WARREN OLNEY CONFRONTS CARMEN TRUTANICH WITH, YOU KNOW, FACTS REGARDING HIS REALIGNMENT CAMPAIGN ATTACKS AGAINST FEUER

Thursday night’s Which Way LA? with Warren Olney on KCRW featured City Attorney candidates Mike Feuer and incumbent Carmen Trutanich, with each man interviewed for half the show.

More than perhaps any other interviewer or debate moderator during this election season, Olney has consistently asked the most intelligent, probing and illuminating questions of all the candidates who have stepped behind his microphones.

Thursday’s show with the City Attorney candidates was no exception.

However, his segment with Trutanich was a standout, as the ever dignified Olney all but chased “Nuch” around the room (metaphorically speaking), after Trutantich repeated his nonsense about AB109 letting inmates out of prison early, accusing realignment and Mike Feuer of being responsible for putting the Northridge kidnapping suspect on the street so the man could snatch ten-year-old girls….and more.

As we’ve said here, there is a legitimate and important discussion to be had about reforming AB 109 and some of its companion statutes mandating parole and probation reform. But that would require understanding the law in the first place, which Trutanich does not appear to do, and then one would have to deal in…you know, facts.

In the meantime, a hearty thank you to Warren Olney for holding our city attorney’s feet to the factual fire.

NEW STUDY ON PRISON RAPE AND SEXUAL VICTIMIZATION IN LOCK-UPS SHOWS THAT YOUTH ARE 13-21 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED THAN ADULTS WHEN INCARCERATED

A study released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) contained a number of disturbing statistics, which we’ll get to in a minute. But perhaps the most alarming stats have to do with the overall rates of sexual victimization for youth ages 16 and 17 in adult prisons (4.5%) and jails (4.7%), which were significantly higher than those for adults (4.0% in prisons, 3.2% in jails). The report also found that among kids who reported being sexual victimized by staff, three quarters were victimized more than once and nearly half said that staff used force or threat of force.

Yet those stats don’t tell the whole story, since kids are much fewer in numbers than adults in lock-up.

According to the highly respected Campaign for Youth Justice, research by BJS shows that 21% and 13% of all substantiated victims of inmate-on-inmate sexual violence in jails in 2005 and 2006 respectively, were youth under the age of 18 (surprisingly high since only 1% of jail inmates are juveniles). Put another way, previous BJS research shows that youth in adult facilities were 13 to 21 times as likely to be sexually assaulted while in custody than their representation in the correctional population.

“This study tells us that youth face sexual victimization in adult institutions, but due to underreporting by youth in challenging adult facility conditions, we need more research to know more about this problem,” says Liz Ryan, President and CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ). “Previous studies and the experiences of young people in the adult criminal justice system document that youth are at greatest risk of sexual victimization in adult jails and prisons, “The report underscores the urgency for U.S. Attorney General Holder and the nation’s governors to redouble their efforts to fully implement the Prison Rape Elimination Act’s (PREA) (http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/preac.html) Youthful Inmate Standard by removing youth under 18 from adult jails and prisons.”

Amnesty International also noted that inmates who identify as LGBT in prisons and jails were at least 2.5 times likely to be sexually victimized by staff than non-LGBT detainees.

LA’S TWIN TOWERS JAIL SHOWS HIGH RATE OF INMATE ON INMATE SEXUAL ASSAULTS ACCORDING TO THE STUDY

In the study, as you might immagine, some prisions and jails had higher frequencies os sexual aEleven male prisons, 1 female prison, and 9 jails were identified as high-rate facilities based on the prevalence of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization in 2011-12.

LA’s Twin Towers Jail was one of those 9 Jails with the highest rates of sexual assaults, said the report. (SEE PAGES 11 & 12)

AND NOW BACK TO REALIGNMENT: A NEW STUDY INDICATES THAT ARRESTS AND CONVICTIONS REMAIN ABOUT THE SAME AS PRE-REALIGNMENT

A new study released Thursday by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation indicates that, under realignment, post-prison arrests are slightly down, while convictions remain static.

The study followed 37,448 lawbreakers for one year after their release from prison and compared those findings with statistics on 51,910 inmates released in the year immediately prior realignment.

The researchers found that post-Realignment offenders were arrested at a slightly lower rate than pre-Realignment offenders (62 percent pre-Realignment and 58.7 percent post-Realignment).

Key findings include:

* The number of post-Realignment offenders convicted of new crimes is nearly the same as the number of pre-Realignment offenders convicted of new crimes (21.3 percent pre-realignment and 22.5 percent post realignment).

* Post-Realignment offenders returned to prison at a significantly lower rate than pre-Realignment offenders, an intended effect of Realignment as most offenders are ineligible to return to prison on a parole violation. (42 percent pre-Realignment and 7.4 percent post-Realignment)

This last is due to the fact that, prior to realignment, parolees were being returned to prison on technical violations of their parole at a rapid clip. Whereas now, with many parolees, technical violations—things like staying out of their old neighborhoods, testing dirty, and so on—do not result in 9 mos more in prison.

There is additional fine grain stuff in the study itself, so click here, if you want delve deeper into the matter. A lot more study is needed, yet the bottom line take-away from this study is that those who have been shrieking that realignment is causing crime to run rife through the countryside, do not have facts on their side.

FEDERAL OVERSIGHT OF LAPD OFFICIALLY ENDS

The Federal Consent Decrees finally is no more for the LAPD. The AP’s Tami Abdollah has the story. Here’s a clip:

A judge has officially ended more than a decade of federal oversight of the Los Angeles Police Department that was triggered by a corruption scandal involving abusive officers.
In two short sentences, U.S. District Judge Gary Allen Feess dismissed the final remnants of a consent decree on Wednesday, releasing the department from a transition agreement put in place in 2009 to ensure reforms that had been made were kept in place.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cheered the formal end to agreement at an afternoon news conference with Police Chief Charlie Beck. Villaraigosa said the department, which was once “an example of how not to police a city, is now a national model.”

Tyler Izen, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said the union was pleased the department was free of the federal monitoring.

“Now we can begin looking for efficiencies in LAPD processes while at the same time maintaining the transparency the public deserves,” he said. The union represents nearly 10,000 LAPD personnel.

The city was forced into the consent decree in 2001 under the threat of a federal lawsuit. The U.S. government alleged a pattern of civil rights violations committed by police officers that went back decades.

Now that it’s over, it bears remembering that, as odious as the thing was, the Consent Decree was a tool that Bill Bratton used effectively to begin to institute real reform in the department.

SUPES TO HAVE CLOSED SESSION TO REVIEW CANDIDATES FOR NEW INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR THE LASD

On Monday, at 9 am, the LA County Board of Supervisors will meet in closed session to interview candidates for the position of Inspector General—IG—for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department.

As you may remember, among the main recommendations made by the Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence in its final report delivered last September, was the appointment of an independent Inspector General (IG) and the creation of an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with “broad authority as well as adequate staffing and funding to review Custody issues and concerns.”

In making its recommendation, the Commission laid out what it saw as the problems with the existing oversight systems, and the new structure the commissioners felt should be put in place in order to be effective.

[You can read the CCJV's whole section re: existing oversight and the recommendation of the appointment of an OIG starting on p. 177.]

In past months, a private consulting company has been conducting the search for the IG candidates.

The lack of community input in the search has disappointed many—including Jails Commission member Reverend Cecil Murray, as he expresses an a letter to the LA Times.

However, as one Supes’ insider pointed out, in that a lot of the best qualified candidates are still working elsewhere, a public selection process is impractical.

We are unlikely to find out much if anything after Monday’s meeting, but the fact that the Supes now have a pile of candidates to review, is a welcome step forward.

AS FOR THAT OTHER CLOSED SESSION, CALLED AFTER THE TANAKA INTERVIEW….

After multiple conversations this week about Tuesday’s closed session –which was hastily called after the interview with Paul Tanaka appeared in the LA Times—we’ve learned that, basically, the meeting served to give the board members a chance to talk about what actions, legal or otherwise, they might need to take if something drastic happened at the LASD (like, say, bigtime indictments, or some unusually horrific revelation).

And, in response to a rumor going around among some of WLA’s commenters, not to worry, there is no indication that the board is going to start appointing committees to investigate the department, or some such crazy and redundant action.

NEW STUDY FINDS THAT CALIFORNIA HAS THE MOST WORKING POOR IN THE U.S. AND DOES A PARTICULARLY LOUSY JOB OF PROVIDING EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES NEEDED TO CLIMB OUT OF POVERTY

A new report released Wednesday finds that California has the most working poor in the nation, and that the state does an ineffective job of providing educational opportunities to boost the low-income workers to economic security—even though California has the 9th largest economy in the world, and is in great need of a well-educated work force.

“Economic security should not be out of reach for people who are working hard when higher education can be a viable pathway from poverty to prosperity,” says the report, commissioned by The Campaign for College Opportunity, in partnership with the Women’s Foundation of California and Working Poor Families project. “But there must be a will for reform and investment in the state’s higher education system. If left unaddressed, the state’s future outlook is threatened.”

Wisely, the report doesn’t just detail the bad news, but outlines a series of recommendations for reform that it says are “within reach.”

THE NEW YORKER’S AMY DAVIDSON WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON MICHELLE KNIGHT, AMANDA BARRY AND GINA DE JESUS

These two comparatively short narratives (here and here) on the three abducted and finally rescued women aren’t likely to tell you something that you don’t know. But Davidson’s strong, good prose counterweights the horror of this story with the humanity of the women. Here’s a clip:

How many times since August, 2002, did Michelle Knight think that she was going to die? When it became clear that Ariel Castro, who had offered her a ride, was not taking her home, but to a basement in his own house? The first time, or the hundredth time, she was tied up with the chains and rope the police found there, or when, as she said, according to press accounts of the initial police report, Castro raped and beat her? Another prisoner arrived, and then another; did that make her own life seem nearer or farther as it became clear, in glimpses of vigils on television, that the city was looking for them but not for her? Or was it the first time, or the second, third, fourth, or fifth time, that she realized that she was pregnant, and then, as she also reportedly told police, watched what happened to her body as Castro systematically starved her and hit her in the stomach until she miscarried? In 2006, according to the report, Castro told her that he would kill her if the baby about to be born to Amanda Berry, whom he had also held for years and raped, died. As Knight, along with the third prisoner, Gina DeJesus, helped with the delivery, in a inflatable pool set up in the house, it looked as though that might happen: the newborn girl stopped breathing. Knight breathed into her mouth, and they both lived.

Read the rest here. and here

TWO SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES RESCUE PICO-RIVERA MAN FROM BURNING APARTMENT

KTLA has this story of everyday heroism in which two LA County Sheriff’s deputies rescue a man, incapacitated by smoke inhalation, from his still smoldering Pico Rivera apartment.

Click here for the video.

HEARTBREAKER AS LA AIRPORT POLICE OFFICER DIES AFTER RUNNING MEMORIAL 5K FOR FALLEN COLLEAGUE

Brian Sumers of the Daily Breeze has the story. Here’s a clip:

A Los Angeles International Airport police officer, who felt ill on Wednesday after running in a 5K race to honor an officer killed while on duty, died late Thursday afternoon, Chief Patrick Gannon said.

Anthony Edwards had been taken to Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center on Wednesday, where doctors discovered a heart problem, Gannon said. He had just finished the run, which raised money for the Tommy E. Scott Scholarship Fund. Scott was killed in 2005 when a man jumped into his patrol car and took off with the officer clinging to the door. Scott was decapitated when he struck a fire hydrant.

“We were honoring one guy – Tommy Scott, who had given his life for this city – and then the irony of it was that an officer who was honoring Tommy passed away himself,” Gannon said. “It’s hard for everyone to get their arms around this. ”

Gannon said Edwards was in his mid-40s. Another police source said Edwards had been with the airport police for 12 years.

LA COUNTY SUPERVISORS CANCEL TRAVEL TO HAVE CLOSED DOOR MEETING ABOUT LASD CONCERNS

There was to have been no Board of Supervisors’ meeting this Tuesday, because the Supes were scheduled to take their once-a-year joint trip to Washington DC instead. However, after last week’s LA Times interview with former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka in which Tanaka engaged in what can best be described as a verbal assassination attempt against Sheriff Lee Baca, the majority of the Board—Don Knabe, Gloria Molina, and Mark Ridley-Thomas—cancelled their respective trip plans and decided maybe a meeting was called for after all.

Or at least so we’ve heard. The meeting is to take place behind closed doors, so you and I won’t be able to observe first hand.

The agenda for Tuesday’s hastily planned meeting indicates the subjects up for discussion are “department head performance evaluations,” plus ” Significant exposure to litigation” and “Allegations regarding civil rights violations in the County jails.”

However, sources close to the board suggested that, more than anything, this meeting is about what Tanaka said, what the Feds might or might not be planning to do, what it all portends for the future of the department, and what actions—if any—might soon be required of the Supes given the storm around the LASD that is rapidly quickening.

We’ll let you know as we know more.

VALLEY FEVER FLARES IN CA PRISONS, JUST AS JERRY BROWN TELLS FEDS THAT CA’S PRISON HEALTH SYSTEM IS IN TIP TOP CONDITION

The AP has the story on this largely-hidden epidemic that endangers inmates in certain CA lock-ups. Here’s a clip:

As many as 3,000 prison inmates in central California deemed to be at risk from a potentially lethal lung disease may need to be moved to other regions under an order from a court-appointed federal overseer.

The directive, issued on Monday, marks the latest effort to stem cases of valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis, at two prisons where the disease was found to have contributed to the deaths of nearly three dozen inmates from 2006 to 2011.

But it could complicate court-ordered efforts to reduce overcrowding across California’s prison system, the nation’s largest…

And then here are a couple of clips from a more detailed story by John E. Dannenberg of The Prison Legal News:

In the past three years more than 900 of the 5,300 prisoners at California’s Pleasant Valley State Prison (PVSP) in Fresno County, plus 80 staff members, have contracted coccidioidomycosis, a fungus commonly known as “valley fever.” Over a dozen prisoners and one guard have died from the disease. Valley fever forms in the lungs, where inhaled fungal spores colonize.

The soil-based fungus, which is indigenous from California’s central valley down to South Texas, most often causes symptoms similar to the flu (and in the process confers lifelong immunity); however, in two to three percent of cases it metastasizes. Once it gets into the bloodstream it is often fatal.

Although valley fever has occasionally infected archaeologists digging in Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument and drug-sniffing dogs along the Mexican border, its statistical prevalence in California prisons is troubling. California reported 3,000 cases of valley fever in the general population in 2006, of which 514 were diagnosed at PVSP alone. This 17% morbidity rate among prisoners is astounding. Further, from a mortality standpoint, 12 deaths in 900 prison cases equals a 1.3% fatality rate – double the community rate of 0.6% (based on 33 deaths in 5,500 infections reported in Arizona in 2006). Put another way, if the general population had the same mortality rate as prisoners, there would have been another 38 valley fever-related deaths in the community.

[SNIP]

The high infection rate at PVSP (and to a lesser degree at other central valley prisons) has been correlated with two other factors: 1) importation of non-local prisoners and 2) prisoners with compromised immune systems. This has translated into a high rate of serious valley fever cases among HIV-infected prisoners from Los Angeles, many of whom are susceptible under both factors. As a result, prison officials have been preemptively moving such vulnerable prisoners from PVSP to other areas in the state…

YOUTH ADVOCATES HAPPY WITH JUVENILE JUSTICE FUNDING IN OBAMA BUDGET—BUT WILL THOSE SECTIONS PASS?

Youth Today has a column by the very-smart Liz Ryan of the Campaign for Youth Justice about the sections in the president’s budget that youth advocates see as the most crucial—namely the funding it provides for the 40-year old Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) that, in this go-round, focuses on three areas:

1. Keeping “status offenders” from winding up in the juvenile justice system. Status offenders kids who’ve done things that are against the law only because of their age—things like skipping school, running away, breaking curfew and possession or use of alcohol.

2. Getting kids out of adult jails and lock ups, whenever possible

3. Reducing the disparate treatment of youth of color in the juvenile justice system.

Here are the details.

LAPD & LASD LICENSE PLATE READERS KNOW WHERE YOU’VE BEEN, PRIVACY GROUPS SUE FOR INFO ON TRACKING PRACTICE

The idea that law enforcement may be compiling databases on the whereabouts of non-lawbreakers is making a lot of people jumpy, and has caused the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to demand that both the LAPD and the LASD fork over information about how the data is being used.

Both Dennis Romero of the LA Weekly and the AP’s Tami Abdollah reported on the matter.

Here’s a clip from Abdollah’s story:

Two privacy rights groups questioning law enforcement’s use of automated license plate readers asked a judge Monday to order the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to provide more details on how they use the technology.

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a writ against the city, county and its law enforcement departments after waiting more than eight months for a complete response to public records requests.

The groups are seeking one week of data collected by the readers, which are usually mounted on police cars and scan thousands of license plates in an officer’s shift. The readers – which collect the license plate numbers, the time, date, GPS location and a photo – alert law enforcement to stolen and wanted vehicles.

“If you’re not wanted for anything, it doesn’t do anything,” said Los Angeles County sheriff’s Sgt. John Gaw, who works in the advanced surveillance and protection unit. “It does collect that information, it does put it in our database, and we’re able to go back and review that information if you’re wanted in some type of criminal investigation.”

Privacy advocates are worried that about the growth of such law enforcement databases often outside the public’s eye and with little public oversight or information. They say the readers create a database that essentially tracks movements of innocent people, often long before any crime has been committed. But officials contend that the readers are a valuable piece of technology that helps solve crimes and simply speeds up and automates what would have been a slow, painstaking manual process only a few years ago.

CALIFORNIA PROSECUTORS WANT TO TRIM DEATH PENALTY APPEALS, GO BACK TO EXTREMELY PAINFUL FORM OF EXECUTION & BLOCK INFORMATION ON DRUG COCKTAIL ON DEATH BY INJECTION. SENATE COMMITTEE SEZ, “UH….NO.”

It used to be the CCPOA* PPOA, the prison guards’ union, that was the most reform-averse and law-and-order crazy lobbying group in the state. But now the the CCPOA PPOA* folks look positively bleeding heart next to the California District Attorneys Association that wants to lock everyone up for as long as possible, consequences be damned. They also really, really, really want to get some people executed in our state, and don’t seem to mind if it’s done very painfully.

So while Maryland’s governor signed a bill Thursday repealing the death penalty, becoming the 18th state to do so, in supposedly progressive California, the prosecutors are itching to kill somebody.

It should be noted that not ALL prosecutors feel this way. In fact, a number of the state’s leading prosecutors don’t. But the prosecutors who call the shots at the CDAA are quite the blood lusty, punishment lovin’ group—and they’re the ones either putting forth or blocking legislation.

Fortunately, in the most recent instance, the Cal Senate’s Public Safety Committee helped the DAs dial things back.

Bob Egelko at the San Francisco Chronicle has the story.

Here’s a clip that outlines the bill that the Public Safety Committee spiked:

Backers of SB779, including its author, state Sen. Joel Anderson, R-Alpine (San Diego County), said the bill would speed up executions in California, which have been blocked by court orders since 2006. It was introduced following the narrow defeat in November of a ballot measure to repeal the state’s death penalty law.

The bill would have limited most condemned prisoners to one round of appeals in the state court system and another in federal court. Other provisions would have eliminated public review of regulations on execution procedures, barred disclosure of the suppliers of drugs used in executions and authorized a new method of gas chamber executions.

California’s last execution by cyanide gas was in 1993. A federal judge ruled a year later that the gas chamber at San Quentin caused excruciating pain and violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Lethal injections at the prison were halted in 2006 when another federal judge ruled that the executions, carried out by poorly trained staff in a dimly lit chamber, posed an undue risk of a prolonged and agonizing death. The court-imposed moratorium is likely to remain in place at least through 2013 as the state tries to validate new regulations and cope with a shortage of execution drugs.

*NOTE: Please forgive the sleep deprived typo of PPOA instead of CCPOA. (sigh.)

JAIL DEPUTY ALLEGEDLY REPEATEDLY ASSAULTED CONFIDENTIAL INFORMANT OF WHISTLEBLOWER DEPUTY JAMES SEXTON

In the lawsuit filed last month by Deputies James Sexton and Mike Rathbun, [and reported by WLA here], among the many allegations listed in the legal complaint is the report that one of Sexton’s confidential informants was repeatedly assaulted and harassed by a deputy working in the jails, even after Sexton told the deputy that he was the inmate’s handler, that the man was a valuable informant, and to please leave him alone— Deputy Michael Camacho continued with his harassment, both physical and verbal.

Robert Faturechi has a story in Friday’s LA Times that reports more deeply on the alleged abuse of the informant by Deputy Camacho. Here’s a clip:

Prosecutors are considering whether to file criminal charges against a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy accused of assaulting an inmate who was helping federal authorities investigate a suspected international drug trafficker, according to records and interviews.

The inmate accused Deputy Michael Camacho of targeting him, at least in part, because he was cooperating with detectives as an informant, internal records show.

The records indicate that in July, the inmate told his sheriff’s handlers that Camacho punched him in his torso and ribs.
“Put me in a room by myself and your [sheriff's handler] and we will see what happens.”

The Sheriff’s Department, which runs the nation’s largest jail system, has been beleaguered by allegations that its deputies have abused inmates, often just for showing nonviolent acts of disrespect.

Records show the informant had been deemed “reliable” and was providing specifics on a drug smuggling ring’s operations, including a six-figure cash drop-off, escapes from law enforcement and kilos of cocaine hidden in warehouses.

A sheriff’s spokesman confirmed that the department completed an investigation into the allegations, and is waiting for the district attorney’s office to decide whether to file criminal charges. In the meantime, Camacho has been reassigned to a desk job.

“We don’t know if this had any effect on his ability to continue his service to the Sheriff’s Department and federal authorities,” spokesman Steve Whitmore said of the said of the inmate informant.

In the Sexton/Rathbun lawsuit, it is alleged that in August 2012, after Sexton had formally reported Camacho for abusing inmates a few weeks before, Camacho confronted Sexton and threatened him physically.

The alleged attacks and threats by Camacho took place in the Spring and Summer of 2012, after the Citizens Commissions on Jail Violence had, for months, been holding their well-publicized hearings investigating abuse of inmates by deputies, and also after Sheriff Baca had publicly and within the sheriff’s department made it clear that such abuse would not be tolerated.

AS REQUIRED, GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN AND THE CDCR SUBMITTED A LIST OF ADDITIONAL STRATEGIES DESIGNED TO LOWER CALIFORNIA’S PRISON POPULATION BY 9000 MORE INMATES BY DEC 2013

On May 3, Governor Jerry Brown and the California Department of Corrections submitted a list of additional strategies to lower the state’s prison population, but it did so unhappily and under protest.

Here is a summary of the state’s new suggestions, most of which require a vote of the state legislature:

The court-ordered list focuses on increasing capacity to house prisoners, but also includes provisions to increase good-conduct credit. Virtually every action identified on the list requires legislative approval with the exception of the expanded fire camp capacity. All legislative changes must be urgency measures in order to meet the December 2013 court-ordered deadline.

The list includes the following measures:
· Expanding the capacity of fire camps by allowing certain inmates who are currently ineligible to participate.
· Slowing the rate of returning out-of-state inmates to California.
· Leasing beds from county jails and other facilities where there is sufficient capacity.
· Increasing good-conduct credit for non-violent inmates.
· Expanding medical and elderly parole.

The increase in credits for good conduct will not impact realignment. Prisoners who are released under the new good-conduct rules would serve their parole under state supervision. If they violate parole prior to the end of what their sentence would have been without the increased good-conduct credits, they will return to state prison.

The full response to the court-ordered population reduction may be found here.

AND….WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF WAYS TO LOWER THE STATES PRISON POPULATION….A BILL PASSES IN CA SENATE THAT WOULD SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER PENALTIES FOR NON-VIOLENT DRUG OFFENSES

Aaron Sankin from the Huffington Post has the story. Here’s a clip:

A bill that passed the California State Senate earlier this week has the potential to fundamentally change the way the state deals with its non-violent drug offenders.

The legislation, introduced by State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), gives local officials more flexibility in how they decide to charge individuals convicted of non-violent drug crimes. This flexibility could ultimately lead to California incarcerating fewer of its citizens, the measure’s backers argue.

“One of the best ways to promote lower crime rates is to provide low-level offenders with the rehabilitation they need to successfully reenter their communities,” said Leno in a statement. “However, our current laws do just the opposite. We give non-violent drug offenders long terms, offer them no treatment while they’re incarcerated, and then release them back into the community with few job prospects or opportunities to receive an education.”

Current California law mandates that certain drugs be charged as either misdemeanors or felonies, while others are categorized as “wobblers,” in which prosecutors and judges decide for themselves on a punishment. For example, marijuana possession is always a misdemeanor and cocaine is always felony; however, meth is a wobbler. The bill, which does not apply to anyone selling or manufacturing drugs, would turn all simple possession cases in wobblers.

Leno expects that giving local prosecutors and judges the ability the charge and sentence some offenses as misdemeanors instead of felonies would both direct more people into rehabilitation programs rather than having them serve hard time and also free up about $159 million annually for said rehabilitation programs.

It could also help the long term life trajectories of some offenders….

It would be an excellent step forward if California were to do something so sensible as to pass this bill.

We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the bill’s progress.

EJECTED UNDERSHERIFF PAUL TANAKA ACCUSES SHERIFF BACA OF MISMANAGEMENT, OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE…AND A WHOLE LOT MORE

NOTE: FOR WED. PM UPDATE scroll to bottom of post.

Former LASD Undersheriff Paul Tanaka has given an interview with the LA Times’ Robert Faturechi in which the powerful—and recently ousted—Tanaka accuses his former boss, Sheriff Lee Baca, of an amazing and disquieting list of faults and misdeeds:

Here are some of the highlights, in no particular order:

1. Tanaka describes the sheriff’s administrative style as disturbingly erratic and impulse driven—by turns, disengaged and focused only on his pet projects, then aggressively micro-managing, demanding that the department hire his friends, family, supporters and new acquaintances, still other times issuing whimsical and problematic orders, then forgetting days later that he’d issued them at all:

Tanaka said Baca frequently gave subordinates contradictory or foolish orders that they had to ignore because they violated department policy or common sense. A few months ago, for example, he said Baca was in a meeting with command staff, talking about the department’s budget shortfall, when he asked a subordinate to study the cost savings that would come from eliminating the agency’s community policing unit.

A week later, at another meeting, that captain began discussing his findings about cutting the unit, when Tanaka says Baca interrupted.

“He stops and he says ‘What did you say? What are you talking about?…I would never do anything like that,’ ” Tanaka recounted Baca as saying.

Tanaka said he had to call the sheriff later and remind him that the captain was “following your orders and you… embarrassed him.”

Tanaka said the sheriff was silent on the other end of the phone, before meekly saying “Oh.”

2. Near the end of the interview, Tanaka said that the sheriff ordered him to hide FBI informant Anthony Brown from the Feds until Brown could be debriefed by the LASD. In other words, Baca deliberately obstructed justice. In making this accusation, Tanaka tried to walk a tightrope by saying that, despite the sheriff’s orders, everybody only kinda, sorta broke the law, but not really, to avoid implicating himself. To wit:

A federal criminal grand jury has been investigating whether sheriff’s officials were hiding the inmate and the phone from the FBI, or whether they were protecting the inmate from retaliation by jail deputies he was “snitching” on, as a sheriff’s spokesman has said.

Tanaka said Baca ordered subordinates to keep the inmate from the FBI until the department finished with him. He said the sheriff explicitly denied a request from a federal official to return the phone.

“I want the inmate interviewed. I don’t want him leaving our custody. I want the phone, all of the information removed from it and I don’t want the phone to go anywhere,” Baca said, according to Tanaka.

Asked if the sheriff was obstructing the FBI investigation, Tanaka said that he and other subordinates “had to really weigh” Baca’s orders to avoid “cross[ing] the line of doing anything wrong.”

In this same vein, Tanaka said that Baca was in such a fit of pique over the FBI’s investigation of the county’s jails that he pulled the department’s participation in any joint crime-fighting task forces with the feds. “…an order Tanaka said he refused to carry out.”

3. Tanaka confirmed that he’s “considering a run” for sheriff against Baca in 2014.

In this context, “considering” means, one presumes, that he is planning to run, barring any force majeure, like, say, a federal indictment. (It has long been rumored that Tanaka has quietly put the pieces in place to, when the time comes, string together a patchwork coalition of voting blocks that he believes could allow him to win, even though he is not a well-known name.)

Otherwise, why so publicly and irrevocably blow-up his relationship with his former boss by inflicting the kind of switchblade swipes to Lee Baca’s person that the former undersheriff has just delivered via the Times? (Sorry for the mixed metaphor, but this interview is driving me to it.)

On the other hand, he may be cutting the sheriff in the hope that the sharks—read: feds—will circle around the bleeding guy and indict him, not the man holding the knife.

Or both of the above.

4. Asked about his reason for speaking out, Tanaka told Faturechi that he felt like he was unjustly scapegoated by the sheriff and by Baca supporters, in particular he mentioned the withering criticism he received by those department members who gave testimony before the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence. When the commission issued its report, it reserved its harshest assessments for the undersheriff.

Tanaka said his reputation was unfairly tarnished by sheriff’s officials who were upset that he was holding lazy supervisors accountable.

“They’re not used to that,” said Tanaka, who will remain on the county payroll as undersheriff until August. “In this organization, they’re used to the higher you go, the less responsibility.”

Miriam Krinsky, the executive director for the CCJV had this to say in response to Tanaka’s characterization of the commission’s findings:

The Commission conducted a comprehensive and thorough investigation. Our report reflects conclusions that stemmed from consistent and credible information. Our findings were not based on any single source or witness, but rather were the result of numerous reports, documents, memoranda and witnesses. It was based on the totality of that evidence that the Commission found that the Undersheriff had engaged in conduct — including troubling statements — that was inconsistent with the department’s Core Values and that undermined the ability of supervisors and others to address and remediate deputy misconduct and aggressive behavior that continued unabated for far too many years. And it was based on the totality of that evidence that the Commission recommended that the Undersheriff have no further responsibility for Custody operations or the disciplinary system.

POST SCRIPT: We were unable to reach Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore last night, although he’s usually very responsive. In the spokesman’s comments to the Times, however, he said, “the sheriff finds it very sad that his former undersheriff has raised these false charges motivated apparently by his personal disappointment and ambition. None of these allegations were made while he served as undersheriff. He raises them only now as he contemplates a run for sheriff.”

UPDATE – WEDNESDAY PM: Steve Whitmore did call back early this morning and we connected in the afternoon. He reiterated that the sheriff is “saddened” by former undersheriff Paul Tanaka’s actions. “But apparently Mr. Tanaka’s memory is clouded by his ambition. He’s welcome to his selective memory,” Whitmore added, “but it’s being driven by ambition.”

As to whether Sheriff Baca had any response to the fact that Paul Tanaka had pretty clearly accused him of obstruction of justice in his depiction of Baca’s having ordered the hiding and the debriefing of FBI informant Anthony Brown, Whitmore dismissed the notion altogether. “Sheriff Lee Baca has cooperated fully with this investigation from the beginning,” he said. “And he will continue to do so. The department’s doors are fully open to the FBI and the US Attorney’s office.”

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:

NY TIMES REPORTS KOCH BROTHERS MAY BE FRONT RUNNERS IN BIDDING TO BUY LA TIMES

On Sunday the USC Campus was gloriously packed with tens of thousands of Lit Lovers as the yearly LA Times Festival of Books entered its second event-jammed day.

However in the “green room” area where author/panelists and LA Times staffers gathered before and after their respective events, amid the upbeat book chatter there were grim conversations about the report by Amy Chozick in the NY Times that politically conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch may be the front runners among suitors to buy the LA Times.

The article suggested that the Koch brothers may have an edge on some of the other would-be buyers like, say, Austin Beutner, who only want to buy the Los Angeles Times and not the rest of the Tribune Corp’s stable of newspapers, whereas the Koches will reportedly bid on the whole shebang. This could be crucial, as the Tribune Corp would reportedly prefer to sell the whole bunch, not piecemeal, paper by paper.

In March the Hilel Aron of the LA Weekly broke the story that the Koch siblings were strongly rumored to be potential bidders.

Here’s a clip from the NY Times story:

Other than financing a few fringe libertarian publications, the Kochs have mostly avoided media investments. Now, Koch Industries, the sprawling private company of which Charles G. Koch serves as chairman and chief executive, is exploring a bid to buy the Tribune Company’s eight regional newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant.

By early May, the Tribune Company is expected to send financial data to serious suitors in what will be among the largest sales of newspapers by circulation in the country. Koch Industries is among those interested, said several people with direct knowledge of the sale who spoke on the condition they not be named. Tribune emerged from bankruptcy on Dec. 31 and has hired JPMorgan Chase and Evercore Partners to sell its print properties.

The papers, valued at roughly $623 million, would be a financially diminutive deal for Koch Industries, the energy and manufacturing conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., with annual revenue of about $115 billion.

Politically, however, the papers could serve as a broader platform for the Kochs’ laissez-faire ideas. The Los Angeles Times is the fourth-largest paper in the country, and The Tribune is No. 9, and others are in several battleground states, including two of the largest newspapers in Florida, The Orlando Sentinel and The Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. A deal could include Hoy, the second-largest Spanish-language daily newspaper, which speaks to the pivotal Hispanic demographic.

One person who attended the Aspen seminar who spoke on the condition of anonymity described the strategy as follows: “It was never ‘How do we destroy the other side?’ ”

“It was ‘How do we make sure our voice is being heard?’ ”

(BIG SNIP]

“So far, they haven’t seemed to be particularly enthusiastic about the role of the free press,” Ms. Mayer said in an e-mail, “but hopefully, if they become newspaper publishers, they’ll embrace it with a bit more enthusiasm.”

A Democratic political operative who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he admired how over decades the brothers have assembled a complex political infrastructure that supports their agenda. A media company seems like a logical next step.

This person said, “If they get some bad press that Darth Vader is buying Tribune, they don’t care.”

Alarming X a zillion.

CALIFORNIA WANTS ITS PRISONS BACK

The NY Times also reports on the issue of whether or not the State of California has done enough to justify taking the state’s prisons out of federal receivership. Near the end of the story, criminal Justice expert Barry Krisberg explains what he thinks it will take.

Here’s the relevant clip from Norimitsu Onishi’s story:

Barry Krisberg, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on California’s prisons who testified in the 2011 Supreme Court case, said it was unlikely the state would succeed in its appeals because of that 2011 ruling.

“He can’t win these cases,” Mr. Krisberg said, referring to the governor. “In my view, it’s nearly impossible to go to the same Supreme Court and within a year ask them the same question.”

Instead of looking only to realignment, Mr. Krisberg said, the state must consider the politically difficult option of shortening sentences for good behavior, a policy that previous governors have carried out without an increase in crime.

“If they were to restore good-time credits for the people who are doing everything we’re asking of them in prison, they could get these numbers,” he said, referring to the 137.5 percent goal.

CHIEF CHARLIE BECK GIVES “SOUTHLAND” APPEARANCE MONEY TO HOMEBOY INDUSTRY

This story is a small but sweet one. (And we could use sweet stories right now.)

TMZ reports:

Beck did a cameo for “Southland” recently … and got a check for more than a grand. The Chief could have spent the cash on scores of donuts … but decided there was a worthier cause — he’s donating the money to Homeboy Industries…..

Turns out Beck has another cause celeb … he and some of his boys in blue are lobbying for the return of “Southland” — which is currently on the bubble.

NOTE TO TMZ: We are grateful to you for nosing out this cool little story, but we could have done without the condescending donut cliché. (Just sayin’.)

DENNIS ZINE SAYS, IF ELECTED, CITY CONTROLLER HE WOULD AUDIT THE LAPD’S RISK MANAGEMENT SECTION TO FIND OUT WHY SO MANY OFFICERS ARE INVOLVED IN LAWSUITS (DOESN’T MENTION OWN SEX HARASSMENT LAWSUIT)

Here’s a clip from the story by the LA Times Catherine Saillant:

As he campaigns to become the city’s next controller, Councilman Dennis Zine said his first job in office would be to audit the Los Angeles Police Department’s risk management division to find out why so many officers are involved in lawsuits.

The city has spent as much as $50 million on legal settlements in recent years on cases it could have avoided if commanders did a better job supervising officers, says Zine, a former LAPD motorcycle officer who faces lawyer Ron Galperin in a May 21 runoff election.

What Zine doesn’t mention is a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a female officer claiming that as a police sergeant he made inappropriate sexual advances during a 1997 business trip to Canada. Zine said that the two were dating and that the officer made up or exaggerated her claims….

Whatever the situation with Zine’s own lawsuit, an audit of this nature never hurts, and needn’t be adversarial. In fact, we’d like to see one for the LASD as well.

PS: THE LAPD OFFICERS ACCUSED OF PERJURY WERE AQUITTED

This happened last week, but it bears mentioning. The Daily News’ Eric Hartley has the story. Here’s a clip:

A jury acquitted a Los Angeles police officer and a fired former officer Friday of charges they lied under oath about witnessing a drunken driver.

Lawyers for Craig Allen and Phil Walters admitted the two were wrong when they said they had seen a woman blow through two stop signs and pulled her over. In fact, other LAPD officers had stopped the woman, then called Allen and Walters to the scene to administer sobriety tests.

But the defense attorneys said the two officers made honest mistakes and had no reason to risk their careers by lying about a routine traffic stop.

“We’re all extremely relieved that this nightmare is over,” Walters’ lawyer, Joel Isaacson, said Friday afternoon. “Officer Walters had faith in the system, but it’s a scary situation to go through. ”

The two were charged with perjury and filing a false report, both felonies.

The LAPD fired Allen, now 40, before criminal charges were filed. His lawyer, Bill Seki, said Allen is “praying that he gets his job back” and will ask the department to reconsider the firing.

Walters, 58 and a 23-year veteran, still faces a departmental trial called a Board of Rights that could result in his being cleared, punished or fired. He has been relieved of his police powers and is not being paid, an LAPD spokesman said.

Here’s the back story (scroll to the bottom of the post).

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.