Category Archives: LAPD

LAPD

An Anonymous Complaint Against LAPD Commander Anne Clark Of The Detective Services Group Details Her Sexist Misrule — Reveals The Existence Of A Secret Internal Affairs Audit Of The Detective Bureau — Accuses Clark Of Hating Women Command Staff — Humiliating Them In Public — Accuses Deputy Chief Kris Pitcher Of Enabling Clark’s Bad Behavior For His Own Selfish Purposes — And Of Conspiring With Clark To Criminally Misuse Federal Funds — And Michel Moore Opened Up A Personnel Complaint Against Clark On The Basis Of This Anonymous Email — Did I Mention There Is A Complete Copy Of It Right Here For You?!

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GREETINGS NEW READERS FROM LAPD!! If you’re enjoying this story please note that it was only possible because some lovely and thoughtful person inside LAPD leaked a confidential email to me. Maybe you’ve seen something the world ought to see? Send it along, friend! You can use my Dropbox here, just make up an email address and name, or go full tinfoil hat and use Tor and PGP! Details here.

Commander Anne Clark runs LAPD’s Detective Services Group, which makes her second in command of the Detective Bureau, reporting directly to Deputy Chief Kris Pitcher. But it’s not a happy workplace, apparently. According to an anonymous email sent on August 6. 2020 to Los Angeles Police Commissioner Shane Murphy Goldsmith by someone using the pseudonym David Well, Internal Affairs Group was at that time conducting a “workplace audit”, apparently LAPD-speak for IAG investigations that lack “CF numbers”, whatever those might be.

Despite the pseudonym, though, I’d bet good money the anonymous complainant is a woman. The accusations against Clarke are not only completely plausible, they have to do with the kind of pro-male sexism that certain women in certain powerful positions can display. They’re not really the kind of problems that men tend to notice in this amount of detail. E.g.

“Anne Clark dislikes other female command staff within Detective Bureau, which appears to be based on their gender. She is very cordial to and supportive of the male Captains but rude, obnoxious, disrespectful and downright mean to the female Captains.

It’s hard for me to imagine a male LAPD officer noticing this kind of behavior and at the same time thinking it’s worth complaining about.1 There are plenty of other examples like this. In fact all of the specific examples have to do with Clark’s mistreatment of high-ranking women, which suggests that the complainant is also a high-ranking woman. The email also faults Clark’s superior officer, Kris Pitcher:

Deputy Chief Kris Pitcher is complicit in that he listens to how she speaks to others during Compstat inspections or other venues, yet does nothing to stop her unprofessional demeanor, most likely because he has been promised the next Assistant Chief position and does not want to jeopardize his appointment by being blamed by Clark for taking action against a female employee.

Michel Moore received Well’s email, which is transcribed in its lurid entirety below, and had his command staff initiate a personnel complaint against Clark. He also asked for a briefing on the Workplace Audit Well refers to. But I have no idea what happened after that, at least not yet I don’t!
Continue reading An Anonymous Complaint Against LAPD Commander Anne Clark Of The Detective Services Group Details Her Sexist Misrule — Reveals The Existence Of A Secret Internal Affairs Audit Of The Detective Bureau — Accuses Clark Of Hating Women Command Staff — Humiliating Them In Public — Accuses Deputy Chief Kris Pitcher Of Enabling Clark’s Bad Behavior For His Own Selfish Purposes — And Of Conspiring With Clark To Criminally Misuse Federal Funds — And Michel Moore Opened Up A Personnel Complaint Against Clark On The Basis Of This Anonymous Email — Did I Mention There Is A Complete Copy Of It Right Here For You?! →

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Hitherto Unpublished LAPD 24 Hour Occurrence Log Form On Salvador Sanchez’s 2019 Killing of Kenneth French In A Costco — Reveals That Initial Force Investigation Division Detective Anthony Rheault Concluded Immediately That Sanchez Was Truthful Regarding Key Elements Of The Story — And Presented His Unsupported Statements As Fact — Statements Which Were Later Shown To Be Either False — Or Contradictory — Or Unsupported By Evidence — Perhaps It Would Be Better For Investigators To Stick To Verifiable Facts On These Forms So As Not To Influence The Direction Of The Later Investigation

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On June 14, 2019 off duty LAPD Officer Salvador Sanchez killed Kenneth French in a Costco in Covina. On September 9, 2019 Riverside County DA Mike Hestrin presented the case to a grand jury, which subsequently declined to indict Sanchez. In 2020 both LAPD Chief Michel Moore and the Los Angeles Police Commission ruled that Sanchez violated Department rules by killing French.

This is all well-known. What I haven’t seen discussed, reported on, or even published is this 24 Hour Occurrence Log form about the shooting, prepared by LAPD Force Investigation Division Detective Anthony Rheault on June 18, 2019, just four days after Sanchez killed French.1 In particular this initial report states that “In an unprovoked assault, Kenneth French struck the officer in the head, causing him to collapse to the ground with his child.”

The 24 Occurrence Log also states that “The off-duty officer sustained blunt force trauma to his head.” While there is some testimonial evidence that French did strike Sanchez it’s not completely convincing and given that later pretty much every other aspect of his story turned out to be a lie, I’m not completely convinced.

Furthermore, Moore’s final report, which was obtained and published by the Los Angeles Times, contains no convincing evidence that Sanchez suffered from any serious injury. To the contrary, Moore states:

The UOFRB majority noted that although the attack on Officer Sanchez by Kenneth was unprovoked, the inconsistencies in Officer Sanchez’s statements and the lack of supporting evidence led them to determine that this incident did not support the drawing and exhibiting of a firearm. … The UOFRB majority also noted that Officer Sanchez indicated he was struck hard enough to be rendered unconscious, yet after receiving medical treatment, there was a lack of any substantiated injuries…”

So basically Rheault accepted Sanchez’s story as fact on these two essential issues, issues on which all the different levels of review later found Sanchez’s story to be inconsistent and implausible. It seems to me, at least, that investigators ought to keep their unsupported conclusions out of their reports and stick to the facts.
Continue reading Hitherto Unpublished LAPD 24 Hour Occurrence Log Form On Salvador Sanchez’s 2019 Killing of Kenneth French In A Costco — Reveals That Initial Force Investigation Division Detective Anthony Rheault Concluded Immediately That Sanchez Was Truthful Regarding Key Elements Of The Story — And Presented His Unsupported Statements As Fact — Statements Which Were Later Shown To Be Either False — Or Contradictory — Or Unsupported By Evidence — Perhaps It Would Be Better For Investigators To Stick To Verifiable Facts On These Forms So As Not To Influence The Direction Of The Later Investigation →

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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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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,1 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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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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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,1 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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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.”1
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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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.1

But the huge majority of complained-against officers, at least in Los Angeles,2 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.3 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’s4 Facebook page.5 These two records reveal an unprecedented6 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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More Records From The Police Commission Committee On Building Trust And Equity — Including Eileen Decker’s 25 Page Discussion Of Reforms Recommended By The Christopher Commission In 1991 — With Her Thoughts On Current Compliance And Potential Improvements — And 74 Pages On The 2001 Consent Decree Reforms — And Much More — Demonstrating The Police Commission’s Compliance Check Methodology — Which Is To Count A Reform As Implemented If LAPD Adopts A Policy — Or Requires More Training — Or Introduces Another Level Of Review — Without Looking Independently At What The Police Are Actually Doing — This Won’t Change LAPD — As The Forty Years Of Reform History In These Documents Shows Very Clearly

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This post is based on records from the Police Commission’s Committee on Building Trust and Equity1 consisting of lists of police reform proposals dating as far back as the 1991 Christopher Commission. I’m linking to PDFs of the documents here in case you want to start with the actual evidence. Other formats are available at Archive.Org:

❀ Christopher Commission Recommendations — In a chart with current compliance evaluations and other comments (probably) by Commission President Eileen Decker. If you only look at one of these look at this one.
❀ LAPD Reform Report Recommendations from the 2001 Consent Decree — Very detailed 74 page report. Essential.
❀ Current Reforms Chart Data Tab — Comparison of four police departments’ implementation of various reform proposals with respect to data, including LAPD.
❀ Current Reforms Tracker Training — Like the previous item but focusing on training.
❀ Current Reforms Tracker Recruitment — Like the previous item but focusing on officer recruitment and retention.
❀ OIG 2017 Review of Best Practices — Inspector General Mark Smith’s 2017 report on LAPD reform efforts, with recommendations.
❀ OIG 2019 Review of Best Practices — Like the previous item but from 2019.

It’s been widely reported that the Los Angeles Police Commission contracted with the National Police Foundation to write a report on the Los Angeles Police Department‘s behavior during the recent May/June 2020 uprising in response to the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. The Commission and LAPD have been busy supplying the NPF with all the evidence they could ever desire.

Not quite so widely reported on is the Commission’s Advisory Committee on Building Trust and Equity. This group was convened in July 2020 to report back to the Commission with recommendations for reforming LAPD, Their report isn’t out yet, but recently I obtained a copy of a draft. It’s a very mainstream set of useless shopworn proposals that, in the words of renowned tweetist @banannaise, “mostly boils down to … tell[ing] the cops to be nice to people and … to stop breaking the law.”

Which was predictable given the Commission’s deferential attitude towards LAPD along with the unstated but obvious charge to the Committee to smooth things over as much as possible. But the fact that the Committee’s conclusions are predetermined doesn’t imply that they’re not committed to making the process look as valid as possible2 nor that much of their work, even if done in the service of appearing valid, is worthless.

As part of this work, then, the Committee is looking in detail at a huge range of existing police reform proposals, many of which LAPD has already tried, some voluntarily and some by court order. They’ve collected these proposals in a number of spreadsheets, also including LAPD-specific analyses, and I recently obtained copies of a number of these documents (and published them here on the Internet Archive).

Regardless of the value of the Committee’s final report3 these records are very interesting. Two of them, this 25 page list of LAPD reforms recommended by the 1991 Christopher Commission and this 74 page list of all LAPD reforms required by the 2001 Rampart Scandal Consent Decree, are extremely interesting.4 You can also view these files as HTML in your web browser. Click here for the Christopher Commission reforms and here for the Consent Decree reforms.
Continue reading More Records From The Police Commission Committee On Building Trust And Equity — Including Eileen Decker’s 25 Page Discussion Of Reforms Recommended By The Christopher Commission In 1991 — With Her Thoughts On Current Compliance And Potential Improvements — And 74 Pages On The 2001 Consent Decree Reforms — And Much More — Demonstrating The Police Commission’s Compliance Check Methodology — Which Is To Count A Reform As Implemented If LAPD Adopts A Policy — Or Requires More Training — Or Introduces Another Level Of Review — Without Looking Independently At What The Police Are Actually Doing — This Won’t Change LAPD — As The Forty Years Of Reform History In These Documents Shows Very Clearly →

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Josh Rubenstein Apparently Calls Black LAPD Officers “Boys” — Right To Their Faces — And When His African-American Subordinate Raymond Brown Complained Repeatedly Rubenstein And His Media Relations Sidekick Patricia Sandoval Apparently Told Him He’d Never Get Promoted — And Then Apparently Didn’t Promote Him At Least Twice — So In May Brown Filed A Suit Against The City Of Los Angeles — It’s Worth Reading And There’s A Copy Right Here For You!

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On a date in or around late 2017, Director Josh Rubenstein greeted the officers in Media Relations Division’s open office space as “ladies, gents, and officers” and, immediately thereafter, approached the Online Unit office and stated, “How are you boys?” At the time, only Plaintiff and Police Officer III Lyle Knight were present in the Online Unit office. Both Plaintiff and Officer Knight are African-American. Within approximately one week, Rubenstein again asked Plaintiff and Officer Knight, “How are you boys?” Just days later, Rubenstein addressed Plaintiff and Officer Knight as “boys” for a third time. This time, however, Rubenstein did so in a snide and mocking tone of voice. Moreover, Rubenstein said “boys” so loudly that even Sgt. Preciado, who was sitting both outside of and a significant distance away from the Online Unit office, heard it.

—Raymond Brown v. City of Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Police Department gets sued. It gets sued a lot. And it’s not just their civilian victims suing them. It turns out that an organization dedicated to violence, secrecy, machismo, and the defense of capital is, who’d have thought, not a very nice place to work. Which is why their own employees sue the LAPD a lot also.

Like for instance just last year LAPD Media Relations Officer Frank Preciado sued, alleging that his supervisor Josh Rubenstein1 didn’t allow Preciado and others to speak Spanish in the office. Preciado also alleged that Rubenstein banned Media Relations employees from tuning in to Spanish Language TV on the Department’s monitors.

The situation is not only discriminatory according to Preciado but, given that his official duties include speaking to Spanish language media folks, it also prevents him from doing his job properly. Rubenstein is LAPD’s most visible Anglophone public information officer. The dude is everywhere and he’s always got time for the media. Unless, I guess, they’re working in Spanish.

Preciado’s suit got some media attention in 2019 when it was filed, but not much since. That little bit is more than Raymond Brown’s suit, filed in May 2020, received, though. And Brown’s suit also hinges on Rubenstein’s weirdo antics, in particular the fact that apparently Rubenstein thinks it’s acceptable to refer to Black LAPD officers as “boys”.
Continue reading Josh Rubenstein Apparently Calls Black LAPD Officers “Boys” — Right To Their Faces — And When His African-American Subordinate Raymond Brown Complained Repeatedly Rubenstein And His Media Relations Sidekick Patricia Sandoval Apparently Told Him He’d Never Get Promoted — And Then Apparently Didn’t Promote Him At Least Twice — So In May Brown Filed A Suit Against The City Of Los Angeles — It’s Worth Reading And There’s A Copy Right Here For You! →

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