Commentary and Analysis: Looking Closer at the Truancy Issue

This is part of a continuing examination of the Davis Joint Unified School District truancy issue. On Monday, we reviewed Thursday school board meeting. Today, we will examine the claims made by the Director of Student Services Pam Mari regarding the need for changes in truancy prevention as well education code. As we assess some of those claims it brings up additional questions.

Pam Mari in her presentation to the board of education, made the argument that the reason that the police got involved in this process is that the district had made a number of attempts to rectify the problem of truancy and those efforts failed. Numbers were cited with regard to lost revenue by the school district in the form of ADA (Average Daily Attendance). One number that floated around was $500,000 was lost at the high school in ADA dollars due to truancy.

However, information that was present in April 11, 2007's Davis Community Advisory Board (CAB) through the police department, raises serious questions about these claims.

According to the minutes from that meeting, Lt. Darren Pytel, one of the innovators of this program, said:

"At the beginning of the school year Davis High was having problems with their telephone computer. Parents were not notified about attendance issues and the students figured it out. Around November, December the district informed parents of the problem and let when know what outstanding absences were not dealt with."

As the result of this computer glitch, up to 200 kids had missed five or more full school days.

My reading of this situation is that a one-time computer problem made it difficult for parents to be notified about attendance problems. The students figured out there was a problem with the computer (the administration did not) and that they would not be caught and therefore took full advantage.

If that is what happened, there was a known cause from a known problem. That would differ from an ongoing problem of truancy. If this interpretation is correct, do we really need to change the way that we are enforcing truancies? Do we really need a radical approach? Shouldn't this issue have been assessed by the policy making policy (i.e. the school board) prior to changes in procedure?

The basic question here is was this a one-time problem as the result of the computer glitch--which was not mentioned at the school board meeting--or is this an ongoing problem? And why did the administration not cite statistics for the board to put numbers on this?

What happened next was largely a result of the truancies caused by this computer glitch. The claim in the school board meeting on Thursday was that the truancy sweep would only involve getting the 15-20 worst offenders into school.

This is not what happened last spring.

"When officers saw school aged kids, they were to ask, “Where are you supposed to be right now?” Then they would verify with School Officer Mark Hicks, who has a police radio and can tell from the school computer if the student should be in school. If so, the officer would give them a ride back to the school" (CAB Meeting minutes April 11, 2007).

This does not sound like an action limited to a few students who are the worst offenders, it sounds like a blanket sweep of the community.

The other problem at this point is that the police have really conflated the issue of truancy with the issue of students driving accompanied by friends in the vehicle--which they are not supposed to do if they have had their license for less than a year. Previously, police did not stop students solely for the purpose of checking whether their friends should be in the car.

That policy has now changed and the police are cracking down on this. They are specifically pulling over cars with young drivers and looking to see if their should be able to drive with friends. That has been a focused effort on the part of the police. That of course leads me to the question and I understand the law, but is there a compelling reason that the police need to expend a large amount of manpower to enforce this law, other than it is the law?

Reading the notes from the CAB meeting which occurred back in April and was actually referenced in March, leads people to a further question--why is it that the school board was not made aware of the changes in policy? This meeting by the way, was one of the first attended by new police chief Landy Black.

However, these discussion appear now to go back six months. How is it that all of these changes in procedure could occur without school board input?

Of all of my concerns about this policy, that is the biggest. The school board is elected to represent the interests of the public on the school board. They are accountable to the public. If they fail to do their job, they can be voted out of office by the public or even recalled under extreme circumstances of dereliction of duty. Administrators are not accountable to the public directly however. They do not have to face the voters. The administration works for the Superintendent and the Superintendent is hired by the school board.

The argument made by Pam Mari is that this is authorized by the California Education Code and therefore they did not need board consent to change their procedure for dealing with truancy.

School Board Member Tim Taylor nailed it on the response:

"One of the things we are struggling with is that regardless of whether the law allows certain things to be done, if they haven’t been done, we have two choices, we can hit the ground at 100 miles per hour or we can have a discussion with ourselves and the community and the public and discuss what are we going to do and I think what you’re hearing and certainly what I’m feeling certainly is that the 100 mile an hour approach while perhaps legal may not be the best fit. Because people are gong to feel like they are getting run over. That will cause community pullback… instead of buy-in, which I think we need, that will have the opposite effect."

However, the other question is whether or not this is even allowed by the law and authorized through ed code.

My reading of the education code does not suggest that it "authorizes" this kind of approach. It does not appear to prohibit this kind of approach necessarily. But it does not automatically authorize it.

What it does specify are definitions for truancy and recourse that the district can take for habitual truants. According to the education code, no pupil can be classified as habitually truant without an effort to have a conference with the parent.

"Any pupil is deemed an habitual truant who has been reported as a truant three or more times per school year, provided that no pupil shall be deemed an habitual truant unless an appropriate district officer or employee has made a conscientious effort to hold at least one conference with a parent or guardian of the pupil and the pupil himself" (EC Section 48262).

The prescribed penalty for habitual truancy:

"(c) The third time a truancy report is required within the same school year, the pupil shall be classified a habitual truant, as defined in Section 48262, and may be referred to and required to attend, an attendance review board or a truancy mediation program pursuant to Section 48263 or pursuant to Section 601.3 of the Welfare and Institutions Code. If the district does not have a truancy mediation program, the pupil may be required to attend a comparable program deemed acceptable by the school district's attendance supervisor. If the pupil does not successfully complete the truancy mediation program or other similar program, the pupil shall be subject to subdivision (d)." (EC Section 48264.5 Subdivision C).

The penalty phase according to the education code appears after the fourth truancy. Penalties at that point include community service, fine of no more than $100, attendance in a court-approved truancy prevention program, and only then suspension or revocation of driving privileges.

So to repeat, after reading through education code, one could probably argue that school policy is not prohibited by the code unless they are attempted to revoke driving privileges earlier than allowed. However, it is not clear that ed code authorizes this approach or that this approach could be undertaken without board approval. I am not familiar enough with the law here to be able to assess what control a school board has in implementing education code policies.

Regardless, it would have been helpful for the administrator in presenting this program to have a written citation of the relevant sections of education code for the school board to see in advance and help them in understanding the new policy and how it fits in with the requirements from the state.

Many questions still need to be answered. Some of these questions include what is actually going on, what this policy will actually do. Other questions include who knew what and when and why was neither the board of education nor the city council aware of these activities by the school district and law enforcement. Answers to those will hopefully occur at the next City-School District two-by-two meeting and a subsequent school board meeting.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Special Commentary: Peeling Back The Veneer on Police Oversight

Watching the City Council Meeting on Tuesday Night in addition to reading the Davis Enterprise coverage and the Ombudsman’s Report on his observations one is very tempted to hearken back to May 2, 2003 where President Bush stood on the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath the sign Mission Accomplished and pronounced the end of major combat operations. And while this is probably a wholly unfair analogy, it is not without some truth to it. Because in reality while there was almost a jubilant atmosphere at the council chambers on Tuesday, the real and tough work lies not behind us but ahead of us.

And yet the very message of the other night is that there are structures in place that will lead us in the right direction.

Don Saylor perhaps summed up this feeling very well, “It is heartening to see the work of so many in the community on this issue. I think there’s a genius to what the community has done in response to the complaints we’ve heard.” Leaving aside the very obvious and blatant irony of his statement, one needs to remember that this system is largely untested by a strong and substantial case. What we have seen at best is that this system in good times, may be adequate—and even then I have my doubts.

At best I would suggest that this new system is indeed untested, but in many ways I believe even stronger that many of the problems that we dealt with over the last year and indeed over the last twenty years are still occurring now and that they have simply not come to our attention just yet in any sort of public way.

I think some of this false sense of security comes from this statement from the report of Bob Aaronson, the Ombudsman: “Of what I observed first-hand, there is little that is troubling about how the Davis Police Department responds to the public. To the extent that any incidents have prompted my concern, it has typically been misjudgments and not misconduct.”

In many ways this gives those such as the City Council Majority and their defenders strong political cover and these words set the tone for the meeting on Tuesday Night. And yet we must note that those words themselves are at best heavily nuanced. He said “little” not “nothing” and he couched in terms of what he observed “first-hand” which leaves much of what he has read second and third hand in play.

It is at this point at which I believe this veneer of mission accomplished begins to fray as quickly as that banner on the USS Lincoln. For one needs only travel out into the community—the minority community—to realize that all is not as rosy as it seemed in council chambers. If you talk to many people instead of optimism and euphoria you have at times heated anger and frustration. For these people, Saylor is indeed correct that there is much more “heat” than “light.”

The very sense I get is that neither the Ombudsman nor the Council Majority has ever really traveled into these circles. It is easy to see from a police cruiser police interactions in the openness, what is more difficult to see is what happens in the darkness of night and in the shadows away from the bright lights of public scrutiny. In other words, is the Ombudsman who goes on ride-alongs experiencing the truth of police interactions or is he witnessing a cleaned up and sanitized version. Is this the Heisenberg principle at work—that in the process of studying the phenomena of police-community interactions, you are actually altering police-community interactions.

Perhaps the most frank discussion of Tuesday evening’s meeting was on the Community Advisory Board. While many members of this board—all of whom are staunch defenders of the police—come forward on Tuesday to praise its work, it was enlightening first to hear the city staff admit that the CAB is not an oversight body like the Police Advisory Board or the Ombudsman. What it most resembles is a sounding board for the police chief.

Steven Worker, himself an ardent defender of the police and the council majority, admitted that the selection process might indeed appear problematic to the outsider and lend itself to the perception that the body was not representative. And although he did not offer a solution, his admission of the problem was enlightening. Moreover the concern was raised both by Worker and Sharla Harrington who spoke in public that the private nature of the meetings and the lack of specificity of the minutes also seemed to undermine it.

In truth this body was described by one of the few members of the CAB who is a critic of the police, as filled with people who are strong supporters and rarely ask tough questions. Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald (my wife and former chair of the HRC) pointed out that this body had actually existed prior to its reformation in 2005 and that prior to its disbanding by Chief Jim Hyde it had been a very effective and diverse body and that the new body was the one that lacked the diversity. It is a diversity in a different sense than sheer demographics, but rather a diversity of thought on police operations. There are simply too many defenders and not enough critics and the purpose of the meetings is wholly sanitized.

Perhaps the most outrageous comments of the evening were made by Councilmember Stephen Souza. First Councilmember Souza asked Mr. Aaronson if there was a required certification for an ombudsman. Actually he less asked it than asserted it. Mr. Souza clearly should have researched this prior to his question, for he would have clearly found that there is no certification required. Secondly he suggested that perhaps Mr. Aaronson could review the operations of all city departments. This was an astonishing statement that Mr. Souza once again should have taken up in private. It seems to me as an observer, that Mr. Aaronson would have politely explained that he was already working far more hours than the city was paying him and he is barely scratching the surface of what needs to be done.

When this position was created I strongly questioned how someone could be a part-time Ombudsman and only come to the city of Davis just a few days out of the month and be able to perform the vast tasks expected of him. This was not discussed on Tuesday night, but it seems clear that there is simply not enough time or resources available to provide the kinds of oversight and scrutiny that this system clearly needs. Mr. Aaronson in his position as Ombudsman, needs to be given far more resources than have thus far been allotted. And while Mr. Aaronson will not complain about this, I certainly both can and will.

This gets back to my primary complaint of that evening and let me say I respect the concerns that Bob Aaronson did express both in his report and in his statements on the lack of a strong supervisory structure, problematic in-car computers and in-car recording systems, and frankly his statement about the lack of communication was in fact a home run.

However at the end of the day, Mr. Aaronson, in my opinion simply has not seen the dark underbelly of the city of Davis quite enough. He has not spoken to a number of very credible people who can tell him of years of abuse running up until this very day at the hands of some within the Davis Police Department. And unfortunately, he has joined our city in progress and I do not feel that he has spent sufficient time getting up to speed on the last year let alone the last twenty years.

The implication of Tuesday night was mission accomplished, but in fact, the reality is more like mission incomplete. The suggestion was made that we have made tremendous progress in the last year and in reality I would suggest that we have made tremendous progress in one area and one area alone—we hired an ombudsman. Unfortunately I think the city council believed that this position would be a catch-all and one of the reasons they believed that was in fact that they never really believed there was a problem to begin with.

The reality is that the position cannot possibly catch-all the problems in this community with the police. And I myself believe I have fallen into a false sense of security that somehow with the hiring of Bob Aaronson, that all of these problems that have been twenty years in the making would go away. I feel that I have backed off this fight to a considerable measure out of deference for Mr. Aaronson. Now after reading the press coverage I feel that I myself have made a mistake. It is not that Mr. Aaronson is poor intentioned—in fact, just the opposite in my opinion. He is a very good, decent, and sincere man. It is simply that he has too big a job ahead of him to leave it all to him.

Where we have fallen backwards is that there is no one that is a public body that can help him out. The Human Relations Commission has been disbanded and it has been replaced by a body that is at best a shadow of its former self. The Community Advisory Board has been somewhat exposed as a non-oversight body, and it was advertised as one of the pieces of the oversight puzzle. The PAC is a body that appears to audit IA’s (internal affairs investigations) and that is indeed an important purpose but it is also a limited one. And the Ombudsman himself has a Platte River of responsibilities and if taken to the logical conclusion it would literally mean his work was a mile wide and an inch deep. Fortunately he is far more dedicated and diligent than that. But at the end of the day, he too needs help and that help is not coming from the Davis City Council who has already declared mission accomplished.

The problems in our community did not happen overnight and they will not be cured in a five month period. While I remain disappointed in the tone of the report, I also realize that this presents an opportunity for this community, if people are willing to actually go out into the field and discover for themselves what a lot of people have to deal with on a daily basis. The mission is in fact not accomplished and in many ways it has only just begun.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Vanguard Response to the Police Oversight Report

The Police Oversight report is now out and you can read the full nine-page text on the City Webpage.

Claire St. John of the Davis Enterprise also did a story on this in Sunday’s newspaper.

If you read yesterday’s article, your reaction to it is probably heavily determined by your feelings about this issue going in. If you felt that the entire issue was a whole lot to do about nothing, then you take solace in statements such as this by the Police Ombudsman Bob Aaronson:

“Of what I observed first-hand, there is little that is troubling about how the Davis Police Department responds to the public. To the extent that any incidents have prompted my concern, it has typically been misjudgments and not misconduct.”

On the other hand, those who opposed the creation of the Office of the Ombudsman and favored a Civilian Police Review Board instead, have pointedly told me that Aaronson’s report just shows them that their feelings on this were correct and that we need to get a stronger system in place that will be able to do a better, stronger, more thorough job at oversight.

I would like to take the middle position in this debate, because I have found Bob Aaronson to be a diligent and well-intentioned person who is incredibly studious and perceptive. I believe that there are fundamental weaknesses in the oversight system - weaknesses that I have laid out ad nauseum in other entries on this blog – however, I believe that those weaknesses can be overcome with diligence and minor structural changes in some of the bodies created by the city council and the police department. I would additionally like to take the middle position, because I believe that Bob Aaronson was well-intentioned and indeed very strategic when he decided to write his report.

I would like to be able to take that middle position, but frankly, I cannot.

I do suggest that people read the full report that is linked above, because the Davis Enterprise did not cover some of the more pointed statements by Mr. Aaronson.

“As I was quoted in a recent Sacramento Bee article, the Buzayan matter was a missed opportunity to begin a meaningful community dialogue around law enforcement issues… Every honest person who played a role in the Buzayan matter must, in hindsight, admit that he’d/ she’d do some things better, more circumspectly, if a ‘do over’ were possible. Healing requires acknowledgment of as much by everyone. Those who haven’t benefitted (sic) from hindsight will simply repeat their mistakes, to the community’s and their own detriment.”

I agree with Bob Aaronson here, and I think it is important for the community itself to understand the point that Mr. Aaronson is making. I find it very unfortunate that this statement did not make its way into the Davis Enterprise article.

However, I also believe that Mr. Aaronson missed out on his own opportunity. And while I understand that Mr. Aaronson has to be cautious and strategic with his position, I think he actually has considerably more political capital to burn than he probably thinks. I do not believe that the city council is in a strong position to be able to fire Mr. Aaronson without handing significant ammunition to people such as myself and others who have been critics of both the police department and city government in general.

Moreover, while I agree with Mr. Aaronson that there is not a Buzayan-level event that he has witnessed to our knowledge, I believe that the community needs to have discourse on the most widespread complaint about the police department—what I shall call pretense stops (in lieu of the more racially charged—racial profiling). These are cases where individuals - who are either of a minority racial heritage, or perceived to be from a lower-socioeconomic status by the vehicle they are driving - are pulled over for minor offenses that other citizens would not be stopped for. This is a very prevalent occurrence in the City of Davis. It is basically a “phishing” operation—where they pull over these cars in hopes of catching a larger fish—an actual criminal who is breaking the law in a major way.

This practice is at times considered good police work and in fact is rewarded. However, it also serves to create tremendous distrust in the minority community because it gives the appearance—that minorities (who are disproportionately of lower socioeconomic status and even those who are not of lower socioeconomic status) are being singled out not because of what they have done, but because of who they are.

This is in my opinion, and the opinion of many in this community, a serious problem and it is not addressed in this report and I feel very disappointed that this was not brought up and that we could not have a discussion on this issue.

Mr. Aaronson has come to the conclusion that the more serious incidents, such as the Buzayan incident, are not an everyday or even a frequent occurrence. I could agree with that assessment; however, my own research – through interviews from calls we have received - suggests at least five to ten more serious incidents per year. But I have a further concern that a lot of these incidents are not being reported at this time, because people either lack trust in the police oversight system, or they lack the financial resources to pursue it through the legal system. Furthermore, people are fearful of being maligned in the public realm as the Buzayans have been.

While Mr. Aaronson compliments members of the police for their treatment of citizens, I have serious concerns about the level of training that some of these well-meaning officers have. I have recently witnessed an appalling lack of police work, where a vandalism incident was reported to the police, an officer came out and took a quick glance and left. However, in the process of cleaning up the scene, I noticed a receipt with the name of an individual on it. The receipt was found just feet from where the police officer parked his vehicle. While the incident itself was not serious, the lack of attention to small details was rather appalling.

This represents an ongoing problem for the Davis Police Department. A similar incident occurred a few years ago when Robert Russell – a gay man whose vehicle was vandalized with over 120 eggs and ruined to a tune of $4,000, was harassed by a group of high school male students who yelled homophobic threats at him all because he had a rainbow flag displayed on his porch. According to a Davis Enterprise article, the grocery bag, the empty cartons, and the receipt remained and were not even picked up by the officers or Gina Anderson, the Internal Affairs officer at the time. Moreover several key people were not interviewed. Not only did Robert Russell end up hiring his own investigator when he saw the lack of work done by those officers assigned to his case, but it was he who went to the grocery store to ask for the video tape. Something that the officers and Internal Affairs should have done.

The report on Tuesday also contains discussion on both the Police Advisory Board (PAC) and the Community Advisory Board (CAB). I will report in detail on the PAC later this week. I have already reported on some of my concerns about the CAB.

The following, is from the City Staff Report written by City Manager Bill Emlen, Interim Police Chief Steve Pierce, and Deputy City Manager Kelly Stachowicz. It is written by city staff (separate from Aaronson’s report) giving feedback on the PAC and the CAB. The report reads:

“The group is meant to provide the Police Chief and other Police Department staff a window into the community. It allows Police Department staff to understand important community issues as seen through the eyes of the community. Members of the group bring to the meetings their concerns, questions, comments and suggestions about police related issues.”

However, I have found the actual workings of the CAB to be different. In speaking with individuals in this group, none of that which is described above is occurring on a regular basis. Issues coming from the public are rarely raised. In fact, the impression I received was that they were often overtly discouraged. Moreover, rarely has input been solicited or received by this body. When the CAB met with the Police Chief Candidate recently, very few tough or substantive questions were raised. “It was a very fluffy interview. Tough questions were not asked,” were among some of the comments made by one of the individuals in attendance that I spoke with.

Moreover, the description sounds more like that of a propaganda purpose than a true advisory relationship. Corresponding with that belief is this mention from the staff report:

“On more than one occasion members have brought controversial issues to a meeting to get clarification on police policies or specific cases. While the Police Department has to be diligent in its protections of confidentiality, misinformation has been addressed and the CAB members have been able to share the correct information with people in the community.”

I read this to say that the police department has used the CAB to promote and clarify their operations—information that is then used to correct information with people in the community. What is interesting is that there is no mention of times when the members of the CAB have brought an issue up with the police and the police were able to correct problems. The reason that such feeback was likely not mentioned in the report is that it probably has not occurred. However, the city council sold the public on the belief that the purpose of the CAB was precisely to give the police department a means to get feedback from the community so that the police could better serve the community.

My previous report, questioned whether in fact the CAB really had a diverse membership—the majority of the members of the CAB are strong supporters of both the police and the council majority. Moreover, they rarely raise tough issues or ask tough questions.

If the council wishes to continue this body, it would be more productive to have them meet in public where a broader cross-section of the community can participate and air their concerns and offer feedback. The alternative would be to alter the make-up of the body to include more people who are likely to be more critical of the department. This would serve a dual function of giving the police better feedback but also helping the critics of the police to better understand the working of the department. This would seem to be of mutual benefit.

The current process however seems to be premised on the notion of cutting public discourse on the issue of police operations. The CAB meets in private. The PAC meets in private. The Human Relations Commission no longer deals with police issues. And the city councilmembers nod their heads but do little else whenever anyone comes forth with a legitimate complaint. The public has little to no access with this entire process - other than the three minutes before city council - and I wonder to what extent these bodies are even aware of the existing problems between the police and certain communities.

My assessment is that in the last year, little has changed in the operations of the police or this city government. And in many respects, the systems in place are worse than the ones that existed on June 1, 2005, before Officer Ly ever met the Buzayan family.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Report on Police Oversight Coming at Tuesday’s City Council Meeting

A review of the police oversight bodies will occur this coming Tuesday. That will include a report from the Ombudsman Bob Aaronson. Mr. Aaronson was hired in September, so he has been on the job less than six months. There will also be a report from the Police Advisory Committee (PAC) and the Community Advisory Board (CAB).

As an aside, when I spoke to Bill Emlen on Tuesday, he indicated that a decision on the new police chief would be made by today. It will be interesting to see if that does indeed happen.

Today, I will once again briefly discuss the Community Advisory Board. Its mission reads:

“Using two way communications, improve relationships between the public and the police. To actively represent the community by articulating, advising and tracking community and police issues.”

Moreover the official purpose is:

“This board meets with the Police Chief on a monthly basis to provide input to the Chief regarding constituent concerns.”

And yet it is ironic that a body created to improve relationships between the public and the police has meetings that “are not open to the public.” How does a private body meeting with the police chief improve relations between the public and the police?

Moreover, the composition of this body also must be in question. On paper this appears to be a diverse group of individuals, but one striking facet jumps out at us, with the exception of one member, there are no critics of the police on this board.

So you have a body that meets in private and which is composed of individuals who have generally been supportive of the police and that is the body that is suppose to improve constituent-police relations.

In the coming week or so, I will be interviewing some of the members of this body. One question that I will ask is the same question I asked last year at this time. What is this group actually doing? A year ago, it was listening to the Chief of Police Jim Hyde tell them about crime patterns in the community and also listening discussions regarding new programs and technologies being used by the department in police cars.

Furthermore, it will be interesting to hear an update on the state of new technologies in the police cars. One problem that surfaced this year was the inoperation of the in-car recording system. There has been a suggestion that that is now fixed. Another problem has been with the in-car computer system and the inability for police cars to know exactly where another unit is and what they are doing.

My general belief though is that the oversight of the police needs to have at least one public component. There is a case to be made for some of the bodies to meet in private to discuss some of these matters. But look at the mission statement for the CAB again. How does the police receive input on constituent concerns unless they are hearing from ALL of the citizens? Not just the people on the committee. Not just the people who are supportive of the operations of the police. Not just the people who have supported the majority on council—but the people who have been the most vocal in their complaints about some of the police operations and some of the operations of the police.

To me this is a no-brainer. And yet, to the majority on the city council - and it appears the staff at city hall- believe there needs to be the ability to meet behind closed doors. I just wonder if the police chief is getting the kind of information he needs from this kind of body. I hope if the city hires Captain Landy Black, he too will re-examine the function and composition of this body and determine if a more open and transparent system would serve his needs and the needs of this community better. It would serve to further regain the trust of the community that has been lost.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting