Inside the Numbers: A Further Examination of the DPD Turnover Rate

Yesterday's Sacramento Bee ran an article that found that Citrus Highets and the Davis police departments have the highest staff turnover rates among other law enforcement agencies in the region.

To add fuel to the fire, the Bee recessitates old charges that the climate in Davis involving complaints of racial profiling and the Halema Buzayan case were the prominent if not primary culprits for this turnover rate.

"High-ranking officials from the two departments blame a variety of factors ranging from a new department's normal break-in period to the way a racially charged incident was handled."

The Bee quotes Assistant Chief Steve Pierce discussing issues involving the arrest of Halema Buzayan, then 16 in 2005, along with accusations of racial profiling.

"Davis Assistant Chief Steve Pierce said his department changed its retirement calculation, making retirement more attractive for some officers. In addition, several officers left to work in newly formed departments in Citrus Heights and Elk Grove.

Pierce also said some employees felt uncomfortable working in the city following a 2005 incident involving a 16-year-old Davis High School student arrested for a misdemeanor hit-and-run. Her parents alleged racial bias because the girl is Muslim.

During exit interviews, some departing officers remarked that they "don't want a car stop done on a person of color blowing up in (their) face," Pierce said."

However, that paints at best an incomplete picture. The Vanguard spoke to Davis Police Chief Landy Black who provided context to both the initial interview as well as the data.

First he provided the actual breakdown of those who left from 2006 to the present.

Retirement: 5 (3 sworn)

Attained promotion not available with DPD: 4 (2 sworn)

Failed to complete academy/field training/probationary period (dismissed by DPD): 2 (both sworn)

Non-sworn personnel became sworn officers elsewhere: 3

Resigned to take comparable position elsewhere: 5 (4 sworn)

By his count that allows for at most four sworn officers who left the department under the conditions that were describe prominently in the Sacramento Bee article.

These data suggest a much more mundane explanation for a high turnover rate. Some simply retired, others were able to get promoted to positions unavailable to them in this department, a few failed their probation, and a few became sworn officers elsewhere.

Under those conditions, the turnover rate is neither alarming nor unusual.

Chief Black also suggested that the comments attributed to Assistant Chief Steve Pierce, while accurate were taken somewhat out of context. His comment regarding exit interviews was not unsolicited but rather reflected a direct question from the Bee reporter who asked him point blank what effect the Buzayan incident had on people leaving the department. There was no emphasis made by Assistant Chief Pierce, according to Chief Black, on the Buzayan factor.

"It is unfortunate that the Sacramento Bee article makes it look like he/we put an emphasis on it. He didn't and we don't."

Chief Black continues:

"I was hired after a period of some internal and external turmoil. There was an expectation placed on me to take steps to mend internal and community relations. While I will take credit for what I've done to meet that expectation, the officers and leaders of this department have taken great individual and professional initiative to rehabilitate an image that they and I believe was unnecessarily tarnished. There is always room for improvement, but the vitriol was over the top in many folks' estimation.

I cannot speak to the character of the officers who left in 2006 or early 2007, but the officers who remained and continue to work here have done so, in large part, due to their commitment to this department, their peers, the law enforcement profession, and the citizens & community of Davis."

Chief Black also took on the issue of racial profiling.

"Racial profiling continues to be a publicly debated issue. We are aware of that and the fact that the perception of racial profiling still exists. We continue to develop our department and train our personnel to conduct themselves in ways that minimize the perception of racial bias. Our recruitment and training focuses on finding and developing professionals who have the capacity and inclination to understand the dynamics of a multi-cultural society and are able to be resilient and welcome transparency as a means to improve trust."

Brief Commentary:

From my perspective, it is unfortunate if the Sacramento Bee believed it was important to stir the pot on this issue. I received a number of emails on this article and felt it was important to find out the rest of the story from the Davis Police Department.

This issue rekindled an issue that had arose back in 2006, when many accused community activists including my wife, the chair of the Human Relations Commission at the time of creating an atmosphere that had led a large number of police officers to leave the department culminating with the Police Chief at that time, Chief Jim Hyde who took a job in Antioch.

The truth is that while it appears there may have been some police officers who left for those reasons, it was not the huge number that was being represented in the media or at city council meetings by members of the community.

While the issue of racial profiling remains a sensitive issue in parts of this community, the overall tone of discussions have change drastically. The departure of the previous chief along with the arrival of Chief Black and Ombudsman Bob Aaronson have helped change some of this.

While many undoubtedly still blame my wife for fanning the flames, many of these incidents were taken to her from people within the community and to the best of her ability she followed the charge of the Human Relations Commission as the only place where people could go to air grievances of this nature at that time.

It is my hope that we have all learned from that incident and should an incident of this sort arise in the future, we can all handle it better and avoid a repeat of what occurred in the winter and spring of 2006.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

Vanguard Loses Efforts to Get Email Through Public Records Act

It has been a long process that has apparently ended this week with a visiting Judge from Colusa County denying a writ that would have required the city of Davis to release an e-mail that was requested by the Vanguard through a public records request. There are appeal options however.

The story begins in early January of 2007. Based on a tip, the Vanguard ran a story that became a bombshell that reverberated throughout city. On January 10, the story ran on a formerly fired police captain ending up on the short list for police chief.

According to the tip, a Yolo County Judge, Dave Rosenberg, had sent an email to the Davis City Council lobbying them to hire this individual as police chief.

On January 22, 2007, The Vanguard made a simple request to obtain the email through a public records request shortly after the story first ran; however, the city denied the request--twice. They argued that this was part of the deliberative process and was thus exempt from disclosure under the exemption clauses of the California Public Records Act. Furthermore, they argued that this was part of the application process and thus exempt for disclosure.

Under the California Public Records Act, the eventual recourse for obtaining records is to take the agency to court. One of the problems with the California Public Records Act is that there is no administrative appeal other than to the denying agency. There is no independent agency that can examine PRA Requests. And there are minimal penalties for failure to disclose--basically you can receive the requested documents and recover court costs... if you win in court.

In March, with the help of Attorney Don Mooney, the Vanguard formally filed a petition for writ of mandate. Because the request involved Judge Dave Rosenberg, we quickly realized that no Yolo County Judge would take the case. So we had to wait for a visiting judge to take it. It would be until June 13, 2008 before the case was finally heard. Already nearly a year and a half after the fact. This is one more example of the many problems associated with the Public Records Act. The city has now long since hired a new police chief.

The city argued:

"During the recruitment process, Judge Rosenberg (former Mayor of the City), sent an e-mail to the Council with a recommendation regarding one of the applicants, apparently under the mistaken perception that the City Council was responsible for appointing the Chief of Police."

The problem with that argument is that Judge Rosenberg is a former Mayor of Davis. Of all people, he knows the rules and knows that the Davis City Council is not the body that hires a police chief. The City Manager is.

The city goes on to argue that the application process is confidential and the applicants submitted to the process under the belief that their applications and related papers would not be made public. For some this would potentially subject them to problems in the work place.

Our counter-argument here is simple. This email was submitted not to a decision-making body but rather to the city council, outside of the normal application process. Thus this is not a simple letter of reference made to an authority that has hiring power. Judge Rosenberg knew the law and was using this as an opportunity to try to lobby for his friend to get hired.

In addition, the PRA allows disclosure of documents that might otherwise be exempt if there is a strong and compelling public interest to so.

To this point, the city argued:

"Against these strong privacy interests, there is no strong public interest in disclosure. The only possible public interest served by disclosure of the e-mail regarding the unsuccessful applicant is to assist the public in determining whether the City Manager is accurately carrying out his responsibilities in investigating and approving applicants for the police chief position. However, such checks on the process are not necessary when the top five applicants were interviewed by panels made-up of various individuals, including local residents. Disclosure of the e-mail would serve no other purpose than to embarrass the unsuccessful applicant and unnecessarily intrude upon the privacy of both the applicant and the author."

However, to our point, a point that the Judge seemed to agree on during oral arguments, there is a strong and compelling reason for the public to know in this case. You have a sitting judge making a recommendation to the Davis City Council, which is outside of the normal application process. In other words, this is tantamount to a lobbying effort by Judge Rosenberg to pressure the Davis City Council to hire his buddy to be police chief. Judge Rosenberg has to reside over court cases brought forward by this individual and the people under this individual's charge and duty.

As Don Mooney wrote in the response brief:

"Petitioner disagrees with the City's assertion that this would be only public interest served by disclosure. The City's argument ignores the source of the e-mail and the recipients of the email. The recipients of the email was not the City Manager, but the members of the City Council. More importantly, the source of the email is a Yolo County Superior Court Judge, who is now the Presiding Judge of the Yolo County Superior Court. Presumably matters involving the City of Davis Police Department will come before Judge Rosenberg in his capacity as a Superior Court. The Police Chief will be responsible for the policies and actions of the officers under his command and such policies and actions may be reviewed by the Superior Court in any number of ways and instances. The matters that come before the Court may range from criminal prosecutions in which police officers and/ or the police chief testify, to alleged police misconduct to alleged civil rights violations involving the Davis Police Department...

The City's argument may carry more weight if the "letter of reference" was not sent by a judicial officer but instead by a neighbor or former employer or an average citizen within the community. But it was not. As such, a strong public interest exists in disclosure, not to review the role of the City Manager in carrying out his duties, but to review the role a Superior Court Judge sought to have in the selection of a Chief of Police."

The Judge in oral arguments seemed to agree with this view, pressing the city very hard on this issue. However, in his ruling, he ruled on their side following an "in camera" review of the email in question.

In a four page ruling, the Judge wrote:

"The overarching principal is to protect the privacy of the individual and the principal must be applied in this case not withstanding the circumstances under which the case is now before the Court. In balancing the public interest in disclosure against the competing public interest of preventing secrecy in government the Court finds based on this document that disclosure would be an unwanted invasion into the privacy of the applicant and the Court finds no compelling public interest in disclosure and the need for protecting the privacy of individuals in this class of circumstances clearly out weighs any public interest in disclosure."

This was clearly a disappointing ruling from the perspective of the Vanguard and the fight for the public's right to know. I still believe that there is a very compelling reason for this document to be made public, because it shines a light on what I believe was an inappropriate attempt by the sitting Judge, a Judge who is now the presiding officer of the court, to insert himself into the hiring process for the Davis Chief of Police. That action in my view is highly inappropriate and the public ought to know what exactly Judge Rosenberg said in lobbying a body that had no power whatsoever to hire the police chief and in fact had no knowledge of who the finalists for the position even were.

According to the law, the Vanguard has the right to appeal the ruling within 60 days of it being filed. However, this would be a costly endeavor and that cost must be weighed against the chances for success.

To this day, this process has been a valuable one to give me further insight into the process and the weaknesses of the Public Records Act.

On Wednesday, on the Vanguard Radio show, we talked with Investigative Report Thomas Peele, who is an expert on the California Public Records Act and watchdog Barry Allen of the group, the Vanguardians, a Glendale-based public watch dog organization. One of the main topics was the California Public Records Act and how the Act is weak. Thomas Peele for instance had numerous suggestions on how to improve the public records act. To listen to the podcast online, please click here.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2007 Year in Review--10 Biggest Vanguard Stories of 2007

As the first full year of the People's Vanguard of Davis comes to completion, we will countdown the top 10 stories from year. This is the second year we have done this.

Last year we counted down the 10 Biggest Stories in Davis.

This year we countdown the 10 biggest stories that we followed on the People's Vanguard of Davis.

We continue with the 5th biggest story: Landy Black hired as new Davis Police Chief.

Given all of the controversy surrounding the Police Department and the exit of former Chief Jim Hyde, this is almost a story because it is not a story. The resignation of Police Chief Jim Hyde was the second biggest story in 2006.

However, the hiring of the new police chief was not without at least some early controversy.

City Manager Bill Emlen decided that the best way to conduct these interviews was to keep all of the names confidential.

So on January 9, the City Manager announced that there were seven final candidates for the position of Police Chief.

"Last night the Davis Enterprise reported that the city has seven final candidates for the position of Police Chief and that one of those candidates is not interim Chief Steve Pierce.

City Manager Bill Emlen was quoted as saying:

“We’d like to find somebody who’s going to be around for a while, is able to set the department forward with clear vision and will be able to implement that vision.”

City Manager Bill Emlen not only has not disclosed the list of finalists to the press, but he has not disclosed it to the city council. While this is a personnel matter, it would not be inappropriate to divulge the names of candidates particularly to the members of the council. Several sources have informed us that this is a highly unusual move by the City Manager. While some personnel matters are confidential, the names of those on a short list are not--particularly to the City Council who is ostensibly his boss."

However, just because the intent was to keep the names confidential, doesn't mean that names do not leak out--particularly controversial ones.

As we reported on January 10, 2007:

"The People’s Vanguard of Davis has learned from multiple well-placed sources that one of these seven finalists is former Davis Police Captain Nick Concolino who was dismissed from the Davis Police Department in June of 2000 by then Police Chief Jerry Gonzales and then City Manager John Meyer."

The article laid out some of the reasons for the firing on Concolino and the controversy it spawned.

"The nature of personnel matters is shrouded in confidentiality agreements that prevent the release of reasons for a dismissal. As such, the public and even the City Council at the time were never informed of the reasons. We spoke with the Mayor of Davis during the time of the dismissal, Ken Wagstaff. He expressed his frustration stating, “this was the most frustrating thing about being on the council.”

Any hire of Nick Concolino would re-open old wounds. This action resulted in a huge and ugly controversy as the Davis Police Officer’s Association (DPOA) and many citizens campaigned against the dismissal of Concolino and then began an orchestrated campaign against Chief Gonzales. In response many citizens and civil rights activists came to the defense of Chief Gonzales."

The fact that Mr. Concolino was even under consideration sparked a lot of attention, criticism, and outrage.

Two weeks later, when the field was trimmed to three, Mr. Concolino was not among them.

"The Davis Enterprise reported on Thursday that City Manager Bill Emlen has announced that there are three finalists for the Police Chief position vacated in June by the departure of Jim Hyde for the same position with the Antioch Police Department.

According to several sources, Nick Concolino, who we ran an article on a few weeks ago, is not among the top three candidates. According to Emlen, one of the candidates is a woman, two of them are from out of state, and two of them work currently for law enforcement organizations, but one does not but has experience working as management in police organizations."

By early February it was clear that there was one candidate--Seattle Police Captain Landy Black.

The Police Captain sat down on the phone with me for a 30 minute phone interview. And laid out his position on a number of controversial issues including expressed support for civilian police oversight, which he had worked under while in Seattle.

On February 20, 2007, Landy Black was named the new Police Chief.

"City Manager Bill Emlen at last night's Davis City Council Meeting announced that Seattle Police Captain Landy Black has accepted a job offer for the position of Police Chief. Captain Black's tenure will officially begin on April 9, 2007. Interim Police Chief Steve Pierce will once again return to his previous position of Assistant Police Chief. Captain Black's starting salary will be $130,421.50 which is the highest salary in the city's salary schedule."

The swearing in came in early April:

"Amid much excitement, anticipation, mixed in perhaps with some relief, Davis City Manager Bill Emlen swore in Landy Black as Davis' new police chief.

The newly sworn-in Chief Black was joined by a number of colleagues, friends, and his very proud wife and parents yesterday before a full contingent of Davis Police Officers, elected office holders, and other community leaders."

For the most part since that point, Chief Landy Black has been a non-story.

He earned rare praise from the Vanguard for his handling on the May Day Student Protests.

In an article entitled, "Davis Police Compare Favorably in their Actions on Tuesday Compared with the Problems in Los Angeles," I wrote:

"As I watched the protest on Tuesday as it moved from campus, through the middle of Russell Boulevard and eventually to the intersection of Russell and Anderson, I remarked to several people the professionalism by which the Davis Police Department handled the march. They not only blocked off the streets in advance of the march, but they allowed for the impromptu, never engaging or escalating even when things may have gone slightly off-track.

As the march ended up with several hundred protesters marching in the middle of one of the most heavily trafficked intersections in the city, the police seemingly effortlessly diverted traffic. I understand that this diversion inconvenienced travelers and students who were attempting to get to class, but in terms of their prime duty--safety and peace, the police did their job on that afternoon and they did it well."

Most impressive to me was a conversation that I had with Chief Black on site:

"I spoke first to Lt. Dorothy Pearson and then to the new Chief himself, Landy Black. In both cases, they downplayed the significance of their actions. Telling me that this was their job. Chief Black spoke about the importance of the right to protest as being a centerpiece of a Democratic society and I could not agree more. However, as we have seen throughout history, the actions of the Davis Police Department on this day should not be dismissed as lightly as the leadership did."

There will likely be trying times in the future for the new police chief, in many ways that is the nature of the job. However, the first seven months or so on the job have afforded the chief was an opportunity to put down roots and make contacts in the community before the next trying incident.

For all of this non-controversy, especially after last year, the hiring of Police Chief Landy Black is the fifth biggest story in 2006.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Truancy Issue: Getting Some Answers

As we continue with our look into the Davis Joint Unified School District and other jurisdiction's truancy efforts, we are finally getting a little bit of clarity as to what the policy entails and what it does not entail.

At one point during the school board meeting last Thursday, Davis Joint Unified School District Director of Student Services, Pam Mari made a somewhat awkward statement:

"And interestingly enough, there could have been an incident that happened today that had nothing to do with anything about this topic, but the last perception is crucial."

This statement turned out to be true to some extent. The police action on the high school campus did indeed have nothing to do with the truancy "sweeps." The action was actually related to a separate police led crackdown upon violations of the provisional license portion of the vehicle code section 12814.6 subdivision (B) which specifies:

"during the first 12 months after issuance of a provisional license the licensee may not do any of the following unless accompanied and supervised by a licensed driver who is the licensee’s parent or guardian, a licensed driver who is 25 years of age or older, or a licensed or certified driving instructor:

(B) Transport passengers who are under 20 years of age."

It is the view of the police that most minors do not believe that this section of the vehicle code is enforced and therefore they determined that they would crack down on this behavior by the students. In a future installment, we will hear from some of the students at the high school about their perceptions about what happened and is happening on the campus. But a number of public officials have expressed privately some concerns about this crackdown by police.

There is a specific provision in this law that students cannot merely be pulled over for suspicion of violating this law. They can only be pulled over if there is probable cause of some other violation.

Hence subdivision (c) reads:

(c) A law enforcement officer may not stop a vehicle for the sole purpose of determining whether the driver is in violation of the restrictions imposed under subdivision (b).

In other words, we have cleared up some of the confusion as to what occurred on campus on Thursday of last week, where there was mass confusion and a number of complaints about the police presence, activities and presence on campus. That said the very idea of a crackdown and enforcement of this law appears to go against the spirit of the law that the legislature passed which specifically sought to avoid the type of profiling and stops that appear to have occurred on the campus. The actions performed by officers may well have fallen within the letter of the law in terms of using secondary violations as a means by which to pull over the students, but the intention of the law and the spirit of this law have clearly been pushed to the brink at the very least.

Moving on to the truancy policy itself, there still appears to be two major problems with the handling of the policy by the school district administration.

One is largely a communication problem, where the policy was never communicated from the administrative level in the school district to the policy level (i.e. the school board) and probably not adequately communicated to parents or the community. As a result of that, large portions of this policy are now on hold. This was to be an interjurisdictional policy with coordination between the District Attorney's Office, Police Department and School District. However, somehow and for some reasons none of the policymaking bodies--city council, school board, or board of supervisors--were informed of this coordinated activity.

The second problem developed from the use of the word "sweep." As Lt. Darren Pytel of the Davis Police Department explained to me, the police's use of the word "sweep" is a much broader term than what non-law enforcement think of the meaning of the word "sweep."

At one point during the meeting, Pam Mari recognized the word "sweep" was part of the angst that had been created with the board about this policy.

"Perhaps we are really hurting on this word sweep... And if the word sweep were eliminated and it was home visit, I wonder if we would be as hurting. I apologize if that word is what is causing the trouble, that’s a word that the police department uses to mean on a given day we are going to use a lot of our energy and do this.”

It is interesting because according to Lt. Darren Pytel, the department is now also using the term "home visit" rather than "sweep" to describe the operation.

While the use of word "sweep" may have been unfortunate. It was probably not the chief cause for concern among the school board members. It is also unfortunate the way the meeting itself was conducted. First, the board was provided with exactly one paragraph of written documentation for a fairly complex policy that required a good deal of coordination and explanation.

Second, if all of these agencies (police, school district, district attorney) were involved, then why not have representatives from all of these agencies present at the school board meeting. At the very least, if Lt. Darren Pytel and Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Raven were present at this meeting, they could have responded to some of the concerns. Instead, we are having to ask questions of them outside of the public setting. Normally an interjurisdictional presentation would have each of the participants as part of a broader presentation. None of this happened. Instead there was a paragraph delivered to the school board.

It is only now that there is any kind of clarity about this policy and that in itself remains a source of discomfort not only for community members, but public officials whose duty it is to run various bodies.

There are actually two parts of this operation according to Davis Police Lt. Darren Pytel. The first part is that when the district recognized they had a truancy problem (Lt. Pytel said that the truancy problem began before the computer glitch and extended past it) and the police quickly discovered that a large portion of the students who were skipping class had actually gone to the park right next door to the school, and so with minimal effort of increasing patrols by the police, they could transport those students back to class. Therefore, this was a relatively simple and straightforward way to get a good percentage of students back to class.

The second part of the effort, which was what they were calling the "sweep," actually were these home visits, where the worst of the truancy offenders would receive home visits by the police and a school administrator. They would make contact with the parents and hopefully get the students back in class. According to Lt. Pytel, this was very successful last year.

Their goal for this year was the top 20 offenders at the high school, the five worst offenders at the Junior High, and all of the elementary school students who were truant.

That brings us to the next question: why do the police have to do this rather than merely the administration? There is a concern that some of the truants are not merely students who are not wanting to go to school but some may also be involved in criminal activity. Therefore a home visit by an administrator alone may introduce an element of danger and risk that they should not have to undertake. That is the job of the police. (The real question that we will discuss a bit later is whether we are to the point where the police need to become involved).

Therefore, again according to what the police are saying, there is no general sweep in this plan. A general sweep would be a broader crackdown within the community whereby the police would look for minors who were supposed to be in school and bring them back to school. Again, the claim by Lt. Pytel is that this was not in the offering.

That said, there is a degree of skepticism by some officials about this claim. Some of whom believe that it is possible that the original plan did call for a more general crackdown on truancy which did involve the police going into the larger community and attempt to find students who were not in class and bring them back to class. And that this represents a bit of backtracking on the part of the police after getting some negative feedback from the community. (I am not really in the position to judge this now, all I can tell is you is what I have been told.)

Lt. Pytel also claimed to not have knowledge about the proposed use of PDAs to identify the students who were supposed to be in class and those who were not suppose to be in class. This was mentioned by Pam Mari but it was not clear who would be the jurisdiction that used the PDAs and how they would be used.

Lt. Pytel did say that in general it was fairly easy to determine which kids were out legitimately and which were not. That most of the students were actually very honest when they were caught. A few of the students did however lie about their identity, but that was quickly discovered as well with a radio to Marc Hicks, the School Resource Officer.

As I said, the questions and concerns now raised by the school board have put this on hold for now. We need to have future discussions in the school district and community at large about the problem of truancy. It may be a serious problem. But the way that this policy came together is also equally concerning. The lack of communication to the policy makers is a serious problem that needs further inquiry. The school board should never have been put in the position that they were on Thursday.

Originally the police were going to conduct their truancy sweep, I mean home visits, on September 19, 2007. As we discussed previously with our look at the education code, legally, the code provides that certain steps be taken before such actions could occur. So there would not be sufficient time to send out the right number of letters or follow the steps laid out. That would mean, that legally the police could not enforce the truancy laws, all they could do would be to go to the home of the students and attempt to get them back into school that way.

I think this is an important that bears consideration. The justification for this was that by the time they could get the letters out, the students would be hopelessly behind in their studies. Therefore, if they could get to the students in September who were already having serious problems with truancy, they could get back into school and be able to catch up.

In theory that sounds good, in practice, there are two important considerations. First, that the law is very specific about the protocol that needs to be followed, in such a way that law enforcement involvement necessarily comes at the last possible step. And second, there is a reason why many of these students are missing class. So even if you get them back into class early on, you still have to deal with those contributing problems. In other words, merely getting them back into class is not a solution but rather a step in the process. There is an advantage to getting to them sooner, but not at the expense of process.

During the course of the meeting on Thursday, Pam Mari was dismissive of the creation of a School Attendance Review Board (SARB) as a means deal with this issue. However, Lt. Pytel offered it as perhaps the ultimate direction that they want to go. The concern though was that it would take time to set it up and it is by its nature a bureaucracy that relies heavily on the coordination between a large number of jurisdictions.

Here is a good definition of SARB:

"In 1974, the Legislature enacted a statute to enhance the enforcement of compulsory education laws and to divert students with school attendance or behavior problems from the juvenile justice system until all available resources have been exhausted. This statute created School Attendance Review Board (SARBs), composed of representatives from various youth-serving agencies, to help truant or recalcitrant students and their parents or guardians solve school attendance and behavior problems through the use of available school and community resources. Although the goal of SARB is to keep students in school and provide them with a meaningful educational experience, SARB does have the power, when necessary, to refer students and their parents or guardians to court."

It seems that the reason that they did not attempt to create a SARB was that it would take a good amount of time, large amounts of efforts and cooperation to create. But this would be a body that would have the authority to do what was needed to get kids back into school but it would not begin at the law enforcement level.

And this remains my concern with this process. I believe that the goal of getting students who are not attending school into class is a very admirable one. But I do not like the way this was approached. Without board direction, an administrator with the school district reached out to law enforcement bodies for help. Law enforcement has a very specific role to play in our society and that is to enforce the laws and punish people who break those laws and who represent a danger to society.

However to put it simply, they are a blunt object. Their presence is marked by fear, intimidation, and authority. In some cases, that presence can be helpful in being the two-by-four that wakes up parents and students and gets their attention. But as Lt. Pytel acknowledged, kids are not a one-size-fits-all subgroup. Rather different kids will respond to different stimuli. For some kids, this type of action may help them. For other, it may push them into other directions.

I think the statement made by School Board member Tim Taylor remains crucial for those of us who are still concerned about this policy.

"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."

The goals involved in this program are as I said, admirable. But really the middle people should not be the ones creating the policies or at least new procedures by which to deal with existing policies--depending on what terminology you want to use here. What I would like to see now is a prolonged discussion in the community, where you have parents, community members, students, the police, the district attorney, the traffic commissioner, the juvenile justice community, the city council, and the school board all sit down communicate about the issue of truancy.

First I would like talk about what the problems are. I still do not feel I have a good appreciation for what the problems are, how extensive they are, and what other problems exist.

Second, I would like a full detailing of present efforts to curtail truancy. What has been tried. What has worked. What has not worked.

Third, determine a course of action. It is my opinion, that law enforcement should be the absolute last resort for dealing with this problem. And quite frankly, law enforcement in this case was not the last resort. Pam Mari argued strongly during the meeting that she exhausted everything and therefore was forced to bring in law enforcement, but that is not true in the least. The next step should have been to take it to the school board. Another step would have been to take it to the public in terms of community forums. Another step would have been to create a task force. Another step would have been to create a SARB. All of these are things that were not done prior to an effort to outreach law enforcement.

It may be that at the end of the day, we do need to be law enforcement. But at the point when we will have done that, we will have engaged the community on this issue and will have brought them along in the process toward that conclusion. As it stands now there is confusion, there is anger, there is fear, and there is trepidation. That does not lead to community buy in, it leads to community pull back.

And let me be very clear, my complaint here is not with law enforcement. It may not even be with this policy. It is with the process by which this policy was created. There are key lessons to be learned here, and the biggest one is that the best of efforts and intentions can be undone by failure to communicate and failure to follow proper process.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

DA Office's Does Not Seek Charges After Assault on DPD Officers

The Vanguard has learned that on August 1, 2007, a 43 year-old homeless man was involved in an altercation with other homeless people at the Davis Community Shelter. He was apparently harassing others, began to vandalize the facility and refused to leave. But by the time police arrived he had left the facility. Nevertheless, a few minutes later he attempted to return at which point police attempted to arrest him for trespassing.

It was at this point that a scuffle ensued with the police. According to one witness, he actually lifted an officer over his head, but apparently no one was seriously injured. He was arrested for trespassing and assault on an officer.

However, two days later on August 3, he was released without charges being filed. According to Davis Police Chief Landy Black, court rulings on trespassing laws have been that if an individual leaves a place that is normally open to the public prior to officers arriving, then they cannot charge an individual with trespassing.

Nevertheless, the police were there for a valid reason and made a lawful arrest at which point the individual resisted in a violent manner and assaulted a police officer.

Landy Black expressed disappointment with the decision by the District Attorney's office to release the individual and not prosecute the crime - at least - of assault on a police officer at the time. However, he stressed that they are still working with the District Attorney to perhaps get charges filed at a later point.

In the meantime the Davis Police are using the incident as a learning experience to better understand the law in this regard and also to use it as a training exercise for future examples of how this could be handled better and what to do to avoid this kind of situation.

Sixteen days after he was initially released, on August 19, 2007, the individual was arrested again. This time he is being held in the county jail and has a court date set for September 5, 2007 at which point he faces charges for public intoxication, assaulting a peace officer, and resisting arrest for an incident that occurred on A Street and 10th Street in Davis.

The Deputy District Attorney in charge of his initial case was Steve Mount. Mr. Mount told me that he had no knowledge of this case after he declined to file charges on August 3, 2007. He told me that the trespassing charge failed to meet standards and that the assault charges were sent back to the police department for further reporting and that's the end of his involvement in the case.

For many, the complaints against the District Attorney's office have been that they over-prosecute fairly minor crimes. But from time-to-time, I have heard the opposite complaints--that they fail to prosecute more serious crimes.

This individual clearly both represented and represents a serious danger to the police and this community. He has a long arrest history that includes repeated arrests for assault, theft, drugs, and is a registered sex offender. Any individual who can manhandle the police or who would assault an officer is an individual that is a danger to the community at large.

Those familiar with the situation have openly wondered why this individual was released at the same time the District Attorney's office has vigilantly prosecuted many young people, particularly black and Hispanics for non-violent drug possession offenses and yet allowed this man with a long history of violence to be released.

There may be legitimate reasons that explain why the District Attorney did not initially seek charges of this individual. And they may yet seek charges against this individual for the August 1 incident, however that sixteen days that the individual was released exposed the public and the Davis Police to a dangerous individual who would repeat his actions. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt this time; however, we may not be so lucky next time.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: A One-Year Review of Police Oversight in Davis

One year ago from August 24, 2006 to August 30, 2006, the fledgling Vanguard in the wake of the then Davis City Council majority of Asumundson, Puntillo, Saylor and Souza voting to put the Human Relations Commission on hiatus ran a seven-part series examining the Davis Police Oversight System. Within a month or two, the city of Davis would hire Bob Aaronson as the police ombudsman for the City of Davis. Last week, the Vanguard interviewed Mr. Aaronson and discussed his first year on the job. Today the Vanguard will discuss a number of police oversight issues and make him regret putting his thoughts on the record (just kidding).

My initial response to the proposed oversight system now in place was strong opposition. There were three reasons for that primarily. First, there was no public component to it--there was no place where an individual could make a complaint in public and receive a public redress of their grievance. Second, the Ombudsman position itself was fairly weak--it was a part-time position, the Ombudsman acted basically as an auditor who reviewed completed investigations if the individual making a complaint was not satisfied. Finally and probably most pointedly, I failed to trust the council to produce a system that would work given their misgivings about and opposition to the need for oversight to begin with.

I will begin with the last point. The other points will be evaluated as I look back over the recommendations I made on August 30, 2006.

To be quite frank, one of the reasons I never trusted the council to create an oversight system that worked is that the very first meeting that I ever saw from them (January 17, 2006), Councilmembers Don Saylor and Ted Puntillo spent their time attempting to demonstrate how unnecessary police oversight in Davis was.

That statement was summarized by this quote by Ted Puntillo:

"What I want are police officers out there that are using their training and their instincts, I don’t want them thinking about oh somebody’s going to be reviewing what I’m doing. "

Don Saylor stated that they had "thoroughly reviewed the complaints against the city and found them totally without merit." This was a stunning statement given it did not seem likely they conducted their own investigation of these complaints. Puntillo then added that this would be "an eye-opener for many in the city."

Up until the point at which these statements were made I have lived in the city of Davis for nearly nine and a half years and had never been involved in city politics. By the time this little scene was done, my life would be unalterably changed. And let me tell you, Ted Puntillo was right, it was an eye-opener for me to hear elected public officials make these sorts of blatantly irresponsible statements.

A few weeks later, on February 21, 2006, then-Police Chief Jim Hyde and Councilmember Don Saylor went through a series of statistics to demonstrate to the public how low the number of sustained complaints were in the city of Davis. Basically what Jim Hyde told Councilmember Saylor was that there were 74 citizen complaints from 2003 to 2005 and of those only 5 were sustained.

Statistics are given a bad rap because most people do not understand how to properly analyze them. This leads to the assumption by many that statistics can be used to say whatever you want them to say. This is patently untrue however. One needs to be able to interpret statistics properly. To his credit, Councilmember Saylor on that date did ask the correct question--asking Chief Hyde how these numbers compare to other communities. However, Chief Hyde dodged this question by stating that communities vary and therefore are difficult to compare. And Saylor never pressed him on the issue when he clearly should have. Had he pressed him, he would have found out that the number of sustained complaints was right around the national average whereby less than 10 percent of all complaints are sustained by the Internal Review Process and in fact, Davis had a higher number than a lot of other jurisdictions.

Ombudsman Bob Aaronson when asked as to whether Davis was in need of an independent oversight system said:

"I’m someone who believes that every law enforcement organization ought to have some form of oversight. I’ve worked with a lot of organizations around the state and to me it’s not a critique of law enforcement it has to do with the fact that in absence of oversight not everyone is going to be squared away."

I still believe that a good police oversight system benefits rather than harms the interests of police officers. It fosters trust that they are doing their jobs the proper way and also provides an outlet for those who are dissatisfied with the handling of their encounter with a police officer. Often that dissatisfaction stems from misunderstanding about the law and an individual's right under the law. By having someone who is independent of the police be in the position and have the authority to explain to an individual that the incident was handled properly, it allows for those who would otherwise distrust the police to be educated about proper procedure.

Getting back however to my original trepidations--the point of this demonstration is to show why I was skeptical of this city council, who had pointedly and deliberately argued that we do not need police oversight, would then be able to turn around and create a police oversight model that would work. They never laid out the case for oversight as Mr. Aaronson did. They took oversight to be a criticism of all police because it arose from specific complaints against the police rather than a means by which to foster community trust in the police.

The jury is still out on that bottom line however. As a whole, I think Bob Aaronson was a good hire. In the comments to the interview last week, some complained he was probably too cautious with his assessment. I would tend to agree with that viewpoint. He has made it a point to protect his political capital until the big case comes forward. While I can understand that desire, I think there are enough data to really look into past practices so that we can come to terms with them and correct them for the future.

At the same time, we have not seen the big case yet either. My biggest problem has been the lack of willingness of those in the community with what appear to be valid complaints that are worthy of investigation (it may turn out that the investigation would clear the officer of wrongdoing, but investigation is still needed) are not willing to come forward. These people are often unwilling to come forward. Part of the reason for that is that they are afraid to. In part, they saw what happened to Buzayans and decided it just was not worth it. That has been a source of much frustration personally.

One of the big questions is that of racial profiling and whether it occurs in the department.

When asked in a California Aggie article if there is "racism within the Davis Police Department," Chief Landy Black who had been in the department for two months at the time responded:

"It's absolutely untrue. I think there was a great deal of political influence in what was going on. There was a need from some people for [their own] publicity, and with the current climate of policing, it gets you notoriety to claim racist policing."

While that was perhaps not the best way to ask the question, I am still uncertain as to how the Chief could know this that soon. Nevertheless, I am not altogether convinced that racial profiling equals racism rather than poor policing technique or even laziness.

During the course of this year I asked the same question of both Former UC Davis Police Chief Calvin Handy who also serves on both the PAC (Police Advisory Commission) and the CAB (Community Advisory Board) and the Ombudsman Bob Aaronson.

When I asked Calvin Handy here was his response:

"My first act as [UC Davis] police chief here was to meet with large groups, students, staff, and faculty, and they had this consistent belief that racial profiling was happening in the city of Davis... After 12 years it is kind of amazing given how much we engaged in the process that people are saying the same thing. This problem has just gone on for too long and too pervasive."

Last week Bob Aaronson said something remarkably similar:

"I have not seen first hand evidence of it. Where I have seen documents or I have seen incidents first hand that would allow me to establish that that occurred. On the other hand, there have been enough complaints by people of color that I’m not prepared to say it’s not an issue. As well there is some statistical information that I don’t know enough about to know whether it’s credible and if it is credible what it’s really saying. But clearly there is something there that requires more attention."

Part of the problem that I have had is how would you even go about proving racial profiling? It is a difficult problem to address.

In response to my evaluation last year of the Police Oversight system. As I examine it now, there are probably several recommendations that I would no longer make, but there are several that I think are still pretty valid.

First, I believed that it would be difficult to have an Ombudsman without it being a full-time position. From my discussions with Bob Aaronson, I believe that more than ever.

Aaronson's response here makes a lot of sense--that it is a matter of balancing priorities:

"Clearly I would like to have more time to spend in Davis doing more active outreach to the community and also doing more ridealongs. But the challenge for a place like Davis—because the implication and the question is ‘what instead’ or ‘in addition to’—the challenge for a community like Davis, and it’s the reason why I came here, most oversight models are geared toward far larger jurisdictions and larger departments. I have a hard time arguing that a jurisdiction the size of Davis ought to be spending a quarter of a million dollars on oversight. I have a hard time arguing that. I could see spending a couple of million dollars on oversight or more for the city of San Jose. But smaller oversight, no one is really trying to figure out a way to do that and so my work here and my work in Santa Cruz also are efforts to explore is there a cost effective way to use some of the oversight tools in a smaller jurisdiction."

It is worth noting that Councilmember Stephen Souza keeps trying to expand the role of the ombudsman to cover the entire city, a notion he first brought up in February of 2006, a notion he mentioned again in March of 2007 and a notion he most recently mentioned in conjunction with a proposal to remove the investigation authority from the Human Relations Commission. I do not see how this is a possibility without hiring a full-time ombudsman with a professional staff.

Second, I recommended that the Ombudsman be given a stronger role in the initial oversight. As this system has developed, it has changed structurally even though it has not changed on paper. What seems to have happened is that the PAC reviews the Internal Reviews from the Department and that the Ombudsman acts as almost a public liaison who assists and talks to individuals about complaints and helps them if they wish to file a formal complaint.

Third, I suggested using the PAC to replace the Internal Affairs Department.

Bob Aaronson last week suggested basic support for Police Internal Affairs departments:

"In my experience, most internal affairs organizations do a good job 90 to 95 percent of the time on cases. And of the remaining five to ten percent, are not handled the way I’d have them handle them. Not out of malice but out of a lack of training."

I differ from Mr. Aaronson here though I lack his over 20 years of direct experience as an ombudsman. My experience had demonstrated in fact a problem with the internal affairs departments in general. Too many cases are returned as not sustained even when the individuals have valid complaints. One of these cases locally was the Bernita Toney case who complained that a police officer falisified a police report. The internal review process concluded this complaint was not sustained. Yet in a court of law, a jury found that the police report had in fact been falisified when they decided to acquit Ms. Toney of all charges against her. This is but one example. The worse example was the use of the Internal Affairs department to threaten and intimidate Halema Buzayan instead of investigating the complaint against Officer Pheng Ly.

It is interesting to note that Mr. Aaronson commented about Davis Police Sgt. Gina Anderson's, who is now in Citrus Heights, handling of the Buzayan Investigation.

"[B]ased on my explicit training to the Department, they now know that you cannot try to advance a criminal investigation through the investigation of a citizen complaint."

The suggestion here is that this was inadvertent and due to a lack of training. Perhaps. But the effect was to intimidate and threaten a minor who was attempting to file a complaint against the actions of a police officer.

My fourth suggestion was to strengthen the CAB. The CAB is composed of many individuals purportedly from diverse segments of the population, but for the most part only a few of these individuals were critical or skeptical of the police department. It was not until March, that the city finally admitted that this was not part of the oversight process. Nevertheless, it would behoove the new police chief to reconstitute the CAB and place on it more individuals who are critical of the police for the very reason that he would get better feedback from the community if he did so.

Fifth, I suggested improving community outreach. The new police chief seems amenable to that, and some of that is going on. But without specific impetus, I think there are segments of the population that would not be reached. Along the same lines, I suggested improving representation on the boards, make the CAB meetings public. This has not occurred yet.

Finally, I suggested they reinstate the Human Relations Commission. They did this but really stripped this commission of its power and influence. They did at least keep the civil rights ordinance intact, but the HRC is not the body that it was prior to June of 2006. I have spent enough time on this subject, but I think the community really misunderstood what the HRC was aiming to do with police oversight and the valuable function it performed prior to 2006.

In many ways, I do not think either the Ombudsman's job or the Chief's job have started yet. We are still waiting for the "big one." That will occur at some point, it is inevitable no matter how well-intentioned we are, something is going to occur. The question will then become, are we properly equipped to handle things. Overall, I would say that some of my fears about this system have been alleviated. I think we were fortunate to land an individual with the experience of Mr. Aaronson. But as he discovered in Santa Cruz, when you rule against the police there is a heavy price to pay. We have not seen whether anyone can withstand that kind of pressure just yet and that will be the crucial test for this system.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Interview with Davis Police Ombudsman Bob Aaronson

Last year around this time, the City of Davis hired its first Police Ombudsman Bob Aaronson. Aaronson has served in the capacity of independent auditor for the City of Santa Cruz among other municipalities. At the time this culminated a rather tumultuous year in Davis that saw allegations, protests, and the disbanding of the city's Human Relations Commission. Now a year later, things have calmed down, but have the underlying problems that led to these complaints and protests dissipated, the Vanguard sits down as talks to the Ombudsman Bob Aaronson to get his take on the current situation.

You’ve been here nearly a year, I know you’ve talked about it before, but is Davis what you expected?

No. Davis is a much more interesting place than I expected. And Davis is a much more interesting place culturally than I expected. As someone who has passed by Davis thousands and thousands of times, I did not have a clue.

What are your impressions of the Davis Police Department?

I don’t think that’s changed a whole lot since my discussion in front of the council. I think there are a lot of good people in the Davis Police Department. I think there are a lot of the challenges, some of the challenges are because of history, problems that have been present historically and you still live with the ghosts and then there are problems that are related to how many people are comparatively new at being peace officers. I think those are quite significant challenges.

So far, what are your impressions of Landy Black?

So far my impressions of Landy Black are positive. My sense is that he is getting out into the community; my sense is that he’s making connections within the department. And my sense is that those connections are good. Landy Black strikes me as an eminently decent guy and someone who is a real cop.

What has the primary focus of your position entailed?

There are two different things that I have been doing. One component that I have been doing is responding to citizens who have complaints and on average I am probably talking to between half a dozen and a dozen people a month. They call to talk about their situations and telling them what the process is and sometimes all it is is explaining to them that the procedural issues that they saw were appropriate.

The second part of what I’m doing is almost like being an organizational facilitator. And an example of that is being part of a process that got the cameras and the computers working. But there are also a myriad of ways that I have become an alternative channel for communication for different parts of city government about what’s going on. And what the problems are.

Do you believe that Davis was in need of an independent police oversight system?

I’m not the right person to ask because I’m someone who believes that every law enforcement organization ought to have some form of oversight. I’ve worked with a lot of organizations around the state and to me it’s not a critique of law enforcement it has to do with the fact that in absence of oversight not everyone is going to be squared away. That’s why we have cops. Because in the absence of cops, some of us are going to speed. Some of us are not going obey traffic laws and commit offenses. We need oversight. I think we all need oversight and benefit from it. It’s the reason why we don’t come into the world hatched out of eggs. We come into the world with two overseers.

Do you believe that the Police Internal Affairs Department serves an effective function or do you believe that too often police departments seek to protect themselves from scrutiny?

In my experience, most internal affairs organizations do a good job 90 to 95 percent of the time on cases. And of the remaining five to ten percent, are not handled the way I’d have them handle them. Not out of malice but out of a lack of training. There are instances where organizations will have a tendancy in order to avoid the limelight or order to avoid the harsh reality will try to find a way to avoid getting to the right result. But the number of times I’ve seen that happen I could probably count on two hands. And that’s based on over 20 years of work with law enforcement.

What changes would you like to see in the Davis police oversight system?

Clearly I would like to have more time to spend in Davis doing more active outreach to the community and also doing more ridealongs. But the challenge for a place like Davis—because the implication and the question is ‘what instead’ or ‘in addition to’—the challenge for a community like Davis, and it’s the reason why I came here, most oversight models are geared toward far larger jurisdictions and larger departments. I have a hard time arguing that a jurisdiction the size of Davis ought to be spending a quarter of a million dollars on oversight. I have a hard time arguing that. I could see spending a couple of million dollars on oversight or more for the city of San Jose. But smaller oversight, no one is really trying to figure out a way to do that and so my work here and my work in Santa Cruz also are efforts to explore is there a cost effective way to use some of the oversight tools in a smaller jurisdiction.

What do you view as the biggest mistake made by former Chief Jim Hyde during his tenure? How can we work to prevent repeat mistakes with the new Chief, Landy Black?

I try to have this rule that if I was not present, it is not fair of me to find fault. I have not viewed my charge as what occurred prior to my watch although I’ve accumulated some information about it. I think there is a host of things, where if I had been involved I would have hoped would have been responded to differently. I certainly have not been shy about the fact that I believe there was a missed opportunity for the community and the department to use the Buzayan incident as a means of having a discussion as opposed to a means of having an argument.

You mentioned that the city of Davis missed out on an opportunity during the contentious 2006 year. What do you think as an outsider looking in, should have been done differently?

If I had been involved in the underlying incident and I have not listened to tapes and I have not reviewed reports, but I have read enough information. I think I would have made different decisions about what occurred at the scene. Decisions that were not as intrusive. I think that decisions that were made in my view don’t amount to misconduct or I certainly haven’t seen anything that would suggest to me that they were misconduct, but I would say that in my view they are misjudgments. Candidly on the other side of it, I will also tell you… if I had been, if my family had been in the situation, I think I would have responded differently as well. And that to me is the point of the Buzayan case, there were opportunities for everyone to learn. Not just for the department to learn about how to handle something in a way that it is as effect but less intrusive, but also for the community to learn about how they can more effectively interact with the department in a way that increases the likelihood of a more positive or less negative outcome.

Does Davis PD have a problem of racial profiling in your view?

I have not seen first hand evidence of it. Where I have seen documents or I have seen incidents first hand that would allow me to establish that that occurred. On the other hand, there have been enough complaints by people of color that I’m not prepared to say it’s not an issue. As well there is some statistical information that I don’t know enough about to know whether it’s credible and if it is credible what it’s really saying. But clearly there is something there that requires more attention.

The DPOA has repeatedly asked for more police officers as a means for crime prevention, do you believe that such hires are necessary?

I am far more conscious about how much I don’t know than how much I do. If I were going to answer that question in this sort of a public fashion, I would want to have done some sort of a serious study of auditing response times, auditing workloads and the like. In all honesty, I don’t know. To answer that question one way or another would require me on some level to speculate.

What lessons can we learn from the UCLA tasering incident?

That one to me is pretty clean. Tasers are less than deadly force. But are probably the equivalent to the use of the baton. It is pretty hard to kill someone with a baton, but you are likely to have more moderate range injuries. You can argue it one way or another. I would be surprised if any officer would have used a baton on the student in the UCLA PD case. When you have a passive resister, you should not be using Tasers. To me that is a fairly basic lesson and one of the problems has been… that most of the first round of instruction in how to use Tasers was controlled by Taser International. And Taser International, and I’ve viewed some of their instruction, in the first round, but definitely in the first round there were scenarios where Tasers were being used on people who were not violently resisting. Hence what happened at UCLA PD.

(I follow up: So how best would it be for police officers to handle people who are not cooperating but not violent resisting and not a physical threat to either the officer or the public?)

Depends on the situation and the size of the person. Officers get taught all sorts of control holds and take down techniques, in the academy and in the FTO process. In an instance where there’s a large crowd gathered, the use of a Taser on someone who is not actively resistant and who is not actively violent is actually increasing the risk to the officer not decreasing it. Now it’s important to be clear and I have viewed on a number of occasions the videotape of the UCLA PD incident and my problem with the videotapes while the videotapes are very troubling, it’s really hard to be able to see enough of the student in a lot of the frames to know what things I would have done or what things I hoped an officer would have done.

What changes can Davis do in the next year to improve relations between portions of the community and the police department?

I would like to see a way that members of the Davis police department become more involved in the community as individuals and as officers and that means community meetings, neighborhood meetings, it also means encouraging people to do ridealongs with the Davis Police Department. There does need to be more of a connection. There clearly does.

You have previously mentioned problems with both supervision, chain of command, and overall morale—have these areas improved under the new chief? What further needs to be done?

Morale has improved because the department is grateful to have a new chief on board. But the underlying issues—the new chief has been there for three and a half months. You don’t fix a damaged family in three and a half months—this is clearly a work in progress. And the underlying issues involving supervision, chain of command, and communication are still there. They remain to be resolved in a successful way.

My biggest frustration for the past year has been the inability or unwillingness for people with legitimate complaints against the police department to come forward—what can we do about that?

That’s a good question. I have had a similar experience and not just with you but with other people who have brought forward to me that there are people who they were in touch with who had complaints and I have begged, cajoled, pleaded… You know, I have two different ways of expressing it. One is that I have an Amnesty International T-shirt that says ‘All it takes for the triumph of evil is for enough good people to be silent.’ The other one is just a more straightforward one. In the absence of people willing to bear witness, no one goes to jail. I understand why people are reluctant, I genuinely do, I understand that for a lot of people, it’s an act of bravery, it’s an act of courage to come forward with a complaint. But it’s really important, and part of the side benefit is that people who come forward with complaints ultimately, regardless of any other resolution, feel unburdened by having done that.

How can we effect change in the absence of people willing to come forward and to use your words—bear witness?

I don’t know, I think that’s probably my single biggest challenge. One of the things I could do is to do more outreach in the community. I have been reluctant to ask the city for more hours, because the city is trying to be fiscally responsible and I respect that. And the problem with what I talk about in terms of getting out into the community is that it’s time consuming. But there is a way candidly that I feel that I know the Davis Police Department right now better than I do the community.

I’ve been told you are not a big fan of anonymity on the internet, can you share your thoughts?

I tend to work by analogy. I think that people’s behavior on freeways is much worse than their behavior at parties or in bars because they are basically anonymous. I think that when you provide people with an anonymous environment a lot of the social controls for some people tend to dissipate. And if we can be anonymous, there are people who are prepared in a theater to stand up and scream [obscenities] to a guy on stage. Now they would never do that if the guy on stage could see their face and see who they were. But in a darkened theater there are people who do that. I have watched and I respect both the vote that was taken and also the sentiment that there are people who otherwise would not post if it was [not] anonymous, but if no one has noticed it, I’m an outspoken person, I’m not shy about offering my perspective and part of my attitude as a student of race relations and the holocaust is you got be willing to speak out and put your name to something.

Your impressions so far of the Vanguard? How can the Vanguard become a more effective tool in the community?

The most positive thing I think about the Vanguard is that there are things being reported in the Vanguard that I haven’t seen in any other media outlets that are at least available to me. And I appreciate that because I don’t just study Davis police issues, I study all of the Davis community issues to better educate myself. So I really appreciated that. I think there have been times that I have been concerned that the tenor of comments and discussion and some of them of them are by the bloggist and some of them by the commenters that are less than civil. I guess the starting place for me, if I caste you as evil, I lose the opportunity to have an effective conversation with you where I really get through to you. I worry about that aspect. That being said, I’m not arguing that the bite should go away. I think part of the bite is what works about it. It’s also true that I think in the year that the Vanguard, I ought to be interviewing you about the Vanguard because it has been about a year and three months or a year and two months that you’ve been doing the Vanguard, and I ought to be interviewing you about how’s that year been, what do you think your successes have been and what have your failures been. I think that the Vanguard has matured in that past year in really powerful ways. I’m sure that you asking in a way is a little self-serving… but I’m grateful that the Vanguard is there. I don’t always agree with it, but it’s rare I don’t learn something.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

UCLA Incident Demonstrates Need for Independent Review and Policy Changes

The recent ruling on last fall's Tasering of a UCLA student gives us the unusual opportunity to review and scrutinize the police review system in addition to discuss policies on use of force by police departments.

In August of 2006, the fledgling Vanguard, took on a seven-part series of review of the Davis Police Oversight system--evaluating each part and making recommendations for changing it.

One of the key criticisms was the use of the Internal Affairs Department (IAD) as the agency with original jurisdiction over IAs. The chief problem that was cited at this time was a relatively low number of sustained complaints by the IAD in Davis. From 2003-2005 there were 74 complaints, only 5 of which were sustained.

These numbers were used by then Chief Jim Hyde and Davis Councilmember Don Saylor (among others) to demonstrate the lack of need for additional police oversight.

However, a 2002 report by the US Department of Justice warned that:

"[T]he meaning of a complaint rate is not entirely clear: a low force complaint rate could mean that police are performing well or that the complaint process is inaccessible; likewise, a high force complaint rate could mean that officers use force often or that the complaint process is more accessible."

Further statistics suggest that the low sustained complaint rate in Davis is actually not atypical. For instance one year in Los Angeles, there were 561 complaints against the LAPD and none of them were sustained.

The UCLA case provides us with another example as to why we cannot merely rely on IADs to provide oversight of police departments.

The initial review of the UCLA case

"cleared Officer Terrence Duren and two colleagues of wrongdoing. Details of the review are confidential but it concluded officers did not violate campus policies, according to a statement released by Norman Abrams, former acting chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles." (See Sacramento Bee, August 3, 2007).

Furthermore, as the Los Angeles Times reported, the officer involved has been involved in a number of other controversial incidents on the campus. This is a frequent problem in oversight, that you have officers often who are repeat offenders, who end up being involved in incidents over and over again. The people that these officers harm are not only the citizens, but their law abiding and dedicated colleagues.

Fortunately in this case, instead of settling for the IAD report, someone made a decision to bring in Merrick Bobb, a noted police accountability expert.

Bobb found that the officer's decision to use a taser here was "unnecessary, avoidable and excessive."

The student is by no means innocent here either and that should be noted and was noted by Mr. Bobb.

"This story has no heroes... While the student should have simply obeyed the order to produce the card ... the police response was substantially out of proportion to the provocation."

Citizens have the responsibility to cooperate with the police always. People ought to know their rights and when they can assert them, however, when push comes to shove, obey the police and dispute their conduct later. However, police are professionals and trained, and they need to respond to difficult situations appropriately, this was not a case where an officer was in danger and therefore the use of force here was clearly not justified.

This case also provides us with an opportunity to examine use of force. We have talked about it in the past as well, especially regarding an incident that did not escalate quite as far as the UCLA incident was, but that had to do with the actions against a UC Davis student involved in a bicycle stop sign incident which also grew out of hand. The key question is how should non-cooperative individuals be treated by the police.

In this case, Mr. Bobb makes specific recommendations for chaing policy on the use of Tasers on "passively or mildly resistant individuals." The main question is, when should officers use force against an individual? It is obvious that if an individual is violent or represents a physical threat to the officers or the public, that use of force is justified.

But if the individual is simply being non-compliant why are you using a taser three times? There have to be other means by which to handle a situation.

Merrick Bobb makes some very strong recommendations to "forbid their use against passively or mildly resistant individuals." Moreover he recommends:

"Restrict Taser use to violent, actively aggressive or imminently violent subjects -- and only after a warning. Discourage repeated shocks. Prohibit shocking of handcuffed prisoners."

Acting UCLA Chancellor Norman Abrams and UCLA Police Chief Karl Ross were both in agreement with the policy change. That is a good start.

But the secrecy of the internal investigation given state law protecting confidentiality of the police involved in citizen complaints led to the independent investigation by Merrick Bobb. The concern is that this was a very high profile case, how many other complaints have also been swept under the rug at UCLA and other UCs across California?

This is a very serious point in evaluating complaints against UC Davis police officers. We have heard of several in the last year and note that there is no Ombudsman or any sort of police oversight system on the UCLA campus.

The City of Davis does have an Ombudsman and they have a three member Police Advisory Committee (PAC) reviewing IAs. Some of my concerns about the Police Oversight system in Davis have been alleviated in the past year. However, a big one that remains is the lack of willingness of individuals to file IAs.

As the UCLA case attests however, a small minority of officers are repeat offenders in violations of the rights of citizens and it is those small number of officers who probably cause the majority of complaints. A system that can identify those officers, can protect the law abiding and dedicated majority of police officers from the type of adverse scrutiny that they do not deserve. Officers put their lives on the line every day and we need to put a system in place that protects them and the citizens.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Why I believe We Need More Officers

On Tuesday night, it was late into the evening, rapidly approaching the midnight hour. I stepped up the microphone to speak at public comment immediately after Davis Police Sergeant Rod Rifredi. I can only imagine what was going through the minds of the many police officers that were in attendance that night. However and perhaps surprisingly to the DPD officials who were there, I spoke of the need to hire six new police officers in the near future. In fact, I told the council that I "agreed with the DPOA and Mr. Rifredi."

As this blog has progressed, I have spoken less and less during public comment. For one thing, I feel I can speak better through the blog. For another, I sometimes get the distinct impression I make things more likely to fail than pass. But this was different, this issue. The issue of police staffing and public safety perhaps make my perspective more rather than less important. I am fully aware of the past and the perceptions in the community and most particularly in the police department about me.

On the other hand, I think some of those perceptions are wrong. Few in Davis are aware than in San Luis Obispo I was a close ally of the police chief. But last year the issue of police oversight for whatever reason became so polarizing that it became the defining moment for many about me, whom people had never met for the most part and knew even less about my background and most of my beliefs.

I flash forward to the current discussion at hand, but I believe that the past is paramount to understanding the future. Why was I so moved to advocate for adequate staffing of police officers? I believe such staffing is part and parcel toward fostering improved trust between the department and the community. For many, the police are strangers in this community, many of whom do not live here and merely move through town, driving around in their cars. Some of that has changed with the hiring of Landy Black as police chief. But I believe we need to move closer toward a model of community policing, where the police are part of the community in which they serve. The only way that can happen is that we have enough officers on duty to put some on foot patrol. To put some into various communities where they can work with the neighborhoods and the citizens.

This is also a political issue and it begins with city budget problems. I could see a sense of frustration on the faces of the officers as they recited past promises that a new officer each year would be hired and complained that this commitment fell by the wayside. I saw the frustration as the city council spoke of budget constraints and lack of resources, even as they have in the past put into place budgetary considerations that have served to hamstring the budget and put such changes out of reach.

A serious crisis looms for the city that has made financial commitments that will induce structural budget problems. The policy of five year employment leading to lifetime pensions is not sustainable. The rapidly escalating salaries of top end officials adds to this problem.

Councilmember Stephen Souza spoke in terms of three main areas for expenditure and played parks and recreation off police and fire in a budgetary tug-of-war.

However at the same time, he presented us with a false dichotomy. The city is prepared to spend hundreds of millions on the combination of a wastewater treatment plant that will be simultaneously upgraded with a new water supply delivery system.

When confronted on this issue Councilmember Souza suggested that money came from a different fund than public safety money. While technically correct, in practice it comes from the same place--the city resident. The money comes from them whether it takes the form of a rate increase or the form of a new tax.

The city is increasingly going to rely on taxation as a means to raise revenue because they have not controlled their spending in recent years. What that means is that the public is in the unenviable task of choosing between parks, police, fire, or water. Unfortunately, the decision on parks has already been chosen. The voters voted for Measure G last year.

Now I am not against parks, no one is. But we have to ask ourselves if that was the most pressing need that needed to be addressed with a tax increase or reauthorization. The problem is that the citizens chose between parks or less parks on their ballot. But the real choice down the line is a prioritization between parks, public safety, and water. And the public never had this laid out to them last year. They only had a simply choice. But at some point, as we face a parcel tax increase schools and one for the library (both of which are desperately needed and I wholly support), we have to lay all and not just some of the options on the table. Because at some point, the public is going to revolt over taxes. They are going to revolt over paying more and more to city government when a lot of the current spending has been squandered. And at the end of the day, they are never going to choose which things are priorities and which or not. They will simply be faced with a terrible dilemma--do I increase my taxes even more or do I cut vital city financed services.

Unfortunately, what our city council is doing forestalling that decision date. They are punting. They are putting the ball into the hands of a future council to make the tough decision as three of them are facing reelection in less than a year, and two of them--Souza and Saylor--have never met a program or budgetary increase that they do not support. But at some point, it will come to the point where it is too much to take and we really will face a crisis.

In the meantime, we need more police officers on the street. We need to insure the safety of the community and help to restore the vital trust between the police and certain communities, and that begins by our city giving the police the tools that they need to do the job they were hired and we trust them to do.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Report Demonstrates Need for Public Safety Priority in City

It has become commonplace within this community to assume that I am against law enforcement because of my proactiveness on the issue of police oversight. I also believe in oversight for all aspects of professional life whether it be medical, legal, or safety standards. I simply believe that oversight is always needed as a protection to the public--regardless of the industry. It is not anti-contractor to have building inspectors. It is simply a recognition that a few bad contractors can ruin it for the thousands of good contractors.

In any case, a number of councilmembers have staked their name as being staunch defenders of law enforcement mainly because they were viewed in opposition of efforts to create civilian review of police operations.

However, in my view it is not simply enough to oppose oversight in order to be pro-law enforcement. Looking at city budget priorities that have been largely put into place by this current council majority, I have to question why anyone would consider them (the council majority) pro-law enforcement.

This is largely made clear, at least in my opinion, in a staff report that will come before the city council this evening.

What is clear from the staff report that we will examine in more detail shortly is that the city lacks the money at present to make the upgrades that we need to protect our citizens in the form of public safety.

The city faces serious budget constraints at present. And more importantly it faces serious budget inflexibility in the future.

As we discussed in March, city practices implemented repeatedly by this council majority have served to hamstring the budget process. Current policy has created a situation where a retired employee needs to have worked only five years with the city in order to receive medical benefits for life after retirement. Current policy has created a stratospheric rise in salaries and benefits--not for the rank and file employee but for upper management.

The result of this practice is not only are we paying a tremendous amount of the city's current budget to upper management, but we have produced a system whereby we are funding people long after they have left the system and we have done so for people who have not been longtime employees necessarily.

No only are we paying a large percentage of our budget to this now, but we will pay ever more in the future. We will have locked a large percentage of our budget away for entitlements and we will not have the budgetary flexibility to meet the needs of a growing and vital community especially in terms of public safety. We simply cannot continue down this path is we want a safe community.

Thus the staff is recommending three phases based on available budget. First, a phase based on changes that can be implemented immediately with minimal additional costs. Second, they would look toward flexibility and reallocation of money. Third, they would look toward new incoming revenue streams such as the Target store.

Our public safety is going to rely on the revenue stream from Target--which may or may not ever come to Davis and from which budgetary estimates are shaky at best?

What the report does not suggest is that many of these concerns could have been handled had the city looked at their budget a few years ago and done a better job of prioritizing their concerns. The bottom line here is that the city will find a way most likely to get the public safety the people need, but the people are going to have to pay for it and the citizens at some point should ask why.

The staff report argues:

"Simply adding “officers to the streets” will not address the overall needs of the Police Department in the long run. On the contrary, unless a sound management and oversight structure is in place first, the addition of officers may not meet community expectations for the type of service that the Department should provide. Furthermore, the addition of officers must be implemented strategically, with an eye on those community expectations and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the Department."

This is an interesting finding. As the Ombudsman, Bob Aaronson, suggested in his report back in February, there at that time criticized the leadership, management and supervision within the department. With the arrival of new police Chief Landy Black, there is reasonable hope that that situation will improve.

However, I would also suggest based on my experience on a ride-along, conversations with members of the business community, and conversations with the public as a whole, that we do need to add more officers to the streets. Much of the time, the current level of patrol is sufficient to cover the city, but it is not sufficient to have a real presence in key parts of the city. Nor is it sufficient to cover the city when a major incident occurs. For example, I watched what happened when there was a simple fight at an apartment complex that led to an injury. Most of their manpower was at the scene of this incident--which meant during a prime time for parties and mayhem, there were not officers on the street that could handle party calls. There were not officers patrolling the street.

So while I agree that "simply" adding "officers to the streets" will not solve the problems, they will go a long way toward helping resolve some of the issues that this community has.

The report further states,

"there is no one response time standard in law enforcement. Police response times vary greatly depending on the type and priority of call received."

I agree. But where questions arise is why it takes a certain length of time to respond to what could potentially be serious calls downtown during key times. There was a broad daylight bank robbery where response time was questioned. I saw an incident personally where a fight could have been dangerous to the public at a popular Davis restaurant and it took the police over ten minutes to arrive.

We recognize that there are different priorities for different situations. No one is overly concerned if it takes the police half an hour to take down a report, but if there is a potentially dangerous situation, it is obvious to this layman that we need the manpower and flexibility to respond rapidly to such situations. And during downtimes, we could use the police presence in key areas to both deter troublemakers as well as foster relations with specific communities and neighborhoods.

Unfortunately none of this will happen unless the city can get control over the budget situation. And right now, they have not.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Examining City Council Goals and Objectives

The Davis City Council will have another public workshop this Friday. First they will conclude their workshop on "Improving Transactional Effectiveness" and then they will have a staff presentation on the status of council goals and objectives.

The council has eight goals and objective for 2007-08:

• Maintain and improve the infrastructure
• Achieve long-term financial stability
• Enhance the vitality of downtown
• Provide a mix of high-quality housing to meet community needs
• Conserve natural resources and protect the environment
• Ensure top quality fire, police and emergency services
• Ensure organizational strength
• Promote economic development

This article will look at some of the specific policy objectives under each heading to see where the council has succeeded at least in their own goals and also discuss things that should have been included but were not.

The big objectives under "Maintain and Improve the Infrastructure," deal with the water supply and the wastewater treatment plant upgrade. In both cases, the city has moved along about at the rate that they wanted to. Both of these projects are massive and will end up greatly increasing Davis residents' water rates. The key question right now is whether this is what the city should be doing.

Last year, the city council agreed to spend $50,000 to $75,000 upgrading the parks and facilities master plan. It took a reconsideration of an agenda item after the initial item was defeated, due to the absence of Councilmember Asmundson. Mayor Greenwald and Councilmember Heystek would have preferred to have spent that money on unfinished projects from the previous plan rather than updating the current plan with an expensive survey.

Missing from the list is any upgrade in the quality of the roads, the workability of some of the traffic intersections and traffic lights.

In terms of the next goal, "Achieving Long-term Financial Stability," the council had a workshop where they look at various revenue enhancements, mainly in terms of new taxes.

The big thing that they did not do was seek to look at areas where spending has greatly increased that will end up costing the city. One such area has to do with upper level employees pensions and health benefits. These current practices for people in upper management may end up either bankrupting the city in future years, or at the very least leading to a large cutback in other sorts of spending as the city needs to get on top of a wave of retirements.

The third goal, is to "Enhance the Vitality of Downtown." Here it does not seem that they have proceeded on a number of their goals. Moreover, the big one that they did proceed on was the 3rd and B Visioning Process. My concern with their direction on this and other projects is that they are looking for ways to revitalize the downtown that are threatening the character of the city and the downtown. Tearing down some of the more historic buildings in the 3rd and B district is going to do far more to destroy the character of the city than it is to help downtown. Moreover, they have enacted projects such as Target that threaten the vitality of downtown.

The fourth goal, is to "Provide a Mix of High Quality Housing to Meet Community Needs." This is an area where I do not think the city has done enough. They have appointed a Housing Element Steering committee. We shall see what that process yields. What this city needs in my view, is a commitment to developing housing that families and younger and new home owners can afford. Not just an allotment of "affordable" housing for low income people that are really limited equity homes. We're talking about moving away from the model that has produced $500,000 to $600,000 homes. That means producing smaller houses on smaller lots and greater density of that housing. However, this is nowhere to be found on the city's goals.

The fifth goal, is to "Conserve Natural Resources and Protect the Environment." They have a list of items, most of which I have not heard of and most of which I do not believe have been acted upon. They do talk about recycling and composting. But I think the city needs to go further here. They mention the Davis Greenway Concept that includes locally based sustainability farms at the city's edge, but there needs to be, in light of county proposals, an all-out commitment to ag land preservation. Second, there needs to be a push for more electric vehicles for in-town use rather than internal combustion engines. Third, there needs to be a stronger commitment to solar power in new housing and perhaps even incentives for existing homeowners to purchase solar panels. Fourth, as they do in the north, they should convert all city road signs to solar energy.

The sixth goal, is to "Ensure Top Quality Fire, Police and Emergency Services." Here they have achieved a good number of their goals. It took them much longer than anticipated but they got the cameras and computers fully operational and for the most part reliable. They hired a police chief. For my purposes the top needs of the city are that we need more police officers hired and on the streets. I would like the city to look into higher standards for training in exchange for higher salary. The city is looking into a fourth fire station, and while I understand some of the concerns of a fourth fire station, particularly with regards to money, the suggestion has been made that the taxpayers could vote on it. I think that's a reasonable proposal from my observations. I can also see the need for a city-owned ladder truck, especially as the city continues to build taller and taller buildings.

The seventh goal, is to "Ensure Organizational Strength." This deals primarily with city staff. As I have suggested previously, I just do not like the city manager driven model of city government. I think it leaves elected council members, especially those who are in the minority, without the resources they need to do a good job of representing their constituency. Reliance on city staff has proven problematic at times. So one of the things I would like to see are reforms and changes to the overall structure.

A goal that is listed on their list of goals is to have in place by 2008 a living wage ordinance for City contracts and contract workers. This was a suggestion made by Councilmember Lamar Heystek that I strongly support. Will the current council majority support this goal? We shall see.

Finally, and this all appears to be future oriented, "Promote Economic Development." So far, I think this has not been an area of success. The first item listed there, is continue to work to ensure sustainability of Westlake Shopping Center. It has been over a year since Food Fair left this shopping center, and amazingly the existing businesses have primarily survived. But I do not think the city has acted aggressively enough to maintain this shopping center.

Second, they mention Trader Joe's. Here I think the city has really squandered opportunities by allowing the situation at University Mall with RAS. I talked to councilmembers after the lawsuit was announced and they felt that people just wanted Trader Joe's and did not care how it got here. Since that time, I have spoken to many people on the street and on the blog and I do not sense that type of attitude. Most do not understand why it has to be where RAS is currently located and most sympathize with RAS. The city lost a lot of their leverage by providing a zoning change prior to an agreement between University Mall and RAS.

Third, is the pursuit of the business and high tech research park. This is the issue that was postponed from last meeting's agenda. It figures to be an interesting battle on the slow growth side as to whether it is better to develop that as a residential development or a high tech research park. The latter has gained more prominence since the Tsakaopoulos proposal has emerged, although that is mainly a proposal for housing developments in exchange for the Stem Cell Research facility, it is unlikely to be available without the housing development.

Finally, we can put the Davis Manor in the same position as Westlake Shopping Center. Both of these locations would make far more sense for Trader Joe's and other additions than the University Mall. The council is seeming to allow two key neighborhood shopping areas lie underutilized for a substantial period of time.

A number of the goals on this list are laudable if overly ambitious. However, my sense over the last two months is that much of these are taking place at the expense of the existing character of the city. I do not oppose housing development, vitalization of downtown, or economic development, but I would like to see plans that integrate these projects into the existing character, rather than what I think is a rapid destruction of existing character. Make no mistake, Davis is under siege in a lot of ways. The question for Davis residents, is "Do you want a city that continues to look and feel like Davis? Or, "Do you want a city that looks more like Fairfield, Vacaville, or even worse some of the more rapid growing Central Valley Communities like Elk Grove and Natomas?" These are the key questions we must ask ourselves as we try to go forward with many of these laudable and necessary goals.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting