police accountability – Techdirt (original) (raw)

NYPD Union Complains After Re-Introduction Of Bill Requiring Officers To Carry Liability Insurance

from the only-happy-when-no-one-expects-anything-from-cops dept

One of many ideas floated as a solution to police misconduct issues is the requirement that officers carry their own insurance. Almost every law enforcement officer is currently indemnified by the towns and cities that employ them, ensuring they’re never personally responsible for any judgments or settlements stemming from their misconduct.

And that’s a very small percentage of civil rights lawsuits. Far more frequently, officers are allowed to walk away from these lawsuits with application of qualified immunity, a Supreme Court-created doctrine that says officers can’t be held accountable if any “reasonable” officer would not have immediately understood their actions violated constitutional rights.

The liability insurance theory goes like this: officers who become uninsurable due to multiple lawsuits will become unemployable. Given that most law enforcement agencies currently do as little as possible to discipline officers who engage in rights violations and misconduct, any nudge of the needle towards the accountability ideal is welcome.

However, there are several ways of “welcoming” news like this. One way is to appreciate a policy like this might act as a deterrent. Another way to “welcome” this news is to claim it will harm every officer, the city they work for, and the public they’re currently underserving.

That’s the case here in New York City, where the police union has stepped up to complain about the slight probability officers might need to be less inconsiderate of other people’s rights in the future. The coverage of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association’s reaction to the reintroduction of a liability insurance law is provided here by Rich Calder of the New York Post — someone who also appears to believe no one should ever make cops even the tiniest bit more accountable for their actions.

A Queens Democrat is trying to drum up City Council support for a controversial state bill requiring police officers to buy personal liability insurance in case of lawsuits — a move critics say is a veiled attempt to “Defund the Police.”

Councilwoman Nantasha Williams urged other council members this week to back the state legislation, claiming it would save local governments a fortune.

“By shifting the financial responsibility for lawsuit payouts to insurance companies and the officers themselves, local governments can save millions in taxpayer dollars,” Williams wrote in an Aug. 7 letter to her fellow council members.

Some of this makes sense. Even if this requirement isn’t the perfect solution to perpetual police misconduct, it’s a step forward from the absolute nothing that’s currently being done in New York City.

This, of course, has led to complaints from the police union, which insists this is just a way to make cops go broke.

“Requiring already underpaid cops to pay for liability insurance will chase away recruits and drive even more experienced cops towards the exits,” [PBA president Patrick] Hendry added. “If the City Council really cared about saving money, it would demand that the city start fighting suits against cops instead of settling.”

“Underpaid” is always the first argument, no matter how well-paid police officers are. The mileage varies, but it’s extremely difficult to argue NYPD officers are underpaid — not when the PD pays officers nearly $60,000/year to start and doubles that salary after they’ve served 5.5 years on the force.

Then there’s the bigger problem: the (unchallenged by reporter Rich Calder) assertion that officers will be paying out of their own pockets for this insurance. The bill makes it clear the city will be paying most, if not all, of the bill for officer liability insurance.

The city, county, town, village, authority or agency shall cover the base rate of the policy required by this section.

An officer will only have to start dipping into their own funds when their insurance policy exceeds the base rate — something that will only happen when an officer is sued often enough that the insurance company feels the need to hike the officer’s rate. Even then, officers will only be required to cover the difference between their rate and the base rate. Defunding this ain’t. And if an officer decides to quit because they don’t feel like paying for the indirect results of their actions, GOOD. More officers should leave the force if they feel they can’t enforce the law without violating rights.

Calder’s article ends with a paragraph that doesn’t make the point he thinks it makes, despite his addition of a bunch of unnecessary adjectives.

Williams in her letter cited an April report released by Comptroller Brad Lander, an anti-cop socialist running for mayor, showing lawsuits against NYPD cops increased 50% from fiscal year 2022 to fiscal year 2023. The report also said settlement and judgement payouts during the same period rose 12%, from 239.1millionto239.1 million to 239.1millionto266.7 million.

That certainly doesn’t demonstrate that requiring cops to carry liability insurance is a bad idea. In fact, it shows the opposite. While the city will cover the base rate, repeat offenders will have to cover some of the premiums with their own funds. Nothing in the bill changes anything in terms of indemnification, which means the city will still have the option of stepping in to provide officers with its own insurance coverage during lawsuits.

And, while the PBA and Rich Calder himself say the city settles too many lawsuits, this oversight report makes it clear settlements are only part of the tax burden inflicted on NYC taxpayers. The rest of it is judgments secured via trials — something that only happens when cops violate the Constitution too much for courts to ignore or ignore long-standing precedent. This is not the result of a few bad apples crossing the line or officers making honest mistakes when dealing with quickly evolving situations. This is the direct result of misconduct being ignored by the NYPD and officers with long histories of rights violations considered to be among the “finest” New York’s Finest have to offer.

Filed Under: brad lender, natasha williams, nypd, patrick hendry, pba, police accountability, police union

Oversight Report: Chicago PD Doesn’t Care Its Officers Are Involved With Right Wing Extremists

from the thin-blue-line-erased-yet-again dept

The city of Chicago’s Inspector General is back at it, pointing out things are very, very wrong with the Chicago Police Department. Not that anyone needed any reminders. A long history of disinterest in disciplining misbehaving officers has led to everything from an off-the-books black site operation to more than 100 misconduct charges being racked up by officers involved in a single wrong house raid.

Like lots of other law enforcement agencies, the Chicago PD has officers who are members of far right extremist groups. A lot of this came to light during the FBI’s investigation of the January 6 insurrection, where it was discovered that law enforcement officers from all over the nation traveled to Washington DC — not to help secure the Capitol building or protect those inside, but to engage in criminal activity of their own.

The Chicago PD is no exception. This latest report details how many officers are involved with far right groups like the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters. It also details how little the PD has done to root out the potential insurrectionists in its midst. (via Chicago Fox affiliate FOX 32)

The report [PDF] leads off with the responses it received from the Chicago PD as well as the mayor’s office. There’s no good news/bad news thing going on here. It’s all bad news, and the lack of accountability apparently will begin at the top:

In a written response attached at Appendix B, the Mayor’s Office reports that “the Johnson Administration and the Chicago Police Department remain fully committed to rooting out extremist, anti-government, and biased organizations in our law enforcement ranks. There is no place in the CPD for those who participate in such organizations.” The Mayor’s Office further says that it is“committed to working with CPD and across departments and agencies to ensure that there is a comprehensive and meaningful approach to preventing, identifying, and eliminating extremist, anti-government, and biased associations within CPD” and says that it will “work with” a variety of entities in this pursuit. OIG appreciates the Mayor’s Office’s response, but notes that the Mayor’s Office neither accepts OIG’s recommendation nor commits to any specific action at all.

“Fully committed” up to the point the response was sent to the OIG’s office. No further commitment has been stated or noted.

After detailing the history of and harmful acts committed by far right extremist groups (the three detailed are the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters), the OIG moves on to point out that the CPD has, in the past, rooted out cops with ties to bigoted extremist groups. You know, like the KKK, to name just one.

More than half a century ago, CPD initiated an investigation into the alleged memberships of multiple CPD members in the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). One such member was Officer Donald Heath, the admitted grand dragon of the KKK in Illinois at the time.

[…]

In the Police Board’s findings, they found Heath and two other CPD members violated Rule 2 by being associated with an extremist group, the KKK, and fired them.

That was 50 years ago. Apparently, being involved with white supremacists (or entities that embrace those views along with their own stated goals) was an offense worth of termination. Five decades later, things have not improved. They’ve gotten worse.

As the OIG notes, allowing officers to join extremist groups — especially ones that consider lawbreaking an essential part of their “resistance” and consider themselves to be, if not actual white nationalists, closely aligned with their philosophies — further damages already tenuous relationships with the communities these officers serve. Looking the other way only encourages more officers to associate with extremists, which is the sort of thing that leads directly to officers committing federal crimes while attempting to overturn a lawful national election.

Here’s the sort of thing that’s far more common now, despite the rules on associating with extremist groups having gone unchanged over the past five decades.

BIA [Bureau of Internal Affairs] reached a finding of Not Sustained on the allegation that the accused [officer] was a member of a “far-right terror group,” determining that no evidence existed that the accused officer committed any misconduct on duty. However, BIA’s analysis failed to acknowledge that relevant CPD rules explicitly apply to both on- and off-duty conduct. Additionally, BIA’s analysis did not consider whether the officer’s membership in the Oath Keepers, by itself, constituted a violation of CPD policy.

OIG recommended that BIA reopen the investigation to conduct any necessary additional investigative activity including, but not limited to, re-interviewing the accused member to determine what, if any, rules, regulations, or policies of CPD he refused to obey because he believed them to be illegal or unconstitutional according to the precepts of the Oath Keepers.

OIG also recommended that BIA conduct and document an appropriate analysis of whether the accused member’s membership in the Oath Keepers violated any of the Department’s Rules and Regulations, including but not limited to Rules 2 and 3. BIA accepted OIG’s recommendation and reopened its investigation. After meeting with OIG to discuss the case, BIA reclosed the investigation leaving its original findings unchanged.

All three of the groups mentioned in this report have their own mission statements that assert members will choose to ignore or disobey laws they don’t agree with and, if need be, utilize violence to achieve those aims. No cop shop should desire to employ people who think only certain laws should be respected and consider all the laws they don’t personally like to be optional.

There’s also the citation of “Rule 2.” Rule 2 has been on the PD’s books for years. It’s the same one that was used more than 50 years ago to fire two officers for being members of the KKK. Without rewriting the rule, the official stance at the CPD is that simply being a member of groups like this is not, in and of itself, a violation of this rule. CPD officials have made this declaration despite the rule expressly forbidding all kinds of things that might make the department look less trustworthy:

This Rule applies to both the professional and private conduct of all members. It prohibits any and all conduct which is contrary to the letter and spirit of Departmental policy or goals or which would reflect adversely upon the Department or its members. It includes not only all unlawful acts by members but also all acts, which although not unlawful in themselves, would degrade or bring disrespect upon the member or the Department, including public and open association with persons of known bad or criminal reputation in the community unless such association is in the performance of police duties. It also includes any action contrary to the stated policy, goals, rules, regulations, orders, or directives of the Department.

The report then notes it can only find one case where this rule was applied to an officer in recent years. Conveniently enough, it was used to discipline a recruit (the most expendable of law enforcement officers) for saying something that could be construed as gang-related.

CPD has recently applied Rule 2 to a member’s association with a group—specifically, a street gang—undermining any suggestion that it is unable to do so. In August 2023, a CPD Lieutenant recommended termination of a CPD Recruit for using “street gang terminology” in violation of Rule 2 and Rule 6- “Disobedience of an order or directive, whether written or oral.” “In less than two weeks after being hired by CPD, the request was granted and the Recruit was separated from the Police Department.”

It was alleged that the CPD Recruit, while standing in formation in a hallway at CPD’s Education and Training Division, stated, “on BD, y’all gonna make me bug up in this bitch. I’m trying to hold this hood shit in but y’all bringing it out on me on BD,” after allegedly being bumped into by another recruit and their duffle bag. The CPD Lieutenant in their termination request wrote that they were aware of the phrase “On BD” to be “common street gang terminology used by members of the Black Disciples street gang to swear upon their allegiance to said gang…”

That is a justifiable application of Rule 2. But it only seems to apply to (presumably) black recruits or those who use gang terminology used by black gang members. The CPD has told the OIG’s office Rule 2 just doesn’t apply to (presumably) white police officers who wear Three Percenter insignias while on patrol or spend their free time hanging out with bigots and white nationalists who have plainly stated they’ll break the laws they don’t like and physically harm those trying to enforce the disliked laws.

There’s a good chance CPD brass considers membership in the Proud Boys, et al to be a feature, not a bug. After all, plenty of police officials have openly stated they won’t enforce laws they don’t like (mainly things like gun control efforts or sanctuary city statutes). And there’s no law enforcement agency in the land that doesn’t generously deploy double standards to protect the worst officers they employ. The fact that these extremist groups direct most of their animosity against liberals, minorities, and LGBTQ+ persons is just icing on the cake. It aligns with the implicit biases that have plagued law enforcement agencies since their inception.

The refusal of the CPD to treat this issue seriously shows it’s unwilling to reach across the divide it’s created to earn the trust of the communities it serves. The mayor’s office is no better, offering up nothing but vague statements about doing something while offering up nothing in the way of actual improvement. This report highlights a problem and serves the purpose of making the public more aware of endemic law enforcement issues. Unfortunately, Chicago residents are likely already well-aware how much they’re being underserved by the PD and city leaders. In the end, it’s just documentation of business as usual. And no one with the power to change things for the better seems to have any interest in actually making that happen.

Filed Under: chicago, chicago police department, extremists, oversight, police accountability, police misconduct

Phoenix PD, Union Already Complaining About DOJ Consent Decree That Hasn’t Even Been Served Yet

from the flow-my-tears,-the-union-rep-said dept

As all DOJ investigations of law enforcement agencies are, the one targeting the Phoenix, Arizona Police Department was scathing in its assessment of the department’s officers and tactics.

It led off with this, before providing graphic details covering everything from routine abuse of force to unchecked biased policing that led the DOJ to conclude “PhxPD uses race or national origin as a factor” when enforcing everything from traffic laws to quality-of-life statutes.

Officers use unreasonable force to rapidly dominate encounters, often within the first few moments of an encounter. Officers fail to employ basic strategies to avoid force, like verbal de-escalation or using time or distance to slow things down. PhxPD’s training has encouraged officers to use force when it is not lawful to do so, and to use serious force to respond to hypothetical, not actual, danger.

Also covered in the report: officers turning off body cameras, officers caught on camera conjuring up probable cause for an arrest, officers beating/tasing/shooting compliant and, in far too many cases, handcuffed individuals.

And, like every DOJ investigation of a law enforcement agency, the Phoenix PD brought this on itself. It could have policed itself, but it chose instead to take the path of least resistance, allowing officers to indulge their worst urges and biases until the DOJ was forced to step in.

Now, that it has, the same cops (and the union reps that enable them) are complaining the report is unfair, that any attempt to increase accountability will lead to a mass exodus of officers, and that yet-to-be-submitted consent decree will starve the city of officers and allow the criminal element to run amuck.

These are the words of the self-proclaimed saviors — the “heroes” walking the thin blue line between civility and chaos:

Federal oversight could tank officer retention in the Phoenix Police Department, according to a survey released Wednesday.

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association’s survey of 1,186 Phoenix Police officers found that 56% were considering leaving in the next three to six months.

Yep, that’s a bunch of cops threatening to quit because it will be slightly more difficult to violate rights and get away with it in the future if (and it’s still an “if”) a consent decree is agreed to by the city of Phoenix. These are the words of absolute children who think the best response to additional responsibility is run away from it.

Meanwhile, the president of the union, Darrell Kriplean, has decided the best response is pure delusion.

Essentially, he thinks the DOJ is incapable of holding Phoenix Police accountable for rights violations.

“We should be beholden to our community members and our city council folks that the community elects to oversee our department,” Kriplean said.

He said the Phoenix PD is a self-assessing and self-correcting agency.

I only slightly agree with the first assertion. There have been dozens of DOJ investigations and consent decrees. I can’t think of a single one that has resulted in sustained accountability. As for the rest… if the Phoenix PD was really a “self-correcting agency,” the DOJ would never have opened a civil rights investigation. Kriplean isn’t saying anything credible. He’s just saying what he thinks officers as consumed by self-delusion as him want him to say.

And he closes (at least for the quotes in this report) with another set of outlandish and internally inconsistent claims:

“They’re not out there arresting people because, at any given moment, if someone complains at the handcuffs were too tight, they’re now being pulled into an internal affairs investigation,” Kriplean said. “That’s why violent crime spikes.”

In essence, Kriplean is claiming officers are already engaged in “quiet quitting,” albeit a cop-specific version that means not doing your job at all because you’re no longer interested in working for the Phoenix PD. And they’re apparently doing this ahead of a consent decree that has yet to be put before a judge, city officials, or the PD itself.

Meanwhile, another police union leader in the area was saying vague things about the report and the still-not-inevitable consent decree:

“The Department of Justice, based on their own numbers, has a 30-year track record of totally disastrous failures,” said APA President Justin Harris. “Why bring that into this city?”

Maybe so. But ask yourself this: were these failures because the DOJ is incompetent? Or were these failures due to law enforcement agencies resolutely refusing to embrace additional accountability and/or decrease the number of civil rights abuses perpetrated by their officers?

At least this report adds this bit, which refutes claims about impending criminal apocalypses made elsewhere by other law enforcement reps and officials:

There is little conclusive evidence that consent decrees cause increases in crime, but research does indicate that they can improve accountability in police departments, and public satisfaction with those departments.

That contradicts the claims often made by police officers and officials anytime there’s more accountability in play. Not that they don’t always return to this talking point, despite the lack of evidence to support their assertions.

And then there’s this talking point, which always seems to rear its head no matter what party controls the White House and who’s heading the DOJ:

“This tactic is nothing more than an irresponsible and unprofessional smear campaign against the men and women who have continued to courageously serve the community amidst dangerous and inflammatory rhetoric by political activists and violent attacks from criminals,” said Kriplean.

Bro, this isn’t an op-ed composed by the Attorney General. This is the outcome of an investigation that lasted more than two years. What’s detailed in the report actually happened. It can’t be a “smear campaign” when it depicts things that occurred and utilizes stats and reports generated by police officers and their enforcement efforts. And while the language in the report is (necessarily) harsh at times, there’s nothing “political” or “inflammatory” about publishing a report on a federal investigation.

I, for one, hope half the department quits. Those walking away from the job just because they’ll have to do better at it don’t deserve to be police officers. If a dearth of officers results in higher crime rates, Phoenix residents need to remember cops walked away from the job because they didn’t want to do if it required respecting constitutional rights. And if the city has trouble attracting replacements, that says far more about the people attracted to law enforcement careers than the specifics of the job itself.

Filed Under: arizona, civil rights, department of justice, doj, phoenix, phoenix pd, phoenix police department, police accountability, police misconduct

I Guess A Bunch Of Sixth Circuit Judges Think The Public Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Outlaw Qualified Immunity

from the oh-come-on dept

[screaming at my mute laptop screen]: WHO GOT TO YOU

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. In 2022, the Fifth Circuit got a decision very right. It said it was very fucking definitely a rights violation to arrest a journalist for publishing information she had received from a law enforcement source.

Rather than limit its investigation to the leaker on the law enforcement side, Laredo PD officers went after Priscilla Villarreal, a local independent journalist with a large Facebook following. Using some very sketchy assertions about “misuse of official information,” officers issued an arrest warrant for Villarreal, better known as “Logordiloca” online. Villarreal turned herself in, got jailed, and then filed a lawsuit.

The original Fifth Circuit decision made things crystal clear: the government cannot do this sort of thing.

If the First Amendment means anything, it surely means that a citizen journalist has the right to ask a public official a question, without fear of being imprisoned. Yet that is exactly what happened here: Priscilla Villarreal was put in jail for asking a police officer a question.

If that is not an obvious violation of the Constitution, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

That seemed to be a closed case. But somehow it wasn’t. A few Fifth Circuit judges who felt the Constitution restrained cops too much asked for the court to take another look. After some polling, the Fifth Circuit decided to review its decision. This one went the other way.

Villarreal and others portray her as a martyr for the sake of journalism. That is inappropriate. She could have followed Texas law, or challenged that law in court, before reporting nonpublic information from the backchannel source.

That’s the existential threat in our nation’s appellate courts. Some judges will just decide they don’t like the opinion handed down by the majority. Rather than settle for writing a dissent, they’ll ask the judges to take another look. If enough judges agree, the first decision is wiped from existence.

Somehow, this seems to happen most frequently when decisions go against cops. Such is the case here.

Earlier this month, the Sixth Circuit Appeals Court ruled that the Ohio Attorney General could not prevent a ballot initiative from being opened up to a public vote. The ballot measure — one that followed all the stipulations of Ohio law — proposed ridding the state of qualified immunity.

Now, it’s clear why the AG would be against it. It was a limitation of government power — one proposed by the governed. So, AG David Yost did everything he could to prevent it from being placed on a ballot. He rejected it at least six times for extremely specious reasons.

The decision by the Sixth Circuit pointed out just how capricious this very personal intervention in the democratic process was.

Yost’s argument turns Ohio’s law on its head. Rather than provide limited discretion to the Attorney General, in this case Yost has issued multiple denials—six based on the fair and-truthful determination—without any review by an administrative body or court. And, although Yost is correct that § 3519.01(C) provides for original jurisdiction in the Supreme Court of Ohio, it does not require that court to review the case within a reasonable time, in light of the election deadlines. Instead, because Plaintiffs must submit their approximately 400,000 signatures 125 days before the election and the Supreme Court of Ohio’s mandatory-expedited review applies only to cases filed within ninety days of the election, the mandatory-expedited review will never apply.

Following this scathing take on AG Yost’s actions, the Sixth Circuit hit his office with an injunction that forbade him from rejecting this ballot proposal… at least until the lower court had issued a final decision.

That has apparently upset some of the Sixth Circuit judges. For reasons left unexplained (at this point), the Sixth Circuit has vacated [PDF] this decision and will take another look at what appears to have been the correct decision the first time around.

A majority of the Judges of this Court in regular active service has voted for rehearing en banc of this case. Sixth Circuit Rule 35(b) provides as follows:

A decision to grant rehearing en banc vacates the previous opinion and judgment of the court, stays the mandate, and restores the case on the docket as a pending appeal.

Accordingly, it is ORDERED that the previous decision and judgment of this court are vacated, the mandate is stayed, and this case is restored to the docket as a pending appeal. It is further ORDERED that the pending Motion to Compel Defendant-Appellee to Comply with the Court’s Order (Dkt. 35) and Motion to Stay Judgment and Issuance of the Mandate (Dkt. 36) are denied as moot.

The injunction has been hit with an injunction, prevented from taking force until the (new!) final review takes place. The AG can continue to block this ballot initiative until this issue is resolved, even though it appeared to be pretty damn resolved the first time around.

We’ll have to see what details roll in or what’s inadvertently exposed in the next decision to see what prompted this unneeded review. But chances are, it’s either judges worried that eliminating qualified immunity in Ohio will make resolving litigation a bit more difficult on appeal or its judges unhappy that cops won’t be given extra rights when being sued in Ohio.

Either way, it’s a disappointing turn of events. While appellate courts are more than happy to say things about federalism while punting on issues involving state law, this appellate court (at least those voting for a rehearing) think the Appeals Court should be able to weigh in more heavily when it might mean more government employees will lose access to litigation EASY button.

Filed Under: 6th circuit, David yost, lawsuit, ohio, police accountability, qualified immunity

DOJ: Phoenix PD Officers Routinely Violated Rights, Deployed Unjustified Deadly Force

from the if-you're-getting-investigated,-you've-done-something-wrong dept

Every report delivered by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division can be described as “scathing” or “damning.” There are simply no exceptions to this rule. It’s not like the Civil Rights unit picks a US law enforcement agency out of the hat and then initiates an investigation. (Maybe it should? I mean, I’m sure there’s plenty of police misconduct flying under the radar at any given moment.)

No, if the DOJ opens an investigation into a local law enforcement agency it’s because that law enforcement agency has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons for months or years. And such is the case with the Phoenix, Arizona police department.

The investigation was announced in 2021, with the DOJ noting the PD routinely violated a decision delivered by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court forbidding governments in the jurisdiction from arresting or fining homeless people for the “crime” of being homeless. It also noted there was more than a hint of a deep-rooted misconduct problem — one that definitely wasn’t made any better by the PD’s mass purge of internal investigation records back in 2019.

The DOJ’s report [PDF] goes further than these initial hints that something’s rotten in Phoenix. It says officers routinely deploy excessive and unreasonable force. It arrived at this conclusion despite the PD’s lack of up-to-date use of force records.

Officers use unreasonable force to rapidly dominate encounters, often within the first few moments of an encounter. Officers fail to employ basic strategies to avoid force, like verbal de-escalation or using time or distance to slow things down. PhxPD’s training has encouraged officers to use force when it is not lawful to do so, and to use serious force to respond to hypothetical, not actual, danger. P

More specifically, officers fire weapons at people who pose no immediate threat. Then they continue to shoot at people long after they’ve been rendered unable to pose a threat. Officers escalate situations seemingly for the sole purpose of deploying deadly force. And when they’re finally out of bullets, they delay rendering aid to those they’ve wounded. Two cases detailed in the report involve officers shooting suicidal people who only posed a threat to themselves. In another incident, officers shot a woman 10 times and did not render any medical aid until more than nine minutes after they had shot her. In another case, they waited fifteen minutes to provide any aid to a person they had shot.

If officers aren’t shooting people, they’re Tasing them, beating them, choking them, or firing non-lethal munitions at them from close range. And just because it’s less-than-lethal doesn’t mean its a reasonable use of force.

In one incident, a group of officers shot 40mm foam rounds, a Taser, and over 20 Pepperballs at an unarmed man within 20 seconds of announcing their presence. The officers planned to take the man into custody for two open felony warrants related to probation violations. They surrounded a storage facility where he stood outside a unit repairing a bicycle. One officer yelled, “Hands!” seconds before firing Pepperballs and yelling, “Get on the ground!” While the officer continued to pelt him with Pepperballs, another officer struck the man with a 40mm impact round. The man turned away, screaming. Then, a third officer advanced and fired a Taser, incapacitating the man. As he fell—nearly hitting his head on the wall of the storage unit—an officer fired another 40mm round.

Officers routinely engaged in violence against people who were never given enough time to comply with shouted, sometimes-contradictory orders from officers. In some cases, the order given to the person was immediately followed by an act of violence. Just as routinely, officers’ reports portrayed their use of force as “justified” due to the person’s supposed “refusal” to comply with their orders.

Then there’s stuff like this, which covers multiple areas of the DOJ’s damning report, all in a single anecdote:

In one example, two officers used excessive force after stopping a bicyclist who ran a red light. The man allowed the officers to search him. As one officer checked the man’s pockets, the man appeared to move something from one hand to the other. The officers grabbed him, told him to put his hands behind his back, and then pulled him to the ground. The man asked, “What am I under arrest for?” An officer said, “For not obeying a police officer.” The officers appeared to recognize they lacked a lawful basis for arresting the man, and one said, “We need to develop PC [probable cause].” Both officers then muted their body-worn cameras. PhxPD arrested him for resisting arrest and possession of marijuana. County and city prosecutors declined to pursue the charges.

There’s a lot more along these lines if you’ve got the stomach for it. Officers routinely violating protocol and internal policy to hogtie people in positions that increased their chance of death. Officers siccing dogs on cooperative arrestees and letting the dogs chew on them while they placed them in handcuffs. Officers continuing to punch, kick, or otherwise physically harm people who were already handcuffed.

Part of this is due to training. Too much of it, surprisingly. As the DOJ notes, Phoenix PD training materials actually encourage this sort of behavior. The chaser is everything else: a systemic failure to discipline officers and officers’ refusal to report force deployment.

There’s also a long section about the PD’s tactics when dealing with the city’s homeless population — efforts that directly contradicted a precedential court ruling by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court. And, like far too many law enforcement agencies in the United States, minorities are the most frequent targets for police harassment and violence.

PhxPD uses race or national origin as a factor when enforcing traffic laws. Officers cite a disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic drivers when compared to violations recorded by neutral traffic cameras in thesame locations. PhxPD also enforces traffic laws more severely against Black and Hispanic driver than it does against white drivers engaged in the same behaviors.

PhxPD enforces alcohol use offenses and low-level drug offenses more severely against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people than against white people engaged in the same behaviors.

PhxPD enforces quality-of-life laws, like loitering and trespassing, more severely against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people than it does against white people engaged in the same behaviors.

Another 20 pages or so is given over to discussing the Phoenix PD’s retaliatory actions against anti-police violence protesters and others engaged in protected First Amendment activities the officers didn’t care for.

Sadly, this is par for the course for DOJ investigations. Every law enforcement agency investigated by the DOJ has pretty much the same list of problems. This clearly shows there’s something wrong with cop culture in general. It’s not a byproduct of the environment these officers work in. No matter where the agency is located, the same sort of violence, abuse, and frequent rights violations are uncovered.

This will start the long, expensive, and pretty much ineffectual process of reforming the Phoenix Police Department. A federal monitor with be put in place and the city will agree to a consent decree. It will make things better in the short term, but very slowly and incrementally. And the most likely outcome will be a lot of nothing. Once the decree is lifted, most agencies tend to go back to doing what they’ve always done: pretend they’re a law unto themselves until the next round of investigations begin.

Filed Under: arizona, civil rights, department of justice, doj, investigation, phoenix, phoenix pd, phoenix police department, police accountability, police misconduct

California Governor: Hey, Let’s Try To Save A Few Bucks By Making Cops Less Accountable

from the let's-just-keep-paying-them-billions-tho dept

We, as a nation, spend hundreds of billions every year to ensure law enforcement agencies are staffed well enough to provide, at best, semi-competent service. We spend billions every year on lawsuit settlements generated by officers who can’t even manage to provide semi-competent service without violating constitutional rights.

You get what you pay for, they say. Whoever “they” were said this without peeping law enforcement agency budgets, which far outpace the value generated by these services. A huge part of the spending problem isn’t necessarily the spending. It’s the lack of transparency and accountability that is paired with massive amounts of money and power.

The entire state of California used to be plagued by this problem. Up until 2019, police misconduct records were officially treated like Sanskrit combined with Fort Knox. The records were locked up tight and whatever might be released would be completely inscrutable. A bill passed in 2018 changed this. Suddenly, California law enforcement agencies were required to turn over these records to requesters.

This should have changed everything. Instead, cop shops went to ground, tossing records into shredders, burn barrels, etc. before they could be turned over to the public. Others went over the top, attempting to preserve their opacity through lawsuits. Most of the latter efforts failed. The former efforts — the wanton destruction of records — were far more successful.

The government of California is now trying to figure out how it can fund all the things it needs to fund. For some reason — only a few years after making police more accountable to the public — Governor Gavin Newsom is suggesting police accountability should be one of the first things to go now that times are tight.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has proposed an end to public disclosure of investigations of abusive and corrupt police officers, handing the responsibility instead to local agencies in an effort to help cover an estimated $31.5 billion budget deficit.

Now, this isn’t exactly what the new law did. But it’s tied to it. The public records reform passed in 2018 led to another accountability effort passed in 2021. That law, which made public disclosure of officer decertification investigations performed by the state’s Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission mandatory, is what Newsom wants to take off the state’s bottom line.

This would place the responsibility for disclosure on local agencies — agencies that have far less funding (in most cases) than state agencies. Local agencies are also far less likely to be proactive in disclosing ongoing or completed investigations of their officers. This will likely lead to even more public records litigation, placing the ultimate financial burden on public records requesters, who have even less funding than local agencies. Not only that, but taxpayers will be expected to foot the bill to defend police agencies in lawsuits where they’ve decided not to follow the mandate dumped into their laps by Governor Newsom.

Here’s the person-to-person impact, as stated by none other than another government official:

Removing the transparency element from the 2021 law would continue eroding public trust, Antioch Mayor Pro Tem Tamisha Torres-Walker said. The city, 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of San Francisco, was shaken after a federal investigation found more than half of the officers in the Antioch police force were in a group text where some officers freely used racial slurs and bragged about fabricating evidence and beating suspects.

“To say, ‘go to the very people who commit the crimes against your community and ask them to reveal themselves to you so that you can hold them accountable,’ I don’t think that’s a fair process,” Torres-Walker said.

That’s what often goes overlooked when transparency and accountability laws get gutted or revamped in the wrong direction. It’s not just journalists and accountability activists seeking access to these records. It’s also people whose rights have been violated. They have a direct interest in frictionless access to these same records. This abdication of responsibility by the state will have a direct negative effect on taxpayers that aren’t going to get cut a check by the state just because the state found a convenient way to offload part of its $31.5 billion deficit.

And no one is willing to say how much this will save, so no one on this side of the government even knows if this offloading of accountability will do anything more than free the Commission from having to perform on-demand delivery of cop-related bad news.

Neither the governor’s office nor the commission shared how much money the state could save under the proposal.

There’s the apparent advantage: an unknown amount of savings might contribute to eating away at a $31.5 billion shortfall — a shortfall that likely to be followed by annual shortfalls for the rest of eternity. And even if the state finds itself closer to being in the black, it will never give this money back to the Commission and resume providing better access to misconduct investigations. That’s just the way the government works. Governments don’t take money from stuff they want to fully fund. And once they’ve taken money away from the things they consider to be unimportant, those things are abandoned forever.

Filed Under: california, gavin newsom, police accountability, public records, transparency

Audit Finds New Jersey Cops Aren’t All That Enthusiastic About Public Accountability

from the to-the-shock-of-Ms.-Louise-but-nobody-else dept

Guess who doesn’t want to police themselves. If you guessed “police,” you win nothing but more years of zero accountability. Everybody seems to know cops don’t want to be held responsible for their actions, but those capable of forcing cops to be accountable for their actions seem willing to let the status quo remain in effect.

Doing nothing and expecting cops to be better is like being an absentee landlord who thinks property values will increase without dealing with your worst tenants. It’s as insane as believing everyone will become a better person by removing any deterrents to them becoming worse.

We can always appreciate a government entity calling out other government entities on their bullshit. But the appreciation is always tempered by the realization that pointing out bullshit rarely results in elimination of said bullshit.

That takes us to this: the totally expected news that law enforcement agencies are ignoring accountability mandates put in place by people who could theoretically control cops, but always seem to find other things to do with their time.

An overwhelming majority of police departments in New Jersey failed to meet state requirements for encouraging the public to report police misconduct, according to a new report released by the state comptroller.

The report focused on a mandate handed down by the Attorney General’s Office in 2019 that updated policies for how police departments must handle internal affairs reports. Specifically, the state required the departments to update their websites to include certain forms and remove warnings that submitting a false report could have legal consequences.

Released on Wednesday, the report states the OSC reviewed 100 websites for municipal police departments throughout the state. It found 80% of the departments surveyed did not meet a basic requirement to have a link to a form on their websites.

The news station apparently couldn’t find any way to link to the report, much less upload it to its site. We’ll do New Jersey 101.5’s job for it. Here’s the state comptroller report [PDF] delivering the dirt on state law enforcement’s unwillingness to better itself, an effort that begins by screwing over the public.

Sure, no one likes to be criticized. But cops aren’t like regular people. They have ways to ensure they’re not officially criticized by the people they’re supposed to be serving.

OSC found that the majority of municipal police departments were not following all of the relevant mandates with respect to the information they were making available online about the internal affairs complaint process. Further, OSC found that many of the departments were engaging in practices either intended to discourage complaints or that could have a chilling effect, especially with regard to complaints made by undocumented persons, non-English speakers, and anonymous sources.

It’s not just cops blowing off state mandates. It’s cops aggressively and deliberately discouraging people from complaining about the subpar service they’re receiving from these particular public servants. It’s cops abusing their power to prevent people from detailing other abuses of power.

Filing a complaint should be a simple process — one that should be treated seriously by the agency whose officers are being complained about. The reverse is happening. New Jersey agencies are preventing complaints from being filed. Deterring negative reports is basically cops shops lying to their oversight. These forcible omissions allow cops to pretend they’re better than they are. And those hoping to see some accountability for wrongdoing are being intimidated out of exercising their right to seek redress for constitutional violations.

Do you want to know how little New Jersey law enforcement agencies care what the communities they serve think about the job they’re doing? Nearly a third of state law enforcement agencies refused to even provide an online citizen complaint form.

OSC’s review revealed that, out of the 100 departments reviewed, 31 did not have any report form available online.

31% of agencies extended a middle finger to the general public, as well as the state legislature, which mandated online complaint forms four years ago. Those are not the actions of agencies that fear being held responsible for violating citizens’ rights, much less state law. Those are the actions of agencies that know they’ll never have to answer for a majority of their illegal actions.

60% of agencies used non-compliant forms when they could be bothered to provide one at all. More than three-quarters of the state’s agencies did not provide forms in the mandated languages. Nearly 30% of the audited agencies used “non-standardized” forms in violation of state mandates. The most common violation? Not informing complainants their inclusion of personal info was optional — something that suggests nearly of third of the state’s law enforcement agencies hoped their non-compliant complaint forms would allow them to identify complainants — the sort of thing that often leads to cops harassing critics in hopes of silencing them.

Nearly half of the audited agencies couldn’t even be bothered to upload information about how to file a complaint. Of the 100 randomly sampled by the comptroller, only 18 managed to comply with at least some aspects of the mandate.

This is garbage. The public shouldn’t stand for it. And it doesn’t. Unfortunately, cops have shown again and again they hold the power and those holding their purse strings are unwilling to tangle with their powerful lobbyists and unions. In the end, the public bears the costs of legislative cowardice. They pay for the lawsuit settlements. They pay the salaries of the cops who abuse them on a regular basis.

While this report does at least perform the public service of telling the public how underserved they are, it’s the legislation that needs to take this information and leverage it to demand greater public accountability from the lawbreakers in law enforcement clothes. But, if history is any indication, this will become just another data point in the law enforcement’s downward trajectory — a trend legislators have proven time and time again they’re unwilling to change.

Filed Under: accountability, new jersey, police, police accountability, police misconduct, transparency

When It Comes To Qualified Immunity, Where Your Rights Were Violated Matters More Than The Fact Your Rights Were Violated

from the more-evidence-the-Fifth-Circuit-is-the-worst-circuit dept

Your rights are more protected in some areas of the country than in others. That’s the conclusion reached by Reuters and its examination of qualified immunity cases across the country.

Reuters’ first report on qualified immunity showed we have the Supreme Court to blame for the high bar plaintiffs must leap to hold police officers accountable for rights violations. The doctrine was created by the court back in 1967. Subsequent decisions have made it easier for cops to escape judgment by limiting the lower courts’ ability to hand down precedent on rights violations. Fewer precedential decisions means fewer cops “know” their violation of citizens’ rights was wrong, leading to more dismissals at summary judgment where all an officer has to do is raise the qualified immunity defense. If no case is on point, the cop wins and the victim loses.

But courts can interpret Supreme Court precedent differently, leading to some very noticeable variations in qualified immunity cases. This report shows the worst place to sue a police officer is the Fifth Circuit. This circuit covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. If you’re a terrible cop, the best place to work is Texas, where the Appeals Court will side with you more often than in any other state.

Plaintiffs fared worst in […] the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where judges habitually follow precedents that favor police.

The court granted 64% of police requests for immunity in excessive force cases.

If you’re going to get brutalized by a cop, try to do it in California and deal with Ninth Circuit judges who have far less patience and sympathy for bad apples.

By contrast, the 9th Circuit has set a higher bar for police. The appellate judges there granted immunity in just 42% of police requests for immunity in excessive force cases.

But having your rights violated in California is no guarantee you’ll ultimately succeed. The Supreme Court appears to have little patience for the Ninth Circuit’s above-average defense of citizens and their rights.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly rebuked the 9th Circuit for its willingness to deny cops immunity, and especially for applying, as the high court wrote in a 2011 ruling, “a high level of generality” when analyzing the question of clearly established precedent.

The Fifth Circuit, on the other hand, rarely delivers decisions that will ultimately annoy the Supreme Court justices. And that’s despite appeals court judges (well, Judge Don Willett anyway) calling out qualified immunity as the loaded dice in a rigged game plaintiffs almost always seem to lose.

There’s more to it than just the qualified immunity doctrine. There’s Supreme Court precedent that pretty much lets judges sidestep juries and decide for themselves whether an officer’s assertions about “fear for their safety” was “reasonable” under the circumstances. This doctrine is derived from a 1989 decision (Graham v. Connor) where cops decided Graham, who was suffering from a diabetic attack, was drunk and proceeded to beat him into compliance, breaking his bones and bruising his body. All the while, cops ignored Graham’s pleas for them to look in his wallet for his diabetes ID card.

The Supreme Court said this was fine because it was objectively reasonable for cops to assume Graham was drunk and possibly involved in a convenience store robbery that never actually occurred. Here’s how Jeff Gamso breaks it down at the (sadly defunct) legal blog Fault Lines:

[T]he test is objective, so there’s a correct answer that any observer would know. (Graham wins.) Except, the test is also (you might want to sit down for this) subjective.

“The “reasonableness” of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”

So, to be clear, it’s an objective test that’s altogether subjective.

It’s also a test that explains why cops are free to shoot whoever they want. The only question is whether the shooting was reasonable. Whether it was reasonable is determined from the point of view of the cop who did the shooting. He thought it was. That’s all there is to it.

If a cop says their reaction was reasonable, it’s taken to be objectively reasonable. The correct way to handle this is to allow the lawsuit to move forward to the trial stage, where members of the public can weigh the evidence and decide what’s reasonable. But this step is almost always ignored and qualified immunity cases dismissed long before anyone besides the court weighs in on it.

The disparity in decisions across circuits isn’t good for America or the public. This is just more unequal justice. Where your rights are violated matters more than the fact your rights were violated. In more plaintiff-friendly courts, it’s the cops who have a higher bar to reach for dismissal.

A cop was denied immunity in Indio, California, after fatally shooting Ernest Foster Jr three times in the back during a foot chase at a shopping plaza, even though police recovered a gun from the scene.

An officer was denied immunity in Denver, Colorado, after shooting Michael Valdez in the back, severely injuring him, though the cop himself had been shot during the preceding car chase.

In other circuits, it’s the plaintiff who’s asked to surmount a bar set so high it’s a wonder anyone can reach it.

[I]n Houston, a cop was granted immunity after fatally shooting Gerrit Perkins in the back while Perkins crouched in a closet holding a cordless phone. Perkins was unarmed.

And in Bradley County, Arkansas, an officer was granted immunity after shooting Davdrin Goffin in the back, partially paralyzing him, even though he had already been patted down for weapons. He, too, was unarmed.

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to work. Americans should have access to equal justice. The Supreme Court’s deference to law enforcement officers has allowed qualified immunity to become the justice-destroying monster it is today. It could start reeling in the long leash it’s given cops over the past 50 years by taking up any number of appeals sent its way by plaintiffs following appellate rejection. But it doesn’t. It appears to be more interested in reversing lower decisions finding for plaintiffs whose rights have been violated than establishing precedent that might result in fewer rights violations in the future. That’s a problem. Here in America, where a person lives matters more than the abuse they’ve suffered.

Filed Under: 5th circuit, 9th circuit, circuit split, police accountability, qualified immunity, supreme court

Pennsylvania Legislature Looking To Hide The Names Of Cops Who Deploy Excessive Or Deadly Force

from the while-victims'-full-names-and-criminal-records-are-dumped-immediately dept

Pennsylvania is looking to regress. Police accountability is always a struggle, but the state legislature wants to take a huge step backwards. A bill sitting on the governor’s desk would allow law enforcement agencies to withhold the names of officers who deploy excessive force, possibly indefinitely.

The decision to release names of officers deploying excessive or deadly force has usually been made at the local level by each individual department. Some were better than others at doing so. Some, like Philadelphia’s police department — moved more proactively, instituting a 72-hour release policy in accordance with DOJ recommendations. This discretion would be removed and replaced with a state law that would only serve to further separate officers from accountability.

That this bill is even on the governor’s desk is largely due to a local police union’s power, as Reggie Shuford of the ACLU explains:

On September 11, 2015, Pennsylvania State Rep. Martina White — who represents a district in northeastern Philadelphia, and who received a political endorsement from the local Fraternal Order of Police — introduced HB 1538. A direct response to [Philadelphia Police Chief Charles] Ramsey’s 72-hour policy, the bill was designed to shield the names of officers involved in shootings. HB 1538 would have made it illegal for any public official to release the name of an officer involved in a shooting unless that officer was charged with a related crime.

This version of the bill didn’t make it far, but a watered-down version has replaced it that’s not much better.

On October 26 this year, Pennsylvania’s State Senate passed a form of the bill that sets a 30-day prohibition on releasing the name of police officers who use force on the job. The state House passed it the next day.

Thirty days is far longer than the DOJ-recommended 72 hours. Worse, the bill robs local PDs of control, subjecting them to state standards, even when delaying the release of officers’ names may do more overall harm to the department and its relationship to its community.

Then there’s the fact that the law doesn’t mandate a release once 30 days have elapsed. All it does is ensure that no information can be released during this time period. If departments want to withhold names indefinitely, nothing in the law prevents them from doing so.

As Shuford points out in his article, police officials should be given the latitude to release names earlier, especially considering the collateral reputational damage done to every officer who works for the same department. While many officials claim that “safety concerns” or “ongoing investigations” prevent the release of officers’ names in use of force incidents, this secrecy does no favors for other officers on the force.

The Hummelstown Police Department was transparent after officer Lisa Mearkle killed David Kassick in February 2015. That transparency protected her fellow officers from unnecessary public pressure…

When the public doesn’t know who the “bad apples” are, it’s pretty easy for them to hate the whole barrel. The proposed law does nothing to foster relationships with the public and forces more proactive agencies to sit on their hands as situations deteriorate.

Filed Under: pennsylvania, police, police accountability, transparency

John Oliver Takes On Police Accountability And The Colossally-Stupid 'Bad Apple' Defense

from the 'good-apples'-pretty-much-unicorns dept

John Oliver has now taken on police accountability — the second word of which should always be enclosed in scare quotes.

The whole thing is worth watching (of course) but the key bit is his skewering of the constant, incoherent twisting of an old adage by police officials and supporters when attempting to portray police misconduct as an outlier, rather than the everyday output of an insular, overly-powerful culture.

“It’s just a few bad apples…”

But the original adage isn’t an excuse. It’s a warning.

“A few bad apples spoil the barrel.”

And that’s exactly what has happened. Officers — sheltered by extra rights, less-than-strenuous internal investigations, policies that allow for the destruction of discipline records, civil immunity, revolving door policies that allow “bad apples” to infect new law enforcement agencies — basically answer to no one.

In rare, rare cases, police officers have been convicted and jailed. But this is usually the end result of outside pressure or behavior so repulsive and toxic the agency housing the officer can’t bring itself to defend them.

As Oliver points out, when officers are caught committing criminal acts, they’re often given the option to resign rather than face an investigation. In other cases, they’re swiftly cleared of serious charges and allowed to desk job their way back into their old positions.

Until recently, the DOJ and FBI expressed zero interest in compiling data on police use of force — to say nothing about regular, non-deadly police misconduct. Years of neglect have resulted in a data gap, with private citizens picking up the government’s slack to produce more credible numbers about civilians killed by law enforcement officers.

Slight movements toward better accountability have been spotted, but in general, most policies meant to add accountability have met stiff resistance from police unions, police departments, and legislators who seem to believe good, non-abusive policing is less effective than cracking skulls, seizing cash, and ensuring every officer makes it home for dinner — no matter how many people they have to kill or injure to achieve that goal.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s absurd to hedge remarks about bad cops by saying “most police officers are good” because there’s simply no data out there to confirm that foregone conclusion. At best, most officers are indifferent: not evil, but unwilling to make any effort to rein in those that are. The culture of law enforcement encourages the ousting of good cops, as any officer that would step up to stop misconduct or deployment of excessive force is viewed as untrustworthy.

True accountability is still a long ways off. Small steps are being made but even these tentative movements are being heavily contested. A full overhaul is what’s needed to fix this in the next several years. Unfortunately, that’s an impossibility, so we’ll have to work with what we’re given. The first step in any major change is admitting there’s a problem. And, as John Oliver points out with his “bad apple” commentary, most law enforcement agencies haven’t even reached that point yet.

Filed Under: bad apples, john oliver, police, police accountability