Deputies Involved In 62,000 Criminal Cases Shown To Be Liars, Frauds, Domestic Abusers, And Sexual Predators

from the all-hail-the-Good-Guys dept

If you had evidence an opposing witness in a criminal trial was untrustworthy, you'd want to use it, right? Too bad says the local law enforcement union. And too bad says a California court. The issue at hand is the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department's "Brady" list. "Brady" is shorthand for exculpatory evidence and untrustworthy law enforcement officers called to provide testimony certainly falls under that heading.

After Sheriff Lee Baca resigned in disgrace following his department's implication in widespread jailhouse corruption and its tendency to hire some of the worst people possible to staff its jail, new sheriff Jim McDonnell wanted to make this list of questionable officers public. He wanted to hand it to prosecutors so they'd know which deputies to avoid if they wanted honest, untainted testimony. He didn't go so far as to offer the same list to defense attorneys, but it was one step further than any sheriff before him had taken.

The sheriff's union sued, claiming handing the Brady list to prosecutors violated state confidentiality laws. In July, the LA County Appeals Court agreed with the union. The case has been taken up by the California Supreme Court, but it won't be discussed or decided until next year. Meanwhile, the ~300 deputies whose names are on the Brady list may have been witnesses in a combined 62,000 cases since 2000. And still, nobody is allowed to access their disciplinary files.

The Los Angeles Times has obtained copies of the 2014 version of the list. (It does not say how it obtained these, so its presumably a leak.) In it are details of hundreds of acts of misconduct, all relating to "moral" issues which could conceivably be used to cast doubt on these deputies' credibility. The documents contain many more details, but this quick rundown by the Times scratches the surface of the secret Brady list. [h/t CJ Ciaramella]

One deputy on the list endangered the lives of fellow officers and an undercover informant when he warned a suspected drug dealer’s girlfriend that the dealer was being watched by police.

Another pepper-sprayed an elderly man in the face and then wrote a false report to justify arresting him.

A third pulled over a stranger and received oral sex from her in his patrol car.

The list also includes several deputies still with the department who were convicted of crimes — one for filing a false arrest report and another who was charged with domestic battery but pleaded no contest to a lesser offense. In other cases, prosecutors sharply criticized the deputies’ actions but declined to pursue criminal charges against them.

Also included: multiple allegations (some sustained) of domestic violence, forging judges' signatures, falsified reports, and sexual misconduct.

Accusations of dishonesty lead the way, composing 69% of all misconduct allegations. Dishonesty is exactly what you don't want from your prosecution witnesses, and a track record of dishonest behavior should be enough to make any testimony given suspect. Unfortunately, the documents are still officially secret, shielded from public access by California law and an appeals court decision.

But the misdeeds detailed in the document make you wonder why the LASD hasn't kicked many of these deputies to the curb. It's not just a problem for testimony in criminal cases. It's also a terrible business practice when you're in the business of serving the public. When your job is literally law enforcement, the lax internal enforcement of actual laws encourages further misconduct and abuse, and destroys your relationship with the communities you serve.

Filed Under: brady list, california, foia, la sheriff's department, lasd, law enforcement, police, transparency

Court Shuts Down Police Union's Attempt To Bury Reporting On Sheriff's Dept.'s Hiring Of Bad Cops, Thieves And Sex Offenders

from the shut-up,-they-motioned dept

Late in 2013, the LA Times published information from applications processed by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department that showed the agency was generally unconcerned by past misconduct and illegal behavior by applicants -- especially if those applicants were former police officers or prison guards. This is the government's other revolving door, one that ensures a bad cop won't stay jobless for long.

The local police union and members of the Sheriff's Department tried to get a court to agree to some prior restraint in hopes of preventing this information from being made public. According to the lawsuit, the documents were "stolen" and, as stolen property, the LA Times had no right to hold onto it, much less publish it.

Of course, this assertion is wrong on multiple levels, starting with the fact that it's not illegal for journalists to publish stolen documents. If it was, hundreds of journalists would be in jail. The law cited by the union only prevents law enforcement officers from stealing or disseminating this information. On top of that, while the lawsuit alleged the documents were stolen, no evidence was provided to back up this claim.

This attempt to prevent information of public interest from reaching the public was greeted with an anti-SLAPP motion from the LA Times. This was sustained by the lower court, which found the plaintiffs' arguments severely deficient.

The court noted the Doe declarations ALADS submitted “contain no personal details about the declarants that would relieve them of the obligation of identifying themselves, particularly when the declarations contain the hearsay statement of defendant Faturechi concerning when the article is going to be published and what it will contain -- the evidence most critical to the showing of irreparable harm or immediate danger that plaintiff must make to justify ex parte relief.” The court also observed, “The declarations are also very vague in their reference to the personal information that Faturechi told the declarants he would be publishing.” The court “decline[d] to issue a TRO imposing a prior restraint on defendants’ free speech based on the speculative hearsay testimony of anonymous witnesses.”

The court denied the application on the additional ground that ALADS -- by its own admission -- had known for weeks if not months that the Times had information from the OPS/LASD deputies’ files, that notwithstanding this knowledge it had not proceeded by noticed motion, and therefore that “any exigency appear[ed] to be of [ALADS’] own making . . . . ”

This, of course, led to an appeal.

The appeal, even if successful, would have been a lost cause. By the time it reached the California appeals court, the information had already been published. Once prior restraint was denied, the only thing left for the plaintiffs to do was find some way to punish the paper for its act of journalism.

The appeals court is similarly unmoved by the plaintiffs' post-publication arguments, which are pretty much mostly a repetition of its previous failed arguments, with the addition of the assertion that the LA Times shouldn't have been able to invoke anti-SLAPP laws because it was trafficking in "stolen" material. Again, the appeals court agrees with the finding of the lower court -- that the plaintiffs make a lot of accusations, but can't seem to be able to back them up.

ALADS asserts the trial court erred in finding the Times had met its burden on the first step of the analysis because the Times obtained the LASD files “through criminal means.” ALADS repeats the allegation from its complaint that the Times reporter “stole, received from someone else who stole, or otherwise unlawfully came into physical possession of the confidential background investigation files...” As the trial court correctly observed, ALADS has presented no admissible evidence that Faturechi or anyone else at the Times stole anything.

And even if the documents were indeed stolen, the LASD officers and police union can't seem to find anything that indicates a law was broken by the LA Times' publication of the material.

ALADS cites -- and miscites -- various statutes it contends are violated by Faturechi’s mere possession of the records. For example, ALADS asserts that section 6200 of the Government Code makes it a crime for “any person” to steal, remove, or secrete “official government documents.” But the statute does not say “any person.” It says “[e]very officer” who has custody of a record “deposited in any public office” shall not steal, remove, secrete, destroy, mutilate, deface, alter, or falsify the record or permit another person to do so. The section is entitled “Custodial officers; theft, destruction, alteration, falsification.” Similarly, ALADS claims Government Code section 3307.5 “makes it illegal, as a matter of law, for anyone” to release a photograph of a peace officer to the public. In fact, that statute concerns officers’ relationships with the agencies that employ them. It says officers shall not be “required as a condition of employment” to consent to the use of their photographs on the Internet.

The court also addresses the "privacy violation" arguments advanced by the police union and the anonymous Doe plaintiffs, finding them similarly weak.

The first problem with ALADS’ argument is that any privacy right in the information contained in deputies’ employment applications belongs to the deputies (and their employer, LASD), not to the deputies’ labor union. “It is well settled that the right of privacy is purely a personal one; it cannot be asserted by anyone other than the person whose privacy has been invaded, that is, plaintiff must plead and prove that his privacy has been invaded.”

Finally, the court takes on the union's claim that its attempted prior restraint wasn't really prior restraint.

[T]he injunction ALADS seeks would not be “content-neutral” at all. ALADS asks the court to enjoin the Times from publishing any article containing any information in 16 listed categories, including the names of any OPS/LASD deputies, their photographs, and their “non-public criminal history.”

In sum, ALADS has cited no case permitting the kind of injunction it seeks here, to restrain a newspaper from publishing news articles on a matter of public concern: the qualifications of applicants for jobs as law enforcement officers. ALADS has cited no case because there is no such case. For more than one hundred years, federal and state courts have refused to allow the subjects of potential news reports to stop journalists from publishing reports about them.

Which is all this actually is. The police union and the Doe officers, too concerned about their reputations to put their name on the lawsuit, wanted nothing more than to bury unflattering information. Neither the union nor the officers seemed to have any problem with former officers fired for misconduct or illegal behavior being allowed back into positions of authority and power, but they had a serious problem with the LA Times letting the public in on its dirty secrets. Fortunately, two consecutive courts refused to buy the plaintiffs' censorious, malformed arguments.

Filed Under: bad cops, first amendment, journalism, la sheriff's department, lasd, police union, prior restraint, reporting

LA Sheriff's Dept. On New Surveillance Program: We Knew The Public Wouldn't Like It, So We Kept It A Secret

from the because-screw-those-whiners-and-their-'rights' dept

As we've noted several times before, law enforcement and investigative agencies tend to roll out expanded surveillance systems without bothering to run it by the citizens they're planning to surveil. The systems and programs are deployed, FOIA battles are waged and, finally, at some point, the information makes its way to the public. It is only then that most agencies start considering the privacy implications of their surveillance systems, and these are usually addressed by begrudging, minimal protections being belatedly applied.

Now, it's obvious why these agencies don't inform the public of their plans. They may uses terms like "security" and "officer safety" and theorize that making any details public would just allow criminals to find ways to avoid the persistent gaze of multiple surveillance options, but underneath it all, they know the public isn't going to just sit there and allow them to deploy intrusive surveillance programs.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is using a new surveillance program utilizing the technology of a private contractor doing business under the not-scary-at-all name of "Persistent Surveillance Systems." This gives the LASD a literal eye in the sky that provides coverage it can't achieve with systems already in place. But it does more than just give the LASD yet another camera. It provides the agency with some impressive tools to manipulate the recordings.

The system, known as wide-area surveillance, is something of a time machine – the entire city is filmed and recorded in real time. Imagine Google Earth with a rewind button and the ability to play back the movement of cars and people as they scurry about the city.

“We literally watched all of Compton during the time that we were flying, so we could zoom in anywhere within the city of Compton and follow cars and see people,” [Ross] McNutt [owner of Persistent Surveillance Systems] said. “Our goal was to basically jump to where reported crimes occurred and see what information we could generate that would help investigators solve the crimes.”

As with nearly everything making its way into law enforcement hands these days, this technology was developed and deployed first in battlefields. Persistent Surveillance Systems' first proving grounds were Afghanistan and Iraq, tracking down bombing suspects. All it takes is a cluster of high-powered cameras and a single civilian plane to watch over Compton with warzone-quality surveillance. According to McNutt, the camera system covers "10,000 times" the area a single police helicopter can. McNutt also believes the system can be expanded to cover an area as large as the entire city of San Francisco.

While the cameras aren't quite powerful enough to allow the LASD to make use of another, increasingly popular technological tool -- facial recognition -- this still gives the LASD an unprecedented coverage area. Camera technology continues to improve, so there's no reason to believe a few of McNutt's planes won't someday (possibly very soon) have the power to assist the LASD with adding new mugshots to its databases.

But, as pointed out earlier, where does the public fit into all of this? Were privacy concerns addressed before moving forward with Persistent Surveillance Systems? I'm not even going to try to set up this astounding response from an LASD officer. Just read it:

“The system was kind of kept confidential from everybody in the public,” (LASD Sgt.) Iketani said. “A lot of people do have a problem with the eye in the sky, the Big Brother, so in order to mitigate any of those kinds of complaints, we basically kept it pretty hush-hush.”

You know, it's one thing to think this. We know from experience that many law enforcement officials (as well as the rank-and-file) absolutely resent being publicly accountable and having to make the occasional token effort to respect civil liberties, so it's not surprising that the LASD knew the easiest way to avoid a negative public was to lock the public out.

It is, however, quite another thing to come out on record and say this. This shows just how little the LASD actually cares about the public's concerns. The agency knew the public wouldn't be happy and an official comes right out and tells the public that his agency and others don't really care. What they don't know won't hurt them... until it's too late to do anything about it.

This was followed up by another statement from an LAPD official, who noted that frogs generally come around to the idea of being boiled to death.

The center’s commanding officer, Capt. John Romero, recognizes the concerns but equates them with public resistance to street lights in America’s earliest days.

“People thought that this is the government trying to see what we’re doing at night, to spy on us,” Romero said. “And so over time, things shifted, and now if you try to take down street lights in Los Angeles or Boston or anywhere else, people will say no.”

There's no honesty or accountability in these statements. There's only an admission that Los Angeles law enforcement feels the public is there to serve them and not the other way around. Hiding your plans from the public doesn't instill confidence that their rights will be respected. Neither does telling them they'll "get used to it." Instead, it creates an even more antagonistic environment, one where the public is viewed as a nuisance at best by people whose power is derived from the same citizens they so obviously have no respect for.

Filed Under: la, la sheriff's department, secrecy, surveillance, transparency
Companies: persistent surveillance systems