HAPPY 50th BIRTHDAY GIDEON V. WAINWRIGHT – THE RIGHT TO AN ATTORNEY

We have all heard the text of the Miranda warning recited in films and on episodic TV shows at least a zillion times:

You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
You have the right to an attorney.
If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.

What most of us don’t know or don’t remember is the fact that the last line—the thing about a lawyer being provided for those who can’t afford one—is a right that is only half a century old.

Monday, March 18, marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright, which guarantees the right to counsel for criminal defendants in state courts who
cannot afford an attorney.

But, despite this remarkable Supreme Court decision that changed American legal history, and despite the hard work of many dedicated public defenders, the system, say experts, is close to broken, with overloaded public defenders often able to spend little more than 3 hours on a clients entire case.

The AP’s Mark Sherman has a story on the topic. Here’s a clip:

….So that was the promise of Gideon — that a competent lawyer for the defense would stand on an equal footing with prosecutors, and that justice would prevail, at least in theory.

A half-century later, there are parts of the country where “it is better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former prosecutor. Leahy said court-appointed lawyers often are underpaid and can be “inexperienced, inept, uninterested or worse.”

Regardless of guilt or innocence, few of those accused of crimes are rich, while 80 percent say they are too poor to afford a lawyer.

People who work in the criminal justice system have become numb to the problems, creating a culture of low expectations, said Jonathan Rapping, a veteran public defender who has worked in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and New Orleans.

Rapping remembers walking into a courtroom in New Orleans for the first time for a client’s initial appearance before a judge. Several defendants in jump suits were shackled together in one part of the courtroom. The judge moved briskly through charges against each of the men, with a lawyer speaking up for each one.

Then he called a name and there was no lawyer present. The defendant piped up. “The guy said he hadn’t seen a lawyer since he was locked up 70 days ago. And no one in the courtroom was shocked. No one was surprised,” Rapping said.

A new award-winning documentary called “Gideon’s Army” gives a visceral feeling for the problem, and the idealism of some of the young public defenders who are trying to make a difference, despite the odds.

GIRLS & BOYS ARE DIFFERENT—SO WHY DO WE PRETEND OTHERWISE WHEN WE LOCK THEM UP?

The juvenile justice system was—and in most ways still is—-designed for boys. And that’s a problem.

Yes, boys greatly outnumber girls in the justice system but girls’ numbers have been growing. Between 1991 and 2003, girls’ detentions rose by 98 percent, compared to a 29 percent increase in boys’
detentions.

More recently, as the number of juvenile arrests has dropped in the U.S., the drop is far bigger for boys than for girls. (In 2010, boys’ arrests had decreased by 26.5 percent since 2001, while girls’ arrests had decreased by only 15.5 percent.)

Girls come into detention facilities for different reasons and with different needs from those of their male counterparts, and yet they are often treated with a cookie cutter sameness.

For instance, 19 percent of boys in juvenile detention facilities had tried to commit suicide, while 44 percent of girls had.

In terms of physical abuse, the split was 22 percent boys, 42 percent girls.

And 8 percent of boys admitted to being sexually abused; 35 percent of girls had been sexually abused.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to differences—and the needs they suggest.

The Sunday LA Times has a story by Anna Gorman on the subject. And it is an important topic that we’ll continue to return to over the next year.

Here’s a clip from Gorman’s report:

Latrice lifts the sleeve of her gray sweatshirt to reveal small, dark lines — scars from slicing her forearm over and over to drown out pain from years of sexual abuse. She says she was an alcoholic, dropped out of school in the eighth grade and got pregnant at 16.

Now 18, she is in Los Angeles County’s juvenile justice system because she violated probation. Latrice says she has been locked up more than 20 times in four years. Petite and talkative, she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and takes antidepressants.

Her health issues — and those of about 9,400 girls in juvenile detention centers around the nation — are serious and complex. Many of the girls don’t have regular doctors, so their physical and emotional problems often go undiagnosed and untreated. That continues when they enter a system that was designed for boys and has been slow to adapt to girls.

“Their health needs are different; they are more severe and more complicated than boys’,” said Catherine Gallagher, a George Mason University professor and an expert in juvenile justice. “They come in underserved…. They remain underserved.”

More than one-third of girls in custody nationwide have a history of sexual abuse, compared with 8% of boys. Girls also have had more physical abuse, suicide attempts and drug-related problems, according to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Few juvenile justice centers have shown they meet minimum healthcare standards, and girls are less likely than boys to get the care they need.

Both the Atlantic Monthly and NPR did good stories —both by reporter Jenny Gold—on the needs of girls that are worth reading and/or listening.

Here, also is one of the studies from the Department of Justice with some of the facts and figures.

SHERIFF LEE BACA AGAIN PROPOSES NEARLY $1 NEW BILLION JAIL

Christina Villacorte of the Daily News has the story:

With the inmate population steadily increasing, Sheriff Lee Baca will ask the Board of Supervisors Tuesday to study replacing the dilapidated and violence-plagued Men’s Central Jail with a $932.8-million high-tech facility, and consider relying more on electronic monitoring devices and other alternatives to incarceration.

The proposal at this stage is to hire a contractor to prepare a conceptual design and environmental impact review.

In a letter to the board, Baca and county chief executive officer William Fujioka said it was “critical” to begin the process of replacing the aging MCJ with a more efficient facility that would hold high-security and medical inmates.

The proposed new jail would be built on the site of the half-century-old MCJ in downtown Los Angeles. It is envisioned to house up to 3,500 high-security and medical inmates in two towers.

Baca and County CEO are also scheduled to ask for $22 million in order to restore adequate patrols in the county’s unincorporated areas. (So what happened to that independent audit that was going to be done on the department’s budget to find out where the money was going. Here’s that story—also from Villacorte at the DN.

REBOOTING FATHERHOOD IN THE PROJECTS
As Jordan Downs heads for a massive rebuild, how the men in one unique local support group may help heal their long-troubled community—as they heal themselves

Michael Cummings—a large, charismatic man known by most simply as Big Mike—has been through a wider variety of stages in his life than most. He’s been an LA gang member, been shot, sold drugs, been to prison.

Now he’s an ordained pastor and a recognized community leader who spends most of his waking hours working to heal the same community that, as a young man, he and his friends helped to break.

For instance, on weekdays, Cummings oversees a program called Safe Passages where he, and the team he has organized, get kids to and from Jordan High school safely so they don’t get robbed, jumped, beaten up…or worse—and thus stop going to school, or drop out altogether.

Then as a pastor, in addition to his spiritual work, he officiates at funerals when someone is killed by neighborhood violence, and helps the families of the dead find affordable ways of burying their loved ones. He helps struggling young men in the community to find jobs, and, when he is able, interrupts violence on the street when he sees it about to occur.

And, since the fall of 2011, Big Mike has run something called Project Fatherhood, in which men from the Jordan Downs housing project (and beyond), meet every Wednesday to teach each other, and themselves, how to be fathers.

“See, most of the men in the group never had fathers,” Cummings told me. “Or if they did have a father in the home, he was usually was doing drugs or an alcoholic, or abusive, or both. So those men never had anyone show them what it means to be a parent,” said Cummings, at least not a male parent.

“A mother can teach a lot of things. But she can’t teach the same things that a father can teach,” he said. “She can’t teach a boy to be a man.”

It is that lack of a father that often sends young men into gangs, said Cummings (a fact that I had observed over and over again in my own years of gang reporting.)

“Take me,” said Cummings. “My father wasn’t there. He came around every so often, but even then, he mostly talked to my sister.” Cummings paused. “For a long time, everything I did”—the gangster activities, the drug sales, the flashy accoutrements—”all that I did to show my father I didn’t need him. If he had a Cadillac, I wanted two Cadillacs. That’s how I got back at him. That’s how I showed him he didn’t matter, that I could become a man without him.”

A lot of the men in the group are like him, Cummings said. But they are also men who wanted desperately not to continue the cycle.

MEN WITHOUT FATHERS

Project Fatherhood was begun with a grant from the Children’s Institute, administered by The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA). For years one of LA’s poorest and dangerous public housing complexes, Jordan Downs is now scheduled for an ambitious $1 billion reconstruction to begin in 2014, and HACLA is trying to institute programs and activities that will help improve the personal lives of the residents, during the time in which their residences are being so dramatically transformed. With all this in mind, the CI people saw Jordan Downs as an ideal site for a new program to “help reengage urban fathers.” Some years before, Children’s Institute had noted that “fathers were most often left out of programs designed to strengthen troubled low-income urban families.” Thus Project Fatherhood was created. It was a program that CI had already tried out in other locations, but there seemed to be few better laboratories for a new iteration of the program than historically dysfunctional and violence-haunted Jordan Downs—especially when it was on the cusp of such a massive change.

When HACLA began looking for someone to launch and run the experimental parenting group, Cummings—along with another friend, Andre Christian— already had a once-a-month casual Saturday barbecue/talk session going in Jordan Downs. The way it worked was as follows: using the food as an excuse, guys from the projects would drift over the barbecue area, at which point Cummings and Christian would engage them in conversation on a variety of topics, parenting prominently among them.

And so when Cummings and Christian heard that HACLA was looking for people to submit proposals to run some kind of new fatherhood program…. “We went for it,” he said.

The twosome got the nod—which meant a small grant for the first year’s expenses, plus the requirement that they hire a master social worker.

UCLA’s Dr. Jorja Leap, who already knew Big Mike from her gang work, agreed to fulfill that social worker role. Leap is an expert on gangs, at risk youth, and community violence reduction (among other specialities). “But I started out as a social worker in Watts in 1978 and into the ’80′s,” Leap said. “So for me it was like coming back home.”

REBOOTING FATHERHOOD

The combination worked. A few men out of Cummings and Christian’s Saturday barbecue group came and the word spread. Sometimes the meetings held inside Jordan Downs on Wednesday afternoons are crowded. Other times, according to Leap, it’s down to the core group of 15 or so men. There are a few hispanic men, but most are black, all are impoverished.

All want to be better fathers.

The topics discussed vary widely. “We teach them how to go to school for their kids to talk to the school principal or the counselors,” said Cummings. “We deal with racial and emotional issues. With talk about how to get jobs to support their families. We talk about what it means to be there for your kids.”

Some issues turned out to be controversial and difficult, explained Leap, like the night they talked about corporal punishment—hitting your kids. “They fought me on that,” Leap said. “It got down and dirty. They kept saying, ‘You don’t understand…’ They were worried if they didn’t hit their kids, they would make their kids weak.”

Still, in the days and weeks after the fractious spanking and hitting discussion, some of the group members told Leap individually how they were struggling with the issue, and that they had decided no more physical punishment. “But they never said it to the group.”

The night that got to her most, Leap said, “was the night the men talked openly about how they wished they’d had fathers. I’d heard it before from other men, and from homeboys. And, in my work, believe me, I’m on intimate terms the father wound, and all that.” But she’d never quite heard the level of anguish around the subject that she heard that night.

GROWTH BEGETS GROWTH

Now the program is in its second year, with a brand new and larger 2-year grant that will keep it going for at least a third year. While the core of Project Fatherhood has remained the same, the positive outcomes it is producing have widened beyond solely parenting. For example, in addition to the fathering talk and training, Cummings and company have gotten some of the men into a good construction apprenticeship/training program, at the end of which, “they have OSHA cards.”

Plus, empowered by their involvement in the group, the men have started extending themselves to become more involved in helping their communities, said Leap.

She described one awful night last June when a 24-year-old father and his 1-year old son were shot in what appeared to be a gang shooting gone awry. The father lived, but the little boy died. Although the wounded dad wasn’t part of the Fatherhood group, Leap said, the group nevertheless texted each other back and forth and “organized a peace march, and marched throughout the neighborhood,” to show the sorrowing young father their support.

Another night, Cummings said, a young father age 20 or 21 came to the group and said he had an autistic child and really needed some help. “Two other fathers in the group spoke up and said that they also had autistic kids, and began talking to him about all the things he would need to do.”

Amazed by the unexpected wisdom he suddenly saw exchanged, the incident became one of Cummings’ favorites.

On still another occasion, the Project Fatherhood guys attended a meeting that had been scheduled to discuss concerns about the Jordan Downs reconstruction. In response to issues expressed by the crowd at the meeting, plus additional community lobbying and pressure, it was decided that 30 percent of the construction jobs created by the project had to go to locals. Cummings tells how the fathers were jazzed to be a part of the community activism.

“You can see the growth in all these men,” he said. “It’s so strong!”

REPLICATION

In addition to continuing to grow and strengthen Jordan Down’s Project Fatherhood, Cummings believes that the project can and should be replicated. “We’re to the point, that we could take this project anywhere. You’d have to tailor it for the individual communities, but the basics are there.”

And the need is great, he said.

“In Jordan Downs, Project Fatherhood was basically something that’d been waiting to happen. But the potential was there. The need was there.”

Leap agreed. “This is an example of a community really doing for itself. And that’s exactly how you affect real change.”

POST SCRIPT: THE FATHER OF ALL SUPPORT GROUPS

A few weeks ago, the LA Times Kurt Streeter published a wonderful story on Project Fatherhood that gets deeper into what the meetings are actually like than what we have here. It’s a must read.

Below, for example, is a clip from the middle of Streeter’s story in which he tells of the night the men talked about discipline:

One evening there’s a discussion that might take place at a parenting group in a faraway suburb: where to get good baby formula, how best to bottle feed, the importance of being open and honest. The next week the talk is more particular to Jordan Downs: raising families on welfare; keeping kids from being killed by gangs from nearby neighborhoods; maintaining dignity when you’re a father struggling to find work.

The two topics discussed with the most passion? The men’s mothers and the virtues of old-fashioned discipline.

“Good Lord, we love our mamas,” says one of the men on a midsummer night. But it’s complicated. Some of their mothers were drug addicts. Some had dangerous boyfriends or were quick-tempered.

“You all remember mine,” McGruder says. “Anyone in these projects needed anything when they were boys, they could come to her.”

The men agree. Everyone remembers Miss McGruder.

“But oh Lord, she laid some whuppings on me,” he says. “All of our mothers did. That discipline is what’s missing with our kids these days.”

There are cackles of laughter. Children in the neighborhood, one father argues, “need to learn fear.” Without fear they can become teens who talk back to the police. If that happens, the police will surely jail, beat or even kill them.

The reasoning hangs in the air, solemn, serious, seen as fact. “Tell it!”

Leap, married to a former LAPD commander who once patrolled Jordan Downs, tries to get the group to consider alternatives to corporal punishment. Some of the men say she’s just plain wrong. Talking and “time-outs” might work in wealthy white neighborhoods, but not here.

Sensing she’s going to lose this debate, at least for now, Leap reminds the men of how the law defines child abuse. “No closed fists, nothing to the head, fellas, nothing.”

Big Mike joins her. “No bruises or cuts. You do that, not only is it wrong, but your kids are gonna be taken by the authorities.”

Be sure to read the rest here.

UPDATE: THIS SEEMS TO BE MY WEEK FOR RADIO. I’M GOING TO BE ON WITH SUZI WEISSMAN ON KPFK’S BENEATH THE SURFACE, TODAY, FRIDAY, between 5pm and 6pm. (I’ll be doing a ten minute news segment at some point during the hour.) We’ll be discussing the Christopher Dorner story and much else.

You can listen live at 90.7 FM or online here. Here’s the podcast. You can find me in the first 13 minutes or so.

THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT AND THE MATTER OF DEPUTY GANGS

I was on Warren Olney’s Which Way LA? on Thursday night talking about whether the LA Sheriff’s Department’s recently announced plans to fire 7 members of the LASD’s Jump Out Boys clique was an action that was more symbol than substance—designed to refurbish the department’s scandal-wracked reputation.

[You can find the podcast here.]

LASD spokesman, Steve Whitmore, was also on the show, as was LA Times reporter, Robert Faturechi. Whitmore said that the Jump Out Boys firing was simply the first in a process of “cleaning house.”

Yet, given the department’s largely unadressed history of deputy cliques—which, in too many cases, seem to project an us-versus-them, we’re the “alpha dogs, do what you got to do ethos of policing—it is difficult not to be skeptical about all this purported sweeping up.

When on the show, I listed a few of the corners of the LASD “house” that could use some cleaning, when it comes to deputy gangs.

For instance I mentioned this account of problematic deputy gangs inside Men’s Central Jail, as told by retired LASD Commander Bob Olmsted during his testimony to the jails commission:

Following up on Busansky’s line of questioning, the Commission’s executive director, Miriam Krinsky, asked if Olmsted had ever heard the term, “earn your ink.”

Olmsted nodded, yes, he had.

“I was a commander at the time. When significant force was going up, I told Captain Cruz that I wanted to see every report where significant force occurred in Men’s Central Jail.

“There was one particular report that stood out in my mind. The inmate was interviewed, and he said, ‘I was up against the wall. I had my hands behind my back. Then one deputy said to the other deputy, “Are you ready to earn your ink?” And then, boom! All of a sudden they busted his orbital. “ (The orbital being the eye socket.)

“And I’m thinking, what the hell does ‘earn your ink” mean? Then I started asking a around. People said, ‘Oh, you don’t know? The 2000 Boys have a Roman Numeral II tattooed on the back of their calf. And that’s how you earn your ink, by busting somebody’s head.’”

At this last, the commission members, who had listened to all of Olmsted’s testimony with unusual intensity, lapsed into a thoughtful silence—except for Reverend Murray, who shook his head slightly.
“Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Mmmmmm.” Murray, murmured sadly, his expression of dismay not meant for the microphone, which picked it up anyway.

When I spoke to Olmsted on Thursday morning, and asked him if there had been any firings around these issues, he said to his knowledge, there had not.

And then there is the matter of the Regulators, as represented in an internal LASD document, circa 2004, that WLA acquired some time back. The memo indicates strong concern among command staff about the gangster-like behavior of the Regulators clique based at Century station. Among other concerns, it was reported that, as with the Jump Out Boys, if a Regulator was involved in “a fatal deputy involved shooting,” then smoke was added to the barrels of the revolvers featured in the clique’s signatory tattoo. (In the case of the Regulators, the clique tattoo reportedly depicted a trench-coated skeleton wearing a cowboy hat and holding not one, but two nice big guns.)

There were, of course, illustrations of the problem I didn’t have the time to mention.

For instance, there is the matter of Sergeant Timothy Cooper who allegedly pulled a gun on Sergeant Mark Moffett, pointed it at his head inside the Compton station in front of a witness and mouthed, “I’m going to kill you.” Serg. Cooper sports both a Viking tattoo and a Regulator tattoo. He received a 15 day suspension and, according to our sources, at least half of that suspension was “suspended.”

**And then there are the Vikings clique members who are scattered throughout the department in positions of responsibility, people like Lt. Greg Thompson, who last we heard was being investigated by the LASD for this incident inside Men’s Central Jails, and by the feds in this incident, was named multiple times for alleged misconduct as a Vikings clique member in this famous class action lawsuit. To my knowledge Thompson has not even been relieved of duty.

The list goes on after that.

When I spoke to Witmore after the broadcast, he reiterated the sheriff’s intention to do housecleaning.

“And look,” he said, “just these seven sends a chill through the department.”

SHERIFF’S BOOSTER CLUB DENIES MISUSE OF FUNDS BY LASD CAPTAIN JOSEPH STEPHEN, NAMED IN SEXUAL COERCION INVESTIGATION

John Loesing at The Acorn has looked into this side story about alleged misappropriation of booster club funds for personal use by former Los Hills/Malibu Station Captain Joseph Stephen. The accusation sprang up following the sexual coercion allegations against three former Sheriff’s Department higher ups, including Stephen, who has recently been relieved of duty. The Sheriff’s Department has reportedly opened an Internal Affairs investigation on the matter but Acorn spoke to Daniel Stern, a board member with the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Foundation, who said that the accusation involving “….possible sexual misconduct and misappropriation of Booster Club funds” relating to parties and prostitution while he attended the 2012 Baker to Vegas Relay, a law enforcement fundraising run” was completely unfounded.

EDITOR’S NOTE: WLA GRIEVES FOR 2 RIVERSIDE OFFICERS SHOT, ONE FATALLY, IN AMBUSH ATTACK REPORTEDLY BY CHRISTOPHER JORDAN DORNER

The Press Enterprise has the story of the two Riverside officers shot early on Thursday, allegedly by Christopher Jordan Dorner.

(That’s our respected friend, Riverside Chief of Police Sergio Diaz, at the press conference about Dorner and the shooting in the video above.)

Christopher Jordan Dorner is, of course, the former LAPD officer who is suspected of shooting and killing Monica Quan, the daughter of longtime LAPD officer Randy Quan, and her fiance Keith Lawrence, in a ghastly and tragic act of revenge against the LAPD for what he believed was his unfair dismissal.

WLA grieves too for the Quan and Mitchell families.

It is our deep hope that Dorner can be quickly apprehended without anyone else getting hurt, and that this frightening chapter can come to an end.

The LA Times Joel Rubin, Jack Leonard and Kate Linthicum have an informative article on Dorner and his background here.

And you can read details, witness testimony and the ruling regarding Dorner’s 2011 appeal of his firing here: DORNER v. LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT It was his second appeal in the matter.

Here, by the way, is a link to Dorner’s manifesto, but with the names of the officers and others he names redacted for their safety.

FIRING THE JUMP OUT BOYS

According to LASD spokesman, Steve Whitmore, the Sheriff’s Department intends to fire seven members of the newest deputy gang-like clique to become notorious, the so-called Jump Out Boys—a move that perhaps was in part stimulated by the grand jury action on the department’s deputy gangs.

The members of the Jump out boys are part of OSS—Operation Safe Streets—the gang investigation unit within the department.

Evidently there were two particular qualities that distinguished this deputy gang from the department’s other deputy gangs (like the Regulators, the 2000 Boys, the 3000 Boys, the Grim Reapers, the Vikings and so on). One is the fact that it’s members had the bad sense to write and print out a Jump Out Boys pamphlet laying out the mission and rules of said clique.

The other is that reportedly after a clique-member engages in a deputy-involved-shooting, he (or, one presumes, she) is entitled to have smoke coming from the gun in his Jump Out Boys tattoo. (The Jump Out Boys insignia—and tattoo design— is a skull holding a large revolver with the two playing cards behind it, one half of the famous aces-and-eights “dead man’s hand.”)

The LA Times Robert Faturechi broke the story about the Jump Out Boy’s existence, last year, and he has more on the matter of this firing. Here’s a clip:

The seven worked on an elite gang-enforcement team that patrols neighborhoods where violence is high. The team makes a priority of taking guns off the street, officials said.

The Sheriff’s Department has a long history of secret cliques with members of the groups having reached high-ranking positions within the agency. Sheriff officials have sought to crack down on the groups, fearing that they tarnished the department’s reputation and encouraged unethical conduct.

In the case of the Jump Out Boys, sheriff’s investigators did not uncover any criminal behavior. But, sources said, the group clashed with department policies and image.

Their tattoos, for instance, depicted an oversize skull with a wide, toothy grimace and glowing red eyes. A bandanna with the unit’s acronym is wrapped around the skull. A bony hand clasps a revolver. Smoke would be tattooed over the gun’s barrel for members who were involved in at least one shooting, officials said….

COULD WE STOP POSTURING ABOUT REALIGNMENT AND USE DATA-DRIVEN ANALYSIS TO LOOK AT CRIME AND RECIDIVISM INSTEAD?

With all else that’s been going on this week, we don’t want you to miss this excellent unsigned LA Times editorial (which happens to be written by my extremely smart friend, Robert Green). It analyses the findings of two reports—one of which we wrote about last month, released by the Council for State Governments Justice Center, which talked about who was getting arrested within a given period in LA County. Then last week there was another important study by the Vera Institute, which looks at mental illness, drug addition and incarceration in California.

Here’s a quick clip from Rob’s essay about what the two reports together suggest:

On Monday, in a separate study, the Vera Institute of Justice reported that a large proportion of county jail inmates from two study areas — Boyle Heights and South Los Angeles — preparing to reenter society have drug or mental health problems.

More research is needed, but the figures from both the Council for State Governments and the Vera Institute suggest that many people who wind up in jail or prison got into trouble at least in part because of clinical conditions, and that many of them come out with the same problems they had when they went in.

If public resources are to be spent effectively, California must cut its recidivism rate, and to do that, it must use data to slice through the posturing of those in politics and law enforcement who claim to “know,” without facts or figures, what people, policies or laws to blame for crime. If drug and mental health problems play a large role in landing people behind bars, it stands to reason that focusing more on diagnosis and treatment could save taxpayers money, reduce the criminal burden on neighborhoods and, by the way, address some of the misery and hopelessness of those caught in the revolving jailhouse door.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE ADVOCATES TAKE A CRITICAL LOOKS AT THE CDCR’S NEW CHIEF

While new CDCR head, Jeffery Beard, is generally viewed with optimism by most prison watchers, criminal justice reformers say there are also areas of concern. George Lavender for The East Bay Express has the story.

(I didn’t clip it as it lists a bunch of pros and cons, thus it’s better to look at the whole thing.)

CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT LOOKS READY TO OKAY LOCAL BANS ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA CLINICS

Law.com has the latest on this story. Here’s a clip of Scott Graham’s wonderfully blow-by-blow account:

Medical marijuana dispensaries are in danger of getting zoned out.

The California Supreme Court strongly hinted Tuesday that municipalities have the right to ban dispensaries via local zoning laws.

Tackling an issue that has vexed state appellate courts, the justices indicated that state laws blessing marijuana cooperatives shield them only from criminal prosecution under California law, and do not interfere with municipalities’ traditional power to regulate them as a local business.

An attorney for a cooperative argued that the city of Riverside has abused that power by adopting an ordinance that bans pot dispensaries anywhere in the city. “If you were to allow these dispensaries to be banned county by county, city by city, that would be the exact opposite of what the Legislature intended” when enacting the state’s Medical Marijuana Program in 2003, said J. David Nick.

But the justices sounded largely unmoved by Nick’s appeals to legislative purpose. “The purposes by themselves are not operative,” said Justice Goodwin Liu. They “don’t require or prohibit anybody from doing anything.”

“Don’t we start with a presumption that the ordinance is valid?” asked Justice Ming Chin.

“Why do we even have to indulge in a presumption?” asked Liu.

Nick argued in City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patient’s Health and Welfare Center that California’s 1996 medical marijuana initiative and the 2003 legislative amendments establish the right to operate dispensaries in at least one location in a city. The goals of the 2003 legislation included enhancing “access of patients and caregivers to medical marijuana through collective, cooperative cultivation projects” and shielded such projects “from state criminal sanctions” under various specified laws. Those laws include Health & Safety Code §11570, a public nuisance law directed at drug houses.

Nick says in his briefs that jurisdictions all over the state, including San Jose, the city of Los Angeles and Sacramento County, are pursuing ordinances similar to Riverside’s, putting state marijuana laws “in a complete state of chaos.”

YES, WE’VE BEEN FOLLOWING THE SCARY AND TRAGIC STORY OF FIRED LAPD OFFICER CHRISTOPHER DORMER WHO HAS REVENGE-KILLED TWO PEOPLE AND IS THREATENING TO KILL MORE.

Here’s the Daily Breeze’s version of the painfully scary story of a very disturbed and very dangerous former LAPD officer who, as I type, is still at large.

Better yet, read the Wednesday night coverage by LA Weekly’s Dennis Romero, who live-blogged the unfolding of the story of Christopher Jordan Dormer, the disgraced and dangerous former LAPD cop on a tragic revenge rampage.

According to an internal memo dated last Friday that WitnessLA has obtained, the LA Sheriff’s Department has received a new grand gury subpoena asking for any and all documents, et al, pertaining to the various deputy cliques that have notoriously formed at patrol stations and inside Men’s Central Jail—cliques like the Vikings, the Regulators, the 2000 Boys and the 3000 boys, The Jump Out Boys…and so on. This would suggest that the Feds criminal probe of the department has now widened to include these so-called “affinity groups,” which have been the subject of highly critical press reports over the years, and have been implicated in a variety of lawsuits, some of them still ongoing.

Several of these cliques, like the Regulators in particular, have been a cause of serious concern among department supervisors in years past, according to documents WitnessLA has previously obtained and reported on here.

It has also been a source of controversy that certain members of cliques like the Regulators and the Vikings hold positions of authority in the department. (The highest ranking is, of course, the undersheriff, Paul Tanaka, who still reportedly retains his Viking tattoo on his ankle.)

It will be interesting to see what comes of this new probe.

Last month, if you’ll remember, the LA Times reported that the FBI was investigating the matter of whether or not certain members of the LA County Sheriff’s Department moved FBI informant, Anthony Brown, from place to place inside the county jail system, giving him phony names and fake inmate numbers. Our sources with first hand knowledge of the matter confirmed that, contrary to the department’s official statement on moving the inmate, this was done specifically to keep him away from his Fed handlers. Our sources also said that they were told by their own supervisor, Lt. Greg Thompson (a former Viking, by the way) that the orders to hide the inmate came directly from Undersheriff Paul Tanaka.

And now we see this new prong of what appears to be an ever-widening FBI investigation.

Here’s the memo pertaining to the deputy cliques:

From: Hellmold, James J.

Sent: Friday, January 04, 2013 10:42 AM

To: All Chiefs; Parker, Michael J. (SHB)

Subject: Federal Criminal Grand jury Subpoena #2086, Item 8

The Department has received a Federal Criminal Grand Jury Subpoena demanding the production of documents. Two of the demands are as follows:

“ Any documentation, reports, memorandum, notes, drawing, pictures, civil litigation documents, or media statements regarding any Deputy clique (Current or Historical), investigated by lAB, ICIB, OIR, or any other LASD entity, including but not limited to: the “Vikings,” “Regulators,” “3000 boys,” “2000 boys,” “Cavemen” “Banditos,” and “Jump Out Boys.” And, “Any documents, policy changes, memorandum, reports, emails, or declarations issued as a result of Deputy cliques at the East Los Angeles station.”

In the Department’s effort to comply completely and thoroughly with this subpoena, you are instructed to review the demand by the United States Attorney’s Office and determine whether you, or anyone within your chain of command at the rank of lieutenant or above, possess any documents responsive to this subpoena. Any responsive documents should be forwarded to the Discovery Unit for production to our law firm. If you determine there are no responsive documents within your chain of command, an email indicating such should be forwarded to Lt. Judy Gerhardt. The Discovery Unit will track responses from each Division to ensure the Department’s response is exhaustive to the best of its ability.

The due date for responses to the Discovery Unit should be Monday, January 14.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Lt. Gerhardt at [numbers deleted by WLA]

James J. Hellmold
Assistant Sheriff
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
4700 Ramona Boulevard
Monterey Park, CA 91754

Last Friday, July 27, the Citizens Committee on Jail Violence heard public testimony from Sheriff Lee Baca and his Undersheriff, Paul Tanaka.

We will have more commentary on their appearances on Wednesday and again later in the week.

For those of you who are following the ongoing LASD drama—a drama where a so much at stake—I think you’ll find it absolutely essential reading.

THE COMMANDER

Straight-backed and going gray with a closely clipped beard, Bob Olmstead has the mysterious quality that law enforcement types refer to as command presence.

He came to oversee Men’s Central Jail in December of 2006, some months after then-Assistant Sheriff Paul Tanaka, the executive who oversaw the custody division from January 2005 to June 2007, reportedly became incensed at Captain John Clark, the man who was, at the time, overseeing the county’s largest and most troubled jail facility. It seems, Clark was not running CJ in the way that Mr. Tanaka wanted. Most specifically, in order to address escalating incidents of questionable force by deputies on inmates in the jail, Clark had elected to institute a job rotation plan for CJ personnel that had long been recommended by others who had studied the problem, but that Tanaka had decided he loathed. As a consequence, Tanaka rescinded Clark’s plan and then became intensely determined to get Clark out of CJ and out of the custody division altogether.

[WitnessLA has reported on the back story between Mr. Tanaka and Mr. Clark and some of his supervisors, here, here and here.]

Olmsted, whom he knew to be well-liked by Sheriff Baca, was the person whom Tanaka tapped to replace Clark.

Olmsted told the commission that when he got the call about replacing Clark, he had only spoken to Mr. Tanaka once before. He said that while he had zero interest in leaving his existing post, a prestigious job in commercial crimes investigations, when Tanaka asked him to make the move, he agreed to do it.

“I’m a team player,” Olmsted told the commission.

Tanaka did not tell Olmsted much about why he wanted Clark out so much. “He said there were morale issues, force issues,” Olmsted explained, “and there was an attempt to rotate all the deputies on the jail”—a strategy that Tanaka made clear to Olmsted that he despised.

Olmsted said that Tanaka reportedly said nothing specific about what he’d like a new captain to do differently, in terms of supervision or strategy, or even goals he wanted hit, he was emphatic about certain additional personnel changes he wanted. There were three sergeants and a lieutenant whom Tanaka wanted Olmsted to get rid of, for reasons that were never made clear. (Olmsted checked the four out, determined they were doing a fine job, and kept them on anyway.)

Most importantly, Tanaka said, he had a guy named Dan Cruz whom he told Olmsted was to be his operations lieutenant, making him the second in command at the jail.

“He wouldn’t have been my choice,” Olmsted said of Cruz. He would have chosen someone, he said, who was “more hands on, more personable, someone who could talk to the deputies and get ‘em motivated.” Still Olmsted agreed to take Cruz out of courtesy to the assistant sheriff, who made it plain he was keen on the transfer.

He would learn much later how drastically unsuited Cruz was for the job, and how his assignment to the jails had little to do with merit, and everything to do with his relationship to Mr. Tanaka.

THE CRUZ FACTOR

To understand this next section of the testimony having to do with Dan Cruz, it helps to know a little about Cruz’s past in the department, a past that Olmsted discovered only much later, as he explained to the commission.

“After I was retired,” Omsted told the commissioners, “I was getting phone calls right and left about stuff that was transpiring at the department.” One such contact, he said, was from a recently retired commander. [He] gave me a call and said, ‘I’m the one that mandated Dan Cruz be transferred from Lennox station.’ He and another lieutenant over there were deficient in the way they handled service comment report and force packages. They were eighteen months behind.”

In response to quizzical looks from the commissioner members, Olmsted explained. “Service comment reports are citizen complaints,” he said. “And ‘use of force packages’ are generated when force is used on individual, a suspect or otherwise. The sergeant looks at the package first. Then the operations lieutenant or station captain “makes the final adjudication.”

This last action is what Cruz neglected inexcusably.

Olmsted went on to explain how the consequence of Cruz holding on to these “packages” of paperwork for 18 months. “You only have one year to look into [a charge of excessive force or a citizen complaint],” said Olmsted. So when Cruz let the complaints and the force reports languish for a year and a half, this meant he effectively rendered each one worthless. This meant if real wrongdoing had occurred on the part of a deputy, or if force was found to be out of policy, “there was nothing you can do.”

“All this made everything make sense after the fact about the problems I had as a commander at Men’s Central Jail,” Olmsted said, of his belated revelations about his new operations lieutenant.

But, back in 2006, Olmsted knew none of Cruz’s history of ignoring complaints. He only knew, he said, that Cruz seemed overly concerned by being one-of-the guys the deputies. “Dan’s the kind of guy who wants to be liked. He’ll do everything he can to try make the deputies happy. I have no problem with that. But sometimes discipline needs to come into play. “

Since part of his job as a supervisor, Olmsted told the commission, was to groom those officers directly under him, he wasn’t bothered by Cruz’s lack of supervisory skills, as he saw the younger man as someone he could mentor.

USE OF FORCE & DEPUTY CLIQUES

Olmsted is a very thorough man by nature. Thus in order have the best possible grasp of what he was walking into at Men’s Central Jail, before he began at his new post, he made a point of setting up a meeting with Clark, the captain whom he was replacing.

“We talked for hours about what was going on,” Olmsted told the commissioners. “He said there were force issues, deputy clicks”—like the now infamous 2000 Boys and 3000 Boys. Clark talked about his (now much written about) attempt to institute the assignment rotation to deal with the cliques.

He also warned Olmsted that three of the lieutenants who would be working under him would be reporting—not to him, but directly to the Assistant Sheriff. “I was told that Wes Sutton, Chris Nee, and Kevin Ebert all reported surreptitiously [to the assistant sheriff] after work, and had monthly meetings with Mr. Tanaka.”

It was, to say the least, a highly unorthodox breech of command structure.

But the undersheriff was becoming known for such breeches.

WORK THE GRAY

In answer to a question from the Commission’s legal counsel, Richard Drooyan, Olmsted said he had no knowledge of the content of those off-the-reservation meetings with Assistant Sheriff Tanaka.

But when Drooyan followed up and asked the commander if he ever heard Mr. Tanaka “…using a term called working in the gray?” Olmsted said he had indeed. He’d not heard it first hand, he said, but he’d definitely heard about it from a variety of close colleagues who had been present when Paul Tanaka gave one of his Work the Gray speeches.

“A very good friend of mine said that when he was in sergeant super school, he said Mr. Tanaka came in and said, ‘You guys need to work the gray area. Work it hard!’”

Drooyan interrupted. “What do you consider ‘working the gray area’ meant?’

Olmsted: “Anything in the gray areas in considered outside policy, as far as I’m concerned. The ‘gray area’ can be interpreted any personal way you want. But it can very easily be construed to be illegal by nature.”

When Olmsted took over CJ, he felt that the work the gray ethic was on display in many areas of the jail’s daily operations. Olmsted then listed for the commission some of the issues at the jail that caused him the most immediate concern.

DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS

In his first week as captain, he said he made a point of walking the floors so he could become acquainted with the deputies and make his presence known. In one of these first walks, he said, he had an “amazing experience. It began, he said, when he walked into the 2000 floor control booth, and saw a deputy with a broken right hand. “What happened to you?” asked Olmsted. “I hit a inmate in the head.” Olmsted said that the deputy replied.

Olmsted was taken aback. “’Really?!” he testified he said to the deputy. “You know, that’s not good for your career.” He chatted with the man, and suggested “there were other ways to subdue an inmate.”

Olmsted then walked up to the floor above, the 3000 floor, and again strolled into the control both. “Same thing. There was a deputy with a broken right hand. I said, ‘What happened to you?’” He too said he’d hit an inmate in the head. Olmsted stayed to talk to the second deputy about all the reasons that head slugging was not the way to go.

Since at this point, Olmsted’s account was starting to sound like a standup comedy routine, one of the commissioners blurted, “Are you serious?”

“Serious as a heart attack,” said Olmsted.

Then he went up to the 4000 floor. Another deputy, another broken hand.

“Don’t tell me,” said Olmsted. “You hit a deputy in the head.”

“No I missed and hit the wall.”

Ba-da-bum!

Olmsted related the events with a storyteller’s touch, but he appeared dead serous about the disturbing implication: on floor after floor, certain deputies were using intense physical violence as their default strategy to control inmate behavior.

It was a matter, Olmsted said, he began taking aggressive steps to stop.

Yet, even before Olmsted encountered the string of broken-handed deputies, he saw other signs of the kind of attitude toward inmates that could easily presage violence:

During his first week on duty, Olmsted told the commissioners, a federal judge called to enquire regarding a rumor he’d heard about problematic graffiti scrawled by deputies inside one of the 3000 floor control booths, specifically the booth on the 3100 block.

“He gave me a call around noon one day. I remember it distinctly because you don’t have a judge call you up often.” The judge met Olmsted at the jail and together the two men went to inspect the control booth in question. When they arrived inside the booth, Olmsted was aghast.

“I found an atrocious sight!” he told the commissioners. Only sworn personnel operate such control booths, he explained, so there could be no blaming of anyone else for the hostile and juvenile vandalism but deputies and their supervisors.

“You have to get two keys to get into it. Inside the second area that you have to go through two locked doors to get access. “ Once past those sets of locked doors, “there was malicious scribbling all over the walls,” he said. “Around the computer keyboard, on the monitor, on the fire hose, which was on strung out on the floor. Olmsted said that the judge was particular concerned with a bumper sticker that was on the control key box. “Please don’t feed the animals.”

Given the high use-of-force statistics in CJ, neither Olmsted nor the judge were inclined to dismiss the scrawled messages as a boys-will-be-boys prank.

“It was ugly. It was just plain ugly,” Olmsted told the commission.

Olmsted said he asked for an immediate “roll-out” from the Internal Affairs Bureau. But after a day or two of taking photographs and analyzing the situation, the two-person IAB team returned to the jail and told Olmsted not to pursue the matter. Their reasoning, he said, was that they had determined that the graffiti had been present for at least six months.

“Now, because this is a violation of policy,” said Olmsted, “everyone who’d walked into 3100—every deputy, every sergeant and every lieutenant who’d walked and out of the control booth and not reported it—would have to be investigated.”

The IAB officers recommend that Olmsted have the room cleaned up, put everyone on notice, but “write this one off” and start over.

Olmsted wasn’t pleased, but after running the decision by his superior officer, he did as was suggested, and let the matter go.

Olmsted also told how constructive interactions with inmates got subverted. When he complimented one deputy for showing a room full of inmates a movie on DVD, which had a measurable calming effect on the men, the very next day the TV connecting cord for the DVD player had been cut—clearly by other deputies—thus effectively ending the movie viewing.

But when Olmsted put his foot down and rectified the situation, deputy who had been showing the films approached him, his expression uncomfortable.

“Please don’t come talk to me any more,” Olmsted said the man told him. “I want to make this stuff work, but I’m getting pressure from my peers. They don’t like the fact that I’m talking to you because they think I’m snitching.

Nevertheless, Olmsted told the commissioners, he continued to set down firm rules regarding force and its use, put confident sergeants into key places, and flooded problem areas of the jail with supervisors. At the same time found out what tools the deputies lacked to do their jobs well, and made sure they were actively supplied.

And after a while, the force numbers in CJ started to go down.

THE CAPTAIN BECOMES A COMMANDER

In April 2008, after he had been captain of CJ for about 15 months, Olmsted was promoted to Commander of all the Southern jails. Dan Cruz was tapped by Mr. Tanaka to move into Olmsted’s place as head of Men’s Central Jail—nevermind that Tanaka was no longer the Assistant Sheriff in charge of custody, but had now moved over to supervising patrol.

When he became a commander, Olmsted was still Cruz’s direct superior. However, once Cruz was in charge of CJ, Olmsted said, his relationship with the man changed “significantly.”

Read the rest of this entry »

EDITOR’S NOTE: THE JAILS COMMISSION STORY IS STILL COMING. SO STAY TUNED

CARLOS & CARLOS: THE NAMESAKE AND THE WRONGFUL EXECUTION

Contributing editor at The Atlantic and legal analyst for 60 Minutes, Andrew Cohen, has the story behind the remarkable and disturbing story of the two men named Carlos—one of whom was executed for a murder the other Carlos has admitted to committing. Here are some clips:

11 p.m Monday, the Columbia University Human Rights Review published and posted its Spring 2012 issue — devoted entirely to a single piece of work about the life and death of two troubled and troublesome South Texas men. In explaining to their readers why an entire issue would be devoted to just one story, the editors of the Review said straightly that the “gravity of the subject matter of the Article and the possible far-reaching policy ramifications of its publication necessitated this decision.”

The article is titled “Los Tocayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution” and it was written by James S. Liebman, Shawn Crowley, Andrew Markquart, Lauren Rosenberg, Lauren Gallo White, Lauren Rosenberg and Daniel Zharkovsky. Los Tacayos can be translated from Spanish as “namesakes” and the two men at the heart of the story were, indeed, named Carlos DeLuna and Carlos Hernandez.. On December 7, 1989, this intense piece establishes beyond any reasonable doubt, Texas executed the former for a murder the latter had committed.

[BIG SNIP]

The DeLuna case was flawed at virtually every level. And all it would have taken to do justice would have been for one prosecutor or cop, one judge or witness, to step up and tell the truth. That didn’t happen. And when it did, thanks to Liebman, Mills and Possley, it was too late for Carlos DeLuna.

What do I think happened? All of the things that go wrong every day in capital cases in this country, all of the human failings and official, institutional biases and prejudices and self-justifications and self-delusions that turn Justice Scalia’s Marsh concurrence into a farce. The bottom line? The criminal justice system decided, combustibly, that Carlos DeLuna was bad enough to be executed without a remotely fair process. The community was fine with the result. The media didn’t care. And the rule of law “covered” it all.

The Columbia University Human Rights Review is hidden behind a paywall. But the authors have made the entire article, plus supporting materia,l available here.

7 SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT “JUMP OUT BOYS” RELIEVED OF DUTY

THE LA Times Robert Faturechi has the story. Here’s a clip:

Seven deputies from within the Los Angeles County sheriff’s gang unit have been placed on leave on suspicion that they belonged to a secret clique that celebrated shootings and branded its members with matching tattoos, sources confirmed.

The move is a sign of the intensifying nature of the probe of the “Jump Out Boys.” Suspicion about the group’s existence was sparked several weeks ago when a supervisor discovered a pamphlet describing the group’s creed, which promoted aggressive policing and portrayed officer shootings in a positive light….

TWO LASD TRANSIT POLICE BEAT DOWN A GUY WITH NO RECORD, NO GUN, NO DRUGS, NO NADA….

The always excellent Scott Moxley of OC Weekly has this hair raising story about two LASD Transit cops severely beating a man who made the mistake of tucking in his shirt within their vision. He sued in civil court and the jury hung.

Here’s a very troubling clip from deep in the story. But read the whole thing.

During Jones’ trial, Harper testified he was without remorse about his use of force. He’d done the man a favor, he explained, by not inflicting more damage. Without a hint of a smile, he asserted that, as a cop, he believed he had “the right to execute” Jones at the scene.

CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT WILL HEAR CASE OF UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT LAW SCHOOL GRADE WISHING TO BE ADMITTED TO THE STATE BAR

Cheryl Miller at Law.com has the story. Here’s a clip:

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously agreed to consider whether an undocumented immigrant should be admitted to the State Bar.

Sergio Garcia’s parents brought him to the United States when he was a young child, according to his attorney, Jerome Fishkin of Fishkin & Slatter in Walnut Creek. He graduated from law school and passed the California bar exam in 2009. The Committee of Bar Examiners has recommended Garcia’s admission, which means that he has received a positive moral character determination.

“We think he meets all the requirements to become a lawyer,” Fishkin said Wednesday afternoon. Fishkin contends that neither citizenship nor residency is required for applicants to be admitted to the bar. And he believes that other undocumented attorneys are practicing in California because they were licensed before bar examiners began asking regularly about candidates’ citizenship.

The court has asked for briefs from Garcia and the Committee of Bar Examiners on five questions: Does federal law preclude an undocumented immigrant’s admission to the State Bar? Does state law allow undocumented immigrants to obtain professional licenses in various fields, including the law and medicine? Does a law license imply that its holder can legally practice in California? Are there any legal or “public policy” limits on the immigrant’s ability to practice law? Do any other concerns arise if undocumented immigrants are allowed to practice?

The court has asked for amicus briefs specifically from the U.S. and state attorneys general.

The Florida Supreme Court is considering a similar case.

LA TIMES CALLS ON LEE BACA TO ASSERT HIS AUTHORITY, LIKE NOW

This is from the paper’s unsigned editorial.

The two former supervisors told a county commission created to investigate problems in the jails that a 2006 proposal to help break up deputy cliques was undermined by then-Assistant Sheriff Paul Tanaka, who has since become Baca’s second in command. Retired Lt. Alfred Gonzales and former Sgt. Daniel Pollaro testified before the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence that Tanaka met with jail supervisors and told them to “coddle” the deputies rather than crack down on them.

Such reports aren’t isolated. Last year, Robert Olmsted, a 32-veteran and former commander, said he had tried alert Baca and his bosses in the jails about violence and cliques but was told the culture within the jails couldn’t be changed.

Since the jails scandal broke last year, Baca has moved too slowly to address the problems he initially denied and later blamed on his command staff…

It’s well written and there’s more. So read the rest.

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

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

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

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

Yeah. About that smoke thingy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The LA Times Robert Faturechi has the story:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We just don’t know.”

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

My friend Jorja Leap has written a wonderful new book called Jumped In: What Gangs Taught Me About Violence, Drugs, Love and Redemption, about her last ten years spent in some of LA’s most violence haunted neighborhoods, in order to study the causes and possible solutions to the gang violence that still claims the lives of nearly 5000 kids and young adults in America.

Jorja is a nationally recognized expert in gangs, violence, and crisis intervention, she is the senior policy adviser on Gangs and Youth Violence for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and has served in similar post for the mayor, for the National Institute of Justice, and more. Jorja brought her crisis intervention skills to post war Bosnia and Kosavo, and is on the faculty at UCLA.

She’s also in the middle of a five year study of the homeboys and homegirls at Homeboy Industries, and has another project at Jordan Downs in partnership with Mike Cummings, a gargantuan former gang member who goes by (and lives up to) the name of Big Mike. Once a fearsome and notorious gangster who helped found the Grape Street Crips, Mike now facilitates groups of men to discover in themselves a passion for fatherhood, with Jorja documenting it all.

In other words, she knows her stuff.

The book draws from all that expertise, of course, but the heart of it is something much closer to the ground, much more intimate, much more heartbreaking, tragic, joy-producing and transformative.

It is also a personal tale of finding her own deepest self in the course of delving into the lives of others. (Did I mention that right in the middle of her research Jorja, the tough girl who was never going to have kids, inconveniently fell in love with and married a widower LAPD Commander with a young daughter? For quite some time, both cop husband-to-be and gangster research subjects were horrified by the proximity of each other.)

But rather than give you any more generalizations, I’ve posted some (very rough) iPhone shot video clips of Jorja speaking at Skylight Books* on Tuesday night.

In the clip above, Jorja fields questions about any fears she had doing the research, and what cultural barriers she encountered.

In the clip below, former gang member Wilfredo Lopez, who came with Jorja to the Skylight event, gives his own perspective on some of the issues the book covers.

In the clip above, Jorja is asked what most surprised her in the course of researching the book. “I know just what surprised me,” she says without missing a beat. “Lesbians.”

In this clip, Jorja address a question about how one “pierces the veil of secrecy” surrounding gangs.

Here she talks about the difference between LA street gangs and organized crime.

*NOTE: Apologies to the wonderful and unmistakable Skylight Books for, in my fatigued haze, originally writing their name as the also wonderful City Lights bookstore in San Francisco.

[MORE BELOW THE JUMP]

Read the rest of this entry »