Because No One's Making Them Do It, Maine Law Enforcment Agencies Aren't Accurately Tracking Complaints Against Officers

from the perhaps-wisely-deciding-to-avoid-taking-notes-on-a-criminal-fucking-conspiracy dept

For three decades, the DOJ and FBI have barely tried (and always failed) to collect information about use of force by the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies. Despite occasional promises to be more thorough and do better, the FBI has, for the most part, done nothing with this opportunity -- one thrust upon it by a crime bill passed in 1994.

The biggest problem is that submission of use of force data has always been voluntary. The Department of Justice only directly oversees the FBI. Neither entity can force local agencies to provide this data. These multiple levels of failure have led to the Government Accountability Office suggesting the national use of force database be put out of its useless misery as early as this year, rather than just be another thing tax dollars are wasted on.

Local lawmakers could at least compel uniform collection and reporting of this data. They may not be able to mandate the release of this data to federal agencies, but they could at least ensure proper reporting occurs at the local level.

Mandates like this are needed. But few localities have them. This sort of accountability must be forced on local agencies. Collecting information on use of force incidents and any attendant complaints or allegations of excessive force does nothing for law enforcement agencies. So, the data collections must be compelled because there's nothing innately compelling about collecting data that may show officers and agencies have unaddressed problems.

The lack of accountability means any collections are hit and miss. And that data set is mostly misses. Unsurprisingly, when journalists go looking for this data in hopes of quantifying local law enforcement's generation of (and response to) citizen complaints, they come away with incomplete depictions of patterns and practices. That's the best case scenario. The worst case is journalists discovering agencies aren't compiling this data at all.

What's been uncovered in Maine could likely be said about almost any other state in the Union.

A nearly year-long investigation into how Maine law enforcement agencies handle complaints against officers has uncovered widespread inconsistencies in record keeping and the public’s ability to access the information.

WMTW’s 8 Investigates team partnered with the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition to review hundreds of documents and data that were obtained.

The coalition contacted 135 Maine law enforcement agencies as part of the investigation. They were asked to provide the number of citizen complaints against officers from 2016 until now and details on any disciplinary action.

The data and documents produced, or lack thereof, made clear that although it is public information, Maine has no uniform system for tracking and maintaining the records.

Why doesn't the state have this? Possibly because no one with any power ever thought it was necessary. Police departments -- until very recently -- often had the full support of elected officials. Those questioning officers' actions were considered outliers, fringe representatives that were sure to be ejected during the next election cycle.

Law enforcement agencies also have powerful lobbyists who are capable of gutting legislation demanding more accountability and capable of tying agencies into restrictive contracts that forbid retention of information about misconduct or excessive force deployment. Police unions are one of the greatest contributors to decades of opacity and abusive behavior by law enforcement officers.

At least the head of one of Maine's police unions seems to recognize the current state of affairs is, at the very least, problematic.

“Is that acceptable? I think we’ve got some work to do to be able to make sure that we’re a little more uniform,” said Augusta Police Chief Jared Mills.

Mills is also the president of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association. He offered no excuses for department heads not responding but explained how strained resources might make data requests complicated.

“They don’t all have that same data system. They don’t have that stuff at their fingertips,” Mills said.

That excuse doesn't hold up, though. Why don't they have this stuff at their fingertips? It would seem to be essential law enforcement data -- something that can help supervisors and police officials head off problems before they become too big to handle. Data like this would show if more training is needed or if some officers should be forced to seek employment elsewhere.

It's not there because law enforcement agencies have comforted themselves by assuming everything is ok because there's no data that contradicts this assumption. And the assumption remains intact because agencies avoid collecting any data that might undermine it.

Now, the guy quoted in this article? The police chief who also heads the police union? He could institute these changes. He runs a union that has the power to persuade state lawmakers to mandate uniform reporting and alter union contracts that may forbid the tracking and retention of these complaints. But somehow I think he won't. It's one thing to recognize a problem when approached for comment. It's quite another to actually go to war with the people you represent.

Filed Under: bad cops, complaints, maine, police, transparency, use of force

Gov't Accountability Office Says FBI Should Probably Just Give Up The Use Of Force Reporting It Never Bothered Doing

from the waste-not,-left-still-wanting dept

In 1994, Congress passed a law (the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act) that ordered the Department of Justice to "acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers" and publish an annual report. The DOJ immediately handed this responsibility off to the International Association for Chiefs of Police, which produced a single report in 2001 and has done nothing since.

The problem was the process was entirely voluntary. And it doesn't appear that, outside an act of Congress, it can be changed. The DOJ does not directly oversee any state or local law enforcement agencies. The involvement of the IACP might have encouraged more participation if the IACP was interested in participating in this data gathering, but the facts speak for themselves. There's nothing in this for law enforcement. And since no one can force law enforcement to send the DOJ use-of-force data, participation by the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies (as of 2015) was as low as 3%.

In 2015, as excessive force deployment and killings by police officers repeatedly gained national attention, the FBI declared itself the hero and rode to the rescue, promising a new, better, still-entirely-voluntary use-of-force database. This time it offered a carrot -- federal funds -- in exchange for information. It did better than the previous (lack of) effort, managing to gather data from nearly than a third of US law enforcement agencies.

Better than nothing, I suppose. But that's the thing: it's still nothing. The FBI has gathered this hugely imperfect data set from a smallish group of self-reporters. And it has done nothing with the data. The annual reporting has never materialized. Thanks to this wealth of inactivity, the FBI and DOJ may soon be able to give up this responsibility -- one they clearly never wanted. It won't be because it can't be made to work. It will be because no one wants to put in the work. And it may also be because the Government Accountability Office is suggesting the DOJ stop spending tax dollars on work it clearly isn't doing.

[D]ue to insufficient participation by law enforcement agencies, the FBI has not met thresholds set by the Office of Management and Budget for publishing use of force data or continuing the effort past December 2022. Further, as of February 2021, the FBI had not assessed alternative data collection strategies.

That's from the summary of the GAO report. The full report [PDF] goes into more detail, but the conclusion is still foregone: the DOJ never wanted to do this and has spent most of three decades not doing it. The failures found by the GAO aren't the result of the DOJ and FBI struggling mightily and still coming up short. It's a mandate the DOJ received in 1994 and immediately abandoned. The 2015 effort was mostly PR -- an attempt to show the federal government cared enough about police violence to at least try to tally it up. And the FBI put in all the effort that empty promise required.

Here's the half-assery the GAO observed. Both the BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics) and the FBI were supposed to collect and publish data. Here's what the BJS managed to do with its time, energy, and personnel over the past half-decade:

[O]ver the 5-year period from fiscal year 2016 through fiscal year 2020, BJS published results from this survey twice. Further, one of those publications was a retrospective report of previously published data that were collected from 2002 through 2011.

Confronted with this failure, the BJS asked the GAO if it had tried looking somewhere else for the data the BJS was supposed to be publishing. The GAO looked and said that's not even the same thing.

BJS officials also stated that the Law Enforcement Management and Statistics Survey was another means through which DOJ published required data on excessive force. However, BJS publishes information on policies and procedures related to officers’ use of force collected through this survey, but does not publish any information specifically on excessive force by law enforcement officers.

A total lack of effort by everyone involved. The DOJ said the FBI collected the information (but did not publish it) and claimed that ended the DOJ's involvement -- a strange assertion for an agency directly overseeing the FBI to say. Stranger still, the FBI said it had not been informed this was its job, despite making two public announcements (2015 and 2019) saying it would be doing these things.

To ensure Americans were deprived of any useful info about excessive force deployment, the FBI deliberately made a mess of the data given to it by a small percentage of law enforcement agencies.

According to FBI documentation, the National Use-of-Force Data Collection does not differentiate between incidents involving reasonable force and incidents involving excessive force. Specifically, the collection does not contain information on whether officers followed their department’s policy or acted lawfully in any given incident. Therefore, it is unclear how DOJ could use these data to publish a summary on excessive force by law enforcement officers.

And again, another failure to do the things asked of it by the FBI.

In addition, the FBI began collecting these data in 2019 and has not yet published any use of force incident data collected through the program…

As was noted above, the FBI and DOJ have no backup plan. If their original effort didn't work, the solution appears to be to let it die. The GAO says no alternative efforts have been considered to ensure greater collection or more frequent publication. (Or, indeed, ANY publication of collected data.) The proposals the GAO heard from these entities suggest officials were just making stuff up on the spot.

When you're concerned about which agencies might be engaging in more deadly/excessive force than others (as was partially the point of this database), a random sample and some extrapolation is going to provide cover for agencies with endemic problems and paint an unrealistic picture about law enforcement force deployment.

The FBI’s business plan for the collection states that using a sample of agencies may be a potential alternative data collection mechanism.

At this point, the FBI only has a "sample of agencies." The collection has never approached 100% of the nation's law enforcement agencies. At best, it has managed to collect police killing data from 55% of these agencies. When it comes to force deployment, the percentage is much lower.

Just to drive home the point once more: no one in the DOJ wanted to do this job. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has published 130 reports from 2016 to 2020. Total number of use-of-force reports during that same time period? One.

The good news for those people who spent years not doing what they were paid to do? They won't have to not do it much longer.

[T]he collection itself may be discontinued as soon as the end of 2022.

That's the way the FBI wants it. No news is good news. Or, at the very least, its news that can't be disputed by data it barely collected and never published. All that's left is the public perception of law enforcement force deployment -- something that definitely hasn't improved over the past five years. The nation's law enforcement agencies -- including those at the federal level -- have managed to rack up nearly thirty years of non-participation trophies. Never investigating the problem means never having to confront the problem. And if you screw around long enough, people will stop asking you to do stuff you don't want to do.

Filed Under: fbi, gao, police brutality, police shootings, use of force

Law Enforcement Agencies That Acquire Military Gear Are More Likely To Kill People

from the what-a-surprise dept

Correlation is not causation, but if you gear yourself up like you're going to war, chances are you're going to treat the people you're supposed to serve as enemy combatants.

This is what police departments have been doing for years. The federal government's 1033 program allows local PDs to help themselves to military surplus, which includes armored vehicles, armored vests, assault rifles, and grenade launchers. Cops have stopped looking like cops and started looking like combat units. The end result appears to be deadlier police forces more interested in shock, awe, and escalation than defusing tense situations.

A study of 1033 program use in Georgia by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows the more law enforcement gets from the military, the more often it uses deadly force.

A new AJC analysis of a decade of records across 651 Georgia police departments and sheriff’s offices found departments that took more than $1,000 in 1033 money, on average, fatally shot about four times as many people as those that didn’t. The newspaper’s analysis used the military’s database and paired it with a database of fatal police shootings from across the state, controlling for statistical variables like community income, rural-urban differences, racial makeup, and violent crime rates.

The results paint a troubling picture: The more equipment a department receives, the more people are shot and killed, even after accounting for violent crime, race, income, drug use and population.

Only 7% of Georgia's law enforcement agencies obtained military gear through this program. But that 7% was responsible for 17% of the state's killings by law enforcement officers.

As the AJC points out, this correlation is only a correlation. It doesn't prove the 1033 program is responsible for increased deadly force deployment. It only suggests a relationship between obtained military gear and increased killings. Getting more gear does not increase the number of killings by cops, but the fact remains agencies that have used the program are involved in more killings than agencies that haven't.

Whatever link exists is partially psychological. Acquiring war gear instills a war mindset. Citizens become "civilians." Criminal suspects become enemy combatants. Neighborhoods become war zones. And the rhetoric used by officers and officials reflects this mindset. None of this warfighter mentality reflects what's actually happening in Georgia. The flow of military gear has remained steady, even as criminal activity declines.

From 2009 to 2018, police departments in Georgia received $43.5 million in firearms, vehicles and other gear from the military, a figure that experts believe is deeply discounted because the material is used. All that equipment has been requested despite the fact that violent crime rates in Georgia have dropped by one third over that period, according to FBI crime statistics.

Some may suggest the flow of military equipment to law enforcement agencies has resulted in a better-behaved populace. But there's no correlation between armored vehicles and lower crime rates.

A newly published article by a group of scholars with the Emory University Department of Political Science found no relationship between the presence of surplus military equipment and lower crime rates.

Fortunately, there are some in the law enforcement community who recognize the damage the acquisition of military gear can do to community relationships, even if those items may be occasionally beneficial. Calhoun Police Chief Tony Pyle says he's limited his acquisitions and has worked at reverting the war-like mindset in the department since he took over two years ago.

Pyle said he turned down the offer of a $750,000 armored vehicle, despite the fact that there are dozens of them in departments around the state.

“It was basically a tank with wheels, I said, ‘Absolutely not. We do not want that thing rolling down the streets of Calhoun,’” he said. “In my humble opinion, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

Pyle said he thinks military-style gear and clothing can have an impact on a department. Along with shelving the M14s, Pyle said he ordered officers to wear traditional police uniforms, instead of the navy blue combat fatigues they had worn in the city for more than a decade.

Unfortunately, there are still far too many agencies cultivating an "us vs. them" mindset. And the nearly-free equipment and weapons available from the 1033 program are too tempting to pass up. The streets are full of enemies. It only makes sense to prepare for war. If more "civilians" end up dead, that's just the price they're expected to pay for public safety.

Filed Under: 1033 program, law enforcement, police, police militarization, use of force

Investigation Shows Sheriff's Department Rewarded Deputies With Gift Cards For Deploying Force

from the too-much-power-concentrated-in-one-place dept

A Texas Sheriff's Office with a history of questionable hiring practices and a fondness for excessive force deployment has covered itself with infamy again. The Williamson County Sheriff's Office was formerly best known for appearing on Live PD, a "Cops" knockoff that followed deputies around as they enforced the law and -- on one occasion -- tased someone to death in front of Live PD's cameras. (A&E "helpfully" destroyed the footage.)

This led to some speculation that Sheriff Robert Chody was hiring deputies that would make for must-see TV, rather than good public servants. Questionable work histories were ignored if candidates appeared willing to engage in aggressive tactics with the cameras rolling. Sheriff Chody's quest to find TV stars resulted in things like the following:

Mark Luera joined the force in November 2017, about 10 months before TV cameras began rolling on patrols in the largely suburban county north of Austin, Texas.

[...]

“A true leader,” Chody captioned a selfie of the two in June 2019. In another post, Chody called Luera a “Wilco Rock Star.”

The department’s star is also a disgraced former city of Austin police officer whom Chody hired days after the city had been set to fire him for using his special airport access to bypass security, then repeatedly lying about it.

The bad news keeps coming. An investigation into use-of-force incidents by deputies has uncovered another unseemly fact about the Sheriff's Office. A culture of violence has been carefully cultivated by Office officials -- one that appears to lead directly to incidents like the one caught on Live PD's cameras. One "good" beating equals a free meal. That's the mindset of the WCSO.

Williamson County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office leaders rewarded deputies who used force on the job with steakhouse gift cards, according to two former employees, one of whom made the admission to Texas Rangers investigating the agency’s aggressive tactics.

Among the deputies who received gift cards to places such as Logan’s Roadhouse were J.J. Johnson and Zach Camden, the officers involved in the March 2019 death of Javier Ambler. The Black 40-year-old father was Tased four times as he shouted that he had a heart condition and could not breathe.

In a recorded interview with Texas Rangers, former Deputy Christopher Pisa said Cmdr. Steve Deaton awarded deputies he considered “WilCo badass.”

This recording was given to the American-Statesman by Deputy Pisa's lawyer. This allegation was immediately denied by Sheriff Chody, who claimed he has only given out one gift card for "recovering some excellent fingerprints." This may be true. But it was apparently used by other supervisors and Chody did nothing to stop it.

Deputy Pisa's statements allege Commander Deaton handed out cards for "good uses of force." It was something mentioned during shift meetings so it wasn't exactly a secret. And it's the sort of thing you'd expect from a supervisor who left the force under his own bigoted cloud.

Deaton resigned in September 2019, months after social media posts of his surfaced with objectionable images showing dolls depicting actions, such as rape and kidnapping and the mutilation of a Black football player.

Sheriff Chody may be maintaining plausible deniability by distancing himself from this specific encouragement of bad behavior. But history shows he's as much to blame as his recently-departed commander. If you want to turn cops into badge-wearing thugs, all you have to do in most cases is just fail to discipline them. But Chody and his supervisors appear to want to accelerate that process. And for the most ridiculous of reasons: for the TV clicks. Live PD no longer shoots in Williamson County. But the damage has been done.

Filed Under: christopher pisa, gift cards, live pd, mark luera, police brutality, robert chody, texas, use of force, williamson county, williamson county sheriff's office

Police Use Of Force Data Remains A Mess And The FBI's Involvement Isn't Making Anything Any Better

from the no-one-really-knows-and-those-that-might-now-don't-really-care dept

Trust me, it all goes downhill very fast from the opening statement.

The federal government recently released what some hoped would be the most accurate data on how police departments resolve civilian complaints of police brutality.

"Civilians" were really the only ones holding onto this hope. The FBI -- which has failed for years to collect reliable data on police shootings -- certainly isn't hoping it will ever compile a definitive dataset on cops killing citizens.

The law enforcement agencies who were voluntold to send in this data aren't hoping that, at some point in the distant future, they'll provide enough info that citizens can make informed decisions about their protectors/servants level of trigger-happiness.

Since no one with any power is truly interested in accurate data, it falls to private parties. For everyone else, there's the annual data dumps by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which don't come anywhere close to telling the whole story about law enforcement use of force.

The report discussed here is the BJS's 2016 report. Working their way backwards from the official stats to the law enforcement agencies that supplied them, the Austin Statesman has found a whole lot of significant discrepancies.

For instance, the survey shows Austin police officers received 20 excessive force complaints in 2015, but Austin police officials said they actually received 22.

And while Austin police data and the survey both show authorities determined none of the complaints that year were sustained, there were some discrepancies. The survey says three complaints were unfounded, three were exonerated and 14 were closed administratively, but Austin police said their records show two complaints were unfounded, two were exonerated and 18 were closed administratively.

That one's a relatively minor blip, but when 4,000 law enforcement agencies are sending in bad stats, the numbers get skewed significantly. In some cases, the 4,000 participants (less than a quarter of all US law enforcement agencies) didn't provide any stats because they simply do not "formally document and store complaints." That was the excuse given by nearly 1,000 of the 4,000 "participating" agencies.

There are those who make it easy to under-report excessive force complaints simply by never bothering to collect this data. Then there are the 2,000 agencies who report obviously wrong numbers.

Of the other 3,000 agencies, two-thirds reported no excessive-force complaints in 2015, including police departments in San Diego and San Jose, Calif.

The San Jose internal affairs unit blamed this incredible discrepancy on the staffer who filled out the BJS form. Apparently, no corrective action was taken and the head of IA was left wondering why someone reporting complaints to the federal government might put down "0" instead of actually trying to get an accurate count. (Yeah it's a real mystery.)

That leaves about 1,000 reports that could be considered reliable. And these reports aren't going to make anyone believe accountability is spreading like wildfire through local law enforcement agencies. Nearly every excessive force complaint filed ends up being discarded.

[O]nly about 7% of formal excessive-force allegations are sustained.

[...]

Nationwide, around 26% of complaints are unfounded; among the rest, 34% end with exoneration and 22% are not sustained.

That's how it stands in the numbers that possibly can be trusted. Police agencies are exonerating their officers 93% of the time. The FBI is stepping up to make this collection more complete, expanding its coverage of police shooting data to cover times where officers shot at people, wounded them, or killed them. That small expansion won't make much difference. Most excessive force allegations don't involve deployments of deadly force. Those that do tend to result in lawsuits, not ignored complaints. The only thing the FBI is doing here is expanding its already-unreliable dataset -- one that tells an incomplete story about US policing as crafted by a few thousand unreliable narrators.

Filed Under: data, fbi, law enforcement, police, use of force

California's 'Model' Police Use-Of-Force Law Won't Change Much About Deadly Force Deployment

from the we're-from-the-government-and-we're-here-to-grandstand dept

In response to controversial shootings of citizens by police officers, California's governor has (far too proudly) signed into law a bill that will do almost nothing to prevent more of these kinds of killings:

The precipitating factor in changing the standard was the March 2018 police shooting of Stephon Clark in Sacramento.

Police shot and killed him in the back yard of his grandmother's house, after mistaking his cell phone for a weapon. Police suspected Clark of breaking into cars, and they shot him after he refused orders to show his hands. Instead, police said, he pointed what turned out to be a cell phone at them.

As is almost always the case when police officers kill unarmed people, the officers' decision to kill Stephon Clark was found to be justifiable -- a reasonable response to a situation in which the officers feared for their safety.

The new law says these kinds of killings will no longer be justified. Oh, wait. It says nothing of the sort. In fact, it says officers can keep killing people as long as they fear for their safety or the safety of others.

A peace officer is justified in using deadly force upon another person only when the officer reasonably believes, based on the totality of the circumstances, that such force is necessary for either of the following reasons:

(A) To defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or to another person.

(B) To apprehend a fleeing person for any felony that threatened or resulted in death or serious bodily injury, if the officer reasonably believes that the person will cause death or serious bodily injury to another unless immediately apprehended. Where feasible, a peace officer shall, prior to the use of force, make reasonable efforts to identify themselves as a peace officer and to warn that deadly force may be used, unless the officer has objectively reasonable grounds to believe the person is aware of those facts.

This law would have done nothing for Stephon Clark. It will do nothing for future Stephon Clarks -- people who aren't carrying weapons but are responding poorly to conflicting commands being shouted by multiple officers who are carrying weapons.

This failure to make any substantial change to the everyday business of killing citizens is being hailed by the man who signed the bill as the future of police use of force legislation.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced on Monday that California is now a "model for the rest of the nation" when it comes to the use of deadly force by police officers.

Good news, rest of the nation! To keep up with California, you really won't have to do anything.

The reason this law is so weak is because it had to be this weak to even get passed. Concessions were made after the bill got hung up in negotiations with law enforcement agencies and their unions. Assemblywoman Shirley Weber's bill only moved forward once it had been watered down enough to be agreeable to the government agencies it would affect.

To get the bill through the Legislature, Weber accepted amendments that eliminated provisions that would have made it easier to prosecute officers.

It still gives some power to courts to decide if an officer’s application of force is justifiable, but it’s unclear if more officers will face criminal charges because of the new law.

It's not a total loss, though. It does make at least one drastic change to police force deployment. It forbids the killing of people who pose a threat only to themselves.

A peace officer shall not use deadly force against a person based on the danger that person poses to themselves, if an objectively reasonable officer would believe the person does not pose an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the peace officer or to another person.

This will keep officers from "helping" suicidal people end up dead faster. Hopefully, it will also slow down the rate at which cops kill mentally ill people. But sufferers of mental issues are frequently perceived as threats by police officers. This clause won't help much because it leaves it up to officers to decide whether or not a person threatening their own life also (somehow) poses a threat to them. With body cams routinely "failing" to operate in situations like these, it's the word of cops against all other witnesses. Not exactly a game changer.

Perhaps the best part of the bill is the definition of "imminent harm," which should at least prevent a few officers from making deadly assumptions using facts not in evidence.

A threat of death or serious bodily injury is “imminent” when, based on the totality of the circumstances, a reasonable officer in the same situation would believe that a person has the present ability, opportunity, and apparent intent to immediately cause death or serious bodily injury to the peace officer or another person. An imminent harm is not merely a fear of future harm, no matter how great the fear and no matter how great the likelihood of the harm, but is one that, from appearances, must be instantly confronted and addressed.

This is good, but see also things like this:

During the interview, [Officer] Browder stated that he first saw Nehad when Nehad was twenty-five to thirty feet from Browder’s car and that Nehad was “aggressing” the car and “walking at a fast pace . . . right towards [the] car.”

These are actual words used by a cop to justify the near-instantaneous shooting of man armed only with a pen. The officer claimed he thought it was a knife -- a statement he didn't make until his second interview about the shooting. So, that's the standard that's being laid down: if an officer believes harm is "imminent" -- or at least thinks a court might buy it -- the guns will come out and unarmed people will die.

Fortunately, the governor has backed up this mostly-worthless law with something that might have an effect.

Newsom said "no," police officers shouldn't be worried about the change from reasonable force to necessary force. "They should only be worried if we don't, commensurate with this legislation, support the training of those officers."

"What kind of training?" Jones asked. "What is the difference ... when you're training an officer to use deadly force only when it's necessary as opposed to when it might be reasonable? What's the difference?"

"Well, we're about to explore that," Newsom said, "because we're going to invest an unprecedented amount of money, tens of millions of dollars, to move through a process of going, step by step, through de-escalation and focusing, now, with much more specificity, on changing the culture of policing.

This is good. But all Californians have at the moment is a law that says nothing really needs to change. If and when this new training is implemented, we may see improvements. Any improvement will depend on the quality of the training and the discretion of prosecutors. And prosecutors aren't really known for their "tough on (cop) crime" mentalities. This law is an improvement over all the laws no one else is actually trying to pass. But it's only very slightly better than doing nothing at all.

Filed Under: california, gavin newsom, police, stephon clark, use of force

The Oakland PD's Dramatic Drop In Use-Of-Force Incidents Is All Bullshit

from the numbers-massaged-and-manually-pleasured dept

Well, this post of mine has aged terribly.

Back in 2014, I breathlessly reported the Oakland PD's adoption of body cameras had resulted in sweeping improvements to its use of force. Deadly force usage had dropped to nothing, reducing the number of people killed by cops from eight per year to zero.

That still holds. If you just look at dead bodies, you'll see that the Oakland PD had produced zero corpses in the 18 months following the installation of body cameras. But other stats in that report are a bit more questionable.

[Mayor] Jean Quan said Oakland police officers had 2,186 use-of-force incidents in 2009, the last year that no officers wore body cameras, and that number declined to 836 such incidents last year and to only 572 incidents so far this year, with just two weeks remaining.

Were body cams really the panacea? Did this program actually introduce accountability?

Unfortunately, it appears the body cams changed nothing. Precipitous drops in use of force incidents have continued. Year after year, the Oakland PD appeared to improve its relationship to the public in terms of subjecting them to physical restraint or bullets.

But the drop observed here has turned out to be too good to be true. Turns out the easiest way to reduce use of force stats is to… stop reporting uses of force.

[I]n September 2018, the Oakland police’s inspector general, an internal watchdog, found that officers under-reported the number of times they pointed their guns at people. In November, the department’s independent monitor confirmed the inspector general’s determination while also noting multiple cases in which officers struck or wrestled with people and failed to report it.

The report [PDF] by the Oakland PD's Inspector General shows officers fudging numbers to make it appear as though the force was using less force. There may have been little to no improvement whatsoever, even with the addition of body cameras. I mean, thank god the force didn't keep killing eight people a year, but beyond the periodic homicide, there has been little improvement.

Substantial drops in several use of force stats prompted this IG investigation, as well as an internal review initiated by the PD itself. What investigators found was very little change in use of force habits, but a lot of change in use of force documentation.

Pulling a sample of incidents in which use of force would be expected, the OIG found officers simply weren't documenting their force deployments.

All documentation and available video footage for the 47 incidents were reviewed. Of these 47 incidents, the auditors identified 17 in which a reportable use of force went unreported (no use of force form was completed).

You've heard the "bad apples" excuse. It appears the rotten apples within the Oakland PD tend to gravitate towards each other.

Twelve of the 17 incidents of underreporting involved four squads of officers.

It's not all bad news, though. The department was at least forward-thinking enough to believe certain cases might need additional review. This policy would at least give a second pass to "contempt of cop" arrests.

The Chief published a Special Order requiring supervisory review of PDRD footage for incidents involving Penal Code 69, 148, and 243(b)(c) arrests (threatening an officer, resisting arrest, battery on an officer) in late November 2018.

But there's plenty of bad news. The Oakland PD instituted policies meant to compile objective reporting of use of force incidents. But then it undermined its own policies by allowing officers to make judgment calls on reporting.

In practice, a police officer’s “intention” is a dominant factor in determining whether the pointing of the firearm at the subject(s) is reportable, a result of an inadequately designed policy.

Because of these deficiencies, the Oakland PD revamped its policies in 2018. This resulted in a dramatic change in use of force stats, albeit not in the direction one would hope.

[B]eginning in October 2018, the total number of reported uses of force (all types of force) increased dramatically, by nearly 300% between January and May 2018 and January and May 2019.

So, it's mostly bad news, highlighted by the uptick in force deployment post-policy fix. Even with the fixes, the OIG found even more under-reporting.

Upon review of the associated video recordings for the 47 incidents likely to involve force in which the arrests were more probable to have involved a use of force, there were 177 incidents in which the Lead Auditors deemed a reportable weaponless defense technique or pointing of a firearm(s) was used and not reported and documented.

It's not just about guns. These are a few cases the OIG highlights in its report, showing even use of less-than-deadly force went unreported despite the new policies.

1. Officers were in a foot pursuit of a subject and an officer forcefully pushed the subject, causing him to fall on the ground against a fence. The reporting officer stated in his report “no known witnesses.” OIG’s review of the associated video footage identified multiple witnesses on scene when the force in question was used.

2. Officers were attempting to place a subject in handcuffs, and the subject stood up and punched an officer in the face. Another officer wrapped his arms around the subject, physically lifting him off the ground causing them both to fall backwards onto a glass table and then lifted the subject back onto a couch.

3. A detained subject started to run from an officer, and the officer grabbed the subject by the hair and pulled him to the ground. The officer failed to articulate and document in his report that he pulled the subject by his hair.

4. During the search of a subject, the subject turned to run, and the officer grabbed him, causing them both to fall to the ground. The officer also delivered an intentional forearm strike to the subject’s right tricep area while attempting to handcuff the subject.

Cops may complain body cameras are nothing more than "gotcha" devices meant to catch them abusing people and violating their rights. The flow of these policemen's tears would mean oh so much more if the body cameras didn't catch them abusing people and violating their rights. So, if nothing else, the body cameras are exposing what officers hoped to cover up by not filing use of force reports.

Then there's this: cops may argue they don't engaged in biased policing, but the stats belie their protestations of "fair and balanced" enforcement.

There were 12 incidents involving 19 subjects in which the audit found the pointing of the firearm should have been reported as a use of force but was not. Of the 19 subjects, 17 were African American (89%) and 2 were Hispanic (11%).

So, every time a white person has a gun pointed at them by an Oakland PD officer, it gets reported. That seems a bit troublesome.

And there's little reason to believe the ongoing use of body cameras will result in more conscientious policing. Officers apparently believe recording interactions with the public is optional.

Upon review of the associated video recordings for the 47 incidents likely to involve force in which the arrests were more probable to have involved a use of force, the lead auditors determined there were PDRD concerns in 19 incidents. However, 18 of the 19 incidents involved officers not complying with PDRD policy requirements.

Fortunately, the large number of cameras issued ensure there was at least some footage of every use of force incident. Unfortunately for officers who "forgot" to activate their cameras, other officers activated theirs, giving investigators all they needed to discover multiple violations of the PD's body camera policies.

The Oakland PD only looks better on paper. It has barely changed at all since the institution of body cameras and use of force reporting requirements. Some cops hate accountability and many apparently view this as damage to be routed around. Until the PD steps up and starts firing people for violating policy, the practice of fudging the numbers and neglecting camera obligations will continue.

Filed Under: body cameras, lies, oakland, police, statistics, use of force

Victims' Rights Laws Being Abused To Hide The Identities Of Cops Involved In Use Of Force Incidents

from the when-it-comes-to-LEO-opacity,-any-law-will-do dept

A law filled with good intentions and vague wording is, more often than not, a law named after the victim of a crime. So-called "Marsy's Laws" are being passed in states that grant crime victims extra rights, often at the expense of the accused's Constitutional rights. As Scott Greenfield explains, "Marsy's Laws" insert crime victims into a process that isn't theirs to be inserted into. Once a crime has been committed, the government takes over and it's between the prosecutor and the accused from that point forward. As harsh as it may sound, crime victims aren't in need of extra rights. Any effort made to "fix" this nonexistent problem only deprives others of their rights.

Prosecutors represent the government, not the victims or their families. The only party with rights in a criminal courtroom is the defendant, both because the Constitution provides it and because the defendant is the only person whose liberty is at stake.

It’s not that there is no way for a victim, or family, to obtain “justice.” They can sue civilly for their loss, in which case they will be a party to the proceeding, will be capable of choosing their own strategy and pursuing it as they deem fit. But the force of the state, the power of the police, the punishment of imprisonment or worse, is not there for the sake of the victims. It’s not theirs to use, and they get no say in the decisions that are ultimately made.

Most of these laws grant crime victims extra privacy. The laws block the release of identifying info about victims under the theory this will head off harassment of victims and their families. This privacy shield contains no exceptions for government employees, so of course it's being abused to protect people whose public service positions wouldn't normally allow them to keep their names out of the news. Scott Shackford has more details at Reason:

What on earth does a victim's rights law have to do with a police officer demanding to conceal his identity from the public? According to the Rapid City Journal, the officer in question shot 21-year-old Kuong Gatlauk following a confrontation during a traffic stop. According to the police report, Gatlauk made statements intending some sort of self-harm and fled from a police vehicle. In a confrontation, he apparently threw a beer can at the trooper and then tackled the trooper and tried to steal the trooper's gun, according to this report. The trooper was able to keep his gun and shot the suspect twice.

Because Gatlauk was subsequent charged with assaulting the trooper, the trooper is claiming the right under Marsy's Law to have his or her name kept confidential, even though this action happened in the course of public police work and much of the records involved are public records. The state's attorney general has agreed.

Considering how easy it is to "assault" an officer during the course of an arrest, this law could be used to hide the identities of officers accused of deploying excessive force or other unconstitutional policing. South Dakota's version of the law doesn't even require criminal charges to be officially filed by prosecutors for these protections to take effect. All it takes is being booked on charges, even if prosecutors decide not to move forward.

All the good intentions in the world won't undo the collateral damage. Police officers -- who already have access to a wealth of extra rights -- now have one more to use to further separate themselves from accountability. And it's all because tragedy tends to blind legislators to the possible negative side effects of feel-good legislation that grants one group special rights at the expense of everyone else.

Filed Under: marsy's laws, police, police identities, use of force, victims rights

Report On Milwaukee PD Body Cams Show Fewer Complaints, Fewer Stops, But No Reduction In Use Of Force

from the better-than-nothing,-but-how-much-better? dept

The Milwaukee PD is (or was) staring down the barrel of a DOJ consent decree for its unconstitutional policing (mainly stop-and-frisk) and routine deployment of excessive force. This is among the many concerns brought to light last year by the DOJ's draft report on the department.

The Milwaukee Police Department fails the community and its own officers by not communicating clearly, making too many traffic stops and applying inconsistent standards when disciplining officers, according to a draft of a federal report obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The draft report offers a particularly damning critique of Chief Edward Flynn's reliance on data, a signature component of his strategy since he took over the department in 2008. Federal evaluators found this approach is having a damaging, if unintended, effect on police-community relations.

“MPD’s attention to crime data has distracted the department from the primary tenet of modern policing: trust between law enforcement agencies and the people they protect and serve,” the draft report states.

The DOJ also found officers had no idea what community policing entailed, suggesting it only applied to other officers officially designated as community liaisons. The DOJ highlighted the disconnection between the MPD's statements and actions on community policing using this depressing anecdote.

[T]he Milwaukee Police Department doesn’t have a strategic plan for community policing or a set of guidelines regarding it, the draft report says. And department-wide training on how to implement the strategy has not been offered in years.

Federal evaluators highlighted one example of an attempt at community engagement that fell flat.

Officers held a roll-call, or shift change, outside a Milwaukee school. The stated purpose was to let kids know officers wanted them to have a safe summer. The problem? There were no kids in sight, not even student leaders.

The evaluators noted the event may even have sent the wrong message: That the students on summer break were a problem, and the police planned to deal with them.

This draft may never coalesce into an official report. AG Jeff Sessions' full-blooded support for law enforcement includes allowing them to be a law unto themselves by killing off DOJ investigations of misbehaving police forces. What's in the draft report is damning, but it will probably remain a draft in perpetuity.

The PD's responsiveness to community unhappiness did at least result in one change: a pilot program equipping officers with body cameras. Unfortunately, the cameras appear to have done little to address one community complaint.

Milwaukee police officers with body cameras made fewer stops and were less likely receive a citizen complaint, a new study has found.

But when it comes to use of force — the primary reason residents clamored for officers to use the cameras — it didn't matter if officers had the cameras or not. They used force at roughly the same rates.

The PD claims this report [PDF] vindicates officers and the department itself, at least in terms of accusations of excessive force deployment. According to the PD, the conclusions make it clear officers have applied force in accordance with policy. But that's stretching the findings a bit much. It could also mean the deterrent effect one assumes the cameras would have simply hasn't materialized. Officers may feel footage is at least as likely to clear them as damn them and are willing to roll the dice.

And the dice come pre-loaded: officers are given weeks or months to make statements when accused of deploying excessive force. And while statements from witnesses are recorded, those made by officers are not, allowing them to retcon narratives if body cam footage refuses to align with the official narrative. The body cam footage may be a new twist, but the internal investigation process has been an issue for a long time. It, too, receives criticism in the DOJ's draft report.

When it comes to officer-involved shootings, the cases reviewed by the Justice Department were inconsistent and the documentation was inadequate.

In both non-fatal shootings and other uses of force, information about officers’ training, prior use of force, complaints and discipline were not included in internal affairs files.

That information also does not seem to have an effect on whether officers are promoted.

One number that did drop in the wake of camera deployment is street stops. Officers wearing cameras performed far fewer stops than officers without them. This suggests the stop-and-frisk program the PD is currently being sued over tends to make the Constitution an afterthought. Documentation of unconstitutional stops isn't going to help the PD emerge victorious in this lawsuit and the simplest solution is to leave those stops to officers without cameras.

It's not all negative, however. As noted above, officers with cameras received 50% fewer complaints, suggesting the presence of another "witness" causes both parties to treat each other with a little more respect. Camera use can result in de-escalation, which is something rarely willfully practiced by officers.

But we can't read too much into that either. The drop in complaints is tracked by a drop in stops, which may suggest the cameras aren't "civilizing" interactions so much as fewer of them are taking place.

Body cams are band-aids, at best. They can never be a panacea, but they're far from useless. Things do change when law enforcement operates under additional scrutiny. But they don't change as quickly or dramatically as proponents of cameras hope they will. A seismic cultural shift is needed in most departments and body cameras will only incrementally increase the speed in which bad apples are expunged from the barrel. But the barrel will still be filled with slightly-less-rotten apples. That being said, cameras should be a requirement as should the presumption that missing footage weighs against a cop's statements. Just because they're not working as well as many of us thought they would doesn't mean it's without its merits.

Filed Under: body cameras, milwaukee, police, use of force