The Police Game

Scott Glover and Matt Lait report in today's LOS ANGELES TIMES that one Los Angeles Sheriffs Department (LASD) supervisor, Lt. James Tatreau, organized "games" in which deputies were urged to compete to see who could make the most arrests in a day.

The reason Tatreau said he instituted the games were, one, "there are good, hardworking deputies and there are the lazy guys [and] he was trying to encourage the less motivated deputies to get more involved in proactive police work."

This unwittingly provides information to the rest of the world that LASD may not have wanted disclosed. Civil rights activists, and victims of false arrest, have long recognized that there is pressure on law enforcement officers to make arrests, which naturally leads to false arrests. If they make fewer arrests, they are viewed as not doing their job.

That's not true, of course. An officer who investigates, finds no basis for an arrest, and refrains from arresting is doing his or her job. But law enforcement agencies don't all see it that way. They like officers who make lots of arrests.

Tellingly, despite the game, the number of arrests didn't go up. Apparently the law-abiding officers didn't give a rat's ass about Lt. Tatreau's "game." But we should. Because police all over the country play that game every day. That's how it works.

California's Big Secret

Matt Lait and Scott Glover follow up in today's LA TIMES ("Privacy risk to police unclear") on the failure of a bill (SB 1019) in the California state legislature which would have reopened to public view administrative hearings on officer misconduct. The hearings have been closed since a recent California Supreme Court decision.

Lait and Glover tracked down legislators who justified their votes on the grounds that making the hearings public -- as they had been for decades -- would put officers' lives at risk. The TIMES asked for examples of officers who had ever been harmed, or even threatened with harm, as a result of the public hearings in the past. Answer: none.

This is because whatever the problem is, it's a new one, which wouldn't be reflected in the prior history of these hearings.

That new problem is the internet. The police union's general counsel provided this questionable, but helpful statement: "Once you have that name, it's easy to locate residences and addresses. ... The example I use is any jerk sitting in a cave in Afghanistan with access to the Internet can download it."

The statement is questionable because finding residential addresses on the internet can't be the problem. If it were, officers wouldn't continue to give out their business cards, identify themselves in court when they testify, wear nameplates on their uniforms, etc. Nor would judges give their names in open court. Or prosecutors. These are ways that a criminal can easily obtain names of people he or she doesn't like in his or her case, without any disciplinary hearing taking place. So the concern is not the officers' home addresses. Those are strictly hidden from the internet.

Yes, the internet is the problem. But not due to an officer safety issue. Here's the problem: "Police union leaders said that trial lawyers and reporters would mine the records to try to undercut the credibility of officers."

That's the problem. Not officer safety. Officer credibility.

Over the last decades, California has gotten into the business of constantly moving a large segment of its population in and out of jails and prisons, over and over. The policy, which the public approves, is to deal with all sorts of societal problems -- poverty, mental disability, substance abuse -- by throwing them into cages. Still homeless? Back to jail. Still addicted? Back to jail. Still bothering the neighbors with your paranoia and delusions? Back to jail.

One defect of this policy is that it creates an ocean of criminal law enforcement litigation for the courts to resolve. The due process protections of the U.S. Bill of Rights create a bottleneck for that ocean to pass through. It's not feasible to respect the rights of the criminally accused to things like probable cause before arrest; or to evidence collected without unlawful searches; or to uncoerced confessions; when you've got such an ocean to take care of. The release valve for that ocean of cases is law enforcement officers' false statements, in police reports and on the witness stand, sometimes referred to as "testilying" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testilying). False statements about why someone was pulled over in the first place; about alleged self-incrimination; about whether someone consented to a search; statements like that. Without those false statements -- which admittedly include false statements against defendants who really are guilty, but also convict the innocent -- the system would break down. The alternative would be to move from a policy of cages, to a policy of treatment, education, counseling. And California isn't ready for that. So its system routinely depends upon the false statements of police.

That system can't work without concealing the records of officers who have been caught lying in the past. As police union officials fear, defense attorneys would be duty-bound to show those records to the jury, and a lot of defendants, defendants who committed the charged conduct, as well as innocent defendants, would escape the cage. Over time, the number of jurors would increase who simply refuse to accept the word of a cop without some independent supporting evidence. And court dockets would become totally unmanageable as more defendants opted for jury trials, because those trials became more winnable.

So California has developed an "honor" system for controlling records of police dishonesty. In order for a criminal defense attorney to see any iota of information from the personnel records of a testifying officer who has been caught lying in the past, the attorney has to make one or more "Pitchess" motions, at the end of which they may obtain incomplete skeletal traces from those personnel records. This procedure typically takes months to complete. And this procedure depends on the police independently deciding, on their "honor," what is, and what is not, appropriate for the judge or the defense attorney to see. Those records are kept by the police, and they only bring into court what they choose to bring, on their "honor."

There's plenty of room for error in this "honor" system. But if the LA TIMES wants to talk to criminal defense attorneys about examples of such errors, it's unlikely any names will be mentioned. It's all a big secret in California, by law.

If the disciplinary proceedings were again made public, then by conducting an internet search, a criminal defense attorney could swiftly check to see whether the police in a particular case had failed to disclose all incidents of an officer's prior dishonesty. Those incidents, given the amount of false statements police are called upon to make, pile up. After five or ten years, too many officers would be of no use to the system, because the jury could be shown that their statements were not reliable. It's impossible to recruit enough new, "clean" officers to make up the difference.

So in California, by defeating this legislation, the system is keeping its officers "clean" by hiding the dirt. That's how it works.

Self-Diagnosis

Paul Pfeifer writes in today's LA TIMES ("Accused killer called fit to share jail cell") a follow-up to his article yesterday ("Jailers are asked how killer was able to strike again"), which I also blogged ("The Immensity of the Process"). The new reported statements are worth looking at because they illustrate how efforts to make needed change can get sidetracked.

L.A. County Jail inmate Kurt Karcher had been in a one-man prison cell for over a year and under treatment in state prison for bipolar disorder. This mentally-disturbed, alleged former white- supremacist gangmember, convicted of killing an attorney, and allegedly having admitted strangling to death his state prison cellmate, was nevertheless housed by the County with a Latino jail cellmate, whom he also allegedly strangled to death 4 days later.

L.A. County jail and California state prison officials have asserted that county jailers weren't told Karcher's background of insanity, racism, and murder, because the state didn't think it was necessary.

As I explained in yesterday's blog, there is reason to suspect that jailers did know of Karcher's background and locked an inmate of another race in with him anyway.

Today, we have a report that the jail mental health workers certified him as safe for general housing. This is a fresh "office error" explanation for the incident. L.A. County Jail psychologist Robert Fish offers that "some of our most severely disturbed inmates with mental illness deny they have problems." So, he implies, housing errors like this one result.

That's not very persuasive. A hallmark of mental illness is that the sufferer is convinced he or she is fine. That's no news. Dr. Fish implies that jail mental health workers must nevertheless simply rely on prisoner self-diagnosis in making their housing recommendations, either without asking for, or without looking at, records that might disclose a background of, for example, racism, mental illness, and in-custody homicide.

In addition to being fairly implausible, Dr. Fish's statements don't address the real issue. Didn't the state tell the county jail about Karcher's history? Withholding such information would have put county jail guards at risk of injury or death. So it's unlikely the information was, in fact, withheld by the state correctional system.

Dr. Fish's statements simply steer the discussion away from the holes in the officials' story, and into a relatively inoffensive examination of mental health cell assignment procedures. If things continue in that direction, the County will end up having to look at changing an office protocol. A few months later, they'll decide they don't have to make an adjustment, or that they do have to make an adjustment. But the question of whether procedures were ignored in this case, and what, if anything, to do about that, will have fallen by the wayside.

That's the way it works.

The Immensity of the Process

Stuart Pfeifer writes in today's LA TIMES about the alleged second inmate murder by the same LA County jail prisoner, named Kurt Karcher ("Jailers are asked how killer was able to strike again"). Because some of the information in the article is based on unreliable sources, there's no way of knowing what really happened, but it offers a useful starting point for comment on the jails.

Let's start with what is likely to be true. Two inmates are dead. One was named Scott Manning. He was in the Lancaster, California State Prison for burglary. That means that, at minimum, Manning unlawfully stuck some part of his body into a building structure with the intention of committing a crime. He died March 7, 2006. He was strangled by cellmate Kurt Karcher. (Karcher allegedly admits killing him, but claims self-defense.) Karcher was serving a life sentence for robbing and strangling a California attorney who had used his services as a male prostitute. The article doesn't tell us the attorney's gender, but it looks like Karcher may have been a violent homosexual, who killed his cellmate while serving a life sentence. He was assigned thereafter to a one-man prison cell for more than a year.

In order to be tried on this second homicide charge, Karcher was transferred to LA County Jail so he could easily be transported to a downtown LA courtroom. But he wasn't put in one of the County jail's 1,041 one-man cells. Despite his alleged background as a white-supremacist gangmember and mentally-disturbed bipolar disorder sufferer and killer, he was put in a cell with Latino Jose Daniel Cruz, whom he strangled to death 4 days later. Cruz was in jail for threatening his sister. His sister says she hadn't even wanted him arrested. (Just as a sidelight, it would be useful if the public understood that once they call the police for help with an abusive family member, they lose control over the process. They may only want someone to be removed from the home tonight, or given a good talking-to by someone in authority. Doesn't matter what they want. If the police want otherwise, that family member is going to jail, where they may die. There is some truth to the nasty phrase, "9-1-1 means death".)

The TIMES article focuses on one issue: why weren't LA county jail officials told by California state prison officials that Karcher, the prostitute turned killer, had already strangled one cellmate? State prison officials explain they didn't think it was necessary, because detectives, from the same Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department that runs the jails, had been involved in the prison death investigation. So no need to check a box or scribble a line saying, "Better put this killer in a one-man cell - that's what we've been doing."

Are the state prison officials really that careless?

The article includes statements about "the immensity of the process" and the "apparent communications gap between state and county jail officials, who exchange hundreds of inmates a day."

Sorry. That's like talking about the thousands of airplanes flying around thousands of buildings every year, and suggesting the World Trade Towers were hit by accident. This inmate was a big deal murderer on trial for a second, in-custody, murder. He didn't make a single move without everyone checking everything twice, every step of the way. Leaving that information out would have put jail guards at deadly risk, too. Not very likely.

So how did this omission occur? Or, did it occur?

One thing we know about government agencies, especially government agencies with a claim to a need for secrecy, is that their statements to the press are just not completely reliable. They cover for each other. When under attack, sometimes they say things to the media, critical things, that are completely inaccurate.

So this story, about accidentally omitting to tell jail officials the critical alleged facts about multiple killer Karcher, is an unreliable story. That leaves the possibility that jail officials were, in fact, told his background. Under the circumstances, it's actually the more likely possibility.

At LA Police Watch, we get complaints from inmates that jail officials put them in a cell with known violent cellmates; that jail officials provoked violence against them by telling the general inmate population that they were troublemakers who brought punishment down on all; or that they were child molesters. That jail officials opened the cell door and then stood by and did nothing while an inmate was being beaten. It is reasonable to suspect that the LA County Jail does deliberately put inmates in with known dangerous cellmates. On the limited and unreliable information available today, that seems a real possibility in this incident.

Karcher was claiming self-defense in his second murder charge. If his third alleged victim, cellmate Cruz, had survived - had only been threatened or beaten, not killed - Cruz could have been called to the stand and damaged or destroyed Karcher's claim of self-defense in death number two. (For example, the Spector prosecutor has been parading surviving former female houseguests of Phil Spector's gunplay, to undermine Spector's claim that he was not holding the gun when his final female houseguest received a fatal headshot. Victims of criminal conduct that was similar to the charged offense are very effective against claims of innocence.)

There's also the fact that a lot of cases are made on the basis of testimony about self-incriminating statements allegedly overheard by cellmate informants. Can't have a cellmate informant in a one-man cell. And a terrified cellmate, eager for transfer to a witness-protection cell, may listen very closely for self-incriminating statements.

Or, it could just have been done to punish cellmate number two. We have all seen countless TV and film scenes where the hero cop happily assures the bad guy that when he goes to jail a violent cellmate is going to rape him. Those scenes are played for us because the U.S. public vigorously approves of such prisoner treatment. And what the public approves, the prisoners are likely to suffer (and later see explained as a result of the "the immensity of the process"), regardless of what's written in some dusty constitution on a shelf somewhere.

That's the way it works.

More Jails for More Crowds

More Jails for More Crowds

Jack Leonard writes in today's LA TIMES on a number of Paris Hilton jail time-related issues ("Hilton case sheds light on sentencing process").

The thrust of the article is that local state judges are helpless to insure that all of those convicted will serve their full sentences, because a federal decree found the jail overcrowding Los Angeles was perpetrating on its own to be unlawful and unconstitutional.

The article notes that City prosecutors are looking for ways to modify the federal order to "ensure that more dangerous offenders serve more of their time." Why would they do that? The jail's early release program already distinguishes between violent and nonviolent offenders. Pure political posturing.

The article states that, over the last 5 years, 200,000 inmates have been released early, including some who committed violent crimes during the time they would otherwise have been locked up. Ok. But how many did not commit violent crimes within the jail - or die themselves - because they weren't so overcrowded they went crazy in a place where the jailers couldn't maintain control?

Answer: who cares? Sometimes it seems that our society figures if they're prisoners, they're not really human beings. Even though many haven't been convicted of any crime (arrestees awaiting trial are not eligible for early release), the majority of people on the outside still couldn't care less about their living conditions, and resent the federal law that does.

The article quoted one local prosecutor suggesting the only answer to the problem is to build more, and more colossal cages for the prisoner population.

Wait a minute. If our criminal law enforcement system of putting people in jails is such a great crime-stopper, how come there's still so many criminals after all these years of having it in place?

Maybe we like crime. If we liked crime, and wanted to increase both the number of criminals, and the violence of their crimes, we might come up with just the system we have. We would put petty criminals and mentally-disabled people in jammed windowless stinkholes where they slept on the floor. We certainly wouldn't be expanding programs for vocational training or psychological counseling. Which wouldn't end crime, but would probably reduce crime a lot more than pouring more money into the current system.

A system that in some ways appears designed to foster crime. And, absent the interference of a federal judge, violates some important laws called the Bill of Rights.

Maybe we don't like crime. But our system sometimes acts like it does. We may not like the results. But that's how it works.

The New Wanted Posters

Matt Lait reported in yesterday's LA TIMES that The Los Angeles misdemeanor prosecutor, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, is presently enduring scrutiny because of his wife's driving record ("Delgadillo's wife named in 1998 arrest warrant"). Michelle Delgadillo had a collision with a city-owned vehicle she wasn't supposed to be driving; the city paid for the repairs; and now it turns out that there has been a warrant out for her arrest for nine years, on vehicle charges for which she failed to appear in court.

The article goes on to discuss briefly the mystery of why police citing her for a moving violation in 2005 failed to address the fact she also had a suspended license, or how she managed to obtain, and then renew, the suspended license without a hitch. There is mention of the fact that the original Santa Monica citation was under her maiden name; that the arrest warrant misspelled her name as "Michele" Delgadillo with one L instead of two; and that "records from other states sometimes are inaccessible."

Of course, although her expired driver's license was from Montana, she was caught driving illegally in California, so that's no answer.

Maiden name? Misspelled "Michelle"? Are you kidding? Can you spell "driver's license number"? Standard police procedure is to take the driver's license, walk back to the patrol car, and "run" this number, that is, use the radio to have a computer search conducted for "wants or warrants" associated with the driver's license, as part of a vehicle stop. All within minutes. Any discussion of misspellings or maiden names would customarily have happened back at the police station, with Ms. Delgadillo in double-locked handcuffs and her car impounded. These explanations are bogus, too.

By the way - is there a warrant out for your arrest?

The correct answer is: I don't know. Any of us could have a warrant out for their arrest on a traffic or any other charge, of which we are guilty or not, without knowing about it. It's left to the law enforcement authorities to decide if they want to pursue the subject of an arrest warrant, or even notify the subject of its existence. As the Delgadillo incident illustrates, these warrants can stay in the system virtually forever, giving the police the authority to jail the subject at any time - even, as here, nine years later on a mere regulatory violation.

Our country's computerized filing system has created a method whereby government officials can quietly render any of us a second-class citizen with a few key strokes. These government computer files may erroneously tag us as "no-fly" terrorist sympathizers ("Constitutional law scholar on no-fly list" http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/10/news/
18014.shtml); as gang-associated ("What's In A Name: Gang Monikers" http://www.fbi.gov/
publications/leb/1997/may972.htm); or as wanted criminals - often without our having a chance to challenge or rectify the classification, often even without our knowledge, until, for some reason or another, law enforcement decides to play the card against us, in a game where the stakes may be our rights, or our freedom.

And remember: an arresting officer may end up lawfully killing you if he thinks you are resisting or threatening. Which you reflexively might do if you find it hard to believe a real police officer could have any reason to drag you or a family member out of your home at 3 in the morning. Even if the killing turns out to have been unlawful, you're still, of course, dead. And if you have a serious health condition, a weekend in jail can also end your life. So any arrest warrant is potentially a death warrant.

It's not a system where everyone gets the same deal, as the Delgadillo episode demonstrates. Law enforcement either didn't bother to check the records of the prosecutor's wife, or they didn't care about what they found. So it's not a fair system. But that's how it works.

The Strong System

"[P]eople should realize that the North Carolina criminal justice system is strong," THE NEW YORK TIMES' Duff Wilson today quotes David C. Evans, father of one of the Duke lacrosse team accused, commenting on the disbarment of Durham District Attorney Michael B. Nifong ("Prosecutor in Duke Case Disbarred by Ethics Panel").

What does "strong" mean? You have to wonder if it means that people rise to the top in that system if they handle cases the way Mr. Nifong did. "“From his very first involvement in this case, Mr. Nifong weaved a web of deception." That's what Doug Brock, lawyer for the North Carolina State Bar, which investigated the Nifong affair, had to say in the same article.

What about other systems? Are they strong too? So far, The Innocence Project has used DNA evidence to exonerate 203 people falsely convicted and imprisoned by district attorneys who worked in systems that were probably just as "strong" as North Carolina's. Would the fathers of those people likewise laud their criminal justice systems? Or would they say the system is wrong, and the Duke students are just lucky their case got national attention?

A visit to the IP's website (www.innocenceproject.org) offers some clues about why they might feel less supportive of our national criminal justice apparatus: eyewitness misidentification; unreliable scientific evidence; false confessions (including coerced confessions); government misconduct (example: "officials take steps to ensure that a defendant is convicted despite weak evidence or even clear proof of innocence"); incompetent, often overworked defense attorneys.

That is a "strong" system only in the sense that it pretty consistently locks people up behind stout bars. Not "strong" in the sense that it necessarily gets the right people, or results in less, or less violent crime.

But crime is money. It sells movie tickets, paperback novels; tv shows. It stokes fear and rage, which the "strong" criminal justice system, depicted in programs like "CSI" or "Law and Order", then neatly avenges in a Hollywood happy ending.

Crime is a societal disease. You can't cure it with the kind of wholesale torture that U.S. jails and prisons too often provide. But you can win the trust and gratitude of a public awash in images of vicious crime and triumphant revenge. And you can boost your chances in a close election, as Mr. Nifong did.

Will North Carolina now take a second look at others convicted by Mr. Nifong, and see if his deception weaving in the Duke case was a first and only?

Seems unlikely. Too many people, like Mr. Evans, the Duke student dad, believe that, if some passengers manage to escape the Titanic on one of the few lifeboats that function, it means "the system is strong." So why question? Full steam ahead.

That's how it works.