Tag: lethal force
Police Chief’s Viewpoint Is An Antidote To Distrust

Police Chief’s Viewpoint Is An Antidote To Distrust

This story is not new.

On March 6, Matthew Kenny, a police officer in Madison, Wisconsin, shot and killed an unarmed 19-year-old black man named Anthony Robinson Jr., who, he said, had attacked him. The shooting triggered days of peaceful protests. An autopsy found a cocktail of illicit drugs in Robinson’s system. Earlier this month, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, who is black, cleared Kenny of wrongdoing.

Though the story isn’t new, what is, is the response from Madison Police Chief Michael C. Koval. In his blog, he anticipated civil disturbances and offered those who might “make a principled decision to get arrested” a helpful menu of charges so they could distinguish between acts that would get them fined and those that would get them jailed and stick them with criminal records.

Impressively, he acknowledged the systemic bias plaguing people of color and the fact that police have been part of the problem. “I am not going to absolve law enforcement for whatever role we have played in being complicit in the calculus of racial disparities.”

One never hears a top cop say such things. I wanted to hear more. Specifically, I wanted Koval to address the question a reader named Tracy posed in this space a few weeks back. “What can I do?” she asked, to combat the scourge of police violence against unarmed African-American men.

Koval said she should volunteer to help police develop programs to identify and combat their own unconscious biases. “A lot of academies, like my own, welcome citizen input and advisories … as people that are willing to come in and serve on panels, to have community oversight.”

It seemed a stretch to say that “a lot” of police academies would welcome this input. When I noted this, Koval sighed. “I think a lot of my colleagues, quite frankly, are very traditional,” he admitted. “I’ll be honest with you. I think the profession … tends to be very reactionary and behind the learning curve. What do cops respond to best? Well, a), lawsuits, which compel change, and b), sometimes there are legislative mandates that put our feet to the fire.”

In other words, if your department does not welcome public input, pressure it to do so. Police, said Koval, have to realize that responding to the public’s concerns is not optional. “If you think it’s business as usual and you can’t incorporate citizen input, then … you’re living on an island.”

Koval said he has worked to make his department a model of progressive policing “in terms of casting, or recasting ourselves, reinventing ourselves into a mold more of a community activist and a guardian, and much less emphasis on traditional law enforcement warrior mindset.” He said he has emphasized community policing where cops don’t just catch bad guys, but also connect citizens with city services and job training, steer the homeless to shelter, help resolve disputes with landlords.

“I’ve been accused, or indicted — I actually embrace it — as ‘Kumbaya Koval,’ because I want to create this guardian image in which I’m trying to cultivate a workforce that are more like social workers with a badge and, oh yeah, there is this law enforcement element that has to take place.”

It will not surprise you that Koval is fond of a quote attributed to Sir Robert Peel, the British statesman who founded London’s police department: “[T]he police are the public and the public are the police.” But that sentiment is only as valid as the trust between the two, and that trust frays more with every controversial shooting. While Matthew Kenny will not — probably should not — face charges for shooting Anthony Robinson, Koval knows that death has nevertheless caused a breach of faith between his department and some of those it is sworn to serve.

“Those are trust gaps,” he said, “that I will be laboring the rest of my life to try to mend.”

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Florida, 33132. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.) 

Photo: Light Brigading via Flickr

Privacy Often Trumps Transparency With Police Shooting Videos

Privacy Often Trumps Transparency With Police Shooting Videos

By Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Cameras mounted inside patrol cars captured every moment.

With their guns drawn, Gardena, Calif., police officers screamed instructions at three men on the sidewalk. The officers warned them to keep their hands above their heads, mistakenly believing that they had been involved in a robbery.

Exactly what happened next is in dispute, but what is undisputed that the men were unarmed when police opened fire, killing one and seriously wounding another.

Afterward, the Gardena Police Department allowed the officers — over the objection of a sheriff’s investigator — to review video of the incident. But the department has refused to make the videos public, even after the city agreed to pay $4.7 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit over the shooting.

Across the country, law enforcement agencies are equipping police and patrol cars with cameras to capture interactions between officers and the public. But many of those police forces, like Gardena’s, do not release the recordings to the public, citing concerns about violating the privacy of officers and others shown in the recordings and the possibility of interfering with investigations.

That approach has drawn criticism from some civil rights activists who say that the public release of recordings is crucial to holding police accountable — especially if the officers involved in the incidents are allowed to watch the videos.

Gardena Police Chief Ed Medrano defended his department’s position as consistent with that of other law enforcement organizations around the country. He said it was intended to protect the integrity of investigations and the privacy of officers and those who come into contact with police.

“The general public does not have an unfettered right to see every video that is taken by law enforcement,” Medrano said in an email. “Thus, absent a court order to the contrary, many agencies across the country, including Gardena, do not intend to release videos to the public.”

In a court filing this year, the city’s lawyers argued that the videos do “not tell the whole story” about the shooting and that making them public could endanger the officers and their families. The attorneys said the social climate since the killing of an unarmed man by police in Ferguson, Mo., last year had heightened the threat to the Gardena officers, who felt compelled to hire experts to remove personal information about them from the Internet.

In February, a U.S. District judge rejected a request by attorneys suing Gardena to lift an order preventing public release of the videos.

Attorney R. Samuel Paz, one of the lawyers representing the men who were shot and family members in the lawsuit, said he was disappointed with the judge’s decision and the Police Department’s efforts to keep the videos confidential.

“Departments speak a good game talking about transparency, but the reality is far from that,” he said.

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Whether to publicly release police videos and when to show recordings to officers have become two of the thorniest issues police departments are grappling with as many add dashboard cameras to cruisers and outfit patrol officers with body cameras.

In Seattle, the Police Department has uploaded videos from officer-worn body cameras onto YouTube after blurring the images to protect the privacy of officers and civilians.

The Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement agencies in California have withheld police video, citing a state law that exempts investigative records from disclosure even after an investigation has been completed. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, whose department is purchasing 7,000 body cameras, has said he considers the recordings to be evidence and will generally not make them public.

Lindsay Miller, a senior research associate with the Police Executive Research Forum, which has issued guidelines on using police body cameras, said it is important for law enforcement to balance the privacy of people who come into police contact with the need to be transparent.

“By withholding all footage, it kind of undermines the transparency rationale,” she said.

The Gardena shooting occurred about 2:30 a.m. on June 2, 2013, after a bicycle was stolen from outside a CVS Pharmacy on Western Avenue. A police dispatcher mistakenly told officers that the crime was a robbery, which usually involves a theft using weapons or force, and officers headed to the area in search of two suspects.

Sgt. Christopher Cuff saw two men riding bicycles east on Redondo Beach Boulevard. The men were friends of the bike theft victim and were searching for the missing bicycle. Mistaking them for the thieves, Cuff ordered the men to stop and put their hands in the air, according to a district attorney’s memo written by a prosecutor who reviewed the police videos.

Ricardo Diaz Zeferino, whose brother owned the stolen bicycle, ran up to his friends as they stood before the police car. The dash camera video captured him yelling at the sergeant, who screamed in English and Spanish for Diaz Zeferino to stop advancing, the district attorney’s memo said.

Diaz Zeferino raised his hands, pounded his chest with both hands and said something that was inaudible, the memo said. One of his friends later told investigators that Diaz Zeferino was explaining that police had stopped the wrong people.

Two more police cars arrived, and three officers emerged with guns drawn.

The patrol car video showed Diaz Zeferino dropping his hands and reaching to his right waistband or rear right pocket and making a tossing motion, dropping an object on the ground, the district attorney’s memo said. He raised his hands, then repeated the move and removed something from his left rear pocket, the memo said.

“You do it again, you’re going to get shot,” yelled an officer on the video, according to the memo.

Diaz Zeferino removed his baseball hat and lowered his hands. As he began to raise his hands again, three of the officers opened fire, the district attorney’s memo said.

Diaz Zeferino, 35, died after being struck by eight hollow-point bullets fired by officers. A single round hit one of the other two men, Eutiquio Acevedo Mendez, in his back, leaving bullet fragments near his spine. In a court filing, the city said Acevedo Mendez “was inadvertently struck with a bullet.”

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The criminal investigation of the shooting was assigned to Detective Jeffrey Leslie of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which investigates Gardena police shootings. Leslie testified that he voiced “displeasure over the idea of (the officers) watching the video prior to me interviewing them,” according to a transcript of his deposition in the civil lawsuit.

Nevertheless, following the department’s policy, Gardena police allowed the officers to watch the recordings before talking to Leslie.

The Police Executive Research Forum recently recommended that officers be allowed to review video recordings before making a statement. Such a practice helps ensure accuracy and is favored by most police executives, the organization said.

But Michael Gennaco, a law enforcement consultant who until last year worked as a civilian watchdog of the Sheriff’s Department, warned that officers who view video before giving a statement can shape their accounts based on the recording.

“Those conducting police oversight don’t favor that,” he said. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department requires deputies to provide an initial statement about a force incident before reviewing video.

The prosecutor who reviewed the shooting, Deputy District Attorney Rosa Alarcon, concluded in her memo that Diaz Zeferino showed a complete disregard for the officers’ orders and that toxicology tests after his death were positive for alcohol and methamphetamine. The videos, she wrote, showed that the officers could not see Diaz Zeferino’s right hand as he dropped it toward his waistband and “believed he was going to reach for a weapon.”

Paz, one of the lawyers who sued the city, disagreed, saying the videos show that Diaz Zeferino’s right hand was clearly empty and in front of his body when the shots were fired. He said the videos show officers were giving confusing orders and that Acevedo Mendez was shot despite keeping his hands above his head.

Medrano said the officers who opened fire — Christopher Mendez, Christopher Sanderson and Matthew Toda — are still on patrol. He said in a recent email that the department’s internal investigation to determine whether discipline is warranted would resume once the civil litigation is complete. A judge finalized the settlement and dismissed the case last week.

Under California law, the outcome of the disciplinary investigation will remain confidential.

Acevedo Mendez, whose stomach bears a 7-inch scar from where doctors removed the bullet, said he wants the public to have access to the videos.

“They need to see what happened…. We had our hands up. We didn’t have any guns. They just shot,” he said. “They killed my friend for no reason.”

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times

Photo: Agustin De Jesus-Reynozo’s brother poses for a portrait on April 28, 2015 at his apartment in Gardena, Calif. His brother, Ricardo Diaz-Zeferino, 34, was shot and killed by Gardena Police. Zeferino called the police to report his bicycle stolen. They mistook his friends for the thieves, and the police opened fire on the group. (Barbara Davidson/Los AngelesTimes/TNS)

Waiting In Cleveland

Waiting In Cleveland

For those who love Cleveland — and there are so many of us who do — the rampant speculation of what comes next is beginning to take its toll.

We are in a constant state of limbo, waiting for so many things.

We are waiting for the verdict in the trial of police Officer Michael Brelo, who is charged with two counts of voluntary manslaughter in the Nov. 29, 2012, deaths of Timothy Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30.

That was the night when 62 police cars chased these two unarmed people across town. Their lives ended in a barrage of 137 bullets fired by 13 officers. At the end of the high-speed chase, Brelo stood on the hood of their car, which was trapped between two police cars, and fired 15 rounds into them.

The nonjury trial has ended. Now we wait for the judge’s verdict and the public’s response.

We are also waiting for the city of Cleveland and the Department of Justice to finish negotiating the consent decree ordered last December and designed to rein in a long pattern of excessive force by police.

We are waiting to find out whether Cleveland police Officer Timothy Loehmann will be indicted for killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice last November.

We are waiting for the Cleveland police union leadership to stop making excuses for the worst of its members and to acknowledge publicly the racism in its ranks, which many members have been willing to talk about only off the record.

And, perhaps most urgently, we are waiting to see whether Cleveland can live up to our recent hype as a city in the throes of rebirth.

Even the city’s bravest faces — politicians, civic and religious leaders, community activists — mask souls cloaked in uncertainty.

We simply don’t know what happens next.

We are aware of the inevitable comparisons to the roiling turmoil in Baltimore and in Ferguson, Missouri.

We are also aware of the many missteps by a city administration too often tone-deaf to the needs of its residents. In March, the mayor apologized for language in a legal brief that cast Rice as responsible for his own death. Late last month, there was the brief and ridiculous Twitter campaign launched by the director of the Cleveland Community Relations Board, Blaine Griffin.

One of his tweets: “Have heart! Don’t hide in the shadows! Should #ourcle be burned down? Speak up.”

Followed by this: “Should Cleveland be burned down like #bmore #ferguson #hough #central?”

Outrage was swift. Both the tweets and the Twitter account disappeared, but not soon enough to spare us from a robust round of national ridicule. Last we checked, Baltimore, Ferguson and the Cleveland neighborhoods of Hough and Central are still standing. But thanks for the suggestion, said no sane person anywhere.

Now, as we wait for the Brelo verdict, city officials are reaching out to parents and community leaders. Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric S. Gordon sent out a tag-team letter with Mayor Frank Jackson to parents and caregivers.

On one side, Gordon tried to assure everyone that crucial conversations designed to protect children are taking place in Cleveland’s classrooms.

“An essential part of our social and emotional learning curriculum … is the lessons we provide to help students confront their feelings rather than to act out in anger,” Gordon wrote.

His list includes:

Good manners.
Understanding and respect for others.
Open expression of one’s feelings.
Sound decision making.
Self-control and the ability to calm down when angry.

One can easily imagine parents reading that list of skills and wondering whether it’s also been introduced to members of Cleveland’s police department.

On the opposite side of Gordon’s letter, Jackson wrote that the city is “focused on how best to create a sense of safety, trust and confidence in our community, while empowering our police to enforce the law and maintain order.”

Pastors in Cleveland are vowing to open their churches in the hours after the Brelo verdict. Some have promised to be on the streets that day.

“To accommodate any person who wants to talk, any person that wants to have dialogue,” the Rev. Theresa Sutton told WKSU-FM, “we’ll have stations set up there so that you can write your requests. I’d do anything that you need to do to keep you from doing what is wrong. What we want people to do today is the right thing, and the right thing is peace, a nonviolent situation.”

This is the Cleveland I know. We are a city anchored in good intentions but churning with uncertainty. If enough of us — only if enough of us — step up, we could really be headed in the right direction, the one that helps us outrun a legacy of decline.

The question isn’t whether Cleveland is the next Ferguson or Baltimore.

What we’re about to find out is whether Cleveland is ready to be Cleveland.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and an essayist for Parade magazine. She is the author of two books, including ...and His Lovely Wife, which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. 

Photo by ifmuth/Flickr

Judge Throws Out Charges Against Chicago Cop In Fatal Off-Duty Shooting

Judge Throws Out Charges Against Chicago Cop In Fatal Off-Duty Shooting

By Steve Schmadeke, Chicago Tribune (TNS)

CHICAGO — In a surprise move Monday, a Cook County judge threw out all the charges against a veteran Chicago police detective who was on trial for fatally shooting a woman during an off-duty incident in March 2012.

Moments before the defense was to put on its evidence in the bench trial, Judge Dennis Porter ruled that prosecutors failed to prove that Dante Servin acted recklessly, saying the shooting was an intentional act.

Under Illinois law, Porter held that a person who shoots a gun in the direction of an intended victim cannot be convicted of involuntary manslaughter but only first degree murder. Anytime a person points a gun at their intended victim and shoots, it is intentional act, not a reckless one, he said.

A chaotic scene erupted in the courtroom as a brother of the victim, Rekia Boyd, stood at word of Servin’s acquittal and shouted and cursed before the judge had stepped down from the bench.

Later, as Servin walked from the Leighton Criminal Court Building with about 10 off-duty Chicago cops flanking him, a crowd of about 40 exploded in anger while someone hurled what appeared to be a lunch bag at the officer.

Prosecutors had charged Servin with involuntary manslaughter, not murder, saying he acted recklessly when he fired five shots over his shoulder from inside his car in the direction of four people who had their backs to him in a dark alley.

His attorneys said Servin was in fear for his life after Antonio Cross, one of the four, pulled an object from his waistband, pointed it at the officer and ran toward his car.

Boyd, 22, was fatally shot in the back of the head. Police found only a cellphone at the scene.

Before he left the courthouse, Servin, 46, spoke to reporters, saying that he has always maintained that Boyd’s death was a tragic accident and offered her family “my deepest sympathies.” He blamed Cross’ actions for causing Boyd’s death.

“I need you to know that my family and I have also suffered greatly during the past three years, and we will continue to suffer,” Servin said. “This is something that I will live with for the rest of my life. My job is to save lives and protect people, and from an early age I knew I would be a policeman. And that’s why I became a policeman so this is a bigger tragedy.

“Any reasonable person, any police officer especially, would’ve reacted in the exact same manner that I reacted,” he said. “And
I’m glad to be alive. I saved my life that night. I’m glad that I’m not a police death statistic. Antonio Cross is a would-be cop killer and that’s all I have to say.”

Darren O’Brien, Servin’s lead attorney, said he cannot be retried for murder because of double-jeopardy protections.

The trial marked a rare criminal prosecution of a Chicago police officer for a fatal shooting. The race of the officer and Boyd — he is white and she was black — never became an issue in the trial itself, but it still hung over the proceedings, coming amid a public outcry in recent months over the deaths of unarmed blacks at the hands of white police officers in Ferguson, Mo., New York City, Cleveland and elsewhere. Testimony began a few days after a white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder after a cellphone video surfaced showing him firing eight shots at an apparently unarmed black man who was running from him.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger said the judge’s verdict reinforces the black community’s distrust of the criminal justice system and could hurt efforts to win more cooperation from the community to combat street violence.

“When I heard of the decision, I was angry and I was saddened for the family, and for us all,” Pfleger, who heads Saint Sabina Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago, said in a brief telephone interview. “What it does is send a message that you can kill somebody and get off with it.

“And every time something like this happens, more and more people say the justice system is broken and more people say what is the point in going through the system?”

Defense attorneys have previously told the Chicago Tribune that involuntary manslaughter cases are typically ones in which a death resulted because a person acted recklessly by playing Russian roulette or firing a gun up in the air.

A veteran trial attorney at the courthouse had told the Tribune before the trial that he questioned why prosecutors had not charged the officer with murder for firing a gun into a crowd.

“Any poor, urban black of Hispanic people who behave that way are charged with first-degree murder,” said attorney Bruce Mosbacher.

Servin, a veteran of 24 years with the department, has been on paid desk duty since he was charged in November 2013. He would have faced up to five years in prison if convicted of involuntary manslaughter, the most serious charge. He was also charged with reckless discharge of a firearm and reckless conduct.

Boyd’s brother, Martinez Sutton, wept outside the courthouse following the abrupt end to the trial.

“This whole case was a slap in the face,” Sutton said.

(c)2015 Chicago Tribune, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

A small group of protesters marches on 15th Place near Kedzie Avenue in Chicago on Monday, April 20, 2015, after a Cook County judge threw out all the charges against veteran Chicago police detective Dante Servin, who was on trial for fatally shooting Rekia Boyd during an off-duty incident in March 2012, ruling that prosecutors failed to prove that the detective acted recklessly. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune/TNS)