Office of Independent Review Annual Report
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Tenth Office of Independent Review Annual Report Michael J. Gennaco Chief Attorney Robert Miller Julie Ruhlin Deputy Chief Attorneys Cynthia L. Hernandez Angelica A. Arias Diana M. Teran DRAFT Bita Shasty Walter W. Katz Attorneys Angie Calderon Maria Avery Sylvia Newkirk-Ma Professional Staff 4900 S. Eastern Ave. Suite 204 City of Commerce California 90040 Telephone: 323-890-5425 Facsimile: 323-869-0715 www.laoir.com September 2012 Contents Foreword 5 PART ONE Violence in the County Jails: A Year of Turmoil and Reform 11 Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau’s Jail Investigations Task Force 12 Reviewing Force in Custody 17 Holding Deputies Accountable for Improper Force 32 Additional Recent Changes in Jail Policies and Procedures 36 Using Volunteers to Increase OIR’s Presence in the Jails 41 PART TWO Drugs, Fraternization & Off-Duty Violence 49 Drug Smuggling Into Jails 49 Drug Smuggling Training Video 50 The Burrito Deputy 51 Off-duty Violence Mixed with Alcohol 52 The Restaurant Melee 52 Quiet Cannon Christmas Party 56 Fraternization with Informants 60 PART THREE OIR Impact 65 Miscellaneous Misconduct Cases 65 Gang Injunctions: Working Toward Fairness 76 Performance Log Entries 77 3 PART FOUR Updates and Initiatives 83 Deputy Involved Shootings 83 Alcohol - Related Misconduct Update 96 Embezzlement of Towing Fees: 104 The Point of Sale System Service Comment Reports: 106 Status on Timeliness Creating Transparency for LASD’s Policies and Procedures 107 Information Flow within the Department 107 Executive Leadership: The Pitfalls of Conflicting Messaging 108 PART FIVE Finalized Discharge Cases for 2011 111 Discharges, Civil Service, and Settlements 111 PART SIX OIR Special Reports 119 Maywood Police Department Hires 119 A Look into the Mitrice Richardson Investigation 146 Eye on the Antelope Valley 168 APPENDIX A Summary of Systemic Changes - Year Ten 187 4 Foreword or centuries, society has punished those who offend its laws and mores by depriving them of liberty in jails and prisons. These inmates historically have lived in conditions of confinement ranging from substandard to inhumane, with most of the general populace showing little regard for either the conditions of those jails and prisons or Fthe offenders who must live in them. In general, the inmate in America is better off than his historical predecessors. The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents “cruel and unusual punishment,” which has been interpreted to provide base line protections and minimal standards of care to inmates, and judges have stepped in when those minimal standards have not been met. However, by and large, the criminally confined still engender little sympathy for or attention to their conditions of confinement. That being said, those entrusted with securing, maintaining, and protecting inmates must set aside any inclination to consider them only as criminals and therefore less worthy of humane treatment. In addition to ensuring that basic human needs are met, they must refrain from abusing their authority through infliction of inappropriate force. As importantly, those providing security should, whenever practicable, maintain that security through means other than physical force and resort to use of force only when there is no other viable alternative. Last fall, controversy surrounding the jails in Los Angeles erupted and generated concern about the conditions of the County’s jails. When OIR first started its work in 2001, the jails were overfilled with inmates. Cells designed in the 1960’s for two non-violent inmates were housing four inmates with violent histories, and cells designed for four inmates were crammed with six. It was not uncommon to have inmates do their time as “floor sleepers,” or crowded into “day rooms.” Using the day rooms as housing made it virtually impossible for deputies to monitor and was a contributing cause in at least one horrific jail homicide. Jail overcrowding also caused delays and undesirable situations at the intake stage. For instance, inmates being processed into the jail waited for days before being medically evaluated while 5 spending time sleeping on the floor or hard benches. The situation was even worse in the 1980’s, when inmates were required to sleep on the roof of the old Hall of Justice Building because there was nowhere else to house them. Mental health treatment for inmates in those days was almost non-existent. Because of pressure from the United States Department of Justice, mental health services for inmates have improved. Litigation by the ACLU and other public interest groups have been the motivating force behind some of the Department’s changes to improve jail conditions. The use of inappropriate force by jail custodians has also been an intractable problem for centuries. Jails and prisons are closed societies where the custodians have sometimes felt they had authority to inflict physical punishment with impunity. Because it is only the inmates and jail guards who “live” in that society, in which the outside world has little interest in or ability to view, centuries of mistreatment have gone unaddressed. Considered in this context, the recent attention drawn to the jails in Los Angeles County over the past year is remarkable. Whatever the reasons, the fact that there has been attention to the issues is, in our view, a welcome phenomenon. It has been too long that too few have been focused on the issue of the treatment of inmates. Outside eyes and interest always provide an opportunity for inspection, introspection, and reform. We have used the attention of the past year to push harder on programs, initiatives, and policies that are designed to check and decrease the use of inappropriate force. We have used the attention introspectively to see whether we can increase our efforts, reorient our resources, and focus our attention to the jails to make our impact more effective. And while more needs to be done, we are optimistic about some of those reform efforts taking root. The Department finally has cameras in Men’s Central Jail (MCJ) and there is promise that the other jails will soon have them as well. The presence of cameras cannot be understated – those lenses provide an objective window to the cloistered jail community and have already provided an invaluable tool for objective accountability and insight. It is unfortunate that it took years of discussion and delay before they were installed and operational at MCJ. While cameras have also been installed at Twin Towers and the Inmate Reception Center, “infrastructure” issues have prevented them from going on line. The Department has advanced other reforms as well, many of which we discuss in Part One of this Tenth Annual Report. We are not going to use these pages to further the debate about how the Los Angeles County Jail system stacks up to other correctional systems. We have seen how the same sets of numbers have been used by advocates on both sides to make their point about whether or not the jails in Los Angeles County are the “worst of the worst.” Suffice it to say that our collective experience touring other jails and prisons and working on past cases has taken us to prisons and jails where inmates are housed in tents; where inmates until recently were crammed in spaces intended to be workshops or gymnasiums; where inmates were receiving medical care so substandard that there were large numbers of unnecessary inmate deaths as a result; where investigations of 6 inmate abuse did not result in accountability because 40 percent of the investigations were not completed during the statutory deadline; where guards provably instructed inmates to beat up other inmates on a systemic basis; and where jail custodians routinely abused inmates in open and provable ways. The conditions in other correctional facilities suggest that inmate abuse and substandard conditions are not unique to Los Angeles County, with comparable sized jail facilities in the United States each having their share of allegations of abuse. That said, the fact that many in the Los Angeles County community have now focused attention on the County jails is a good thing, and the internal and external efforts to address the problems are welcoming. While force numbers have risen and fallen, sometimes inexplicably, a rise in numbers should be a cause for concern, in the same way that a rise in deputy-involved shootings should be a focus of attention. However, OIR believes that it is the individual cases and analyses that provide more insight into what is going on than force numbers overall. That is why we were dismayed to learn that we had been shut out of some of those analyses over the years that we have provided oversight for the Sheriff’s Department. We have identified contributing causes to the use of force by deputies in the jail in the past, but it cannot hurt to reiterate them here: 1. At Men’s Central Jail the physical plant itself presents a challenge. The linear design of the jail in old fashioned cell blocks makes it difficult for deputies to monitor the inmates. The age of the jail makes plumbing, temperature, and other housing conditions difficult to maintain. The configuration of inmate housing eliminates the opportunity for direct supervision or other more progressive housing configurations. 2. The deputy/inmate relationship needs continual work. Leadership needs to strive to ensure that all deputies assigned to Custody understand the importance of their work and the need for vigilance, and accept that their main responsibility is to keep inmates housed in decent conditions, with proper medical care and other necessities of life, and to keep them safe from each other. 3. Deputies need to recognize how force is never a desirable outcome in resolving issues with inmates. Certainly, in some situations it is a necessary outcome.