We’ve now seen more than a week’s worth of politically charged emotional fiction pouring from sources ranging from KFI AM radio screamers John and Ken, to author Earl Ofari Hutchinson in yesterday’s LA Times op ed, to a new online column by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic Monthly. All contain the message that murdered football star Jamiel Shaw would likely not have died were it not for the restrictions of Special Order 40—the 1979 police mandate adopted by then LAPD Chief Darryl Gates that prevents officers from questioning people solely to determine their immigration status or arresting them solely for violations of immigration law.

Here’s how those master’s of veracity John and Ken put it:

If Special Order 40 didn’t stand in the way, the illegal would have been deported, and Jamiel would be alive. It’s as simple as that. We say that Mayor Villar, Chief Bratton and the City Council have blood on their hands!

But let’s review the facts, shall we?
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FINALLY….SOME GOOD NEWS

Yesterday I was critical of what appeared to be one more gang report, this one ordered by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Like most gang policy watchers—I’d reached a state of near apoplexy regarding the plethora of expensive reports, and the absolute dearth of real action resulting from them. Thus I found the idea of one more plan/report/audit entirely maddening.

But after I posted I got an email from attorney Susan Lee from the Advancement Project who told me very nicely that I’d gotten it wrong. This wasn’t just another report at all, Lee wrote, but a set of specific recommendations designed to get LA County to actually take some of the steps that we’ve be clamoring for.

Here’s the deal: One of the things that all the previous reports have made clear is that the only long term solution to LA’s gang violence is to change the community ecology in which the gangs exist. To put it another way, if we really want to get the upper hand on gang violence in a given area we have to change everything: the schools, access to services, the mental and emotional health of the families, the neighborhood. And we have to add new elements to the mix: mentoring, jobs, parenting classes, mental health treatment, youth development sites that feature recreation, arts, job training, and sports….and on and on.

Do we have the money or the organizational wherewithal to make those kinds of changes in LA’s poorest and most gang-fraught communities? Of course not. At least, not right now. (We can’t manage to get our urban schools to work. for God’s sake.)

BUT, what we can do-–as Susan pointed out when we talked later in the afternoon—is to “lay the tracks” for such an endeavor, and from there make changes by increments, but with an uber strategy in mind—instead of the ineffective piecemeal chaos we’ve got now. (That last was my phrasing, not hers.)

It sounds daunting. Okay, it is daunting. But the County plan awaiting approval is designed to pick out several “demonstration sites,” do a comprehensive “needs assessment” in those communities, and then get to work. Once the Board of Sups gives the go-ahead, the ball will begin rolling.

The idea is not without precedent. Probably the closest existing analogue is the Harlem Children’s Zone project in New York which aims to blanket all the kids in a particular low income area with tightly linked services throughout their childhoods into young adulthood, and thus change their ability and opportunity to succeed.

There will be no overnight miracles. This is an in-it-for-the-long-haul deal. And, as Susan said, given the fiscal realities, in the next year everybody’ll be mostly be laying track.

One small reason to be hopeful here is the fact that LA’s most essential players have bought in to the plan and have agreed on the broad strokes planning—namely Chief Bratton, Sheriff Baca, LAUSD’s David Brewer, Jeff Carr from the mayor’s office, Connie Rice, plus the big county health agencies and more.

It is also cheering that LA County CEO Bill Fujioka (the former LA City CAO) is the person chosen to integrate the best elements of past reports and form them into plan of action. Fujioka is an extremely smart dude who is very skillful at finding the hidden money lurking in any given budget and “re-prioritizing” it to meet a pressing need.

Alright, here’s the bottom line: While City Hall remains bogged down in turf battles, the main players have clustered around the County figuring it was the place they might cut through the crap and get something going.

With any luck, a month from now, that’s exactly what will happen.

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Yesterday, the LAPD’s chief psychologist, Kevin Jablonski, told the Police Commission that cops were twice as likely to kill themselves as to be killed in the line of duty. And to help turn those stats around, the Los Angeles Police Department is starting its first suicide prevention program. (Both the Daily News and the LA Times have short articles on Jablonski’s report.)

The LAPD’s suicide rate is higher than that of New York’s police and most other big city forces. Most, but not all. San Diego’s is higher. Higher still is the FBI. And highest of all are the suicide rates for US Customs officers.

The National Police Suicide Foundation has some interesting articles on the subject. Here’s a thoughtful clip from one of them:

Ernesto Banuelos did not die on the street. He shot himself to death one morning in 1997. Despite a growing acknowledgement of the problem, the topic of suicide remains taboo among much of law enforcement’s rank and file. To some extent, psychologists say, that is merely a reflection of society as a whole — uncomfortable with the idea of people taking their own lives. But experts say that those who make their living projecting strength and control are especially reluctant to admit that they need psychological help. They fear they will be perceived as weak.

”Cops don’t talk about that kind of stuff,” says Jerry Sanders, former San Diego police chief. ”They either do it. Or they don’t.”

In many departments, ”if it’s known you’ve thought about suicide, or you’re depressed, it’s next to impossible for you to progress through the ranks,” says Ivanoff, who worked on a 1994 project that evaluated New York City police officers’ attitudes about suicide. ”Because of the negative effect it can have on your career, officers are extremely reluctant to identify each other as needing help and will go to great lengths to ‘protect’ somebody who needs help rather than helping them get it.”

The stress that often leads an officer to commit suicide is at least partially the result of unrealistically high expectations of being a successful cop. ”If you’re a carpenter and you drop your hammer, you bend over and pick it up,” says Don Sheehan, director of the stress management program at the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit. ”What happens to a police officer who drops his gun during a bank robbery or misspeaks during a trial? They have to always be in control. Officers learn very early on that they have to always be right.”

It’s been my experience that police officers, like soldiers, often feel that there are few others outside their own ranks with whom they can discuss the intensity of what they experience on the job—and that’s not good.

Not an easy problem to solve. But kudos to the LAPD for taking it on.

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(NOTE: USC grad j student and IJJ research associate, Amanda Becker took excellent notes on this session, which are what I’m working from in this post.)

Thursday was the last day of the IJJ Criminal Justice seminar and featured the moment where the rubber met the road—or at least talked about meeting the road.

(Could I possibly torture that metaphor any more?)

For two and a half days, nearly all the main players in LA’s criminal justice system, and many of their top critics, got together on panels, at lunch, and sometimes in the audience, to talk about the fact that LA is still the gang capital of the world and that, after nearly three decades of using imprisonment and punishment as its primary public safety strategy, California’s “incarceration addiction” is threatening to break the state.

The final panel was called: Moving from Vision to Action, What are LA’s Leaders Willing to do Jointly to Reform the System?

The panel consisted of LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, LA District Attorney Steve Cooley, LA Public Defender Michael Judge, LAPD Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger (one of those likely to be short listed to replace Bratton when the time comes), California State Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, Chief LA County Probation Officer Robert Taylor, and Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, Marvin Southard.

Joe Domanick, the moderator and prime mover behind the conference, asked everyone to say what they were willing to commit to doing in order to reform LA’s—and California’s—- justice system.

The best of the answers are below.
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All day Tuesday some of the main players in the realm of LA criminal justice got together at the Davidson Center at USC and talked with each other and the audience about what a successful 21st Century criminal justice system ought to look like. Among those present were LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, LA civil rights attorney Connie Rice, gang intervention specialist, Bo Taylor, Urban League president Blair Taylor, author and former California state senator Tom Hayden, LA gang czar Jeff Carr…and lots more.
The discussions were moderated by journalist/author Joe Domanick and bounced around between such subjects as gangs and gang violence, California prisons, the LA County jail and the broken parole system.


I’ll blog about the high points later. But the conversations were remarkable for their lack of defensiveness or grandstanding. Everyone seemed to have showed up with the willingness to genuinely talk about solutions—and how the ideas discussed this week could get beyond talk to actual implementation.

Here’s some of what Victor Merina, Senior Fellow at the the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism, wrote about the conference:

For Connie Rice, an attorney and architect of Los Angeles City’s landmark anti-gang report, reforming the criminal justice system is critical in dealing with an “endemic epidemic” of violence on community streets.

For Sheriff Lee Baca, who oversees the country’s largest jail system, a criminal justice system overtaxed by mental health issues among those incarcerated has worsened a staggering problem.

For Darren “Bo” Taylor, a former gang member who now works with at-risk youth as founder of Unity One, the everyday violence in communities of color is simply “a crisis. It’s an emergency.”

And Blair H. Taylor, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Urban League, puts it even more dramatically, calling the need to curb community violence today’s paramount issue. “It’s a problem, I believe, bigger than any problem in the 21st Century,” said Taylor, “bigger than global warming, bigger than terrorism.”

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All day today I’ll be at the Criminal Justice Conference sponsored and organized by the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism, where I’m a senior fellow. (They’re the folks who sponsor this blog.)

The prime mover behind the conference, which is open to anyone, is my pal Joe Domanick, and the three-day schedule will feature LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, Sheriff Lee Baca, Connie Rice, and loads of others. (You can find the full schedule here
Here’s a snippet from Joe’s introduction to the reasons he think the conference is important:

The purpose of the Justice and Journalism conference….is for L.A.’s criminal justice professionals and experts to discuss what they see taking place on the other side of the Los Angeles criminal justice conveyor belt – a belt that never stops. Over 30% of those moving into the state’s overstuffed prison system come from L.A. County. After doing their time, tens of thousands return each year to Los Angeles – the majority having received little or no educational help, mental health care, treatment for drug or alcohol abuse, or other services while in prison. When they arrive here and hit the streets, there is no serious, sustained and coordinated reentry strategy to assist them. It’s no wonder that 70% are placed back on the conveyor belt and returned to prison within three years following their release….

Come on down if you can manage it. The event is free and it will be very, very interesting, I guarantee it.

(Naturally, I’ll be blogging it.)

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And….this week’s silver medal for Olympic class bad judgment by a public servant or servants goes to (drum roll, please)….the groups of Lakewood-located LA County Sheriffs who have been having (I am not kidding about this) ARREST CONTESTS.

(Sorry officers, but the gold medal for mind-bogglingly hideous judgment by a public servant has already been awarded to Judge Keller in the post below.)

This morning’s LA Times has the story. Read the whole thing, but here’s a clip or two to get you started:

One recent competition, described in an internal Sheriff’s Department e-mail obtained by The Times, was called “Operation Any Booking.” The object was to arrest as many people as possible within a specific 24-hour period.

Other one-day competitions have included “Operation Vehicle Impound,” a contest aimed at seizing as many cars as possible. And another challenged deputies to see how many gang members and other suspected criminals could be stopped and questioned.

(Forget putting Fluoride in the water, lets see if we lace the County’s water system with whatever drug promotes common sense. Or maybe aerial spraying would work.)

After being called for comment by The Times on Wednesday, Sheriff Lee Baca said he spoke with the Lakewood station lieutenant. Baca called the competitions a well-meaning but ill-conceived idea that promoted “the wrong values.”

Gee. Ya think?

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Okay, this may be perfectly innocent but....to have a clique within the LA County Sheriff’s Department calling itself “The Regulators” doesn’t exactly have the protect and serve image we’re hoping to find in our local law enforcement, Sheriff’s Department included.

The LA Times has the story.

I admit I have exactly zip inside knowledge about this. But my first bounce reaction is summed up quite nicely by my friend, Mike Gennaco.

Michael Gennaco, chief attorney for the sheriff’s Office of Independent Review, which monitors internal affairs investigations, said he was concerned that groups like the Regulators hurt morale and divide deputies.

He said that the name itself, the Regulators, is a cause for concern. In jail culture, regulators are inmates who control other inmates’ behavior.

“The name and connotation and symbol they have selected can cause sinister perceptions, even if in reality nothing sinister is going on,” Gennaco said.

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IN THE ONGOING GENARLOW WILSON CASE, the Georgia Supremes heard argument for and against Wilson’s release in a packed-to-the-rafters courtroom on Friday (although ruling isn’t expected before September.). The Atlanta Journal Constitution has perhaps the best description of the proceedings for laypersons. And, for the law-junkie’s among us, a very, smart cookie young Atlanta lawyer named Sara, at Going Through the Motions, live blogged the hearing on her blackberry. (Sara also made very helpful note of the fact that Wilson’s attorney, B.J. Bernstein, wore a suit featuring a sequined faux leopard skin collar.) She also observed, although likely not with entirely flawless objectivity, that prosecutor McDade was..”…even sleazier in person, if that’s possible.”

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF SEXUAL OFFENSES….. this Sunday’s NY Times Magazine has a fascinating cover story exploring facts, myths and misconceptions surrounding the issue of juvenile sex offenders. It’s titled, “How Can You Distinguish a Budding Pedophile From a Kid With Real Boundary Problems?” It’s very much worth the read. (She mentions Genarlow Wilson, but only in passing.)

ON BEING DIFFERENT….SPECIAL ED. This weekend, Ira Glass and This American Life replay a wonderful past episode called “Special Ed…. “…Stories about people who were told that they’re different. Some of them were comfortable with it. Some didn’t understand it. And some understood, but didn’t like it.”

If you only listen to part of it, listen to chapter one—about the group of developmentally disabled people who took a cross country journey during which they conducted a series of filmed man-on-the-street interviews. It’s great, great radio. (Ira Glass really is one of the most talented people working in any media.)

DEPORTED AND DISAPPEARED All this brings us quite naturally to the excellent narrative piece written by LA Weekly’s Danial Hernandez on that that story we flagged here a few weeks ago about the developmentally disabled main who, despite the fact that he’s a U.S. citizen, was deported to Mexico after he served time in the LA County jail for a low-level vandalism charge. He is now missing.

“…..he made one distraught phone call to his family from the border at San Ysidro. His sister-in-law Vicky picked up.

‘He called and told her to ask us, ‘Who is going to come get me in Tijuana?”‘ Carbajal says. ‘And she asked, “Why?” “Because they deported me.” ‘But why?” He said, “I don’t know. I’m confused. I don’t know why I’m here.” ‘

Then the line went dead….”

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I

Snubbing Devin’s memory: Legislators fail to learn the lessons of a 13-year-old’s fatal shooting by police.

Today we award Badges of Cowardice to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief Bill Bratton, and six key state lawmakers, for failing to stand up to California’s powerful police unions and take the first baby steps toward reopening police disciplinary records and proceedings that had been public since at least the 1970s.

Our L.A. leaders, along with the six-member Assembly Public Safety Committee, cowered in the face of cop bully-tactics and the secrecy lobby that brought down a modest bill to reopen public access to what had been an historically open process.

We give extra large, doublesided badges to the mayor and police chief because they are trying to have it both ways. They professed to be in favor of State Sen. Gloria Romero’s SB 1019, dubbed here the Anti-Secret Police bill, but they failed to show up at Tuesday’s committee meeting and fight for its survival.

Come on, guys, don’t you remember how adamant you seemed on the issue when an enraged community demanded answers after a secret police Board of Rights hearing exonerated the police officer who fatally shot 13-year-old Devin Brown? Look what Antonio and Bill told the L.A. Times’ Patrick McGreevy in January, when the issue was hot and the public demanded action.

“I am in support of change. I am very frustrated by [the current process],” Bratton said… “The public has no access to it. The media has no access to it. That’s crazy, absolutely crazy. We have nothing to hide in the Los Angeles Police Department.”
Hours later, Villaraigosa issued a concurring statement .
“The mayor would enthusiastically support legislation or other measures to open the board of rights process to the public,” the statement said. “Transparency … would benefit both the public and the officers facing disciplinary action.”

But that was six months ago. Will there be a similar outcry when the results of secret investigations into the MacArthur Park melee are released? Let’s hope the chief doesn’t black out the names of officers disciplined and withhold key details. And, if voters grow restless and the chief and mayor renew their calls for reform, will we take them seriously?

By the time the Anti-Secret Police bill made it to the committee, the unions watered down the bill to mollify cops and win the so-called support of Bill and Antonio. The bill even gave the police chief the power to withhold records if he deemed an officer’s safety would be put at risk.

The bill would merely allow local governments to vote on whether to restore public access to the same narrow category of police disciplinary records and proceedings that had been open in Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Bay Area for decades until the California Supreme Court closed the records in its intellectually dishonest and unintelligible decision last year, Copley Press v. Superior Court of San Diego. In that decision, the Supreme Court held that California’s statutes aimed at controlling the discovery of police personnel records in civil lawsuits prohibits the disclosure of records that arise from the officer’s administrative appeal to an oversight body such as a civil service commission. Police agencies, taking the decision one more step, said if the records were off-limits to the public, so must be the proceedings.

The bill failed to win a solitary vote in the Assembly Public Safety Committee after passing out of the Senate a few weeks ago. The Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPD’s cop labor union), a representative of Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona, and Assemblyman Jose Solorio, a Santa Ana Democrat and chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, all made the same bogus claim that the bill would have opened up personal information about police officers and their families to criminals and “endangered” the lives of officers and their families.

Antonio and Bill were nowhere to be seen in Sacramento Tuesday to counter this false alarm. If they had truly “supported” the bill, they would have flown to Sacramento and explained that this process has been open to the public for decades in Los Angeles without any reported endangerment of officer safety. If our leaders actually backed the bill, they would have explained that no information about an officer’s family is released in disciplinary records.

Rather, the Anti-Secret Police measure would have allowed local agencies to vote on whether to create a policy of public access to police officer disciplinary files – but only if the local agency had previously had open records and only in instances where an officer had filed an administrative appeal of their discipline with a local civil service commission or police board of rights. If the local agency adopted the access policy, then the only records available to the public would be the records filed with the civil service commission or police board of rights relating to the specific incident and discipline. Like why should that be such a big deal?

The unions built their propaganda campaign on lies and threats. Under the Anti-Secret Police bill, a police agency would not have been allowed to release a police officer’s entire personnel file, home address, or medical records. Nor would the bill allow a police agency to release all citizen complaints or internal affairs investigations. Rather, public access would have been allowed only after a police officer filed an administrative appeal of a particular disciplinary sanction with an oversight body.

One union leader, John Stites, sent an e-mail to intimidate Senate members before their vote on the measure, saying that police unions “adamantly oppose this legislation to the point that if it is passed we will move quickly to oppose any term-limit reform legislation publicly. There is no compromise on this. Ensure that it be understood that this will only be the beginning.” Romero denounced this “bully tactic” and the Senate approved the bill, 22-10 earlier this month.

Also receiving Badges of Cowardice are the members of the Public Safety Committee. These scared legislators wouldn’t even let the measure come up for a vote. They are:

Two Republicans: Joel Anderson of El Cajon and Greg Aghazarian, Stockton

Four Democrats: Chairman Jose Solorio of Santa Ana, Anthony J. Portantino of La Canada, Hector De La Torre of South Gate, Fiona Ma of San Francisco

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