Monthly Archives: December 2020

LAPD

Never Before Seen Unredacted Confidential Closed Session LAPD Use Of Force Reports Now Available — Twelve From 2019 And Two From 2020 — Along With Sixteen Confidential 24 Hour Incident Summaries From 2020 — Including Police Killings — Wounds — Complete Misses — Officers Shooting Their Guns By Mistake — Three Dead Dogs — A Very Rare Example Of An LAPD Family Liason Unit Report — Apparently After LAPD Officers Shoot A Person They Send These People Out To Meet With Their Victim’s Family — Which I Did Not Know About

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When Los Angeles Police Department officers shoot, hurt, or kill people or animals, and even when they fire their guns by accident, the Department investigates the incident and reports on it to the Police Commission.1 For sufficiently serious incidents both the Chief and the Inspector General review the evidence and write confidential reports, which are then considered in closed session by the Commission. Even the least serious incidents get covered in a so-called “Chief of Police 24 Hour Occurrence Log Force Investigation Division” report. The ones for which

The Department publishes summaries of the first kind of reports on their website and it’s possible to get redacted versions of the original confidential closed session reportsif you ask for them,2 but I’ve never seen the unredacted reports published anywhere. Until now, that is, because I have an unprecedented set of records comprising both Chief and OIG reports from 14 cases in 2019 and 2020 and 18 of the previously mentioned 24 Hour Occurrence reports from 2020 for you today!

Some of the more serious cases also have confidential minority opinions filed by LAPD Command staff and I have those too, also unredacted. One of the cases, Alex Flores, has an unredacted LAPD Family Liason report. AYou can download all of them here on Archive.Org, or read on for brief summaries and direct links. Here are internal links to the files organized by victim in ascending date order:

🜰  Raymond Hernandez
🜰  Unintentional gunshot 1
🜰  Garrett Scott Coressel
🜰  Unnamed pit bull 1
🜰  James Frazier Lazzeri Jr. — Incl. minority report
🜰  Rodolfo Louis Coleman
🜰  Unintentional gunshot 2
🜰  Unintentional gunshot 3
🜰  Alex Flores — Incl. LAPD Family liason rpt
🜰  Nathaniel Robert Pinnock — Incl. minority rpt
🜰  Nathan Alexander Tovar — Incl redacted version for comparison
🜰  Lonyea Calloway
🜰  Julio Rafael Rodriguez
🜰  Oktawian Balenkowski
🜰  Unintentional gunshot 4
🜰  Alfonso Mauldin
🜰  Aleksandr Rusanovskiy
🜰  Daniel Rivera
🜰  Unnamed pit bull 2
🜰  Ben Montemayor
🜰  Kwame Page
🜰  Abigail Rodas
🜰  Yordy Ochoa
🜰  Maximillian Ochoa
🜰  Unnamed protester
🜰  Kevin Carr
🜰  Julie Anne Archer
🜰  Brandon Maxwell
🜰  Bryan Gudiel Barrios
🜰  Vanessa Nunez
🜰  Unnamed pit bull 3
🜰  Manuel Marshall Hernandez

Continue reading Never Before Seen Unredacted Confidential Closed Session LAPD Use Of Force Reports Now Available — Twelve From 2019 And Two From 2020 — Along With Sixteen Confidential 24 Hour Incident Summaries From 2020 — Including Police Killings — Wounds — Complete Misses — Officers Shooting Their Guns By Mistake — Three Dead Dogs — A Very Rare Example Of An LAPD Family Liason Unit Report — Apparently After LAPD Officers Shoot A Person They Send These People Out To Meet With Their Victim’s Family — Which I Did Not Know About →

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LAPD

California Cop Disciplinary Processes Are Notoriously Top Secret — They Don’t Even Release Names Of Accused Officers Except In Very Extreme Circumstances — But Here Is A Spreadsheet From August 2020 Showing All Pending LAPD Board Of Rights Cases — Including Accused Officers’ Names And Serial Numbers — Names Of Hearing Officers — Defense Attorneys — LAPD Department Advocate — Who Acts Like A Prosecutor — Dates Of Upcoming Hearings — And Other Disciplinary Processes Also — I Have Never Seen Anything Like This Document!

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Santa Claus teaches children many important lessons about ubiquitous surveillance and moral judgments,3 but if those children grow up to be LAPD officers, well, the lessons are no longer true for them. I mean, Santa Claus can make a list and check it twice and no matter how naughty officers are accused of being, a lot of time no one outside of 100 W. 1st Street ever hears a word about it.

This deep, deep silence gets even deeper when a board of rights is involved. These shadowy hearing boards review the Chief’s punishment recommendations and almost always overturn them. But the names of officers appearing before boards of rights are secret, as are their findings and pretty much everything about them. Boards of rights have gotten some attention from the news since 2017, though.

That’s when LA voters amended the Charter to allow for all-civilian membership. People feared that civilian boards would go much easier on accused officers, and the officers themselves clearly believe that this is the case. The usually toothless LAPD Office of the Inspector General is currently looking into the process afforded by these boards. And he’s going to release his conclusions in the aggregate. Like e.g. since they’ve been allowed to, it looks like 100% of LAPD officers choose all civilians.

Why? Well, we could ask them if we knew who they were, but … well, actually, I have a record for you! It’s a spreadsheet from August 2020 with lists of all pending board of rights hearings. I also exported this as a PDF and you can read it in HTML over here. It includes the names of the accused officers, their attorneys, and the names of the members of the boards of rights.

It reveals the date the precipitating incident took place and the date of the next scheduled hearing so it’s possible to see how long the process takes. So for instance, the next time you see LAPD Officer Oscar Rojas, serial number 43061, you could ask him how his hearing on December 7, 2020 went. Or LAPD Officer Monica Moore, serial number 35815, you can ask her if she’s worried about her upcoming hearing on February 8, 2021.
Continue reading California Cop Disciplinary Processes Are Notoriously Top Secret — They Don’t Even Release Names Of Accused Officers Except In Very Extreme Circumstances — But Here Is A Spreadsheet From August 2020 Showing All Pending LAPD Board Of Rights Cases — Including Accused Officers’ Names And Serial Numbers — Names Of Hearing Officers — Defense Attorneys — LAPD Department Advocate — Who Acts Like A Prosecutor — Dates Of Upcoming Hearings — And Other Disciplinary Processes Also — I Have Never Seen Anything Like This Document! →

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Los Angeles City Government

Self Help And The California Public Records Act — The Case Of FilmLA — And Their Weirdly Intransigent Attitude Towards The Law — And A Hacky But Functional Way To Scrape Their Website — Which I Did Over The Last Week Or So — And Now It’s — At Least Theoretically — Possible To Batch Search The Permits

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Background: This post follows up on a post from a few days ago, and here’s some useful background from there:

This month Los Angeles activists were forced to think a lot about film permits. First the extraordinary Ktown For All broke what turned into an international story about the City shutting down a COVID test site at Union Station to accommodate a film shoot.

Then less than two weeks later Streetwatch LA member Ian Carr broke the story that an entirely different film company had somehow arranged for a large encampment in front of City Hall East to be swept away in advance of their shoot. Twitter user @publicownedbus also provided valuable info, and then ace Knock LA reporter Cerise Castle also wrote about this incident.4

Recent events have made it clear that we need an effective way to search the content of Los Angeles film permits for names and phone numbers of location managers, locations, and other essential information. Permits are coordinated by an entity called FilmLA. FilmLA is putatively private but is made subject to the California Public Records Act at least by its contract with the City of Los Angeles.5 But FilmLA bossman Paul Audley refuses to comply with the law.

And while I’m not giving up on legal remedies, they take forever and it turns out that it’s not necessary to wait in order to obtain some of the records. In particular, the permits themselves. Audley admits that the permits are subject to the CPRA and they are all in some technical sense available on FilmLA’s website. However, the search is abysmal.

It’s only possible to search on four predetermined fields, which are Permit Number, Company Name, Production Title, and Date of First Activity. If you want other information, like all permits at a given location, you’re out of luck. Not only that, but it’s impossible to search even those fields without being logged in. This excludes search engines from indexing the permits (unless arrangements are made to allow them in, which FilmLA has not done).6

But there’s probably no way to compel these people to let search engines in, even with a lawsuit, so I took matters into my own hands and scraped the site of most of the permits.7 I’m in the process of putting these all on Archive.Org. There are presently more than 45K individual files uploaded but there are over 100GB and it’s taking a while to get them up. The Archive allows search engines to index their site, of course, so eventually all the permits will be searchable on the open internet.
Continue reading Self Help And The California Public Records Act — The Case Of FilmLA — And Their Weirdly Intransigent Attitude Towards The Law — And A Hacky But Functional Way To Scrape Their Website — Which I Did Over The Last Week Or So — And Now It’s — At Least Theoretically — Possible To Batch Search The Permits →

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Los Angeles City Government

The Central City Association Held Secret Members-Only Meetings With Mike Feuer And Eric Garcetti In October And November — Attendees Included Tom Gilmore — Patti Berman — Sara Hernandez — And The Usual Gang Of Downtown BIDdies And Zillionaires Complaining About Homelessness — And Defunding The Police — And Regulations And Codes — They Really Really Hate Regulations And Codes — Featuring The Inimitable Blair Besten As Self-Proclaimed Expert On “Street Homelessness” — And Plenty Of Other Aggressive Lunacy

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You might want to meet with Eric Garcetti but Eric Garcetti doesn’t want to meet with you. John Motter told that story recently in the essential Knock LA. And it’s not Garcetti’s problem, honestly. It’s all you. There are plenty of folks he will very gladly meet with, like e.g. members of the Central City Association. And in secret no less, as he did on November 16, 2020. Mike Feuer did the same thing on October 8, 2020.

And what were these luminaries talking to CCALA about in these top secret meetings? I’m glad you asked! I recently obtained copies of CCALA supreme commander Jessica Lall’s confidential members-only briefing notes for these two meetings that reveal quite a bit about what went on.8 Here are links to the original Microsoft Word files and PDF versions9. HTML transcriptions and images appear below as well:

嬄   Feuer Meeting briefing notes — DOCX ◈ PDF ◈ JPG ◈ HTML

嬄   Garcetti Meeting briefing notes — DOCX ◈ PDF ◈ JPG ◈ HTML

You should read the originals, also. They have a lot more stuff in them than I discuss here. The notes include brief agendas and a list of goals. For instance, Garcetti:
Continue reading The Central City Association Held Secret Members-Only Meetings With Mike Feuer And Eric Garcetti In October And November — Attendees Included Tom Gilmore — Patti Berman — Sara Hernandez — And The Usual Gang Of Downtown BIDdies And Zillionaires Complaining About Homelessness — And Defunding The Police — And Regulations And Codes — They Really Really Hate Regulations And Codes — Featuring The Inimitable Blair Besten As Self-Proclaimed Expert On “Street Homelessness” — And Plenty Of Other Aggressive Lunacy →

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LAPD

Garcetti Aide Jeff Gorell And LAPD Inspector General Mark Smith Were All Set In July To Announce Plans To Open A Satellite Inspector General’s Office In South Los Angeles — To Be Staffed Two Days A Week — For Accepting Reports And As A Meeting Space — But When Gorell Checked In With His “Chief” About It A Couple Days Before The Announcement Garcetti Put The Nix On It — Wanted To Bundle It Up With “Other UOF Reforms” — And Now It’s December — With No Satellite Office Announcement And No UOF Reforms — Maybe None Of It Looked Pressing To Garcetti While Visions Of Cabinet-Level Appointments Danced In His Head?

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It appears that Mark Smith, Inspector General of the Los Angeles Police Department, and Mayor Eric Garcetti planned earlier this year to open a satellite Inspector General’s office in South Los Angeles “when COVID allows.” According to emails I obtained recently, Garcetti aide Jeff Gorell, Smith, and Police Commission President Eileen Decker were ready on July 9 to announce this publicly.

On July 7 Gorell emailed Garcetti to inform him of the plan, in which the satellite would have “some capacity for in-person report-taking and meetings [and] staffed 2 days per week.” Apparently Garcetti nixed the announcement, though, because it was never made.

According to Gorell’s later email to Decker they’d decided “to postpone the announcement of the satellite IG office until later when we can couple it with other UOF reforms.” The point being, I guess, that Garcetti intended the satellite office, like the use of force reforms, to placate people protesting daily to express their disgust for LAPD’s apparently unslakeable thirst for blood.

Well, I haven’t heard about this plan again, and I haven’t heard much of the ‘other UOF reforms” either. I guess none of it seemed so important while MEG thought he was on his way to Washington? Or something like that. Anyway, read on for a transcription.
Continue reading Garcetti Aide Jeff Gorell And LAPD Inspector General Mark Smith Were All Set In July To Announce Plans To Open A Satellite Inspector General’s Office In South Los Angeles — To Be Staffed Two Days A Week — For Accepting Reports And As A Meeting Space — But When Gorell Checked In With His “Chief” About It A Couple Days Before The Announcement Garcetti Put The Nix On It — Wanted To Bundle It Up With “Other UOF Reforms” — And Now It’s December — With No Satellite Office Announcement And No UOF Reforms — Maybe None Of It Looked Pressing To Garcetti While Visions Of Cabinet-Level Appointments Danced In His Head? →

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Los Angeles City Government

Practical Instructions On How To Obtain Everything You Need From Film Permits On The Day Of Shooting — Even Though FilmLA Chief Bossdude Paul Audley Doesn’t Put Them On The Website Until Two Days After — But There’s A Workaround! — For Instance — That Infamous December 1 Union Station Shoot That Shut Down The COVID Test Site? — The Permit Didn’t Hit The Website Until December 3 But This Method Would Have Let Us Learn — Just For Instance — The Name And Cell Phone Number Of The Location Manager Immediately On December 1

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This month Los Angeles activists were forced to think a lot about film permits. First the extraordinary Ktown For All broke what turned into an international story about the City shutting down a COVID test site at Union Station to accommodate a film shoot.

Then less than two weeks later Streetwatch LA member Ian Carr broke the story that an entirely different film company had somehow arranged for a large encampment in front of City Hall East to be swept away in advance of their shoot. Twitter user @publicownedbus also provided valuable info, and then ace Knock LA reporter Cerise Castle also wrote about this incident.1

On December 1, then, I started using the California Public Records Act to investigate. It turns out that FilmLA is a private corporation but their contract makes them subject to the CPRA, so I fired off a request and a couple of days later, after an inordinate amount of pushback from an inordinate number of City offices,10 I received the Union Station permit and wrote a post about it.

In the process of this investigation I ended up learning a lot of interesting things about film permits, how to get copies of them, and what can be learned from them,11 which I thought I’d share with you today!
Continue reading Practical Instructions On How To Obtain Everything You Need From Film Permits On The Day Of Shooting — Even Though FilmLA Chief Bossdude Paul Audley Doesn’t Put Them On The Website Until Two Days After — But There’s A Workaround! — For Instance — That Infamous December 1 Union Station Shoot That Shut Down The COVID Test Site? — The Permit Didn’t Hit The Website Until December 3 But This Method Would Have Let Us Learn — Just For Instance — The Name And Cell Phone Number Of The Location Manager Immediately On December 1 →

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LAPD

Inspector General Mark Smith Is Reviewing LAPD’s Disciplinary Process According To Kevin Rector Of The L.A. Times — The LAPPL Is Fighting Smith’s Plan To Observe Boards Of Rights Hearings But Doesn’t Seem Mad About His Plan To Audit Hearing Outcomes — Smith Needs Data For That And He Has It — And You And I Need Data Too — So We Can Audit The Auditors! — And Here Is The Data! — Six Spreadsheets With Detailed And Unprecedented Information On Hearing Outcomes Since 2016 — In Some Cases Including Case Numbers — Summarized Allegations — Names Of Officers, Advocates, Hearing Board Members, And So On — And Proof That Accused Officers Have Overwhelmingly Chosen All-Civilian Review Boards Since 2019 When The Option Became Available — Since June 2019 When The Option Became Available

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Kevin Rector has a story in today’s L.A. Times about LAPD Inspector General Mark Smith’s intention to review the police discipline process. Rector explains:

According to Inspector General Mark Smith, his office is developing plans to begin monitoring police Board of Rights proceedings to identify “inconsistencies” in board decisions, “inequities” in the process and other ways the system might be improved to ensure “just outcomes for all stakeholders.”

As I’m sure you can imagine, the Los Angeles Police Protective League is fighting Smith’s plan. Absolute secrecy of every possible aspect of the disciplinary process is one of the LAPPL’s main issues. And if the case of Nicholas Owens is a reasonable example, I can certainly see why they don’t want the process monitored when more serious offenses are involved. Also according to Rector, the monitoring plan is not all Smith is working on:

Smith said his office is already conducting a more limited audit of the outcome of disciplinary hearings since the City Council passed an ordinance last year allowing for all-civilian panels.

Voters amended the City Charter in 2017 to allow for these all-civilian panels if the accused officer chooses to have one and the change took effect last year. Most observers expected civilian panels to be much more forgiving of officers’ misdeeds, and I assume that that’s what Smith is already looking into.

And you can look into it too, if you’re interested. I recently obtained an unprecedented set of six spreadsheets filling with information about pending and complete boards of rights, administrative appeals, civil service hearings,12 and maybe other LAPD disciplinary processes.

The data includes outcomes of both all-civilian panels and traditional panels for comparison, and just an incredible amount of other information including names of officers and civilian staff with pending hearings, the names of their representatives and the board members, and so on.

A proper analysis of this material is far beyond my personal capabilities, but its importance is indisputable. I’m publishing it today to make it available to people who have the capacity to understand and use it. All the files can be found here on Archive.org, and there are individual links to the files below, both in the original Excel format and also as PDFs for ease of reading:
Continue reading Inspector General Mark Smith Is Reviewing LAPD’s Disciplinary Process According To Kevin Rector Of The L.A. Times — The LAPPL Is Fighting Smith’s Plan To Observe Boards Of Rights Hearings But Doesn’t Seem Mad About His Plan To Audit Hearing Outcomes — Smith Needs Data For That And He Has It — And You And I Need Data Too — So We Can Audit The Auditors! — And Here Is The Data! — Six Spreadsheets With Detailed And Unprecedented Information On Hearing Outcomes Since 2016 — In Some Cases Including Case Numbers — Summarized Allegations — Names Of Officers, Advocates, Hearing Board Members, And So On — And Proof That Accused Officers Have Overwhelmingly Chosen All-Civilian Review Boards Since 2019 When The Option Became Available — Since June 2019 When The Option Became Available →

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LAPD

The Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation — Which Represents African-American LAPD Officers and Civilian Staff — Surveyed Its Members On Workplace Racism Regarding The George Floyd Protests — Sixty Percent Of Respondents Witnessed Or Were Aware Of Racist Statements Made By LAPD Employees — Foundation President Jody Stiger Met With Chief Michel Moore To Discuss — Here’s A Copy Of The Foundation’s Newsletter With Stiger’s Report — And A Lot Of Other Interesting Material

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The Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation “represents African American officers and civilian employees who proudly serve the Los Angeles Police Department and other municipal agencies throughout the county.” The Foundation publishes a quarterly newsletter known as Pursuit. In the Second Quarter 2020 issue Foundation president Jody Stiger wrote that soon after this Spring’s protests over the killing of George Floyd began, he …

… began to receive numerous calls and texts from members and non-members regarding the harsh and callous comments being made about the Black Lives Matter movement, officers that decided to kneel with protesters, and countless other comments that were, quite frankly, racist and incongruent with the Department’s Core Values.

The Foundation’s board of directors surveyed the members, asking simply “were you witness to, or aware of, any concerning statements made by LAPD employees in regards to the recent protests and calls for police reform?”

Sixty percent of the respondents answered “yes,” and Stiger told Foundation members that the board had met with LAPD Chief Michel Moore “and expressed your concerns to him. I personally read some of the responses to him, and he was very disappointed with what you all witnessed in the workplace.”13
Stiger goes on to describe other actions the board planned to take to protect the safety and well-being of their members while on the job. Stiger’s entire statement is transcribed below. The Foundation’s members have a unique perspective on the question of what should be done about the LAPD. I haven’t heard as much about it as I have some others, and it makes the whole newsletter, which I was lucky to obtain a copy of, definitely worth reading.
Continue reading The Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation — Which Represents African-American LAPD Officers and Civilian Staff — Surveyed Its Members On Workplace Racism Regarding The George Floyd Protests — Sixty Percent Of Respondents Witnessed Or Were Aware Of Racist Statements Made By LAPD Employees — Foundation President Jody Stiger Met With Chief Michel Moore To Discuss — Here’s A Copy Of The Foundation’s Newsletter With Stiger’s Report — And A Lot Of Other Interesting Material →

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Business Improvement Districts

Ellen Riotto — Executive Director Of The South Park BID — Contacted Kevin de León’s Office In July 2020 To Set Up A Meeting With All The Downtown LA BIDdies — She Worked It Out With Sarah Flaherty — Now A CD14 Field Deputy — And The Meeting Happened On September 24 — Riotto And Her Fellow BIDdies Had A Secret Agenda Though — Like Literally A Secret Agenda — That They Didn’t Share With de León — But I Have A Copy — And It Is Very Asky — And Demandy — One Big Thing With Them Is “How Often Do We Have Facetime With The CM? Monthly?” — Listed Twice On The Hidden Agenda — And They Want To Base Their Relationship With The CM On “Trust, Accountability, and Shared Vision” — Accountability?! Facetime?! Monthly?! — These BIDdies Live In A Different World

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On September 24, 2020 the directors of six Downtown Los Angeles business improvement districts met with incoming City Councilmember Kevin de León. The BIDs involved were South Park, Historic Core, Downtown Center, Downtown Industrial District, Arts District, and Little Tokyo and the meeting was arranged by South Park BID director Ellen Riotto.

Riotto got in touch with de León’s office on July 27 asking to meet, and by September was working with de León staffer Sarah Flaherty14 to schedule it. On September 23, the night before the meeting, Riotto sent an agenda to Flaherty along with a note about how darn thrilled they all were.15 The agenda was fairly bland:

DTLA BIDs & Councilmember-elect Kevin de León
September 24, 2020
Zoom Meeting Agenda

I. Welcome and introductions
II. Downtown BIDs
• Who we are
• What we do
• Key stats
III. Our priorities
• Economic recovery
• Long-term planning
IV. Council District 14’s priorities
V. Working together and lessons learned
VI. Next steps

But you know and I know that these BIDdies are sneaky as sneaky can be. Very sneaky. Of course they had a hidden agenda as well as a public one. No, like an actual hidden agenda. Literally a hidden agenda. An agenda, but they hid it from de León.16 And here is a copy of it! They had a lot more planned for that meeting than they told their incoming CM! Their purpose:
Continue reading Ellen Riotto — Executive Director Of The South Park BID — Contacted Kevin de León’s Office In July 2020 To Set Up A Meeting With All The Downtown LA BIDdies — She Worked It Out With Sarah Flaherty — Now A CD14 Field Deputy — And The Meeting Happened On September 24 — Riotto And Her Fellow BIDdies Had A Secret Agenda Though — Like Literally A Secret Agenda — That They Didn’t Share With de León — But I Have A Copy — And It Is Very Asky — And Demandy — One Big Thing With Them Is “How Often Do We Have Facetime With The CM? Monthly?” — Listed Twice On The Hidden Agenda — And They Want To Base Their Relationship With The CM On “Trust, Accountability, and Shared Vision” — Accountability?! Facetime?! Monthly?! — These BIDdies Live In A Different World →

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LAPD

LAPD Disciplinary Procedures Are Notoriously Secretive — But I Recently Obtained Records About An Officer — Nicholas Owens — Accused Of Using A Monkey Emoji To Comment On A Video About Mike Tyson And Subsequently Exonerated By A Board Of Rights — Which Reveal Unprecedented Information — Including The Board’s Detailed Rationale For Its Findings — Which Doesn’t Create Much Confidence In The Validity Of The Process — Like E.g. One Reason They Exonerated The Guy Is That None Of His Extensive Sensitivity Training Specifically Covered Emoji-Based Racism — It Sure Looks Like LAPD’s Disciplinary System Is Performance Rather Than Substantial Process — Remember This Whenever Politicians Or Cops Pass Off Disciplinary Procedures As Some Kind Of Police Reform — The Police Run The Process — And Can Make It Look Genuine As Long As The Proceedings Are Secret — So Let’s Open Them Up!

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Summary: LAPD officers accused of rule violations often appear before a Board of Rights in an adversarial proceeding with the Department playing prosecutor. Most end in exoneration. All records of these proceedings are top secret so no one can tell if the process is corrupt or not. I recently obtained records about a disciplinary case against Officer Nicholas Owens, accused of posting a monkey emoji as a comment on a Mike Tyson video, which include the Board’s detailed Rationale for Findings. This includes an explanation of the reasoning behind the Board’s exoneration of Owens. The explanation doesn’t provide much confidence in the integrity of Board of Rights hearings in general. The other document records the Departmental discipline process, which precedes the Board of Rights hearing.

Police discipline records are notoriously top secret in California. Since forever until 2019, when Senator Nancy Skinner‘s monumental SB1421 took effect, they were uniformly exempt from the California Public Records Act. Even now, though, only records relating to the most egregious misconduct can be released, and only when the officer is found guilty.17

But the huge majority of complained-against officers, at least in Los Angeles,18 are exonerated and most police misconduct isn’t covered by SB1421, which leaves most police disciplinary records completely off limits, and even the release of these very limited SB1421 records was and is highly contested. The

In 2019 police statewide fought SB1421 implementation in court, they fought to stop its retroactive application, and are still slow-walking and otherwise obstructing access to the newly available records.19 Releasing records of disciplinary procedures that end in exoneration isn’t even being discussed. But it certainly ought to be, not least because such secrecy really reinforces mistrust of the police.

The most obvious reason for police to be so vehemently against release is that proceedings ending in exoneration are empty performances with predetermined outcomes. If they’re not scripted, the thinking goes, then why not release the records? If privacy is the issue then why not release public versions, as LAPD does for use of force cases? As Peter Bibring of the ACLU says, “That lack of transparency prevents the public from having any faith that the process is working.”

What Bibring doesn’t say is that if the process isn’t working but the public still has faith in it, transparency is likely to destroy even that. Let’s find out! I recently obtained copies of confidential LAPD disciplinary records from a case where the subject was ultimately exonerated. Even though the offense was relatively minor, involving the officer’s use of a monkey emoji in a Facebook post about Mike Tyson, these records provide unprecedented insight into LAPD’s complaint handling procedures.

It started with a July 2018 complaint, called in to LAPD by a citizen, about the contents of Officer Nicholas Owens’s20 Facebook page.21 These two records reveal an unprecedented22 level of detail about LAPD disciplinary proceedings in much, much more ordinary cases than are covered by SB1421. I have never seen anything like them. Here they are:
Continue reading LAPD Disciplinary Procedures Are Notoriously Secretive — But I Recently Obtained Records About An Officer — Nicholas Owens — Accused Of Using A Monkey Emoji To Comment On A Video About Mike Tyson And Subsequently Exonerated By A Board Of Rights — Which Reveal Unprecedented Information — Including The Board’s Detailed Rationale For Its Findings — Which Doesn’t Create Much Confidence In The Validity Of The Process — Like E.g. One Reason They Exonerated The Guy Is That None Of His Extensive Sensitivity Training Specifically Covered Emoji-Based Racism — It Sure Looks Like LAPD’s Disciplinary System Is Performance Rather Than Substantial Process — Remember This Whenever Politicians Or Cops Pass Off Disciplinary Procedures As Some Kind Of Police Reform — The Police Run The Process — And Can Make It Look Genuine As Long As The Proceedings Are Secret — So Let’s Open Them Up! →

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