toole for her work with “community policing” — i.e. walking the street more, attending meetings, getting to know community members — and body cameras, which are meant to quickly answer questions surrounding police interactions, and altercations, with people on the street.

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These tools, along with Department of Justice investigations into the practices of police departments, have been important parts of Obama’s answer to the deaths of young black men in cities like Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland and others. Seattle is further along this road than most, and success here would show that there’s hope for success elsewhere.

But while O’Toole has won praise in both Washingtons, her department is still very much in the thick of reform. A seat near Michelle Obama tonight, some believe, may be a little premature.

 When O’Toole arrived in Seattle in 2014, she inherited a police department waist deep in federally mandated reforms. Those reforms were spurred by a Justice department investigation that grew out of the shooting of Native American woodcarver John T. Williams in 2010. SPD officer Ian Birk shot Williams in the back when he refused to drop a knife he was carrying — a tool of his trade. Williams was hard of hearing. The department later paid Williams’ family $1.5 million after the shooting was ruled unjustified.

That was before the police killings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray and Laquan McDonald — men who are now household names across the country — put the issue in the national spotlight.

Mayor Ed Murray hired O’Toole, a former Boston Police Commissioner, specifically to oversee the reforms. Within six months of her hiring, she replaced the department’s top brass with two outsiders and a lieutenant. This, after 35 years of hiring from the rank of Captain within the department. The Seattle Police Management Association, the union representing captains and lieutenants, threatened an unfair labor practice claim, but she managed to negotiate a deal to provide internal leadership training and the claim was dropped.

Months later, O’Toole was the only high-ranking public official to offer support to the concerns of the Community Police Commission, the civilian component of the DOJ’s mandated police reforms, regarding management of protests and demonstrations. This, for many, was a sign that she recognized what was important to the people of Seattle, not just the powers that be within her department.

And last August, O’Toole bucked the opposition of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, the rank-and-file union, and fired officer Cynthia Whitlach for her treatment of 67-year-old William Wingate, an African American man the officer said swung a golf club at her. (Dash-cam video shows otherwise. Whitlach, who made racially charged statements on social media, claimed she was the victim of a sort of reverse racism.) O’Toole specifically cited language regarding de-escalation and biased policing that had been added to department guidelines since the beginning of Seattle’s settlement agreement with the feds. It was a reminder that she was committed to reform.

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Since O’Toole took over the department, the DOJ’s police monitor, Merrick J. Bobb, has given her increasingly positive reviews. Last June, he praised the SPD’s progress on de-escalation training, data collection, crisis intervention and transparency. In more recent reviews, he’s lauded members of the department for more consistently reporting use of force to higher-ups.

“Especially given that, between 2009 and 2011, only 0.04 percent of cases received any significant chain of command scrutiny whatsoever,” Bobb wrote, “it is a praiseworthy advance in accountability that SPD … has become far more comfortable with critically analyzing and scrutinizing officer use of force and holding officers accountable for their performance during incidents involving force.”

During a stop on her six-city “community policing” tour last September, Attorney General Loretta Lynch hailed the Seattle Police Department’s efforts as a national example. Indeed, several major cities, including New York, have sent delegations to Seattle to learn from the city’s progress. SPD’s work regarding an early intervention system — a data-driven approach to catch problems with officers before they balloon — is being closely watched locally and nationally.

 O’Toole is hard not to like. She’s got a subtle Boston accent and seems to keep her chin up at all times, literally holding her head high and back straight. A police chief’s got to eat a lot of criticism and she eats it well. She knows many of the most vocal anti-police voices in the city by name and addresses them as such. In the face of flurried questions from the media, sometimes thinly veiled accusations, she never flusters.

Even amid Lynch’s praise for the city and department as a whole, it was O’Toole who seemed to get the most glowing reviews, almost certainly a precursor to her invitation to D.C. today.

Still, O’Toole is not immune to controversy. Community members criticized her for giving too light a punishment to the officer who pepper sprayed a local high school teacher at a Black Lives Matter demonstration last Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The police unions claim she maintains an excess of captains while the department lacks for rank-and-file officers. And there is still clearly tension surrounding the fact that she went outside the department to hire her assistant chiefs.

O’Toole has also reportedly still not moved her family to Seattle, renting a home here while maintaining a place back in Boston. Some say it wouldn’t be a surprise if she were gone by next New Year’s Eve.

In the end, though, it’s not these things that worry community activists, but concern over what they see as a premature celebration of what the department has accomplished. In November, nearly 50 community groups, many of which were original signers on the first letter asking the DOJ to intervene in Seattle, mounted something of a mutiny against the police monitor and Federal Judge James Robart, who is overseeing the reform, for not advancing legislation that would make some reforms permanent.

Both Robart and Bobb have maintained that legislation codifying changes to the department ought to be considered carefully and advanced, if necessary, slowly. Mayor Murray has agreed. The result, say community advocates, is that O’Toole may be the only thing holding the reforms together. Were she to leave, the progress could crumble.

Among other concerns are whether the department’s neighborhood-level, “micro-community policing plans” are actually being put to use, and whether the city can realistically deploy body cameras and answer questions of privacy at the same time. When Mayor Murray introduced money for full deployment of body cameras in his budget, the results of the department’s pilot program — which is specifically referenced in a statement about O’Toole by the White House — were still being reviewed. They have still not yet translated into broader policy.

Meanwhile, community groups continue to say they haven’t gotten a fair hearing. During her visit to Seattle, Attorney General Lynch told reporters she was hearing positive things from the community about its relationship with the department. Members of the Community Police Commission, however, say they never actually got the opportunity to express their concerns to Lynch. “We need an honest discussion,” said Reverend Aaron Williams, a CPC member. “This was a lot of patting on the back.”

The department has made progress, and O’Toole is mostly well-liked — these things are true. And the DOJ intervention could very well lead to exactly the reform everyone hoped to see. But the work is not done yet, and if Obama suggests in his speech tonight that it is, some heads will shake in Seattle.

David Kroman

David Kroman is the city reporter for Crosscut. A Bainbridge Island native, David has also worked as a teacher, winery cellar hand, shellfish farmer and program director of a small non-profit. His Twitter is @KromanDavid and his e-mail is david.kroman@crosscut.com.

Texas Trooper Who Arrested Sandra Bland Is Charged With Perjury

 

By DAVID MONTGOMERYJAN. 6, 2016

HEMPSTEAD, Tex. — The state trooper who arrested Sandra Bland, the Chicago-area woman who three days later was found hanged in her cell at the Waller County jail, has been indicted on a perjury charge, a special prosecutor here said Wednesday.

Hours after the indictment was announced against the trooper, Brian T. Encinia, the Department of Public Safety said that the state police agency “will begin termination proceedings to discharge him.”

The charge against Trooper Encinia, a Class A misdemeanor, was announced at the end of a day of grand jury deliberations. It carries a possible penalty of one year in jail and a $4,000 fine, prosecutors said.

The charge stemmed from a one-page affidavit that Trooper Encinia filed with jail officials justifying the arrest of Ms. Bland, who was pulled over July 10 in a routine traffic stop in Prairie View, northwest of Houston, for failing to use her turn signal. Ms. Bland, 28, who was black, was returning to Texas to take a job at Prairie View A&M University, her alma mater.

Assessing the Legality of Sandra Bland’s Arrest

A video released by Texas officials confirms accounts of a physical confrontation between Ms. Bland and a state trooper. But her arrest and cause of death remain in dispute.

The trooper wrote that he removed Ms. Bland from her car to more safely conduct a traffic investigation, but “the grand jury found that statement to be false,” a special prosecutor, Shawn McDonald, said.

A police dashboard-camera video of the episode shows an escalating confrontation after Ms. Bland refuses Trooper Encinia’s request to put out a cigarette. At one point, Trooper Encinia says he will forcibly remove Ms. Bland from her car and threatens her with a Taser, saying, “I will light you up.”

Larkin Eakin, Trooper Encinia’s lawyer, said he spoke to his client after the indictment was announced. “His reaction was he’s not guilty,” Mr. Eakin said. “When you’re not guilty, you don’t expect to be indicted.”

The Videos That Are Putting Race and Policing Into Sharp Relief

The next step calls for a Waller County judge to issue a warrant, set bond and schedule an arraignment hearing. Mr. Eakin said Trooper Encinia remained on administrative duty and would appear for the arraignment when the date was set.

The question of criminal charges against Trooper Encinia was believed to be the last major issue facing the grand jury, which began its investigation in August, two special prosecutors, Darrell Jordan and Lewis White, told reporters outside the Waller County Courthouse earlier Wednesday. The grand jury had already declined to indict any of Ms. Bland’s jailers in connection with her death on July 13, effectively sustaining the medical examiner’sruling of suicide.

Ms. Bland’s family, which has filed a wrongful-death suit, has expressed frustration and disappointment with the grand jury, saying Waller County officials have failed to keep them informed about its progress. Cannon Lambert, the family’s lawyer, has called the case a “sham of a process.” The Waller County district attorney, Elton Mathis, appointed an independent panel of five lawyers, including Mr. Jordan and Mr. White, to oversee the investigation.

 

Another reasons for cops to stay in the station until we call

New York Police Sergeant to Face Internal Charges in Eric Garner Confrontation

 

By AL BAKERJAN. 8, 2016

A New York City police sergeant was served with departmental disciplinary charges on Friday for her role in the confrontation that led to the death of Eric Garner in 2014.

The sergeant, Kizzy Adonis, was one of two Police Department supervisors to initially respond to the scene of the encounter. The charges are the first official accusations of misconduct against any of the officers involved in the case.

Mr. Garner, 43, died after being grabbed from behind by one officer, Daniel Pantaleo, who threw an arm around Mr. Garner’s neck as he and several colleagues tried to arrest him on suspicion of selling loose cigarettes.

The death of Mr. Garner, which the Justice Department is investigating, illuminated the aggressive tactics employed by officersin New York when confronting people suspected of minor offenses. Agrand jury’s decision not to charge the officers involved fueled protests in the city and elsewhere and, along with several other police-involved deaths around the country, led to calls for criminal-justice reforms.

Mr. Garner, who was unarmed, died after repeatedly saying he was having difficulty breathing. Representatives of his family, civil rights lawyers and others, including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, called for changes to the secretive grand jury process.

The Police Department had said that it was waiting for the results of the federal investigation before proceeding with its own actions with regard to Mr. Garner’s death. But police officials were forced to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Sergeant Adonis because of an 18-month statute of limitations dictated by the state’s Civil Service law, said Stephen Davis, the department’s chief spokesman. Mr. Davis said the department had filed the internal charges after consulting with the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.

The statute does not apply to Officer Pantaleo, Mr. Davis said, because federal authorities were reviewing his conduct and a “criminal aspect exception applies.” The department has completed its internal inquiry into Officer Pantaleo, he said.

Sergeant Adonis, 38, joined the Police Department in 2002. She was assigned to the 120th Precinct on the North Shore of Staten Island at the time of the confrontation with Mr. Garner, on July 17, 2014, in the Tompkinsville neighborhood. She had been promoted to sergeant less than a month earlier, on June 25. Her yearlong probation was extended by six months last year.

On Friday, she was placed on modified duty, stripped of her gun and badge, and barred from doing street enforcement, Mr. Davis said.

Portions of the officers’ encounter with Mr. Garner were caught on video. That footage showed Sergeant Adonis entering the frame as Officer Pantaleo and his colleagues pressed Mr. Garner onto the sidewalk after taking him to the ground. A second sergeant, Dhanan Saminath, arrived, though it is not clear when. He was the anticrime team supervisor.

The encounter occurred on Bay Street, outside Bay Beauty Supply. The store manager said he heard the female sergeant say to the officers, “Let up, you got him already.” An officer looked up but did not let go, the manager said.

At a news conference on Friday, Sergeant Adonis stood silently with Edward D. Mullins, the head of the sergeants’ union, as he criticized Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, calling the charges “political pandering” at the expense of an officer with an “unblemished record.”

In an interview earlier in the day, Mr. Mullins said: “Commissioner Bratton bears the full responsibility for what occurred on Staten Island in the Garner case. He was the commissioner in charge of a policy, a failed policy, that should never have been. And that policy being the enforcement of untaxed cigarettes. And if anyone should be put on modified assignment, it should be him.”

Mr. Mullins said the charges against Sergeant Adonis were four counts of “failure to supervise” the situation.

“We don’t hear about the duty captain,” added Mr. Mullins, who said Sergeant Adonis was assigned to be at a meeting, not on patrol, and responded at her own initiative, at the time of the confrontation. “We don’t hear about a borough commander, a zone commander.”

As a practical matter, the internal case against Sergeant Adonis will be delayed until the federal inquiry is complete. While the deadline for filing internal charges against other officers has not passed, Mr. Davis said that none beyond Sergeant Adonis were “subject to department charges in connection with this at this point.”

Ultimately, a departmental judge will make a recommendation to Mr. Bratton about how to address the sergeant’s actions. Punishment could involve termination. As commissioner, Mr. Bratton is the final arbiter.

In November, the state’s highest court declined to order the release of transcripts from the grand jury that considered evidence in the death of Mr. Garner.

Christopher T. Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that sought the transcripts, questioned why the federal inquiry was still open. The matter, he said, is “not a tough call under the federal statute.”

“This is fine and good, but the much bigger issue is what is happening with Officer Pantaleo,” he said. “There is ample basis for a federal prosecution, and we see no reason why the Justice Department needs more time to decide whether to proceed.”

The Justice Department opened its investigation in December 2014, and it is not unusual for such inquiries to stretch past a year. Federal law enforcement officials in New York and Washington said the investigation remained active.

Georgia Prosecutors Seek Indictment of Officer Who Shot Unarmed Man

 

By ALAN BLINDERJAN. 7, 2016

DECATUR, Ga. — A prosecutor here said Thursday that he would seek a felony murder indictment against a white police officer who last year shot and killed Anthony Hill, a black man who was naked and unarmed at the time of the fatal encounter.

“Our position is that the facts and the circumstances surrounding the shooting death of Anthony Hill warrant a charge for felony murder,” District Attorney Robert D. James Jr. of DeKalb County said at a news conference.

Mr. James’s decision to pursue a criminal case against Officer Robert Olsen does not guarantee an indictment, in part because Georgia offers law enforcement officers special protections when their on-duty behavior is being reviewed by a grand jury.

Mr. James said that prosecutors would ask grand jurors, when they meet on Jan. 21, to charge Officer Olsen with felony murder, aggravated assault, violation of oath of office and making a false statement.

Officer Olsen could not be reached for comment on Thursday. Neither a lawyer who has represented him, nor the DeKalb County Police Department, immediately responded to messages on Thursday, one day after Mr. James said Officer Olsen was notified of the government’s intention to request an indictment.

Officer Olsen’s conduct has been scrutinized since last March, when he was called to an apartment complex in Chamblee, northeast of Atlanta, and Mr. Hill approached and behaved erratically. Witnesses said that Mr. Hill, whose family said he had post-traumatic stress disorder after an Air Force deployment to Afghanistan, had raised his hands or placed them at his sides and that he did not obey Officer Olsen’s instructions to halt.

In November, Mr. Hill’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in Atlanta’s Federal District Court that accused Officer Olsen of using “illegal and excessive force” against Mr. Hill, 27. That case is pending.

Georgia law allows some public officials, including police officers, to attend meetings where grand jurors hear evidence that could yield an indictment. The law, which supporters say is a vital safeguard for officers who are often required to make immediate judgments in chaotic circumstances, also permits potential defendants to address the grand jury, unrebutted and without cross-examination, at the end of the prosecution’s presentation.

It is not clear whether Officer Olsen will speak to the grand jury this month, but he testified last year when a civil grand jury reviewed the shooting. In October, that panel recommended that officials continue their inquiry.

Lawyers here said that they would not be surprised if Officer Olsen addressed the grand jury, and they said such a choice could be central — perhaps even decisive — to his defense.

“It is going to go in the way of the police 99 times out of 100 if it’s a close call, or not even a close call,” said J. Tom Morgan, a former DeKalb County district attorney who is now in private practice. “It’s got to be very egregious for a police officer to be indicted when they’ve heard from the police officer as a last witness.”

But Lance LoRusso, a defense lawyer who works with the Georgia division of the Fraternal Order of Police, said the laws here afforded officers a crucial opportunity to explain their decisions and experiences, and he said the protections helped to curb potentially overzealous prosecutions.

“It’s a check and balance on the D.A.,” Mr. LoRusso said.

Although Georgia’s legal safeguards for police officers are among the country’s most generous, the state is one of more than a dozen that have enshrined protections for officers whose on-duty actions draw scrutiny. A police officer in Maryland, for instance, may wait 10 days before giving a statement to investigators. In Florida, a police officer has the right to be questioned by a single investigator.

Despite Mr. James’s words of caution about the ultimate authority of the grand jury, Mr. Hill’s girlfriend said Thursday that she welcomed the step toward a possible indictment, particularly at a time when white police officers elsewhere have not been prosecuted in the killings of unarmed black men.

“I’m glad that we have an officer off the streets,” Ms. Anderson said of Officer Olsen, who was placed on administrative leave after the shooting. “He murders people because he’s hiding behind the badge

 

I think not

groan at will

The Problem with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Latest Attempt at Police Reform

 By Tom McKay December 30, 2015

In the wake of searing criticism alleging Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel turned a blind eye to — and in some cases allegedly covered up — a series of bloody police shootings under his tenure, the mayor has announced the Chicago Police Department will begin requiring all officers to be trained in the use of and equipped with Taser technology.

"The policy changes center around de-escalation tactics to reduce the intensity of a conflict or a potentially violent situation at the earliest possible moment, emphasizing that the foremost goal is to protect the safety of all involved," Emanuel said in a press conference on Tuesday, according to USA Today.

According to ABC 7, other changes include encouraging officers to call backup before heading into dangerous situations and extending the minimum amount of time an officer has to spend on desk duty following a shooting from 72 hours to 30 days.

The change of policy is motivated by more than a desire to protect Chicago citizens from unnecessary police violence. Chicago officers shot a man named Ronald Johnson in the back on Oct. 12, 2014. Days later, on Oct. 20, city Officer Jason Van Dyke shot a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, 16 times in the back — and Emanuel's office fought to keep the dashboard camera video, which would later prove crucial in bringing murder charges against the officer, under wraps for 13 months.

Earlier this month, the mayor publicly apologized and called McDonald's death "totally avoidable" around the same time his job approval ratings plummeted to 18 percent. Emanuel was up for re-election during the timing of the investigation into McDonald's death, leading some to argue he covered it up for political gain and call for hisresignation.

This weekend, Chicago officers shot and killed 19-year-old Quintonio Legrier and 55-year-old Bettie Jones, a mother of five and a bystander. Both victims were black.

Though Tasers and other less-lethal weapons offer an alternative to firearms when dealing with suspects, they have also been linked to hundreds of deaths between the years of 2001 and 2013 in the United States.

Experts also say the devices can be abused by departments with lax rules on when the devices can be deployed.

"I think the biggest problem with stun guns is because they are perceived as not-so-deadly force, the constraints on using them are less," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's New York City chapter, told the Los Angeles Times. "The reluctance to use them is far less."

"These should be restricted to only those situations where an officer is protecting himself from violence," Justin Mazzola, Amnesty International deputy director of research, told Mic. But instead, they're "being used as a compliance tool" against suspects who are not necessarily dangerous but are disobeying officers' commands.

Simply introducing a new type of weaponry to the police force is also far less than many members of the Chicago community are asking for, especially considering Chicago police have been linked to lethal Taser abuse before.

"This community is under siege, and the police department has two sets of rules, one for blacks and one for whites," Greater St. John Bible Church pastor and local activist the Rev. Ira Acree told USA Today. "It's not just as simple as 'Let's put Tasers on police officers.' But because of the erosion of trust in the community, [Rahm]'s always in a reactionary mode."

Cleveland police police abuse police brutality Tamir Rice

How the Law Protects Police Who Kill

Despite the political pressure to prosecute cops in cases like Tamir Rice’s, the current system grants enormous leeway to officers who employ lethal force.

•           DAVID A. GRAHAM

•           @GrahamDavidA

Although 2015 will go down as the year when the United States began grappling with the problem of police violence, it ended with a trio of defeats for reformers.

First, a jury in Baltimore was unable to come to a verdict in the trial of Officer William Porter, one of several officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray. Several days later, a grand jury in Waller County, Texas, decided that there had been no crime committed in the death of Sandra Bland in a jail cell there. Finally, and most gallingly to many observers, on Monday a grand jury in Cuyahoga County decided not to indict two officers in the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

Taken together, these cases—and particularly the Baltimore and Cleveland cases—demonstrate yet again the difficulty involved in holding police accountable when civilians are killed. Even as there is greater awareness about the toll that police killings take, police are seldom prosecuted, and when they are, they are seldom convicted. That was the case before Michael Brown’s death in August 2014, and it remains true today. The reasons for that are various. Prosecutors are reluctant to bring charges against police, because they rely on officers to gather information and serve as witnesses in other cases. Juries tend to be deferential to officers.

There are also legal protections: In Graham v. Connor, the Supreme Court ruled that events “must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” Finally, even when the facts seem clear-cut, the law grants police wide latitude. Although many people who watched dash-cam footage of Bland’s arrest were horrified by Trooper Brian Encinia’s conduct, police experts who reviewed the footage, including some who criticized Encinia’s judgment in no uncertain terms, generally felt he had acted within his legal authority. Many departments employ “use-of-force matrices,” which detail what steps an officer may take during an incident, in some cases giving them the right to use more aggressive action than might be necessary or seem justified to an outside observer.

This was particularly apparent in the Rice case. The boy was shot by an Officer Timothy Loehmann just seconds after he arrived on the scene, sent by a dispatcher who told him there was a report of a man pulling out a gun and pointing it at people. Surveillance footage of the death galvanized and appalled the nation. The 12-year-old being gunned down by the officer so abruptly seemed to exemplify overuse of deadly force, while the ensuing events—Rice’s sister was prevented from reaching him, and officers did little to save his life—clinched the case as a signal injustice. As more information emerged about Loehmann, including his abbreviated, troubled career with another Ohio police department, there seemed to be widespread recognition that he shouldn’t have been wearing a badge and that he had acted inappropriately when he shot Rice.

The problem is that although Loehmann’s actions may have seemed obviously inappropriate to a layman, that doesn’t mean that they actually violated the law. Three independent reports, commissioned by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty all found that the Loehmann and his partner Frank Garmback had acted within proper protocols and rules for officers. (One reportused particularly unfortunate and offensive language, likening Rice’s loss of life to the potential end of Loehmann’s career.) The grand jury’s decision not to indict is simply the latest evidence that no statutory crime may have been committed.

In announcing the grand jury’s decision, McGinty made that argument: What happened was terrible, but I can’t prove it was a crime. “The state must be able to show that the officers acted outside the constitutional boundaries set forth by the Supreme Court of these United States,” he said, and while Rice’s death was a “tragedy,” McGinty said, “it was not, by the law that binds us, a crime.”

That isn’t to say that McGinty couldn’t have procured an indictment—if not necessarily a conviction—if he’d taken a more aggressive strategy. The DA has come in for harsh criticism throughout the case. He took an extremely long time to bring the case before a grand jury—so long, in fact, that Rice’s family and activists dredged up an obscure Ohio law to get a municipal judge to issue at warrant for the officers, circumventing the McGinty’s process. (They received an unsatisfying split decision: A judge ruled that there was probable cause to arrest the officers, but that the law did not actually authorize him to issue warrants.)

Activists and other observers accused McGinty of issuing the three independent reports as a way to justify a future failure to indict—a suspicion that Monday’s announcement will only reinforce. McGinty also failed to convict Officer Michael Brelo in the 2012 deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, two residents gunned down after a mistaken chase. In short, McGinty seems at best soft on police and at worst ineffective as a prosecutor. “It has been clear for months now that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty was abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment,” Rice’s family said in a statement.

But one tough lesson of the William Porter case is that however lethargic McGinty’s approach may have seemed, a more aggressive approach is no guarantee of different results. Whether prosecutors move glacially and timidly or quickly and boldly, it’s hard to hold police accountable because of the way the law is written and the system works. Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby did practically everything differently: She moved with incredible speed to bring charges against the officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray, and she brought an aggressive slate of charges—including a depraved-heart murder charge against one officer. She quickly obtained indictments from a grand jury and prepared to take the cases to trial.

But once the first trial began, the difficulties facing prosecutors became clear. A central element of the state’s case was an accusation that Porter had failed to restrain Gray with a seatbelt. Yet Porter’s team mounted a convincing argument that although Porter may have violated written policies, what he did was in line with general practice for Baltimore cops. The law was murky enough that it was tough to obtain a conviction, and some analysts felt that prosecutors were lucky to get a hung jury rather than simply an acquittal.

Further evidence for the gap between legal standards for a crime and civilian judgment about proportionality comes from the fact that even though officers are seldom prosecuted for violence, many cities—including Baltimore and Cleveland—have made large payouts to victims and their families, either as a result of civil verdicts or as settlements to end or forestall civil suits. McGinty himself suggested that the civil system might provide some recourse for Rice’s family. “We, too, want justice for Tamir,” he said. The grand jury’s decision “doesn't mean the legal system is done,” he said, adding that civil courts might provide the accountability to the family “that they deserve.”

If the failure to indict in Cleveland is a defeat for police-reform activists and Black Lives Matter, it is also a defeat for some of the movement’s critics who have espoused “responsibility politics” for African Americans who criticize the justice system. In October, I noted Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy’s call for activists to set aside victims of police violence like Michael Brown, whose reputation could be more easily impugned because of his alleged involvement in a robbery before he was shot. Proponents of respectability politics “preferred to rally attention around Tamir Rice, the black twelve-year-old who was playing with a toy gun in a park when he was precipitously shot dead by a policeman in Cleveland, rather than a figure like Michael Brown,”Kennedy wrote earlier this year.

The fact that no one was indicted in Rice’s death shows the shortcomings of that approach. While there are many death at the hands of police, there are few perfect victims, victims whose deaths are so clear-cut, so appalling, so unjustified, that a conviction is a slam dunk. Many of the people who come into contact with the long arm of the law may have committed crimes; others may simply have acted unwisely, like Rice brandishing his toy gun with the orange tip removed. None of this justifies extrajudicial execution by the state, which is what Rice—along with Samuel Dubose and Walter Scott and many others—received.

Rice’s family and other activists are calling on the Department of Justice to step in and take up the case. But as the DOJ’s investigation into Michael Brown’s death showed—and as the department hinted Monday—federal civil-rights cases are extremely difficult, and tend to require an even higher standard of proof than a simple criminal prosecution, making it unlikely that Washington will deliver justice in this case.

Although the anger of police reformers and Black Lives Matters activists ran high in 2015, there was also, at times, a naïvely optimistic underpinning to their protests. They were built around the belief that if only there were reliable statistics on deaths in the hands of police, if only there was more awareness about deaths, if only more political pressure could be brought to bear on prosecutors, then the criminal-justice system could deal with police-inflicted deaths. That hope was encouraged by the Walter Scott case, in which Officer Michael Slager was fired and charged with murder almost immediately after a video of Scott’s shooting was made public.

The results this month in Baltimore and Cleveland give reformers a roadmap to follow in 2016. It’s not enough to just enforce the laws as they exist now—though that, too, is essential. Reducing police abuse will also require political efforts to change the laws and protocols that determine how police can act and what actions are justified. Until those changes are made, stomach-churning incidents like Rice’s death will continue to go without indictments or convictions.

In The Tamir Rice Case, Cleveland Was A Police Disaster Waiting To Happen

How can we expect real police reform when prosecutors are willing to send such a clear message in the Tamir Rice case that, however egregious the error, no one will ever be punished?

By Rachel Lu

Michael Brown was (plausibly) lunging for an officer’s weapon when Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed him. Eric Garner didn’t pose much of a threat, but he wasresisting arrest, and the tactics used to subdue him wouldn’t have been life-threatening but for a particular medical condition. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was just playing with a toy pistol in a Cleveland public park when the police gunned him down in broad daylight.

No charges will be brought against the officers involved.

This is a disturbing case. It cannot reasonably be dismissed as a trumped-up grievance-fest, or even just a tragedy of errors. Rice died as a consequence of a serious police error, in a county with a history of overaggressive, undisciplined policing.

Human Resources Screwed Up

Ironically, Officer Timothy Loehmann’s salvation may have been the sheer volume of screw-ups that contributed to Rice’s death. In explaining why Loehmann was exonerated, Prosecutor Tim McGinty described the situation as “a perfect storm of human error.” Quite a number of people do seem to have demonstrated shocking incompetence here. Let’s do a run-down.

Loehmann’s emotional issues made him unreliable with a firearm.

We can start with the person who hired Loehmann to work for the Cleveland police. Loehmann had left his previous job with a suburban police department in what appeared to be a “quit or be fired” situation. He had mental health and maturity issues, and his deputy chief expressed the opinion that neither time nor training could make him a capable cop. His biggest problem? His emotional issues made him unreliable with a firearm. He became “distracted” and “weepy” even during a training session.

After losing his first job, he applied unsuccessfully to multiple other departments and finally got hired in Cuyahoga County. Within a few months on the job, he’d killed a preteen armed with a toy.

So Did The Dispatcher

Next we could look to the dispatcher, Beth Mandl, who informed Loehmann and his partner Frank Garmback that an armed man in a public park was frightening local residents. The person who called in this tip had told the dispatcher the suspect looked like a juvenile, and that the gun was likely a fake.

Doesn’t that sound like the sort of information the responding officers should have? Apparently Mandl didn’t think so.

Mandl’s background should also have raised concerns, given that she had been fired from her last dispatcher job in 2008. Last summer she quit her job with the Cleveland police, though only after failing to come to work for three months, without explanation.

So Did the Partner

It’s heartbreaking to think this tragedy might have been averted if the officers had been fully informed. Still, given that they thought they were dealing with an armed adult, wouldn’t you expect the officers in charge to exercise some caution in approaching the situation?

Less than two seconds after the officers’ arrival, the twelve-year-old was on the ground.

Footage from the scene shows that Rice was alone in the park. If bystanders were indeed alarmed by his actions, they had evidently had the good sense to get some distance. The police weren’t so prudent. Garmback drove directly up to Rice and, seeing hands somewhere around his mid-section, Loehmann emerged from the squad car firing. Less than two seconds after the officers’ arrival, the twelve-year-old was on the ground.

Loehmann now claims he warned Rice three times to show his hands. No witnesses heard this. More importantly, watch the video for yourself. (Start at the one-minute mark, and it’ll take you ten seconds, literally!) Decide whether that claim is plausible. Could Loehmann possibly have had time to issue such a command, let alone three?

Did I Mention Cleveland Has a History of Police Aggression?

When reading about high-profile cases like this, you may find yourself wondering: are we making too much of the occasional mistake? Was this mostly a freak incident?

The evidence suggests that the culture of a justice system makes a huge difference in officers’ behavior.

Usually the answer is “no.” Of course we should all appreciate that policing is dangerous, and that we can’t expect people to have perfect judgment in their split-second decisions. But the evidence suggests that the culture of a justice system makes a huge difference in officers’ behavior. Incidents like this arise far more frequently in regions with a history of police brutality and prosecutorial abuse. Cleveland definitely qualifies.

As it happens, Rice’s shooting in November 2014 preceded by mere days the release of a Department of Justice report on the Cleveland police. The report details a litany of problems, among them unexplained (and unconstitutional) stops and searches, and punitive physical aggression against suspects who were already handcuffed or otherwise restrained.

The DOJ observed that the Cleveland police seemed to have adopted a militaristic “us against them” mentality with respect to the local population, even noting little details, such as a public sign at a local station designating it the “forward operating base.” They noted, as well, that officers seemed to be poorly trained in the use of their weapons, often firing them “in a manner and in circumstances that place innocent bystanders in danger,” and using “dangerous and poor tactics to try to gain control of suspects.”

Justice found that Cleveland Internal Affairs does almost nothing to respond to use-of-force complaints.

In what is possibly the most shocking detail in the report, Justice found that Cleveland Internal Affairs does almost nothing to respond to use-of-force complaints. The report states, “A member of the Office of Professional Standards, which, among other duties, has been charged with investigating use of deadly force incidents, stated that the office has not reviewed a deadly force incident since 2012.”

When controversial cases arise, prosecutors rightly point out that police behavior can be inappropriate without being criminal. It isn’t their job (they might suggest) to ensure that the police are doing their jobs well.

Evidence suggests, however, that prosecutorial laxity and over-aggressive police forces tend to go together. We already know that Cleveland’s Internal Affairs office isn’t bothering much about police aggression. If prosecutors are likewise looking for ways to go easy on the police, “freak tragedies” like the death of Tamir Rice are foreseeable, not freakish.

One more detail of the DOJ’s report may be of interest. It said (to paraphrase), “Hey, didn’t we issue a report like this ten years ago? Have you done anything to address all these problems that we documented back in 2004? It doesn’t seem like it.” Interesting.

Who Should Go Down For This?

What actually happened on that fateful day in November? As usual, there are a mess of conflicting claims on the table about the incident itself. Multiple reports commissioned by the prosecutor’s office assert the shooting was reasonable. The ones commissioned by Rice’s family attorneys say it wasn’t. McGinty claims Rice was drawing his toy weapon when Loehmann fired. Another report says Rice’s hands were in his pockets and that he couldn’t have had time to draw.

This seems to imply the police can legally shoot anyone at all, provided they can piece together a remotely plausible case that they felt threatened.

Three cheers for the experts, eh? But we shouldn’t let officials hide in these ambiguities. A boy is dead, owing to massive incompetence on the part of law enforcement. And if, as McGinty has suggested, this behavior is within the bounds of the law, that would seem to imply that the police can legally shoot anyone at all, provided they can piece together a remotely plausible case that they felt threatened.

Apparently this holds even when it was unnecessary for the officers to put themselves at such close range in the first place, or if the suspect was just a seventh-grader with hands moving somewhere around his midsection.

Concerned citizens are right to be upset that this incident has resulted in no charges of any kind, against anyone. No reasonable person suggests this is first-degree murder, but is it right to dismiss even much lesser charges, such as involuntary manslaughter, or dereliction of duty? McGinty isn’t even willing to bring an indictment for one of those charges? How can we expect real police reform when prosecutors are willing to send such a clear message that, however egregious the error, no one will ever be punished?

Loehmann isn’t the only guilty party, however. There’s lots of blame to go around, which is why we should be hearing phrases like “take responsibility,” not “perfect storm of human error.” Cleveland’s justice system has real problems, and now the whole world knows it. Let’s not be satisfied until we see real movement towards reform.

Rachel Lu is a senior contributor at The Federalist. As a Robert Novak Fellow, she is currently researching criminal justice reform. Follow her on Twitter.