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.

According to a new LA Times story, Sheriff Lee Baca “played a significant role” in the department’s efforts to hide FBI informant, Anthony Brown, inside the jail system by moving him under various aliases from facility to facility.

Robert Faturechi also writes that, on Friday, Baca is being interviewed by the feds about the informant situation and other department issues.

Here’s a clip from the story:

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials learned in the summer of 2011 that the FBI had enlisted an inmate in the Men’s Central Jail to collect information on allegedly abusive and corrupt deputies.

In an unusual move, sheriff’s officials responded by moving the inmate, a convicted bank robber, to a different jail under fake names, including Robin Banks.

They assigned at least 13 deputies to watch him around the clock, according to documents reviewed by The Times. And when the operation was over, the deputies received an internal email thanking them for helping “without asking to [sic] many questions and prying into the investigation at hand.”

Whether Pandora’s Box was intended to protect the inmate or neutralize him as an FBI informant is a key issue in a federal investigation into brutality in the jails.

Four sheriff’s officials told The Times that Sheriff Lee Baca played a significant role in the operation: After learning that an inmate in his jails may have been working as an informant for the FBI, Baca called a meeting and gave his staff orders on how to handle the situation. One of the four officials said Baca continued afterward to guide the operation and get updates.

On Friday, Baca will be interviewed by federal prosecutors examining jail abuse and other problems in the Sheriff’s Department. Part of the inquiry centers on whether by holding inmate Anthony Brown under aliases and moving him, sheriff’s officials were obstructing an FBI investigation.

In an interview this week with the Times’ Editorial Board, Baca said he’s been assured he’s not a target of the investigation….

A SHOOTING IN LANCASTER

Angel Mendez, 30, and Jennifer Garcia, 27, were assuredly not model citizens. Yet they were not suspected of any crime when a specialized Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department team reportedly blew through the door of the backyard shack where they were living.

The members of the “COPS HIT” team (the unfortunately conceived acronym for “Community-Oriented Policing Services High-Impact Team”) reportedly entered the shack without knocking, calling out, or identifying themselves. They had evidently come to the shack looking for a parolee who had gone AWOL from his court-ordered drug rehab. They’d gotten a tip that he might have gone to the Mendez/Garcia shack. Or not. It might have been somewhere else.

Within seconds two of the team unloaded a total of fifteen bullets into Angel Mendez and Jennifer Garcia.

In this week’s LA Weekly, reporter Patrick Range McDonald delves into the story of the shooting, the subsequent response of the sheriff’s department, and the civil case that has recently finished and now awaits a judicial verdict.

Here are two clips—one from near the first of the stort, the second from near the end.

Conley opened the shack door with his department-issued 9mm semiautomatic Beretta drawn. Mendez, who had on the bed a Daisy Powerline rifle-style BB gun that he used for shooting rats, sat up and moved the BB gun to the floor. Conley opened fire. A bullet ripped into Mendez’s right forearm, passed through it and struck his right leg — proof, his attorneys today say, that he was reaching down to put the BB gun on the floor when shot.

“I didn’t even know it was them,” Mendez later told Sheriff’s Homicide Sgt. Robert Gray. “They didn’t say ‘police’! They didn’t say ‘freeze’! They didn’t say ‘drop the weapon’! They said nothing, sir.”

Conley and Pederson fired at will, peppering the couple with 14 more bullets, one of which struck the seven-months-pregnant Garcia in the right upper back and shattered her collarbone. Mendez was critically injured, hit multiple times in his right leg, arm, back and side; blood poured from his wounds. Weeks later, his badly fractured right leg, whose key arteries had been sliced in half, had to be amputated.

In a disturbing videotape taken minutes after the shooting, as a paramedic worked to stop the bleeding, police can be clearly heard pressuring Mendez to say he’d pointed the BB gun at Conley. Mendez begs the people around him, “Oh, please, don’t let me die, sir!” then turns his head toward neighbor Charles Green, who is witnessing the drama, and tells Green: “I never pointed the gun at him, Charlie!”

And pages later…a second clip:

Tom Parker, the former head of L.A.’s FBI office, read the Sheriff’s and L.A. County District Attorney reports on the Mendez shooting, as well as David Drexler’s opening statement at trial. He has come to suspect that COPS HIT and TOP were engaged in the “very common” practice of “testi-lying” after a bad shoot.

Parker is a retired 24-year veteran of the FBI whose distinguished career included undercover investigations, police corruption and brutality cases and investigations of agent-involved shootings. Last year, the Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara gave him a Heroes of Justice Award for his work on criminal-justice reform.

Parker says police sometimes lie about “drug houses” to justify unjustifiable searches. But he has even more fundamental doubts than that in the Angel Mendez case. He questions whether a deputy ever saw big, white Ronnie O’Dell at Albertsons or whether the purported informant even existed.

“From that point forward,” Parker says, referring to the deputies’ huddle outside Albertsons, “there’s really faulty police procedures happening here.” Nobody saw O’Dell leave Albertsons, so the deputies were not in a “hot pursuit” to Paula Hughes’ home. Nor was there any clear and immediate threat to the public.

Parker says, “Without a warrant or substantial probable cause … you don’t have a right to go into the backyard and search through buildings, never mind the shack.” He says the killing of Paula Hughes’ German shepherd was wrong. “If you’ve got no right to be on the property, you’ve got no right to shoot the dog.”

Professor O’Donnell agrees that if there’s not an emergency, “You need to have a warrant to go into someone’s house.” But he notes that due to institutional pressures, officers and their commanders often feel they can’t admit they were wrong.

O’Donnell adds, “If you can’t be truthful, then what are your reports going to say?”

Parker explains, “If you operate from the premise that [police] had no right to be there, that damages the self-protection aspect of the shooting. … Angel and Jennifer are innocent victims in this situation.”

O’Donnell says it’s also “interesting” that Mendez was not prosecuted for pointing an imitation gun. “He basically didn’t do a crime,” the professor says. “He was sitting in his home.”

The sheriff’s department’s own Internal Affairs investigation cleared the officers of any wrongdoing, as did the OIR—the Office of Independent Review—and the LA DA’s office.

There’s much more to the story so read the rest here.

SUE REAMS GETS HER SON BACK AFTER 3-STRIKES AND 17 YEARS

Anyone who has reported on 3-Strikes reform has probably met or talked to Sue Reams, one of the front line 3-Strikes reform activists. Reams started her campaign to change the law after her son went away on a life sentence.

The day before Easter of this year, she and her husband were able to bring her son home from prison.

NPR’s Ina Jaffe has the story. Here’s the audio. And her’s a clip from the text:

…Before that moment, Shane had served about 17 years of his potential life sentence. He got his third strike for being involved in the sale of a $20 rock of cocaine. He says he was a bystander. The prosecution said he was a lookout. But it was Shane’s first two strikes that caused his mother such heartache, as she said in a 2009 interview with NPR. She’d been trying to get her son off drugs, she explained. Nothing seemed to work, so she tried tough love.

“Tough love tells you that you take a stand,” she said. “So I took a stand.”

That meant when her son stole some stuff from her house — and from the neighbors — to get money for drugs, Reams insisted he turn himself in. She even drove him to the police station. She told him: “Maybe you’ll get a drug program. You need a drug program.”

Instead he got convicted of two counts of residential burglary. A few years later when he got picked up on the drug charge, those burglaries counted as his first two strikes….

THE TEEN COURT OPTION

Los Angeles has a remarkable teen court program that we’ve visited and will report on in the future, but here’s a report on a teen court in Napa, California that is doing good things.

Michael Waterson writing for the Napa Valley Register has the story. Here’s a clip:

Recognizing the power of peer pressure, Napa County’s juvenile justice system attempts to harness it for positive behavioral change through a peer court program where teens judge teens.

Peer Court came to American Canyon on Thursday. A young defendant was tried in City Hall chambers by youth lawyers who presented the case to a teenage jury and Napa County Family Court Commissioner Monique Langhorne-Johnson. The young attorneys were mentored by real lawyers from the Napa Bar Association or experienced Peer Court youths.

The young defendant, who because of his age can’t be identified, had been arrested for allegedly smoking marijuana and concentrated cannabis. A high school senior and a good student with a 3.27 grade point average, the defendant said he used marijuana more than once for joint pain in his knees and shoulder. He said a doctor told him surgery was not an option to correct his pain.

On the day he was caught smoking with a friend in a parked car, he said he had come from work where he had stood on his feet all day. Because of his arrest, he has been given a curfew by his parents, he said.

In addition to observing another Peer Court proceeding, writing an essay about it and serving on a peer jury, student prosecutors Eric McFarland and Acee Echevarria called for the defendant to put in eight hours of community service and complete a drug education class.

A 16-year-old student at American Canyon High School, McFarland said he has always loved the idea of being a lawyer. His middle name, Kazi, means “lawyer” in the Bengali dialect he said.

Echevarria, also 16 and an American Canyon student, said he is fascinated by the law, so much so he sometimes travels to Napa to sit in on random court proceedings.

“I first heard of it in class,” Echevarria said about Peer Court. “I fell in love with the program….”

Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department via LA Weekly

A WAR ON COPS?

When police officers are murdered, in addition to the unbearable hole it leaves in the lives of family, fellow officers and friends, it is a blow to all the rest of us, a deeply painful wound to the community at large. Police officers and firefighters are the one’s taking risks to keep the rest of us safe. When they are killed, we should take it personally. We should grieve for those fallen officers as our own.

That’s why so many people tuned in to watch such funerals as those of Riverside officer, Michael Crain, and San Bernardino Sheriff’s Deputy, Jeremiah MacKay, both killed in February of this year, and for LAPD SWAT officer Randal Simmons killed in February 2008, for Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Deputy Juan Abel Escalante, killed in August 2008, and for Santa Cruz Police Department detectives, Detective Sgt. Loran “Butch” Baker and Detective Elizabeth Butler, both fatally shot in late February when we were still reeling from the trauma of Christopher Dorner and all the havoc he wreaked.

All that said, let us allow these most recent 2013 deaths to be the tragedies they are, and not make them into something they are not—namely a so-called war on cops.

In 2011, when after a mostly steady decrease in officer deaths at the hands of another, there was a perplexing spike, causing journalists and public figures to warn that a war had been declared against law enforcement, despite facts to the contrary. In addition to not being—you know—true, such rhetoric was hardly helpful to the state of mind of officers facing genuine dangers on patrol.

Huffington Post criminal justice reporter Radley Balko wrote about the issue in 2011. And he has written a new essay on the matter in Tuesday’s Huff Post.

Here are some clips:

The recent killings of two prosecutors in Texas, a Colorado Department of Corrections official and a sheriff in West Virginia have law enforcement groups and the media once again buzzing about an alleged “war on cops” or, in some instances, a broader trend toward violent anti-government sentiment. Over at The Atlantic, Philip Bump does a good job debunking that idea. (He also quotes me.)

Unfortunately, thorough and skeptical analyses of police fatality statistics like Bump’s are rare. The “war on cops” talk heats up every time that one or more high-profile police killings hit the news. But there’s just no evidence that it’s true.

I’ve pointed out a number of times that the job of police officer has been getting progressively safer for a generation. Last year was the safest year for cops since the early 1960s. And it isn’t just because the police are carrying bigger guns or have better armor. Assaults on police officers have been dropping over the same period. Which means that not only are fewer cops getting killed on the job, people in general are less inclined to try to hurt them. Yes, working as a police officer is still more dangerous than, say, working as a journalist. (Or at least a journalist here in the U.S.) But a cop today is about as likely to be murdered on the job as someone who merely resides in about half of the country’s 75 largest cities.

You can read the linked pieces above for more evidence that police officers today are as safe as they’ve been in decades. But I want to discuss why it’s important to push back against this “war on cops” narrative.

It should go without saying, though I will: This has nothing to do with trying to diminish the tough job that police officers do or to cast aspersions on those who have been killed. But there are other reasons why journalists need to do a better job of reporting this story accurately. (Beyond the hopefully obvious value of reporting things accurately for the sake of reporting them accurately.)

[SNIP]

But there’s a more pernicious effect of exaggerating the threat to police officers. In researching my forthcoming book, I interviewed lots of police officers, police administrators, criminologists and others connected to the field of law enforcement. There was a consensus among these people that constantly telling cops how dangerous their jobs are is affecting their mindset. It reinforces the soldier mentality already relentlessly drummed into cops’ heads by politicians’ habit of declaring “war” on things. Browse the online bulletin boards at sites like PoliceOne (where users must be credentialed law enforcement to comment), and you’ll see a lot of hostility toward everyone who isn’t in law enforcement, as well as various versions of the sentiment “I’ll do whatever I need to get home safe at night.” That’s a mantra that speaks more to self-preservation than public service.

When cops are told that every day on the job could be their last, that every morning they say goodbye to their families could be the last time they see their kids, that everyone they encounter is someone who could possibly kill them, it isn’t difficult to see how they might start to see the people they serve as an enemy….

Read the rest here.

WHEN ANTI-BULLYING POLICIES HURT MORE THAN THEY HELP

On Tuesday’s Air Talk, Larry Mantle talks to Susan Porter, Ph.D, author of “Bully Nation: Why America’s Approach to Childhood Aggression is Bad for Everyone.“

Here’s a clip from the blog post about the segment on KPCC. When the audio goes up, I’ll link to that too.

Educator Susan Eva Porter said that the nation considered the shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as victims of bullying, and the nation quickly and fearfully adopted zero-tolerance policies to prevent future victims of bullying.

In “Bully Nation…” Porter argues that labeling children as bullies is equivalent to calling them “stupid” because it gives them a “fixed mind-set” about how they perceive themselves.

Do anti-bullying programs cause more harm than help? Is bullying in schools a problem? What’s the best way to help victims of bullying? Are children more aggressive today than in the past?

SHOULD JOURNALISTS EVER BE FORCED TO REVEAL THEIR SOURCES?

Mantle also has an intriguing and smart segment on Tuesday’s show about when—if ever—journalists should reveal their sources.

This relates to a story that broke Tuesday morning about an instantly controversial recording that Mother Jones obtained, an audio that was made of a conversation between Republican leader Mitch McConnell and his staff talking about actres Ashley Judd and what kind of op research might be used against her, should she run for office.

(For the record, everyone we know or respect in the field would go to jail before revealing a source.)

REFORMING LAUSD’S POLICY OF “TEACHER JAIL” GAINS SUPPORT

It has been widely reported over the last couple of years, how public school teachers accused of serious of wrongdoing can be held in what is known colloquially as “teacher jail” for a startling amount of time without any appropriate action—which, among other things, costs the distract a lot of money. A new proposal put forth by school board member Tamar Galatzan wants to streamline this ridiculously broken process.

Hillal Aron at the LA School Report has the story.

Here’s a clip:

Normally, when a teacher is accused of physically and seriously harming a child (i.e., hitting them or touching them inappropriately), law enforcement officials investigate.

During the investigation, the teacher is removed from a classroom and placed in a so-called “teacher jail” or “rubber room” pending investigation of alleged misdeeds .

The time teachers spend there can be lengthy — most of it due the time it takes for law enforcement to do its investigation, according to Galatzan.

According to a November 2012 audit, LAUSD has been required to pay $3 million in salaries to 20 teachers who have been ‘housed’ (removed from site) the longest while being investigated for misconduct – including one who’s been housed for 4.5 years.

In most cases, teachers do not end up returning to the classroom. Last year, only 16 returned, and only 14 have been reassigned as of December this year.

However, sometimes law enforcement, for a variety of reasons, determines that there is no criminal act or decides it can’t make the charges stick.

That’s where Galatzan’s resolution comes in….

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

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

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

But both Morrison and McDonald did much better than that.

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

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

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

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

[SNIP]

Is there a philosophy of incarceration that you embrace?

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

How has realignment changed the system?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read on!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s how it opens:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the rest.

REPORT FINDS EMPLOYEE MISCONDUCT STILL TOO HIGH AT PROBATION DEPARTMENT

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

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

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

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

[BIG SNIP]

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

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

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

Not cheering at all.

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s a clip from the essay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ASSEMBLY DEMS REJECT FIRST ROUNDS OF ATTEMPTED REALIGNMENT ROLL-BACKS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other counties (like LA)…not so much.

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

MCJ’S JAIL DOGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Angela Walton, a lieutenant who is quite literally a poster girl for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department, has filed what has the potential to be a messy sexual harassment lawsuit against Commander Joseph Fennell who, for the last couple of years, has been one of Sheriff Lee Baca’s cluster of rising stars charged with helping to reform the department’s troubled jails.

Walton, 44, is a bright, attractive supervisor who is featured on various department recruitment posters and billboards and who was one of the highest scoring females when she took the necessary exams to promote to the rank of lieutenent.

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.”

The lawsuit comes just a few months after the news that a female deputy had filed charges of “sexual coercion” against three department higher ups, one a chief already retired, another a captain forced into a quick retirement, the third also a captain, is sidelined as he waits for the results of LASD’s internal investigation into the matter.

Now there is Walton’s complaint against Fennell, which alleges that, for the last four years, Fennell has “harassed, stalked, threatened and retaliated against” Walton, who was under his command.

The filing—which WitnessLA has obtained—states that Fennell, who was Walton’s supervisor during the four year period in question,” required sexual conduct as a condition of advancement” and engaged in a “lurid pattern of unwanted sexual conduct” toward Walton.

And, indeed, some lurid descriptions of agressive sexual overtures follow.

Walton’s attorney, Okorie Okorocha, stated categorically that Walton “declined every overture,” from Fennell. He also said that Walton will present cell-phone texts that support her charges, as well as the testimony by friends who witnessed some of the alleged incidents.

Fennell is reportedly gathering his own line up of friends and other support for his defense.

According to Okorocha, Walton became the most undone about the alleged unwanted and coercive attention when, two years ago, she was transferred by Fennell to work at Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic during a time when her father was dying of cancer and she had requested,, for this period, to stay closer to her home on the Westside of LA. Instead, Okorocha said, his client was punitively transferred for some “freeway therapy” because she again declined to cooperate sexually. “It was a critical time for her,” he said. “And she was really upset.” (Walton’s father has since died.)

The complaint further states that “Fennell repeatedly demanded sex” from Walton, and threatened her with loss of promotions if she ever disclosed his actions toward her, because Fennell’s wife “would wring his neck in his sleep” if she ever heard about the attentions he was paying to the attractive woman who worked for him.

Fennell, obviously, is married. Walton is not. (She is divorced.)

Following the filing of the lawsuit, the sheriff’s department has launched an internal affairs investigation, according to department spokesman Steve Whitmore. “It will get to the bottom of the allegations.”

Fennell, who declined to speak to WLA, said through Whitmore that he is “looking forward to the IA investigation that will show that the lawsuit is not grounded in fact.”

You can read the legal filing here: walton v. lasd

EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated with small factual corrections at 2 pm, April 2.

AND IN OTHER NEWS, SHOULD WE TAX BULLETS? A CALIFORNIA PHYSICIAN SAYS “YES.”

This Op Ed for the San Francisco Chronicle by Dr. Anthony Iton, senior vice president at the California Endowment, deserves a read—and some consideration.

Dr. Iton’s idea doesn’t try to take away anybody’s guns. His proposal simply treats gun violence like the public health problem it truly is.

Here’s a clip from the center of the essay, but read the whole thing (Then let’s talk about it):

…In too many communities, bullets leave a wide wake of shattered lives. Children grow up without fathers. Young men are put in wheelchairs. Kids are afraid to walk down to school or play in a park. A toxic stress pervades these neighborhoods. A recent Johns Hopkins report stated that deaths and injuries from guns resulted in at least $32 billion in medical costs and lost productivity.

Gun violence is a public health problem. It wasn’t that long ago that we faced a similar public health problem with tobacco. A comprehensive approach that included tobacco taxes, clean air laws, telephone “quit” lines for smokers, media and restricting sales to minors, has driven smoking rates down and decreased emphysema and lung cancer deaths. By helping fund many important public health investments, tobacco now pays for some of the societal harms it has caused.

We must do the same with ammunition. It’s time that the sales of ammunition foot part of the bill for the havoc bullets wreak across our state. A recent Field poll confirms that a majority of Californians support imposing higher taxes on the sale of ammunition with the proceeds going to violence prevention programs.

The tax would work like the one on cigarettes. When someone buys rounds of ammunition, a tax would be added to their bill that would go to pay for youth development programs, including sports, arts and mentorship programs for at-risk youth. These are proven programs to prevent violence.
The tax would do two important things:

First, fewer bullets would be sold in distressed neighborhoods. Guns are relatively cheap to buy and there are a lot of them out there. But bullets are like gas for guns. The tax would help empty the tank.

Second, the tax would provide much-needed funding to address the root causes of violence. Violence flares when young people feel they don’t have options and lack control over their lives. Studies consistently show that violence can be reduced if young people have relationships with caring adults. opportunities to develop their talents, and constructive ways to get involved in their communities, the three core elements of youth development.

The ammunition tax would fund places like Youth Uprising in East Oakland. They get kids involved in music, art, sports and entrepreneurship. Over three quarters of young people surveyed there said they have long-term and educational career plans because of Youth Uprising. There are countless organizations like Youth Uprising throughout our state, many of them underfunded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Didn’t see that coming.

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

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

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

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

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

SCOTUS JUSTICE RUTHIE’S VERY POWERFUL WHISPERS

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

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

Here’s clip:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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