At last Friday’s hearing for the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence—the final time the commission will meet before it issues its report at the end of this month**—the statements about the sheriff and the undersheriff, and others on the LASD command staff, pulled no punches, and left little room for spinning.

Here is a representative sample of some of the points made:

*Sheriff Baca failed to monitor and proactively control the use of force in the jails.

*Leaders had a lax attitude toward deputy aggression and discouraged deputy discipline.

*Management has known about and failed to address problems with deputy cliques.

*The undersheriff failed to up hold the department’s goals and values.

*There is substantial evidence that Tanaka urged deputies to be aggressive and ‘work in the gray area’ and “function right on the edge of the line,” made comments that undermine the credibility of IAB, discouraged supervisors from investigating deputy misconduct.

*There was a breakdown in the chain of command at MCJ that Undersheriff Tanaka encouraged and permitted.

These preliminary “findings” were presented to the commissioners by the teams of lawyers who have served as the commission’s investigators. The teams—-made up of high-powered attorneys lent by such firms as Gibson Dunn, O’Melveny & Meyers, Munger, Tolles & Olson, and others of that ilk, to work for the commission pro bono—have cummulatively interviewed approximately 150 people and have reviewed around 15,000 30,000 pages of documents.

Later this month, WitnessLA will have a more comprehensive story about the last stages of the commission’s work, including additional details and thoughts on these investigative reports and what they suggest for the final report.

In the meantime, here are a few representative bullet points from Friday’s presentations:

A CULTURE OF FORCE AND SILENCE

The teams found the following:

And it goes on from there.

NO SUGAR COATING

Several of the Board of Supervisors’ staffers who drifted down to watch the proceedings their 8th floor offices, said they were impressed with the teams’ willingness to call things as the facts they found suggested.

“Frankly, we expected a whitewash,” said one high level staffer. “But that’s definitely not what this is.

Or as Commissioner Jim McDonnell put it: “There was no sugarcoating as some may have thought there would be for political reasons.”

That much was clear on Friday. There is no white wash. No sugar coating. Just well-researched facts—and carefully drawn conclusions. What they add up to is troubling but not surprising.

The final report is still to come, of course.

And then there’s the question of what it will all mean. Will the Commission’s final report help to precipitate real change in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department? Or will it be one more stack of papers that get a day or two of attention from the public and the Board of Supervbefore being roundly ignored by the sheriff?

Stay tuned.

**DELIVERY NOTE

The Commission has pushed their timeline up and their final report will likely now be released on September 28, not early Oct. (October is their safety net date.)

On Tuesday morning, both the LA Times editorial board and WitnessLA called for the LA County Supervisors to appoint an independent civilian commission—a la the Christopher Commission (which looked into LAPD practices post Rodney King)—to investigate the civil rights mess that is occurring in the County’s jails facilities.

On Which Way LA? Tuesday night, after I brought the matter up, Sheriff Baca said he would welcome civilians investigating—or words to that effect. He even mentioned some people he’d like to see on such a team. Loyola Law School prof, Laurie Levenson, was among those whom he named.

But will the Board of Supervisors step up and create the commission?

Some Board insiders I polled said that that is unlikely that an independent commission would happen, that budgetary concerns would stand in the way.

“There just isn’t the money for it,” said one source.

No money? Um, what about the $1.4 billion plan the Sheriff just pitched on Tuesday to demolish and rebuild Men’s Central Jail downtown, plus a second new jail for women inmates at Pitchess Detention Center. (Fox news has more on the jails pitch.)

The Supervisors are in a position to take a much needed leadership role by appointing an independent commission —-which is really not a terribly expensive proposition. (Heck, just shave a single million off that $1.3 billion jail construction pricetag.)

Unfortunately, thus far the Board has been missing in action on the topic of the jails scandal in general.

Of course, a civilian commission alone can’t force reform in the culture and practices of LA County’s Jails . It is also important that the existing FBI probe into deputy abuse be expanded substantially. Then, once the Feds have finished their investigation, with any luck the Department of Justice will impose a Federal Consent Decree—which is essentially a legally binding plea bargain that imposes a list of strict conditions, plus a timetable under which they must be met.

(The Federal Consent Decree imposed on the LAPD, was much of what made it possible for LA’s once-ailing police culture to reform itself.)

No one can guarantee what the FBI and the Department of Justice will do. Yet, it is fully within the power of the LA County Board of Supervisors to appoint that much-needed independent commission.

Inmates rights are being violated on the Board’s watch. Doing something proactive about the jails abuse scandal is a part of their job.

PS: Someone like John Van de Kamp might be a good person to lead such an endeavor.

Or how about Bill Lann Lee, the civil rights attorney who was the Assistant Attorney General for the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under Bill Clinton?

The possibilities are many.

AND ON OTHER TOPICS…

LAUSD AGREES TO MAKE CHANGES IN HOW IT TEACHERS ENGLISH LEARNERS AND BLACKS

The LA Times’ Howard Blume has the story.

Wednesday’s LA Times has an Op Ed about realignment that is so smart and dead on that it made me a little dizzy.

It’s written by former federal prosecutor (and present USC adjunct law professor), Jonathan Shapiro. Here’s a clip:

Rather than complain, L.A. leaders ought to lead. If done right, realignment could revolutionize and repair the incarceration-only policies that have led to both the nation’s highest costs per inmate and the nation’s highest state recidivism rate.

Public safety means more than simply jailing offenders. It requires problem-solving courts, the creative use of electronic monitoring and more intensive oversight when offenders have done their time. It means evidence-based, cost-effective strategies such as day-reporting centers, where former offenders must participate in programs during the day but return home at night, and “flash” incarceration, an immediate but short return to jail following a probation violation. It also means drug and mental health treatment for offenders and ex-offenders, as well as education and job training.

To be sure, this is a tough time for Los Angeles County. Its Probation Department is in a period of transition, its Sheriff’s Department is being investigated for excessive force against the offenders it already houses, and budgets are being cut. But however difficult the times and however challenging change is, L.A. County and the rest of California no longer have the luxury of pandering to “tough on crime” policies that have proved ineffective and too expensive to sustain.

Realignment has arrived. Former offenders are already trickling back to L.A. and into county hands. New offenders are being charged. The Los Angeles law enforcement community and the county Board of Supervisors should embrace their new role as a historic opportunity. Public safety is in their hands now more than ever.

From time to time here, I’ve taken issue with the DEA’s 100-agent raids on LA County’s medical marijuana clinics, raids that have used big piles of our tax dollars to harass clinic owners and patients, resulted in few arrests, and in most cases, exactly zero charges.

(Earlier stories are here and here and here.)

Medical marijuana is legal in this state and, unless there is blatant wrong-doing (meaning guys using the clinics as fronts to make big bucks in bulk trafficking), the Feds need to butt out and use their time—not to mention our valuable tax dollars—to shut down some crystal meth dealers instead. (In the past, I’ve offered to point out a few meth-dealing locations, but DEA spokesperson Sarah Pullen, the LA person who has the job of deal with us snarky press types, declined to take me up on it.)

Which brings me to today’s story. Today the California Attorney General’s Office announced that on Friday, the state’s drug enforcers, the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement or BNE—along with a multi-agency task force—raided a single marijuana clinic in Northridge called Today’s Healthcare and caught the owner and his colleague red handed (or green handed, in this case) buying and selling $18 grand worth of weed, with a like amount stashed in one of the men’s vehicles, and another $6.6 million worth of plants found when warrants were served on the guys’ houses.

According to Brown’s office, in order to make Friday’s bust, 11 agents were involved —as opposed to the DEA’s 100-agent cluster…uh…thingy.

The raids and the arrests were the result of an six-month investigation by the same multi-agency task force.

(Interesting random fact: Established in 1927, BNE is the oldest narcotic enforcement bureau in the United States.)

“This criminal enterprise bears no resemblance to the purposes of Proposition 215, which authorized the use of medical marijuana for seriously sick patients,” said AG Jerry Brown in today’s announcement. “Today’s Healthcare is a large-scale, for-profit, commercial business. This deceptively named drug ring is reaping huge profits and flaunting the state’s laws that allow qualified patients to use marijuana for medicinal purposes.”

In other words, unlike the Feds, California’s BNE and the AG’s office did it right. They went after the blatant drug dealers while respecting state law and the will of the California voters.

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UPDATE: Monday afternoon, Brown’s office also announced a set of “guidelines” for law enforcement and patients regarding med marijuana.

Oddly, this is the first time that any state agency has issued such guidelines, and both cops and advocates said they welcomed the legal clarification.

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Note: the photo of the BNE guys is a snapshot I snatched from the InterMountain News of another BNE raid, but not Friday’s drug raid.