Writing a special guest blog post for LA Observed, my pal, the award-winning former LA Times editor and reporter, Frank Sotomayor, calls for the release of all the unredacted files pertaining to the death of well-known LA journalist Ruben Salazar, who died on August 29, 1970—40 years ago this weekend.
Sotomayor wants to know why, after all this time, has the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department still declined to release to the press the eight boxes of department materials relating to Salazar’s case?
It is an important question that demands an answer. What possible reason can there be to stonewall after four decades? No issues of national security are at stake. If the files show wrongdoing on the part of law enforcement figures, so be it; all the more reason the paperwork on the case should see the light of day. If those boxes full of material reveal that Salazar’s death was simply a tragic accident, that too needs to be known so that long-held suspicions that he was deliberately targeted may be laid to rest.
Below you’ll find the beginning of Sotomayor’s essay. . But read the whole thing because it is loaded with back story and context that is an essential part of LA’s history.
Two Mexican cousins are killed by Los Angeles police in a case of mistaken identity. A prominent journalist is cautioned by two LAPD officers about his coverage of the shootings. A short time later, the journalist meets with staffers of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and tells them he is being followed. He gives his Rolodex of news sources to a colleague and clears his desk. Days later, at the age of 42, he is dead. Killed by a 10-inch-long tear-gas projectile fired by a Los Angeles Sheriff’s deputy.
Is this the plot for a crime thriller? It could be. But it is just part of the tragic mystery surrounding Ruben Salazar. The Los Angeles Times columnist and KMEX news director was killed 40 years ago Sunday under very disturbing circumstances. Law enforcement officials had a chance to resolve the matter at that time but dropped the ball. A new generation of law enforcement officials now has a chance to come clean by releasing all records relating to the case. For the sake of history and transparency, they must not fumble this opportunity….
Exactly.
Earlier this month, in an editorial, the LA Times also called for the release of the Salazar files.
In truth, we should all be asking for the release of these files—and asking loudly.
Photo by photographer Raul Ruiz, was reportedly taken of an unidentified officer just seconds before Deputy Tom Wilson shot the projectile that would hit and kill Ruban Salazar, who was reportedly sitting on a bar stool behind the three men in the bar’s doorway.
Despite alarming incidents of drug-cartel-fueled violence near the Mexican border, the crime rate in the state of Arizona is the lowest it has been in 40 years—as is true in many areas of the country.
At the same time, the Hispanic immigrant population has risen precipitously.
Anyone who bothers to spend five minutes on the computer doing research, has access to those two facts.
Nevertheless, those with political axes to grind have loudly attributed most of Arizona’s social ills—-particularly crime (and most particularly drug-related crime)—to immigrants from Mexico and Central America.
The “crime wave” hysteria was a large part of what fueled the passage of SB 1070.
However, a study just released by well-regarded researchers Mike Males and Dan Macallair, both of Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, digs even deeper into the issue, and lays out for us, in hard numbers, the relationship between crime and immigration—legal and not—in Arizona.
The study, which is rather prosaically titled “Scapegoating Immigrants: Arizona’s Real Crisis Is Rooted in Residents’ Soaring Drug Abuse,“ finds the following:
Claims that Hispanic immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are creating a crime and drug wave are contrary to the best information available from Arizona and national law enforcement, public health, and drug abuse monitoring agencies. By the best evidence, Hispanics, regardless of status, constitute the leading edge of Arizona’s rapidly declining crime rate and a decreasing proportion of Arizona’s rapidly increasing drug abuse crisis. The large influx of Hispanic immigrants has promoted decreased crime, violence, and drug abuse compared to trends among Arizona’s existing resident populations.
“We can keep the public safe without locking children up forever for crimes committed when they were still considered too young to have the judgment to vote or drive.”
- Elizabeth Calvin, children’s advocate, Human Rights Watch
The Fair Sentencing for Youth Act, SB 399, may or may not be passed into law this week in the California State Assembly. If passed, it would to allow courts to take a second look at cases involving juveniles sentenced to life without parole, (or hugely long sentences that amount to life), after that kid has spent 15-years behind bars. The bill guarantees nothing, but it at least opens up the possibility that an adolescent who did something terrible as a kid, might one day be given the chance to demonstrate his or her worthiness of release.
The bill was amended for what is believed to be the final time this past Friday. It has already passed through California’s Senate.
Interestingly, the best article over the weekend on the state of the bill ran in an Illinois-based publication—the Belleville News Democratic.
Here are a few representative clips from the Bellville piece:
A 14-year-old south Modesto boy who killed a young father at a child’s birthday party will likely die in prison. Angel Cabanillas, now 19, stands to serve at least 100 years behind bars. But just 40 miles south in Merced, a boy who was 15 when he committed a fatal drive-by to impress his fellow gang members is set to be sentenced Monday to 31 years in prison. He could be out by the time he’s 42.
The disparity in their sentences reflects a divide in how judges and prosecutors handle violent crimes committed by children. The topic of whether minors can be sentenced to die in prison has recently come under scrutiny by the U.S. Supreme Court and the California Legislature, and their discussions could change the rules for cases like Cabanillas.’
In May, the Supreme Court ruled juveniles cannot be sentenced to life in prison without parole for non-homicide crimes. Denying children who commit lesser crimes the opportunity to ever get out of prison constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and runs counter to a worldwide consensus against such harsh sentences for juveniles, the court wrote. But while the decision did not specifically address what can happen to children convicted of murder, legal experts say recent court rulings regarding juvenile justice have shown a trend toward leniency.
[SNIP]
“The court has made clear that juveniles are different than adults,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine.
The California Legislature is heading in that direction, too. On Friday, it moved forward with a bill that would allow courts to take a second look at cases involving juveniles sentenced to life without parole.
It would not prohibit life without parole sentences for juveniles but lets courts review such cases 15 years after sentencing, potentially allowing some young convicts to receive a lesser sentence of 25 years to life.
The existing bill is a watered down version of Yee’s original bill, which would have prohibited life-without-parole sentences for juvenile’s altogether. But the hair of law enforcement groups across the state uniformly burst into flames over the matter of doing away totally with LWOP for kids. Thus a frantic series of amendments were added.
Still SB 399 is a place to start.
That is IF it passes.
The California District Attorney’s Association is still resolutely against it. (We are shocked, shocked.) As is the Republican Caucus. The fear-mongering against the bill has been considerable.
The last round of amendments only passed 34-30—meaning the bill likely has 34 votes locked up. It needs 41 votes to pass.
Let us hope that seven more state assembly persons find their spines and their common sense in time to pass SB 399.
A great deal of controversy, shock and confusion has surrounded the deathof 18-year-old Zac Champommier an honor student, self-described band geek who played the sax and the viola in the Granada Hills High School marching band, and graduated this past June and was to have entered college in the fall. After college graduation, he wanted to travel, meet new people, fall in love, and eventually own a book store, according to his MySpace musings. (Zac is shown above in a video collage made by one of his friends for his memorial.)
Instead, on the night of June 24th, Zac went to meet a friend in the parking lot behind the Chipotle Mexican Grill at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, but somehow unaccountably ended up hitting a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy with his car. The deputy and a DEA agent reportedly fired at Zac in return. According to initial coroners reports, the bullet entered through his left arm and continued into his chest. Zac died on the parking lot pavement.
For weeks his mother and his friends have been puzzing in anguish over what could possibly have caused the terrible string of events.
Now there is a witness.
His name is Douglas Ryan Oeters and he tells a story that is different in several important ways from the one that the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has previously reported.
It seems he is the friend whom Zac was meeting. I have been corresponding with Oeters via email about the night in question.
(I see that The LA Times’ Robert Faturechi has also been corresponding via email with Oeters.)
According to Oeters, who is 29, he had just spoken to Zac on the cell phone before the events were set in motion that were to end in tragedy.
“He called me a minute before this happened and said he was sitting in the Citibank parking lot in a white car.” Oeters said he saw a white car parked in the back of the lot, walked over, and peered into it to see if anyone was inside. No one was. Then he spotted a second white car—which turned out to be the right one—and was proceeding toward it when he said he was approached by a plain clothes officer and then several more, none of whom, he said, in the beginning showed him any kind of a badge.
The official press release from the LA County Sheriff’s Department describes the crucial events as follows:
It states that Sheriff’s narcotics officers together with DEA agents had just served a search warrant and were now debriefing in the Chipotle parking lot.
During their discussion they saw a man looking into parked cars who appeared to be casing the area to commit a crime. Task force members contacted the man. He immediately became uncooperative and a struggle ensued. An additional deputy approached to assist, drew his handgun, and ordered the suspect to the ground.
A white sedan, driven by a second suspect, sped toward the group, hitting the deputy.The deputy was thrown into the air, landed on the hood, hit the windshield, and was
thrown back onto the ground. The deputy and a Drug Enforcement Administration agent,
fearing for their lives, fired their duty weapons at the suspect vehicle.
Although not spelled out in the original statement, now the LASD confirms that the officers involved were in indeed in plain clothes and their cars were unmarked.
As a consequence, according to Oeters, he first mistook the officers who approached him for “rednecks” who intended to jump him.
“I was scared and tried to avoid this very large man in plain clothes with no badge. They rushed towards me as I was walking in the parking lot looking for Zac waiting in his car. …I was looking for Zac and nothing else.”
Oeters said that he was fearful and continued to ask the officers, “What is this about?” However, he insisted that he never physically resisted the officers as the LASD report states he did. “I continued asking what was I doing wrong while this large man cornered me by a fence.” He became further alarmed when an agent pulled his gun, he said, “when there was no physical contact at all. Just me having my hands put behind my back after a badge was finally shown.”
From where Zac was sitting in his car, Oeters theorized later, the scene must have looked very threatening.
“Because of this Zac panicked and decided to flee the parking lot. He pulled his car forward as if to leave. Somehow an agent got in the way between him and the exit. Did he have any intent to harm this agent in the way? NO it did not appear as if he was there to hurt anyone. He was not driving very fast.
Reportedly, the deputy whom Zac hit and a DEA officer both fired at Zac.
How he managed to hit a sheriff’s deputy on his way out of the parking lot is still not clear.
Friends who know Zac Champommier well said that their friend would not have played the hero in a situation of this nature. It was more likely, they said, echoing Oeters, that he was simply trying to escape a frightening scene he did not understand and would have probably called 911 once he was safely away from what looked like an attack.
As to the question of why the 18-year-old Zac was meeting a 29-year-old man to go to the movies, sources close to Zac’s family said that, after her son’s death, his mother, Linda, read the emails that Zac and Oeters had exchanged the night before their plan to meet, and that Oeters had written that he was new in town, and hoped to sell a screen play, but was trying to get to know people in the area.
Whatever the case, Zac had no reputation as a wild kid. Thus far anyway, there are no tales of drugs or anything else illegal in his past. Videos taken by friends show an bright, open-faced, handsome young man who seemed at ease with himself yet could be zany and silly with his band pals. Not someone who walked any kind of edge, his friends said.
According to his mom, when he went to a party, he would usually be home by 10:30 or a 11 p.m.
In fact, his mother worried a little that he was not going out enough. She thought that maybe, because she was a single mom, he might have felt he ought to keep her company. So she began encouraging him to get out a bit more.
Still he rarely stayed out past his self-imposed 11 p.m. deadline.
That is why when her son didn’t arrive home by 1 a.m. and then 2 a.m., then 4 a.m.…then 6…. Carol Champommier knew something was horribly wrong.
By around 8 a.m., friends say, she reported Zac as a missing person. Shortly after that, Carol Champommier learned her son was dead, shot by an LA County sheriff’s deputy.
As for Oeters, the LASD records showthat he was arrested and booked that same night.. A couple of days later he was released on a $20,000 bail and has since retained an attorney.
In addition, the LA Times reports that Oeters, who is from Ohio, had at least one other “brush with the law. In Ohio, he was convicted of a charge related to soliciting sex from a minor, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.”
The verdict was reached at around 3:15 p.m. It was announced in LA at around 4:05 p.m.
In this particular instance, Involuntary Manslaughter will mean a sentence of 2-4 years. However, since the jury also found in favor of a gun “enhancement”—meaning a sentencing add on for the use of the gun in the crime—Mehserle will likely do more–specifically as much as 5-14 years.
Mehserle has been taken into custody. (He was free on a $3 million bail.) He will be sentenced on August 6.
A rally and news conference regarding LA residents’ reactions is taking place at Crenshaw Boulevard and Vernon Avenue in Leimert Park.
The man who may be responsible for the longest killing spree in California history was arrested on Wednesday as a consequence of dogged police work and a complex new forensic tool called “familial DNA“—a method used only as a last resort after traditional DNA routes have been tried without success.
Familial DNA allows forensic scientists to use DNA markers to ID possible family members of a perpetrator who has left his or her DNA on the scene, and then to follow all family strands until the killer has been located.
This is precisely what happened in the case of the man believed to be the The Grim Sleeper. (The killer was given this sobriquet by the LA Weekly’s Christine Pelisek, who originally broke the story in 2006 when police were trying to keep the news of the serial murders quiet.)
The alleged killer of at least 11 people, with murders going back 25 years, turned out to be a 57-year-old South LA auto mechanic named Lonnie David Franklin Jr., who was well-liked by his neighbors.
(Once again, the so-called face of evil ends up being all too sadly ordinary.)
The LA Times has some good team coverageof the steps that led to the arrest.
Here’s a clip:
For well over two decades, the killer had eluded police. His victims, most of them prostitutes in South Los Angeles, had lived on the margins of society, and their deaths left few useful clues aside from the DNA of the man who had sexually assaulted them in the moments before their deaths.
A sweep of state prisons in 2008 failed to come up with the killer or anyone related to him. Then, last Wednesday, startling news came to the LAPD: A second “familial search” of prisons had come up with a convict whose DNA indicated that he was a close relative of the serial killer suspected of killing at least 10 women.
Working through the Fourth of July weekend, LAPD detectives drew up a family tree of the prisoner, then began analyzing all the men on it. Were they the right age? Did they live near the murder scenes? Was there anything in their background to explain why the serial killer had apparently stopped killing for 13 years, then resumed in 2003?
From that painstaking process, according to LAPD officials who requested anonymity, the prisoner’s father emerged as a likely suspect. An undercover team was sent to follow him; they retrieved a discarded slice of pizza to analyze his DNA. On Tuesday, they confirmed that it matched the DNA of the suspect in the killings.
(There’s a lot more on the history of the investigation and now the reaction of neighbors, so read the rest.)
A large thank you to all the LAPD officers involved for not giving up.
AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT—NEUROLAW: BRAINS, GENES AND KILLERS
And just in time, earlier this week NPR’s Talk of the Nation had a story on new research looking at the relationship between brain abnormalities, certain genes and serial killers.
On Friday the jury began deliberations in the case of Johannes Mehserle, the BART officer who fatally shot Oscar Grant as Grant was laying face down on a subway platform in Oakland.
The jury deliberated for a couple of hours before quitting for the long weekend because one of the jurors got sick. When they came back on Tuesday it turned out that another juror had a doctor’s appointment while a third had to leave for a previously planned vacation.
The vacationing juror had to be replaced by a brand new juror so deliberations started from scratch on Wednesday, but didn’t get all that far before the day was over.
Meanwhile, in a lot of neighborhoods, as the LA Wave points out, people continue to worry about post-verdict reactions.
YOUNG MAN SUCCEEDS DESPITE TIME SERVED IN LA COUNTY PROBATION CAMPS
The LA Weekly has a good story by Sam Slovick that combines a sort-of round-up of the horrid state of things at LA County’s Probation Department together with a tale of a kid who’s doing well, in spite of his awful experiences in one of the county’s camps.
Later this week, I’ll have a new story on the mess that is LA County probation and some additional information on the circumstances surrounding the heartbreaking death of Zac Champommier.
But for now, here’s a round-up of weekend news that I thought you’d find of interest.
IF DEATH ROW INMATE TROY DAVIS PROVES HIS INNOCENCE, THEN WHAT?
Last summer the U.S. Supreme Court granted Georgia death row inmate, Troy Davis, a new hearing before a federal judge in which Davis and his attorneys would be able to to try to prove Davis’s innocence of the 1989 murder of an Atlanta police officer. [Back story on Davis's case here.] It is, as the AP points out, “a chance afforded no American facing execution in nearly half a century.”
But the AP also discusses the fact that it isn’t at all clear what is to happen even if Davis and company persuade the judge that Davis didn’t do the crime.
Some experts say the judge could order a new trial. Others say the judge could make a recommendation to the Supreme Court that Davis be freed from prison. There’s also a possibility the judge could find Davis innocent, yet rule he’s powerless to spare Davis’ life.
“There is some ambiguity,” said John H. Blume, a Cornell Law School professor who specializes in death penalty appeals. “Whenever you’ve got something this new, that hasn’t happened all these years, you’re really making your best guess.”
REASON # 4598 WHY SO MANY PEOPLE ARE GOING ELSEWHERE FOR NEWS OTHER THAN TO THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
For weeks, I have found myself in a state of quietly growing rage at the way the so-called journalism establishment has taken endless snide little potshots (and some not-so-little shots) at Michael Hastings and his scoop-of-the-season Rolling Stone article, “The Runaway General,” in which then-General Stanley McChrystal and his aides made the smart-mouthed remarks that cost the general his job.
And so who did the ever vigilant Washington press corps attack after the release of excellent Hastings article? Why Hastings of course.
Thus it was relief to read Eric Alterman’s scathing round-up of nearly all the instances of what Rolling Stone’s Matt Tabbai had earlier and accurately described as Hysterical Backstabbing Jealous Hackfest 2010!
Here’s a representative clip:
But almost as impressive as the article itself—and, of course, the commotion it caused in the administration’s Afghan policy resulting in McChrystal’s firing and his replacement by Gen. David Petraeus—has been the Washington journalistic establishment’s reaction to it. Reporter after reporter has complained that by accurately reporting what McChyrstal and his aides said in explicitly on-the-record conversations to a reporter with a tape recorder and/or notepad in his hand, Hastings has violated the tenets of professional journalism. (A few of the reporters did this, it should be added, after stealing his work for their own websites.)
And about that work-stealing issue that Alter mentions: I flagged it at the time, but was astonished to find that few others seemed to notice. Here’s what Alterman says on that matter:
The other decidedly comical aspect of the journalistic establishment’s reaction to the piece they so disdain was the eagerness a few of them showed in trying to steal it. Not only did website after website post the highlights of the general’s shocking quotes before Rolling Stone did, but two of them—Politico and Time—stole it outright, posting the results of months of research and tens of thousands of dollars of investment on their own sites without even bothering to ask permission from the people responsible for them.
Asked by an NPR reporter whether this behavior “cros[ed] a line,” Bill Grueskin, who is dean of academic affairs at the Columbia University School of Journalism, replied, “I think they crossed the line in the same way that a bank robber who goes into a bank and takes money out of the cashier’s drawer crosses a line.” New York Times media reporter David Carr titled his column on the controversy “Heedlessly Hijacking Content,” and termed it “a clear violation of copyright and professional practice, and it amounted to taking money out of a competitor’s pocket.”
And do keep in mind that these people who excoriated Hastings (but thought nothing of stealing his work), are the same folks who regularly beat their breasts about the icky “non-professionalism” of bloggers.
Right. Sure. Whatever you say, boss.
A YEAR OUT OF PRISON BRUCE LISKER MEETS WITH ONE OF HIS JURORS
On LA Observed, Photojournalist Iris Schneider has been doing an occasional and quite wonderful series on Bruce Lisker, who was released from prison nearly a year ago after serving 24 years for murdering his mother, Dora Lisker. Monday Schneider posted her latest installment in which she accompanied Lisker when he met with Lorraine Maxwell, one of the twelve jury members who convicted him when he was 17-years-old of the 1983 murder.
THE LA TIMES GETS AERIAL EXPERT’S REPORT THAT CONTRADICTS OFFICIAL ACCOUNT OF HOW THE STATION FIRE MIGHT HAVE BEEN STOPPED
The LA Times’ Paul Pringle has gotten his hands on a very credible report that suggest that the official account of the way the disastrous Station Fire was handled may be troublingly inaccurate.
OBAMA TELLS CONGRESS: HANDS OFF FEDERAL RACE TO THE TOP FUNDS
The NY Times editorial board rightly approves of Obama’s threat to veto any spending bill that slashes money from his Race-to-the-Top school reform program. Find the cuts elsewhere people.
CLAY SHIRKY EXPLAINS WHY THE (INTERNET) KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
If you don’t recognize the name of web prognosticator/author/astonishingly fine thinker Clay Shirky, suffice it to say that, if you are interested in the whole Future of News thingy, he’s the guy you want to read. He has a brand new book out, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, which is already selling at a rapid clip.
Or better yet, read the interview in the Guardian in which the self-described techno-luddite interviewer admits she finds herself hanging on Shirky’s every word.
On Thursday, a friend who works for works for public radio in San Francisco emailed me and asked if I planned to cover the murder trial of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle.
“I woulda thought there would be more interest in So Cal given the “meta-themes” – police brutality, transit cops with attitude, race in the courts – but doesn’t seem like it…”, she wrote.
Indeed, the case is tragic and emotion-fraught, with all of the elements that our fair city would ordinarily take to obsessively:
In the early morning hours of January 1, 2009, now-resigned BART police officer, Johannes Mehserle shot and killed a 22-year-old unarmed BART passenger named Oscar Grant III. It seems Grant and some of his friends were thought to be fighting on the train and BART police were called.
At some point, Mehserle and some other officers got Grant—who is black— down on the ground with the intention of cuffing him. But then Mehserle—who is white— stood up and shot Grant in the back while a dozen or more witnesses watched.
And, this being the 21st century, at least 5 different people shot cell-phone videos that show some aspect of the shooting. (Two of those videos are in the YouTube compilation above.)
Now Mehserle is on trial for murder.
His defense attorney contends that the former BART cop intended to draw his taser but instead mistakenly and tragically the drew his service weapon— thus fatally wounding Grant.
The prosecutor says nonsense, that Mehserle deliberately shot Grant while the man was face down on the cement.
The case has aroused a deep emotional reaction throughout the Bay Area as the shocking videos of the incident played repeatedly on local TV and quickly went viral on YouTube. Large demonstrations have resulted, some of them violent.
However in LA, no one seemed to notice.
In fact emotions have run so high in the Bay Area, that the trial was moved from Alameda to downtown Los Angeles.
The trial began on June 10 and has been going on all this week, replete with lots of daily drama.—but with very little notice from the LA press.
LA Times reporter Jack Leonard has been in court every day,and told me he is fascinated by the case, yet I notice most of his stories are either buried deep in the paper, or relegated to occasional LANow blog posts (even though, as one of the paper’s top crime reporters, his work is usually featured prominently).
Other Los Angeles media outlets have been similarly lackadaisical in their coverage.
Independent LA journalist Thandisizwe Chimurenga, who has been covering the trial for a Spot.Us project, told me that when she tried to interest a couple of local outlets in her reporting, they all but yawned.
Hey, now that the Lakers have rather thrillingly won the NBA trophy (Go Artest! Go Kobe! Go Spain!), and the mini-post-victory riots and car burnings have been finally and thankfully quelled, perhaps we will need something else to occupy our….um… hearts and minds.
So maybe at least a bit of our attention will drift over to the People v. Mehserle.
On Wednesday of this week, the Inspector General of California, David Shaw, issued a 35-page special report on the parole supervision of John Albert Gardner III, the man who raped and murdered Amber Dubois and Chelsea King..
The report is scathing. Shaw says that the California Department of Correction’s parole supervision of John Gardner blew it in myriad ways with horrific results.
For example, he says:
“.. .it did not identify Gardner’s aberrant behavior, including unlawfully entering the grounds of a state prison––a felony––as well as numerous parole violations. Had the department identified Gardner’s criminal act and parole violations, it could have referred them to the district attorney or Board of Prison Hearings for appropriate action. Successful prosecution of Gardner’s crime could have sent Gardner back to prison, making it impossible for him to murder the two young girls and commit the attempted sexual assault.”
It seems that the primary reason that Gardner’s parole agents didn’t send him back to prison for his more than 158 parole violations, or the actual new felony he committed by gong on the grounds of a state prison, is because his parole officer didn’t know about about most of the violations, much less the prison incident—even though, all the while, Gardiner had a GPS tracking device on his ankle.
So why wouldn’t the tracking gadget alert Gardner’s PO that he was breaking his curfew with ridiculous frequency, that he was often in the proximity of schools and playgrounds, that he had a storage unit, which was strictly against the rules, that he visited creepily isolated spots (also against the terms of his probation and that he had committed an outright crime?
Shaw explains that the tracking device was only monitored thirteen percent of the time. The other 87 percent the GBS tracker was useless. It wasn’t watched at all.
These revelations are awful enough on their face because, had Gardner been monitored properly, he would have landed back in prison,—which means in turn that he wouldn’t have been able to kill 14-year-old Amber Dubois and 17-year-old Chelsea King.
The report also points beyond itself to say troubling things about California’s parole supervision in general. It doesn’t help that this comes at a time, when there is a strong push to let certain offenders out early, provided they have GPS monitoring.
I am someone who has been in favor of the monitoring option for certain cases. But if nobody’s keeping track of a braceleted, high control sex offender whose jacket includes several alarming reports about his impulse control, why in the world should we think that the CDCR will keep tabs on run-of-the-mill GPS-wearing parolees?
We must also have the confidence that when officials call an offender “low level”—that a proper and thorough assessment of the parolee’s entire record has been done, not merely a glance at his/her most recent crime. Unfortunately this often seems not to be the case either.
If we are to have a chance at legislating real sentencing and parole reform, the public will need to know that the system is a lot better calibrated than what we evidently have now.
Many tragic crimes arrive without warning. However, with John Gardiner, it appears that there were red flags galore, but that they went unheeded. We need a system that is calibrated to see those flags and act on them appropriately.
The Economist praises South Carolina’s sentencing reform package that was recently signed into law:
South Carolina’s Republican governor today signed off on a sentencing-reform law that passed the state’s Republican-controlled legislature by a wide margin. It reduces sentences for some non-violent offenders while increasing them for certain violent ones and it improves post-release supervision. It also ends the ridiculous sentencing disparity between powdered and rock cocaine, ends mandatory minimum sentences for first-time drug possession and lets more inmates participate in work-release programmes. It is also projected to save the state $400m over the next five years—no small potatoes for a state looking at a billion-dollar shortfall.
LAPD ACTS FAST ON PHOTOGRAPHER’S VIDEO OF OFFICER’S HARASSMENT
Zach Behrens reports for LAist that less than 24 hours after an LA photographer posted a video of an officer losing it with him over being photographed legally from a public sidewalk, the LAPD has triggered an investigation of the incident.
“Constitutional policing is very important to Chief Beck and we examine cases through that lens,” said Commander Richard Webb, who announced that his Internal Affairs group will conduct the investigation. “We will keep the Inspector General informed of the progress of the investigation which will ultimately be presented to the Chief of Police to determine if any discipline or retraining should take place.”
Good for Chief Beck and the LAPD. Quick action on a complaint goes a long way in building public confidence in the department.
PS: I hate to harp on this, but had John Gardener been a gang member, rather than an upstreet sex offender who assaulted a 13-year-old, he would have been back to prison on a parole violation, lickety split.
August 27th, 2010 by 
Celeste Fremon
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