As most of you have doubtless heard by now, in an interview with CBS’s Pat Harvey on Saturday, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said that he would reopen the case that led to Dormer’s termination.

(You also I’m sure know that a $1 million reward is being offered for information leading the capture and conviction of Dorner.)

Reopening Dorner’s case is an important move. Despite vast improvement, the toxic elements of the bad old days of the LAPD still linger in cracks and corners of the department, and sometimes that toxicity leaks outside those cracks and corners. Once upon a time in the Los Angeles Police Department, those who reported other officers for wrongdoing were quickly marginalized, racism ran deep in too many quarters–both the overt and the simply careless variety—and an us versus them, siege mentality that lent itself to brutality, evidence planting, and the criminalization of whole communities, ruled too much of the day.

Through the imposition of a federal consent decree, and the work of two chiefs determined to transform the malignant sides of the department culture, along with the less recognized efforts of the city’s many good and decent cops—both supervisors and rank and file—the LAPD began the slow process of change.

As of now, the Los Angeles Police Department has come a very long way, both in terms of its own reform, and in the way it is viewed by the communities it serves, in particular the minority communities who were most on the receiving end of the brutality and racism that ran deep and wide through the department during its worst years.

But to think the job is over, is to be dreaming. For all Dorner’s monstrous (alleged) actions and his unimaginably ghastly threats, amid his vengeful ragings there are many statements that ring grimly and dishearteningly true.

Therefore it is good to hear Chief Beck make it clear that, amid the nightmarish threat that officers and their families are facing, he doesn’t want to lose the gains in community relationships that the strides that the last decade have brought—while not for a moment insisting that everything has been fixed in the Los Angeles Police Department. The department is “better but not perfect,” he said. And, so, he’s reopening the Dorner case.

“I am aware of the ghosts of the LAPD’s past, and one of my biggest concerns is that they will be resurrected by Dorner’s allegations of racism,” Beck said in a statement.

Beck’s concern is appropriate. Yet the concern needs to be broadened to include the present, not just the past. The destructive spirits of the LAPD’s bad old days, while their power is greatly lessened, are not gone. Let us all be honest about that fact.

With this in mind, reopening the Dorner case should be the first step of many for the department, not the sole step.

I think Chief Beck is leaning that direction. “We will also investigate any allegations made in his manifesto which were not included in his original complaint,” the chief wrote in his statement. But he must be backed in this endeavor by the union, by the political forces in the city, and by the men and woman of the force itself.

It should, for example, sober everyone that some LAPD officers, because of their fear that Dorner was in the area and might threaten the officer they were guarding, appeared to give themselves permission, without a scintilla of actual provocation, to light up a suspicious-seeming truck containing two newspaper delivery women—nevermind that the women’s truck did not match the make or color or the plate number of Dorner’s vehicle. We desperately want our officers to be safe from the man who is stalking them. But, their safety cannot ever be bought at the cost of the safety of the residents of the communities they have taken an oath to protect and serve.

The details of the second appellate ruling against Dorner tend, on first bounce, to suggest that he was wrong in accusing his training officer of kicking a homeless man that Dorner and his boss were apprehending, but as a law enforcement friend pointed out in a conversation about the matter Saturday night, “You know how that goes. Those outcomes can be cooked. We’ve all see it happen.” Yep, we have. And courts are notoriously reluctant to decide against police officers.

So, a thank you to Chief Charlie Beck for opening the investigation. And please, LAPD, make very, very sure that the reexamination is right and good and true. As your chief said, you are not reopening the issue to appease an alleged multiple murderer; you’re reopening it to reassure Los Angeles residents that you no longer punish whistleblowers, and that racism no longer calls the shots—either overtly or subtly—in the LAPD. And that you will not put up with officers who believe they have the right to abuse and dehumanize anyone they designate as “the bad guys.”

And, if by chance, Dorner happened to be right in the accusation that, in part, led to his termination, please have the courage to say so.

It is very painful to admit that a man who is suspected of creating so much grief and havoc— a man who wishes to create far more grief and havoc—has made some righteous points that demand our attention. But that happens to be the case.

MORE THAN 50 OFFICERS AND FAMILIES UNDER PROTECTION

The full Beck interview is above, and it’s interesting to watch. Chief Beck looks more strained than I’ve ever seen him, understandably so.

The part of his interview below gives an idea why (if we didn’t know already):

Beck: Look I have over 50 families—-50 families—of Los Angeles police officers that have protective details living with them right now, because we’re so concerned about their safety because they are specific targets of Dorner, because he’s stated that in his manifesto. And he has demonstrated through the murders of Monica and her fiance that he is serious about what he’s said in that manifesto. Now imagine having to go through you daily existence like that knowing that your family is the target of a trained assassin like Dorner. Now, imagine the way that would affect you and way you go about your day to da You know, all of us, including me, when we become police officers, we know there’s risk. And we’re willing to accept those risks. But we’re not willing to accept those risks for our kids. And our wives. and our husbands. We don’t expect them to shoulder the burdon of our profession.

Beck’s official statement can be accessed here.

The chief is a very good man in profoundly difficult situation. We are rooting for him.

NOTE: the NY Times has an interesting article on Beck’s decision to open Dorner’s case.

AND THE LA TIMES’ Jack Leonard, Joel Rubin and Andrew Blankstein have a must read story on Dorner’s case and how Dorner’s perceived credibility, more than the facts, may have decided it.

FIRING THE JUMP OUT BOYS

According to LASD spokesman, Steve Whitmore, the Sheriff’s Department intends to fire seven members of the newest deputy gang-like clique to become notorious, the so-called Jump Out Boys—a move that perhaps was in part stimulated by the grand jury action on the department’s deputy gangs.

The members of the Jump out boys are part of OSS—Operation Safe Streets—the gang investigation unit within the department.

Evidently there were two particular qualities that distinguished this deputy gang from the department’s other deputy gangs (like the Regulators, the 2000 Boys, the 3000 Boys, the Grim Reapers, the Vikings and so on). One is the fact that it’s members had the bad sense to write and print out a Jump Out Boys pamphlet laying out the mission and rules of said clique.

The other is that reportedly after a clique-member engages in a deputy-involved-shooting, he (or, one presumes, she) is entitled to have smoke coming from the gun in his Jump Out Boys tattoo. (The Jump Out Boys insignia—and tattoo design— is a skull holding a large revolver with the two playing cards behind it, one half of the famous aces-and-eights “dead man’s hand.”)

The LA Times Robert Faturechi broke the story about the Jump Out Boy’s existence, last year, and he has more on the matter of this firing. Here’s a clip:

The seven worked on an elite gang-enforcement team that patrols neighborhoods where violence is high. The team makes a priority of taking guns off the street, officials said.

The Sheriff’s Department has a long history of secret cliques with members of the groups having reached high-ranking positions within the agency. Sheriff officials have sought to crack down on the groups, fearing that they tarnished the department’s reputation and encouraged unethical conduct.

In the case of the Jump Out Boys, sheriff’s investigators did not uncover any criminal behavior. But, sources said, the group clashed with department policies and image.

Their tattoos, for instance, depicted an oversize skull with a wide, toothy grimace and glowing red eyes. A bandanna with the unit’s acronym is wrapped around the skull. A bony hand clasps a revolver. Smoke would be tattooed over the gun’s barrel for members who were involved in at least one shooting, officials said….

COULD WE STOP POSTURING ABOUT REALIGNMENT AND USE DATA-DRIVEN ANALYSIS TO LOOK AT CRIME AND RECIDIVISM INSTEAD?

With all else that’s been going on this week, we don’t want you to miss this excellent unsigned LA Times editorial (which happens to be written by my extremely smart friend, Robert Green). It analyses the findings of two reports—one of which we wrote about last month, released by the Council for State Governments Justice Center, which talked about who was getting arrested within a given period in LA County. Then last week there was another important study by the Vera Institute, which looks at mental illness, drug addition and incarceration in California.

Here’s a quick clip from Rob’s essay about what the two reports together suggest:

On Monday, in a separate study, the Vera Institute of Justice reported that a large proportion of county jail inmates from two study areas — Boyle Heights and South Los Angeles — preparing to reenter society have drug or mental health problems.

More research is needed, but the figures from both the Council for State Governments and the Vera Institute suggest that many people who wind up in jail or prison got into trouble at least in part because of clinical conditions, and that many of them come out with the same problems they had when they went in.

If public resources are to be spent effectively, California must cut its recidivism rate, and to do that, it must use data to slice through the posturing of those in politics and law enforcement who claim to “know,” without facts or figures, what people, policies or laws to blame for crime. If drug and mental health problems play a large role in landing people behind bars, it stands to reason that focusing more on diagnosis and treatment could save taxpayers money, reduce the criminal burden on neighborhoods and, by the way, address some of the misery and hopelessness of those caught in the revolving jailhouse door.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE ADVOCATES TAKE A CRITICAL LOOKS AT THE CDCR’S NEW CHIEF

While new CDCR head, Jeffery Beard, is generally viewed with optimism by most prison watchers, criminal justice reformers say there are also areas of concern. George Lavender for The East Bay Express has the story.

(I didn’t clip it as it lists a bunch of pros and cons, thus it’s better to look at the whole thing.)

CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT LOOKS READY TO OKAY LOCAL BANS ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA CLINICS

Law.com has the latest on this story. Here’s a clip of Scott Graham’s wonderfully blow-by-blow account:

Medical marijuana dispensaries are in danger of getting zoned out.

The California Supreme Court strongly hinted Tuesday that municipalities have the right to ban dispensaries via local zoning laws.

Tackling an issue that has vexed state appellate courts, the justices indicated that state laws blessing marijuana cooperatives shield them only from criminal prosecution under California law, and do not interfere with municipalities’ traditional power to regulate them as a local business.

An attorney for a cooperative argued that the city of Riverside has abused that power by adopting an ordinance that bans pot dispensaries anywhere in the city. “If you were to allow these dispensaries to be banned county by county, city by city, that would be the exact opposite of what the Legislature intended” when enacting the state’s Medical Marijuana Program in 2003, said J. David Nick.

But the justices sounded largely unmoved by Nick’s appeals to legislative purpose. “The purposes by themselves are not operative,” said Justice Goodwin Liu. They “don’t require or prohibit anybody from doing anything.”

“Don’t we start with a presumption that the ordinance is valid?” asked Justice Ming Chin.

“Why do we even have to indulge in a presumption?” asked Liu.

Nick argued in City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patient’s Health and Welfare Center that California’s 1996 medical marijuana initiative and the 2003 legislative amendments establish the right to operate dispensaries in at least one location in a city. The goals of the 2003 legislation included enhancing “access of patients and caregivers to medical marijuana through collective, cooperative cultivation projects” and shielded such projects “from state criminal sanctions” under various specified laws. Those laws include Health & Safety Code §11570, a public nuisance law directed at drug houses.

Nick says in his briefs that jurisdictions all over the state, including San Jose, the city of Los Angeles and Sacramento County, are pursuing ordinances similar to Riverside’s, putting state marijuana laws “in a complete state of chaos.”

YES, WE’VE BEEN FOLLOWING THE SCARY AND TRAGIC STORY OF FIRED LAPD OFFICER CHRISTOPHER DORMER WHO HAS REVENGE-KILLED TWO PEOPLE AND IS THREATENING TO KILL MORE.

Here’s the Daily Breeze’s version of the painfully scary story of a very disturbed and very dangerous former LAPD officer who, as I type, is still at large.

Better yet, read the Wednesday night coverage by LA Weekly’s Dennis Romero, who live-blogged the unfolding of the story of Christopher Jordan Dormer, the disgraced and dangerous former LAPD cop on a tragic revenge rampage.

LA POLICE DEPARTMENTS TO GET $$ TO HELP WITH ADDED BUDGET BURDENS CAUSED BY REALIGNMENT

When California’s prison realignment kicked in on Oct 1, 2011, nearly $400 million was allocated to LA County to offset the added costs. One of the two main recipients of the money has been the LA County Probation Department, which oversees the post-prison probation of many former inmates who, in the past, would have been on state parole. The other main recipient, is the LA County Sheriff’ Department, which has had the considerable added expense of jailing thousands of extra lawbreakers who, pre-realignment would have served their sentences in state prison.

Yet the various police forces in and around LA County have been complaining loudly for more than a year that, while their budgets aren’t hit as hard as those of Probation and the LASD, they too have substantial added costs.

For instance, in 2011, the Los Angeles Police Department moved 150 police officers out of street patrol duty to help probation officers who, unlike state parole officers, do not carry weapons, and thus often rely on local police to help with house visits and other forms of probation enforcement.

With all this in mind, last year, the state legislature voted to allocate $20 million in grants for California’s city police departments, an amount that was tentatively upped to $24 million last week according to the California Board of State And Community Corrections, which voted to distribute the money to each county according to a formula based on the various counties’ relative needs. (The extra $4 is still pending the approval of the state legislature, which has ’till mid February to act on the matter.)

GARDENA? SERIOUSLY, GARDENA?!

Los Angeles County is set to get nearly $7 million of the $24 million, which is to be divided among the county’s various city police forces.

However, until the money is divvied up, one city in each county is given “fiduciary responsibility” for the cash and then will “allocate the funds based on the collective decision of local law enforcement.”

According to documents obtained by WLA, most California counties logically chose their largest city to administrate the grant funds. For example, Alameda County chose Oakland, San Francisco County chose San Francisco, Kern chose Bakersfield, San Diego chose San Diego….and so on.

That is why it was something of a surprise to find that LA County—which has within it the city that receives, far and away, the most parolees and probationers returning from prison of any other municipality in the state—did not choose Los Angeles to manage the grant, although surely LA would have been the obvious option. Nor did it choose Long Beach, which might be the fallback position. Instead, LA County’s administrative city is…..Gardena.

Now, no doubt there is perfectly good reason that the 6-square mile city of Gardena was selected. We weren’t able to find anyone before press time who could tell us who exactly made the decision, although since Sheriff Lee Baca is on the 12-member board for State And Community Corrections, one assumes he at least had something to do with it. After all, his Undersheriff, Paul Tanaka, along with being the main person who oversees the LA County Sheriff’s Department’s budget, is also the mayor of Gardena.

WILL THE LASD CONTRACT CITIES WANT THEIR CUT?

It will be interesting to see how the allocation of $7 million plays out, as the various police agencies make their bid for a piece of what is, in reality, a very limited pie.

One would normally assume that the Los Angeles Police Department would get the lion’s share of the money, for obvious reasons, with Long Beach and possibly Burbank running at a distant 2nd and 3rd place.

However, here’s the thing: according to the rules of the grant, in addition to city police departments being eligible for a share of the grant money, county sheriff’s departments that contract to police incorporated cities within their counties (in addition to the unincorporated areas that are their core responsibility) can also put themselves in the running for the new grant dollars. The LASD has contracts to police 42 cities within LA County. Taken cumulatively, one could make the case that the LASD should get a very large piece of the $7 million funding pie—despite the fact that, as mentioned above, they’ve already received a a good share of the nearly $400 million allocated to the county in the last 2 fiscal years.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT’S RECENT BUDGET TROUBLES?

Added to the ever-more-interesting mix, right now the Sheriff is facing large cash flow woes to the degree that, as of this week, is rumored to be running substantially over his $2.8 billion budget.

In fact, at the Tuesday Board of Supervisors meeting, Baca announced that he was going to have to cut patrols in the unincorporated areas of the county, in order to manage his cash flow, which was “hemorrhaging,” he said, in part due to runaway overtime. (It seems that the LASD’s overtime costs have doubled between the past fiscal year and this one, jumping by more than $30 million.)

Things got so heated at the meeting over the LASD budget issues, that the Supervisors ordered a forensic audit of the department’s budget, to find out where all the money is going.

Moreover, one of the issues that came up in the meeting is that the LASD is providing the contract cities with services that it is not charging them for.

All this is to say that, it would not be any kind of shock to hear the sheriff make a hardball pitch for some of those nice new realignment funds.

So does any of the above have to do with the otherwise unlikely choice of the City of Gardena to administer the police department grant funds?

Oh, who knows?!

But, it is at least a matter worth watching.

THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION MAY SURPRISE YOU

It has long been assumed by many law enforcement and corrections officials, politicians and pundits, that people on parole and probation are the biggest contributors to the overall crime rate. To put it another way, those under state or county supervision for a previous crime, account for a big, bad chunk of all new arrests.

We hear some version of this assumption whenever the topic of state prison realignment comes into the conversation.

But is it true?

The Chiefs of Police for Los Angeles, Redlands, Sacramento, and San Francisco (this list obviously includes the LAPD’s Charlie Beck), along with some other criminal justice experts and leading law enforcement officials in California, decided they’d like to find out. So in 2010 they commissioned a rigorous study to learn the reality of the matter.

Between then and now, researchers at the Council for State Governments Justice Center collected and matched more than 2.5 million arrest, parole, and probation records generated between January 1, 2008 and June 11, 2011, in those four different areas. Along with the four police forces, data and help was provided by four matching probation departments, the California Department of Corrections, and two sheriff’s department, most notably Lee Baca and the LASD.

The resulting report, which was released Tuesday afternoon, had some surprising results:

COUNTER TO EXPECTATIONS, THE BIG ARREST NUMBERS DID NOT COME FROM PAROLEES OR PROBATIONERS

It turns out that a startling 78 percent of those arrested for a crime in these four California areas, between Jan. 2008 and June 2011, were not on either parole or probation.

And 62 percent of those arrested had no parole or local probation history at all.

That, of course, left 22 percent—or one out of every five arrestees—that came out of the parole/probation pool. Interestingly, the majority were on probation, not parole. And the crime those probationers or parolees were most likely to commit was drug related.

The time period covered by the 52-page study [which you can access here], stopped just short of when California’s prison realignment kicked in during October 2011, opening the door for a similar study to be done a year or two years from now, using this one as a baseline.

BUT WHAT ABOUT VIOLENT CRIMES?

The percentages were even more dramatic when it came to adult violent felony arrests.
In Los Angeles, out of 51,749 violent felony arrests, 6,001—or 11.5 percent—of those arrested were on probation.

A far lower amount 3,653—or 7 percent—of those arrested for violent felonies in LA were on parole.

The remaining 42,095—or 81 percent—were not under any supervision.

PREDICTING THE PROBLEMS

The report has a lot more in the way of intriguing information for those who take the time to read it closely.

For instance, obviously, there is a “subset” of probationers and parolees who do commit more crimes and get rearrested—for drug, property and/or violent crimes.

So the question is, how successful are we in picking which people are the most likely to go off the legal rails again—and thus who needs the most supervision and help.

The answer turns out to be mixed. Weirdly, the systems in place for parole classification—designating the high risk people who need lots more controls, and those who are generally low risk, and all in between—turn out to be fairly accurate most of the time:

Of those on parole, the people who were labeled high risk were more likely to offend than lower risk people. Specifically, 51 percent of those parolees who were arrested were in the high risk category. The moderate risk category made up 33 percent of the parole re-arrests. Those labeled “low risk” accounted for 13 percent.

However when it came to those on probation in the various counties, all predictive powers and effective assessment tools seemed to go out the window. Only 5 percent of those probationers who were arrested for new crimes had been classified as high risk, 38 percent of the new arrestees were labeled medium risk, while 37 percent were labeled low risk.

San Francisco was the one exception. Their risk assessment methods paid off. Their arrestees were: 73 percent from the high risk category, 11 percent moderate, only 2 percent were labeled “low risk.”

WHAT ABOUT THOSE “NON-REVOKABLE” PAROLEES?

In January 2010, CDCR instituted a parole supervision policy known as Non Revocable Parole.
The strategy was, to a large degree designed to lower the prison population because, for years, approximately 40 percent of those coming into California prisons were not coming in because they had been convicted of new crimes, but because they had violated a technical condition of their parole. These “conditions” were strictures that varied from testing dirty on a required drug test to showing up in the area of town where you weren’t allowed to be because it’s where your former gang hung out, never mind that your mom and your girlfriend also lived on those same blocks—plus a list of other infractions.

The idea of Non-Revocable Parole (or NRP) was to reserve that laundry list of ways that you could land back in prison for the high risk people who needed the structure the most, and lift it from the low-risk people who were then, it was hoped, were more likely to start just living their lives.

To be eligible for NRP, the parolee could not have a criminal conviction for any one of various serious offenses (sex offenses, murder, voluntary manslaughter, robbery, 1st degree burglary), and had to be assessed as low risk.

Releases of prisoners to NRP began in earnest in March 2010 and by October 2010 there were nearly 17,000 NRP parolees in California communities.

So, how did the NRPs do? Obviously, more study is needed, but contrary to The Sky Is Falling pronouncements from many, of the 170,336 adult arrests that occurred in the four jurisdictions during the 15-month period of the study that overlapped with the implementation of NRP, 216 arrests involved people on NRP. That’s under 2 percent.

Surely there is much room for improvement when it comes to screening for risk. And we need to become more effective at helping people successfully reroute the trajectories of their lives so as to avoid returning to prison.

But this study—The Impact of Probation and Parole Populations on Arrests in Four California Cities— is a good, smart, informative place to begin the next stage of work.

So a round of applause for the 4 Chiefs of Police and 2 Sheriffs who made it possible.

AND IN OTHER NEWS, BE SURE TO READ THE LA TIMES’ STEVE LOPEZ’S COLUMN ON CARDINAL MAHONY—AND AND THEN READ PATT MORRISON’S

Here’s a clip from the column:

Read the rest of this entry »

GOVERNOR SAYS PRISON POPULATION CRISIS IS OVER, THAT FEDS SHOULD REMOVE THE POPULATION CAP—MEANWHILE SOME CA LOCK-UPS STILL RUN AT WAY PAST CAPACITY

On Thursday, California Governor Jerry Brown will introduce his new proposed state budget which is expected to have some innovative and possibly controversial ideas about how better to run the state’s prison system.

In the meantime, in a press conference this past Tuesday, Brown was also talking prison policy when he announced that the prison population crisis is at an end, and that the gaggle of interfering federal judges should buzz off and give the responsibility of running the California state prisons back to the state of California.

Here’s a clip from the San Francisco Chron’s coverage of the story:

A defiant Gov. Jerry Brown declared an end to the overcrowding emergency in state prisons on Tuesday and said that the courts should return all the responsibility of overseeing prisons to state officials.

That action came hours after the state faced a deadline to inform a federal court how officials plan to further reduce the prison inmate population by June. State attorneys instead filed an appeal requesting that federal judges undo an order that had set a limit on California’s prison inmate population.

“We’ve gone from serious constitutional problems to one of the finest prison systems in the United States,” Brown said at a news conference, where he announced that he had signed a proclamation declaring an end to a state of emergency in state prisons.

That emergency was declared in 2006 by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger because of overcrowding. But since then, the population of inmates has decreased by about 43,000 to 119,200, largely because Brown’s prison realignment program shifted incarceration of inmates from prisons to county jails. Some sheriffs now say their jails are overcrowded.

(One of the finest prison systems in the U.S…? Oh, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry! Improved, yes. One should hope so. But one of the finest…? Uh, no.)

While we can understand Brown’s desire to do away with outside overseers and meddlers, and certainly, we don’t want to see the courts force some kind of crazy prisoner release, advocates and experts, who are not quite the Calif. prison system boosters that Brown was on Tuesday, feel it’s important that the pressure stays on the governor and the California Department of Corrections for just a bit longer.

And, although progress has been made, stories like this one by Joshua Smith in the Merced Sun-Star remind us that there are still challenges that remain, on the prison pop front. For instance, according to the Sun-Star, Chowchilla prison for women is running at 180 percent of intended capacity with 3,608 inmates, while earby Avenal prison is running at 171 percent capacity.

Here’s a clip:

More than a dozen groups from around the state – including the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and Californians United for a Responsible Budget — have organized a rally to protest the conditions.

“These cells were set up for two to four people max, and they’re up to eight people again,” said Colby Lenz, campaign coordinator for the coalition. “They’re not enough resources in terms of hygiene. They’re not getting cleaning supplies or tampons. It’s a public health disaster.”
The protest will be held at 3 p.m. Jan. 26 in front of Valley State Prison outside Chowchilla.
However, corrections officials dismissed the groups’ concerns.

“We’re not overcrowded,” said Dana Simas, a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman. “No inmate is being housed in nontraditional beds. We’ve been far more overcrowded than where we are now.”

(NOTE TO CDCR’S DANA SIMAS: “We’ve been far more overcrowded” is not a reassuring thing to say at this juncture. Yes, of course we know you’ve been far more overcrowded. Catastrophic overcrowding is what brought the state the years of federal oversight, plus a US Supreme Court ruling that said the state’s lock-ups are in violation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution!)

Squabbles over prison oversight aside, we are looking forward to hearing Brown’s budget proposals on Thursday.

USING TEST SCORES TO EVALUATE TEACHERS CAN DEFINITELY WORK, SAYS NEW GATES STUDY, BUT ONLY IF COMBINED WITH OTHER MEASURES

As the argument over how to measure teacher effectiveness continues, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation weighs in with a just released 3-year study involving 3000 teachers, which provides lots of data-driven food for thought. Their main conclusion was that, yes, the so-called value-added method of evaluating teachers by using changes in yearly student test scores to measure teacher performance can, in fact, be very useful. But the study also determined that the value added model works best if combined with other methods, like student surveys and certain systems of classroom observation and direct evaluation.

Here’s a clip from the executive summary.

Despite decades of research suggesting that teachers are the most important inschool factor affecting student learning, an underlying question remains unanswered: Are seemingly more effective teachers truly better than other teachers at improving student learning, or do they simply have better students?Ultimately, the only way to resolve that question was by randomly assigning students to teachers to see if teachers previously identified as more effective actually caused those students to learn more. That is what we did for a subset of MET project teachers. Based on data we collected during the 2009–10 school year, we produced estimates of teaching effectiveness for each teacher. We adjusted our estimates to account for student differences in prior test scores, demographics, and other traits. We then randomly assigned a classroom of students to each participating teacher for 2010–11.

Following the 2010–11 school year we asked two questions: First, did students actually learn more when randomly assigned to the teachers who seemed more effective when we evaluated them the prior year? And, second, did the magnitude of the difference in student outcomes following random assignment correspond with expectations?

They found that, yes, effective teaching can be measured.

Read the rest of the photo and diagram-laden study for the details.

CITY COUNCIL WANTS REPORT FROM LAPD ABOUT REDUCING GANG VIOLENCE BY WORKING WITH GANG INVERVENTIONISTS

David Fonseca of Highland Park Patch has the story. Here’s a clip:

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday stated in a dual press conference with LAPD Charlie Beck that gang crime has been reduced by 47.5-percent since he took office and that a “record-low” 152 gang related homicides were reported in 2012.

Despite the marked reduction in gang crime, Chief Beck said the problem still required is “still unacceptable” and “requires much work.”

One of the two motions passed on Tuesday, which was authored by Councilman Tony Cardenas, would require the Los Angeles Police Department to provide within 30 days a report detailing the level to which the department collaborates with gang intervention programs.

“Given the significant steps that have been taken to further professionalize the field of community-based gang intervention within the City of Los Angeles and the historic partnership that has developed among law enforcement and interventionists, a report from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) affirming the integral role of community-based gang intervention in helping to reduce violence would substantially contribute to demonstrating the overall effectiveness and necessity of intervention services during these difficult economic times,” Cardenas’ motion states.

JUVENILE JUSTICE EXPERTS CALLED IN TO TALK TO THE WHILE HOUSE AND CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS ABOUT GUN VIOLENCE

We know the White House is meeting with a lot of people on this issue, but it’s nice to know that juvenile justice experts are among them. Moreover a glance over their list of participants is heartening as they’ve got a lot of the right people included, people like Liz Ryan, founder and CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice; Mark Soler, founder and CEO of the Center for Children’s Law and Policy, and more of that ilk.

Kaukab Jhumra Smith of Youth Today has the story. Here’s a clip:

Representatives from a group of more than 300 juvenile justice and delinquency prevention organizations at the national, state and local level have met with White House staff and Congressional minority leaders at their invitation in recent weeks to provide evidence-based expertise on ways to reduce gun violence in the country, a coalition leader said.

As tasked by President Barack Obama in the wake of mass shootings at an elementary school last month, Vice-President Joe Biden and his staff have spent the last few weeks meeting with gun-control advocates, pro-gun rights groups and dozens of concerned organizations in preparation for the release of the vice-president’s recommendations for the prevention of gun violence.
According to Politico, Biden indicated today that the president could use an executive order to act on some of his recommendations, which are expected to be made public next week.

HELPING GIRLS ENTANGLED IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

A new report from the Georgetown Center on Poverty says that things like diversion programs, staff training, and gender-specific programming need to be developed in order to help the fastest-growing group in the juvenile justice system—girls.

NPR’s Carrie Johnson has the story. Here’s a clip:

Experts say girls make up the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice system, with more than 300,000 arrests and criminal charges every year. A new report by the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy says the system isn’t doing enough to help those young girls.

Most girls who wind up tangled in the justice system have family problems, trauma or a history of abuse, says Georgetown University professor Peter Edelman, who co-authored the report, “Improving the Juvenile Justice System for Girls.”

More than half of the girls detained these days don’t commit big crimes. More often their transgressions are things like skipping school, breaking curfew or running away from home, says Edelman, who has studied justice up close since the 1970s.

“Getting them back into school and getting them back on a path without invoking the sanctions of the juvenile and criminal justice system,” Edelman says, “that is so much better in terms of not leaving those wounds and scars and preserving the possibilities for the future.”

REASONS BEHIND LAPD CHIEF BECK’S IMMIGRATION TACTICS

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck says that his recent immigration initiatives and policy changes are not based on his personal views on illegal immigration or political strategy, but directly related to public safety. (We’re a day late on this story about LAPD Chief Beck and immigration, but it’s important and we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it. For background, go here and here…and here.)

The LA Times’ Joel Rubin has the very well-written story. Here are some clips:

A decade ago, Charlie Beck watched as William J. Bratton arrived in Los Angeles and began rebuilding a department deeply tarnished by the Rodney King beating, riots and corruption scandals. Bratton made many changes as chief, but Beck was particularly taken by his aggressive effort to rebuild the LAPD’s broken relationship with the African American community, which over and over Bratton said was a cornerstone to his success.

Beck carried the lesson with him when he replaced Bratton three years ago as chief of the nation’s second-largest police force. With nearly half of the city’s population Hispanic and the federal government’s aggressive efforts to identify and deport illegal immigrants sowing fear in immigrant communities, Beck believed that his success or failure as chief rested heavily on whether he could replicate Bratton’s success — but this time with Latinos.

His actions have made him a lightning rod for criticism, even from some of his own police officers. But they have also established Beck as a forceful national voice for a more restrained approach to illegal immigration, a high-profile counterpoint to hard-liners like Sheriff Joseph Arpaio in Arizona’s Maricopa County.

[SNIP]

In an interview, Beck said he was driven to act on some level by his sense that he can and should help level the playing field for illegal immigrants, whom he said have suffered unfairly from crude federal immigration laws. But Beck said those personal views were not as important as his more practical belief that extending an olive branch to immigrants in Los Angeles was vital to the LAPD’s crime-fighting efforts.

“It’s not so much that I am a dove on immigration,” he said. “It’s that I’m a realist. I recognize that this is the population that I police. If I can take steps — legal steps — to make them a better population to police then I will…. I do have sympathy for their plight, but my actions are not based mainly on that. It makes absolute law enforcement sense. Any one of these things I’ve done is directly tied to public safety.”

LA CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS VOTE AGAINST PUPPY AND KITTY MILLS

LA City Council voted Wednesday in favor of banning the sale of non-rescue dogs, cats, and rabbits in pet stores. If it passes with a majority a second time, it will bring about a three year trial run to see if targeting puppy and kitten mills will bring down euthanization rates at shelters.

LAist’s Lauren Lloyd has the story. Here’s a clip:

City News Service explains that the ordinance “is intended to shut down puppy and kitten mills and reduce the tens of thousands of euthanizations performed on unclaimed animals each year.” While it clearly mandates that pet stores cannot sell animals obtained from commercial breeders, pet stores would still be permitted to sell animals from shelters, humane societies and registered rescue groups. Individuals would still be allowed to buy directly from breeders as well.

Penalties for stores caught disobeying the law include misdemeanor charges and a first-time penalty of $250. A third strike would carry a fine of up to $1,000.

The wolves and Pomeranians at WitnessLA approved this message.

SUSPECT PLEADS GUILTY IN MISTAKEN IDENTITY MURDER OF LASD DEPUTY

A 28-year-old LA gang member pleaded guilty Tuesday to the murder of well-liked LA Sheriff’s Dept. Deputy Juan Escalante, who at the time of his death was working at Men’s Central Jail. (For background on Deputy Escalante’s heartbreaking story, go here.)

The LA Times’ Richard Winton has the story. Here’s a clip:

Carlos Velasquez, 28, pleaded guilty to murder and one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in the Aug. 2, 2008, slaying of Dep. Juan Abel Escalante, right. The plea was accepted by Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen.

Velasquez was originally charged with capital murder and could have faced the death penalty. He admitted he killed the deputy as he was leaving his parents’ Cypress Park home to head to work at the Men’s Central Jail.

Escalante was shot in the back of the head as he reached into his car to adjust a child’s car seat.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Phillip Stirling and John Colello say Velasquez wrongly believed he was killing a gang rival and shot the deputy numerous times.

FURTHER CALLS TO ACTION FOR SHERIFF BACA

In an op-ed for the LA Times, Richard Drooyan, the Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence’s general counsel, and Miriam Aroni Krinsky, the Commission’s excutive director, say that if Baca does not follow through with his promise to fulfill the Commission’s 63 recommendations and uphold lasting reform, he should not be reelected next term. (For background on the Commission’s report and the sheriff’s response, go here.) Here’s a clip:

In order to have meaningful and lasting reform after the spotlight on the jails recedes, the Sheriff’s Department should conduct a nationwide search for a professional and experienced corrections leader to run the department’s custody operations. The commission concluded that because “accountability is an absolute necessity,” this person should report directly to the sheriff, while the sheriff, in turn, is accountable to the voters.

The commission’s report also recommended a new approach to staffing that recognizes the differences between patrol and corrections work. Deputies would be recruited to two tracks: One for those seeking careers as corrections officers, the other for deputies with a desire to patrol communities. This would not only change the culture in the jails but would also improve morale, since those serving in the jails would be there because they had chosen to be.The report recommended hiring additional civilian custody assistants to support deputies. Increasing the proportion of civilian staff would save money that could pay for additional oversight, including an independent inspector general.

Last week, Baca announced that he intends to implement the commission’s 63 recommendations. This is welcome, but there will need to be independent monitoring to ensure that these commitments are met.

In testimony before the commission, Baca was asked how he should be held accountable for the problems in the jails, and he responded: “Don’t elect me.” While this response elicited laughter from some, we believe that the sheriff got it right; voters should not reelect him unless he can demonstrate that he has implemented lasting and meaningful reforms in the jails.

In their response, the Pasadena Star News calls for different, fresh problem-solving tactics. Here’s a clip:

The county’s top cop deserves some credit for taking the blame for inmate abuses while finally moving the Sheriff’s Department in the right direction, but it’s unclear whether these reforms will do enough to completely rid the jail system of ongoing abuses.

While hiring an under-sheriff is a good idea, perhaps it might be time for a whole new system. One idea for the county Board of Supervisors to consider is the feasibility (and legality) of completely removing the county jail system from Baca’s hands so that he can concentrate on fighting crime. The beleaguered jail system could be placed under the management of an elected or appointed warden who would have the authority to independently oversee the recommended reforms and make sure they stick.

Creating a new jail warden’s position may require a change to the county charter. But, if we can ask voters if the county assessor should be appointed or elected, then why not ask their opinion about an independent warden who could finally erase the abuses found in the nation’s largest county jail system?

It’s time for the county Board of Supervisors and for Baca to bring to the table all possible solutions to this endemic problem. Because what’s been done up until now hasn’t worked.

LA Times’ columnist Sandy Banks had perhaps the sharpest words of all, explaining that while most people seem to really like Sheriff Baca, fondness of the person can only go so far—essentially, enough is enough. Here’s a clip:

For years Baca has been carried by his reputation as a caring, enlightened intellectual; a humanitarian lawman with a Zen mind-set and progressive bent.

His public reservoir of goodwill is uncommonly deep. More than half of voters recently polled disapprove of the sheriff’s job performance, but fewer than one-quarter said they have an unfavorable view of the man.

Even at county Board of Supervisors’ sessions, where his department has been savagely dissected, speakers preface criticism of him with some version of “I really like the man…”

I really like the man too. But it’s time for all of us to stop playing “Let’s pretend.”

Reforming the system will not be easy. The deputies’ union has already challenged the sheriff’s efforts, calling the violence a “perceived problem” that doesn’t require broad solutions like Baca’s new force prevention policy, stepped-up supervision and insistence on better inmate-deputy relations.

The changes have led deputies “to feel that they have largely ‘lost control’ of the jails,” a letter from the union contends. That’s what you get when you let dysfunction flourish in private for so long.

Prisoners’ rights are not up top on many priority lists. So Baca’s commitment will be tested.

This is not just about inmates with black eyes and broken bones, but about those core values the sheriff likes to recite and promised to uphold: honor, respect, integrity, wisdom, fairness, courage. It’s time to make them more than words.

Don’t disappoint us, Sheriff Baca. Your legacy is on the line. And in case that’s not enough, this time your back is against the wall.

CHIEF BECK WILL NO LONGER HAND OVER LOW LEVEL ARRESTEES TO ICE

Late last week after the governor vetoed the TRUST Act, Chief Charlie Beck announced that the LAPD would no longer hand over immigrants arrested for low level crimes to ICE for deportation.

An LA Times editorial rightly says that Chief Beck’s decision is one that will benefit public safety. Here’s a clip:

The trouble is that Secure Communities doesn’t just weed out dangerous criminals. It casts a wide net, failing to distinguish between those undocumented immigrants who pose a threat and those who do not. Under the program, tens of thousands of immigrants who have never been convicted of a crime, or who have been convicted only of minor crimes such as street vending or driving without a license, have been deported.

Beck’s stance isn’t a political calculation intended to win him votes — after all, he’s appointed, not elected. Rather, the chief’s decision is about smart policing. He, like many other chiefs around the country, doesn’t think it’s appropriate to have officers turned into immigration agents and jailers. That’s not their job. As Beck has explained, public safety depends on the cooperation of all residents. Unfortunately, Secure Communities has eroded that trust and left many immigrants fearing that any contact with police could land them in deportation proceedings. The governors of New York, Massachusetts and Illinois have all sought to end participation in the program because it compromises public safety.

Some will argue that Beck doesn’t have the authority to ignore federal law, or that his efforts are no more legal than Arizona’s attempt to create its own set of immigration rules. But those arguments are specious. Secure Communities isn’t a law; it’s a federally funded program that was advertised as a voluntary way to help deport the most dangerous immigrants. The chief’s new rules comply with that goal.

The New York Times’ Ian Lovett has more on the LAPD chief’s decision.

(For the official LAPD statement, go here.)

LA OFFICIALS TAKE NEW STEPS TO KEEP ART IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Education budget cuts seem to have hit art education the hardest, leaving approximately one art teacher per 2,800 students in LA public schools. Later today, Monday, Mayor Villaraigosa, Superintendent Deasy, and Megan Chernin, the CEO of The Los Angeles Fund for Public Education will be presenting an initiative to save LAUSD art education (we will let you know as we know more). Tuesday, the LAUSD school board will vote on a measure to make art a core subject, saving it from further budget cuts.

KPCC’s Tami Abdollah has the story. Here’s a clip:

In 2008, L.A. Unified employed 345 art specialist teachers — the district called that year its “peak.” Now there are 204 art specialist teachers for more than 580,000 students (not including those in charters).

That breaks down to about one art specialist for every 2,800 students. The district says that teachers travel from school to school to fill gaps.

Since 2008, the district has cut arts education at elementary schools by 40%.

-The district says 53% of more than 272,000 students in kindergarten through fifth grade will not receive any arts instruction in elementary school.

-About 75% of about 129,000 students in the sixth through eighth grades will not receive any arts instruction in middle school. The district adds that “most middle schools have no art teacher (primarily due to budget cuts).”

-About half the district’s more than 180,000 high school students will not receive any arts instruction in high school.

GRAND PARK BLOCK PARTY OPENING FESTIVITIES

This past Saturday, crowds of LA residents happily celebrated the official opening of the last segment of the city’s new 12-acre Grand Park at a “Block Party” featuring music ranging from jazz to drumming to the newly composed, “A Fanfare for Grand Park,” dancing (like the Diavalo dancers splashing artfully here in the park’s Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain), food and finally a high flying performance by aerial dance pioneers, Bandaloop, who turned City Hall into a vertical dance floor as they leapt and twirled while suspended from climbing ropes. Although, some of the city’s professional curmudgeons (we’re looking at you, Steve Lopez) have suggested that Grand Park isn’t….you know…grand enough, those wandering the park’s grounds during Saturday’s all-day festivities looked pretty grandly cheerful about their brand new green space.

THE INNOCENCE PROJECT ON LAPD CHIEF BECK’S DISTASTE FOR BLIND LINEUPS

According to the Innocence Project, eyewitness’ mistaken identifications account for the majority of wrongful convictions. Despite this fact, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck remains opposed to the use of “blind lineups,” which are conducted by officers not involved in the case who have no knowledge of the suspect’s identity. Chief Beck reasons that officers not connected to the case will not have the established rapport that an involved officer would have with the eyewitness.

In an Op Ed for the LA Times, Barry C. Scheck, co-director, and Karen A. Newirth, eyewitness identification litigation fellow at the Innocence Project, say that in terms of false identifications, the cost of using involved officers is not worth the benefit. Here’s how their essay opens:

Nearly 300 American men and women wrongly convicted of crimes have been exonerated by DNA testing. And in the bulk of those cases — almost 75% — the convictions were based in part on faulty eyewitness identifications.

Witnesses are often asked to identify suspects from photo lineups, which are typically conducted by the officers investigating a crime. But numerous scientific studies on memory and identification have demonstrated that witnesses can be influenced, intentionally or not, by the person conducting a lineup. An officer who believes one of the people in a photo lineup is the likely perpetrator can influence — sometimes without even meaning to — the proceeding.

This has led scientists to recommend “blind” lineups, meaning that the officer who conducts the lineup shouldn’t be aware of the identity of the suspect, so that he or she can’t contaminate the identification procedure.

Many cities, as well as many states, have embraced this approach. Los Angeles is not one of them. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck refuses to embrace blind photo lineups. He told reporters that his reluctance was based on the belief that an officer close to the case would be more likely to have rapport with witnesses, and that this could produce better outcomes.

Beck’s reluctance should be allayed not just by scientific studies or the adoption of blind administration as a best practice by groups like the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, but by more than a decade of success in the field, including statewide programs in New Jersey, North Carolina and Texas.

13-YEAR-OLD WITH A TRAGIC UPBRINGING FACES MURDER CHARGES IN AN ADULT COURT

Cristian Fernandez, a thirteen-year-old FL boy, will be tried as an adult for allegedly murdering his two-year-old brother and sexually assaulting a five-year-old brother. Cristian’s childhood was steeped in violence, sexual attacks, and death, leading some advocates to ask if adult court is the right place for him to be tried and sentenced. In fact, many of the adults that will decide Cristian’s future seem unsure how to proceed.

The Huffington Post has the AP story by Tamara Lush. Here’s how it opens:

A decade before he was charged with murder, a 2-year-old Cristian Fernandez was found naked and dirty, wandering a South Florida street. The grandmother taking care of him had holed up with cocaine in a messy motel room, while his 14-year-old mother was nowhere to be found.

His life had been punctuated with violence since he was conceived, an act that resulted in a sexual assault conviction against his father. Fernandez’ life got worse from there: He was sexually assaulted by a cousin and beaten by his stepfather, who committed suicide before police investigating the beating arrived.

The boy learned to squelch his feelings, once telling a counselor: “You got to suck up feelings and get over it.”

Now 13, Fernandez is accused of two heinous crimes himself: first-degree murder in the 2011 beating death of his 2-year-old half-brother and the sexual abuse of his 5-year-old half-brother. He’s been charged as an adult and is the youngest inmate awaiting trial in Duval County.

If convicted of either crime, Fernandez could face a life sentence — a possibility that has stirred strong emotions among those for and against such strict punishment. The case is one of the most complex and difficult in Florida’s courts, and it could change how first-degree murder charges involving juvenile defendants are handled statewide.

Underscoring the unusual nature of the case, Fernandez’ defense attorneys said they aren’t sure how to proceed since the U.S. Supreme Court threw out mandatory life in prison without parole for juvenile offenders in June. Another complication involves whether Fernandez understood his rights during police interrogations.

Richard Kuritz, a former Jacksonville prosecutor who is now a defense attorney, said everyone agrees that Fernandez should face consequences if convicted — but what should they be?

“What would be a fair disposition? I don’t suspect this case is going to end anytime soon,” said Kuritz, who has been following the case closely.

Supporters of local State Attorney Angela Corey say she’s doing the right thing by trying Fernandez as an adult: holding a criminal accountable to the full extent of the law. But others, like Carol Torres, say Fernandez should be tried in juvenile court and needs help, not life in prison.

SEX OFFENDER PROXIMITY LAW FOUND UNCONSTITUTIONAL, LEAVES PAROLEES WITH NOWHERE TO LIVE

The Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled last week that a law forbidding CA sex offenders on probation from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park is unconstitutional. According to the court, the CA law, Prop 83, makes it virtually impossible for the parolees to find housing, and many end up living on the streets.

(Note: While we at WitnessLA don’t want sex offenders around our kids either, they need to be able to live somewhere. A law that makes housing inaccessible is wrongheaded—and was, frankly, from the beginning when it was passed.)

The SF Chronicle’s Bob Egelko has the story. Here’s a clip:

Wednesday’s ruling was in response to a suit by four ex-offenders in San Diego County who said it was virtually impossible to find affordable housing in the county that complied with the 2,000-foot restriction imposed by the 2006 ballot measure, Proposition 83. A lawyer for parolees said the ruling should apply equally in the Bay Area and most of the state’s population centers.

“It’s broadly generalizable to the metropolitan Bay Area,” said attorney Ernest Galvan.

If the ruling stands on appeal, he said, the 2,000-foot exclusion would no longer be enforceable as an across-the-board restriction on all paroled sex offenders, regardless of their circumstances.
As the court noted, however, parole officers who supervise individual parolees would still have the authority to impose similar or even greater limits on where and with whom they live, depending on their crimes and personal histories.

About 10,400 parolees statewide are registered sex offenders covered by Prop. 83′s residency restriction, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

GET WELL SOON, CHIEF

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck returned to work yesterday after breaking his collarbone in a motocross accident last Thursday. (We hope Chief Beck heals quickly, but nonetheless think it’s cool that our Chief of Police rides motocross.) Here’s a quote from Beck’s 2011 interview in Dirt Rider Magazine:

High-speed pursuit driving and riding a dirt bike are a little bit alike. Both things are about learning how to control yourself in stressful situations and being able to make good decisions even when adrenaline is pumping.

PHOTO CREDIT: Dirt Rider Magazine

LA COUNTY’S LARGEST YOUTH PROBATION CAMP SEES MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS ON FORMERLY APPALLING CONDITIONS

Challenger, LA County’s largest juvenile probation camp, has come a very long way from the once horrifying conditions it subjected kids to. In November of 2010, the ACLU, Public Counsel, and the Disability Rights Legal Center settled a landmark lawsuit over Challenger’s then unconscionable education system. (WitnessLA’s previous post on the lawsuit can be found here.) Two years later, Challenger has had a complete turn-around, giving its education system the potential to be a model for juvie probation camps across the country, says KPCC’s Tami Abdollah in a pair of stories on the camp. Here are some clips from the first story:

Probation and education officials have trained together under a new “behavior management model” called Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports.

The program has landed Challenger in a study funded by the U.S. Department of Education that evaluates the effects of it in juvenile corrections.

Since January, PBIS has slowly reduced the numbers of students written up for bad behavior from dozens a day to as few as two. Staff put up posters in classrooms illustrating proper classroom behavior.

“We assumed kids knew what was expected of our kids in the classroom, but that was not true,” said Kimberly Humphries, assistant principal for special education. “Because our kids have not traditionally been in school. They’ve been kicked out, they don’t go.”

The change is one example of the biggest shift that has taken place at Challenger: a change from a “punitive coercive culture” to a more “positive cooperative culture,” said Watkins.

“Instead of constantly catching the kids when they were doing something wrong, we needed to flip that, and start to catch the kids when they were doing things right,” Watkins said. “A lot of our attention was being focused on the kids who were not behaving, … and there were probably a lot more kids behaving.”

[SNIP]

It costs roughly $139,500 per year, per bed, to house and educate minors at a county juvenile detention camp, according to county officials. Traditionally, it is more expensive than housing adults, because of the requirements to educate and efforts to rehabilitate youths, said Peter Leone, a professor of special education at the University of Maryland.

Leone is a national expert at delivering education in detention settings and serves as a monitor in this case. He has been involved in monitoring and reform at dozens of facilities for 25 years.

“There will be people who … say: ‘What are they doing all this stuff for these kids for? My kid didn’t get in trouble and he didn’t have access to this kind of stuff. … It’s a waste of money,’” Leone said. “But it’s a whole lot less expensive to get these kids on the right track, to support them, help them become more confident young men, than to have them potentially in and out of juvenile corrections. That’s more expensive. They’re not taxpayers. Then we have to house them, provide for them.

“I don’t think the public understands that. I think we’re still in that ‘get tough on crime,’ ‘three strikes you’re out’ mentality that’s much more punitive,” Leone said.

Tami Abdollah has another, longer article on Challenger—this one focusing on Challenger’s potential to emerge as a model for other youth camps if it can get the support it needs to proceed. The juvie probation camp is on a roll, but it faces budget cuts that may make staying on course difficult. Here’s a clip from the second article:

…A 2011 settlement agreement gave county officials a legal mandate to change. The agreement requires monitoring and quarterly reports by a team of experts over four years who check on 13 areas of reform, including literacy, instruction and special education. A monitor is at the site several times a month, sometimes weekly.

“There’s a lot of pressure on everybody,” said school principal Marsha Watkins. “We live in a fishbowl pretty much. But the real bottom line is it comes down to kids. …We weren’t doing what we needed to do for kids, and now we are.”

Yet even as Challenger emerges as a possible model for teaching incarcerated kids, budget worries may endanger these reform efforts. Cuts to state funding have already forced a round of layoffs since the settlement, and such new and innovative programs —as well as the training for them — require more resources. There is a fear that, though support and focus is here now, that won’t remain the case in the future.

(Be sure to read the rest of these articles, as they are jam-packed with worthwhile information and Abdollah’s excellent writing and reporting.)

SANTA CLARA SHERIFF BREAKS FROM THE PACK, ENDORSES TRUST ACT

Santa Clara Sheriff Laurie Smith has publicly taken a stand in favor of the TRUST Act, sending a letter to Gov. Brown asking him to sign the legislature. The TRUST Act would keep law enforcement from detaining undocumented immigrants for ICE, except in the case of serious felonies. Smith’s stance is a major divergence from the views of other CA sheriffs.

CBS San Francisco has the story. Here’s a clip:

Smith sent a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown, urging him to sign the TRUST act. If approved, police would be prohibited from holding undocumented immigrants at local jails for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, unless they are charged with serious or violent felonies. The legislation was introduced by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano.

In the letter, Smith criticized the federal government’s “Secure Communities Program” or S-Comm, which was billed as a way to deport violent criminals. The sheriff said in two-thirds of the deportations, the detainees had no criminal records or had nonviolent offenses such as traffic violations.

Smith wrote: “The S-Comm program has diminished trust in our immigrant communities of local law enforcement…immigrant victims and witnesses of crime have told me they are afraid to come forward to cooperate with local law enforcement out of fear that they could be detained by ICE under S-Comm and deported.”

(A copy of the letter from Sheriff Smith can be found here.)

AT OUR END OF THE STATE, SHERIFF BACA HAS MADE HIS STANCE ON THE TRUST ACT VERY CLEAR

Sheriff Baca says that he will not enforce the Trust Act. (Here is a nice little cartoon depiction by the LA Times’ Ted Rall.)

LAPD CHIEF’S TIMELY RESPONSES TO USE OF FORCE ISSUES

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has reassigned and cut the pay of the commanding officer of the Foothill division due to his poor response to an incident involving questionable use of force to detain a woman arrested after a traffic violation last week. Beck also removed the officers involved from field duty pending the investigation—an action he says should have been executed by the commanding officer.

The Daily News’ Dakota Smith has the story. Here’s a clip:

“I have serious concerns about this incident and I believe the commanding officer of Foothill area was severely deficient in his response,” Beck said. “Proper steps were not taken, including appropriate notifications and the removal of the involved officers from the field. Because of these issues, I have removed him from his command and initiated downgrade procedures.”

Beck also is requiring that video of the incident be played at officer roll calls across the city as part of a discussion about use of force issues.

“Every Los Angeles police officer regardless of rank will be held accountable for their actions,” Beck said.

And then, there’s this—LA Times’ staff writers have the story on yet another LAPD brutality investigation. This time, a woman died in custody after a particularly violent struggle in which a female officer stomped on her genital area. Here’s a clip:

The altercation in front of her South Los Angeles apartment was captured by a patrol car’s video camera.

When asked by The Times about the incident, LAPD Cmdr. Bob Green confirmed that one officer, while trying to get Alesia Thomas into the back of a patrol car, threatened to kick Thomas in the genitals if she did not comply, and then followed through on her threat.

After officers forced Thomas into the back seat of the police car, she is seen on the video breathing shallowly; she eventually stopped breathing.

“I take all in-custody death investigations very seriously,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement late Thursday. “I am confident we will get to the truth no matter where that leads us.”

Photo by KPCC’s Tami Abdollah

NO CORRELATION BETWEEN RISE IN OFFICER SHOOTINGS AND ASSAULTS ON OFFICERS, SAYS LAPD WATCHDOG

According to Alex Bustamante, the inspector general for the Los Angeles Police Commission, there is no link between the rise in LAPD officer-involved shootings and the reported rise in assaults on officers–a claim Chief Charlie Beck made in November. The findings are detailed in a report Bustamante will present to the commission on Tuesday.

LA Times’ Joel Rubin has the story. Here’s a clip:

Los Angeles police fired their weapons in 63 incidents last year, a total which marked a roughly 50% increase over the shootings in any of the previous four years, according to the report. Beck has explained the increase by pointing to what the LAPD said was a 22% increase in assaults on officers from 2010 to 2011. Police officials counted 193 such incidents in 2011, which were recorded as assaults with a deadly weapon or attempted murders, according to the report.

“Officer involved shootings are also up — largely in response to these kind of attacks,” Beck told the Police Commission in November.

But the inspector general found several reasons why he said this cause-and-effect relationship wasn’t accurate. For one, from 2007 to last year, the number of assaults on officers fluctuated dramatically from one year to the next. The number of officer-involved shootings, however, remained relatively flat until last year, when they jumped. If there had been a connection between the two, the year-to-year totals should have climbed and dropped in sync, according to the report.

The way the department tracks shootings and assaults on officers also muddied matters, Bustamante found. Attacks on officers are tallied based on the number of officers present when assaults occur. By contrast, the department counts an officer-involved shooting as a single event regardless of how many officers open fire. In an incident in April 2011, for example, in which a suspect shot at police from inside a house, the LAPD counted 16 assaults on officers and one officer-involved shooting, despite the fact that 15 officers fired their weapons.

When Bustamante recalculated last year’s assault total to count the number of incidents instead of officers, he counted 106 attacks — a 45% drop from the department’s total. And, instead of a double-digit increase that Beck had contended, Bustamante said the number of assaults was actually about even from 2010 to 2011.

OC SHERIFF TAKES AWAY SECURITY OFFICERS’ ABILITY TO CARRY GUNS OFF-DUTY AND MAKE ARRESTS

OC Sheriff, Sandra Hutchens, removed security officers’ ability to carry firearms off-duty and make arrests after she received a notice in May that the officers may not meet the minimum requirements of the state commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training–POST. A union representing the officers said they are planning to sue the OCSD over the sudden gun protocol change.

FYI–LASD spokesperson Steve Whitmore told WitnessLA that their security officers have specific training to carry weapons on duty, but cannot carry off-duty. Regarding arrest powers, Whitmore said that the officers can only make citizens’ arrests–”We ask them to be ‘armed witnesses’.”

The OC Register’s Tony Saavedra has the story on the OC security officers. Here’s a clip:

The state commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training notified Sheriff Sandra Hutchens in May that the department’s 200 special officers may not meet minimum requirements for training. The officers have limited police powers and provide security at John Wayne Airport, county courthouses and county buildings. They undergo four months of academy training, while full deputies undergo six months.

POST also requires that the department notify the agency whenever a deputy or special officer is hired or terminated, which the department has not done with the special officer classification.

In response to the commission’s concerns, Hutchens on Wednesday took away, for the time being, the special officers’ ability to make arrests. Under previous guidelines, the officers were allowed to make misdemeanor arrests if a deputy wasn’t available. Hutchens also sidelined the officers’ ability to write misdemeanor tickets. And Hutchens took away their ability to carry weapons while off duty, suggesting they apply for a concealed weapon permit from the department.

The changes will remain in effect while Hutchens, the commission and the Orange County Employees Association work out a plan to handle the training concerns, said Assistant Sheriff Timothy Board.

LA Times’ Richard Winton has the story on the planned lawsuit. Here’s a clip:

…Jennifer Muir, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Employees Assn., said Hutchens overstepped her power in deciding the officers will no longer carry weapons off duty and directing them to carry a concealed weapons permit if they want to resume doing so.

“We plan to go to court later this week,” Muir said. “It is a matter of officer safety.”

Muir said there is a very real danger that an off-duty officer could come into contact with a suspect they handled while off duty.

NEW ACT TESTING TOOL TO HELP BRIDGE EDUCATION GAP

The ACT testing company–the college entrance exam people–has developed a new tool to assess students’ behavioral and academic abilities across K-12. The testing tool focuses on gaps between compulsory education and skills necessary for success in college and the work force.

Salon has the AP story by Josh Lederman. Here’s a clip:

ACT, the organization that developed the ACT college-entrance exam, will start testing the tool in the fall. It will be available to schools starting in 2014.The tool tracks students’ career interests, academic performance and progress toward goals. It’s designed to follow students from kindergarten through high school.

Jon Erickson, president of ACT’s education division, said the goal is to identify and address gaps in skills needed for college and the workforce. The assessment combines traditional testing with teacher-led projects to generate an instant, digital score.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons/Flickr user Karppinen.