PATT MORRISON TALKS TO THE LASD’S NEW JAILER-IN-CHIEF
The LA Times Patt Morrison did an interesting Q & A interview with Terri McDonald, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s newly appointed Assistant Chief in charge of LASD’s custody facilities—its jails.
Interviews like these are tricky both for the journalist and the subject because someone in McDonald’s position needs to sound serious, knowledgeable and substantive but not be particularly controversial, or in any way critical of the department or, heaven forbid, her new boss, the sheriff. Moreover, she must accomplish all this while navigating a path that is, due to the department’s ongoing scandals, investigations, and problems, loaded with extremely large bear traps. Thus the temptation is for the interviewee to say not much of consequence—which leaves the interviewer with a load of meaningless pablum.
But both Morrison and McDonald did much better than that.
There were no monster surprises or gasp-producing revelations. But it’s a smart conversation that is in a subtle way, quite revealing.
Below is a clip from the middle of the interview. But read it all—-especially that part about McDonald’s favorite prison movies.
In your new job, do you have the authority not just to make recommendations but to carry them out?
I believe the sheriff has given me full authority to do that. These aren’t easy problems, and fixes don’t happen overnight. Many solutions require resources, and it’s still a time of constrained resources. We just have to learn to be creative.
[SNIP]Is there a philosophy of incarceration that you embrace?
Three kinds of offenders come into the system. One group of offenders are just criminally entrenched. They tend to be rather sociopathic, predatory, violent, very difficult to manage and very dangerous. The second group has made a situational mistake. They’re coming in to serve their time. They have abilities, and when they get out [they won’t] return. The third group lands somewhere in between. If they can be reached, they’re likely to be successful. If you don’t provide those services, they’re likely to go on to a lifetime of criminality.
How has realignment changed the system?
Post-realignment, parole violators are serving time locally. They’re referred to in the state prison system as churners — they come in, they serve 45 days or so, then out they go. That’s the same population sitting in county jails now. [Some] 60% of those have a substance abuse problem that hopefully you can address.
Just this past week, The Times wrote about a 2009 email from a sheriff’s deputy to two black colleagues about the “Black Panther LASD.”
It is currently under investigation. But I consider it inappropriate behavior.
Late last year, a couple of deputies exchanged pictures of beaten-up inmates. One message read, “Looks like we did a better job.” How do you change these mindsets?
[The state] system had similar allegations. I was one of the folks who rolled out the new use-of-force training policy [there] and also developed and implemented a statewide policy eradicating the code of silence. [You have to] tell people what will not be tolerated.L.A. County’s already put together an excellent use-of-force policy, not just when and where you use force but how you track it and monitor it.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard executives and managers work, occasionally a stray employee is the wrong employee for any law enforcement agency.
FORMER GANG MEMBER AGUSTIN “TIN TIN” LIZAMA TALKS ABOUT LOSING HIS ARM, HIS BEST FRIEND AND HIS BROTHER TO GANG VIOLENCE. NOW HE HELPS OTHERS RECOVER HOPE
Tin Tin Lizama is one of the best men I know. I met him in 2006 when my novelist friend Leslie Schwartz and I managed to rope ourselves into running a poetry writing class at Homeboy Industries. The thing was co-sponsored by PEN USA (where I was on the board of directors) and funded primarily by the California Council for the Humanities. The idea was to help former gang members, and young, at-risk wannabe gang members find their individual voices through writing, and also through interviewing each other for oral histories—all culminating in a couple of performances where the homeboys and homegirls read their work, plus the publication of a book that anthologized a poem or three from each student, plus the best of the interviews.
(I wrote a little about the class here and here.)
Back then, Agustin Lizama—called Tin Tin for short— was one of the class’s shy but budding talents. Yet I noticed that he never took his left arm out of his pocket. What I know now, but didn’t know then until he disclosed the secret in his writing, was that he was hiding the fact that both his left hand and part of his arm was missing, blown off by another gangster in a drive-by shooting when he was 12.
Now a gifted public speaker, the head of Homeboy’s domestic violence program, and a devoted father, Tin Tin has no such reticence. He has learned the power of revealing himself—his arm, his once-buried emotions, his intelligence, and his enormous sense of compassion.
I tell you all this because I happened to notice that Kathleen Miles at the Huffington Post has written a a very nice profile of Tin Tin.
Here’s how it opens:
When Agustin Lizama was 11 years old, he joined a gang. When he was 12, he was shot.
He remembers coming home from school that day and heading down to the corner store, where his brother, then 15, was hanging out with their other fellow gang members.
A car drove by and one of the occupants fired a 12-gauge shotgun at close range. “I looked down and saw half my thumb and a couple pieces were still there, but everything was pretty much hanging,” said Lizama, now 33.
A pellet had gone directly into his skinny forearm. “I started screaming so loud. Then I was in shock, numb. I couldn’t answer people’s questions. The pain was so bad I don’t think my body or brain could really take it.”
At the hospital, doctors had to remove about half of his left forearm and hand. Instead of compelling him to turn away from gun culture, the injury forced Lizama further into the gang. “At the time, my support was already the gang. So it just drove me deeper,” he said.
Lizama grew up in the northeast LA neighborhood of Glassell Park as one of seven children, all raised by their single mother. Because his mother juggled several jobs, it seemed that the only attention he got from her was a beating if he did something wrong, he said.
“That’s why I joined a gang. I was so hungry for attention, and they gave it to me,” he said.
The first thing Lizama did once he recovered from the shooting was to buy a gun — a black market .22-caliber revolver for $44. “I wasn’t going to get caught slippin’ again,” he said. “It was the most empowering feeling.”
REPORT FINDS EMPLOYEE MISCONDUCT STILL TOO HIGH AT PROBATION DEPARTMENT
The Los Angeles Office of Independent Review (OIR) issued its yearly report assessing LA County Probation and found that, while there was a slight improvement in employee misconduct over 2011, there was still way too much, especially when it came to those who supervised kids.
Here are a couple of clips on the just-released report from the story by Christina Villacorte of the Daily News.
An alarming number of Los Angeles County Probation Department employees were accused of misconduct both on and off duty in 2012, though the figures are down slightly from the year before, according to a report Wednesday by the county Office of Independent Review.
Robert Miller, deputy chief attorney at the OIR, which the county Board of Supervisors appointed to monitor misconduct investigations at the department, said, “A constant concern is their use of force in the juvenile institutions.”
[BIG SNIP]
The OIR report profiled several incidents of on-duty misconduct, including an officer stealing public funds from youths making the transition from foster care to independent living, and another using a department computer to search for an ex-wife in violation of a court order.
The off-duty misconduct included Carl Washington, a high-ranking manager and former state assemblyman, being arrested at Probation headquarters in Downey, accused of stealing about $200,000 from financial institutions by claiming to be a victim of identity theft.
One employee was investigated for, but not charged with, attempted murder after he shot a man he had argued with at a bar. Another employee was arrested for indecent exposure and lewd conduct after being caught masturbating at a public park.
Not cheering at all.
STANFORD’S PRISON & PAROLE EXPERTS, JOAN PETERSILIA AND ROBERT WEISBERG, SAY REALIGNMENT CAN SUCCEED, JUST GIVE IT A MINUTE
In an Op Ed for the Sacramento Bee, Joan Petersilia, and Robert Weisberg, write about how California’s inmate realignment is doing, what it is doing, and where it needs to go.
Petersilia is one of the nation’s top corrections system experts and, along with colleague, Weisberg, she runs Stanford’s Criminal Justice Center.
She has also been given a grant to assess how realignment is faring in each of the counties.
All this is to say that her sober-minded, unfrilled analysis of the issue is worth reading.
Here’s a clip from the essay.
…Since realignment went into effect 18 months ago, the state prison population has declined by roughly 25,000. Quite predictably, the local jail population has simultaneously increased, and by some projections, the jail increase might soon roughly equal the prison population decline.
If the total number locked up in state prisons or jails turns out to be about the same in the near term, should we conclude that realignment isn’t succeeding? We think the answer is no, because that’s the wrong metric for evaluation.
First, even if accurate, the projection that the overall incarceration population in California may not change doesn’t diminish realignment’s success. The law’s primary and most immediate goal was to satisfy the federal injunction to cure unconstitutional overcrowding.
Of course, the Plata case is not yet resolved; the plaintiffs contend many illegal conditions persist. But given the dramatic decrease in the number of state prisoners, and the overhaul of health care and mental health care, and other operations, we know that in time the injunction will terminate.
When it does, realignment will deserve much of the credit. Moreover, many felons who would have entered state prison on new crimes or re-entered following parole revocations, but instead have been “realigned” under the new law surely pose some risk to public safety. Realignment wasn’t intended to change the length of sentences, only the place where sentences are served. If prosecutorial and judicial decisions lead to most of those realigned felons being in jail, then realignment will have solved a constitutional problem without reducing public safety.
Finally, the Eighth Amendment violations in Plata were hardly legal technicalities. Overcrowding caused shocking numbers of preventable deaths from disease and even suicide, serious spread of contagious disease, and a lack of even minimal mental health care. It also exposed inmates and guards to violence, and deprived educational and rehabilitation programs of minimal space to operate.
If realignment helps address those problems, it will help achieve an undeniable social good while also potentially reducing recidivism – for both jail and prison inmates
L.A. County’s already put together an excellent use-of-force policy, not just when and where you use force but how you track it and monitor it.
“Unfortunately, no matter how hard executives and managers work, occasionally a stray employee is the wrong employee for any law enforcement agency.”
Celeste: If this is her mindset then she hasn’t got a clue!! LASD is a top to bottom system failure! Obviously, the AS hasn’t done her homework and intends to learn the job while on the job! I hope that Witla and the Times reports on her mistakes as well as Baca and Tanaka’s failures were reported. We want her to succeed but she already shows signs of misplaced loyalty. By the way the force policy was forced onto us (excuse the pun) because of Rodney.