EDITOR’S NOTE: On any given day, the biggest chunk of the County’s jail population—45 percent— is made up of people waiting to go to trial.

Most of that pretrial 45 percent are in for felony charges. About half of those with a felony charge are accused of violent or sex related crimes.

But this leaves a big chunk of people who are in jail awaiting trial for far less serious charges. Many of this group are locked up, not because they are considered a public safety risk, or a flight risk, but because they simply don’t have the money or the assets (like a house) that will allow them to make bail.

Both Dr. James Austin and the Vera Institute compiled reports for LA County that recommended implementing an innovative system pretrial supervision, which would mean that certain people could get out, pretrial, without having to post bail, but they will have some element of supervision to insure that they show up for their court dates.

Matt Fleischer is keeping a close eye on the issue and has an update.

DR. JAMES AUSTIN SAYS THAT MAKING PRETRIAL RELEASE A REALITY IN LOS ANGELES IS NOT A SURE THING—BUT THE CHANCES LOOK GOOD

by Matthew Fleischer

It’s been nearly a month since LA County Sheriff Lee Baca stood side-by-side at a press conference with nationally-renown corrections expert Dr. James Austin to debut Austin’s plan to shutter Men’s Central Jail and reduce the LA County Jail population by up to 3,000 inmates. Austin worked with the Sheriff’s department for three months to develop his plan. (

The Austin plan, if you’ll remember, calls for the release of selected non-violent inmates awaiting trial, the transfer of inmates to lower-cost fire camps, expanded release opportunities through the sheriff’s Education Based Incarceration program, and the expansion of capacity at the North County Correctional Facility. The pretrial release component is generally considered the report’s centerpiece, and also the element that could be the most controversial.

Baca seemed impressed—publicly professing his support for the plan, and announcing for the first time that, thanks to Austin’s efforts, the complete shutting of MCJ could be accomplished without building a $1.4 billion new jail.

As I wrote in the wake of the press conference, however, Baca’s supportive statements were no guarantee of action. “The sheriff is not committed to implementing the Austin plan,” Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore told WitnessLA.

Even if the Sheriff does wish to implement the plan, he still has to convince the Board of Supervisors, the CEO, the probation department and the local judiciary of its potential efficacy. The prospect of closing the most dangerous jail in America certainly seems daunting.

I reached Austin by phone last Friday to see how things are progressing.

---

What is your role now that the plan has been completed? Are you sticking around to help implementation?

I’m funded to work with the Sheriff to help implement that plan. We’re starting that process. I just had a meeting with the CEO and the Board of Supervisors. We’re putting together the nuts and bolts.

How are things progressing in your estimation?

I’m still optimistic. By June 1st we’ll know how real this thing is going forward. We’ve got some players outside the Sheriff’s department, obviously–the CEO and the supervisors. Everything has to be negotiated. We have a ways to go.

Can the Sheriff enact any elements of your plan unilaterally? Does the money already exist for electronic monitoring of inmates released pretrial?

As far as the money situation, I’m not sure. Legally you can do it. But it’s best we get everyone involved. During the planning process I met with the overseeing judge, who was fully behind the plan. Funding is an issue, perhaps. But Baca can do it legally. He has those powers under the Rutherford case.

What is the first step we should be seeing the department take that would indicate they are taking this report seriously?

The releasing some of the pretrial people. The second thing would be to get the construction plans in place for shutting down parts of Men’s Central Jail and getting it reconfigured for lower risk inmates.

Have any pretrial inmates in the county system been released yet?

No inmates have been released. At least not that I know of. Things could have happened and I wasn’t informed of. But not to my knowledge anyway. We should see something in terms of releases soon though.

In Monday, special counsel to the LA County Board of Supervisors, Merrick Bobb, issued his semi-annual report in which he found that complaints in the department were being handled appallingly slowly, and that reform in the jails, while showing some heartening progress, still had a long way to go.

Yet Bobb’s strongest theme was his clear expression that reform in the department depends greatly on Sheriff Baca’s leadership, and the sheriff’s willingness to stop ceding crucial control to others.

For instance, Bobb writes:

“To some extent, any LASD Sheriff is the public face of the Department and has to concentrate efforts on its external relations. The Sheriff perforce must delegate to trusted lieutenants. But it should be a delegation of authority, not an abdication of it. And the Sheriff must be certain that those who act in his name do so in a manner consistent with the Sheriff’s own core values… “

Here are a few more highlights from the 70-page report:

RUINING THE JAILS

“Two things seem clear: the Sheriff was not well served by major executives and managers who both actively and passively permitted the jails to operate at variance with the Sheriff’s core values, seemingly believing that the abusive culture there was intractable, at best, or not really a problem, at worst. Senior executives did not keep Sheriff Baca well-informed or else sheltered him from persons in his management seeking to alert him to the serious problems in the jails.

The Sheriff has taken some steps to chastise some of the individuals who let him down. There are signs that there has been a change of attitude on the part of some, which is welcome and bodes well for the Department. Nonetheless, it will take a sustained period of genuine progress to convince knowledgeable observers that those same major executives who presided over the apparent collapse of accountability in the jails are capable of presiding over jail reform.

THE DEPARTMENT’S INVESTIGATIVE BUREAUS MUST REPORT DIRECTLY TO THE SHERIFF

There has been concern expressed about a possible lack of support and respect for the Internal Affairs at the senior executive level. [This is, we presume, from WLA's reporting here.] The importance of the Leadership and Training Division has eclipsed in recent years and needs now once again to be front and center. The Chief of that division, which contains IAB, reports directly to the Sheriff, a recent change that we endorse. ICIB—the criminal investigations arm of the LASD—currently is a direct report to the Sheriff, according to the Undersheriff. The secrecy of ICIB investigations apparently has been compromised in the past, so there is a value in keeping layers of reporting to a minimum. In our review, as a matter of policy and best practice, both IAB and ICIB should report directly to the Sheriff. The power to initiate and terminate investigations and hence to make or break careers is one that requires oversight at the highest level. Direct reporting allows the chief executive to personally keep his finger on the pulse of the organization.

LASD’S NEW USE OF FORCE POLICY IN JAILS WOULD DISCOURAGE THE SLAMMING OF INMATE’S HEADS INTO HARD OBJECTS

There’s a lot more, like the rundown on the progress being made—and not made—in installing the video cameras in the jails, along with charts that show the degree to which use-of-force numbers have dropped since all the scrutiny of the jails began last year.

There is a short section on the importance of the recommendations about pre-trial release made in the Vera and the James Austin reports, if jail population is to be kept at a manageable level.

Plus there are things like this on a newly proposed use of force policy:

Among other things, the current reformulation attempts to subject a wider variety of head injuries to an immediate rollout by Internal Affairs. It should serve to discourage deputies from causing an inmate to strike his head against any hard object, be it the concrete floor or the bars in the jail. Should a deputy deliberately do any of those things, it may be a crime and should be dealt with as such. We believe it also should include instances where it might not have been done deliberately but was done recklessly, as when the deputy knows the high probability of what he is doing will cause a head strike, yet goes ahead anyway. Reckless conduct may also be criminal….

Okay, well, that’s encouraging, I guess. One would have assumed that such matters would have already been clear. But better late than never, one supposes.

JAILS TASK FORCE DOING WELL SO FAR

Bobb makes a point of praising the Commander Management Task Force or CMTF, whose job it is to “….assess and transform the culture of the custody facilities in order to provide a safe, secure learning environment for our Department personnel and the inmates placed in the Department’s care…”

Admittedly, WitnessLA was among those who were very concerned at the make-up of the CMTF because all but one of its five commanders were Undersheriff Paul Tanaka’s hand picked people.

While acknowledging the concern, Bobb says “the group is doing a good job so far,” and gives various examples of their competence, adding, “It is a positive step that they are reporting directly to the Sheriff.”

Merrick Bobb sums his assessment of the CMTF in this way, which also capsulizes much of what the report says when taken altogether:

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the US Supreme Court rejected without comment an appeal that could have shielded Sheriff Lee Baca from legal responsibility for a pending jail abuse case. The case involves an inmate named Dion Starr who was stabbed 23 times with a jail-made shank by three alleged Latino gang members in a racially charged attack that occurred when Starr was in the 2400 block of Men’s Central Jail awaiting trial on minor charge.

Interestingly, in looking more closely at the chain of supervisory control in Men’s Central Jail at the time of the reported attack against Starr, it appears that any legal exposure might better be shared by Undersheriff Paul Tanaka.

But before we get to that part of the story, it helps to know at least the rough parameters of the case and of the recent action (or more accurately, the deliberate inaction) by the U.S. Supreme Court:

Starr’s complaint states that the attack against him was made possible when a deputy named Jose Garibay, who controlled inmate ingress and egress from the 2400 cells, wrongly opened the door to Starr’s cell, then walked away from his observation post while Starr—who is African American and reportedly has no gang affiliation—screamed and called out for help as the attack continued.

Eventually, other deputies arrived, including a Sergeant Inge, who rapidly stopped the attack. But as Starr lay on the floor of his cell, bleeding and moaning in pain, one of the deputies—Deputy Maybet Bugarin—allegedly yelled racial epithets at him, things like, “shut up nigger.” Then Bugarin reportedly kicked Starr in the face, fracturing his nose. According to the complaint, Sergeant Inge, who was the floor sergeant for the 2000 block, saw Bugarin deliver the kick.

Starr’s attorneys, Sonia Mercado and Samuel Paz, contend that the inmate attacks and the deputy abuse, and the lack of a rigorous follow-up investigation, are part of an ongoing pattern of such incidents in Men’s Central Jail, and that Sheriff Baca had been repeatedly informed about the problems by supervisors, and through reports from people like Mike Gennaco of the Office of Independent Review, and LA County Special Counsel Merrick Bobb, whose 2004 and 2005 reports wrote of similar attacks. One high profile inmate on inmate attack that involved a mentally ill inmate named Chadwick Shane Cochran, had occurred a few months before in November of 2005, in the same 2400 block, of CJ, where Starr was stabbed. Cochran was left incorrectly in a room with 30 inmates some of whom beat him to death, while other inmates screamed for deputy intervention that did not arrive. “It was a systemic failure,” Bobb told an AP reporter of the Cochran case. In short, in the face of a rash of violent and in some cases, fatal incidents, multiple critical outside reports and lawsuits, Baca had not exerted the leadership necessary to put a stop to the problems and to keep inmates safe.

And so he’s liable, said the attorneys.

Last summer, a three judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed when it ruled in the case of Baca v. Starr that Dion Starr could hold the sheriff legally accountable for the serious injuries he received on January 27, 2006 in Men’s Central Jail.

That the Supremes declined to fiddle with the 9th Circuit’s ruling was a surprising setback for Baca and his LA lawyer, Timothy Coates. And if Starr and his attorneys are successful at trial, it will open a wide highway for other inmates in jail abuse cases to sue the sheriff directly.

In reading the text of the 9th Circuit’s ruling its evident that, in addition to the justices’ interpretation of legal precedent, they took seriously the detailed line up of similar inmate-on-inmate abuse cases, including five killings in six months in late 2003 to early 2004. Most of the incidents had occurred in CJ when deputies unaccountably allowed the wrong inmates together in a cell or room, and then walked away.

After examining the Starr case, we reviewed our own records here at WitnessLA, and noticed that the timing of Starr’s reported attacks (and some of the other attacks referenced in the case) seemed to logically point to supervisory culpability in addition to Baca’s, namely that of Undersheriff Tanaka.

To wit:

Starr was injured on January 27, 2006. This means the incident occurred during Captain John Clark’s tenure as head of Men’s Central Jail. If you remember, Clark is the CJ captain who became concerned about spiking levels of deputy use of force and the increasingly toxic deputy cliques like the 3000 Boys, and the 2000 Boys—the latter being the deputies who could have potentially guarded the 2400 block where Starr was housed.

WitnessLA has recently obtained a copy of a February 8, 2006, memo that Clark sent out to the deputies and supervisors in his charge in which he announced a new policy of job rotation that would begin in March of 2006, and was specifically designed to help break up the deputy gangs.

If you’ll remember from Parts 1 and 2 and 3 of Matt Fleischer’s Dangerous Jails series, then Assistant Sheriff (now Undersheriff) Paul Tanaka, reversed the reforms Clark had announced in the memo, and subverted the authority of the captain and his supervisors to discipline deputies for wrongdoing by meeting with the deputies separately and telling them to come directly to him—Tanaka— not their immediate bosses.

We were also interested to note that Clark’s Feb. 8, 2006 memo was sent out 12 days after the attack on Dion Starr, meaning that the Starr incident fell smack within the period during which Clark was the most concerned about deputy misconduct, and was attempting to act constructively to address his concerns—but was thwarted by those above him, specifically Tanaka. That would be the same Tanaka who has, as WLA has reported, often exhorted deputies to “work in the gray.”

With the above events in mind, now that the 9th Circuit has opened the door to holding supervisors like Sheriff Baca legally accountable in jail abuse cases like Dion Starr’s, one cannot help but wonder where the undersheriff’s legal responsibility in such cases might conceivably lie.

LEGAL NOTE: David Savage at the LA Times has an extended report on the Supreme’s ruling that is worth reading.

In it he mentions SCOTUS’s earlier ruling on a similar issue:

In 2009, the Supreme Court made it harder to sue top officials. In a 5-4 decision, it threw out a suit against former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft seeking to hold him liable for the arrest and jailhouse beating of Muslim men after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Ashcroft is considered by many to be a clumsily written ruling. Thus a couple of the lawyers I spoke to yesterday thought that SCOTUS might be trying to at least somewhat amend their Ashcroftian mistake through the back door by declining to take Baca v. Starr, thus allowing the 9th circuit’s precedent-making ruling in the matter to stand.

Since last fall Sheriff Lee Baca has insisted to the LA County Board of Supervisors that the county needs to spend $1.4 billion to build a state of the art jail facility, so that the notorious and violence-plagued Men’s Central Jail can be closed and torn down.

Now, however, Baca has tentatively signed on to what many are calling a ground-breaking plan that is far more progressive—and far less expensive—than his earlier building extravaganza, yet one that it is hoped will result in the closing of the decrepit and difficult to guard Men’s Central, while employing what experts describe as a fresh approach to criminal justice policy and practice.

At a Tuesday morning press conference held at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department headquarters in Monterey Park, Baca stood with nationally known corrections expert, Dr. James Austin, and the ACLU’s Peter Eliasberg and Margaret Winter, for the presentation of Austin’s innovative roadmap that charts the ways that the County’s jail population may be lowered enough to shut down CJ completely as soon as 2013.

The much-anticipated Austin report titled “Evaluation of the Current and Future Los Angeles County Jail Population,” lays out in 32 pages of intensely researched text, graphs and charts, all of the elements that its proponents say are needed make the jail closing happen, while also keeping in mind public safety. The plan also factors in the state’s AB 109 realignment plan that kicked in last October, and that is estimated to bring an influx of 7000 extra inmates into the county jail system by the end of 2014.

Among the points made in Austin’s blueprint are the following:

The biggest chunk of the County’s jail population is pretrial at 45 percent. These are people who are waiting to go to trial, but have not been convicted. (The rest are: sentenced with a pending charge, 18%, sentenced, 37%)

Most of that pretrial 45 percent are in for felony charges, about half of which are violent or sex related.

However, as Austin notes, this leaves a big chunk of people who are in jail while awaiting trial for more minor charges. Many of this group are in jail, not because they are considered a public safety risk, or a flight risk, but because they simply don’t have the money or the assets (like a house) that will allow them to make bail.

Austin estimates that, by the end of 2014, the projected jail population of 21,000 can be safely reduced by about 3,000 inmates by implementing an “innovative” system pretrial supervision—meaning certain people will get out—pretrial—without having to post bail, but they will have some element of supervision to insure that they show up for their court dates.

The blueprint also calls for some reorganization of the county’s existing facilities including the North County Correctional facility in Castaic, which would be renovated to replace the maximum-security beds lost at Men’s Central, which currently houses 4,000 inmates, and the possible utilization of
five county conservation camps to increase the number of minimum-security beds. The county’s Mira Loma Detention Center, which is presently contracted to ICE, is another facility listed as an alternative option in the Austin plan.

In addition, the multi-part strategy would include another leg that allows low-risk convicted felons to be supervised in the community if they complete education-oriented programs shown to cut down on recidivism—namely LASD’s Education Based Incarceration (EBI) program, that also happen to be Baca’s pet project. (At present, the EBI program serves approximately 1,200 inmates who receive counseling and education services in order to cut down their risk of recidivism, a strategy that statistically has been shown to be successful.) Austin estimates that the EBI part of the strategy, if properly implemented, could lower the future jails population by another 1000 inmates.

The ACLU, which paid for the Austin report, had tried in past years to get the LASD to allow Austin to study the LA County jail system and to make recommendations for lowering the jails population. Always before, Baca had declined the offer.

Then after news of the FBI investigation into jail violence broke, combined with the ACLU’s harshest jails report yet, and ongoing critical coverage by such media outlets as WitnessLA, the LA Times and others, Baca agreed to let Jim Austin in. (Baca’s cooperation was necessary in that large parts of Austin’s report is based on analyses of LASD’s internal figures.)

“The sheriff has said to us that he’s committed to the proposal, and It’s a huge step,” said Peter Eliasberg, the So Cal ACLU’s legal director, speaking about Baca’s degree of sign-on to the Austin-crafted strategy. “We may disagree about a lot things, but where we can agree, we should be able to make real progress.”

The ACLU’s national jails expert, Margaret Winter, goes even further. “That Sheriff Baca strongly supports the Austin report and these recommendations indicates a seismic shift in attitude,” she wrote this morning in a blog post, “a shift likely to reverberate and help trigger change around the nation.”

Whether Baca’s cautious sign-on on Tuesday will translate into action is something that we will continue to track.

UPDATE: SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN STEVE WHITMORE, while reiterating that the sheriff was “going to consider the Austin report,” was far less upbeat in his take than the ACLU.

“The sheriff is not committed to implementing the Austin plan,” said Whitmore. “The ACLU should not oversell this.”

Whitmore said that Baca had been exploring the pretrial release option for some time, but that it took cooperation from the court system, which the sheriff has not secured. Plus there’s a cost factor and the DA factor.”

District Attorney Steve Cooley has, thus far, not been enthusiastic about pretrial release.

So has progress been made?

For a functional answer to that question it appears that we are, once again, all going to have to…

…stay tuned.

Photo of CJ by Jay Clendenin/Los Angeles Times

Jack Leonard and Robert Faturechi, of the LA Times report that Sheriff Lee Baca may be planning to take the first big step in reorganizing his troubled jail system by moving part of the population of the antiquated and violence plagued Men’s Central Jail to the women’s jail in Lynwood.

This is welcome news.

Here’s a clip from the Times’ article:

Facing a federal investigation into allegations of brutality in his jails, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is considering a bold proposal to shutter a portion of the department’s most troubled lockup that has been plagued by inmate killings, excessive force by guards and poor supervision.

The plan would shift about 1,800 inmates, including many of the county’s most violent criminals, from the old section of Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, a sheriff’s jail commander said. The inmates would probably be moved to a newer facility in Lynwood that currently houses female inmates.

Indeed, there’s probably little question that the federal investigation into inmate abuse by deputies in the jails, a newly appointed “citizens” commission to look into the jails problems not to mention the ongoing press attention to the matter, have all been part of the reason that the Sheriff has wisely—at least for the moment— stopped hectoring the LA County Board of Supervisors for his much-desired $1.4 billion for new jail construction and is, instead, actively entertaining some of the alternative solutions that jails experts and reform advocates have long been suggesting.

As we mentioned in late January, the Sheriff has recently opened the door to an analysis of his jail housing problems by jail and prison population expert, Dr. James Austin—after resisting an Austin report in previous years, when the ACLU suggested such an analysis and even agreed to foot the bill for it.

Nevertheless, it is to Baca’s credit that now he appears to be embracing the notion of working with Austin.

Last week when I asked the Sheriff’s spokesman, Steve Whitmore, about Austin’s final report, he said it was not yet completed. However, I’ve seen some of Austin’s preliminary material, which includes an analysis of t the existing population in each of the county’s jail facilities, and then an assessment of the projected population over the next few years, taking into consideration the extra inmates coming to LA County because of the state’s realignment strategy.

The final report will also look at where and how in the existing facilities the jails’ population could most successfully—and safely—be housed, and how the population might also be reduced by instituting the kind of pretrial release system that has worked well for some other cities and counties.

Another report that the Sheriff was expected to draw on for his future plans is the 289-page study by the Vera institute, titled the Los Angeles County Jail Overcrowding Reduction Project, that had been previously commissioned by the LA County CEO’s office. (The report was first completed in 2008, then revised in Sept. 2011.)

(As with Austin’s work, the Vera report has a detailed section about pretrial release and how and why LA’ County’s bail system needs to be rethought. It shows with plenty of graphs and pie charts how the current system lets wealth, or lack thereof, decide who gets out on bail, and who languishes in a cell while they wait for trial, when the deciding factor really ought to be “risk assessment”—namely who is most at risk of not showing up for trial, or might be a danger to public safety.)

One thing that all concerned seem to agree upon is the need to close all or part of the decrepit and poorly designed Men’s Central Jail. At the last Jails Commission meeting on March 2, Mike Genneco of the Office of Independent Review and Merrick Bobb, the Special Counsel to the Board of Supervisors each told the commissioners how hard CJ is to oversee because of its floor plan in which cells are arranged in long rows, and thus not visible from a single vantage point. Lynwood, in contrast, is built with a more modern and effective floor plan that places a guard post at the center with a view of an entire cell block.

Both men explained that, while not the cause of the culture of violence that has been permitted to fester in Men’s Central Jail, the facility itself hasn’t helped the situation.

“It’s structurally a very, very difficult jail to manage,” said Merrick Bobb, citing the cell layout. “That’s why we’ve recommend cameras so many times over the years for Men’s Central Jails.”

As of the March 2 meeting, the camera installation had yet to be fully accomplished.

(NOTE: For some of the main points from Austin’s preliminary analysis go to the bottom of the post here.)

AND IN OTHER NEWS…. SOME REPORTS ON THE ARGUMENTS PRESENTED TUESDAY IN THE SUPREME COURT ON THE ISSUE OF SENTENCES OF LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE FOR JUVENILES.

You can listen to Nina Totenberg’s report here at NPR.

Doug Berman at Sentencing, Law and Policy (who wrote an amicus brief for the cases) wasn’t very encouraging in his analysis. Here’s how he began his report:

On reading the transcripts in the two juve LWOP cases that the Supreme Court heard today, Miller and Jackson, I’m struck by how confused the Justices are about how to frame the issues. The advocates certainly didn’t seem to give the Court the help it was looking for.

However, Adam Liptak at the New York Times had this to say:

…A majority of them appeared prepared to take an additional step in limiting such punishments, but it was not clear whether it would be modest or large. The court’s precedents have created so many overlapping categories — based on age, the nature of the offense and whether judges and juries have discretion to show leniency — that much of the argument was devoted to identifying the possible lines the court could draw.

In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the court abolished the juvenile death penalty, a decision that affected about 70 prisoners. “It is worth noting,” that decision said, “that the punishment of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is itself a severe sanction, in particular for a young person.”

LA TIMES’ JIM NEWTON TAKES A SECOND TRIP TO CHILD DEPENDENCY COURT

Please don’t miss Jim Newton’s terrific column on his second trip to child dependency court,since the court was ordered open to the press by Judge Michael Nash. (Judge Nash is my hero for the year for unilaterally moving to open the long-secret courts, over much shrieking objection.)

Here’s a clip about one particular case of the many Newton observed the day he went again to court:

…..Secrecy has become routine for Dependency Court, but as this example illustrates, it’s often hard to see whose interests that has served. When the case was called last week, the lawyer for the father moved to have me excluded on the vague grounds that it would intrude on her client’s privacy. But during a break in the proceedings, the father sought me out and complained that privacy has hidden the misdeeds and indifference of social workers and his own lawyers.

“They’re trying to make it seem like we haven’t learned anything from our parenting classes or our domestic-violence classes,” he said. “We don’t have anyone to raise a voice for us.” He said he feels victimized, not protected, by privacy, and he urged me to use his name: It’s Carlton Vereen.

Conversely, secrecy may have protected this father from scrutiny. It came out in court that he’s plowed through lawyers and caused repeated delays without anyone watching. And his actions have postponed resolution of the case — and stability for his daughter — for month after month.

So, if secrecy can be bad for the child and bad for the parents, for whom is it good? Well, it undeniably serves the interests of those whose judgments might be second-guessed.

Read the rest of this entry »

LASD RESERVISTS WHO ARE ALSO THE SHERIFF’S WEALTHY SUPPORTERS MAY GET FREE DEPARTMENT CARS (WHILE LASD* OFFICERS WHO NEED CARS DON’T HAVE ‘EM)

The LA Times’ Robert Faturichi reports. Here’s how it opens:

For months, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Capt. Phillip Hansen heard the grumblings: Deep-pocketed donors and other well-connected individuals working as reserve deputies were driving around in unmarked Sheriff’s Department cars. One reserve, a restaurant owner who threw a fundraiser for Sheriff Lee Baca, was frequently seen parking a county-owned Ford Crown Victoria outside his La Mirada restaurant, a popular hangout for deputies.

Hansen, who heads the volunteer deputy program, was troubled by the reports and asked for an accounting of which reserves had take-home cars.

He was stunned by the response.

“I basically got nicely told I really wasn’t authorized to have that information,” Hansen recalled.

It turns out at least one reserve — the Baca fundraiser — was assigned a county car. A sheriff’s spokesman conceded that other reserves may have had vehicles as well, but he declined to provide a detailed accounting of how many received such a perk.

Last year, the Sheriff’s Department refused to comply with a public records request from The Times regarding take-home county car use and gas consumption by four reserves who have given Baca political support or gifts. The department declined to even confirm the men were reserves, despite all four being named on department websites or other public listings.

When reached by phone last month, one of the four men, Chris Vovos, refused to answer questions about whether he had a take-home car, hanging up twice. “You’re asking me for information I don’t give my own father,” he said.

It is both interesting and heartening that Captain Hansen (the division captain quoted in the beginning of the story) and Norwalk station Capt. Patrick Maxwell (quoted closer to the story’s end), chose to speak out candidly.

There is no way to know for sure, but this suggests an attitude of being fed up with the favoritism and cronyism that has permeated parts of the department. In our investigations we are seeing an attitude of enough-is-enough among large swaths of department personnel—and it’s our observation that the feeling is growing.

* This headline originally read “(…while sworn officers who need cars don’t have ‘em). However a commenter reminded me that reserve officers are also “sworn.”

JAILS COMMISSION MEETS TO HEAR TESTIMONY FROM INDEPENDENT MONITOR AND SPECIAL COUNSEL

The Citizens Commission on Jail Violence will meet at 10 a.m. on Friday, where they’ll hear reports and testimony from Michael Gennaco, Office of Independent Review and Merrick Bobb, Special Counsel.

The Commission has a website that will tell you all its goings on. So, if you’re interested in observing the meetings from the beginning, check here and then com’on down. This is the first meeting where there will be real testimony as opposed to mostly set-up.

STATE LEGISLATORS MEET ON FRIDAY AT 2:30 PM TO HEAR TESTIMONY ABOUT HOW TO HELP YOUNG MEN OF COLOR THRIVE

Research shows that young men of color have the lowest life expectancy rates, highest unemployment rates and lowest graduation rates of any population in LA

With this in mind, an impressive list of local leaders, experts and youth will share “innovative health, education and juvenile justice models for possible statewide expansion” at a legislative hearing from 2:30 pm to 6 pm, Friday at the : Expo Center, 3980 Bill Robertson Lane, Los Angeles.

For additional information and to register (it’s free) go here.

NOTE; DUE TO MY OWN CRAZY MEETING SCHEDULE THESE PAST TWO DAYS, THIS IS A LIGHT BLOGGING DAY. Lots more Monday.

Sergeant Mark Moffett, a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, loved policing, and had the good performance reviews to prove it.

Then about five years ago, he reportedly began to be taunted and harassed by another LASD sergeant named Timothy Cooper, who told Moffett that he didn’t have what it takes to be a “real deputy”—meaning he was not enough of a hard charger; he didn’t skate the edge.

[NOTE: The Times reported that, according to the district attorney's records, Cooper may have been a* had ties to the Vikings, "a deputy clique that in the 1990s was alleged to have brutalized minorities, falsely arrested suspects and engaged in wrongful shootings." Paul Tanaka was a member of the Vikings.

According to some of our sources, Cooper is a Regulator, another one of the gang-like deputy cliques like the now infamous 3000 Boys and 2000 Boys, and the Vikings before them, that have matching tattoos, flash hand signs, and take pride in policing very aggressively---in certain cases, some say, brutally. As both the Vikings and the newer Regulators originated in Lynwood, department sources have characterized the Regulators as an evolution of the older deputy clique.

For several years, Moffett did not report Cooper, even as news of their run ins and Cooper's reported swaggering threats made the rounds on the department's gossip telegraph.

Then one morning in 2009, inside the Compton Sheriff's station, Cooper pulled a gun on Moffett and pointed it at his head.

"I'm going to kill you," Moffett said Cooper mouthed at him. "I'm going to kill you."

According to Moffett, he had avoided reporting Cooper's harassment in the past. But this time he decided enough was enough.

The LA Times' Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard have a report in Wednesday's paper on Moffet's allegations against Cooper, and on the response by the sheriff's department.

WitnessLA is also familiar with Moffett's story---and the department's response to it. We'll have more on this a bit later on.

In the meantime, here are some clips from the LA Times report:

....Moffett told authorities he pulled into the employee lot [at the Compton station] at 4:30 a.m. As he walked toward the station, he said, Cooper pulled up in a sheriff’s patrol SUV, revved the engine and smirked. Cooper then allegedly drove toward him slowly, stopping just a few feet short of striking Moffett.

“What are you going to do?” Moffett recalled saying. “Run me over?”

Cooper, he said, nodded his head and smiled.

Surveillance video shows the SUV proceeding at a steady pace and stopping within five feet of Moffett, the district attorney’s memo states.

Later, inside the station, Cooper walked by Moffett, unsnapped his holster, and again smiled and nodded. He was standing just behind another station supervisor when he brandished his gun.

That supervisor, Sgt. Douglas Iketani, told investigators that he believed Cooper pointed the gun in Moffett’s general direction.

Moffett told investigators that Cooper proceeded to close one eye as if he were aiming before allegedly mouthing his death threat, according to the prosecutor’s memo.

According to the Times report, although the original recommendation was for Cooper to be demoted, the executives on the department’s discipline committee instead opted for a 15-day suspension—a wrist-slap at best.

This same discipline committee has now been disbanded by Sheriff Baca who, as we reported last week, is taking a direct and active role in the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, which—since last Spring—was controlled by Undersheriff Paul Tanaka. [See Dangerous Jails, Part 4.]

The Times reports that Baca had this to say when asked about the departmental change and the Moffett/Cooper case.

“I’m not here to comment about what’s [happened] before,” he said. “I’m here to say improving the sheriff’s discipline process … cannot be delegated.”

Indeed.

The Times also reported:

The now-disbanded committee that determined Cooper’s punishment was typically composed of two assistant sheriffs, Marvin Cavanaugh and Cecil Rhambo, and the undersheriff, Paul Tanaka..

POST SCRIPT: Timothy Cooper is on the 2004 donations list for Paul Tanaka’s Mayoral Campaign. We did not see him on the 2008 or 2009 lists. We have yet to check the others.

EDITORS NOTE: Apologies to our non-LASD obsessed readers. We’ll have news on other topics again tomorrow.

* Note correction from earlier version.

THE SHERIFF MAKES THREE CHANGES AND INSIDERS SEARCH FOR HIDDEN MEANING

reported by Matt Fleischer and Celeste Fremon

It is rumored that there may be one or two unexpected shifts in personnel in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department command staff. More on that later as we sort fact from gossip.

In the meantime, three small but interesting changes have occurred inside the department, each of which have insiders sifting through them for hidden meaning.

Change Number 1:

Last Wednesday morning, during the Sheriff’s weekly Executive Planning Council meeting, Lee Baca announced that Chief Roberta Abner, the department head who oversees Internal Affairs, the LASD’s self-investigative bureau, would now report directly to him on all matters concerning IA. This meant that top level say so over IA would effective bypass several other members of command staff—most prominently the undersheriff, Paul Tanaka, Sheriff Baca’s ultra powerful second in command.

For Baca to involve himself this directly with oversight of Internal Affairs was an extremely unusual move, sources inside the department told us.

According to one source, Baca’s direct oversight of IAB means he’ll be the tie-breaking vote on matters of discipline in the department–which is a responsibility with serious ramifications. “If deputy gets a pass on a bad case, Sheriff Baca now could be now be deposed to figure out why that deputy was let off easy. It opens him up to all kinds of scrutiny. I think it does show he’s taking the situation seriously.”

What made the move even more unusual was the fact that, last spring, Undersheriff Tanaka had himself taken over direct control of Internal Affairs and its companion bureau, ICIB (the Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau, which investigates criminal matters involving department personnel).

As we reported last month in Part 4 of our ongoing Dangerous Jails series, Tanaka’s move was considered to be a power grab by many, especially since Tanaka had long been vocal about his loathing for Internal Affairs.

Weirdly a week after WitnessLA began inquiring into the matter, Tanaka handed IA back—officially anyway. Sources inside the department said he still maintained iron control—however not on paper, so to speak.

That was around a month ago. Now, as of last week, Sheriff Baca is in charge. According to several of our department sources, this means that Undersheriff Tanaka is effectively out of the loop as far as IA is concerned.

“Skipping over Tanaka is an unprecedented move,” one source inside the department told us. “It shows a lack of confidence in Tanaka by the Sheriff.”

At least that’s the supposition bouncing through certain streams of department chatter.

Chief Abner did confirm that she will be reporting directly to Lee Baca on IAB matters. When we asked about ICIB, however, Abner said the unit still is under Paul Tanaka’s control. “The Sheriff plans to have some discussions on the matter, but as of now nothing has changed.”

Change Number 2:

At last week’s same Executive Planning Council meeting, it was announced that LASD Correctional Services Chief Alexander Yim will be assuming the duties of recently retired custody chief Dennis Burns. Baca has no immediate plans to promote another chief. Instead, Yim will handle oversight of both divisions.

“In a division as troubled as custody,” one source told us, “you want twice as much supervision, not half. But I think it shows that Baca really doesn’t know who he can trust right now.”

When we asked Sheriff Baca’s spokesman Steve Whitmore about this and a list of related questions, he said he had no comment.

However, Michael Gennaco, who oversees the Office of Independent Review, confirmed that Yim would be heading both Custody as well as Correctional Services. “It’s going to be a lot of work for him, that’s for sure,” Gennaco said referring to Yim. Gennaco also confirmed that Baca would be overseeing IAB directly, and said that the OIR had no objections to either move.

However, another source familiar with the situation and the players said that Yim had pretty much been running both divisions anyway, and that he wanted to “clear out the obstructionists” in the troubled custody division—meaning, we were told, those individuals who stood in the way of reform.

Change Number 3:

On Tuesday of this week what is known as an “Intent to Promote” teletype was sent out from the Sheriff’s office announcing that two captains would be promoted to the rank of Commander. This would have no particular significance except that one of the about-to-be commanders is Captain Ray Leyva—a man who, along with Captain John Clark, and now retired Commander Robert Olmsted, was one of the supervisors who attempted reform in Men’s Central Jail, but whose efforts were blocked and/or undone by Paul Tanaka.

Ray Leyva was also one of three captains that Tanaka said he would never under any circumstances promote, according Bob Olmsted.

Tanaka made good on his word.

After being transferred out of Men’s Central for a less prestigious posting, Leyva was reportedly repeatedly passed over for promotion in favor of men with far less experience than his, but who were Tanaka proteges. In fact, in the past eight years, Leyva has been passed over for promotion 58 times—the most in the department.

As a consequence, Leyva along with another on Tanaka’s “never promote” list, Joaquin Herran, brought suit against against the department alleging discrimination and unfair practices in its promotional system. (See Dangerous Jails Part 3 for the rest of the details.)

Now Lee Baca appears to have reached around Tanaka and Leyva is about to become a commander.

So what does it all mean? Do these changes mean anything at all past the actions themselves?

Do they presage a weakening of the control of the undersheriff?

Or is sometimes a cigar—just a cigar.

When it comes to Internal Affairs, we do know that the three people Paul Tanaka promoted to head up IA and ICIB are still in place. In fact, one of the three, Commander Joe Hartshorne, who oversees both bureaus, is the person who is now personally overseeing the investigation centering around Bob Olmsted, who told WitnessLA and the LA Times last year that he had warned Paul Tanaka and the sheriff about the problems of jail abuse but was ignored, his attempts at correction derailed.

Olmsted told the LA Times he feared the investigation was a witch hunt.… So how does all that factor in?

More as we have it.

One of the more interesting moments in Friday’s meeting of the Citizen’s Committee on Jail Violence came when Richard Drooyan, the General Counsel for the Commission, gave his report.

Drooyan, a former Chief of the Criminal Division in the US Attorney’s Office in LA, now in private practice, (and was also was a counsel for the Christopher Commission, among other relevant posts), is the person overseeing the teams of attorneys who will act as the detectives, so to speak, tasked with doing the actual investigating work for the Commission.

Drooyan reported that, thus far, he has 15 attorneys lined up (“most of them former assistant U.S. attorneys”) who are divided into five teams of three “All these attorneys are pro bono,” Drooyan explained. “And all of them have started to recruit attorneys in their firms…. (who would also be pro bono. “All of them are anxious to get going.”

There was, however, one hiccup, that was holding up the start of the investigation, said Drooyan.

It seems that an attorney for the sheriff’s deputies union (presumably ALADS,) told Sheriff Baca who, in turn, informed Drooyan, that the Commission cannot have access to jail records—specifically personnel and disciplinary records—”because it is against state law.” (This means the Public Safety Officers Bill of Rights and a controversial 2006 California Supreme Court decision.)

Drooyan, however, argued otherwise, saying that the LA County Supervisors are legally able to look at such documents in a secure setting, and that the Supes may extend their powers to the Commission and its legal designates.

Drooyan made it clear to the Commission that the investigators cannot possibly do their jobs without this material. [Note: The commission isn't interested in probing the actions of individual deputies, but is looking for patterns within the jails---both in terms of deputy actions, and how supervisors responded to those actions.]

(Such records were considered significant during the Christopher Commission’s investigations and during the probe into police misconduct during the Rampart era.)

“If we don’t have access to personnel and disciplinary records,” he said firmly, “then we’re going to have to go to court to get access. So that may take a little longer [than anticipated].”

Drooyan was careful to spell out the fact that the confidential reports will be looked at only within protected circumstances. For instance, the investigators will only have hard copies, he said. “Nothing electronic.” And those copies will be kept under lock and key and looked at by the investigators only in one secure location. Again, he warned that getting them may be a legal battle, that the union may try to file an injunction.

Otherwise, he said, “we’ll be ready to start interviewing and reviewing documents next week—but that’s assuming we can get documents.”

(I’ll keep you posted on this.)

In addition, Drooyan revisited the issue of confidentially for witnesses. “We are going to try to maintain confidentiality for those witnesses who ask for confidentiality,” he said. “But we can’t guarantee it.” However, the Commission would guarantee to leave the names of people wishing confidentiality out of reports and documents. However, if those names ever became relevant to future court proceedings, he said, then the commission would have to fork them over.

The next meeting was set fir 10 am on March 2, at which time the Commission will start hearing from witnesses.

AND IN OTHER NEWS….

AN OP ED IN MONDAY’S WA PO DECLARES CITIZENS UNITED A “CATASTROPHE.”

E.J. Dionne writes in Monday’s Washington Post that this election season is proving the controversial decision to be a disaster for democracy. Here’s a clip:

….The Citizens United justices were not required to think through the practical consequences of sweeping aside decades of work by legislators, going back to the passage of the landmark Tillman Act in 1907, who sought to prevent untoward influence-peddling and indirect bribery.

If ever a court majority legislated from the bench (with Bush’s own appointees leading the way), it was the bunch that voted for Citizens United. Did a single justice in the majority even imagine a world of super PACs and phony corporations set up for the sole purpose of disguising a donor’s identity? Did they think that a presidential candidacy might be kept alive largely through the generosity of a Las Vegas gambling magnate with important financial interests in China? Did they consider that the democratizing gains made in the last presidential campaign through the rise of small online contributors might be wiped out by the brute force of millionaires and billionaires determined to have their way?

“The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.” Those were Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words in his majority opinion. How did he know that? Did he consult the electorate? Did he think this would be true just because he said it?

Justice John Paul Stevens’ observation in his dissent reads far better than Kennedy’s in light of subsequent events. “A democracy cannot function effectively,” he wrote, “when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.”

WONDER DOGS AND TROUBLED KIDS

There is a story in Sunday’s NY Times that is a genuine must read. It’s about an American couple who adopted two Russian kids, a boy and a girl. What they were not told by the adoption agency was that the boy was suffering with a severe case of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

As the boy—Iyal— got worse and worse, his parents tried everything they could think of to help him with little affect. Finally they heard about a woman who’d had luck training service dogs for autistic kids and other children with disabilities. (The trainer had her own personal miracle story, involving a service dog helping her turn her own health and well being around.)

Anyway, Chancer the big, cheerful golden retriever became Iyal’s dog…. And managed to break through to the kid in a way that nothing else had.

Iyal wasn’t cured, of course. He never will be. But the difference a dog made in one boy’s life was—and is—profound.

It’s a great story and you can read itself yourself right here.