A former state senator is
calling on lawmakers to change the law and make police departments transparent.
By Stephen Stock, Kevin Nious,
Jeremy Carrol and Scott Pham
When compared to other states,
Police Departments in California are among the least transparent in the
country. When citizens complain about the conduct of sworn police officers,
those complaints might go away and are never heard of again. In the last five
years alone, the Investigative Unit discovered 17.916 citizen's complaints
filed against the four major law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area, in
addition to California's Highway Patrol.
Yet, a state law called the Police
Officer’s Bill of Rights protects police from those who allege misconduct.
Looking for Answers
Tech entrepreneurs Peretz
Partensky and Ben Woosley came up against POBOR when he complained about what
he says was an unfair arrest. He says he saw two bicyclists injured along
Folsom street in San Francisco near his house. He didn’t even know the two
bicyclists, but he called 911 for medical help.
“The next thing I know, [the
police] grabbed me from behind and wrenched my arm back,” said Ben Woosley. He
said he and Partensky were trying to get answers from the police, but the two
were handcuffed and set on the ground.
“Since then,” Partensky said,
“I’ve not actually been able to get any information about the incident.”
It’s not an uncommon story.
Retired Marine Garret Bondaug was also left with unanswered questions when
police unexpectedly showed up at his mother’s Santa Clara home one night.
“We were literally watching
PBS,” Bondaug said. That’s when the police showed up at about 11pm. “As soon as
we ask ‘what for?’, [the officer] whipped out his ASD, aluminum baton, and
started beating me.”
Transparency in law enforcement
is an issue NBC Bay Area has been investigating for over a year after the
Investigative Unit heard the story of police brutality, OIegs Kozachenko. The
truck driver and Berkeley resident said he was trying to ask about a traffic
ticket an officer was writing him along I-80 west of Truckee. He had trouble
because English is his second language
• Berkeley Man Nearly Beaten to Death by CHP
“I apologized and said that I
didn’t understand,” Kozachenko told us through an interpreter.
Instead of answers, Kozachenko
ended up unconscious on the pavement with his hands cuffed behind his back.
When he stopped breathing, police rushed him to a level one trauma center.
Kozachenko and Garrett Bondaug
have each filed lawsuits against the police departments involved. Partensky and
Woosley filed citizens’ complaints. None of the police departments involved
have even offered acknowledgement that the complaints have been renewed by
internal investigators. “If this can happen to me,” said Bondaug, “what is
happening to other people out there who do not have the resources to fight?”
The State Law that Protects
Police From Scrutiny
Transparency is uneven across
police agencies. POBOR allows police to keep secret the details of internal
investigations or even official findings of misconduct. “It’s a sad, sad
statement for any police department to not have some level of transparency. And
when I say ‘some,’ I mean, it should be pushed as far as you can get it under
the law,” said LaDoris Cordell, head of the Independent Police Auditor Office
in San Jose. Cordell says San Jose police don’t invoke state law to avoid
scrutiny, but many do.
POBOR was passed in 1976[pdf]
and was designed to protect officers in Southern California who had become
targets of mass protests and threats. A 2006 Supreme Court ruling kept even
more information from the public by preventing civilian police commissions from
publically disclosing their misconduct findings. In some cases, the ruling
prevents commissions from even gaining access to officers’ personal files.
“The intentions are good,” John McGinnes said,
a consultant for the California Police Officers Association (CPOA). “Is there
potential for abuse? Absolutely. Have there been abuses? I believe so. But I
think savvy, wise, communicative law enforcement leaders can work through this,
and have.”
The CPOA is a training and
lobbying service for law enforcement across the state. The organization
official supports POBOR’s protections.
Misconduct Complaints are
Rising
The Investigative Unit asked
for internal affairs records from San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Santa
Clara’s police departments, plus the California Highway Patrol. It took
weeks—in some cases months—for the departments to comply. But, as a group, the
documents demonstrate a rising trend of citizens complaining about officer
misconduct.
From 2011 to 2012 (the last
year complete data is available) complaints about officer misconduct grew by
27%. The number of “sustained complaints” (meaning there was sufficient
evidence to prove the allegation) grew by a remarkable 68% in that same time
period.
The data we analyzed show that
complaints specifically about the use of force are increasing. In 2010 there
were 515 such complaints. In 2011 there were 800 and in 2012 there were 866.
Almost all of these excessive
force complaints were officially cleared. But in most cases, details about the
review process, interviews, evidence collected and the names of officers were
all kept secret.
“It’s disappointing, and it’s
also a little scary when you have police departments that decline to give you
any information about complaints that people have about an officer’s
misconduct,” said Cordell with the San Jose Independent Police Auditor, “And
the first thing that comes up is ‘what are you hiding?’”
Data on federal lawsuits tell a
similar story. Between 2009 and 2013 the number of civil rights and personal
injury lawsuits naming California law enforcement agencies (police, sheriff,
highway patrol) has almost doubled. Just 48 such lawsuits were filed in 2009
but 2013 saw 85. Since 2000, more than 800 such lawsuits have been filed in
federal courts.
Former State Senator Gloria
Romero tried to change POBOR during her time in Sacramento, but said the police
union opposition was too strong to overcome. “Most states in the nation allow
for the knowledge of these misconduct reports,” said Gloria Romero. “That
essentially translates to, we have a secret police force and I think that
surprises people in a democracy such as California’s.” Partensky and Woosley,
the two San Francisco residents who called 911 for some injured bicyclists,
never did get the answers they were looking for. The SF Police Department told
us that the two were detained for interfering with medical rescue crews. There
was no internal police review and no police officers were disciplined.
In the case of retired Marine
Garret Bondaug, Santa Clara won’t comment because of the pending lawsuit. And
the California Highway Patrol won’t say if they even conducted an internal
investigation for the beating of Russian truck driver Kozachenko.
Tomorrow, San Jose’s
Independent Police Auditor presents her findings to the city council, and NBC
Bay Area will dig into those numbers. Tune in at 11pm and online for the
results.