Community Law Enforcement

A new tack for old juvenile camps

Helping a troubled adolescent isn’t easy. Even more difficult is helping a hundred of them in one room, at the same time. That, however, has been the challenge for the Los Angeles County Department of Probation, which houses some 1,300 young offenders in its juvenile detention camp system.

Research has shown that the most effective programs take place in small group settings. But the county’s 17 camps, many built decades ago, still feel more like military camps than places where a troubled kid might be rehabilitated—little room for study and introspection, but plenty of space for power struggles and gang fights.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors took a first step toward giving Los Angeles County’s juveniles a more rehabilitative setting. Acting on a motion by Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Don Knabe, the board voted to pursue a $28 million state grant to transform one the county’s 17 camps into a state-of-the-art rehabilitative compound.

“This is a modest attempt to change the dynamics in one camp and the outcomes in one camp, so hopefully we’ll learn a few things and begin to convert other aspects,” Yaroslavsky said. “We’ve got to do something about these camps.”

Although the supervisors are examining which camp to refurbish, the county’s grant application was clear on the goal—to create a more therapeutic model by replacing the old, military-like settings with smaller cottages and more intimate areas for dining and meeting.

“Right now, it’s like a teacher trying to teach a classroom with 50 kids rather than 20,” said the probation department’s chief deputy, Cal Remington. “We’re trying to get these kids to think positively about what we’re trying to teach them. But it’s hard for them to think about anything but each other and status in these big settings.”

Evidence, he said, has repeatedly shown that troubled adolescents are much more likely to change their behavior and attitude when they’re housed as small groups. “A lot of people like the idea of boot camp, but the evidence shows that they don’t change behavior. They just force some kids to say, ‘Yes sir’ and ‘No sir’.”

Jackie Caster, a Los Angeles youth advocate who, like many, has been pushing for some time for improvements to the county’s troubled and outdated juvenile detention program, said changing the layout of the detention camps is crucial.

A year and a half ago, Caster said, she and a number of county officials and academics visited Missouri, where the effectiveness of the juvenile justice system has been held up as an example nationwide. Although comparisons between the rural Midwest and urban Los Angeles are tricky, both she and Remington said that Missouri’s costs and recidivism rates appear to be much lower than L.A.’s.

The secret, Remington said, lies in calmer, more intimate settings that force the juveniles to engage with staff and peers one-on-one. In Missouri, he and others said, the teenagers are put into smaller group homes, given intensive individual and family therapy and academic instruction and taught teamwork and conflict resolution.

Rooms built for small group interaction allow for more counseling and better treatment. The Missouri camps, Caster said, “don’t look like institutions. They have carpets on the floor, pictures on the walls. The kids have bunks and closets. They’re made to feel valued, not just institutionalized.”

The grants are authorized by the state’s 2007 Juvenile Justice Reform Bill, which shifted California’s non-violent juvenile offenders into county programs and facilities. As part of that measure and subsequent legislation, the state authorized some $300 million in lease-revenue construction bonds for the design and construction of new or renovated county facilities for youthful offenders.

Los Angeles County’s proposal is not the largest to have been approved under the program. Alameda County is planning to build a similar 150-bed girls’ camp for $35 million. Still, several supervisors expressed concern that the grants might fall through, given the state’s financial problems. Also the program requires that the county ante up a $2.8 million cash match, plus a 15% contribution of in-kind services such as architectural planning.

Robert J. Takeshta, deputy director of the California Corrections Standards Authority, which administers the program, said that if the county sets the paperwork in motion, it could still decline the grant if the supervisors decided not to go through with the project.  The money, he says, would simply go back into the pot to fund another juvenile justice project elsewhere in the state.

Said Supervisor Knabe: “Why leave money on the table when we have the ability to pull the plug if we want to?”

Posted 3/1/11

A young man and a dream die in war

At an age when most teens still find it challenging to crawl out of bed in the morning, 17-year-old Matthew Ramsey was driven, a doer. So as he aimed toward an early graduation from high school three years ago, it surprised no one that he also decided to join a friend in the Los Angeles Sheriff Department’s Explorer Program.

What Matthew did not expect to find as member of Explorer Class 79 was his calling. After helping deputies in the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station with a variety of tasks, the Quartz Hill teenager decided he wanted to wear the department’s badge, too, as soon as he turned 21.

In the meantime, he and a buddy made a pact that they’d enlist in the Army to hone their skills and emerge as prime candidates for the Sheriff’s Academy when their military hitch was up.

For Matthew, that tour of duty ended a lifetime too soon.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, while working at an observation post in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province near the Pakistani border, Matthew and five of his fellow soldiers were shot and killed by a rogue Afghan Border Police officer that his unit had trusted and worked with for several months. American soldiers killed the gunman seconds later; Al-Qaeda sources claimed he had been their sleeper agent, but that could not be confirmed.

By then, Matthew was married with a 17-month-old son, Zachary. His wife, Mirella, was pregnant with their second child. But Matthew’s death resonated well beyond his grief-stricken family, sending shock waves through his hometown and the close-knit Sheriff’s Department.

“The kids who join the Explorers are generally kind of a notch above,” says Deputy Michael Kuper, who oversees the Explorer Program for the Lancaster station near Matthew’s home. Kuper says Matthew fit the mold, an eager kid who was fully committed to a program that seems anything but glamorous. Explorers assist deputies in non-hazardous law-enforcement situations that include ride-alongs, crowd control, traffic management and community events.

Matthew finished his service with the Sheriff’s Law Enforcement Explorer Program in April, 2008. After turning 18, he left for basic training.

His mother, Melissa, admits she wasn’t happy with his decision to join the Army.

“It’s not something that we wanted,” she says. “I don’t think any parents want them to go, but we couldn’t change his mind.” While Melissa’s father, served in the U.S. Air Force, her son wasn’t raised in a military family and enlistment wasn’t a foregone conclusion. “He was my youngest, and I didn’t want him to leave. I wasn’t ready for him to go.”

Still, Melissa says, “I definitely supported him and the choices he made.”

Matthew was eventually assigned to the 101^st Airborne Division. In his various deployments and assignments, Matthew earned numerous citations, according to the Army, including the National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, NATO Medal and Air Assault Badge.

Two more will soon be added posthumously to that list: the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

“He put 110% into everything he did,” says Melissa, whose son recently told her that he would soon be promoted to sergeant, a particular point of pride for her because of his relatively young age.

Those who knew Matthew in the Sheriff’s Department also share a sense of pride in the young man who impressed them with his sense of responsibility and enthusiasm.

As a Sheriff’s Department military liaison, Lancaster Deputy Mike Ruiz helped organize Matthew’s memorial service last Saturday at Highlands Church Fellowship, where the family worships. More than 1,000 mourners gathered.

Sending a message that life goes on, the family insisted that the church leave in place all its seasonal decorations, including a frosted Christmas tree, twinkling lights and the stage set for an upcoming Christmas musical that allowed barely enough room for all the flowers.

Melissa delivered a poem for her son, and a cousin performed a song. Speakers included the local congressman, Rep. Buck McKeon, and Brigadier General Robert B. Abrams, the commanding general for the Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin. Dozens of local Sheriff’s Explorers were also there, as were representatives from the Air Force and Marine Corps.

More than 100 members of the Patriot Guard Riders, a national motorcycle club whose members include former military personnel and retired police officers, helped escort the funeral cortege. A 21-gun salute was fired, taps were sounded and a precisely folded American flag was presented to the family.

Besides his wife, mother and stepfather, Matthew leaves behind an older sister, Meghan; two stepsisters, Corrin and Stephanie, and three nieces. American Security Bank in Lancaster has established the Matthew Ramsey Memorial Fund on behalf of his widow and children. Call (661) 723-2000 for further information.

Posted 12/15/10

More than just the facts, ma’am

Where have you gone, Sgt. Friday?

Law enforcement communication, once a bastion of deadpan, just-the-facts accounts, is entering a new era in Los Angeles.

And not a moment too soon for Sheriff’s Captain Mike Parker. His agency, along with the LAPD and some others in the county, is an enthusiastic early adopter of Nixle–a direct communication service that beams official news dispatches instantly by email or cell phone text message.

Originally intended as a mass emergency alert system, Nixle has quickly evolved as well into a way for authorities to pass on information about everything from how to find a bathroom at the Lakers’ victory parade to how to avoid a ticket for parking overnight on the street during the holidays. Detectives with missing persons cases have turned to Nixle to get the word out quickly to thousands of potential witnesses.

And agencies, once dependent on a media middleman to carry their messages, are suddenly speaking directly and instantaneously to the public. In the process, some time-honored conventions of the press release are getting a makeover, with attention-grabbing headlines, colorful quotations and even a little up-close-and-personal storytelling.

“We don’t want to do salacious,” says Parker, who’s leading the charge to train sheriff’s officials in using the new system. But there’s nothing wrong with zeroing in on “What is unique about this? Convince me to open this email.”

“You tell a story,” Parker says. “You don’t have to be a tabloid.”

This week, for example, an item went out from the sheriff’s Century Station under the headline “Crossing Guard Beaten & Robbed of Stop Sign and Whistle in Front of 20 Schoolchildren & Adults. 2 suspects arrested.”

The accompanying narrative told the tale of a plucky crossing guard standing up to two suspects in a black Ford Expedition who were trying to push through her intersection without stopping. “The crossing guard raised her stop sign higher in the air and told the suspects, ‘You have to stop, the children come first.’ “

According to the Nixle account, the suspects responded by swiping her stop sign, grabbing her lanyard and whistle and knocking her to the ground. They were arrested nearby and the crossing guard, who had only minor injuries, went home.

That left Lieutenant Mike Thatcher of Century Sheriff’s Station with the last word–a classic “kicker” quote that would not seem out of place in a news story: “We have never seen anything like this before and hope we never do again.”

The LAPD and the sheriff’s department–which together reach about 80,000 subscribers who’ve signed up for the free service–report that Nixle usage increases during a major news event, like the Crown Fire near Palmdale in August.

Sheriff’s Deputy Bob Boese, who’s helping to train his colleagues on how to take advantage of Nixle, says the system is valuable in conveying both “local, local, local” information and the really big stuff.

“The goal is to get every Los Angeles County resident to sign up for Nixle, so that in the event of a catastrophe, we can provide information directly to their cell phones,” Boese says.

Sheriff’s officials say using Nixle helps make good on Sheriff Lee Baca’s pledge of openness and transparency.

“In addition to transparency, we’re providing a sense of community,” Boese says.

Over at the LAPD, Lt. John Romero calls Nixle “a game-changer for the region.” His agency has used it as a secure internal communications system during events like awards shows as well as for specific happenings like the Lakers parade and a hotel evacuation after an explosion.

In an email, he said he expects the system to become “a major success story” as its audience grows. (Those who wish to sign up for Nixle start by registering their email address and setting up a password. Once signed in, people can adjust their settings to receive alerts from as many agencies as they like, which range from the tiny South Pasadena Police Department to the 405 Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project. Those who want to receive text alerts only can text their zip code to 888777.)

The sheriff’s department’s no-cost contract with Nixle was approved by the Board of  Supervisors in June. The company’s business model calls for it to begin charging other agencies for its “enterprise software” in the future. It also is planning to go to market with a specialized mobile device that agencies could use for for a variety of communication needs. Nixle will remain free for the public to receive alerts–although, depending on their phone plan, they may have to pay standard text-messaging rates. The New Jersey-based company says more than 4,000 agencies across the county now are using Nixle to reach some 500,000 subscribers.

Parker, who has a degree in finance, says that learning to make the most of Nixle’s communications potential is important for many in his department because they never received such training working on a school newspaper, for example.

“I have yet to meet a cop who, when he was in high school, was thinking, ‘I want to be a public information officer for the sheriff’s department,’ “ Parker says. He tells them, “Were not trying to make you into reporters. We want you to be accurate. Don’t be salacious. Don’t be inflammatory…A balanced statement about what really happened–we’re trying to get it out there.”

For Parker personally, new tools like Nixle and the sheriff’s recently revamped website represent more than just technological progress. They’re also a chance to hold his head up a little higher at family get-togethers.

“My entire family is in marketing. In my family, you’d better be able to tell a good story or people make fun of you. If you sit there quietly, they make even more fun of you.

“They’ve been laughing at me for years at how lame the sheriff’s department was at marketing itself.”

This year, he’ll be the one laughing.

Posted 12/1/10

Fresh start for failed youth camp school

Less than a year after a class action lawsuit alleged a near-total breakdown in the school system at the county’s largest juvenile detention camp, the Board of Supervisors has approved a far-reaching settlement that will overhaul educational services at the Challenger Memorial Youth Center in Lancaster.

Under the agreement negotiated with a coalition of civil rights groups and approved Wednesday, the complex of six probation camps colloquially known as “Camp Challenger” will have up to a year to vastly upgrade an educational system that has been beset for several years by accusations of incompetence and disregard.

Among other things, the camp, which is required by law to provide schooling to some 650 students, will be forced to hire reading specialists and create vocational and literacy programs for its charges, many of whom arrive with reading skills that are several years behind grade level. Also among the mandates are improvements in access to books and workspaces, a designated classroom for kids in the facility’s special handling unit, an updated security system and improved monitoring of teacher absences.

A panel of nationally-known educational experts will develop and monitor the reforms at the institution. Intensive tutoring also will be made available to students who were at Challenger after 2008, the parties said.

“Los Angeles is going to be a national model,” said Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel of the ACLU of Southern California, which brought the class action along with Public Counsel and the Disability Rights Legal Center on behalf of three youths who had been held at Challenger as minors.

“While we do not acknowledge that all the allegations are true, we did recognize there were some serious problems and this lawsuit brought it to everyone’s attention,” agreed Assistant County Counsel Roger Granbo, who negotiated on behalf of the county.  “There’s going to be a complete culture change out at Challenger.”

The suit, filed in January against the probation department and the Los Angeles County Office of Education, had depicted educational negligence at Challenger in epic proportions—a years-long situation in which teachers were routinely AWOL, kids lacked textbooks, pleas for educational help were ignored or punished and at least one teenager who had been at Challenger for most of his adolescence was awarded a diploma, even though he was illiterate.

One teenager allegedly spent months in a solitary cell with no schooling except for occasional meetings with a teacher who sometimes left after as little as 15 minutes. Classwork, the suit claimed, consisted of occasional worksheets thrown under the cell door. Another said he was denied special instruction even though, at 17, he had the reading comprehension of a second grader and had repeatedly told his teachers he didn’t understand the classwork.

The suit alleged that students were so illiterate that they could not complete job applications or read restaurant menus. “These kids were regarded as disposable people,” Rosenbaum says.

Situated in the desert next to a prison, the Challenger complex has suffered from its remote location, as well as architecture that imparts a forbidding, prison-like atmosphere, even without the punitive culture and hostility that have plagued it in recent years, educational experts say. Allegations of mistreated teenagers there made it the target of a Department of Justice investigation, and a 2009 Los Angeles County Probation Commission report called its school system “broken.”

However, both sides said, the settlement promises to address longstanding concerns in and outside the probation system, and retirements and resignations in recent months have turned over leadership at both the county probation department and the office of education.

“Already we’re seeing changes at Challenger,” said Cal Remington, chief deputy of the probation department. “There’s a new principal I have a lot of confidence in, and he’s already making a difference. And we’ve already brought in some experienced teachers from other institutions.”

Rosenbaum praised the county for seizing on the lawsuit as an opportunity to push for more change. “This was a cooperative venture from the beginning — all the energy was toward finding a solution for the kids,” he said.

And experts in the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders said that even at an institution like Challenger, teachers and programs can make a difference.

“You can blame the kids, you can blame the architecture, you can say the place is in the desert far from home,” said University of Maryland education professor Peter Leone.

“But I’ve seen some correctional settings that were really unappealing and they have some terrific programs. Look, we’re the adults in this situation. If we teach kids begrudgingly and don’t inspire within them the spark of learning, we have no one to blame but ourselves.”

Although the county and the ACLU have agreed to the settlement, it will not be finalized until the court signs off.

Posted 11/4/10

Sheriff hits milestone on rape kit tests

There was a time, not so long ago, when the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department seemed committed to resisting the inevitable, rebuffing advocates who wanted to know whether the agency was sitting on a backlog of untested rape kits.

It was mid-2008, after the Los Angeles Police Department disclosed it had more than 7,000 untested kits in storage behind Parker Center. The issue had entered the universe of politics, becoming a test of sorts of police responsiveness to the concerns of women.

But the Sheriff’s Department wouldn’t budge when a researcher for the group Human Rights Watch filed a series of Public Records Act requests for the information. The department stated that it would be “prohibitively time consuming” to count the kits—a response that Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky found unacceptable. At his urging, the five-member board directed the Sheriff’s Department to begin counting.

That was two years ago this month, a milestone that has now led to another. Not only have the kits been counted, all 4,763 of them have been outsourced for testing. Although they’re far from being fully processed—only about half so far have been found to contain usable DNA—sheriff’s officials and women’s advocates surprisingly are in agreement on this much: the process is going better than expected.

“I can remember a time when we couldn’t even get them to acknowledge there was a backlog,” said Sarah Tofte, the Human Rights Watch researcher whose records requests were rejected. “To be at a point now where they’ve sent out every kit, my gosh, that’s a big deal. I think it’s very definitely something to be celebrated, even if it’s not the end of the road.”

Tofte, who now works for actress Mariska Hargitay’s Joyful Heart Foundation, was the driving force behind Human Rights Watch’s 2009 report on untested rape kits in the Sheriff’s Department and LAPD, which also has now outsourced virtually its entire backlog.

There are many in law enforcement who privately argue that it’s unnecessary and wasteful to test every kit for DNA evidence, especially when the suspect’s identity is known or he’s been arrested. Under California law, a DNA sample is taken from all felony arrestees and entered into a database. Critics say that in these cases, there’s no need to test the kit because the suspect’s DNA already is in hand.

But advocates and others in the criminal justice system contend that there’s too much room for error in exempting certain types of kits, for which victims undergo a meticulous forensic examination. They say the broad discretion historically given detectives to determine whether kits are tested has resulted in botched opportunities, potentially leaving rapists on the loose.

Advocates note, for example, that the vast majority of rapes are perpetrated by acquaintances with a pattern of such behavior with other women. Although the suspect’s name may be known to police, if he’s not arrested, he won’t be swabbed under the California law. But the forensic evidence could connect him to other sexual assaults in which kits have been tested and uploaded into the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, database. This is what New York authorities found in processing its 15,000 warehoused kits.

In Los Angeles, however, the debate is now moot because Sheriff Lee Baca and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck both have directed that all rape kits—past and future—be tested.

The man responsible for executing Baca’s directive is Commander Earl Shields, who oversees the department’s crime lab operations. He says the huge mobilization has provided unexpected benefits to the department, beyond confronting the mass of untested sexual assault kits, as they’re called in law enforcement circles.

With new hires and equipment, Shields said, “we’ve built up a tremendous capacity in the lab. What that positions us to do in the future is to look at other investigative uses of DNA.”

Through an agreement between the Sheriff’s Department and the county’s Chief Executive Office, the lab has added six criminalists, with two more on the way thanks to a $1 million federal “Rape Kit Reduction Program” grant.

So far, the testing itself has cost $3.1 million—far less than the department initially predicted—according to the sheriff’s most recent monthly status report on the effort. Most of that money has come from a more concerted use of federal DNA grants. Only a fraction of the $2.3 million the department allocated from its budget has been tapped.

Shields said the sheriff achieved substantial savings by playing the private labs against each other. “We told them, ‘We have a whole lot of cases. The better the price, the more we’ll send. ’ ”

But there’s also been a downside. The crush of kits moving through the system has created a new backlog of nearly 1,000 kits awaiting “technical review” of the work done by the private labs, which are not allowed to upload the results into the DNA database. According to Shields, this verification process can vary greatly in complexity, possibly requiring even more investigative work by detectives.

Shields said he expects these cases to be reduced more quickly in the weeks ahead as the lab’s newly hired criminalists are trained. “Our ability to do technical reviews is increasing all the time,” he said.

As of October 1, according to the department’s status report, DNA from only 673 kits has been uploaded into the CODIS database. Of those, there have been 305 matches involving department cases, 227 of which are currently under investigation. Seventy-eight cases are closed, 17 of them resulting in criminal charges prior to the testing. So far, the department said two criminal filings are directly related to the testing. The District Attorney’s Office has rejected 38.

No one knows more about the importance of rape kits—or speaks more forcefully on the topic—than Gail Abarbanel, who 36 years ago founded the pioneering Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. There, she has created a safe environment for women traumatized by sexual assaults to receive, among other things, emergency medical care, forensic services and counseling.

“When it was discovered that thousands of kits were sitting in storage facilities and never opened or processed,” Abarbanel said, “it was really a metaphor for how rape victims are discounted in the criminal justice system.”

Abarbanel said she, too, is encouraged by the Sheriff’s Department’s progress.

“I commend them for sending kits to be tested, but none of these cases are completed until the results are in the hands of the detectives investigating the cases and the offenders who’ve been identified are arrested and off our streets,” Abarbanel said. “There’s still thousands of rape kits across the country that have not been processed. But what’s different in Los Angeles today is that we have an absolute commitment from the sheriff that every kit will be tested. I feel confident he’ll do the right thing.”

Posted 10/14/10

Sheriff race bias in Lancaster?

A special counsel to the Board of Supervisors has raised serious concerns about whether blacks in Lancaster are being arrested far too often by sheriff’s deputies for so-called “contempt of cop” violations.

In a report released Friday, Special Counsel Merrick Bobb said he and his investigators “were troubled by a seemingly overzealous use of such charges against blacks in the Lancaster area.” He said arrest patterns in Palmdale and Carson raised some of these same concerns, “but to a lesser degree.”

The findings are contained in Bobb’s 29^th semi-annual report on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. This one focuses largely on potential racial disparities in arrests during 2007 in which suspects were accused solely of crimes against police officers. Broadly called “obstruction,” these include resisting arrest, delaying or obstructing a peace officer and battery on a police officer without injury.

Bobb said that high numbers of these kinds of arrests involving specific racial groups are a warning sign of possible systemic discrimination by police.

Although Bobb said he found “significantly disproportionate” numbers of obstruction arrests by Sheriff’s deputies assigned to the Lancaster station, that was not the case in Los Angeles County overall, despite the fact that blacks are being arrested in numbers that far surpass their representation in the population.

In coming to that conclusion, Bobb compared the proportion of obstruction arrests to the number of total arrests for blacks, Latinos and whites.  Among the three, he found the proportions to be roughly similar.

“Our findings do not demonstrate that there is a greater burden on blacks in general in the county [for obstruction],” Bobb said. “Even though the general criminal justice system in Los Angeles falls more heavily on blacks.”

Bobb said there were, however, significant differences among the races in whether those obstruction arrests were filed as felonies or misdemeanors, with Latinos and blacks facing the more severe charges far more often.

Bobb offered no firm explanation for what he called the troubling racial disparities in Lancaster, located 55 miles northeast of Los Angeles. There, blacks, who represent only 17% of the population, comprise 42% of all arrests. They account for 64% of the obstruction arrests—a disparity far larger than anywhere else the Sheriff’s Department patrols in L.A. County.

In an interview, Bobb said the sheriff’s top commander in the Antelope Valley region, Chief Neal Tyler, told him that residents expect the department’s nearly 200 sworn personnel to police aggressively.

“He noted that those communities ask for and demand a level of [patrol] activity that may result in more confrontations and stops,” Bobb said, adding that Tyler agreed that the issue “merits further inquiry.”

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said the department was pleased with Bobb’s countywide findings and will examine closely the potential problem areas cited in the report.

“Yes, L.A. County can do better and we will always strive to improve,” Whitmore said, acknowledging that the department polices aggressively in the high desert cities of Lancaster and Palmdale “to keep the streets safe and secure. It’s an aggressive area.”

As part of his latest report, Bobb also examined hate crimes and the department’s investigation of them.

Bobb praised the department’s Hate Crimes Task Force, calling it “a model of its kind.” Between 2007-09, the two-detective unit investigated more than 200 hate incidents and crimes, nearly half of the county’s cases. The unit has been widely praised in the gay and religious communities, Bobb said in an interview.

In contrast, Bobb found that the quality of hate crime investigations conducted at five randomly selected sheriff’s stations “varies considerably, from poor to acceptable to very good at the West Hollywood Station.”

He was harsher when it came to the department’s treatment of hate crimes inside the county’s jails.

“Investigation of hate crimes in the jails is shameful and reflective of an unwillingness or inability to recognize hate crimes as such,” Bobb said in his report.

Among other things, he said that potential hate crimes are not thoroughly investigated.

The report cited a 2009 case in which a disabled white man was beaten for two days by at least three inmates before jailers came to his aid, the report said. He was choked, punched and beaten with one of the inmate’s prosthetic leg.

Bobb said evidence suggested he might have been beaten because he was white, disabled or for both reasons. The assailants allegedly called him a “blue eyed devil” during one of the beatings. A deputy later noted in a report that “I believe the primary motivation for the [assault] was due to [the victim’s] disability.”

Bobb said he found it “shocking” that the investigating detective appears to have “simply abandoned the case…despite known suspects and much testimony on record.” Bobb said investigators seemingly “let the case fall through the cracks.”

For the special counsel’s complete report, including recommendations, click here.

Posted 8/6/10

L.A. Coroner gets some hi-tech help

It’s a “CSI” world out there. But when it comes to in-house DNA testing, the L.A. County coroner’s office might as well be back in the “Quincy” era.

That’s about to change. Armed with start-up funding from the county’s Quality and Productivity Commission, the department is embarking on a plan to create its own small DNA lab. The department will hire expert consultants who will help it establish an accredited lab that can help coroner’s officials solve some of their toughest cases—and perhaps even turn a profit.

The proposal for the lab, which will be funded for three years with $1.6 million annually from the commission’s Productivity Investment Fund, was approved by Los Angeles County Supervisors on Tuesday.

Anthony T. Hernandez, director of the coroner’s department, said establishment of the lab is “way overdue.” New York City’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner has the largest coroner’s DNA lab in the country, and has been performing such testing since 1991.

In L.A. County, a primary function of the new lab will be to shortcut the often time-consuming—and sometimes futile—work of identifying the 350 to 400 John and Jane Does who come through the coroner’s office annually. There are at least 25 such “hardcore” cases that elude investigators each year, Hernandez said.

Having a DNA lab also will allow coroner’s officials to take on the 100 or so paternity requests it receives each year. These often come from people trying to claim Social Security or other benefits for children of people who have died. As it stands now, their requests must be farmed out to private DNA analysis firms.

Others turn to the coroner’s office seeking paternity information that will help them come to terms with mysteries that have haunted them all their lives.

“It does fill an emotional void for a lot of folks,” Hernandez said.

Once the lab is up and running, the coroner’s office says it also will be able to assist law enforcement agencies struggling with a backlog of cases, including large numbers of untested sexual assault kits that have plagued agencies such as the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.

“We don’t profess to make a giant dent in that, but we think we could help,” Hernandez said.

Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, the county’s Chief Medical Examiner/Coroner, said he’s excited about the possibilities of the new lab from an investigative standpoint.

“I’m all for it,” Sathyavagiswaran said. “We’ll be a full-service department.”

Sathyavagiswaran, in an interview outside the Board of Supervisors hearing room, said the new lab will be helpful in “subtle cases where it’ll enhance the quality of death investigation.” Those cases include deaths by Long QT Syndrome, in which the heart stops for no obvious reason, such as in an apparently healthy high school athlete. DNA testing also could be useful in uncovering hidden crimes in cases where the cause of death was obvious–for example, a woman who’d died of a heroin overdose but also may have been the victim of a rape before her body was dumped.

“The citizens of L.A. will benefit from this DNA laboratory,” Sathyavagiswaran said in a follow-up email.

With 18,000 deaths reported to the L.A. County coroner’s office each year, it ranks as one of the world’s busiest, with responsibility for investigating thousands of violent or unusual deaths each year, along with notifying next of kin and determining how and why deaths occurred.

Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen, a chair of the National Association of Medical Examiners’ committee on inspections and accreditation, said it makes sense for L.A. to join other major jurisdictions like New York and Houston in having an in-house coroner’s DNA lab.

“The quicker you can make identifications, the better you can keep the flow of bodies moving and avoid backups,” Jentzen said.

There are also financial incentives, according to Hernandez. He said the lab is expected to generate revenue from paternity testing and from collecting fees from law enforcement agencies and smaller coroner’s offices seeking help with their cases.

“We have been working on the implementation of DNA testing since late 2006,” Hernandez said. One reason it took so long is that the department tried to find a way to establish the new lab “in a way that doesn’t cost the county anything.”

The seed money from the productivity commission fund, he said, will enable the department lab to start small and grow into a self-supporting and eventually profitable endeavor.

It also could help the department keep up with the expectations of the television-watching public. Said Hernandez: “You’d be surprised how many folks do think ‘It’s the coroner. It’s just like CSI.’ “

Posted 7/14/10

New turf for the sheriff’s watchdog

Veteran civil rights lawyer Michael Gennaco has focused for nearly a decade on one job: keeping an eye on the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.

As chief attorney of the respected Office of Independent Review, Gennaco has built a model oversight unit, investigating everything from on-duty shootings to off-duty drunkenness.  Although not beloved by the rank-and-file, the unit has the support of Sheriff Lee Baca and has been credited with improving the department’s training and discipline.

Now Gennaco finds himself on a new mission, one that has put him and his team front-and-center in one of Los Angeles County’s most vexing and embarrassing controversies. The Office of Independent Review, or OIR, has been recruited by the Board of Supervisors to help restore accountability and integrity to another one of the county’s criminal justice agencies—the scandal-plagued Probation Department.

It’s a new challenge—“a whole new world,” Gennaco says—but also the natural extension of his work monitoring the Sheriff’s Department and his earlier career as a widely praised federal prosecutor specializing in law enforcement misconduct and civil rights violations.

“I have a world vision in which police officers obey the law, a vision that is supported in most cases,” Gennaco says. “But there are times when they abuse their power. The victims of police misconduct don’t have power and authority and the ability to get redress. They’re not the people in Malibu.”

The mandate

In the weeks ahead, Gennaco’s team of six lawyers will be expanded to eight. He’ll send a pair of them to the Probation Department with orders to improve the speed, quality and effectiveness of internal discipline. The OIR lawyers will work hand-in-hand with the agency’s new chief, Donald Blevins, who has vowed to crack down on misbehavior and rebuild the department’s management ranks.

Although the details of the arrangement are still being worked out, Gennaco says he believes that “the expertise we have from the Sheriff’s Department will transfer over effectively.” And, the supervisors hope, quickly.

In recent weeks, the reputation of the 6,000-person department has come under withering assault amid disclosures of institutional failings and individual misconduct.

Staffers have been accused of, among other things, using department credit cards to buy electronic goods and of allowing juvenile charges to engage in video-taped brawls in probation camp classrooms. The department’s managers, meanwhile, have drawn the ire of the Board of Supervisors for being unable to fully account for $79 million that had been allocated to comply with federal mandates to improve conditions in the department’s network of juvenile camps and halls.

As county Chief Executive Officer William T Fujioka put it at a recent board meeting: “The depth of the problems in this department are shocking.”

By then, Gennaco and his team of OIR lawyers had thrown their own fuel on the fire. In a report requested by the supervisors and released last month, OIR disclosed that breakdowns in the Probation Department’s internal affairs operation had allowed dozens of employees accused of misconduct—some of it serious—to escape discipline because the investigations ran too long.

The 60-page report concluded by calling for “the establishment of a permanent independent oversight group”—a job that would promptly be added to OIR’s portfolio.

Gennaco says he’s optimistic change will come. He says the department offered “no resistance” while his team spent three months assessing the internal affairs operation and that the agency’s brass already has adopted some of his team’s 34 recommendations.

Asked whether the rank-and-file might resist his efforts, given the insular nature of law enforcement agencies, Gennaco said simply: “I don’t know.” But he added that swift, accurate investigations are in everyone’s interest, including employees who could be exonerated of wrongdoing.

On a personal level, Gennaco says, he’s “more energized than worried” about the high expectations that have been placed on him because he’s a true believer in the mission that’s been entrusted to him.

Righting wrongs

Raised in a multi-ethnic household, the son of an Italian-American dad and a Latina mom, Gennaco says his interest in civil rights started young. Two of his early heroes were Robert F.  Kennedy and Thurgood Marshall. After graduating from Dartmouth College, he attended Stanford University law school and clerked for U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas Tang, the first Chinese-American on the federal bench.

In 1984, Tang encouraged an uncertain Gennaco to join the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, despite concerns that the unit’s work ranked low on the Reagan agenda. “Judge Tang told me if there’s any time when they need good people, it’s now,” Gennaco recalls.

From his post in Washington, Gennaco prosecuted civil rights cases across 20 states, particularly in the South, and began to hone his skills on police misconduct cases. One of those cases gave him his first taste of police culture in Los Angeles when, in 1992, he successfully prosecuted a white LAPD officer assigned to the San Fernando Valley who beat a Latino teenager so severely with a baton that he sustained permanent brain injuries.

In 1994, Gennaco joined the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, where he established its first civil-rights unit and was credited with expanding the number of investigations and prosecutions of police misconduct and hate crimes. Among his most high profile cases was the prosecution of neo-Nazi Buford O. Furrow Jr., who opened fire at a Jewish day care center in the San Fernando Valley, wounding five. Furrow later shot and killed a Filipino postman.

In 2001, with the LAPD embroiled in a scandal over rogue cops selling drugs and covering up unprovoked shootings, Sheriff Baca surprised the national law enforcement community by calling for the creation of a civilian oversight unit that the sheriff hoped would provide credibility to the department’s internal investigations.

For Gennaco, the timing was perfect. After 16 years of prosecuting individual cops, he was frustrated. He had come to believe that law enforcement agencies effectively bred large-scale misconduct by failing to stamp out small-scale misbehavior early.

“When this [OIR] opportunity popped up, I thought ‘Here’s a chance’” to attack the root of the problem at one of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies. Gennaco applied for the job and was unanimously picked by the Board of Supervisors, he says, from among 200 candidates.

Since then, Gennaco has earned a reputation as a steady and determined steward of OIR. The unit has produced dozens of reports across a wide array of issues that focus not only on the conduct of individual deputies but also on the practices and policies of the institution itself.

One, for example, led to changes in weapons training after OIR examined a high number of shootings in which deputies were firing multiple rounds. Another, more recently, led to changes in hiring standards, which OIR concluded had been loosened in a rush to increase the department’s ranks and that had resulted in the hiring of recruits with questionable backgrounds. Yet another OIR effort helped create better training for deputies assigned to the jails so they could reduce the number of suicides and homicides among inmates.

Asked for OIR’s biggest success, however, Gennaco had one word—transparency.

“Before we got here, the public had almost no information coming from the department about what kind of conduct was being alleged,” says Gennaco, who lives in Hermosa Beach with his wife of 18 months.

“There are people [in the Sheriff’s Department] who chafe a little whenever we come out with a report,” he says. “But we have to be critical of the department when we have reasons…We have a responsibility to shine a light and that’s uncomfortable.”

Perhaps the most important lesson he’s learned over the years is that civilian oversight, to be effective, must be sustained over time.

“It’s not as if you can fix the department and just go away,” he says—a conviction the Probation Department is about to experience up close.

Posted 7/7/2010

Taking a shot at pot in L.A. County [updated]

Supervisors rolled out the unwelcome mat for medical marijuana dispensaries Tuesday, voting to draft a ban on such establishments in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County.

The board, acting on a motion by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, instructed the county’s Regional Planning Department and the County Counsel to come up with an outright ban that would replace the 2006 ordinance that had regulated the dispensaries with a restrictive conditional use permit process. Before taking effect, the ban must go to the Regional Planning Commission, which will hear public testimony prior to a formal hearing before the Board of Supervisors.

Under the county’s existing ordinance, no medical marijuana outlet has been approved in county territory, prompting Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky to wonder aloud about the need for a new law. “I’m just trying to understand if this is a motion in search of a problem,” Yaroslavsky said.

Medical marijuana dispensaries, which have generated long-running public debate particularly in the city of Los Angeles, have received heightened attention in recent days after a series of shootings at dispensaries in Echo Park, Hollywood and Northridge.

At the same time, the city has scrambled to rein in hundreds of dispensaries after the City Council in January approved an ordinance to regulate such establishments and force many out of business. Some, however, have vowed to remain open, and a legal challenge to the city ordinance is underway.

People on both sides of the issue spoke before the supervisors’ vote. Supporters of the ban expressed concern that regulations against the dispensaries in Los Angeles and other cities would push the medical marijuana sellers into unincorporated areas.

Jacquelyn Lacey, speaking on behalf of District Attorney Steve Cooley, who supports the ban, said the crackdown would send operators into “friendly territory” in unincorporated areas of the county.

Another ban supporter, attorney Tulane M. Peterson, added:  “This is a public safety issue. It is not a debate over the medical properties of a drug.”

But others, like Barry Kramer, a medicinal marijuana patient, said the county shouldn’t discard a “very good working ordinance.” “You just need to enforce that ordinance to keep out medical marijuana dispensaries that should not be opened,” Kramer told the supervisors. “It’s a mistake that the city of Los Angeles made. They never enforced the moratorium that they put in place. And by not enforcing it, they allowed for that proliferation.”

Planning officials said five applicants have formally tried to open legal medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated Los Angeles County since 2006. One application was denied, another was withdrawn and three are currently pending, in Monrovia, Covina and East Los Angeles. The Monrovia project, proposed by the owner of a self-serve car wash, has drawn widespread outrage in that community.

The county’s 2006 ordinance gives planning officials leeway to keep marijuana dispensaries away from sensitive areas such as daycare centers and to make sure they are not “detrimental to the surrounding area,” said Mark Child, head of the planning department’s permit section.

Before the vote, Yaroslavsky said the focus should be on illegally-operating dispensaries, which he said cause most of the problems. As an amendment to the motion that eventually was unanimously approved by the board, Yaroslavsky asked that county planners report back with some ideas on shutting down illegal outlets that could be incorporated into the new ordinance. And board chair Gloria Molina directed county planners and attorneys to find ways to move against rogue operators more quickly.

Since 2006, 27 marijuana dispensaries have been caught operating illegally in unincorporated L.A. County. Eighteen stopped when they received a notice from enforcement authorities, five currently are being investigated and four required civil court action, with one case still pending in appeals court.

An amendment from Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas sought to insulate the county from a possible legal challenge to the new ban. Under his amendment, which was adopted as part of the board vote, the ordinance would revert to the current law if the California Supreme Court or Court of Appeals ruled against outright bans.

An appellate ruling is expected soon in a case that could have implications for the new L.A. County measure. A group called the Qualified Patients Organization has challenged the city of Anaheim’s 2007 ordinance barring the dispensaries, saying that it flies in the face of the state’s medical marijuana law. A trial judge backed the city, and the matter is now before an appeals court.

Another potential complication could arise with this November’s vote on whether to legalize marijuana in California. Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, L.A. County’s top health officer, recently developed an analysis of medical and recreational marijuana for supervisors in advance of that vote.

Posted 7/6/10

Updated 11/23:  As expected, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted in favor of an ordinance that would ban all medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated county territory. Led by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, the move was taken, in part, because of concerns that crackdowns in neighboring jurisdictions would potentially boost the number of operators flowing into unincorporated county areas.

The ordinance, recommended by the Regional Planning Commission, was approved 4-1, with Supervisor Yaroslavsky dissenting. Yaroslavsky argued that the measure not only undermined California’s voter-approved Compassionate Use Act but was also unnecessary.

Yaroslavsky said that, because of the county’s rigorous permitting process, no dispensaries had legally opened in unincorporated areas. The problems with dispensaries, he said, have been limited to a number of “bad actors” who’ve skirted the process and who’ve not been shut down quickly enough.

To correct that situation, the board unanimously approved a motion by Yaroslavsky that would, among other things, direct county enforcement teams “to utilize the toughest available enforcement mechanisms against illegal operators, including imposing fines of up to $1,000 per day against the operators and/or landlords of illegal marijuana dispensaries.”

 

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