OIG: LAPD Deployed “Ghost Cars” to Boost Patrol Numbers, Asset Forfeiture $$, Black Teens’ 21 Times Higer Risk of Death by Officer, and LA’s New Poet Laureate

INSPECTOR GENERAL FINDS LAPD MET PATROL GOALS BY SENDING OUT “GHOST CARS”

An investigation by the LAPD’s Office of the Inspector General found department supervisors falsified documents to augment the recorded number of cars on patrol to meet policy requirements. Department commanders in at least 5 of 21 divisions sent out “ghost cars” while the officers recorded as on patrol were actually completing paperwork or performing other duties, according to the report released Friday.

The LA Daily News’ Mike Reicher has more on the investigation. Here’s a clip:

To keep call response times down throughout the city, department policy requires at least one car to patrol each of the department’s roughly 200 geographic areas at all times. A workforce constrained by budget cuts and pressure to report positive statistics may have pushed commanders to manipulate information, some say.

“In the broadest sense, perceptions become reality,” Police Commission President Steve Soboroff said in an interview. “People perceive there are a lot of police in the street, but they would act differently if there’s only one car patrolling their neighborhood.”

Department spokesman Cmdr. Andrew Smith declined to comment until the full Police Commission addresses the report at its Tuesday meeting.

The investigation found that the officers’ patrol cars, which were reported to be responding to emergency calls, were actually parked at the stations or otherwise not on patrol. They are known as “ghost cars.”

[SNIP]

“It appears that the area personnel provided inaccurate accounts of actual patrol strength to [headquarters], and not to the public,” the report by Inspector General Alex Bustamante stated, “for the express purpose of meeting the patrol plan mandate.”

Bustamante’s report details one officer who was assigned to work patrol, but instead worked the equipment room checking out items such as microphones, rifles and car keys. Another spent six hours writing reports and conducting follow-up investigations in the station, despite his official status as patrolling. The report doesn’t list officers’ divisions or names, to protect whistleblowers’ confidentiality.

---

LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES USE SEIZED ASSETS AS FUNDING, BUY WEAPONS, GEAR, AND MORE

A new Washington Post investigation found that since 2008, local law enforcement agencies across the US have used billions of dollars obtained through civil asset forfeiture to buy things like weapons, gear, vehicles, a $637 coffee maker, and a clown. (No, we’re not kidding about the clown.)

The Post’s Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Steven Rich analyzed tens of thousands of expenditure reports submitted to the DOJ through the Equitable Sharing Program which allows law enforcement agencies to use the money they take from citizens. The investigation found that 81% of the $2.5 billion reported was taken from people who were never charged with a crime. But because people have to jump through hoops to prove they legally acquired the money or property that officers took from them, they do not often win it back.

(You can read our earlier posts about asset forfeiture here, here, and here.)

Here are some clips:

The details are contained in thousands of annual reports submitted by local and state agencies to the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, an initiative that allows local and state police to keep up to 80 percent of the assets they seize. The Washington Post obtained 43,000 of the reports dating from 2008 through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The documents offer a sweeping look at how police departments and drug task forces across the country are benefiting from laws that allow them to take cash and property without proving a crime has occurred. The law was meant to decimate drug organizations, but The Post found that it has been used as a routine source of funding for law enforcement at every level.

“In tight budget periods, and even in times of budget surpluses, using asset forfeiture dollars to purchase equipment and training to stay current with the ever-changing trends in crime fighting helps serve and protect the citizens,” said Prince George’s County, Md., police spokeswoman Julie Parker.

Of the nearly $2.5 billion in spending reported in the forms, 81 percent came from cash and property seizures in which no indictment was filed, according to an analysis by The Post. Owners must prove that their money or property was acquired legally in order to get it back.

The police purchases comprise a rich mix of the practical and the high-tech, including an array of gear that has helped some departments militarize their operations: Humvees, automatic weapons, gas grenades, night-vision scopes and sniper gear. Many departments acquired electronic surveillance equipment, including automated license-plate readers and systems that track cellphones.

The spending also included a $5 million helicopter for Los Angeles police; a mobile command bus worth more than $1 million in Prince George’s County; an armored personnel carrier costing $227,000 in Douglasville, Ga., population 32,000; $5,300 worth of “challenge coin” medallions in Brunswick County, N.C.; $4,600 for a Sheriff’s Award Banquet by the Doña Ana County (N.M.) Sheriff’s Department; and a $637 coffee maker for the Randall County Sheriff’s Department in Amarillo, Tex.

Sparkles the Clown was hired for $225 by Chief Jeff Buck in Reminderville, Ohio, to improve community relations. But Buck said the seizure money has been crucial to sustaining long-term investigations that have put thousands of drug traffickers in prison.

“The money I spent on Sparkles the Clown is a very, very minute portion of the forfeited money that I spend in fighting the war on drugs,” he told The Post.

About 5,400 departments and drug task forces have participated in the Equitable Sharing Program since 2008. Justice spokesman Peter Carr said the program is an effective weapon to fight crime but should not be considered “an alternative funding source for state and local law enforcement.”

---

PROPUBLICA: BLACK TEENS FACE MUCH HIGHER RISK OF BEING FATALLY SHOT BY OFFICERS THAN WHITE TEENS

ProPublica’s Ryan Gabrielson, Ryann Grochowski Jones, and Eric Sagara analyzed federal data on fatal “officer-involved” shootings of young males up to the age of 19. The analysis, which included 1,217 deadly shootings between 2010 and 2012 (as well as a larger pool of 12,000 incidents from as far back as 1980), revealed black teens faced a risk of being killed by officers that was 21 times greater than white teens.

Here’s a clip from the ProPublica analysis:

The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.

One way of appreciating that stark disparity, ProPublica’s analysis shows, is to calculate how many more whites over those three years would have had to have been killed for them to have been at equal risk. The number is jarring – 185, more than one per week.

ProPublica’s risk analysis on young males killed by police certainly seems to support what has been an article of faith in the African American community for decades: Blacks are being killed at disturbing rates when set against the rest of the American population.

Our examination involved detailed accounts of more than 12,000 police homicides stretching from 1980 to 2012 contained in the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report. The data, annually self-reported by hundreds of police departments across the country, confirms some assumptions, runs counter to others, and adds nuance to a wide range of questions about the use of deadly police force.

Colin Loftin, University at Albany professor and co-director of the Violence Research Group, said the FBI data is a minimum count of homicides by police, and that it is impossible to precisely measure what puts people at risk of homicide by police without more and better records. Still, what the data shows about the race of victims and officers, and the circumstances of killings, are “certainly relevant,” Loftin said.

[SNIP]

The data, for instance, is terribly incomplete. Vast numbers of the country’s 17,000 police departments don’t file fatal police shooting reports at all, and many have filed reports for some years but not others. Florida departments haven’t filed reports since 1997 and New York City last reported in 2007. Information contained in the individual reports can also be flawed. Still, lots of the reporting police departments are in larger cities, and at least 1000 police departments filed a report or reports over the 33 years.

---

LUIS RODRIGUEZ NAMED LOS ANGELES POET LAUREATE

Last week, Luis Rodriguez, an iconic LA poet, novelist, memoirist, teacher, publisher, and advocate, best known for his memoir, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA, was named Los Angeles’ second ever poet laureate.

(We at WLA think this is a wonderful thing, and we’ll have more on the story later in the week.)

LA Weekly’s Jennifer Swann has more on our new poet laureate. Here’s a clip:

As L.A.’s poet laureate, Rodriguez will serve a two-year term in which he’ll act as “the official ambassador of L.A.’s vibrant creative scene,” a sort of spokesman for the written word, according to a statement issued by the mayor’s office. It’s a natural fit for Rodriguez, who’s already been filling that role on his own, as the founder of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural, a nonprofit bookstore and cultural center that fosters art, literary and music workshops in the largely Latino community of Sylmar.

In his new position, the best-selling author of the memoirs Always Running, La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. and It Calls You Back is expected to host a series of readings, workshops and classes at the L.A. Public Library, which sponsors the poet laureate program, along with the Department of Cultural Affairs. The program is aimed at educating inner-city kids with limited access to poetry.