LASD Undersheriff Paul Tanaka was featured in a special KABC 7 News segment Monday night in which the once-powerful second-in-command to Sheriff Lee Baca painted his former boss as a disengaged, incompetent leader who frequently gave orders that ranged from impractical to illegal, including an instance of possible obstruction of justice when he allegedly ordered staffers to hide and secretly debrief a federal informant.

It is the second such slash-and-burn interview from Tanaka who, for years, was rarely seen on camera, despite his influential position.

Then, last month, he unexpectedly sat down with the LA Times’ Robert Faturechi and blasted the sheriff to a degree that shocked most LASD watchers.

Tanaka launched a similar attack through the medium of KABC’s David Ono in a lengthy and reportedly quote-rich video interview taped earlier, that had producers working until the last moment choosing the best clips for the not-quite-five minute segment that aired Monday night.

While there were no game-changing revelations among the snippets featured, there were things that could conceivably cause Baca trouble when he faces reelection in 2014.

(Tanaka told both the LA Times and KABC’s Ono that he is considering running for sheriff against Baca, and has reportedly opened an “exploratory committee” for purposes of fundraising.)

MANAGING THE SHERIFF

In much of Monday’s interview, Tanaka painted the sheriff as someone who constantly had to be managed by his underlings.

“We used to have this saying amongst the top executives that our greatest job is to manage the sheriff and make sure that he doesn’t do anything that we can’t clean up,” Tanaka said.

Tanaka also described a sheriff who was unhealthily concerned with politics and “desperate to be reelected.”

When not hyper-focused on reelection, according to Tanaka, Baca is “obsessed” by whimsical fixations like “living to be 100,” and subjects the department’s upper management to lengthy discourses on this and similar topics.

“We sit in command staff meetings, you have very high-paid people, 15-20 of us, and these are the lectures we get for two or three hours….”

Tanaka also admitted that when, in early March of this year, he unexpectedly announced his retirement, in fact, he was forced out when the sheriff became fearful of growing department scandals and “…served my head on a platter to detractors because he thought that would save him.”

BACA DISMISSES TANAKA THROUGH SPOKESMAN

While Baca declined to answer Tanaka’s accusations in person, he sent a message via LASD spokesman Steve Whitmore, who told KABC that “the sheriff is just not going to get into a bickering discussion, if you will, with a soon-to-be, seems-to-be-angry, ex-employee making allegations that seem to be fueled by rumor and innuendo, trying to exact some form of revenge for imagined slights.”

OUTTAKES

One interview tidbit that did not make it into Monday’s broadcast had to do with Tanaka’s past in the deputy clique known as a Vikings. KABC’s Ono asked him about the Viking tattoo that comes along with membership and the undersheriff said he regretted getting the thing.

One wonders, then, why the soon-to-be ex-undersheriff doesn’t simply have the controversial Vikings ink lasered off. (We’re just sayin’)

ELECTIONS: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE VOTE

MAYOR:

WLA hasn’t made an endorsement in the mayor’s race, and we’re not going to do it now.

We know and like both Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti and can make a strong case for either candidate, both of whom we believe will also grow on the job. We have respected friends and colleagues who are maniacally in favor of one over the other—some choosing Eric, others lining up behind Wendy.

We know the LA Times has endorsed Garcetti. But we hope you’ll take the time to make up your own mind—which ever way you finally lean.

If you’re still trying to decide, LA Weekly’s Gene Maddaus “Five Key Differences..” rundown on how the two diverge provides some helpful food for thought.

CITY CONTROLLER

We favor Ron Galperin over Dennis Zine.

We think Zine’s a good guy, personally, and we like that he occasionally rides his Harley to Sturgis for the big bike rally in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

But we think Galperin has the right skill set and temperament to be a very good, pro-active controller—which is, after all, the point.

CITY ATTORNEY

Mike Feuer not Carmen Trutanich—please!

Feuer is smart, has the chops, and will be good.

Trutanich, while not without talent, is vengeful, mendacious, power-hungry and seems bizarrely unclear on the law when selective dis-clarity happens to serve his personal purposes, all of which we see as….you know… problematic.

PROPOSITIONS C, D, E, & F

These are the propositions that propose different schemes for regulating the sales of medical marijuana, which is long overdue.

Here’s the short form: YES ON D……NO on the rest.

For the long form, read what the LA Times says or the LA Weekly.

Among other things, D has the best shot at passing, and if the voters don’t pass one of these puppies, the City Council may try to shut down all the dispensaries, which is a very bad idea.

AND IN NON-ELECTIONS RELATED NEWS….

ZEV YAROSLAVSKY INTRODUCES A MOTION FOR JAIL RENOVATION TO BETTER HOUSE MENTALLY ILL INMATES

At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors’ meeting, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky will introduce a motion as an “alternative concept for the replacement of Men’s Central Jail,” which would replace one of MCJ’s towers with a facility designed to house mentally ill inmates.

Evidently Zev was fed up with the various billion dollar jail building proposals that the sheriff keeps pushing, so came up with a different angle with the idea of jump starting a fresh conversation about the jails facility issue.

Here’s a clip:

Instead of demolishing all of MCJ and constructing a replacement facility for the general inmate population, a better approach could be to demolish one tower of MCJ and replace it with a medical/mental health/substance abuse Integrated Inmate Treatment Center designed to serve inmates with mental illness, co-occurring substance abuse and specified medical conditions. Initial studies show that by consolidating all relevant inmates in this Center, sufficient beds would be opened up elsewhere in the system to house the County’s remaining inmates. The proposed Integrated Inmate Treatment Center would be designed to meet the needs of this inmate population and could result in better and more humane outcomes for these prisoners as well as a more cost-effective solution to the problem of housing the general jail population.

Initial reviews of this idea show great promise. Studies show that recidivism on
the part of mentally ill/dually-diagnosed inmates can be substantially reduced through intensive treatment programs.

The ACLU responded to Yaroslavsky’s proposal with some suggestions of their own (detailed in their letter here: Yaroslavsky Mental Health Motion). But mostly, as So Cal ACLU Legal Director Peter Eliasberg put it, “…we appreciate the fact that the supervisor has started the conversation.”

We do too.

MERRICK BOBB’S NEWEST REPORT ON THE LASD LOOKS AT THE SHERIFF’S GANG ENFORCEMENT STRATEGY

On Monday, Special Council Merrick Bob introduced his bi-annual report on the Sheriff’s Department. This particular report focuses on gang enforcement since, although crime in general is down, gang violence still remains a pressing problem affecting LA’s communities.

You can find the report here: 32nd Semiannual Report 5-20-13.

We’ll likely return to discuss this report further in the next few days,

But, for now, suffice it to say that we appreciated the report’s analysis of what effective, targeted gang suppression looks like, versus ineffective gang surpression—which only serves to alienate the community, wrongly criminalize some gang members, and, in excess, can actually cause crime to rise. This smart outline will, we hope, be viewed by the department as valuable feedback as they hone their gang policing methods.

Where we differ a bit from Bobb’s report is that we’re not at all that sure about the notion that, in addition to smart, targeted, strategic—and community-respecting—surpression (policing), that the LASD should also be engaged in gang prevention and intervention.

The report is, of course, dead on when it points out that, historically, we’ve learned that gang surpression alone, doesn’t lower gang crime. Every study tells us that we need the prevention/intervention/reentry pieces for violence reduction and community health.

With this in mind, certainly it’s essential for law enforcement to be cooperative with those agencies that provide prevention, intervention and reentry programs, et al —places like Homeboy Industries, Communities in Schools, Homies Unidos, and Aquil Basheer’s BUILD Youth Empowerment Academy, and others. However, it’s not the job of the cops to offer those services themselves.

We’d rather see the County instead carve out some money to help the intervention/reentry folks, since they are the people actually doing—and equipped to do—that work.

All this is a longer discussion. But that’s the short form..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or both of the above.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SENATOR LELAND YEE’S BILL LIMITING USE OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT FOR KIDS PASSES OUT OF COMMITTEE

SB 61, a bill that defines and limits the use of solitary confinement for kids locked up in state and county juvenile facilities passed out of the Senate Public Safety Committee on Wednesday. The bill, authored by Senator Leland Yee, (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) is something that youth advocates have been pushing.

A statement from Yee’s office outlined the following points:

**Nationally, over half of the youth who committed suicide while in a correctional facility were in solitary confinement and 62 percent had a history of being placed in solitary confinement.

***Research also shows that individuals who were forced into solitary confinement had much higher rates of recidivism as well as developing psychopathologies.

**“The use of solitary confinement on a child is wrong and should be used only in the most extreme situations,” said Yee, who is a child psychologist. “The studies are clear – holding juveniles in solitary increases recidivism rates, exacerbates existing mental illness, and makes youth more likely to attempt suicide. The overuse of solitary confinement with children destroys young lives.”

“Solitary confinement is an archaic way of dealing with incarcerated children” said Yee. “Clearly, solitary confinement does not benefit society in the long run and actually makes our communities more dangerous. If we embrace scientific evidence over the status quo, we can work to rebuild broken lives and keep California safer.”

Dr. Laura Abrams of UCLA testified on behalf of SB 61, saying, “The mission of the juvenile justice system is to offer youth an opportunity for rehabilitation while also promoting public safety. The use of solitary confinement is counter to these goals. Not only does solitary confinement undermine rehabilitation efforts, but also as the potential to return a young person to society with exacerbated trauma and mental illness that can manifest in violence toward self or others.”

We’re watching this bill and are heartened by this first step toward passage!

HOW SCHOOL SUSPENSIONS BACKFIRE

This run-of-the-mill yet heartbreaking story of the everyday manner in which the use of a school suspension fairls to serve either the student or the safety of the school, is all too common. It is by Sally Lee writing for the Huffington Post. Here’s a representative clip:

Working in the Bronx, as she writes in the Suspensions Stories blog, E.E.M. is a history teacher who helped develop a “Moot Court” project that has become one of the seminal academic experiences of upperclassmen at her school. Student teams research real First and Fourth Amendment Supreme Court cases and then develop arguments and present in front of guest “justices.” Each year students are highly engaged in this project, and one year four of them, a crew of friends who had known each other since childhood, were working hard to prepare for their presentation. But just weeks before the case presentations, three of the young men were involved in an altercation (involving many people from multiple schools in the building) that was the result of an out-of-school turf tension related to the two sets of housing projects near the school. The three young men were given a 60-day out-of-school suspension. The effect? The students never got to stand tall and present their cases in front of peers and impressed guests. Instead, one student transferred to a school that didn’t match his needs or interests, another moved out of state, one returned to the school with little trust for faculty, and the fourth, who wasn’t involved in the fights, grew listless after the destruction of what had been a positive and supportive team for him: his friends. What could have been for these young men had the school system intervened earlier and responded differently? For E.E.M. and her colleagues, stories like these are common, and they are heartbreaking. Educators see so much promise in their students, but what is their fate when time and again they are demoralized and alienated by schools without adequate and supportive resources?

HOPELESSNESS REIGNS AT GUANTANAMO

We don’t usually stray into issues that relate to national security, but for those of us concerned about humane and constitutional incarceration policies, this situation is of grave concern. The New York Times’ Charlie Savage has written a painful and shameful story about the dispair that has spread among the prisoners at Guantanamo, resulting in a mass hunger strike that is now threatening lives.

Here’s a clip from Savage’s excellent and disturbing story:

In the early afternoon quiet, guards in camouflage fatigues walked the two-tiered cellblocks of Camp Six, where the most cooperative of the 166 terrorism suspects held in the military prison here are housed. From a darkened control room, other guards watched banks of surveillance monitors showing prisoners in white clothing — pacing, sleeping or reading — in their cells.

But the relative calm on display to visiting reporters last week was deceiving. Days earlier, guards had raided Camp Six and locked down protesting prisoners who had blocked security cameras, forbidding them to congregate in a communal area. A hunger strike is now in its third month, with 93 prisoners considered to be participating — more than half the inmates and twice the number before the raid.

“They are not done yet, and they will not be done until there is more than one death,” said a Muslim adviser to the military, identified as “Zak” for security reasons, who fears there may be suicides. Only one thing, he predicted, will satisfy the detainees: if someone is allowed to leave.

The spark for the protest is disputed. Detainees, through their lawyers, say that when guards conducted a search of their cells on Feb. 6, they handled their Korans in a disrespectful way. Prison officials dispute that.

But both military officials and lawyers for the detainees agree about the underlying cause of the turmoil: a growing sense among many prisoners, some of whom have been held without trial for more than 11 years, that they will never go home.

AND THE REALLY, REALLY BAD JAIL OF THE MONTH AWARD GOES TO….THE BALTIMORE CITY DETENTION CENTER

Jail guards as inmates’ babymamas plus a thriving drug biz behind bars and more. Rochelle Ritchie of CBS reports this story (and so has nearly everyone else). Here’s a clip in case you missed the sad and jaw-dropping saga of one of Baltimore’s jail:

Twenty-five people, 13 of those female correction officers, are now behind bars facing federal charges of racketeering, money laundering and possession of drugs with the intent to distribute. Investigators say the women helped White and other gang members smuggle cell phones, marijuana, prescription pills and cigarettes into the Baltimore City Detention Center.

“It’s pretty much its own city. The guards aren’t running the jail; prisoners really run the jail,” said one former inmate.

The illegal operation isn’t surprising to former inmates.

“I was in there before. Everywhere you look, people lighting up marijuana joints, tobacco…we even get alcohol in there,” said a former inmate.

And here’s a clip from a story by Dan Rodricks for the Baltimore Sun:

I have lots of questions about the Black Guerrilla Family case, starting with this: Was the warden of the Baltimore City Detention Center asked to approve maternity leave for any of the female correctional officers allegedly impregnated by inmate Tavon “Bulldog” White?

I thought it was a pretty good question.

A taxpayer’s question.

According to the U.S. attorney’s office, White got four of his jailers pregnant. (Do you think these women knew what was going on before the indictment came down? Do you think they all got along and attended Lamaze class together?)

If the indictment is correct, if female prison guards fraternized with an inmate to the point of pregnancy — a couple of them had White’s name tattooed on their bodies, the feds say — then I don’t want to hear that they asked for paid maternity leave.

Don’t tell us that.

Bad enough that White pretty much ran the jail, according to the indictment.

If his baby mamas — excuse me, his alleged baby mamas — had the chutzpah to ask for paid maternity leave, that would add insult to injury….

HE’S OUT

Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, the #2 person in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department command structure right under Sheriff Lee Baca, announced his resignation on Wednesday during the sheriff’s Executive Planning Committee.

For most Los Angeles residents the announcement of the undersheriff’s exit was of little consequence. People were, of course, very familiar with LA’s popular—if now beleaguered—Sheriff Lee Baca, but Tanaka—the sheriff’s right hand man and longtime consigliere—had always flown largely under the media radar.

Yet for those inside and close to the nation’s fourth largest policing agency, the departure of the undersheriff was of enormous significance. The big question for Tanaka’s supporters and detractors, was what exactly did this abrupt leave-taking mean?

To begin with, according to department sources, the announcement was stunningly unexpected, and was greeted by most among the executive group who first heard it with genuine shock.

The official press release, which was put out hastily at mid-afternoon on Wednesday, did little to answer any questions. It began:

Undersheriff Paul Tanaka today announced his retirement to the Sheriff and the Department’s executive staff. His retirement will be effective August 1, 2013….

Then the release ticked off some of the undersheriff’s postings and accomplishments during his 33 years on the job with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, and little more.

Those familiar with county employment rules guessed that the August 1 exit date was likely picked because it is shortly after the undersheriff’s 55th birthday in July. And fifty-five is the magic age for LA County employees who wish to get their full retirement.

But of course the real question was not so much when Mr. Tanaka was leaving, as it was why?**

THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN LOS ANGELES YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF

It is hard to find a more polarizing figure in contemporary Los Angeles law enforcement than Paul Tanaka.

Until recently, Tanaka has been viewed as a sort-of shadow sheriff, the person behind Sheriff Lee Baca whom many saw as holding the real power in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.

WitnessLA’s Matt Fleischer first broke the news in December 2011 that the largely unknown Mr. Tanaka wielded a startling amount of control in the LASD, which—-with 18,000 employees—is the largest sheriff’s department in the world, and runs the nation’s largest jail system.

Since our report, Tanaka has come under scrutiny by the FBI for his part in what has been described as a culture of violence inside Men’s Central Jail, and he may also be the focus of a federal grand jury probe into allegations that LASD management ordered jails personnel to hide an FBI informant from his handlers by moving the man in secret from place to place inside the county jail system, using a string of phony names and false inmate ID numbers.

Starting in early 2012, WitnessLA issued a series of additional reports on what was widely perceived inside the department as a system of patronage run by Mr. Tanaka, in which loyalty and, in many cases, cash donations to Tanaka’s political campaigns, were rewarded when it came to promotions—instead of merit.

(NOTE: Along with being the LASD undersheriff, Tanaka is the mayor of the city of Gardena.)

(See reports on alleged pay-to-play here, here and here.)

In February, the reports caused Supervisor Gloria Molina to introduce a motion to prohibit county supervisors from asking for or accepting campaign contributions.

As the year wore on, the Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence—which included four federal judges and a chief of police—delved further into the undersheriff’s practices as they investigated the jail violence in general. In their final report, issued in September 2012, the commission stopped just short of ordering the sheriff to fire Tanaka, but they critiqued what they saw as the undersheriff’s mismanagement and misconduct in the harshest of terms, and strongly advised that he be removed from any oversite of the custody division, and even suggested—albiet delicately, as it was outside their mission—that the same prohibition apply to any Tanaka oversight of street patrol. Here is a snippet of what they wrote:

“The troubling role of Undersheriff Tanaka cannot be ignored. Not only did he fail to identify and correct problems in the jails, he exacerbated them. The Commission learned about his ill-advised statements and decisions from a wide array of witnesses and sources. Over the course of several years, the Undersheriff encouraged deputies to push the legal boundaries of law enforcement activities and created an environment that discouraged accountability for misconduct. His repeated statements that deputies should work in an undefined “grey” area contributed to a perception by some deputies that they could use excessive force in the jails and that their aggressive behavior would not result in discipline”

The 194-page report went on in that vein, including a description of the “belief,” among deputies regarding the unaccountably powerful undersheriff who seemed to skip, at will, over the department’s paramilitary chain-of-command, “that patronage and favoritism matter more than merit.”

Shortly after the report was delivered, the sheriff forced into retirement several of those who who had some responsibility for the deputy-abuse-of-jail-inmates scandal—most notably Assistant Sheriff Marvin Cavanaugh, and Chief of Custody Operations. Dennis Burns. Yet Baca seemed stubbornly disinclined to hold his second-in-command accountable, telling the Citizen’s Commission during his testimony last year, that he had no intention of disciplining or getting rid of the undersheriff, that he was too crucial, particularly when it cames to balancing the department’s $2.5 billion budget.

“Paul Tanaka is uniquely suited to be the undersheriff,” Baca said. “When you go through two recessions, you need a CPA.”

(Among his other skills, Tanaka is a certified public accountant.)

Nevertheless, in a nod to the commission’s allegations, the sheriff announced that the department had launched an internal affairs investigation into the undersheriff’s conduct. He also insisted that, from there on out, the undersheriff would mostly be the department’s CFO, applying his magic to the budget, but would no longer have any control over the jails or the patrol divisions, or over the investigative bureaus like internal affairs, which Tanaka had taken over for a period.

Yet, at the same time, as recently as late last October, Baca continued to defend Tanaka both in public and in private.

As the year came to a close, however, Baca’s attitude reportedly took a measurable turn. Sources inside and close to the department tell us of “an uneasy rift” between Mr. Tanaka and the sheriff in the last few months, which became “very noticeable” before Christmas 2012.

“I think that all the things began to add up for the sheriff,” said one source. “The talk of pay-to-play, the cigar club, the whole thing of working the grey, the way the federal investigations were handled, the problems in the jails, and all the rest.”

Another source said that Baca was also upset when Tanaka, who had promised the sheriff that he would not run for mayor of Gardena again, pulled out of the race after first registering and scaring off most other candidates, but pulling out so late that his name had to remain on the all-ready-printed ballot. Then, although he professed non-interest in running, he allowed fundraising and a surrogate campaign in his behalf to be launched by the Gardena Police Department, reportedly complete with clusters of Tanaka yard signs blooming on lawns all over the city.

Tanaka was easily re-elected mayor of Gardena on Tuesday. His retirement was abruptly announced on Wednesday.

SO WHO LEFT WHOM?

Counter to what sources inside and close to the department tell us, according to Sheriff’s department spokesman Steve Whitmore, the decision to leave was Tanaka’s alone, that he simply felt it was time to move on, and that the sheriff himself only learned of the undersheriff’s retirement plans on Tuesday, the day before the announcement.

Mr. Whitmore said that Tanaka has chosen to retire in order to spend more time with his family. “When I talked to him about it,” said Whitmore, “he pointed to a picture of his three-and-a-half year old son that sits behind his desk and told me, ‘That’s why!’ You have to remember,” said Whitmore, “the undersheriff is 54, so he didn’t become a father until he was past 50.”

The department “is losing a dedicated public servent,” said Whitmore. “He will be sorely missed. His departure leaves a big hole.”

When queried, Whitmore said that the internal affairs investigation into allegations against Tanaka will continue, despite the undersheriff’s announcement.

He also said that, in Tanaka’s time remaining on the job, he will shepherd the department’s budget to its completion date in June.

WHAT EFFECT WILL TANAKA’S DEPARTURE HAVE?

If Paul Tanaka’s resignation/retirement leaves a hole, as Steve Whitmore suggests, what does that newly-opened gap portend?

Miriam Krinsky, the Jail’s Commission’s executive director, reiterated the “troubling reports” about Tanaka that the commission uncovered in the course of its investigations, and characterized the undersheriff’s exit as very welcome news that is potentially favorable for the department.

“I certainly hope,” she said, “that the decision of the undersheriff provides the department with the opportunity to look for someone who can help create a new and really positive culture in the jails.”

Peter Eliasberg, the legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, was also surprised and pleased by the news.

“Any time you’re talking about changing the culture of a large organization, a big part is making sure that the right people are in charge and the wrong people aren’t. The change of one person like Tanaka isn’t a silver bullet, but I think it’s potentially quite significant.

Both Krinsky and Eliasberg emphasized that much will depend on who replaces Paul Tanaka.

According to Steve Whitmore, however, Sheriff Baca is “not considering any replacement” for the departing undersheriff, at least not for a while.

POST SCRIPT

It has long been actively rumored that much of Paul Tanaka’s management style has been aimed at gathering a base of power in order to succeed Lee Baca as sheriff of LA County.

Last summer, in fact, former LASD Commander Robert Olmsted told me that Tanaka had unapologetically confided to him that the reason he needed to ensure that the “right” people were in supervisory positions in the department, was so that those loyalists were in place when he, Tanaka, became sheriff. “He said Waldie (who was then the undersheriff) Cavanaugh and the Sheriff are all old, and that they would be retiring very soon, and he expected to hold the position after Sheriff Baca, ‘for the next fifteen years.’”

Unbelievably, even with the storm of scandals ever-quickening around Tanaka, as recently as the past few months, the undersheriff was reportedly working behind the scenes to make sure “his” people were elected to crucial positions on the boards of the two LASD unions—ALADS and PPOA—plus LA county’s law enforcement fraternal organizations like BPOA (Black Peace Officer’s Association of Los Angeles County) and HAPCOA (Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association)—all organizations that, if they lined up behind a single candidate, could have a significant influence.

On Wednesday, however, Mr. Tanaka told Daily Breeze reporter Sandy Mazza that he has no plans to run for Los Angeles County Sheriff.

But then again, Tanaka also said repeatedly that he was not running for Mayor of Gardena. Yet, on Wednesday, the day he announced his retirement, he officially accepted the post for a third term.

LINKS TO TANAKA TESTIMONY: When I was on Warren Olney’s Which Way LA? on Thursday, there was discussion about testimony given by Undersheriff Paul Tanaka at the Jail’s Commission hearing, and some dispute about what the undersheriff said and in what context. With those questions in mind, here’s a link to the transcript from the hearing and also a link to the audio from that same hearing. In addition to providing some excellent background information into the problems inside the jails that were being investigated, this hearing in particular is great theater.

** This section of this story was expanded on March 10, 2013

MALDEF PRIES UNREDACTED RUBEN SALAZAR RECORDS AWAY FROM BACA AFTER 2 YEARS OF POINTLESS LEGAL WRANGLING

ON Tuesday, MALDEF settled its lawsuit against Sheriff Lee Baca and LA County, in which they had challenged the sheriff’s two-year attempt to withhold unredacted records regarding the 1970 death of Rubén Salazar, the former Times colum­nist and KMEX-TV news dir­ect­or who was killed on the day of the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War under circumstances that have left in their wake a cloud of questions for more than four decades.

In the lawsuit, MALDEF represented award-winning documentary filmmaker Phillip Rodriguez, who is in the midst of making a film on the life of Salazar and the controvesy around his death. With this settlement, Rodriguez—and others—can finally have full access to things like unredacted autopsy reports, and coroner’s photos taken at the scene, plus unredacted investigative documents.

Here’s a clip from MALDEF’s Thursday press release:

Salazar was a KMEX-TV 34 journalist killed by a Sheriff’s deputy during the national Chicano Moratorium March in 1970. He was best known as the first Mexican American journalist to cover the Chicano community from the mainstream media. Despite the truth-seeking and investigative nature of his journalistic work, Salazar’s own death has been surrounded in secrecy for over 40 years.

“This settlement ensures that the Sheriff can no longer attempt to control the use of critical historical records on the killing of iconic journalist Rubén Salazar. The public, through the forthcoming documentary film, will immediately benefit from the availability of these unredacted records in assessing Salazar’s death 42 years ago,” stated Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF President and General Counsel.

On December 4, 2012, the Sheriff and the County agreed to disclose unredacted autopsy and investigative documents, and coroner’s photos regarding Salazar’s death on August 29, 1970, enabling Phillip Rodriguez to reproduce copies of the documents, and use them in his film.

MALDEF began requesting the information in 2010, under the California Public Records Act, but the LASD folks refused to turn anything over claiming the documents were exempt from public records requests. However, with increasing legal prodding, a shove or two from Supervisor Gloria Molina (plus a lot of negative publicity surrounding the stonewalling), Sheriff Baca agreed to let Rodriguez and company look at the docs in March 2011, but only under strict conditions. For one thing, nobody could make copies of the reports.

According to Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel, the sheriff de facto admitted that the documents were not exempted as public records by allowing partial access to them, thus rendering the rest of the control-freaky conditions that he and the LASD placed on them, to be legally unsupportable.

Nevertheless, the sheriff and his lawyers managed to drag the whole thing out for an additional nine months—for no appreciable reason (save, one supposes, Because They Can).

Of course, for the Sheriff there is no fiscal downside to engaging in two years of basically useless and rights-hindering legal wrangling since we, as taxpayers, were footing the attorneys’ bills to help the LASD try to keep the crucial material about the 42-year-old Salazar case OUT of the public domain.

(And, what’s up with the County Counsel attorneys who gave the sheriff the swell advice that allowed him to think that he could continue all this legal foot-dragging?)

Vexing. Very Vexing.

Congratulations to Phillip Rodriquez and MALDEF for prevailing in the public interest.

Rodriguez’s documentary is eagerly awaited as what it is hoped will be the first independent and thorough investigation of the mysterious and controversial events surrounding Salazar’s death. “The film will illuminate an often neglected and misrepresented chapter of American history that was foundational in the development of the Latino cultural and political identity,” stated Rodriguez.

Rodriguez’s film, “Rubén Salazar: The Man in the Middle,” will air in the fall of 2013 on PBS primetime to national audiences.

You can read the full settlement here.

LAPD UNION USES FBI MOST WANTED ARREST TO SLAM REALIGNMENT

On Tuesday, the LAPPL LAPPL put out a statement that, in a peculiar loop-de-loop of logic, attempted to discredit the state’s realignment policy because, the recently arrested fugitive from the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, Jose Luis Saenz, was—for entirely bureaucratic reasons—taken off parole.

Yes, I know it sounds weird. But Saenz was taken off the parole rolls because he no longer qualified, so removing him was simply bureaucratic clean up. “Having him on parole was essentially useless,” said CDCR spokesman, Luis Patino. “It was just gumming up the system, so we removed him.” They knew Saenz had warrants on him for four murders, Patino said. “He didn’t need another parole warrant in order to be arrested.”

The LAPPL writes on its blog:

The Los Angeles Police Protective League has warned the community that realignment would result in mass discharges of very dangerous felons and the deaths of innocent individuals. While realignment was enacted years after Saenz was first wanted, what justification does the Parole Department have for discharging Saenz in August, when he’s still wanted for killing four people?

It sounds sexy and like a delicious gotcha to say that the CDCR is SO out-of-it that they took the FBI’s most wanted guy off parole.

Yet, it is a cheap trick, loaded with falsehoods-–yet it is one that continues to be repeated in various guises.

Certainly, there are ways that realignment can—and should— be improved. But it is irresponsible and profoundly distorting of the issue to take big bad, high profile murder cases that have zero to do with the state’s new policy, and try to hold them up as bogeymen to scare people into counterfactually believing the state’s realignment program is damaging public safety.

Worse, such theatrics stand in the way of a genuine discussion about how to make realignment better.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL LAGGING ON APPOINTING HEAD OF YOUTH JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

There is a big push to get the Senate to force the Obama administration into getting off the dime and appointing a head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), which oversees and coordinates juvenile justice reforms around the country. This administration is the first since the OJJDP was created in 1974 to fail to make the appointment.

This essay from Campaign for Youth Justice head, Liz Ryan, makes clear the importance of the issue.

LA COUNTY PROBATION CAMPS FAIL (AGAIN) TO MAKE NECESSARY IMPROVEMENTS, DOJ DOES ZIP TO HOLD PROBATION ACCOUNTABLE

It was reported to us this week that, instead of slapping the LA County Department of Probation with a nice fat federal consent decree over its chronic inability to fix 41 “areas of concern” in LA’s juvenile probation camps that the DOJ blinked, and instead gave us yet another extension to make the agreed upon fixes.

(The cynical among us might say that such a pronounced unwillingness to hold anybody accountable defines the term enabling, but, sure, hey, yeah, why not. Carry on!)

Here’s a little back story taken from the post we wrote last December on this very same issue:

When, on November 6, 2006, the US Department of Justice began investigating LA’s juvenile probation camps, investigators found the facilities rife with horrors. Probation officers batted kids around, instigated fights (some of which were caught on video and wound up on YouTube) or looked the other way when one group of kids pounded another. Staff also made kids stand or sit in body-stressing positions for long periods, kept them in solitary confinement for even longer periods as punishment, randomly denied them bathroom breaks, recreational time and/or medical treatment, failed to check on kids who were on suicide watch, pepper sprayed teenagers over trivialities, and drank alcohol on the job—among other transgressions and illegalities.

Now, said the monitors in the new report, the worst of the rampant abuse and neglect in the camps had pretty much been halted, although there was still lots of room for improvement.
And thankfully the staff, for the most part, wasn’t drinking on the job.

But, after 4 years under the watchful eye of the Department of Justice, although most kids weren’t being actively abused, they weren’t being helped either, said the monitors, particularly when it came to mental and emotional health, substance abuse—and overall rehabilitation. Probation has little or nothing in the way of positive outcomes to show for its supposed progress in these areas. And in many of the camps they have they don’t have the required rehabilitative programs in place at all.

“These camps are not meant to be punishment for the kids we send there,” said a source close to the federal monitors. “They’re supposed to rehabilitate. And that’s still not happening.”

So now the big question is: Will the Feds take over the the juvenile facilities with a Federal Consent Decree?

Answer to that question: Clearly not.

And ten months later, has anything improved? Uh, not really, according to the newest response from the feds. The camps still don’t have the needed rehabilitative programs for the kids in their custody.

Moreover, in some areas things might be getting worse. The monitors reported that in the next assessment they expect four of the areas that were previously in compliance—to have back-slid out of complience. Alarmingly, these areas are in the arenas of:

1. the staff’s excessive use of force against kids.

2. the staff’s “use of practices such as slamming’ or “assuming the bob-sled
position’ for punitive or abusive purposes”

3. the “reduction of youth on youth violence,” and..

4. “record keeping” to make sure there was adequate tracking of when kids were given medications and their side effects, which kids were given “psychotropic medications,” and “adequate tracking to identify youth receiving mental health services.”

Seriously, after 5 years, staff still can’t manage to stop slamming kids against walls, making them assume stress positions as punishment, can’t keep them reasonably safe from aggressively pounding each other, and can’t keep adequate track of who’s being given what medication and has received what mental health services.

It’s honestly hard to know what to say.

More on this next week.

Part 1 of the long-promised promised “30-Day” audit of alleged improprieties at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s Aero Bureau was made public on Wednesday, Oct. 10, and found only a handful of problems.

The Board of Supervisors ordered the audit from the County’s Auditor-Controller back in the beginning of April of this year with a motion by Zev Yaroslavsky, when Supervisors became concerned after the publication of two reports from WitnessLA (here and here) stories from the LA Times, pointed to allegations outlined in an LASD internal report, that a $29 million Board of Supervisors-approved contract to do completion work on the LASD’s 12 new helicopters, may be loaded with overcharges and unnecessary equipment to the tune of up to $11 million.

The internal memo, written by a former Aero Bureau Sergeant also alleged that some Aero Bureau supervisors colluded to rig the bidding process.

More specifically, the memo outlined the four following “areas of concern:”
1. Excessive labor costs,
2. The purchase of extra equipment outside the scope of what was approved by the Board of Supervisors, and often with hefty mark-ups attached
3. Standard equipment purchased in excess of what was required.
4. Charges for installation of basic equipment that conventionally should have been installed at the factory as part of the price of the aircraft.

3 SMALL PROBLEMS

Despite these detailed allegations, the audit basically found only three problems with Aero Bureau’s ordering and contract process:

1. The department messed with some of the contractual language without permission for some of its parts and/or service agreements.

2. Aero Bureau didn’t always get competitive bids for its helicopter repair services, like it was supposed to do.

3. Aero Bureau purchased a bunch of $200-ish rain jackets that it didn’t really need. (Oh, those crazy Aero boys!)

As for the rest of the allegations of contractual, bidding and purchasing irregularities relating to the purchase of a new fleet of twelve A-Star ‘copters, the audit concluded that all were ‘unfounded”—nothing to see here, folks.

ROUND TWO STILL AHEAD

There is, however, to be a Part 2 of the audit, which will reportedly concern itself with the rest of the allegations that WitnessLA outlined here in its April 2 report, which draws on a lawsuit brought by former Aero Bureau supervisor, Ed Cook, plus interviews with multiple Aero Bureau sources who allege that, at the direction of a cluster of Aero Bureau supervisors and the group’s head, Captain Louis Duran, pilots were told to ignore service calls as part of a scheme to create the impression that more, high-paying overtime was “needed” (at a time when overtime elsewhere in the department was being slashed to the bone)—plus other safety-risking irregularities. We also reported allegations of regularly falsified records, misuse of county aircraft (including a take-home helicopter), and a pattern of retaliation against Aero Bureau whistle blowers.

Based on our reporting, and subsequent conversations with our Aero Bureau sources, we believe this second set of allegations will be far harder to dismiss.

More soon. So stay tuned

OKAY, NOW WHAT?

“The time for negotiation has long since gone.” Sup. Mark Ridley-Thomas

“If any of these [jail cases] that we see were on TV like Rodney King had been, the public would be asking for the sheriff’s head.” Sup. Gloria Molina

On Tuesday morning, the LA County Board of Supervisors had the first of its meetings about what actions the Supes must take now that their blue ribbon Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence has issued its 194-page report full of scathing findings, plus its list of 63 recommendations for how to address the disturbing array of problems that the report describes.

At the meeting’s beginning, the board listened to a summary of the CCJV report (delivered by the commission’s chair and vice chair, Judge Lourdes Baird and Rev. Cecil Murray, plus commission executive director, Miriam Krinsky and general counsel, Richard Drooyan). After the presentation, the Supes collectively thanked the commission profusely for its work, then three of the supervisors discussed in detail their concerns about how the board could best move forward to make sure the commission’s report actually came to something, as opposed to just getting cheerfully shelved once everyone’s backs were metaphorically turned.

This was despite the fact that Sheriff Lee Baca had announced last week that he was fully committed to implementing all of the commission’s recommendations.

In fact, after again praising the commissioners’ work, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas suggested that the commission may not have gone far enough. Specifically, he said that the creation of a new Inspector General’s office, a move that the commission said was crucial, would only be effective if the IG had some legal power that went beyond the merely advisory.

Ridley-Thomas was undeterred by the fact that giving legal power to an oversight entity like an inspector general or an LASD commission, would require a county charter amendment or state legislation.

“There has to be legal authority which is non-negotiable,” he said. “I think the time for negotiation has long since gone.”

MRT seemed to suggest that the sheriff might very well intend in good faith to follow through with the changes that the commission has called for, but that it was unrealistic to believe that he could magically do so simply by recalibrating his previously unfocused attention.

“It’s flawed to think that a single individual can cause the department to become a better department on his own,” he said. “That’s why I seek to put those pieces in place that honor the democratic system of checks and balances.”

The report makes it “abundantly clear” he added, “that, to a significant degree, the problem is essentially a function of inattention. And it’s substantially so because [power] is vested in one single place, without sufficient levels of oversight and accountability….”

Supervisor Mike Antonovich who, of anyone on the board, might be characterized as law enforcement friendly to a fault, sounded equally frustrated. “The sheriff has stated that twenty of the [63] recommendations have been implemented,” Antonovich said. “But I’ve not seen twenty that have been implemented,”

Antonovich then drew a comparison between the commission’s recommendations and the video cameras that had long-ago been ordered by the board to be installed in the jails. “We were told that the cameras have been implemented in the facilities,” he said, “and now we’ve been told that they have not been fully implemented.” The same was true with lapel cameras for the deputies. “Now we hear that there is a technological problem with that too….”

INSUBORDINATION

Last up was Supervisor Gloria Molina who, like Ridley-Thomas, felt that, without some new sharp-toothed instrument of change, all the commission’s valuable work could conceivably come to naught—or almost naught, anyway.

She pointed to the matter of the Undersheriff whom she called insubordinate. “He’s insubordinate to the sheriff, and insubordinate to us, and insubordinate to the public, by…overriding policies and by virtue of how he handled promotions based on loyalty…”

So why hadn’t Tanaka been disciplined or in any way held to account? she wanted to know. “If we can’t bring discipline at the top,” how could they expect it from the deputies working the jails?

“With all due respect,” said Molina, “your report is wonderful. It’s well organized. It’s sincere. it is clear. It’s the best pathway we’ve had in…forever. But now [the responsibility] lands on us….Now there are the tough, challenging questions of implementation.”

Like Antonovich, Molina ticked off a list of the ways that the board has tried to implement change and to hold the sheriff accountable, with little to show for their efforts.

She described how the commission routinely sees cases where extreme force has been used on inmates, causing serious injury. “But everyone, all the commanders, tell me this is appropriate use of force.” Meanwhile, according to Molina, the county’s attorneys tell the board they can’t take these same cases, deemed to be perfectly within LASD policy, to court, because “a judge or jury will rule against us. So we pay the $3 million or $5 million settlement.

“I think that if any of these [jail cases] that we see were on TV like Rodney King,” concluded Molina grimly, “the public would be asking for the sheriff’s head.”

KEEPING FEET TO THE FIRE

On Tuesday afternoon, just before she took off for a round of meetings in Washington D.C., Miriam Krinsky said she was heartened that every board member had so thoroughly done their homework, but also observed that the Supes were “struggling to define their role in keeping the sheriff’s feet to the fire.”

In a phone call on Tuesday night, I asked Supervisor Ridley-Thomas how he felt the morning’s meeting had gone and what was likely to happen next.

He said he was cautiously hopeful.

“I think progress is being made,” he said, that the board was coming to terms with the “more active role” it must take “in insuring that structural reform occurs.”

He reiterated that, in addition to the creation of a new inspector general as the commission recommends, he believes it is important for the board to go a step further and “impanel a commission that will see it as its sole responsibility to oversee the department.”

There is a need for “profound change” in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department, Ridley-Thomas said before we rang off, “But it can’t be dependent on the intentions of a single individual”

And speaking of that “individual,” next week Sheriff Baca is scheduled to meet with the commission about these very issues.

LAST JAIL COMMISSION MEETING ON FRIDAY AT 9:15 AM—NEXT UP, THE COMMISSIONS REPORT IN OCTOBER

The last scheduled meeting of the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence will take place Friday, September 7, at 9:15 a.m.

The Commission is due to deliver its report in early October.

Those interested in listening to the live Commission meeting in real time may do so by calling (877) 873-8017, Access Code: 111111#.

10TH ANNUAL OFFICE OF INDEPENDENT REVIEW REPORT RELEASED

ON Thursday, Michael Gennaco, Chief Attorney for the Office of Independent Review, presented the OIR’s 10th annual report on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The report covers a wide variety of observations, progress assessments, recommendations, specific cases, and special investigations in its 194 pages, including such sections as:

*Violence in the Jails (p. 11)

*Drugs, Fraternization & Off-Duty Violence (p. 49)

*A Look into the Mitrice Richardson Investigation (p. 146)

*And a special investigation into some very problematic hires of displaced officers from Maywood. (p. 119)

There is also this short but interesting section titled “Executive Leadership: The Pitfalls of Conflicting Messaging.”

It reads:

Over the past years, there have been times in which messages from Sheriff’s executives to
LASD personnel did not seem to mirror the vision of the Sheriff himself. For example, in 2007
we heard that a high level executive had been communicating his dislike of the Internal Affairs
Bureau (IAB) to various audiences. Because we monitor all investigations coming out of IAB,
we were concerned that such comments could have a deleterious effect on the functioning
and morale of the unit. We also were concerned that the comments could undermine the
effectiveness of internal investigations.

As a result, we met at that time with the executive and related our concerns about comments
attributed to him. He described how his intended message was a more innocuous version of what
we had heard, and we indicated that his comments were not being received in the way he said
he intended. We suggested that he explore other ways to communicate his sentiments, and he
agreed to do so. We also relayed our concerns about the executive’s comments to the Sheriff at
that time, and we were informed that he subsequently also had a conversation with the executive
about the IAB comments.

It is critical that executives’ comments to deputies and other personnel be consistent with the
vision of the head of the agency. Comments perceived as divergent from that vision may be
used by personnel to behave counter to the agency’s values. As another example, there has been 09
much recent public discussion about the same executive making a comment about “working the
gray.” There were clearly deputies who believed the executive intended by his comments that
deputies could cross or come close to the line of professional, legal, or ethical conduct in order to get criminals off the street. While the executive has recently disavowed that intent, in the years previous that messaging may have caused deputies to be confused about the expectations of their Department. We are hopeful that this unfortunate episode has served as a learning opportunity
for the Department, and that communications contrary to the ideals of the organization will not
be articulated in the future.

Of course there’s lots more, if you want to take a look.