Post on Monday’s Jail Commission meeting coming shortly. Still writing.

EDITOR’S UPDATE: I’m writing a far longer story than I’d originally intended—mainly because I think the topic deserves it. Bottom line, the story will be in Wednesday-ish.

The LA Times Robert Faturechi has a follow-up to his story about another LASD clique, specifically a clique that is part of the gang enforcement unit, Operation Safe Streets or OSS. The reported clique is called “The Jump Out Boys.”

In the original story, Faturechi reported that concern about the group surfaced when a supervisor came across a printed pamphlet that outlined a sort of mission statement for the clique and that reportedly seemed to portray officer involved shootings “in a positive light.”

This new story has a drawing of the tattoo that two sources confirmed to the Times was indeed the ink sported by the Jump Out Boys. It features a bandana-headed skull with demon eyes, its skeletal hand holding a large revolver. Two playing cards, the ace and eight of clubs, are fanned out behind the skull, representing the infamous “dead man’s hand,” that Wild Bill Hickok was said to be holding when he was shot and killed. (Actually, Hickok was supposed to have held two aces and two eights, plus a fifth card, still face down, the identity of which is in dispute. But nevermind. The ace and eight still is universally considered to represent that death-haunted hand.)

Moreover, Faturechi reports that “investigators suspect that smoke is tattooed over the gun’s barrel after a member is involved in a shooting.”

Yeah. About that smoke thingy.

Unfortunately, the suspicion regarding the added smoke may have a troubling precedent in the department.

WitnessLA has acquired a document indicating that when, a few years ago, some Sheriff’s department higher-ups became concerned about the gangster-like behavior of some of the Regulators clique based at Century station, they reported hearing reports that, if a member had been involved in “a fatal deputy involved shooting,” then smoke was similarly added to be “emitting from the barrels” of the revolvers featured in the clique’s signatory tattoo. (In the case of the Regulators, the clique tattoo reportedly depicted a trench-coated skeleton wearing a cowboy hat and holding not one, but two nice big guns.)

Okay, look: Yes, we know that many Los Angeles Sheriff’s stations have colorful mascots and that, in an era when the nice young guy ringing up your groceries at Trader Joe’s has a sleeve full of intricate tattoos, it does not necessarily indicate any kind of wrong doing if a few deputies have the mascot discreetly inked on, say, their ankles. And we understand that it’s good to build camaraderie among deputies, and that a little bit of harmless college fraternity-like behavior might help to do so.

However….when only certain people are invited to join the said inked group, a less than healthy “in” group and and “out” group cultural atmosphere is created at the station. Then, if the tattoo for the “in” group depicts some kind of gun-brandishing death-dealer, at that point one has taken a very large step out onto a decidedly slippery slope. And it is a slope that leads directly away from constitutional policing, and directly toward an us-versus-them, work-in-the-gray, shave-the-legal-dice and do-what-you-gotta-do mentality..

The insignia above, circa late 1990’s for the LAPD’s Rampart CRASH unit, is a signal example.

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

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

For instance, Bobb writes:

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

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

RUINING THE JAILS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JAILS TASK FORCE DOING WELL SO FAR

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

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

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

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

Read the rest of this entry »

LASD MOTORCYCLE MADNESS

by Matthew Fleischer

Did a Sheriff’s Department commander have his personal vintage motorcycle repaired and revamped by LASD mechanics on county time? According to a longtime department facilities worker, the answer is YES

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In May of 2011, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Commander David Waters called a meeting of Facility Services Bureau workers—the people responsible for the repair and maintenance of LASD property—and read them the riot act. Facility Services fell under Water’s umbrella as the highest ranking sworn supervisor at the Administrative Services Division, which—in addition to Facility Services—oversees the department’s fiscal operations, warehousing, human resource management, and construction projects. Waters lecture in May had to do with the fact that, for years, employees had been asking for and getting their supervisors approval to sign out county-owned tools in order to do side work at home. The practice, Waters told them, would stop immediately. Anyone caught bringing tools home would fired.

Waters was a relatively new commander for the division, but he was known for being a tough supervisor. Years before, he’d worked in Facility Services as a lieutenant. So while Waters’ speech elicited more than a few grumbles, no one was entirely shocked.

What did startle the Facility Services people, however, is Water’s own actions in the months after his crackdown.

According to a letter of complaint filed with the LA County Office of Investigations, obtained by WitnessLA, on June 23, 2011, about a month after Waters’ no-tools-at-home meeting, a custom vintage motorcycle was trailered in to the sheet metal shop at LASD’s Peter Pitchess Honor Ranch facility. The bike, according to the complaint was “left there for the sheetmetal workers to fabricate a new exhaust system for this bike and other repairs. This is improper[sic] use of county equipment and labor on a county facility for personal gain. There is a possibility that county material is being used.”

The letter went on to note that the bike in question belonged to Commander David Waters.

The author of the complaint was Calvin Grable, a civilian plumbing supervisor who has worked for the Sheriff’s Department since 1996. I spoke with Grable, who confirmed that the letter was his and vouched for its accuracy. As proof, he forwarded photos he took of the bike when it was inside the shop awaiting repair [see above], that he also submitted to the county. Grable was in attendance for Waters’ May meeting and was, he said, “shocked at the hypocrisy” when he was told about the personal bike flagrantly sitting in a county shop was the Commander’s.

“It bothered me that people didn’t stand up,” he says, explaining that other workers were also upset by the ethical violation.. “I wasn’t the only one who took pictures.”

Work on the bike is a custom job, says Grable. County workers were instructed to create an exhaust system from scratch to resemble a classic Indian bike from the World War II-era.

According to the Kiwi Indian motorcycle shop of Riverside, a vintage Indian exhaust system can cost anywhere from 600-1,000 dollars. A custom piece can cost “considerably more.” The shop charges 100 dollars per hour for work on Indian bikes.

Grable says the bike was in the LASD sheet metal shop for five days—from June 23, to June 28. According to Grable, it was transported to the county shop by a county worker and worked on for a minimum of four hours with county tools. Grable says he took the photos and submitted them to the fraud unit immediately upon learning about presence of the bike in the sheet metal shop. After a few days passed with no word, and the bike still being worked on, Grable called to check the status of his complaint. He was told that the county didn’t handle LASD investigations, and that his complaint had been forwarded to the LASD Internal Affairs Bureau. Upon learning that IA would be involved, Grable told his immediate supervisors about his complaint.

“Within 30 minutes,” he says, “the bike was gone. The same employee who’d brought it in put it on the trailer and took it away.”

That, however, was the last Grable heard on the matter: “IA never contacted me. I was never interviewed.”

It is Grable’s understanding that the men who worked on the bike received some kind of minor citation. Waters, however, to his knowledge, was never disciplined. That is because, sources tell me, IA never launched a formal investigation. After the County Office of Investigations passed Grable’s complaint to IA, it was sent to Administrative Services to be handled in-house. In other words, the Division that Waters oversaw was reportedly given the task of investigating an ethics violation by its commanding officer. A preliminary investigation was opened, but the case never went any further.

According to one longtime LASD Internal Affairs investigator whom we presented with details of the case, this was a major breach of protocol.

“This should have been formally investigated by IA. A commander was alleged to have been involved in the potential criminal theft of county materials and the use of county equipment on county time. That’s a big deal.”

The reason IA was especially needed in this case is that unit-level investigations are typically handled by a sergeant or a lieutenant—who would have been forced to investigate a vastly higher-ranking supervisor. For obvious reasons, this simply isn’t supposed to happen. Under extremely extraordinary circumstances, a Chief could potentially sit in on the interviews to prevent bigfooting. But Waters is the highest-ranking sworn officer in the Administrative Services Division.Victor Rampulla, a civilian, is the director in charge.

“[Rampulla] is not a policeman,” says our IA source. “He doesn’t know how to conduct an investigation.”

Whoever did conduct the preliminary investigation certainly didn’t dig too deeply. Protocol dictates that the starting point for any investigation is to speak to the source of the complaint.

“The fact that the complainant was never interviewed, although clearly identified in his original letter of complaint, suggests someone wanted this to quietly go away. There are a number of questions that have not been answered because they apparently were never asked. That is the purpose of an IAB investigation, to get to the truth and discover the facts so the decision maker, Mr. Rampulla or above, can make an appropriate assessment of what did or did not happen.”

We were not able to confirm whether or not Rampulla was briefed on Grable’s complaint. The division director could not be reached for comment, as he has been out for months on an extended medical leave.

Late last week I called Mike Gennaco at the Office of Independent Review to get his take on Grable’s complaint. Gennaco said he was unfamiliar with the case, but would look into it. This past Wednesday, we spoke again.

“Our review of [Grable’s] initial inquiry led the OIR to contact the Internal Affairs Bureau,” he told me. “Based on those discussions, a formal investigation has been launched.”

In other words, due to WitnessLA’s reporting, Waters will now be made the subject of an official IA investigation.

Waters, incidentally, is said to be closely aligned with Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, and has been donating to Tanaka’s Gardena mayoral campaign since 2002. As we reported in Dangerous Jails Part 4, Tanaka took unilateral control over IA on May 15, 2011—weeks before Grable’s complaint made its way to the unit. Whether or not the undersheriff had any influence on the fact that IA did not investigate the motorcycle issue itself, is unknown.

Commander Waters was unavailable for comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so he’s liable, said the attorneys.

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

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

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

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

To wit:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secret deputy cliques within the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department have been a problem for the LASD since at least the late 1980’s, some say before.

Such “affinity groups” most recently hit the public consciousness with the revelation last year that there were gang-like cliques reportedly wreaking havoc in the department’s troubled and notorious Men’s Central Jail. The highest profile of these CJ cliques is the 3000 Boys, with their matching tattoos and even hand signals. But there are also the 2000 Boys, among others, both inside the jails and out on the street.

Now, according to a story posted Thursday late afternoon in the LA Times, the department is newly worried by a clique inside the LASD’s gang unit—reportedly because of what is printed in a memo or pamphlet that may indicate that deputies’ participation in Officer Involved Shootings conveys status within the clique.

Rumors of shootings conveying status within other LASD cliques have long swirled around the department. However, if such a delineation really does appear in writing, it would be an entirely different matter.

The LA Times Robert Faturechi has the story:

Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives have launched a probe into what appears to be a secret deputy clique within the department’s elite gang unit, an investigation triggered by the discovery of a document suggesting the group embraces shootings as a badge of honor.

The document described a code of conduct for the Jump Out Boys, a clique of hard-charging, aggressive deputies who gain more respect after being involved in a shooting, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation. The pamphlet is relatively short, sources said, and explains that deputies earn admission into the group through the endorsement of members.

The sources stressed that the internal affairs investigation is still in its early stages and that little is known about the Jump Out Boys’ behavior or its membership.

Still, sheriff’s officials are concerned that the group represents another unsanctioned clique within the department’s ranks, a problem the department has been grappling with for decades.

Last year, the department fired a group of deputies who all worked on the third, or “3000,” floor of Men’s Central Jail, after the group fought two fellow deputies at an employee Christmas party and allegedly punched a female deputy in the face. Sheriff’s officials later said the men had formed an aggressive “3000″ clique that used gang-like three-finger hand signs. A former top jail commander told The Times that jailers would “earn their ink” by breaking inmates’ bones.

On learning of the new investigation, LASD sources we spoke with expressed concern about whether the department’s investigation of the clique would be honest and aggressive.

Some sources took it as a possible good sign that the investigation is being conducted by the Internal Affairs Bureau, or IAB, the investigative unit over which Sheriff Baca has recently retaken control. The department’s other investigative unit, UCIB, which looks into potentially criminal matters in the LASD, is still ultimately overseen by the Undersheriff, Paul Tanaka, who took over directly both investigative units last march, much to the dismay of many LASD observers.

As Faturechi notes, Tanka himself is a member of the now infamous Vikings clique that was most active in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, it’s members the subject of a massive class action suit that cost LA County $9 million in cash settlements and training. According to a deposition taken in an unrelated court case earlier this year, Mr. Tanaka still sports a tattoo on his ankle signifying Vikings membership.

WitnessLA has acquired a partial list of Vikings working inside the department culled from sworn depositions for various court cases. The list indicates there are Vikings members scattered at supervisory levels throughout the LASD including, at present, inside the departments’ internal investigatory units like IAB and ICIB.

It is, however, considered to be good news that IAB is now headed by Captain John Clark, recently put into place by Sheriff Baca. Clark, if you remember, was the supervisor that WitnessLA reported had tried to institute reforms in Men’s Central Jail when he became aware of the growing problem of deputy cliques inside the jail.

Modeled after the law-suit producing deputy cliques of the previous decades, like the Vikings, these cliques featured special tattoos, threw gang-like hand signs and, in some cases, refused to socialize with “rival” cliques within the department. In the case of the 3000 Boys and the matching group from the 2nd floor, the 2000 Boys, the cliques had also recently started waiting for their entire crew to get off work—sometimes lingering for hours at a time—before leaving the station together en masse. This was not only a violation of departmental policy, but it was eerie gang-like behavior intended to intimidate—to show both inmates and supervisors alike who really ran the jail.

But instead of getting support from higher-ups, Clark had his reforms swiftly revoked by Undersheriff Tanaka, who railed at Clark and his supervisors for their attempts at discipline, had his own private meetings with deputies, then transferred Clark away from custody work, altogether. (You’ll find more details in Part 3 and Part 4 of Matt Fleischer’s Dangerous Jails series.)

Officially Sheriff Baca disapproves of groups like the Jump Out Boys, the 3000 Boys, the 2000 Boys, the Regulators and the Vikings, et al. But sources inside the LASD tell us that unofficially a double message is conveyed to the troops with the undersheriff’s well-documented work in the gray speeches, and his tendency to protect, rescue and reward those who do color outside the lines. And of course his retention of the Viking ink on his ankle.

Sheriff’s department spokesman, Steve Whitmore, confirmed that IAB was doing the investigating, but reminded me that the notion of status conveyed for shootings could be “a fantasy.”

“We just don’t know.”

In any case, WLA will track the investigation as it develops as, no doubt, will the Times.
So stay tuned.

LAPD SAYS IT WILL HAVE SEPARATE AREA FOR TRANSGENDERED INMATES IN POLICE LOCK-UP

Last Thursday night, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck announced a newly crafted, and hearteningly enlightened policy toward transgender people—including a separate LAPD lock-up, the first in the nation. The new policy takes a hugely significant step in healing the problem-laced relationship between the transgender community and the criminal justice system in general.

(According to a study by UC Irvine commissioned by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, nearly 60 percent of transgender inmates in California lock-ups reported being sexually assaulted by other inmates, a rate 13 times higher than for a random sample of the general inmate
population.)

The LA Times’ Sam Quinones has the story. Here’s how it opens.

Responding to incidents of violence against transgender arrestees, the Los Angeles Police Department plans to open a segregated lockup for biologically male and female suspects who identify themselves as members of the opposite sex, officials said.

By early May, a 24-bed transgender module will open at the LAPD women’s jail downtown, the first such police lockup in the nation, according to Capt. Dave Lindsay, the jail division commander.

“This is a major change,” Lindsay said. It will allow for “an environment that’s safe and secure, as there’s been a history of violence against transgender people.”

City jails are for holding people only until they are arraigned in court on the charges on which they were arrested, typically a maximum of three days; then they are transferred to the Los Angeles County Jail, run by the Sheriff’s Department. The county jail will not be affected by the changes.

Go, Chief Charlie. This is a very good thing.

HOWEVER, AFTER YOU READ THE TRANSGENDER STORY, READ THIS BY THE LAT’S JOEL RUBIN ABOUT HOW THE POLICE COMMISSION IS CRUCIALLY AT ODDS WITH PART OF BECK’S DISCIPLINE POLICY

SCOTUS WILL HEAR ARGUMENTS THAT THE FAIR SENTENCING ACT—REGARDING THE CRACK AND POWDER DISCREPANCY—SHOULD BE RETROACTIVE, AT LEAST IN PART

ON Tuesday the US Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding whether or not the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 should be, in any way, retroactive If you’ll remember, the FSA is the law that (mostly) rectified the horrific 1-100 sentencing discrepancy between the prison terms handed down for powder cocaine sales convictions and sentences for convictions for crack sales. (The FSA changed the ratio to 1-20-ish.) The problem is that the new law implied —but did not implicitly say— that it would retroactively apply to crimes committed before the act was passed—but sentenced after the act was passed.

The twinned cases of Dorsey v. the United States, and Hill v. the United States are about that retroactivity issue.

Lyle Denniston over at SCOTUSBLOG has a very complete rundown of the finer points of the cases and the law. While he may be a little on the wordy side for non-wonks, his post is quite fascinating and informative if you take the time.

Here are some clips:

Blacks more often got punished for buying or selling the “crack” or “rock” variety of cocaine, which can be easily processed into a smoked version; conviction carried a much heavier prison sentence. Whites more often got punished for dealing in the “powder” or “blow” version, which can be snorted; conviction carried a far more lenient sentence.

[Snip]

For cocaine, that [1986 Anti-Drug Abuse] Act required judges to punish an individual convicted of a crack crime 100 times more severely than one convicted of trafficking in the powder form. In other words, every gram of crack was treated as the same, for punishment purposes, as 100 grams of powder.

[The Fair Sentencing Act] adopted a ratio that works out to about 18 to 1, crack to powder. A crime involving 28 grams of crack would draw a five-year minimum sentence, as would a crime with 500 grams of powder. A crack crime with 280 grams would be sentenced to ten years, as would a powder crime with 5000 grams. The Justice Department has explained the choice of 28 grams as the bottom amount of crack for sentencing on the premise that wholesale distribution of crack usually involves one-ounce quantities — that is, close to 28 grams.

Although only one lawyer will appear Tuesday for the two Illinoisians, the lawyers for each have filed their own merits brief. The brief for Corey Hill (whose lawyer will be arguing) put its main emphasis upon congressional intent in 2010: “Once Congress completed its historic overhaul of crack sentencing policy,” the brief said, Congress “wanted those amendments to apply immediately….The clear implication….was that the new mandatory minimums should take effect rapidly so that the Guidelines would have a model against which to ‘conform’ and be consistent.”

[Snip]

The Dorsey-Hill cases almost certainly will revive within the Court the long-running dispute over how to read federal statutes — to stay focused only on their language, or to look at legislative history, too. If the Court were to use the former approach, it would seem that the Court-appointed amicus has the better of the argument. The 1871 law is quite specific in requiring Congress, if it wants a new criminal law to have retroactive effect, to say so explicitly; Congress did not do that in 2010. But if the Court were to take the latter approach, there is much that went on during the process of passing the 2010 law that suggests that Congress did want retroactivity to the extent being advanced by the government and counsel for the two Illinois men — not least, the removal of the anti-retroactivity provision from the bill.

BALTIMORE POLICE ABOUT TO JOIN OTHER DEPARTMENTS WHO VIDEOTAPE INTERROGATIONS

The Baltimore PD, which is the 8th largest department in the nation, plans to begin videotaping interrogations in serious cases like shootings and murders. Criminal justice advocates across the country have been pushing for the move due to the now recognized prevalence of false confessions in innocence cases. Baltimore PD’s dithering—and their determination to make the change—is emblematic of similar policy shifts taking place in agencies all over the U.S.

Justin Fenton of the Baltimore Sun has the story. Here’s a clip:

The department, the eighth-largest in the country, recently began using video as part of a series of reforms of its sex-offense unit. Now officials are exploring equipment options and the policy impact of videotaping homicide and shooting interrogations. Detectives are being trained on subtleties such as where to stand and how their demeanor will play to a jury.

I’m committed to doing this, and I have a bunch of really smart guys working on getting this done,” said police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, who has studied videotaping since he was chief of detectives. “But it’s not as simple as going to Radio Shack and bolting a camera into the wall.”

[SNIP]

Hundreds of jurisdictions across the country now videotape interrogations, and it is required by law in several states and the District of Columbia. The shift has been spurred by increasing affordability, as well as by questions of coercion and false confessions as DNA testing has led to the release of scores of inmates.

In Harford County, the sheriff’s department says it has long recorded interviews in major cases and recently got funding to add interrogation rooms to neighborhood precincts.

“It’s pretty much a standard for progressive law-enforcement agencies,” Sheriff L. Jesse Bane said. “People are finding out that the things Hollywood portrays really don’t take place.”

STRANGE, IMPRACTICAL MARRIAGE FOR LAPD? OR CONVENIENT HOOK-UP?

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to propose a merger between the LAPD and the General Services’ Office of Public Safety cops in his budget, to be presented Friday. The rather curious melding of the officers who guard libraries and courthouses with the LAPD may be a cost-efficient way for Villaraigosa to uphold his promise to add 1,000 officers to the LAPD ranks by the end of his mayoral term—or not.

Here’s a clip from the Daily News’ Dakota Smith’s report:

As part of his budget being released Friday, Villaraigosa is proposing to shift the Department of General Services’ Office of Public Safety into the Los Angeles Police Department, according to City Council members familiar with the proposal.

Under the proposal, some or all of the city’s 250 security officers and sworn officers who guard the city’s parks, zoo, and City Hall would move under the command of the LAPD.

City budget chief Miguel Santana is expected to release a report on the costs, advantages, and risks of moving the department to the LAPD next week.

Additionally, the LAPD is doing its own feasibility study on absorbing the department.

“There’s a lot of homework to do before this can occur,” said City Councilman Dennis Zine, adding he has questions about the plan.

For instance, Zine said the OPS and LAPD officers have different salaries and pension plans.

In any case, at this point, it’s far from a done deal.

The L.A. Times also reported on the issue.

CAN AN UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT WOULD-BE LAWYER GET ADMITTED TO THE FLORIDA BAR?

Rafael A. Olmeda of the Sun-Sentinel has the intriguing story. Here’s a clip:

Can an immigrant without a green card get a Florida Bar card?

Aspiring lawyer Jose Godinez-Samperio, 25, a Tampa-area resident, is hoping the answer is yes.

A native of Mexico who entered the United States legally with his parents 16 years ago on a tourist visa, Godinez-Samperio is a graduate of the Florida State University College of Law, the valedictorian of the Armwood High School class of 2004, an Eagle Scout — and an undocumented immigrant.

The Florida Board of Bar Examiners, which grants membership to the Bar, has asked the state Supreme Court to determine whether it can accept someone who is not in the country legally. The Supreme Court flagged the case as “high profile” last week.

Similar cases are pending in NY and California.

Original illustration by Scott McPherson

JAMES AUSTIN PLAN…MEET THE VERA REPORT

by Matthew Fleischer

The mood outside of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department was cheerful on Tuesday at a press conference announcing the debut of a report by nationally-renowned corrections expert Dr. James Austin. After Austin made his presentation, LA County Sheriff Lee Baca spoke about shuttering violence-plagued Men’s Central Jail by 2013–without demanding a new $1.4 billion super-jail to replace it. It was the first time Baca had ever agreed to close CJ in its entirety without the precondition of a new jail, and his announcement visibly pleased the ACLU members. Even some of the normally jaded TV journalists in attendance, seemed excited, as if something new was afoot.

For the variety of reasons we have reported on here at WitnessLA, CJ is arguably the most dangerous jail in America. Virtually everyone–the LASD, the ACLU, the LA County Board of Supervisors, the Office of Independent review, LASD civilian monitor Merrick Bobb, the LA Times and WitnessLA—agrees it needs to be shuttered. Austin’s plan has created a roadmap for that to happen. Among other recommendations, the plan calls for the release of selected non-violent inmates awaiting trial, the transfer of inmates to lower-cost fire camps, expanded release opportunities through the sheriff’s Education Based Incarceration program, and the expansion of capacity at the North County Correctional Facility. If enacted, these proposals would help free up enough space in the system to close CJ permanently.

Asked why he has suddenly come around to the idea of closing the whole of CJ, without demanding a wildly expensive new jail, Baca replied, “I didn’t have an Austin plan before.”

True. But he did have a Vera plan. In September of 2011, the Vera Institute released a report, sponsored by the Los Angeles Board of County Supervisors and the Countywide Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, that included 30 recommendations for how to alleviate population pressure in the LA County Jail system. Many of those recommendations dealt with enacting a more efficient system of pretrial release and the blended release of non-violent offenders—just like the Austin plan.

How many of Vera’s recommendations were acted upon since the report’s release? Exactly zero. And when Dr. Austin brought up the Vera recommendations Tuesday’s press conference, he said he didn’t expect any of them to be implemented.

If Vera’s recommendations were ignored, what assurances are there that the department will take the Austin report any more seriously?

When I asked Austin that question, he said he believed that we wouldn’t see a repeat.

“This plan has four very pragmatic recommendations instead of 30. Vera didn’t apply risk assessments to their release proposals. We did. I have full confidence our proposals can work, even with the various political considerations.”

One of the primary “political considerations” at issue is the rest of LA County’s government and several of its agencies. The Sheriff’s Department is limited in what it can do without the cooperation of the LA County Board of Supervisors, the county probation department and the judiciary. In other words, to implement most of Austin’s blueprint requires buy-in by various other county entities. The only thing Baca does have the legal power to do is to free inmates as he chooses–which is not exactly politically palatable.

“That’s not something anyone wants to see happen,” says Austin.

Sheriff’s spokesman Mike Parker wouldn’t comment on what aspects of the plan—if any— could be implement by the LASD alone.

“The public wants us to work together,” he said “And right now we are working together. So now is not the time to focus on hypothetical scenarios.”

Sources close to the board of supervisors say the Austin plan is something the supes will consider, but not commit to without a lot of additional study. Supe Mike Antonovich won’t even go that far. “While Men’s Central Jail is old, shutting it down without a comparable replacement threatens public safety and makes a mockery of our criminal justice system,” Antonovich said in a statement.

If the supervisors seem hesitant, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, the Probation Department, and various members of the Los Angeles judiciary haven’t haven’t taken any kind of initiative on reform. Like the Sheriff’s Department, all had the option of embracing Vera’s recommendations and chose not to—if they read the report at all. ←–

I called Peggy McGarry, Director of the Vera Institute’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections to ask her what, if anything, the sheriff could accomplish on his own without buy-in from everyone else. “There’s been a lot of focus on the sheriff and the conditions inside the jail But the reality is the Sheriff does not control the population inside the jail. It’s the rest of the [county] system. The jail is overcrowded because of the way the rest of the system behaves. Bails are determined by the judges. [Even if Baca institutes reforms, the rest of the county system] can bypass the Sheriff, which is what it’s consistently done.”

McGarry said she hadn’t yet read the Austin report, nor did she want to comment on why Vera’s findings were not put into place.

“No institute makes recommendations with the expectation they would sit on the shelf,” says McGarry. “We were hired by the county to give them advice. Not to implement our recommendations. Inaction is always a risk.”

Even so, the ACLU’s Peter Eliasberg was confident that this plan was not the second coming of the Vera study.

“When you tell everyone they need to cooperate, no one does,” he said. “When someone takes a leadership role, it’s easier to make things happen. Dr. Austin has created a path for the Sheriff to take a leadership role. And [Baca] has made it very clear that he is ready to make this plan happen.”

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore didn’t sound so sure. “The sheriff is not committed to implementing the Austin plan,” he told WitnessLA. “The ACLU should not oversell this.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So has progress been made?

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

…stay tuned.

Photo of CJ by Jay Clendenin/Los Angeles Times

So check back.