The contents of this article are my personal opinions and do not reflect any official position. Readers are advised that the contents contain some coarse language written by a Chandler Police Officer.
In an opinion that is more than 100 pages long, last week a Federal judge found Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in contempt of court for disregarding orders designed to prevent or correct racial profiling. The media reported that the judge found that the Sheriff and some of his administrators deliberately violated orders about police actions toward Hispanics and then tried to cover it up. Until now, the imposition of more than $50,000,000 in fees and judgments against Maricopa County from various lawsuits was not a deterrent to “Top Cop” Sheriff Joe.
Police officers have been members of my family for decades. I know most police officers are loyal, hard working, honest family men and women who risk their lives daily for the public. But sometimes there are bad apples that cast a shadow over all of those good officers. So what happens when the “Top Cops” who are charged with administration of departments don’t do their job of policing the police?
"In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you." — Warren Buffet
“Top Cops” have a few ways of keeping the lack of integrity of a few bad apples under wraps if the revelation might threaten their administrative careers.
“If a top man is no good, all the people below him will be no good in the same way.” — Jacob Rabinow’s Law in The Official Rules: 5,427 Laws, Principles, and Axioms to Help You Cope with Crises, Deadlines, Bad Luck, Rude Behavior, Red Tape, and Attacks by Inanimate Objects by Paul Dickson
When “Top Cops” tolerate or protect bad officers, they convey the impression that all of the officers of the department share those attitudes and behaviors and the majority of good officers who don’t are silent because they have no one to turn to.
Sheriff Joe isn’t the only “Top Cop” who has been (or should be) scrutinized. And as far as I can tell, “Top Cops” in the jurisdictions described below have not been held accountable or deterred from conduct that the public should be displeased about. The real shame is that in the face of administrations that thwart department rules and policies designed to protect the public, thousands of good, honest, hardworking officers do their sworn duty every day but get painted with the same bad brush as the officers who are protected by the administrations.
__________________
Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, issued in May 2015:
• Decades of research and practice tell us that the public cares as much about how police interact with them as they care about the outcomes that legal actions produce. People are more likely to obey the law when they believe those who are enforcing it have the right—the legitimate authority—to tell them what to do.
•Since the 1990s, policing has become more effective, better equipped, and better organized to tackle crime. Despite this, Gallup polls show the public’s confidence in police work has remained flat, even declining among people of color.
• There’s an old saying, “Organizational culture eats policy for lunch.” Any law enforcement organization can make great rules and policies, but if policies conflict with the existing culture, they will not be institutionalized and behavior will not change.
•Law enforcement agencies should establish a culture of transparency and accountability in order to build public trust and legitimacy.
• … law enforcement’s obligation is not only to reduce crime but also to do so fairly while protecting the rights of citizens. Any prevention strategy that unintentionally violates civil rights, compromises police legitimacy, or undermines trust is counterproductive from both ethical and cost-benefit perspectives. Ignoring these considerations can have both financial costs (e.g., lawsuits) and social costs (e.g., loss of public support).
___________________________
In June 2014, the Payson Roundup reported that a case was dismissed after a judge found:
“The state’s conduct was not the result of legal error, mere negligence, mistake, or insignificant impropriety,” Cahill wrote. “Instead, it amounts to intentional conduct which prosecutors and police knew was improper and prejudicial, a pattern of indifference to their obligation to obtain and disclose evidence.
“Due process of law is not a meaningless slogan,” Cahill wrote. “It is the indispensable foundation of individual freedom; it defines the rights of the individual and delimits the powers which the state may exercise.
http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/2014/jun/03/judge-dismisses-case/
I don’t recall any reports of discipline being meted out by the police department administrators on the police officers involved, but I do recall that money was paid by the Town for their (mis)conduct
__________________________________
Recently I was telling someone about a Chandler police detective who wrote his “observations” of patrons at a Valley Barnes and Noble bookstore cafe. He graphically described his profile of “… Gang bang wannabe kids”.
Barnes and Noble seems like a strange place for gang bang wannabes to hang out but the officer felt like he could profile relevant character trait’s of gang bang wannabe kids there – they were “Hispanic … Duh”.
At the bottom of this article you can see his note, in his handwriting.
Police officer (mis)conduct must be disclosed in criminal cases if his/her conduct might affect the officer’s credibility as a witness; also, if the misconduct forms the basis to question the non-biased enforcement of the law by the officer (and in some cases, the department); it might even reveal other, sometimes illegal, conduct as happened in San Francisco (see below).
Despite police administrators knowing about the officer’s racial profile, the Chandler Police sex crimes detective received no discipline or corrective counseling for his perception of Hispanics.
That same officer had made a statement that he had engaged in sexting with a Chandler elementary school teacher during his (and her) work hours and he admitted that he carried pornographic pictures of her on his cell phone during his work hours. He said that if any defense attorney were to find out what he had done, his career would be ruined.
If you were Hispanic (or any person of color), wouldn’t you want to know why the investigating officer who believed that Hispanics were probable gang bang wannabes was deciding questions about whether Hispanics committed crimes, were victims of crimes and what charges might be filed? Or, if you were a defendant or a victim of a sex crime, wouldn’t you want to know if the investigating detective who was reviewing the intimate details of a sex crime event had a history of carrying porn on his cell phone and sexting while on duty?
Well, a public records request for disclosures to defendant’s attorneys in cases where the Chandler officer is a potential witness does not reveal either the Hispanic comments or any discipline that was imposed.
The “Top Cop” of Chandler, Police Chief Sean Duggan, keeps that information from being found. How? He issued a generic “conduct unbecoming a police officer” reprimand for “texting” while on duty. By limiting the description of the behavior and the discipline, it doesn’t get disclosed to defendant’s attorneys and no one would know to suspect bias (see reference at the end of article) or predisposition of inappropriate sexually explicit conduct (see reference at end of article). (Incidentally, the teacher who was sexting has stated that she is looking forward to pursuing a principal’s position in the Chandler Unified School District, so the culture in Chandler is widespread apparently.)
In 2014, Chandler Police Chief Duggan got a lot of print and television media coverage when he ordered his officers to cover up their tattoos because they didn’t “look” professional. He said: "Policing is an honorable profession. It requires a standard of behavior based on trust and respect,'' Duggan said. "It starts with the way we look, what we say and how we say it.'' http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/chandler/2014/07/14/chandler-police-tattoos-restrictions/12614189/
In Chandler, as it seems to have happened in Maricopa County, information that might damage a career might be covered up (literally and figuratively). That is such a profound disservice to the honest, hard working officers in these departments and to the public that relies upon the integrity of every officer and every administrator.
The problem isn’t only an Arizona problem, either.
From
LAPD found no bias in all 1,356 complaints filed against officersBy Kate Mather, December 15, 2015 LA Times article
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-biased-policing-report-20151215-story.html
The Los Angeles Police Department did not uphold any of the 1,356 allegations of biased policing by officers that the agency investigated from 2012-2014, according to a report from Inspector General Alex Bustamante. The LA police department’s watchdog is the Police Commission.
Commissioner Robert Saltzman called the lack of substantiated allegations “quite troubling and disappointing.”
“While no doubt the vast majority of LAPD officers do not engage in biased policing, it strains credibility to suggest that ... there were zero instances of biased policing,” he told The Times. “It should not be surprising that there is diminished trust in the LAPD given these results.”
_____________________________
From
Second group of officers investigated for exchanging racist and homophobic textsJulia Carrie Wong of The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/31/san-francisco-police-racist-homophobic-text-scandal
Several more San Francisco police officers are under investigation for exchanging racist and homophobic text messages, the district attorney’s office revealed on Thursday, reigniting allegations of widespread bias in the department.
Previous racist and homophobic text messages exchanged by a group of 14 San Francisco police officers in 2011 and 2012 were revealed in 2015 in court filings from a federal corruption case.
The evidence of bias by law enforcement officers forced district attorney George Gascón to re-examine [as many as 3,000] criminal cases in which the officers had been involved.
The new batch of messages were discovered by prosecutors during the course of a criminal investigation, the district attorney’s office said, which involved allegations of sexual assault by a police officer, Jason Lai, according to the San Francisco police department.
Prosecutors are required to turn over evidence of racial and homophobic bias to defense attorneys, which can be used to disqualify the officers’ testimonies.
“We don’t know yet how many cases are going to be implicated,” Gascón said. “It puts a tremendous burden on the criminal justice system and creates a tremendous divide between the community and the police.”
In December 2015, a judge ruled that the police officers involved in the first text message scandal could keep their jobs because the police department had waited too long to initiate disciplinary action against them.
________________________
See also
'Wild animals': Racist texts sent by San Francisco police officer, documents showBy Scott Glover and Dan Simon, CNN, April 26, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/26/us/racist-texts-san-francisco-police-officer/index.html
_______________________________
From
The police can’t police themselves. And now the public is too scared to cooperate with them
By Mikki Kendall
The Washington Post, April 10, 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/10/the-police-cant-police-themselves-and-now-the-public-is-too-scared-to-cooperate-with-them
Video evidence showed William Melendez, who was named in 12 other brutality and corruption lawsuits, planting drugs on Floyd Dent after brutally beating him. Before Officer Michael Slager was caught on tape planting his Taser on William Scott’s body, he was accused of using his Taser repeatedly on an innocent black man and lying about it. Timothy Loehmann, the officer who fatally wounded Tamir Rice, had been found unfit for duty by another police department. On August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, igniting both civil unrest and a national debate on police and community.
________________________________
Other incidents regarding Chandler Police discipline:
Officer disciplined a third time but allowed to stay on the force until retirement, http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/chandler/2014/11/09/probe-officer-targeted-native-american-suspects/18784865/
Civil lawsuit against Chandler for an officer’s conduct with a naked woman reported July 14, 2015
http://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/cell-phone-video-chandler-officer-illegally-enters-womans-home-arrests-her-while-she-is-naked
In an opinion that is more than 100 pages long, last week a Federal judge found Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in contempt of court for disregarding orders designed to prevent or correct racial profiling. The media reported that the judge found that the Sheriff and some of his administrators deliberately violated orders about police actions toward Hispanics and then tried to cover it up. Until now, the imposition of more than $50,000,000 in fees and judgments against Maricopa County from various lawsuits was not a deterrent to “Top Cop” Sheriff Joe.
Police officers have been members of my family for decades. I know most police officers are loyal, hard working, honest family men and women who risk their lives daily for the public. But sometimes there are bad apples that cast a shadow over all of those good officers. So what happens when the “Top Cops” who are charged with administration of departments don’t do their job of policing the police?
"In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you." — Warren Buffet
“Top Cops” have a few ways of keeping the lack of integrity of a few bad apples under wraps if the revelation might threaten their administrative careers.
“If a top man is no good, all the people below him will be no good in the same way.” — Jacob Rabinow’s Law in The Official Rules: 5,427 Laws, Principles, and Axioms to Help You Cope with Crises, Deadlines, Bad Luck, Rude Behavior, Red Tape, and Attacks by Inanimate Objects by Paul Dickson
When “Top Cops” tolerate or protect bad officers, they convey the impression that all of the officers of the department share those attitudes and behaviors and the majority of good officers who don’t are silent because they have no one to turn to.
Sheriff Joe isn’t the only “Top Cop” who has been (or should be) scrutinized. And as far as I can tell, “Top Cops” in the jurisdictions described below have not been held accountable or deterred from conduct that the public should be displeased about. The real shame is that in the face of administrations that thwart department rules and policies designed to protect the public, thousands of good, honest, hardworking officers do their sworn duty every day but get painted with the same bad brush as the officers who are protected by the administrations.
__________________
Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, issued in May 2015:
• Decades of research and practice tell us that the public cares as much about how police interact with them as they care about the outcomes that legal actions produce. People are more likely to obey the law when they believe those who are enforcing it have the right—the legitimate authority—to tell them what to do.
•Since the 1990s, policing has become more effective, better equipped, and better organized to tackle crime. Despite this, Gallup polls show the public’s confidence in police work has remained flat, even declining among people of color.
• There’s an old saying, “Organizational culture eats policy for lunch.” Any law enforcement organization can make great rules and policies, but if policies conflict with the existing culture, they will not be institutionalized and behavior will not change.
•Law enforcement agencies should establish a culture of transparency and accountability in order to build public trust and legitimacy.
• … law enforcement’s obligation is not only to reduce crime but also to do so fairly while protecting the rights of citizens. Any prevention strategy that unintentionally violates civil rights, compromises police legitimacy, or undermines trust is counterproductive from both ethical and cost-benefit perspectives. Ignoring these considerations can have both financial costs (e.g., lawsuits) and social costs (e.g., loss of public support).
___________________________
In June 2014, the Payson Roundup reported that a case was dismissed after a judge found:
“The state’s conduct was not the result of legal error, mere negligence, mistake, or insignificant impropriety,” Cahill wrote. “Instead, it amounts to intentional conduct which prosecutors and police knew was improper and prejudicial, a pattern of indifference to their obligation to obtain and disclose evidence.
“Due process of law is not a meaningless slogan,” Cahill wrote. “It is the indispensable foundation of individual freedom; it defines the rights of the individual and delimits the powers which the state may exercise.
http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/2014/jun/03/judge-dismisses-case/
I don’t recall any reports of discipline being meted out by the police department administrators on the police officers involved, but I do recall that money was paid by the Town for their (mis)conduct
__________________________________
Recently I was telling someone about a Chandler police detective who wrote his “observations” of patrons at a Valley Barnes and Noble bookstore cafe. He graphically described his profile of “… Gang bang wannabe kids”.
Barnes and Noble seems like a strange place for gang bang wannabes to hang out but the officer felt like he could profile relevant character trait’s of gang bang wannabe kids there – they were “Hispanic … Duh”.
At the bottom of this article you can see his note, in his handwriting.
Police officer (mis)conduct must be disclosed in criminal cases if his/her conduct might affect the officer’s credibility as a witness; also, if the misconduct forms the basis to question the non-biased enforcement of the law by the officer (and in some cases, the department); it might even reveal other, sometimes illegal, conduct as happened in San Francisco (see below).
Despite police administrators knowing about the officer’s racial profile, the Chandler Police sex crimes detective received no discipline or corrective counseling for his perception of Hispanics.
That same officer had made a statement that he had engaged in sexting with a Chandler elementary school teacher during his (and her) work hours and he admitted that he carried pornographic pictures of her on his cell phone during his work hours. He said that if any defense attorney were to find out what he had done, his career would be ruined.
If you were Hispanic (or any person of color), wouldn’t you want to know why the investigating officer who believed that Hispanics were probable gang bang wannabes was deciding questions about whether Hispanics committed crimes, were victims of crimes and what charges might be filed? Or, if you were a defendant or a victim of a sex crime, wouldn’t you want to know if the investigating detective who was reviewing the intimate details of a sex crime event had a history of carrying porn on his cell phone and sexting while on duty?
Well, a public records request for disclosures to defendant’s attorneys in cases where the Chandler officer is a potential witness does not reveal either the Hispanic comments or any discipline that was imposed.
The “Top Cop” of Chandler, Police Chief Sean Duggan, keeps that information from being found. How? He issued a generic “conduct unbecoming a police officer” reprimand for “texting” while on duty. By limiting the description of the behavior and the discipline, it doesn’t get disclosed to defendant’s attorneys and no one would know to suspect bias (see reference at the end of article) or predisposition of inappropriate sexually explicit conduct (see reference at end of article). (Incidentally, the teacher who was sexting has stated that she is looking forward to pursuing a principal’s position in the Chandler Unified School District, so the culture in Chandler is widespread apparently.)
In 2014, Chandler Police Chief Duggan got a lot of print and television media coverage when he ordered his officers to cover up their tattoos because they didn’t “look” professional. He said: "Policing is an honorable profession. It requires a standard of behavior based on trust and respect,'' Duggan said. "It starts with the way we look, what we say and how we say it.'' http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/chandler/2014/07/14/chandler-police-tattoos-restrictions/12614189/
In Chandler, as it seems to have happened in Maricopa County, information that might damage a career might be covered up (literally and figuratively). That is such a profound disservice to the honest, hard working officers in these departments and to the public that relies upon the integrity of every officer and every administrator.
The problem isn’t only an Arizona problem, either.
From
LAPD found no bias in all 1,356 complaints filed against officersBy Kate Mather, December 15, 2015 LA Times article
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-biased-policing-report-20151215-story.html
The Los Angeles Police Department did not uphold any of the 1,356 allegations of biased policing by officers that the agency investigated from 2012-2014, according to a report from Inspector General Alex Bustamante. The LA police department’s watchdog is the Police Commission.
Commissioner Robert Saltzman called the lack of substantiated allegations “quite troubling and disappointing.”
“While no doubt the vast majority of LAPD officers do not engage in biased policing, it strains credibility to suggest that ... there were zero instances of biased policing,” he told The Times. “It should not be surprising that there is diminished trust in the LAPD given these results.”
_____________________________
From
Second group of officers investigated for exchanging racist and homophobic textsJulia Carrie Wong of The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/31/san-francisco-police-racist-homophobic-text-scandal
Several more San Francisco police officers are under investigation for exchanging racist and homophobic text messages, the district attorney’s office revealed on Thursday, reigniting allegations of widespread bias in the department.
Previous racist and homophobic text messages exchanged by a group of 14 San Francisco police officers in 2011 and 2012 were revealed in 2015 in court filings from a federal corruption case.
The evidence of bias by law enforcement officers forced district attorney George Gascón to re-examine [as many as 3,000] criminal cases in which the officers had been involved.
The new batch of messages were discovered by prosecutors during the course of a criminal investigation, the district attorney’s office said, which involved allegations of sexual assault by a police officer, Jason Lai, according to the San Francisco police department.
Prosecutors are required to turn over evidence of racial and homophobic bias to defense attorneys, which can be used to disqualify the officers’ testimonies.
“We don’t know yet how many cases are going to be implicated,” Gascón said. “It puts a tremendous burden on the criminal justice system and creates a tremendous divide between the community and the police.”
In December 2015, a judge ruled that the police officers involved in the first text message scandal could keep their jobs because the police department had waited too long to initiate disciplinary action against them.
________________________
See also
'Wild animals': Racist texts sent by San Francisco police officer, documents showBy Scott Glover and Dan Simon, CNN, April 26, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/26/us/racist-texts-san-francisco-police-officer/index.html
_______________________________
From
The police can’t police themselves. And now the public is too scared to cooperate with them
By Mikki Kendall
The Washington Post, April 10, 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/10/the-police-cant-police-themselves-and-now-the-public-is-too-scared-to-cooperate-with-them
Video evidence showed William Melendez, who was named in 12 other brutality and corruption lawsuits, planting drugs on Floyd Dent after brutally beating him. Before Officer Michael Slager was caught on tape planting his Taser on William Scott’s body, he was accused of using his Taser repeatedly on an innocent black man and lying about it. Timothy Loehmann, the officer who fatally wounded Tamir Rice, had been found unfit for duty by another police department. On August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, igniting both civil unrest and a national debate on police and community.
________________________________
Other incidents regarding Chandler Police discipline:
Officer disciplined a third time but allowed to stay on the force until retirement, http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/chandler/2014/11/09/probe-officer-targeted-native-american-suspects/18784865/
Civil lawsuit against Chandler for an officer’s conduct with a naked woman reported July 14, 2015
http://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/cell-phone-video-chandler-officer-illegally-enters-womans-home-arrests-her-while-she-is-naked