Tag Archives: Horace Frank

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.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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LAPD

In 2016 LAPD Bomb Detection Canine Section Officer Raymond Garvin’s Supervisor Kathryn Meek Demoted And Transferred Him Out Of His Prestige Position — In 2018 Garvin Sued The City of LA For Unfair Employment Practices And Retaliation — In September 2020 Deputy City Attorney Marianne Fratianne Recommended That City Council Pay $700K To Settle The Suit — Which They Did — Fratianne Identified The “Root Cause” Of The Lawsuit And Recommended A Single Preventative Correction — Out Of A Long Lurid List Of LAPD Transgressions Fratianne Identified Only The Single Most Anodyne — Out Of A Myriad Of Potential Preventative Measures Fratianne Recommended Only The Least Effective — How Will The City Government Of Los Angeles Reform LAPD Even A Little If Officials Are Completely Unwilling To Criticize Them — Even In Confidence — LAPD Is Completely Unable To Reform Itself Given The Level Of Internal Workplace Chaos They Evidently Find Normal And Acceptable

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Synopsis:  LAPD officer Garvin sued the City because his superior officer Meek, who had a “romantic relationship” with another one of her subordinates, conspired with Deputy Chief Frank to get him demoted and transferred. Meek solicited damaging info from Garvin’s subordinates and used “completely fabricated” complaints against him to accomplish this goal. In a confidential report to LA City Council Deputy City Attorney Marianne Fratianne recommended that the City settle for $700K because Meek was not a credible witness but Garvin was.

From a long and lurid list of LAPD transgressions Fratianne chose only to recommend that the City avoid future liability by having LAPD supervisors think carefully about using the technical loophole in the complaint resolution process that allowed Meek to demote Garvin on the basis of fabricated complaints. This innocuous choice suggests that the City Attorney’s office is unwilling to recommend effective LAPD reforms to City Council even when they can recommend in secret and even when such reforms would be purely internal.

Continue reading In 2016 LAPD Bomb Detection Canine Section Officer Raymond Garvin’s Supervisor Kathryn Meek Demoted And Transferred Him Out Of His Prestige Position — In 2018 Garvin Sued The City of LA For Unfair Employment Practices And Retaliation — In September 2020 Deputy City Attorney Marianne Fratianne Recommended That City Council Pay $700K To Settle The Suit — Which They Did — Fratianne Identified The “Root Cause” Of The Lawsuit And Recommended A Single Preventative Correction — Out Of A Long Lurid List Of LAPD Transgressions Fratianne Identified Only The Single Most Anodyne — Out Of A Myriad Of Potential Preventative Measures Fratianne Recommended Only The Least Effective — How Will The City Government Of Los Angeles Reform LAPD Even A Little If Officials Are Completely Unwilling To Criticize Them — Even In Confidence — LAPD Is Completely Unable To Reform Itself Given The Level Of Internal Workplace Chaos They Evidently Find Normal And Acceptable →

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LAPD

Internal Police Commission Calendars Show Commissioners Regularly Attending Social And Ceremonial Events With LAPD Brass — And Meeting Very Regularly — Very Privately With Charlie Beck — Michel Moore — Other LAPD Command Staff — With Private Meals At The Pacific Dining Car — Langer’s — YXTA — They Were Briefed On LAPD Facial Recognition In 2018 — Even Though The Department Publicly Lied And Denied Their Use Of It Until September 2020 — They Have Scheduled Breakfasts Tuesdays At 8 AM — So Many Commissioners Have So Many Private Meetings With Michel Moore That Brown Act Violations Seem Unavoidable — And More!

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NOTE: This post is about Police Commission Calendars from 2013 through 2020, and they’re here on Archive.Org.

The Los Angeles Police Commission theoretically oversees the Los Angeles Police Department via powers enumerated in the City Charter at §570 et seq. Although these powers are pretty broad, e.g. they include the power to recommend that the Chief be fired subject to approval of Council, the Commission doesn’t do much with them at all, as you surely know if you’ve ever attended one of their meetings. They act more like collegial collaborators with the police than any respectable oversight body ought to do.

You’ll have seen that the only people in the room who’ve spent any time at all thinking about police oversight are members of the public there to give comment. The Commission itself is overly friendly with the police and exceedingly hostile towards any members of the public who are not also overly friendly with the police. And it turns out that this impression of unseemly collaboration between overseers and overseen is also accurate outside public view.

The Commissioners have regular private meetings with the Chief and other members of LAPD’s command staff, sometimes over a meal. For instance on January 17, 2018 Steve Soboroff and another person had lunch with Beck at YXTA, a gentrification bar on Skid Row which apparently has good carne asada. Soboroff and Beck met regularly before Beck retired, often at YXTA but sometimes at Langer’s and elsewhere. On March 6, 2018 Soboroff had breakfast with Dominic Choi at the Pacific Dining Car.
Continue reading Internal Police Commission Calendars Show Commissioners Regularly Attending Social And Ceremonial Events With LAPD Brass — And Meeting Very Regularly — Very Privately With Charlie Beck — Michel Moore — Other LAPD Command Staff — With Private Meals At The Pacific Dining Car — Langer’s — YXTA — They Were Briefed On LAPD Facial Recognition In 2018 — Even Though The Department Publicly Lied And Denied Their Use Of It Until September 2020 — They Have Scheduled Breakfasts Tuesdays At 8 AM — So Many Commissioners Have So Many Private Meetings With Michel Moore That Brown Act Violations Seem Unavoidable — And More! →

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