HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES AT 25

“If you want to change the world, change the metaphor,” said Father Greg Boyle, quoting Bertrand Russell, when he delivered the final speech of the evening at Homeboy Industries’ 25th birthday celebration on Saturday night.

Twenty-five years ago, Father Greg Boyle and Homeboy Industries— before it was Homeboy Industries—changed the metaphor. Rather than demonizing young gang members, Boyle practiced compassion and what he calls kinship. He said that gangs and gang violence were symptoms of “a lethal absence of hope. So you want to infuse young people with hope, when it seems that hope is foreign.”

So Fr. Greg did—and does. And he built an organization to reflect that same sense of compassion and the belief that “we belong to each other.” Lives were changed—and not just those of the homeboys and the homegirls, but of others in the city, many of whom came to celebrate on Saturday night.

Mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel was there at the party (shown below with former homegirl, my pal, Frances Aguilar), as was Hilda Solis, Sheriff Lee Baca and other elected officials and policy makers. Eric Garcetti did not attend, but he sent his dad Gil did in his stead.

Happy 25th Birthday Homeboy!

JAILS SUPERVISORS HAD BRIEFING MONDAY ON “RETALIATION”

Newly promoted custody commander Marvin Washington called a meeting on Monday of jail supervisors, including those from OSJ, to talk about the issue of retaliation.

(OSJ is the unit in which deputies Mike Rathbun and James Sexton have been working.)

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore confirmed the meeting, saying that Sheriff Baca has long been committed to a firm no retaliation policy, “And the message is finally getting through loud and clear; that you can’t do that!”

About the Sexton/Rathbun lawsuit, Whitmore said that the department is “cooperating fully with the federal investigation,” but also reiterated what he’d earlier told the LA Times, that Sexton and Rathburn “were not retaliated against.”

DO WE STILL HAVE THE RIGHT TO A SPEEDY TRIAL? NOT SO’S YOU’D NOTICE. (DEAR SCOTUS, YOU’RE NOT HELPING.)

Andrew Cohen at the Atlantic has a column on the topic of not-terribly-speedy trials, which are now the norm. His doorway into the topic is the matter of a case involving a 7-year wait for trial in Louisiana, which the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear, and then, this week, decided….um….maybe not.

Here’s a clip from the story:

There has been for decades now an ideological split at the United States Supreme Court over the Sixth Amendment’s right to a speedy trial — one of the most basic of due process rights. Court conservatives have successfully limited the scope of the right by justifying and forgiving unconscionable delays in bringing criminal defendants to trial. And the Court’s progressives, outnumbered now for a generation, have complained not just about the unjust results of those cases but about the indigent defense systems which have fostered trial delays in the first place.

And so it is again. On Monday, in a case styled Boyer v. Louisiana, none of the Court’s five conservative justices were willing to come to the aid of a man who had to wait seven years between his arrest and his trial because of a “funding crisis” within Louisiana’s indigent defense program. In fact, those five justices refused even to render a ruling on the merits of the matter, instead deciding after oral argument and all the briefing in the case that their earlier decision to accept the matter for review was “improvident.”

It was left to Justice Samuel Alito to defend the Court’s inaction. The long delay in bringing Jonathan Edward Boyer to trial on murder charges was not just the fault of Louisiana and its infamously underfunded and understaffed indigent defense program, Justice Alito concluded. “['T]he record shows that the single largest share of the delay in this case was the direct result of defense requests for continuances, that other defense motions caused substantial additional delay, and that much of the rest of the delay was caused by events beyond anyone’s control,” he wrote. That was enough to deny Boyer’s claims.

Read the rest.

THE FEDS TOUR MCJ AND TWIN TOWERS

Officials from the U.S. Attorney’s office, the Department of Justice, and the FBI are conducting a tour of Men’s Central Jail and Twin Towers on Tuesday. According to the notification passed around to custody personnel, the tour is expected to last for approximately 8 hours, and the feds will be interviewing random inmates and videoing certain areas of the jails.

The tour is reportedly a part of preparations for an upcoming Civil* Grand Jury Inquiry.

LASD spokesman, Steve Whitmore, admitted he was not aware of the tour, but said that the department “welcomed” such inquiries and saw them as beneficial.

*NOTE: We took the designation “civil” grand jury from the LASD internal memo we obtained but, upon reflection, we now suspect that the word was simply incorrect verbiage that we unwittingly repeated, and that the department supervisor who wrote the memo meant the latest federal grand jury to be convened in the ongoing and ever-expanding FBI investigations. If we get further clarification, we’ll let you know.

AFTER DORNER, 40 OTHER COPS WANT THEIR CASES REVIEWED

I’m presuming you’ve seen this story, by the LA Times Joel Rubin, but just in case anyone missed it, about the 40 former LAPD officers who believe their respective cases out to be reviewed.

The news for those officers dismissed who believe their cases are wroth of review is both good and bad.

Here’s a clip that explains the situation:

In the wake of Christopher Dorner’s claim that his firing from the Los Angeles Police Department was a result of corruption and bias, more than three dozen other fired LAPD cops want department officials to review their cases.

The 40 requests, which were tallied by the union that represents rank-and-file officers, have come in the two months since Dorner sought revenge for his 2009 firing by targeting police officers and their families in a killing rampage that left four dead and others injured.

Dorner’s allegations of a department plagued by racism and special interests left Chief Charlie Beck scrambling to stem a growing chorus of others who condemned Dorner’s violence but said his complaints about the department were accurate. To assuage concerns, Beck vowed to re-examine the cases of other former officers who believed they had been wrongly expelled from the force.

Now, details of how the department plans to make good on Beck’s offer are becoming clear. And, for at least some of the disgruntled ex-officers, they will be disappointing.

In letters to those wishing to have their case reviewed, department officials explain that the city’s charter, which spells out the authority granted to various public officials, prevents the police chief from opening new disciplinary proceedings for an officer fired more than three years ago.

“Therefore the Department does not have the power to reinstate officers whose terminations occurred more than three years ago,” wrote Gerald Chaleff, the LAPD’s special assistant for constitutional policing. “You are being informed of this to forestall any misconceptions about the power of the department.”

Yep, that last would be the the bad news.

PROLOGUE

Last week two Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department deputies, Michael Rathbun and James Sexton—both the sons of law enforcement fathers—filed suit in federal court naming LA County, Sheriff Lee Baca, the former undersheriff Paul Tanaka, Lt. Greg Thompson, and a string of others.

The suit alleges retaliation, constitutional violations, malicious prosecution, conspiracy, harassment, direct threats—and a lot more.

It appears that Sexton and Rathbun tried every other possible route within the department to bring to light the alleged misconduct they said they witnessed, and to put a stop to the ongoing retaliation and agressive threats they reportedly experienced—but with no luck. So with much trepidation, the two brought this doozy of a lawsuit containing a laundry list of disturbing allegations, some of which we’ll cover in much more depth in the days to come.

For now here’s the overview:

RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT

To understand the whole of the 39-page lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday April 23 by attorneys Brad Gage, Terry Goldberg, and Milad Sadr, all of Goldberg and Gage, it helps to remember that Rathbun and Sexton are the two deputies who were in the news some months ago, after a case they were working inside the jails allegedly got deliberately blown by their supervisor, Lt. Greg Thompson.

Sexton and Rathbun worked for the investigative unit inside the county jails known as Operation Safe Jails—or OSJ—an elite unit that develops intelligence sources and confidential informants among the inmates in order to better predict problems among the facilities’ gang populations.

The two, most particularly Sexton, were known for their facility at cultivating confidential informants—or CIs—who then yielded information that, in a great many cases, led to fruitful busts in the jails and, even more often, out in the street. Other units in the LASD, the LAPD and sometimes the FBI had all, at one time or another, been able to make use of Sexton and Rathbun’s information.

In the course of the investigation that would trigger the string of events leading to this lawsuit, the two had been told by a confidential informant, whom they had found in the past to be extremely reliable, that a deputy in Men’s Central Jail, whose name was Joseph Britton, was allegedly passing information—and possibly more—-to an inmate who was the primary white supremacist shot caller for the county jails. (Each racial group has its own gang hierarchy within each facility, and then an uber hierarchy in the county system as a whole.)

In return for his alleged favors for the white supremacist guy, who whose nickname is “Fritz,” Britton was allegedly getting expensive tattoo work for free by Fritz’s partner, who has a tattoo shop in the West Valley.

Sexton and Rathbun wrote up their detailed report on Britton, expecting their direct supervisor, Lt. Greg Thompson, to pass the information on to either Internal Affairs, or more likely, ICIB, the department’s internal investigative unit dealing with criminal matters, which would look into the allegations further.

Incredibly, Thompson did not pass the investigation up the line. Instead he took the un-redacted report—featuring Rathbun and Sexton’s name as investigators, and worse, the name of the confidential informant—and gave it to Britton, the deputy being investigated, plus others, thus effectively blowing the case to smithereens, and putting their CI potentially at lethal risk, since he was now in a position of being known as a snitch among Aryan Brotherhood types when he got out of jail. Being a snitch, in gang circles of any ethnicity, is traditionally a death sentence.

After Thompson leaked Sexton and Rathbun’s report, he reportedly did the thing that Sexton and Rathbun found the most unforgivable: He allegedly ordered one of his “acolyte” deputies to declassify their CI from a “K-10″ protected status, then to move him into the jail’s “general population,” meaning he was out among the masses, completely unprotected, thus his life would be immediately at risk—especially now that Lt. Thompson had liberally handed around the confidential investigative report that would unambiguously label the CI as a “snitch.” A rat.

Indeed, an attempt on the CI’s life was reportedly made almost immediately after the move: An inmate tried to shank him in the showers. The CI survived, according to Rathbun and Sexton, but only because he was larger and faster than his assailant.

The minute they heard of the CI’s exposure, Sexton and Rathbun pulled every string possible, and managed get their man back into a protected unit where they kept a close eye on him.

Stunned and furious at what they saw as their boss’s deliberate endangerment of their informant, Sexton and Rathbun went to internal affairs themselves and laid out what they knew.

That, according to the lawsuit, is when the threats and the retaliation began.

Months later, when an article about the Britton matter appeared in the LA Times, Rathbun and Sexton were subsequently called to testify in front of a federal grand jury.

After the feds entered the picture, the retaliation, the intimidation and the implicit and explicit threats became far more intense and frightening, according to the lawsuit.

SECOND GENERATION LAWMEN

Both Rathbun and Sexton are well-educated deputies, and second-generation cops, who appeared to come to the department with the idealistic view that the LASD was a place where they could make a positive contribution. Rathbun graduated from UC Santa Barbara, while Sexton began at West Point, finished up at the University of Alabama, and is now getting his master’s at USC.

Mike Rathbun is the son of 35-year LASD veteran, David Rathbun, now a reserve deputy. James Sexton is the son of Ted Sexton, the department’s newly hired Chief of Homeland Security, who left his longtime job as head of the sheriff’s department in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, to come to work for his friend, Lee Baca.

In fact, when they had reportedly exhausted all other avenues, the lawsuit also alleges that each of the deputies talked multiple times personally with Baca whom they informed of everything that now forms the basis of the 39-page complaint. Sexton and Rathbun maintain they asked Baca for help, for advice as how best to proceed and, as matters deteriorated, they expressed fears for their personal safety.

Yet, it all came to nothing, they said.

Instead, the retaliation and threats against Rathbun and Sexton continued to get worse.

THE ANTHONY BROWN FACTOR: HIDING THE FEDERAL INFORMANT (FROM THE FEDS)

Even before the matter of Lt. Thompson, and the alleged endangering of the confidential informant, the lawsuit states that Rathbun and Sexton were ordered to participate in an “operation” that they quickly realized likely involved them in a crime—namely the hiding of FBI informant, Anthony Brown.

According to the lawsuit, the matter of moving Brown from place to place, clandestinely, inside the jail system, which LASD officials have claimed was done for Brown’s safety, was explicitly for the purpose of keeping him away from his FBI handlers and anyone from the U.S. Attorney’s office. Sexton and Rathbun know this because they were part of the team tasked with an extremely elaborate scheme of allegedly hiding Brown from any FBI agents or assistant US Attorneys, so that he could be debriefed by members of the sheriff’s department, who wanted to know for themselves what Brown had seen and heard that he was going to pass along to the Feds.

The lawsuit alleges that Lt. Thompson led the operation, but that he repeatedly stated to his troops that he did so at the direction of Paul Tanaka. Sexton and Rathbun describe multiple instances where Tanaka’s oversight was verified.

The deputies also report having knowledge of Sheriff Lee Baca being briefed on the operation.

WHITE POWER GANGS & RACIST DEPUTIES

Among its many disheartening allegations, the suit maintains that certain members of OSJ—the elit investigative unit within the LA County Jail system of which Sexton and Rathbun were members—have “an inappropriate relationship” with “various inmate gangs, particularly white supremacist gangs,” and that these department members use the inmate gangsters “as proxies or agents to retaliate against other LASD deputies or inmates” against whom they have a beef or grudge.

Sexton and Rathbun reportedly know this because they’ve witnessed it, and also because, once the Britton case came apart, they began being targeted.

The lawsuit outlines a quid pro quo system in which the Aryan Brotherhood-like types get special privileges that they are “otherwise legally precluded from.” In return, the white power gangsters do dirty work for a clique of racist deputies, a group in which Rathbun and Sexton say Thompson is included. (The suit also notes that Greg Thompson is a Viking from the same era as Paul Tanaka, and is reportedly very close to Tanaka. Thompson is named multiple times for wrongdoing in the famous class action lawsuit, Thomas v. the County of Los Angeles, settled in 1996 for $9 million.)

The lawsuit also alleges incidents in which OSJ deputies working in Men’s Central Jail would beat up inmates when it suited them, in one case, repeatedly harassing and injuring one of Sexton’s other confidential informants.

When Sexton reported the issues with his informant, having first vetted the claims to his own satisfaction, nothing was done. It was just bad judgement at most, he was told. Inmates lie.

THREATS & RETALIATION

The tale of the escalating threats and retaliation against Sexton and Rathbun that the lawsuit alleges is alarming and likely worth its own harrowing narrative. Here, however, is a sampling:

**In late February 2012, Sexton was “cornered” in a department office by two OSJ deputies, who were on duty in uniform, who told him that he and Rathbun “better shut up or else,’ about the Britton case.

**Also in February, Sexton was confronted around 1 am in the jails parking lot by a uniformed deputy who warned, his manner agressive, that he and Rathbun had better keep their mouths shut about the Britton case.

**At the same time, MCJ OSJ deputies referred to Sexton and Rathbun as “snitches” and told them that in moving “Fritz,’ the white power shot caller, the two were “fucking up their program.”

**In March 2012, Sexton conducted an audio-taped interview with a suspect in an unrelated case, in the custody facilities. Bizarrely, the audio was subsequently leaked and posted on YouTube. “Sexton’s ID was thus exposed, and his well-being placed in jeopardy.” Sexton asked Lt. Thompson to investigate the matter, but Thompson reportedly declined telling Sexton to ‘forget about it.”

**In April 2012, Rathbun, who had been struggling with drinking to cope with increasing job stress, had a bad night in which he drank a lot, and got into a “fender bender,” and was charged with a misdemeanor DUI. The video of the arrest, was anonymously posted on the LASD’s intranet network.

**“White power” literature was left on the front porch at Rathbun’s home in a manner that was seen as a threat. At the same time, white power inmates in MCJ began referring to Rathbun and Sexton as “race traitors.”

**The lawsuit reports several similar and aggressive warnings of “you better…or else” from OSJ deputies, including Lt. Thompson’s son, Matt Thompson.

**In April 2012, right before Sexton was due to be interviewed by Internal affairs about the Britton incident. Lt. Thompson himself called Sexton at home and asked if he was going to talk to IA and ICIB. Sexton said he was. Thompson then reportedly abruptly hung up.

**The threats continued, and included awkward meetings with Thompson who demanded to know what Sexton and Rathbun had told LASD personnel in this or that interview.

**In May, Thompson called Sexton into his office. “Have you been calling your dad back home about this?” he wanted to know. Yes, sir, said Sexton. “If I were you I’d quit telling your dad war stories about what’s going on in this jail.”

**Often now, according to the lawsuit, the threats came with explicit mentions of bodily harm.

** After Sexton and Rathbun were subpoenaed to testify in front of a grand jury, and indeed testified, two deputies cornered Sexton, one of them, Lt. Greg Thompson’s son, Matt Thompson, wanting to know what they’d talked about at the grand jury.

**In June, after Thompson was removed from the unit, two deputies announced at a unit party that whomever caused “the boss” to be transfered would “answer” for their actions.

**Sexton has allegedly been subject to frivolous retaliatory investigations by Internal Affairs, each time coming to nothing.

**And then there is the matter of Rathbun’s DUI, which was quietly upped to a felony, which would have likely meant prison time, although, according to the lawsuit, there was no factual basis whatsoever for the escalation of charges. The suit alleges that the charges were raised at the behest of LASD supervisors.

**Rathbun’s car was vandalized on LASD property.

**Sexton found men in an unmarked car across the street from his house, watching his home, attempting to take pictures. When Sexton approached them, they claimed to be “insurance inspectors,” but reportedly sped away when he asked for ID.

**In the summer of 2012, Rathbun was suspended without pay for the DUI, but assured by Baca that he would be able to return with no harm to his career.

**In September 2012 Sexton needed to make a work-related visit to the department’s Temple Station, where Thompson had been transferred after an LA Times article precipitated the opening of an IA investigation into his actions regarding the Britton matter. Upon arriving, however, Sexton was intercepted by Temple station’s Sgt. Larry Mead, who reportedly relayed a message from Thompson that Sexton should leave the premises, “to prevent an incident.”

**In late 2012, a high-ranking supervisor expressed concern that Sexton and Rathbun’s lives might be in danger.

**in late 2012, “Rathbun discovered that LASD personnel, including Detective Perkins,” were the ones responsible for escalating his DUI misdemeanor to a felony. (The charge was eventually dropped again by the DA to a misdemeanor, and the case settled.)

**In March of 2013,” reports the lawsuit, “Michael Rathbun was recommended for termination,” although the DUI was his first infraction, and according to a document obtained by WLA, at least 5 other LASD deputies and 4 non-sworn LASD staff members also got DUI’s in the first two quarters of last year, for which they received only 15 to 30-day suspensions.

BETRAYAL OF TRUST, Part 2 coming soon.

UPDATE:

While it doesn’t rise to the seriousness of illegal juicing for the Tour de France, cheating on the once-a-year, 120-mile charity foot race known as Baker to Vegas, a competition open solely to law enforcement agencies from all over the country, is considered to be something approaching a sacrilege.

So when it was found that a Baker to Vegas team from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department may have put an especially skilled ringer in as one of their runners, all hell deservedly broke loose.

The discovery of the alleged cheating resulted in an internal affairs investigation and, as of this week, disciplinary action is being taken against five LASD members, including the demotion of two captains and one commander—-all of whom work for the Transit Policing Services Bureau (TSB), which is one of the bureaus that the LASD is contracted to run.

To demote so many command staff members at once is close to unprecedented, said department insiders.

“It’s an A bomb!” one department source told us.

According to several department sources in a position to know, the three demoted command staffers are Captain Matthew Rodriguez, Captain Holly Perez and Commander Pat Jordan.

An emergency meeting was reportedly held on Wednesday afternoon at Transit Policing Services to discuss the startling turn of affairs, which left staffers reeling.

The popular charity event known as the Baker to Vegas Challenge Cup Race, or B2V, is a competitive foot race through the Mohave Desert that has been in existance since 1985, and has grown to include law enforcement teams made up of probation officers and district attorneys along with the traditional police and sheriffs competitors. B2V is held each year on a weekend in March or April. (For instance, this year’s race was last weekend, on Saturday, April 13.)

The course begins 25 miles north of Baker CA. on Highway 127 and finishes inside the Hilton Hotel Convention Room in Las Vegas. It is run as a relay, with approximately 20 runners on a team, each running a leg, plus support team members to track and aid their runners with follow cars.

The highly festive event is a favorite of both the LAPD and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which each fields several teams every year.

The team from Men’s Central Jail won several years in a row from 2007 to 2011. Then for 2012 and 2012, the winning baton passed to the LAPD’s Elite team of runners.

Sources tell us that last year’s Transit team substituted a “ringer” for one of their officially listed runners. The alleged substitute runner was reportedly the son of a department member who did not himself work for the department, and thus was entirely ineligible to run. The ringer reportedly turned in one of the best times for any leg of the race.

When news of the alleged deception and the subsequent demotions surfaced, members of other law enforcement agencies expressed surprise and dismay.

“How freaking stupid can you be to do something like that?” an LAPD source wrote to WLA in an email.

According to department spokesman Steve Whitmore, the disciplinary action was made solely by Sheriff Lee Baca, although newly hired Homeland Security Chief Ted Sexton, who oversees the Transit Police along with Aero Bureau and other LASD units, was fully briefed on all stages of the decision making.

“The Sheriff takes matters like this one very seriously, and he acted accordingly,” said Whitmore, who also said he was prevented by the Peace Officers Bill of Rights from confirming any names or ranks of those disciplined.

EDITOR’S NOTE: While it’s commendable that the department took swift action on The Great Foot Race Cheating Scandal, we cannot help but note that it has seemingly been in no hurry to come to a conclusion on far more serious matters like, say, this one, which began in February of 2012, more than a year ago.

IN OTHER NEWS….MONTEREY COUNTY USES ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION TO KEEP JAIL POPULATION DOWN, POST-REALIGNMENT

Although a 2012 civil grand jury in Monterey County was critical of the county’s handling of the additional inmates coming to the county’s jail, most of the county’s other stakeholders approved of the way Monterey’s sheriffs, DA, probation, public defender, and others, have effectively used methods such as own-recognizance release, pretrial screening and involuntary home detention, as well as pending plans to transfer inmates to other counties, according to a report by Jim Johnson of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

Here’s a clip:

Monterey County’s already overcrowded jail is not more packed than usual due to realignment of state prison inmates to local control, contrary to a county civil grand jury’s findings.

The efforts of local law enforcement officials to use alternatives to locking up inmates have helped keep it that way.

But the county jail is facing the prospect of a growing inmate population because of realignment in the near future until the effects of treatment and rehabilitation programs are fully realized.

That is the main message the Board of Supervisors indicated Tuesday it wanted to send to the 2012 civil grand jury in response to its findings and recommendations. The supervisors approved a modified response to the grand jury’s suggestion the jail was suffering from “gross overcrowding” largely because of the “increased incarceration of serious offenders and the additional population resulting from the implementation” of AB 109, the state legislation that transferred responsibility for a large percentage of state prison inmates to local oversight.

Supervisor Jane Parker asked county staff to include a list of efforts local law enforcement officials have undertaken to manage the jail population. She noted the jail has been stretched beyond its capacity for years, long before realignment, and could have been a bigger problem without management efforts.

“They’ve done a lot of work setting up” alternative methods, Parker said. “They’d be even more overcrowded
under AB 109 without those efforts.”

CITY ATTORNEY CANDIDATE HOLDS PRESS CONFERENCE IN RESPONSE TO WEDNESDAY’S SENATE DEFEAT OF ASSAULT WEAPON BAN.

City Attorney candidate Mike Feuer will hold a press conference Thursday at 2 pm with leaders of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, along with victims of gun violence, to discuss his plan to reduce gun violence as L.A.’s next City Attorney.

The press conferences is, in part, in response to the blocking by the US Senate, on Wednesday, of the assault weapon ban legislation.

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times has a story on the Senate’s action. Here’s a clip:

A wrenching national search for solutions to the violence that left 20 children dead in Newtown, Conn., all but ended Wednesday after the Senate defeated several measures to expand gun control.

In rapid succession, a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks for gun buyers, a ban on assault weapons and a ban on high-capacity gun magazines all failed to get the 60 votes needed under an agreement between both parties. Senators also turned back Republican proposals to expand permission to carry concealed weapons and to focus law enforcement efforts on prosecuting gun crimes.

Sitting in the Senate gallery with other survivors of recent mass shootings and their family members, Lori Haas, whose daughter was shot at Virginia Tech, and Patricia Maisch, a survivor of the mass shooting in Arizona, shouted together, “Shame on you.”

President Obama, speaking at the White House after the votes, echoed the cry, calling Wednesday “a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

Opponents of gun control from both parties said that they made their decisions based on logic, and that passions had no place in the making of momentous policy.

“Criminals do not submit to background checks now,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. “They will not submit to expanded background checks.”

It was a striking defeat for one of Mr. Obama’s highest priorities, on an issue that has consumed much of the country since Adam Lanza opened fire with an assault weapon in the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School in December.

Jeremy Peters of the NY Times reports here about the feelings of personal defeat felt by Senator Dianne Feinstein when she watched helplessly as her bill went down in flames, despite her efforts.

As a part of the sexual harassment lawsuit filed in February by LASD Lieutenant Angela Walton against Commander Joseph Fennell, Walton’s attorney filed a new motion on Monday requesting Fennell’s financial records, alleging that, in the course of trying to persuade or threaten Walton into bed, the commander bragged about running illegal errands for Sheriff Lee Baca, from which he benefited in terms of greatly enhanced power within the department, and also possibly monetarily.

WLA has previously reported that Walton, 44, a bright, personable department supervisor—who is also one of the “poster girls” for department recruitment—has alleged in a civil complaint for damages filed in mid-February that, for the past four years Fennell, who was Walton’s superior, “required sexual conduct as a condition of advancement” and engaged in a “lurid pattern of unwanted sexual conduct” toward Walton. The complaint further states that when she repeatedly dodged and refused his advances “in as respectful a manner as possible,” he “harassed, stalked, threatened and retaliated against” her.

Now in this new motion (that WitnessLA has obtained) Walton’s attorney, Okorie Okorocha, alleges that as a part of Fennell’s ongoing campaign to cajole/coerce/threaten Walton into having sex with him, the commander made references to power and influence he had acquired by running illegal errands during the period that he served as Sheriff Lee Baca’s driver.

THE VALUE OF BEING A DRIVER

To better understand exactly what is being alleged here, it helps to know that, to be the sheriff’s driver, while not an advance in rank, is generally considered to be a coveted jump up the department ladder, as drivers make a lot in overtime and, after serving the sheriff, one usually advances very rapidly since, among other things, the position gives an individual lots of chances to positively impress people at the top of LASD command staff.

Indeed, Fennell’s career appears to have been on an upward trajectory from the driver assignment onward.

However, the filing claims more, alleging that Fennell “explicitly told the Plaintiff that he was invincible and untouchable at the Sheriff’s Department and wielded unlimited power, because of the favors he did for Sheriff Lee Baca, while he was the driver/bodyguard” [for Baca] and this secret information he had on the Sheriff, was leverage…”

Some of the favors Fennell admitted to, according to the filing, are the following:

1. Being a courier for Sheriff Lee Baca, who would pick up and return with kickbacks, campaign donations, and bribes from various individuals in cash. As a courier, FENNELL would collect $30,000 to $100,000 in cash for the Sheriff and return it to him and would be compensated in many ways.

2. FENNELL drove Sheriff Lee Baca to engage in sexual liaisons and encounters with various women throughout the County of Los Angeles and while on the clock and witnessed the Sheriff’s affectionate tendencies towards these women.

ALLEGATIONS OF SPECIAL CONTRACTS & PEELING SUVS

In addition, the motion alleges that Fennell was part of his own kick-back scheme involving the “preferential awarding of contracts for the graphics placed on Sheriff’s Department vehicles.”

This allegation reportedly refers to special SUVs that are used for department recruitment and are “wrapped” with various recruitment photos. According to Okorocha, when Walton was working in the recruitment unit, she found that the quality of the “wrapping” done by the company that Fennell had selected, was inferior and tended to peel, so found other venders whom she concluded did better quality work, for a much lower price, and recommended that the existing company be replaced when the contract came up for renewal, but was told to back off, that the original company was inviolate.

Finally, the motion alleges that Fennell seemed to throw “large amounts” of cash around, including when, the motion states, he offered a “substantial amount of money in a failed attempted to purchase sex from the plaintiff,”, and booked expensive hotel rooms “on several occasions for the purpose of trying to coerce the Plaintiff into having sexual relations with him.”

THE DEPARTMENT RESPONDS

Following the filing of the lawsuit, the sheriff’s department launched an internal affairs investigation, according to department spokesman Steve Whitmore. “It will get to the bottom of the allegations.” It was a statement that Whitmore reiterated on Monday.

Fennell again declined to speak to WLA directly, but communicated through Whitmore that he is “looking forward to the IA investigation that will show that the lawsuit and its allegations are not grounded in fact.”

Joseph Fennell was one of the five supervisors handpicked in the fall of 2011 by Sheriff Lee Baca for his Commander Management Task Force, a sort of super group sent into the department’s scandal-plagued custody division to “effect positive change within the Los Angeles County jail system.”

In the department’s very recently reorganized command staff (which eliminates the role of undersheriff) Cdr. Fennell is working as a high level supervisor in the Countywide Services Division.

Lt. Walton is a supervisor at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic where, according to the lawsuit, she was assigned punitively during a period two years ago when her father was dying and she requested to be stationed closer to home.

IN THE PHOTO ABOVE, Lt. Angela Walton is standing at the far left.

AND IN NEWS THAT AFFECTS US ALL, THE NEW YORKER COVERS THE BOSTON MARATHON EXPLOSIONS

As we all still reel from the many-sided pain and confusion thus far wrought by the Boston Marathon explosions, here and here and here and also here are several moments in commentary from the New Yorker—all of which thankfully is not hidden behind a paywall.

Our thoughts are with Boston.

PATT MORRISON TALKS TO THE LASD’S NEW JAILER-IN-CHIEF

The LA Times Patt Morrison did an interesting Q & A interview with Terri McDonald, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s newly appointed Assistant Chief in charge of LASD’s custody facilities—its jails.

Interviews like these are tricky both for the journalist and the subject because someone in McDonald’s position needs to sound serious, knowledgeable and substantive but not be particularly controversial, or in any way critical of the department or, heaven forbid, her new boss, the sheriff. Moreover, she must accomplish all this while navigating a path that is, due to the department’s ongoing scandals, investigations, and problems, loaded with extremely large bear traps. Thus the temptation is for the interviewee to say not much of consequence—which leaves the interviewer with a load of meaningless pablum.

But both Morrison and McDonald did much better than that.

There were no monster surprises or gasp-producing revelations. But it’s a smart conversation that is in a subtle way, quite revealing.

Below is a clip from the middle of the interview. But read it all—-especially that part about McDonald’s favorite prison movies.

In your new job, do you have the authority not just to make recommendations but to carry them out?

I believe the sheriff has given me full authority to do that. These aren’t easy problems, and fixes don’t happen overnight. Many solutions require resources, and it’s still a time of constrained resources. We just have to learn to be creative.

[SNIP]

Is there a philosophy of incarceration that you embrace?

Three kinds of offenders come into the system. One group of offenders are just criminally entrenched. They tend to be rather sociopathic, predatory, violent, very difficult to manage and very dangerous. The second group has made a situational mistake. They’re coming in to serve their time. They have abilities, and when they get out [they won't] return. The third group lands somewhere in between. If they can be reached, they’re likely to be successful. If you don’t provide those services, they’re likely to go on to a lifetime of criminality.

How has realignment changed the system?

Post-realignment, parole violators are serving time locally. They’re referred to in the state prison system as churners — they come in, they serve 45 days or so, then out they go. That’s the same population sitting in county jails now. [Some] 60% of those have a substance abuse problem that hopefully you can address.

Just this past week, The Times wrote about a 2009 email from a sheriff’s deputy to two black colleagues about the “Black Panther LASD.”

It is currently under investigation. But I consider it inappropriate behavior.

Late last year, a couple of deputies exchanged pictures of beaten-up inmates. One message read, “Looks like we did a better job.” How do you change these mindsets?

[The state] system had similar allegations. I was one of the folks who rolled out the new use-of-force training policy [there] and also developed and implemented a statewide policy eradicating the code of silence. [You have to] tell people what will not be tolerated.

L.A. County’s already put together an excellent use-of-force policy, not just when and where you use force but how you track it and monitor it.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard executives and managers work, occasionally a stray employee is the wrong employee for any law enforcement agency.

Read on!

FORMER GANG MEMBER AGUSTIN “TIN TIN” LIZAMA TALKS ABOUT LOSING HIS ARM, HIS BEST FRIEND AND HIS BROTHER TO GANG VIOLENCE. NOW HE HELPS OTHERS RECOVER HOPE

Tin Tin Lizama is one of the best men I know. I met him in 2006 when my novelist friend Leslie Schwartz and I managed to rope ourselves into running a poetry writing class at Homeboy Industries. The thing was co-sponsored by PEN USA (where I was on the board of directors) and funded primarily by the California Council for the Humanities. The idea was to help former gang members, and young, at-risk wannabe gang members find their individual voices through writing, and also through interviewing each other for oral histories—all culminating in a couple of performances where the homeboys and homegirls read their work, plus the publication of a book that anthologized a poem or three from each student, plus the best of the interviews.

(I wrote a little about the class here and here.)

Back then, Agustin Lizama—called Tin Tin for short— was one of the class’s shy but budding talents. Yet I noticed that he never took his left arm out of his pocket. What I know now, but didn’t know then until he disclosed the secret in his writing, was that he was hiding the fact that both his left hand and part of his arm was missing, blown off by another gangster in a drive-by shooting when he was 12.

Now a gifted public speaker, the head of Homeboy’s domestic violence program, and a devoted father, Tin Tin has no such reticence. He has learned the power of revealing himself—his arm, his once-buried emotions, his intelligence, and his enormous sense of compassion.

I tell you all this because I happened to notice that Kathleen Miles at the Huffington Post has written a a very nice profile of Tin Tin.

Here’s how it opens:

When Agustin Lizama was 11 years old, he joined a gang. When he was 12, he was shot.

He remembers coming home from school that day and heading down to the corner store, where his brother, then 15, was hanging out with their other fellow gang members.

A car drove by and one of the occupants fired a 12-gauge shotgun at close range. “I looked down and saw half my thumb and a couple pieces were still there, but everything was pretty much hanging,” said Lizama, now 33.

A pellet had gone directly into his skinny forearm. “I started screaming so loud. Then I was in shock, numb. I couldn’t answer people’s questions. The pain was so bad I don’t think my body or brain could really take it.”

At the hospital, doctors had to remove about half of his left forearm and hand. Instead of compelling him to turn away from gun culture, the injury forced Lizama further into the gang. “At the time, my support was already the gang. So it just drove me deeper,” he said.

Lizama grew up in the northeast LA neighborhood of Glassell Park as one of seven children, all raised by their single mother. Because his mother juggled several jobs, it seemed that the only attention he got from her was a beating if he did something wrong, he said.

“That’s why I joined a gang. I was so hungry for attention, and they gave it to me,” he said.

The first thing Lizama did once he recovered from the shooting was to buy a gun — a black market .22-caliber revolver for $44. “I wasn’t going to get caught slippin’ again,” he said. “It was the most empowering feeling.”

Read the rest.

REPORT FINDS EMPLOYEE MISCONDUCT STILL TOO HIGH AT PROBATION DEPARTMENT

The Los Angeles Office of Independent Review (OIR) issued its yearly report assessing LA County Probation and found that, while there was a slight improvement in employee misconduct over 2011, there was still way too much, especially when it came to those who supervised kids.

Here are a couple of clips on the just-released report from the story by Christina Villacorte of the Daily News.

An alarming number of Los Angeles County Probation Department employees were accused of misconduct both on and off duty in 2012, though the figures are down slightly from the year before, according to a report Wednesday by the county Office of Independent Review.

Robert Miller, deputy chief attorney at the OIR, which the county Board of Supervisors appointed to monitor misconduct investigations at the department, said, “A constant concern is their use of force in the juvenile institutions.”

[BIG SNIP]

The OIR report profiled several incidents of on-duty misconduct, including an officer stealing public funds from youths making the transition from foster care to independent living, and another using a department computer to search for an ex-wife in violation of a court order.

The off-duty misconduct included Carl Washington, a high-ranking manager and former state assemblyman, being arrested at Probation headquarters in Downey, accused of stealing about $200,000 from financial institutions by claiming to be a victim of identity theft.

One employee was investigated for, but not charged with, attempted murder after he shot a man he had argued with at a bar. Another employee was arrested for indecent exposure and lewd conduct after being caught masturbating at a public park.

Not cheering at all.

STANFORD’S PRISON & PAROLE EXPERTS, JOAN PETERSILIA AND ROBERT WEISBERG, SAY REALIGNMENT CAN SUCCEED, JUST GIVE IT A MINUTE

In an Op Ed for the Sacramento Bee, Joan Petersilia, and Robert Weisberg, write about how California’s inmate realignment is doing, what it is doing, and where it needs to go.

Petersilia is one of the nation’s top corrections system experts and, along with colleague, Weisberg, she runs Stanford’s Criminal Justice Center.

She has also been given a grant to assess how realignment is faring in each of the counties.

All this is to say that her sober-minded, unfrilled analysis of the issue is worth reading.

Here’s a clip from the essay.

…Since realignment went into effect 18 months ago, the state prison population has declined by roughly 25,000. Quite predictably, the local jail population has simultaneously increased, and by some projections, the jail increase might soon roughly equal the prison population decline.

If the total number locked up in state prisons or jails turns out to be about the same in the near term, should we conclude that realignment isn’t succeeding? We think the answer is no, because that’s the wrong metric for evaluation.

First, even if accurate, the projection that the overall incarceration population in California may not change doesn’t diminish realignment’s success. The law’s primary and most immediate goal was to satisfy the federal injunction to cure unconstitutional overcrowding.

Of course, the Plata case is not yet resolved; the plaintiffs contend many illegal conditions persist. But given the dramatic decrease in the number of state prisoners, and the overhaul of health care and mental health care, and other operations, we know that in time the injunction will terminate.

When it does, realignment will deserve much of the credit. Moreover, many felons who would have entered state prison on new crimes or re-entered following parole revocations, but instead have been “realigned” under the new law surely pose some risk to public safety. Realignment wasn’t intended to change the length of sentences, only the place where sentences are served. If prosecutorial and judicial decisions lead to most of those realigned felons being in jail, then realignment will have solved a constitutional problem without reducing public safety.

Finally, the Eighth Amendment violations in Plata were hardly legal technicalities. Overcrowding caused shocking numbers of preventable deaths from disease and even suicide, serious spread of contagious disease, and a lack of even minimal mental health care. It also exposed inmates and guards to violence, and deprived educational and rehabilitation programs of minimal space to operate.

If realignment helps address those problems, it will help achieve an undeniable social good while also potentially reducing recidivism – for both jail and prison inmates

ASSEMBLY DEMS REJECT FIRST ROUNDS OF ATTEMPTED REALIGNMENT ROLL-BACKS

After decades of general spinelessness on criminal justice reform (and I mean that in the nicest possible way), certain California democrats are energetically slapping down a rash of ill-conceived pieces of legislation that would roll-back parts of realignment.

The chief of those doing the slap-downs is Public Safety committee Chairman Tom Ammiano (D. San Francisco).

For instance, on Tuesday, Ammiano led the majority of his committee members to reject a bill that would return to prison sex offenders who violated parole, rather than sending them to jail for a shorter term.

The bill the Ammiano-led vote knocked down was, as the LA Times Paige St. John points out, nearly identical to a bill rejected by the committee last month.

In rejecting the bill, Ammiano expressed concern about the positive gains of realignment being dismantled, while at the same time acknowledging that, under realignment, some county sheriffs are slashing the jail terms of certain parolees far more than is wise.

Here’s what St. John writes on the matter:

[Ammiano] also expressed concern about how county officials decide who to release early from jail, and that California takes a “one size fits all” approach to sex offenders. Ammiano said he plans to file his own legislation on the matter later this year.

“You have identified a problem. There’s no doubt about that,” Ammiano told [Republican Assemblyman Mike] Morrell. “I disagree on your solution.” Morrell’s bill died on a 2-4 party-line vote, with Democrats in the majority.

This is heartening. Ammiano acknowledged that there are, indeed, some problems with the current law that need to be addressed. But he appeared to be looking for fact-based, targeted solutions with which to reform AB109—rather than simply throwing fear-based, reactive “tough-on-crime” bills at the matter, damn the consequences or the collateral damage.

(By the way, I don’t mean to slam Republicans on these issues. While a great many conservative California lawmakers have been annoyingly fact-challenged when it comes to the topic of realignment, on a national level a growing number of conservatives have shown real leadership in criminal justice matters, most notably the Right on Crime movement.)

AND IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT TWO OF THE NEW REALIGNMENT ROLL-BACK BILLS ARE AUTHORED BY DEMOCRATS

A bill authored by Sacramento Assemblyman (D) Ken Cooley would send “drug traffickers” to prison, not jail—which on the surface sounds…reasonable. (I mean, whom among us wants big time drug traffickers to be given mere wrist slaps.) On the other hand, we’d like to drill down into this one a bit, and do some fact checking. In the meantime, Melody Gutierrez of the Sacramento Bee reports on Cooley’s bill, which would provide sentencing enhancements for certain kinds of drug dealers.

(Now see that’s a red flag right there: Sentencing enhancements. In California, we have not had a problem giving big time drug dealers big bad sentences. To the contrary, our prisons are loaded with small time drug dealers doing big nasty sentences. So what is it exactly we need to “enhance” anyway? Once WLA has had a chance to poke around a little bit, we’ll have a better idea if this bill has merit, or is playing to the cheap seats.)

Cooley also plans to co-introduce a bill that would send certain parole violators back to prison. WLA will be looking into that one too.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF REALIGNMENT….CUSTODY CANINES

With all the noisy grandstanding about the need to roll back the purported evils of realignment, what usually gets lost is the fact that a large part of the purpose of AB109 is for certain inmates and parolees to be taken out of the hands of the state and put in the care of the various counties. The reason for this (in addition to lowering the state’s prison populations like SCOTUS told us we must do—or else), is the belief that the counties are potentially better able to help these inmates and parolees succeed as they leave custody and reenter our communities. Rehabilitation and reentry is a task at which the state has roundly and repeatedly failed (hence our high recidivism rate, which led to our out-of-control prison population). AB109 challenges the counties to step up and do better.

Some counties, like San Francisco, have managed to coordinate their various agencies—probation, the sheriff’s department, and the rest— in order to grab hold of the challenge with some good early results.

Other counties (like LA)…not so much.

Nevertheless, there are a few bright spots. Which brings us to….Custody Canines.

MCJ’S JAIL DOGS

Right now, thirty-six Los Angeles County Jail inmates are participating in what is called the Custody Canine Program, housed—of all places—at Men’s Central Jail. Inmates volunteer for the 3-5 week program that teaches them to train dogs. Each of the dogs that come to the program has languished unwanted at a kennel or shelter. The idea is for the inmates to take these rejected critters and, through intensive training and interaction, to prepare them to be successfully adopted.

The program was started in August of last year in partnership with Belmonte’s Dog Training and Equipment, whose professional trainers provide the requisite instruction for the incarcerated humans who in turn work with the orphaned dogs. The participants, who are all part of the Sheriff Lee Baca’s Education Based Incarceration program, stay in 18-person dorms, with one dog to a dorm—meaning that everybody gets to take regular turns at hound duty.

The program kicks off at 6:30 a.m. each day, with a different person from the cell working with the dog every half hour, thus helping with the beast’s socialization, while both human and canine are gaining skills.

Custody Canine is funded through the Inmate Welfare Fund, which in turn is funded through the proceeds from inmate vending, commissary, and collect phone calls. (The “bonus” that the department receives every year for its collect phone call contracts amounts to big bucks.)

Similar programs are housed in various prisons around the nation, and have been widely praised for their success in rehabilitating troubled dogs, while helping inmates reconnect with themselves in such a way that increases the likelihood that they will succeed after they are released. However, few if any such programs have been tried in county jails, making LA’s Custody Canine unique—and promising.

KTLA also did a short story on the Custody Canine Program that’s worth watching to see the inmates and dogs working together.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ve not seen the program up close, but WLA plans to visit Custody Canines in person in the next few months as we survey various county programs that work with AB 109 prisoners and parolees—in LA County and elsewhere in the state. We’ll let you know what we see.

JURY AWARDS $1.1 MILLION TO PALMDALE TEENAGER SHOT BY LASD DEPUTY WHILE ON BIKE WITH TOY GUN

This week a jury awarded 19-year old William Fetters $1,127,600 in medical bills and damages for pain and suffering, after Fetters was shot on May 10, 2009 by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy, Scott Sorrow.

Fetters, who was then 15-years -old, was riding his bicycle, and playing a tag-like game with his brother and friends, when he was shot.

Deputy Sorrow testified at trial that Fetters was brandishing a realistic looking toy gun that he refused to drop. This, the deputy said, caused him to fear for his life and that of his partner so he fired a single shot at Fetters.

The teenager was hit in the rear of the side of his chest.

According to Fetters, matters went as follows: he was riding his bike down the street toward a local baseball diamond, playing “cops and robbers” with his brother and friends as they went. As the boys rode, Sorrow approached in his car and asked Fetters to stop riding and drop the toy gun he was holding, and that he dropped it right away. After that, Fetters said, the deputy shot him. Then, as he lay on the ground wounded, yelling that the gun was just a toy, Sorrows handcuffed him.

(Sorrows also testified that he handcuffed the wounded boy after shooting him and seeing that the gun was on the ground and out of his reach.)

At the trial—and according to interview transcripts—-Sorrows insisted that Fetters did not drop his toy gun when ordered to do so, while Fetters said the opposite. The teen said he was scared, and when the deputy barked the order, he dropped the gun immediately, then tried to get off his bike, at which point Sorrows shot him.

Oddly, according to Fetters’ attorney Bradley Gage, in an earlier version of an interview transcript that was presented at a hearing for the case in 2012, Sorrows appears to say that that Fetters did drop the gun.

But for this month’s trial, said Gage, the same transcript was amended to read that Fetters did not drop the gun. When questioned about the discrepancy in trial, Gage said that Sorrows discribed the first version as a “typo.”

(Here is the first version of the interview with Sparrow: EXHIBIT 35 – 1st INTERVIEW)

About the matter of whether Sorrow shot Fetters “with malice,” which the court was also asked to consider, the jury as unable to not a verdict. Thus a mistrial was declared for that part of the case. The question of “malice” is due to be tried again in mid April.

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said that the department strongly disagrees with this week’s jury judgment, and that Fetters was holding what appeared to be a real handgun which he pointed at the deputies when he was shot.

WHY ARE PEOPLE ARE DYING LIKE CRAZY IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY JAIL?

Reporters Dave Maas and Kelly Davis, have a startling story in San Diego City Beat showing that the jail death capital of California is….San Diego County.

Didn’t see that coming.

Maas and Davis note that jail inmate deaths have been tracked nationally only since 2000, when Congress passed the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) to “help address increasing reports of neglect and abuse in U.S. jails.”

According to Department of Justice statistics tracked from the period of 2000 to 2007, for that time period, San Diego was second in the state, for jail deaths. (Alameda county was first.)

Then when the reporters began gathering stats from 2007 to the present through public records act requests, things got worse for SD, not better. In this newer period, San Diego County was at the top of California’s list—based on a calculation of deaths per 100,000 people (the standardized metric that is most often used for this kind of calculation so that one may compare apples to apples).

Riverside County, Alameda and Los Angeles ranked 2nd, 3rd and 4th, respectively, behind San Diego.

Next the reporters plan to drill down into the county’s figure so try to determine if any of those deaths were preventable.

SCOTUS JUSTICE RUTHIE’S VERY POWERFUL WHISPERS

One of the most to-the-point remarks in this week’s gay marriage hearings was said so softly that many in the court gallery didn’t hear Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s words when she talked about “skim milk.”

Greg Stohr at Bloomberg has a nice story about the physically diminutive, but intellectually and strategically powerful Miz Ruth.

Here’s clip:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sometimes barely audible when she speaks at the U.S. Supreme Court. That doesn’t mean she isn’t heard loud and clear.

As the court took up same-sex marriage this week for the first time, the 80-year-old justice offered a reminder that she remains a force, the anchor of court’s liberal wing. At various points, she served as the hard-hitting questioner, the voice of experience and a source of wit.

Ginsburg delivered one of the most memorable lines of the two days of arguments when she said yesterday that a federal law limiting benefits to married gay couples would create “two kinds of marriage — the full marriage, and then this sort of skim-milk marriage.”

The quip drew chuckles throughout the packed courtroom. The laughter would have been louder except that many of the 500 onlookers couldn’t hear Ginsburg, whose soft speaking style means her words often get lost in the corners of the courtroom.

Her quiet manner and diminutive stature make Ginsburg an easy justice to underestimate — for those not familiar with her work.

“It is clear that she is respected and even somewhat feared by her adversaries on the bench,” said Garrett Epps, a University of Baltimore law professor who attended the argument.
The skim-milk analogy was her way of “explaining in clear terms — terms that will be remembered and carried forward to judges and citizens outside the court — what is wrong with the idea that the federal government can withhold the title of marriage to couples legally wedded in their states,” Epps said….

The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin has a terrific profile of Ginsburg in the New Yorker earlier this month, but regrettably it’s hidden behind their paywall. However, if you don’t have your own subscription and can’t snatch a friend’s magazine, Toobin was interviewed on Fresh Air with Terry Gross about his profile, and it’s very good (and covers many of the same points as he did in the profile).

The LA Times’ Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard report that Undersheriff Paul Tanaka did not, in fact, announce his retirement earlier this month because “he felt it was time,” (as department spokespersons then maintained). To the contrary, Tanaka left, not by his own choice, but because Sheriff Baca insisted rather firmly that his second in command pull the plug.

This revelation is not exactly news since the sheriff himself said as much to the LA News Group editorial board last week (which we pointed out on Friday).

Moreover, we reported on the issue more than two weeks ago, based on information from a variety of insider sources. We did so here at WLA, and on Warren Olney’s Which Way LA? (although, at the time, we were admittedly a bit more circumspect, in order to politely allow room for the “wanted more time for his family” meme put forth by department spokesman Steve Whitmore).

However, there is one genuinely meaningful piece of news embedded in Monday’s LA times story and that is the last sentence in this paragraph:

One source close to Tanaka said the undersheriff believes Baca views him as a political liability and is trying to use him as a scapegoat for the jail’s problems as the sheriff seeks reelection to a fifth term. That same source, who has spoken with Tanaka, said Tanaka has not ruled out running for sheriff himself, challenging his boss in the 2014 election. [Italics mine]

The fact that Paul Tanaka still believes he can be the next sheriff is both flabbergasting and, sadly, not a surprise at all. Despite the growing string of scandals that follow Tanaka like an elaborate and ever-expanding kite tail, as recently as February, according to well-placed sources inside the department, the undersheriff was still maneuvering to get his own loyalist slates elected to the various boards of the two LASD unions—ALADS and PPOA—–plus LA county’s main law enforcement fraternal organizations, namely BPOA (Black Peace Officer’s Association of Los Angeles County) and HAPCOA (Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association)—with the idea that their combined support could provide signficant help him in a bid for sheriff in 2014.

What a race that would be!—especially if someone untainted by the current scandals comes in from the outside, like Long Beach Chief, Jim McDonnell.

BACA TALKS TO EDITORIAL BOARD OF LA NEWS GROUP AND GETS IMPROVED REVIEWS

The LA News Group includes such newspapers as the LA Daily News, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Long Beach Press-Telegram and so on. Earlier this month, the group published a withering critique of Baca, all but calling for his ouster in 2014 when he is up for election.

But after a meeting with Baca this week, while not by any means offering the sheriff any reelection endorsements, the LA News Group’s editorial board was, at least, somewhat less determined to show him the door.

Here’s a clip from the editorial:

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca mentioned two personal goals this week: Winning re-election next year and living to 100. In recent months the latter had seemed more likely than the former.
The dedicated runner’s physical fitness wasn’t in doubt, but his fitness for office was. After revelations about the unwarranted use of violence by sheriff’s deputies, Baca initially passed the blame to subordinates. A citizen’s commission probing jail violence cited a “failure of leadership. ”

By last fall, the question had become whether Baca, 70, should resign before scandal or voters forced him out.

But the Lee Baca who visited the Los Angeles News Group editorial board this week, to outline responses to the problems in the Sheriff’s Department, appeared as fully committed and as creative as ever in his approach to his huge job. It is still not clear that Baca deserves a fifth term, any more than it was clear before that he doesn’t. But it is clear that Baca will not be easily brushed aside in 2014.

The question now is whether Baca’s wide-ranging responses to the scandals makes up for his inability to prevent them.

The editorial also mentions that, in answer to questions about the exit of Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, Baca said he managed to “finess” Tanaka into leaving.

Here’s the clip:

…More-impressive responses are Baca’s admissions that much of the ACLU’s criticism is correct, and his actions to get to the systemic roots of issues instead of merely blaming underlings.

One was Baca’s move to “finesse” Undersheriff Paul Tanaka into announcing his retirement – and then to essentially eliminate the position. Baca thinks this removes a barrier to communication between him and assistant sheriffs.

The insistence on using the word “finesse” to describe his ouster of Tanaka is classic Baca….

In other words, the retirement announcement was not about the undersheriff’s sudden urge to play more golf, after all.

For LASD watchers, it’s essential to read the whole editorial.

ASSESSING OUTGOING MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA’S PUBLIC SAFETY REPORT CARD

KPCC’s Frank Stolze talks to a list of LA experts about how Mayor Antonio Villagraigosa should be rated as a public safety mayor.

The reviews are generally good, but qualified with the admonition that Antonio was also the beneficiary of some very good luck.

Villaraigosa’s largest stroke of good fortune was his inheritance of Bill Bratton as LAPD’s chief after James Hahn arguably lost the mayoral election to Antonio because he fired Bernard Parks, “a beloved figure in the black community. Hahn lost his once bedrock support among African-Americans.”

(It should be noted that Parks had come to be roundly loathed by the rank and file, who felt that, as chief, he punished them for small infractions while letting his friends do what they pleased. He also alienated the press, members of the DA’s office, and most of city hall for his obstructive handling of the Rampart investigation.)

But while Villaraigosa may not get credit for bringing Bratton to LA, Stoltze reports he does get credit for working very well with him.

Here’s a clip:

In a sense, Villaraigosa lucked out.

“I think he was the beneficiary of the very tough decision that Jim Hahn made,” said UCLA Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology Jorja Leap, who studies crime in L.A. “I don’t think Jim Hahn is given enough credit.”

Villaraigosa embraced Bratton, who receives a lot of credit for turning the LAPD around and delivering the dramatic drops in crime by introducing new technology and cooperating more with federal agencies. The mayor also deserves praise for working with the chief to repair long-frayed police-community relations, said Alex Alonso, who monitors gangs and policing on his StreetGangs.com website.

“Chief Bratton and Villaraigosa showed up at churches, showed up at community meetings,” Alonso said. “That’s definitely a plus. Going to the ghettto.”

Villaraigosa also is praised, reports Stoltze, for embracing non-law-enforcement-centric strategies for crime reduction.

While she’d like to see more funding for the GRYD program (it receives about $25 million annually), Kayle Shilling of the Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater L.A. said she’s glad Villaraigosa embraced the gang strategy along with more police — even if it was four years into his administration.

“There are a lot of different approaches in Los Angeles and I think it just takes folks a little while to get up to speed,” Shilling said. “I think he’s landed in a good place.”

Villaraigosa can hardly take sole credit for the historic crime drop that began before he took office. Community groups — some led by former gang members — are more involved than ever in reducing violence.

“You have a lot of other things going on outside of City Hall and outside of government,” said Alonso of StreetGangs.com. “You have nonprofit organizations, you have a lot of gang intervention workers. The mindset is changing within South L.A.”

But with Villaraigosa’s help, the mindset on how to tackle crime has changed at City Hall, too.

Read and listen to the rest of Frank Stoltze’s report here.

AND JUST A REMINDER….NEXT WEEK THE U.S. SUPREME COURT WILL HEAR THE TWO GAY MARRIAGE CASES

We’ll be linking to what we see to be the best of the commentary. So buckle-up and hang on.

Here, for example, is an explanatory story from Michael Doyle of McClatchy Newspapers.

And here’s an interesting blog post by Amy Davidson in the New Yorker about the non-Prop 8 case, that of Edie Windsor. As she writes, Davidson helpfully links to some of the best essays on the two cases.

LOS ANGELES SUPERVISORS (THANKFULLY) DECIDE THAT BACA’S $1 BILLION JAIL-BUILDING PLAN NEEDS MORE STUDY

As we reported on Tuesday morning, the planned discussion of Sheriff Baca’s nearly $933 million plan to build a new, state-of-the-art jail to replace the bad old Men’s Central Jail, was abruptly yanked off the meeting schedule when the LA County Supervisors indicated they intended to vote on a motion to table the building plan pending further study.

The motion that passed unanimously by the Supes—proposed by Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Gloria Molina—ask for a study of the matter that included the following:

*A description of existing facilities, number and types of beds
*A profile of the existing inmate population by classification;
*A trend analysis that projects the need for beds by security classification type over the next ten, twenty and thirty years
*Jail Plan options and related assumptions which include
one-time and on-going funding needs; including State funding options
*A timeline/delivery schedule, which includes swing space during construction.

The building proposal, which was remarkably similar to the plan put forth by Baca and County CEO Bill Fujioka in January of last year. And that plan was tabled pending further study too. Now a year later, a slightly tweaked version of last year’s was about to be marched out—even though it appeared to have made little or no use of last year’s James Austin analyses of how best to handle the county’s inmate population and what kind of facilities were needed.

We know the sheriff has a habit of pushing for more money for this and that, whenever it is possible, but what’s the CEO’s excuse?

KPCC’s Rina Palta has a story on the issue. Here’s a clip:

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca’s proposal for a nearly $1 billion jail construction project needs thorough evaluation by an outside entity, the county Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday.

Supervisors directed the county’s CEO to commission a study of current jail needs and what they might be over the next 20 to 30 years.

Baca’s latest proposal for replacing downtown L.A.’s Men’s Central Jail with a more modern facility calls for reopening the shuttered Mira Loma jail to house women, and moving men into the Century Regional Detention Facility—the current women’s jail. Baca’s proposal also calls for building two new towers on the site of Men’s Central Jail.

[SNIP]

Peter Eliasberg, of the ACLU of Southern California—which called Men’s Central “nightmarish” in a 2009 report—agreed that it’s time for the old jail to go.

“Men’s Central jail is a disaster. It needs to be closed,” Eliasberg said.

But he said the “parade of proposals” that have come before the supervisors regarding the county’s jail needs have lacked a fundamental component: planning.

“One minute they’re telling us the jails can hold 21,000 people,” said Eliasberg. “Six months later, they’re telling us they can hold 14,000 people.”

Eliasberg said the county “has not done the basic studies” of the the current jail capacity and the projections for how many inmates the county system will need to house in the future, especially considering the sheriff’s plans for alternatives to incarceration.

PS: Baca said this week that, rather than tear down Men’s Central Jail, which was the plan last year, he’d like to repurpose it to use for his Education Based Incarceration program, a strategy that—if at all practical—we rather like.

DO YOU KNOW HOW YOUR BILLIONS IN REALIGNMENT TAX $$ ARE BEING USED?

In April, Stanford’s Dr. Joan Petersilia and her team of researchers, will release a study that looks at California’s $4+ billion Realignment plan to see what is effective and what isn’t, and how the various counties were spending their millions of state tax dollars.

In this this Huffington Post essay Michael Santos hints at some of the things the Stanford team found.

Here’s a clip:

…AB 109, or Realignment, was a legislative response to judicial decisions concerning health care in state prison. Jurists found California prisons were hopelessly overcrowded. The only remedy that would allow California prisoners to receive adequate health care required the state to reduce its prisoner population by tens of thousands of people.

The legislature and Governor Brown responded with Realignment. The AB 109 legislation was designed to lower prison population levels by diverting certain offenders from state prison to serve their sanctions in the county jail or on county probation. Qualifying for the Realignment sentencing meant the offenders were non-sex offenders, non-violent offenders, and non-serious offenders, referred to as non-non-nons, or NNNs.

Many people on parole would also receive different treatment under Realignment. Rather than being sent back to state prison for technical violations, people who violated conditions of their parole (but did not violate new laws) would be sanctioned to the county system rather than to state prison.

[SNIP]

Realignment operated under the ostensible theory that county officials might be more inclined to work toward preparing low-level offenders for law-abiding lives. The AB 109 legislation provided county officials with the funds to implement evidence-based practices that have been shown to reduce recidivism.

[However when Stanford researchers looked at how the counties spent their millions, they] …”found that only 12 percent of the total first-year allotment for Realignment funds across the state was given to community service providers that provided treatment programs and services.

The Stanford analysis also found that about 35 percent of all the allocated AB 109 money was earmarked for probation and sheriff staff salaries. That was the average, though. Some counties, like Sacramento, allocated a much higher percentage of AB 109 spending for traditional law enforcement operations. According to its published AB 109 budget, Sacramento County received $29,988,198. The Sheriff’s Department scored with $20,040,553 of those funds, but it only allocated $500,000 for “inmate services,” a measly 2.5 percent. Like most counties, Sacramento allocated the lion’s share of its AB 109 funding for traditional law enforcement services…..

Read the rest.

By the way, this story in the Union Democrat by Sean Jannson paints a depressing picture of how one of California’s counties, Calaveras, squabbled unpleasantly over their realignment $$, getting very little done, and leaving public safety to fend for itself.

DO WE NEED LEGISLATION TO “HIT THE RESET BUTTON” ON ZERO TOLERANCE RUNNING AMOK?

This week, the attorney representing the 7-year-old Maryland boy, who may or may not have bitten his pop tart into the shape of a gun, announced plans to appeal the child’s suspension so as to get the pastry biting black mark off the kid’s record.

Columnist and radio producer Lynda Bekore writes in the Huffington Post that, in light of this sort of idiocy, which admittedly seems of late to be running rife through the countryside, we may need some legislation that lays down some common sense ground rules to prevent schools across the nation from doing harm to kids with whacked out, fear-based zero-tolerance policies.

In other words, sadly, we may need government overreach to prevent school overreach.

Here’s a clip:

For any student, the stigma and shame of a school suspension can be emotionally life-altering; for older students, suspensions become part of their permanent record, adversely affecting their chances of acceptance to college.

Most principals would usually not choose to suspend a student for anything but egregious misconduct, or repeat bad behavior, instead opting for discipline more appropriate to that specific student or situation. But their hands are tied by the extreme limitations of zero tolerance imposed by their school boards, who themselves feel constrained by a litigious culture that demands expensive retribution for any perceived slight to another child’s precious self-esteem.

We can all throw our hands up in the air or shrug our shoulders, and tsk, tsk the silliness of “other” people’s narrow-minded lack of good judgment, or we can try to make it stop. Maryland State Senator J.B. Jennings recently introduced a bill, The Reasonable School Discipline Act of 2013, which calls for clearer disciplinary guidelines at specific grade levels for behavior that is not directly physically violent, such as nibbling a pastry into a gun, or talking about shooting bubbles from a Hello Kitty bubble gun.