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January, 2014 - Week 2
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California
Pasadena police pleased with Rose Bowl week's ‘See Something, Say Something' campaign
by Sarah Favot
PASADENA>> While close to 1 million people descended on the city since Jan. 1 for Tournament of Roses festivities and the college football's national championship game, aside from a protest a Pasadena Police Department official said the total number of arrests were down compared to last year.
“Our perspective of all three events is they went very well,” said Police Department spokeswoman Lt. Tracey Ibarra. “People enjoyed them.”
The Police Department announced in a news conference before the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game it had stepped up security measures after taking months to study recent events like the Boston Marathon bombings, where three people were killed and 260 were injured at the finish line of the internationally watched event.
More bomb-sniffing police dogs patrolled the parade route and police had teamed up with local businesses along Colorado Boulevard to ensure the police had full-time access to private security cameras if they needed it.
Ibarra said the months of preparation that went into the events paid off.
The department had launched a “See Something, Say Something” campaign throughout the week encouraging spectators to call police if they saw any suspicious activity.
Ibarra said she knows about a couple calls to police that people made who were concerned about abandoned backpacks. She could not immediately provide the total number of calls made to police.
Police arrested 48 people across the city between 4 p.m. on New Year's Eve and 11 p.m. on New Year's Day, according to documents obtained by this newspaper.
Those arrests included 16 People for Ethical Treatment of Animals protesters, including a 12-year-old girl, who were arrested at the beginning of the Rose Parade on New Year's Day because they attempted to stop the SeaWorld float from sailing down Colorado Boulevard.
Twenty-three people were arrested throughout the city Monday, the day of the BCS National Championship game at the Rose Bowl between Auburn University and Florida State University. Twelve of those arrests were at the Rose Bowl, mainly on charges of public intoxication.
Police had originally said 19 PETA protestors were arrested last week, but after reviewing arrest data, just 16 protestors were arrested, Ibarra confirmed.
“PETA was there, of course they have the right of freedom of speech, but they did not have the right to disrupt the parade and because our officers stepped in, they did not disrupt the parade and the parade proceeded forward,” Ibarra said.
Police had been prepared for the PETA protesters. PETA had demonstrated at a number of Tournament of Roses events throughout the fall and had planned to protest the parade.
The total number of arrests of people who were camping overnight on New Year's Eve along the parade route was down.
Lt. Terysa Rojas said 13 people who were camping out along Colorado Boulevard between 5 p.m. on New Year's Eve and 5 a.m. on New Year's Day were arrested, including six on charges of public intoxication, two warrant arrests, one traffic violation, one resisting arrest, one battery and one felony grand theft. She said one juvenile was arrested on charges of public intoxication.
The previous year, 23 people were arrested overnight: 22 of those arrests were on charges of public intoxication.
“We have deputies assigned to every block,” said Ibarra. “Alcohol is usually the biggest factor that we face as reflected last year ... But we had less alcohol-related arrests this year.”
Most of those arrests on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day took place along Colorado Boulevard or in Old Pasadena.
Five arrests occurred at the Rose Bowl around the time of the Rose Bowl Game, including two public intoxication arrests, one for resisting, delaying or obstructing an officer and two Pasadena Municipal Code violations.
Four people were arrested on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
One person was arrested on charges of possession of a controlled substance.
http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140111/pasadena-police-pleased-with-rose-bowl-weeks-see-something-say-something-campaign
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Connecticut
Police dispatch software improves public safety
by Jim Taylor
WATERTOWN — The Town of Watertown should feel a bit safer now that the police department is transitioning to new software from Nexgen of East Haven.
According to Town Manager Chuck Frigon, the level of coverage it gives the town is “better than ever” and it is providing a “much higher level of community safety.” The system will be implemented over the next month and will require some training on the parts of the officers.
“The opportunities for error now are almost nonexistent,” said Mr. Frigon. “We should all feel better protected with regards to public safety.”
Chief of Police John Gavallas stated that the software was bought using the bonding issue for an upgrade and renovation to the entire dispatch center, which relocated it within the police department headquarters. The software was the last phase of the upgrade and cost approximately $180,000.
According to Lt. Spencer Cerruto of the Watertown Police Department, the new software has three components: A Computer Aided Dispatch, a Report Management System and a Mobile System.
“The overall goal in switching to the new software is that it will make officer report-related work more efficient, giving time for more police work and public safety,” Lt. Cerruto said. “It will free officer discretionary time that will be applied to public safety issues.”
The first component, the Computer Aided Dispatch, will mean that the dispatch center will always know where police units are currently located in the area through GPS tracking. When a 911 call comes in, the computer can tell dispatch which units will have the fastest response time.
The Report Management System means that all information on calls and incident reports will be put into a system and available immediately when a call comes in. When a 911 call comes in from a certain address, dispatch will be able to see all prior incidents that occurred at that location and will be able to make the officers aware of that, particularly if a household has a history of certain types of calls such as domestic violence.
The Mobile System will allow officers a greater level of information and will also allow the department to move to electronic ticketing. According to Lt. Cerruto, a lot of time involved in a traffic stop is filling out a traffic ticket. With the mobile system, a mot of information is stored in the system from the DMV, and can be quickly transferred and printed.
“It's another way the system makes an officer's job easier,” said Lt. Cerruto.
Lt. Cerruto stated that Nexgen currently services 115 of the 169 police departments in the state, including local, state and university police departments, as well as the Department of Motor Vehicles, meaning it has a large market share in the area.
Chief Gavallas pointed out that the advantage to all those departments being linked into the same system means that any updates to the system will be available within 24 hours, rather than the police department having to purchase the updates at a “significant cost.”
“That was a strong selling point,” Chief Gavallas said.
The Fire Department will also be able to take advantage of the system and is “on board” with it. Every fire engine will have an iPad capable of accessing the mobile system and every bay will have screens that can alert firemen to the emergency at hand, according to Lt. Cerruto.
“This will allow us to coordinate with the fire department and be on the same page in emergencies,” Lt. Cerruto said. “This is a big step forward in interoperability with the fire department.”
Mr. Frigon expressed pride in the employees involved in the relocation and renovation of the dispatch center.
“The outcome is something that we as a community should be proud of,” Mr. Frigon said.
http://www.towntimesnews.com/articles/2014/01/10/top_stories/doc52cdae887b5af284537839.txt
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Washington
Opinion
States and cities choose dollars over safety
by Radley Balko
Over at Reason, Brian Doherty dives into the effects the enforcement of petty crimes like jaywalking and traffic infractions can have on the poor.
L.A. police had already been issuing over a thousand tickets per month for jaywalking in the name of homeless management. A 2007 study from UCLA law professor emeritus Gary Blasi, “Policing Our Way Out of Homelessness? The First Year of the Safer Cities Initiative on Skid Row,” found such jaywalking or other petty citations given at rates 48 to 69 times those in the rest of the city. It noted that “of the 1,000 people per month who receive citations and are unable to pay the fines, most will face subsequent arrest and jail, even though the original offense may have been littering or a pedestrian signal.”
Some of those ticketed were in wheelchairs or otherwise disabled, or pushing a cart full of all their possessions in front of them as they tried to struggle across the street, says Pete White of Los Angeles Community Action Network, a poverty activist group. Blasi found the timing of skid row lights to be the absolute minimum imaginable for anyone to get across a street.
As damaging as the fines themselves can be, says White, his group also hates strict pedestrian law enforcement because it's “an excuse for search, harassment, and intimidation of the poor” in a situation where a population of thirteen to fifteen thousand people downtown were receiving nearly that many citations a year.
Lawyer Carol Sobel, who helps represent many downtown L.A. residents who receive such citations, says you can often beat the rap if you go to court (usually because officers don't show up, or your lawyer can prove they gave a citations that wasn't legally warranted). But if you cannot beat the rap or pay the fine, that simple ticket for stepping off a curb can lead to an arrest warrant—which many activists think was in part the point of the city's crackdown to begin with, a component in a general plan of clearing the homeless out of downtown L.A.
Contemplating how something as simple as a ticket for a couple hundred bucks could effectively ruin a life reminded me of the last time I was in traffic court, for driving a car in California with an expired license plate. I heard brief versions of the stories that brought dozens of my fellow citizens before the judge, some facing imprisonment, most just facing fines of more than a thousand dollars (that could lead to imprisonment if not paid).
Every single story that brought them there—overwhelmingly minorities and, my guess based on their demeanor and stories, working class—began with a “small fine” for some traffic-related infraction that, not dispatched with prompt bourgeois responsibility, ballooned to larger fines and/or arrest warrants.
Do the crime, pay the fine, many might think. Why wouldn't they? Maybe the fine represented too large a part of their disposable income to be dealt with in time, or maybe they just aren't that skilled at remembering to take care of expensive problems promptly.
I've written quite a bit about how cities have come to use traffic cameras not to maximize public safety, but to bolster city revenues. It's gotten to the point where several cities have been caught shortening yellow lights to hand out more tickets, a practice that makes intersections significantly more dangerous.
That's all bad enough. But Doherty explains that revenue-motivated traffic enforcement not only is often arbitrary, but can have crushing, cascading consequences for low-income drivers.
As David A. Harris pointed out in a 1997 article in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology called “'Driving While Black' and All Other Traffic Offense: the Supreme Court and Pretextual Traffic Stops,” a driver is pretty much always committing a moving violation, since they can include actions as vague and open to interpretation as not giving “full time and attention to the operation of the vehicle.”
As Harris goes on to note, and disproportionate effect on the poor, that is going to have a disproportionate effect on minorities which, given American socioeconomics, can mean a disproportionate effect on the poor.
As will the state's demands that we pay them off in various ways for permission to drive, a core element of modern working life for many. Tom Nordlie, a former assistant public defender in Florida in the 1990s (and, disclosure, an old college buddy), remembers nearly a third of misdemeanor cases he represented involved people driving with licenses suspended (DWLS). A first offense could net two months in jail and a $500 fine — even though the crime did not necessarily cause any harm to anyone.
“In the world of misdemeanor crimes, many offenses come about because people are impulsive, drug-addicted, cruel or avaricious,” Nordlie says. “Most DWLS cases don't happen for any of those reasons. DWLS cases come about because people are poor. Or, at the very least, because they don't manage their money well … DWLS is more strongly linked to economics than any other misdemeanor offense.” It frequently occurred because of unpaid tickets, or lack of insurance.
“I had many clients tell me, ‘I had to keep working to have a chance to raise the money I needed to fix this situation, and in order to work, I had to drive.' Bam. It's a DWLS charge waiting to happen.”
Nordlie knows “there are situations where someone needs to stop driving, due to demonstrated incompetence or disregard for other peoples' safety, But in my experience, those situations represent only a small fraction of DWLS cases.”
Many states also now tack “processing fees” onto traffic violations that can exceed the fine for the violation itself, sometimes several times over. Another trick : Make it more expensive to challenge a ticket than the cost of the ticket itself. Another strategy: Should they lose their challenge, hit motorists with an added fine so large , no one in his right mind would consider exercising his due process rights.
Skeptical? Consider this decision released just this week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, upholding an Illinois town's $30 “booking fee” for arrestees, even if the arrest doesn't result in any criminal charges. That may not sound like much. But think of the implications. As one commenter at the Volokh Conspiracy put it:
It seems to me that this case, according to the majority, depends on the fact the $30 is not charged as a result of the underlying crime for which the arrest was made. That being the case, I see no reason, under this decision, that the police could not charge a fee for every time they become involved with citizens. The police could charge for making traffic stops regardless of whether a ticket was issued, they could charge for conducting searches, or giving breathalyzers. Maybe they could charge every time they testified at trial, why should expert witnesses be the only ones paid?
Another commenter added:
Think about the possibilities this ruling opens up: a city could charge an admission fee to anyone who crosses the city limits and an exit fee to those leaving, every time police pull over a vehicle the driver owes a $25 fee for the stop even if no ticket is issued, every Terry stop and frisk comes with a $50 fee payable immediately by the friskee whether or not a weapon is found.
If you think those (alleged) arrest and stop-and-frisk quotas are bad now, wait until city officials discover that they can start charging citizens $50 each time they're subjected to the privilege of a pat-down or wrongful arrest.
So what happens if you just can't pay all these fines? Some state are bringing back the debtor's prison, though they won't explicitly call it that. Here's the economist Alex Tabarrok, writing at the Marginal Revolution blog a couple years ago.
Debtor's prisons are supposed to be illegal in the United States but today poor people who fail to pay even small criminal justice fees are routinely being imprisoned. The problem has gotten worse recently because strapped states have dramatically increased the number of criminal justice fees. In Pennsylvania, for example, the criminal court charges for police transport, sheriff costs, state court costs, postage, and “judgment.” Many of these charges are not for any direct costs imposed by the criminal but have been added as revenue enhancers. A $5 fee, for example, supports the County Probation Officers' Firearms Training Fund, an $8 fee supports the Judicial Computer Project, a $250 fee goes to the DNA Detection Fund. Convicted criminals may face dozens of fees ( not including fines and restitution) totaling a substantial burden for people of limited means. Fees do not end outside the courtroom. Jailed criminals can be charged for room and board and for telephone use, haircuts, drug tests, transportation, booking, and medical co-pays. In Arizona, visitors to a prison are now charged a $25 maintenance fee. In PA in order to get parole there is a mandatory charge of $60. While on parole, defendants may be further assessed counseling, testing and other fees. Interest builds unpaid fees larger and larger. In Washington state unpaid legal debt accrues at an interest rate of 12%. As a result, the median person convicted in WA sees their criminal justice debt grow larger over time.
Many states are now even charging the accused to apply for and use a public defender! As a result, some defendants are discouraged from exercising their rights to an attorney.
Most outrageously, in some states public defender, pre-trial jail and other court fees can be assessed on individuals even when they are not convicted of any crime. Failure to pay criminal justice fees can result in revocation of an individual's drivers license, arrest and imprisonment. Individuals with revoked licenses who drive (say to work to earn money to pay their fees) and are apprehended can be further fined and imprisoned. Unpaid criminal justice debt also results in damaged credit reports and reduced housing and employment prospects. Furthermore, failure to pay fees can mean a violation of probation and parole terms which makes an individual ineligible for Federal programs such as food stamps, Temporary Assistance to Needy Family funds and Social Security Income for the elderly and disabled.
Arguments against policies like primary seatbelt laws, jaywalking enforcement, traffic cameras, “distracted drivers” laws, and arbitrary speed enforcement are often met with derision. But these laws inevitably become more about revenue generation than public safety, and when local and state governments start to see motorists and pedestrians as piggy banks, you get policies like those above. For a good percentage of the population these fines can be devastating, and for them, there's nothing petty about the aggressive enforcement of petty crimes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2014/01/10/revenue-generation-over-public-safety/?tid=pm_opinions_pop
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Minnesota
Editorial
More cops, youth outreach can boost public safety
Minneapolis police chief outlines promising list of initiatives.
As victims of cellphone thieves, former Minneapolis mayoral candidate Mark Andrew and several University of Minnesota students know this trend personally: Aggressive thefts of smartphones and other personal electronics contributed to an uptick in violent crime in Minneapolis last year.
During a news conference this week, Police Chief Janeé Harteau and newly installed Mayor Betsy Hodges reported that although overall crime remained at record lows, the city still saw a 4 percent increase in violent criminal activity.
The chief said there were encouraging trends from the city's 2013 crime statistics, including fewer burglaries, auto thefts, homicides and rapes. But there were more robberies and aggravated assaults — nearly 8 percent citywide and 39 percent in north Minneapolis — in part driven by the growing market for stolen electronics.
To address those concerns, Harteau said she has assigned more officers to the robbery and assault units. And the chief and mayor talked about increasing the number of sworn officers to 850 from the current 812. In addition, the department will move forward with the use of body cameras for officers in 2014, starting with a pilot program.
Beyond a larger force and new technology, the chief is smartly emphasizing building stronger police-community relationships — including more involvement with the city's young people. As part of her MPD 2.0 culture change, she already has required more officers to get out of their squad cars and get to know neighbors on the North Side. In the future, she's hoping to have more cops walk beats throughout the city.
That's crucial for this department — especially given its difficult history of payouts for alleged police misconduct and questionable community relations.
As evidence of the focus on relationship building, Harteau invited several dozen of her precinct leaders, neighborhood activists and business owners to participate in this week's news conference. Many spoke briefly about how they are interacting with cops and doing a better job of sharing information to prevent crime.
The news conference came one day after the mayor and seven new City Council members were installed and held their first meeting of the year. During that meeting, activists seeking an end to racial disparities chanted “Let the people speak!” but were not allowed to address the council.
In contrast, Harteau invited several speakers to the news conference, including representatives from the city's Youth Coordinating Board who support the chief's strategy of including more young people in crime prevention efforts. Harteau said the department and the YCB did more work with teens in 2013, which may have contributed to a 4.6 percent drop in juvenile crime.
Last summer, the YCB and the Downtown Youth Street Outreach Project had representatives on Nicollet Mall every day to talk with young people and make them aware of events at the library, the downtown YMCA and elsewhere.
This year, MPD will start a program called Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) to help officers in schools connect with youth and help them build the life skills they need to be successful. Harteau is planning a youth leadership summit for later this year, primarily for African-American and East African youths. And she will convene a youth “Chief's Advisory Council” to listen to their concerns.
“I'd really like to see our next line of community leaders come from this group,” Harteau said at the news conference. “They've got the solutions. We need to bring them to the table.”
Harteau and Hodges are certainly not the first city officials to talk about building better police-community relations. Here's hoping that one day they'll be known as the police chief and mayor who were able to sustainably follow through.
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/editorials/239513041.html
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Nebraska
More Omaha police fired in ‘caught on tape' case
by Joe Jordan
(Video on site)
Just days after a federal lawsuit accused Omaha police of excessive force in a widely publicized (see video below) “caught on tape” tape case, two more officers have been fired bringing the total to six.
The latest firings came Wednesday and Thursday, according to a statement from Omaha police.
“As I have previously stated, we did not carry ourselves in a manner representative of the Omaha Police Department in this incident,” said Police Chief Todd Schmaderer.
Last March 21 a routine parking problem near 33rd and Seward in North Omaha escalated into a must-see six minute recording.
The video—shot by a member of the public— shows a police officer (see video below) throwing a man to the ground and hitting him several times, while a dozen other officers storm a home across the street.
“A parking ticket turned into officers storming my house and me being thrown to the ground and put into a chokehold,” said Octavius Johnson.
“Pulling over twenty officers away from other parts of the city should sound an alarm for taxpayers,” says Amy Miller of the ACLU who filed the suit Monday.
But citing a national accreditation award issued to OPD in November, Schmaderer sees lessons learned.
“I am confident in saying the Omaha Police Department is a better department in the aftermath of this incident,” said the chief.
The first four firings came within a few weeks of the incident. One of those four has appealed his firing, a ruling is pending.
The last two officers are awaiting a pre-termination hearing.
http://watchdog.org/123164/omaha-officers-fired-caught-tape-case/
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Suicides of young veterans top those of active-duty troops
by Gregg Zoroya
Whatever torment has driven U.S. troops to commit suicide in historically high numbers is following them as they leave the service, according to new data released by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Young veterans just out of the service and receiving health care from the government committed suicide at nearly three times the rate of active-duty troops in recent years, according to new data released Thursday by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
VA officials say the data show that severe personal issues driving self-destructive tendencies for those in uniform follow them when they leave the military.
"The rates ... are honestly alarming. This group of young veterans appears to be in some trouble," says Janet Kemp, head of the department's suicide prevention program.
The Army has struggled with suicide among active-duty troops more than other service branches during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the risk persists after soldiers return to civilian life.
Veterans ages 18-24 enrolled in the VA's health program killed themselves at a rate of 46-per 100,000 in 2009 and nearly 80-per-100,000 in 2011, the latest year of data available, according to figures released through a USA TODAY public records request.
Non-veterans of the same age had a suicide rate during 2009 and 2010, the most recent data available, of about 20-per-100,000, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Thirty-six young veterans receiving some form of VA health care committed suicide in 2009 and 65 died by their own hand two years later. Among those in the broader age group 18-29, the suicide numbers rose from 88 in 2009 to 152 in 2011.
The number of soldier suicides peaked at 185 in 2012 and a record rate for the Army that year of 30 per 100,000.Numbers for 2013 are not yet available.
Kemp says a preliminary analysis shows that most of them were not receiving mental health therapy, but rather had been treated for other health issues by the VA.
"They're young. They've just gotten out of the service," she says. "They're more concentrated on going home, getting jobs, for the most part. They're not coming in for mental health care."
VA epidemiologist Robert Bossarte says a similar pattern was found among veterans in the past.
"There were were several studies after Vietnam that showed increases in suicide and other forms of injury/mortality for about the first five years following return from service," Bossarte says. "Those rates (eventually) came down to be about the same as the rest of the population."
A positive sign in the new data, Kemp says, is that suicide rates for male veterans of all ages who are diagnosed and treated for mental health problems by the VA have fallen steadily from 2001-2011, in contrast to suicide patterns among non-veteran males.
The same is not true, however, for female veterans, whose suicide rates have not improved and remain higher than women who are not veterans, according to the VA data.
Kemp says recent success in reaching veterans through social media offers hope that more young people can be brought into therapy.
Online chat connections with veterans through the VA's suicide prevention office (hotline number is 1-800-273-8255) have increased from several hundred in 2009 to nearly 55,000 last year, VA data shows.
"If we can get them engaged in (mental health) services, we can make a huge difference, and that's encouraging," she says.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/10/suicide-veterans-rates-high-prevention/4393547/
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Oklahoma
Oklahoma bill would ease school policies on imaginary, toy guns
OKLAHOMA CITY – Schoolchildren in Oklahoma could not be punished for chewing their breakfast pastries into the shape of a gun under a bill introduced this week by a Republican legislator.
Rep. Sally Kern said Wednesday her measure dubbed the Common Sense Zero Tolerance Act was in response to school districts having policies that are too strict or inflexible.
Kern cited a recent Maryland case that gained national media attention where a boy was suspended after his teacher accused him of chewing his Pop Tart into the shape of a gun.
"Real intent, real threats and real weapons should always be dealt with immediately. We need to stop criminalizing children's imagination and childhood play," Kern, Republican from Oklahoma City told News9.com.
"If there's no real intent, there's no real threat, no real weapon, no real harm is occurring or going to occur, why in the world are we in a sense abusing our children like this."
Under Kern's bill, students couldn't be punished for possessing small toy weapons or using writing utensils, fingers or their hands to simulate a weapon. Students also couldn't be punished for drawing pictures of weapons or wearing clothes that “support or advance Second Amendment rights or organizations.”
News9.com reported that Kern's proposal was met with immediate opposition from the Oklahoma Education Association.
"The proposed legislation removes local control from teachers, counselors, administrators and local school boards. Educators are degreed professionals, trained and experienced in dealing with children," Linda Hampton, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, told the station.
In Maryland, Republican state Sen. J.B. Jennings introduced a similar bill last year that would prohibit schools from suspending students for seemingly harmless childish acts, such as playing games with fingers pointed like guns or chewing food into the shape of a firearm.
In July, Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, introduced the Student Protection Act, which aims to stop the enforcement of policies that "punish innocent children" by cutting funds to schools with excessive "zero tolerance" weapons policies.
Under the bill, which schools would face cuts in federal funding if they punish students for specific activities, including carrying a toy gun, using a finger or hand to simulate a gun and wearing a T-shirt that supports Second Amendment rights.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/10/oklahoma-bill-would-ease-school-policies-on-toy-guns/
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Washington
Editorial
Mayor Murray's swift action on Seattle Police Department
Mayor Ed Murray says hiring a new chief of the Seattle Police Department is one of his most important duties, His actions demonstrate that belief.
MAYOR Ed Murray's appointment of Harry C. Bailey as the new interim chief of the Seattle Police Department is an inspired choice to move department reforms ahead.
Bailey is a well-regarded department veteran, and the mayor's announcement was well received at all levels of the agency.
Murray's replacement of Jim Pugel as interim chief was an emphatic declaration that a fresh start is needed for a department working its way out of intense U.S. Department of Justice scrutiny and criticism.
The mayor's respectful but blunt letter to the police department is a powerful message to the rank and file, command staff, the interim chief and the community leaders assembled to search for a new chief.
“Community policing must be the department's operating philosophy, not merely a series of special projects,” the mayor wrote. “True community policing is about building relationships with the people the department serves and developing solutions to the problems they face.”
Murray also touched on a key point raised by the outside monitor overseeing the department's response to federal imperatives and negotiated reforms: “Our Seattle Police Department ought to base its strategies on data and best practices, not merely tradition and instinct.”
The mayor's letter is a template for how to proceed for both interim Chief Bailey, the 32-member citizens' community panel convened by Murray, and the 12-member search committee.
Bailey knows the department and the city, and he can do the next chief a favor by refreshing the senior ranks of the command staff with those prepared to meet the mayor's expectations.
Likewise, the community panel and search committee, co-chaired by Ron Sims and Pramila Jayapal, have a filter through which to screen applicants who want to lead the police department.
The breadth of skills, talents, leadership experience and community connections represented by those who answered the mayor's call to help is a measure of the confidence invested in Murray's commitment.
Mayor Murray is off to a swift start with a well-articulated, well-supported effort to fill a key post for his administration and the city.
http://seattletimes.com/html/editorials/2022634920_murraypoliceedit10xml.html
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Washington
Police seek recruits for community academy
Bellevue Police are seeking applicants for a 12-week community academy where recruits will learn about department operations and policing challenges. The academy requires students to attend one three-hour session one weeknight for 12 weeks.
Classes are free and start at 7 p.m. March 5 at Bellevue City Hall. Instructors include Bellevue officers and personnel, who will teach students about their areas of expertise. Topics to be discussed include hostage negotiations, traffic, patrol, forensics, gangs and investigations, a ride-along with an officer and a chance to fire a few rounds at the department's gun range.
The application can be downloaded.
http://www.bellevuereporter.com/news/239451941.html
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Seattle, Washington
Murray to SPD: ‘We can – and will – do better'
by John de Leon
Editor's note: Mayor Ed Murray, who today named Harry C. Bailey new interim chief of the Seattle Police Department , sent this letter to the department:
To the Law Enforcement Officers of the Seattle Police Department,
As I take on my duties as Mayor of our great city of Seattle, I want to take this moment to share with you my vision for our Seattle Police Department. This vision is informed by a fundamental belief that in order for our city to thrive, we must have a police department that is effective at both controlling crime and building trusted relationships in all the communities and neighborhoods that make up the city of Seattle. This vision is also shaped by deep appreciation for the risks each and every law enforcement officer takes in putting his or her life on the line every day that you step outside your home wearing your uniform or your badge.
The Seattle Police Department is an integral part of our community. As such, the department must be trusted by all of the people of Seattle. The department must reflect the diversity of all the people who live in Seattle. The leadership of the department must be able to implement the reforms detailed in the Department of Justice Settlement Agreement while building officer morale through a positive and transparent culture change. Department leadership will not tolerate misconduct or discrimination during my administration. Nor will I.
Community policing must be the department's operating philosophy, not merely a series of special projects. True community policing is about building relationships with the people the department serves and developing solutions to the problems they face. True partnership is about dialogue and relationship. And, when something goes wrong, we must have a swift and comprehensive accountability process that is clearly understood and trusted by all. I am committed to utilizing these principles of community policing throughout the entire city government structure, a practice sometimes referred to as community governance.
Additionally, public safety is not merely the domain of the Police and Fire Departments. Rather it is the job of all of us, both city government and the community at large. Crime and violence and injustice are economic, education, or public health issues as much as they are legal issues. We must approach them in the spirit of partnership, with a sense of mutual trust and responsibility.
Our Seattle Police Department ought to base its strategies on data and best practices, not merely tradition and instinct. To do that, our department must provide officers with the consistent training, tools and professional supervision and standards to carry out their duties. It must embrace new technologies and methodologies, recognizing that these are multiplier forces in an era when simply hiring more people can no longer be the only solution to every problem. The department is currently working to comply with the Settlement Agreement. But none of us should be satisfied with merely “good enough” in meeting the terms of the agreement.
Instead, I invite each of you to join me in looking beyond the horizon of our final, technical and eventual compliance with the terms of the agreement to a future vision where the principles and values that are at the foundation of this agreement those of justice and equality for all under the law are embraced and woven into the fabric of the department at all levels. The best practices and community relationships we develop must be sustained long after the Monitor has left. And while the Seattle Police Department is a good department, in striving for excellence, we must remember that “good enough, isn't.” We can — and will — do better.
I will never be able to fully appreciate the dangers into which each and every law enforcement officer places him or herself when called to answer the call of duty. But I can promise you my unwavering commitment to seeing our Seattle Police Department return to its rightful place as a national leader in demonstrating the best of policing practices. Just as the best hospitals are
Thank you again for your public service to our great city.
Sincerely,
Edward B. Murray
Mayor of Seattle
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2014/01/murray-to-seattle-police-we-can-and-will-do-better/
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Texas
New cameras in downtown Houston brewing debate
by Katie McCall
HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A battle is brewing over public safety and the right to privacy. One civil rights group is speaking out against the installation of dozens of new surveillance cameras by the city of Houston.
The use of surveillance cameras to monitor the public is a source of debate among Houstonians.
"I just think it violates privacy. If they don't have a reason to be watching you, I don't think they should be," Houston resident Andrew Norton said.
"I don't have a problem with it. I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I don't have any problems with the government putting cameras up," Houston resident Andre Ho said.
The city of Houston just announced an expansion of its video surveillance network in highly populated public areas, calling the cameras a prevention tool for crime and terrorism. The disagrees.
"This is a powerful tool for a growing Big Brother state," Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Amin Alehashem said.
The group warns that safety cameras can easily be used to attack the innocent.
"They might see you interacting with somebody that's known to have been involved in some criminal activity but you yourself might not be," Alehashem said.
The city issued a statement saying, "The courts have continuously ruled that there is no expectation of privacy in public places."
Its addition of 180 cameras downtown will bring the total to about 1,000 at a cost of $18.5 million federal grant. At the Houston marathon, the city says cameras could prevent an attack like the one in Boston.
And some people say they're OK sacrificing privacy for protection.
"It's public space. Public safety is a concern," Houston resident John Ivey said.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=9386182
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New York
(Commentary)
Albany policing a model to copy
by Terry O'Neill
Today, the Albany Police Department is far and away ahead of any other in the state in returning law enforcement to the philosophy of community policing — so thoroughly eclipsed over the past two decades by widely influential policing tactics debuted in New York City under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
In 1994, Giuliani and his police commissioner, Bill Bratton, introduced data-driven policing under the name CompStat. This "cops on the dots" system of deploying police manpower to areas of spiking crime has spread across the nation and beyond.
Unfortunately, this simple innovation has gone seriously astray over the years, resulting in such egregious distortions as the New York City Police Department's "stop and frisk" practice and the cooking of statistical books by NYPD precinct commanders pressed to deliver the ever downward-trending crime statistics demanded by their political masters.
"Stop and frisk" was resoundingly rejected this past year by a federal judge, the New York City Common Council and the voters of the city of New York. The manipulation of NYPD crime statistics has been exposed in research published by Eli Silverman of John Jay College and John Eterno of Molloy College.
That these distortions didn't happen in Albany and that our police department is now a model of community policing for the whole state is owed to activist Albany Common Council members like the recently departed Dominick Calsolaro and Barbara Smith; to a change in the city charter that gave the council a say in selecting a police chief, and to former Mayor Jerry Jennings in finally learning to collaborate with the council.
But more than anything else, it was the sustained and committed participation of many community activists and ordinary citizens — people like the redoubtable Beverly Padgett — who spoke out in public forums and took the trouble to learn about policing and the many new concepts that have been emerging in its practice. When the people know what to ask for, they will get it.
What we have accomplished in Albany is quite extraordinary. It should be held up to reproach characters like Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, who denounced community policing as an "outdated, outmoded, romantic notion" during her recent re-election campaign, and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, whose last "nationwide search" for a new police commissioner was conducted in such secrecy that many doubt it ever occurred.
And we should take note that Bratton, who is returning as NYPD commissioner, has seen the light at last, although he insists on calling community policing "collaborative policing." At least he's not still deriding it as "social work" as he did 20 years ago.
Albany led the way in launching a vibrant new movement in law enforcement. I challenge Gov. Andrew Cuomo to note what has been accomplished in the capital city and to include in his forthcoming budget a new program at the Division of Criminal Justice Services to provide financial support and technical assistance to help communities across the state move toward community policing, or collaborative policing, or whatever he may choose to call it.
Terry O'Neill is an Albany resident and attorney.
http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Albany-policing-a-model-to-copy-5111812.php
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Maine
Training to aid mentally ill a priority for police
Most officers in Portland and elsewhere in Maine are learning how to intervene amid a mental health crisis.
by David Hench
When Portland Police Chief Michael Sauschuck was a young community policing officer, he and his partner were called to the Casco Bay Lines parking garage for a person behaving and driving erratically.
They found the man, a driver of a Cadillac in the upper levels of the parking garage, but could barely communicate with him.
“This individual truly believed in his mind we were agents of the devil and we were there to kill him,” Sauschuck said. The officers ended up in the cab of the car, fighting to keep the man from putting it in gear and running them over.
The experience helped convince Sauschuck that he should enroll in the department's first Crisis Intervention Team class in 2001.
“When something like that happens, you play those conversations in your mind: ‘Did I do absolutely everything possible to help this individual?'” Sauschuck said. “I knew personally and professionally I needed more information.”
Now, 12 years later, every officer in the state's largest municipal police force, the first to embrace crisis intervention training, has completed a 40-hour course in identifying and responding to the array of people with mental illnesses that officers encounter.
The achievement comes as the number of police calls related to a person's mental health has been climbing for years, in part because residential facilities for people with mental illness have closed.
Portland identified 4,013 calls for service in 2012 that related to a person's mental health, up from 3,311 the year before. Numbers for 2013 have not yet been compiled.
The stakes on such calls can be high.
Some are mundane – people talking to themselves or acting strangely, who are deemed to be no danger to themselves or others despite their abnormal behavior and who cooperate with police. Others are more perilous, both for officers and the person in crisis.
A 2012 report by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram found that 42 percent of the 57 people shot by Maine police officers since 2000 were mentally ill, and they represented 58 percent of the 33 people killed in officer-involved shootings.
The report found that most officers lack the specialized training in recognizing and de-escalating confrontations stemming from mental illness.
City Councilor Ed Suslovic, chairman of Portland's public safety and health and human services committee, said having every officer trained to deal with people in mental health crisis is an important achievement that will pay off.
“It's notable it's been a long time since we had a fatal shooting where a police officer shot someone who was having a serious mental illness situation,” Suslovic said. “That shows how important the CIT training is and really how the entire department gets it when it comes to the challenge.”
But the training does not prevent deadly confrontations.
South Portland Police Chief Ed Googins said he is also committed to the program. All but two of the officers in his 53-person department have been certified in CIT. He notes that both of the city's fatal police shootings in 2006 and 2008 involved people with a mental health crisis. In both cases, CIT-trained officers were on hand but did not have an opportunity to mitigate the threatening behavior that led to the use of deadly force.
Googins says the training is an essential tool for modern police work.
“This really is developing career-long survival skills, because mental health calls, we've had a number of them go very badly over the years,” he said.
Portland is the largest, but not the only, police department in Maine to provide CIT training to all of its officers. In addition to South Portland police, Sanford police and the Kennebec County Sheriff's Office also have trained all or nearly all of their officers.
Like many medium-sized departments, Portland and South Portland originally intended to have one officer on each shift trained in crisis intervention.
But mental health calls can take time and often overlap, so it was determined that it was not effective to have just one or two people on a shift trained, Googins said.
Laura Usher, CIT program manager at the National Alliance on Mental Illness headquarters in Virginia, said some agencies around the country believe that rather than train every officer in crisis intervention, it's better to train people who are suited to that approach who can be called upon by officers who are not.
Sauschuck, however, believes every officer could potentially encounter a person in crisis, and waiting for a specialist can be imprudent or impossible.
“My argument from the beginning was we don't train specific officers in OUI enforcement or defensive tactics,” he said. Sauschuck said dealing with people in mental health crisis has become part of the job of an officer. “When we talk about verbal judo or we talk about crisis intervention team training, these are officer safety or community safety classes.”
At the heart of it is getting people the help they need while ensuring public safety, said Jenna Mehnert, executive director of the NAMI Maine, the state affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“There are ways to make those situations more complicated or heated, and other ways to handle it where you can help calm somebody down and get at the root of what's going on and address that, instead of just the behavior that's presented in front of you,” Mehnert said.
A person with serious mental health issues may exhibit frightening behavior but is more likely to be a victim than a perpetrator, she said.
“We want to make sure people with mental illness get services and that we do not criminalize mental illness any further,” Mehnert said. “We want people in law enforcement to have another skill that helps them get through their day and make it home at night. ... We have many people whose only [criminal] charges, unfortunately, are related to assaulting nurses and law enforcement.”
The program has gained in popularity, but still only 2,800 law enforcement agencies, out of 20,000 nationwide, have trained officers in CIT.
Portland is one of six departments nationwide that have been identified as learning sites by the Bureau of Justice, which endorses the crisis intervention training.
Maine has a $90,000 annual contract with NAMI to coordinate CIT classes in the state. The classes are taught by local mental health professionals, and that give officers contacts in the treatment community.
The week-long training involves classwork and role-playing.
“The effectiveness of this CIT training are the role plays that officers are put in, to actually deal with folks that are exhibiting symptoms or behavior similar to a type of mental illness, be it depression or schizophrenia, whatever it is,” said Googins, who undertook the training about four years ago.
“We're having to use our skills to de-escalate the call, establish a rapport and get the person the help they need,” he said. “The idea is to do it with the least amount of force, and be effective – not just saying, ‘We're clear, send us to the next call,' but we've done something that might negate a future callback.”
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Crisis_Intervention_Team_training_aids_police_in_perilous_encounters_.html
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California
San Diego Has Fallen Behind on Combating Police Racial Profiling
by Liam Dillon and Megan Burks
The San Diego Police Department and its chief, William Lansdowne, used to be national leaders in addressing concerns about racial profiling. Now they're not.
More than a decade ago, San Diego police were among the first to use data to examine how frequently officers targeted minorities in traffic stops. Today, that policy has become the norm in big urban departments across the country. But in San Diego, the effort has largely fallen by the wayside. Officers here now track race in fewer than one out of every five stops and a sergeant in the department's research and analysis division wasn't aware that the requirement to gather the information still existed when we asked about it.
Lansdowne isn't troubled by the decrease in the department's data collection efforts. He and his top deputies said residents don't believe racial profiling is a problem.
“It hasn't come up in years and years and years in interactions with the community,” said Assistant Chief Shelley Zimmerman, who's in charge of the department's neighborhood policing efforts.
But those who monitor San Diego police don't share that perspective. The head of the local Black Police Officers Association, the president of the local NAACP and a city councilman all said racial profiling happens in San Diego and they hear about it.
“Everyone knows it exists,” said Lei-Chala Wilson, the local NAACP president.
And city taxpayers recently had to foot the bill for an incident where police officers stopped young minorities for no reason.
This spring, a federal judge ruled that two officers violated the Fourth Amendment rights of two black residents, Dante Harrell and Shannon Robinson, during a City Heights traffic stop in 2010. Harrell and Robinson's lawsuit didn't specifically allege racial profiling, but Harrell said he believed the stop happened because police look for reasons to pull over minorities in minority neighborhoods. The city agreed to settle the case last month for $450,000.
Lansdowne isn't troubled by the decrease in the department's data collection efforts. He and his top deputies said residents don't believe racial profiling is a problem.
“It hasn't come up in years and years and years in interactions with the community,” said Assistant Chief Shelley Zimmerman, who's in charge of the department's neighborhood policing efforts.
But those who monitor San Diego police don't share that perspective. The head of the local Black Police Officers Association, the president of the local NAACP and a city councilman all said racial profiling happens in San Diego and they hear about it.
“Everyone knows it exists,” said Lei-Chala Wilson, the local NAACP president.
And city taxpayers recently had to foot the bill for an incident where police officers stopped young minorities for no reason.
The late 1990s, civil rights groups in San Jose demanded action after allegations emerged of racial profiling in traffic stops. Lansdowne, San Jose's police chief at the time, responded.
His department pledged to gather race and ethnicity information voluntarily on traffic stops to see how frequently officers pulled over people of color. Criminal justice researchers hailed Lansdowne as the "father of data collection" on police racial profiling.
"We can't be afraid to look at the statistics," Lansdowne said when San Jose released its initial 1999 report, which showed only small disparities between minorities stopped and the citywide population.
"Nobody that I know or myself do I feel safe around [police],” said Abdihakim Afewerki, a 26-year-old engineering student who is black. Afewerki frequently spends time in Encanto and Lincoln Park. “In my eyes, they're not there to protect me, they're there to harass me.”
The lawsuit and renewed national scrutiny over racial profiling got Lansdowne's attention. He has ordered a new round of data collection on race at traffic stops, saying profiling has again become an issue in San Diego.
Criminal justice experts, however, say racial profiling is always an issue: Incidents can erode trust between police and the communities they serve. For some people of color who believe San Diego police officers have pulled them over for that alone, the traffic stops have taken their toll.
‘We Can't Be Afraid to Look at the Statistics'
In the late 1990s, civil rights groups in San Jose demanded action after allegations emerged of racial profiling in traffic stops. Lansdowne, San Jose's police chief at the time, responded.
His department pledged to gather race and ethnicity information voluntarily on traffic stops to see how frequently officers pulled over people of color. Criminal justice researchers hailed Lansdowne as the " father of data collection " on police racial profiling.
"We can't be afraid to look at the statistics," Lansdowne said when San Jose released its initial 1999 report, which showed only small disparities between minorities stopped and the citywide population.
But more than a decade later, Lansdowne, San Diego's chief for the last 10 years, has few statistics to look at.
The San Diego Police Department has had a policy to collect race and ethnicity data during traffic stops since 2000, making it one of the first big urban departments to do so, along with San Jose. The department has told officers they needed to gather this information multiple times in the years since.
But the message didn't stick. A sergeant in the department's research and analysis division wasn't aware that a data collection policy still existed when we asked in late October.
“We do not keep any demographics on traffic stops,” Sgt. Laura McLean told us in an email.
It turns out officers were keeping demographics on traffic stops – just not very much. In the first 10 months of 2013, officers gathered racial information on roughly 16,000 traffic stops, an amount equivalent to about a fifth of the citations issued over the same time. Officers pulled over an untold number of additional drivers without giving them tickets – or noting their race. Many officers gathered the information diligently, police officials said, but the amount of data the department collected decreased substantially over time.
Lansdowne said the effort slowed because no one demanded the department analyze racial profiling in traffic stops, so he didn't emphasize the requirement to collect the data. In the meantime, other law enforcement agencies have surpassed the San Diego Police Department when it comes to being proactive on the issue.
Seven of the 10 largest police departments in the country currently have policies requiring them to gather race and ethnicity information on traffic or pedestrian stops even if officers don't arrest or cite the person stopped. An eighth department, Washington D.C., documents the race of those frisked by police.
These data are the cornerstone of a high-profile legal challenge over the New York City Police Department's practice of stopping and frisking pedestrians in an effort to fight crime. Researchers found 84 percent of those stopped and frisked by New York police were black or Hispanic. Civil rights groups have argued these numbers show the practice is unconstitutionally biased against minorities.
Researchers who study the issue say data collection is a key part of a larger effort, along with robust diversity training and strict anti-bias policies, to prevent racial profiling.
“If there is a spirit and culture of transparency and accountability in the department, they'll collect the data,” said Carol Archbold, a criminal justice professor who specializes in racial profiling issues at North Dakota State University.
‘Unless It's Happened to You, You Don't Know That It Happens'
When his own colleagues pulled him over for no reason, it confirmed for Benjamin Kelso that racism still existed in law enforcement.
One time, San Diego police officers stopped him and told him he looked like he was on parole, said Kelso, who heads the local Black Police Officers Association. Another time, Kelso said, officers told him his blue track suit and Cadillac made him look like he was in a gang.
These incidents happened 20 years ago, and in the decades since, Kelso has worked to be a buffer between the San Diego Police Department, where he's now a detective sergeant, and San Diego's black community, of which he's a part. He calls it being “black while blue.”
The department has made a lot of progress on racial issues in the almost 25 years he's been on the force, Kelso said, and he understands gray areas exist between criminal profiling and racial profiling.
Still, he doesn't know why Lansdowne and other department officials say that racial profiling isn't a community concern. He hears it all the time in southeastern San Diego. Racial profiling traffic stops, he said, do happen in the city.
“Is it the norm? No,” Kelso said. “But I think we would be remiss to say that they don't occur at all.”
Above: Benjamin Kelso, head of the local Black Police Officers Association, as a young San Diego police officer in 1990.
Below: Kelso pictured at the location where he believes fellow SDPD officers racially profiled him at a traffic stop 20 years ago.
In the last five years, San Diego police have received on average fewer than a half dozen formal discrimination complaints, a category that includes racial profiling, a year. Internal investigations found none of the discrimination complaints valid. And Lansdowne said racial profiling hasn't come up in his meetings with community groups and leaders.
“I'm unaware of any organized group in San Diego that has approached me about the issue in the last eight years,” he said.
Wilson, the local NAACP president, disputes that. Her organization has held multiple forums on the relationship between the black community and local police. She recalled Lansdowne speaking to the NAACP at a recent monthly meeting where profiling was a topic. She's not sure why police officials would say no one has brought racial profiling problems in San Diego to their attention.
“I would say that's untrue,” Wilson said.
Told Wilson's comments, Zimmerman, the assistant chief said both she and Lansdowne meant that police officials don't hear complaints about specific racial profiling incidents from community groups or residents.
Wilson, however, believes San Diego police profiled her nephew, a 22-year-old Southwestern College student, during a traffic stop in summer 2012. Officers pulled over her nephew and his friend, she said, after they left a Padres game, saying their taillight was out. The officers asked if they were on probation or parole, and when they told the police they had been to the game, the officers quizzed them on the score. The officers let them go. When the nephew and his friend checked later, their taillight worked. Wilson said her nephew was too scared to get the officers' badge numbers, and that she didn't tell police officials about the incident, either.
City Councilman David Alvarez, a mayoral candidate, said he believes the department has racially profiled recently, too. He cited the lawsuit over the 2010 City Heights traffic stop during a debate in the fall. Alvarez wants to see the department take profiling issues more seriously.
And Alvarez, who is Hispanic, said he too has been stopped unnecessarily because of his race.
‘It's An Issue Again'
Afewerki, the black engineering student, expects San Diego police to pull him over every time an officer looks his way.
“It's sad but it's a part of life of being a minority in San Diego,” Afewerki said.
Racial profiling matters because it can damage the relationship between police and the communities they serve, said Joshua Chanin, a public affairs professor at San Diego State. Perceived racial double standards can deter crime witnesses from cooperating with police and, at its worst, spark civil unrest, he said.
“It really is about feelings of legitimacy and trust between minority communities and the cops,” Chanin said.
Indeed, a recent incident shows how that sort of breakdown in trust, combined with police errors, can spiral out of control.
In March 2010, San Diego police officers Ariel Savage and Daniel McClain were driving along University Avenue in City Heights when they typed a license plate into their system to check whether the 2005 Pontiac Sunfire they spotted was stolen.
The plate didn't match the Pontiac, and Savage and McClain flipped on their lights to pull the car over. Inside the car were three young black residents, Dante Harrell, his then-girlfriend Shannon Robinson and their friend.
Before walking over to the Pontiac, the officers rechecked the plate. They found they'd made a mistake when they first typed the plate into their system. Everything matched when they typed in the correct number, meaning officers no longer had a reason to stop the car.
Savage, who also is black, got out of his police cruiser to tell Harrell the cops had screwed up, according to court records. But instead of just letting Harrell and Robinson go, Savage asked for their license, registration and insurance.
At that point, the couple began showing clear signs of mistrust for the police. Harrell picked up his cell phone and hit record to videotape the officers. Robinson grabbed her phone to dial 911. She wanted to speak with a police supervisor; she'd had a bad experience with Savage before.
Ultimately, a struggle began. Officers pepper-sprayed the couple, tasered Harrell repeatedly, dragged Harrell and Robinson to the ground and arrested them. At least 10 police cruisers and a helicopter responded. Prosecutors never filed charges against the couple.
Harrell and Robinson filed a lawsuit, alleging wrongful arrest and excessive force. In May, U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Battaglia ruled the officers didn't have the right to continue the traffic stop after discovering they had entered the wrong license plate. The city agreed to settle the case last month for $450,000.
Harrell said he believes race may have been a factor in the initial stop.
“It was easier, way easier. A black neighborhood, a car full of black folks,” Harrell said. “If I was somewhere else, that wouldn't have happened. Not at all.”
Top San Diego Police Department officials agreed the incident could be perceived as racial profiling, though they said their internal investigation did not show race was a factor.
Lansdowne said his officers made a mistake when they asked for Harrell and Robinson's insurance information, but that it was an isolated incident.
“I do not think it's indicative of a problem with the entire organization,” he said.
Still, Lansdowne used the lawsuit, along with the New York City stop and frisk controversy, to make changes to the department's approach to racial bias.
Police supervisors discussed the traffic stop and brought it up during daily lineups with rank-and-file officers. The department also re-enforced training on situations that do not involve arrests or citations.
Lansdowne reviewed the department's racial profiling complaints and found they often came from people upset with San Diego officers asking if they were on probation or parole. He's planning a training bulletin that will advise officers to be more sensitive when discussing the issue.
And in late October – six days after a sergeant told us the department didn't keep the information – the department issued a memo to all officers reiterating the requirement to collect racial data every time they pull someone over.
“It's an issue again,” Lansdowne said.
http://voiceofsandiego.org/2014/01/06/san-diego-has-fallen-behind-on-combating-police-racial-profiling/
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Tennessee
Community Programs Attributed For Drop In Memphis Homicides
by Adam Hammond
Memphis is a safer city than it was this time last year.
According to police numbers, homicides dropped slightly in 2013, and most major US cities saw a similar trend.
There were ten less homicides in 2013 than the year before, and though the number may be relatively small, the city says a lot went into making that happen.
Unfortunately, parts of Memphis can be known for crime, but Ken Baker is noticing a difference.
“We still have our issues, but overall I have seen it reduce, especially downtown since I work downtown,” said Baker.
His observation is backed up by the numbers.
According to Memphis police, there were 129 murders in 2013 compared to 139 in 2012.
Bobby White, with Mayor A C Wharton's office, says the biggest cause of the reduction is the Memphis Police Department's community policing approach.
Part of community policing is embedding certain officers in specific neighborhoods and schools so they can get to know the people in the area and be ready to stop crime before it happens.
“These men and women who go out on the streets every day and put themselves in harm's way just deserve all of our respect and we can look at the numbers and see they continue to have great impact out there in the community,” said White.
Mayor A C Wharton's office also launched the Memphis Gun Down program in 2013 and they call it a success.
The program fights crimes by targeting specific people who committing crimes and partnering faith-based and other programs to offer education and mentor opportunities for teenagers.
“We just continue to stay the course and just keep our nose to the grindstone and I know we will see positive things moving forward in 2014,” said White.
White says Memphis Gun Down took some tips from Chicago who saw a massive drop in murders last year.
Chicago launched its own $55 million program that got 20,000 young people into summer school and part-time jobs.
In return the city reduced murders 17 percent to 415, and Chicago PD has taken more than 6,500 illegal guns of the streets since last year.
Despite the sharp fall, Chicago still had the most murders in the country last year.
Other major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and LA also saw sharp decreases.
http://wreg.com/2014/01/03/community-programs-attributed-for-drop-in-memphis-homicides/
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California
Number of homicides falls in many Bay Area cities
by Henry K. Lee
Many Bay Area cities ended 2013 with their lowest number of homicides in years or even decades, mirroring a national trend in fewer slayings.
San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond and San Jose saw fewer killings last year, and authorities attributed the homicide reduction to a combination of factors, including aggressive local, state and federal task forces; changes in demographics; and the use of video to solve cases. But they warned that the apparent crime lull will not last without continued diligence on the part of law enforcement officials and the public.
"We cannot do this alone, said Officer Albie Esparza, a San Francisco police spokesman. "With help from the community, we are able to solve crimes, including when witnesses come forward. Also, when there is video surveillance, it without a doubt helps police in solving crimes and/or identifying suspects and being able to make arrests."
For now, the statistics appear promising.
San Francisco, population 825,000, had 48 homicides last year, down from 69 in 2012.
Oakland, population 400,000, had 92 killings, compared with 131 in 2012. The 2013 tally is the lowest since 2004 and included several high-profile slayings that drew nationwide attention, including the shooting death of a neighborhood dog walker and the killing of an 8-year-old girl at a sleepover party.
In Richmond, population 106,000, police investigated 16 slayings, a low not seen in 33 years.
But San Jose, population 982,000, had 44 homicides, down from 46 in 2012 but still the third straight year the city has since more than 40 slayings in a year. "The good news substantially outweighs the bad news," said Franklin Zimring, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law who studies crime trends. "But now we come to the puzzling part of the program: What is an explanation for these trends? And the answer is that it's not at all clear. Since there's no general pattern, there's also no general explanation."
Killings fall nationally
The Bay Area drop in homicides is mirrored across the nation.
In 2013, New York City recorded 333 homicides, a 20 percent drop from the year before. In Los Angeles, police reported 250 homicides, a 16 percent drop and the lowest since 1966. Chicago had 415 homicides, down from more than 500 in 2012, when it led the nation as the city with the highest number of killings.
Oakland police focused their attention on going after members of two gangs that were responsible for shootings, home-invasion robberies and assaults. "I can't say we've eliminated those two groups, but I believe we've severely impacted their ability to operate, and I think that's what's given rise to the reductions you see," said interim Police Chief Sean Whent.
The grassroots approach is also evident in community policing programs, where officers walk their beats and get to know the merchants and residents they serve. Last year, Oakland reorganized its police force, designating five policing areas, each commanded by a police captain.
Effects of layoffs
Officers in San Jose and Oakland have been laid off or left for other departments in recent years because of budget problems, and that has affected morale and crime-fighting, union leaders in those cities say.
"I think Oakland and San Jose are offering interesting comparisons," said Robert Weisberg, a criminal justice expert at the Stanford Law School. "Oakland was and still is one of the most dangerous cities in the country. It's right near the top for homicide rates, that is to say, homicides by population. The fact that it went down a little is obviously good news, but I think it's more significant that it remains catastrophically high."
San Jose, by contrast, "is still one of the safest cities in the U.S."
Authorities also cite gun suppression and domestic violence programs - federal prosecutors focused on suspects who carried guns near schools in Oakland and San Francisco - as well as the efforts of emergency-room personnel for saving lives.
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Number-of-homicides-falls-in-many-Bay-Area-cities-5116512.php
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From the Department of Justice
Department of Justice Takes Steps to Strengthen Federal Background Check System for Firearms Transfers
Proposed Regulation Would Clarify Who Is Prohibited from Possessing Firearms for Mental Health Reasons
The Department of Justice today announced it is proposing a regulation that will clarify who, due to mental health reasons, is prohibited under federal law from receiving, possessing, shipping or transporting firearms. In addition to providing general guidance on the federal law, this clarification will help states determine what information may be appropriately shared with the federal background check system for firearms transfers – the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) – in order to keep guns out of the hands of individuals who may be a danger to themselves or others.
The revised definition clarifies that the statutory terms “adjudicated as a mental defective” and “committed to a mental institution” include persons who are found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect; persons lacking mental responsibility or deemed insane; and persons found guilty but mentally ill, regardless of whether these determinations are made by a state, local, federal or military court. The proposed regulation also clarifies that the statutory term includes a person committed to involuntary inpatient or outpatient treatment.
“We are taking an important, commonsense step to clarify the federal firearms regulations, which will strengthen our ability to keep dangerous weapons out of the wrong hands,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “This step will provide clear guidance on who is prohibited from possessing firearms under federal law for reasons related to mental health, enabling America's brave law enforcement and public safety officials to better protect the American people and ensure the safety of our homes and communities. And it is emblematic of the Justice Department's broader commitment to use every tool and resource at its disposal to combat gun violence and prevent future tragedies while respecting the Constitutional rights to which all Americans are entitled.”
The NICS background check system is a critical tool in keeping guns out of the hands of those who cannot legally have one. To date, NICS has prevented more than 2 million guns from falling into the wrong hands. In order for background checks to continue to be effective, the system must have access to relevant, correct and complete information.
Clarifying the existing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) regulation is just one of many common-sense steps the department has taken to keep guns out of the wrong hands. The department is working diligently to reduce gun violence and is committed to using every tool at its disposal, including implementing effective prevention, enforcement and re-entry strategies. In addition, the department is working with other federal departments and agencies to ensure relevant information is shared with the NICS and has also provided monetary support to states to improve their abilities to share this information.
The NPRM will be available for review beginning at 4:15pm on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014, at: http://www.federalregister.gov. Comments can be submitted to http://www.regulations.gov.
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/January/14-ag-002.html 
