Maybe It Is Time to Rethink Some Policies
According to the Associated Press, a police officer was involved in an on-duty shooting and wounded the suspect. The suspect was arrested. Apparently it was a controversial shooting because community members stormed the police station and tied two officers to their chairs. Then, in front of them, they hacked the shooting officer to death with machetes and set his body on fire. Twenty members of the mob were later arrested, but that didn’t do the hacked-up officer much good.
This occurred in Haiti. But you don’t have to go that far to find police officers gunned down in front of their homes; abducted, never to be seen again; and ambushed while on duty. Just look south a couple of hundred miles to Mexico. Closer yet, look less than a hundred miles east to Hemet. Two suspects have been arrested there in connection with stalking a police officer for months after he had arrested one of them. They set booby traps and even attempted to rig a rocket launcher to hit the police station.
Then a couple of months ago, Rampart station had to be evacuated because someone sent a threatening letter filled with an unidentified white powder to the LAPD officer involved in the shooting of the knife-wielding suspect that has received much media attention. The white powder turned out to be harmless — this time.
It doesn’t take much to set off people who are intent on breaking the law and inciting violence. According to news articles, a suspect was recently arrested and charged with attempting to hire an assassin to shoot an LAPD officer in the back of the head and bury him in the desert for impounding his car.
The point is that personal violence against police officers is getting closer and more likely on a daily basis. Not resisting-arrest-type violence, which has been with us since the first Roman Centurion went in pursuit of a speeding chariot, but personal-revengetype violence, the kind that targets a specific officer and has no respect for home, family or bystanders.
We learned this lesson in 1985. Detective Tom Williams was targeted for assassination by a suspect whom he had arrested for robbery. The suspect hired a gunman who had Tom’s home under surveillance and eventually tailed him to the school where he was picking up his son. Then the shooter did a drive-by with a fully automatic pistol. Williams shielded his son, but took nine bullets and died at the scene. The suspect was convicted and sentenced to death,but remains on death row 25 years later laughing at the criminal justice system.
If one were to dream up the perfect shooting that would have the support of the community, it would be the recent Rampart officer involved shooting (OIS). Citizens fleeing from a knife-wielding suspect flag down officers and request their help. The suspect is threatening a pregnant woman. When officers arrive, the suspect turns on them after they order him to drop the knife, necessitating a shooting. No one is hurt, except the suspect.
One can only conclude by the three days of subsequent rioting that officers cannot count on community support for anything. Everyone has an agenda and it has nothing to do with the truth or common sense.
This brings into question the Police Commission’s rule about routinely releasing the names of officers involved in an OIS. Why does it insist on this? Well, the reason usually stated is that it must do so under the attorney general’s opinion handed down on May 19, 2008. Attorney General Jerry Brown opined that in response to a California Public Records Act request for the names of peace officers involved in a critical incident, the agency must disclose the names unless, given the facts of a particular case, the public interest served by not disclosing the names clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosing the names.
What that means in plain language is that if an officer is operating undercover, or the incident involves a streetgang member and there is a possibility of retribution by other gang members or some such justification, the name need not be released. It is a case-bycase balancing process, says Brown.
There is, however, a big difference between releasing a name after a California Public Records Act request has been filed and voluntarily releasing names every time there is an OIS. After all, the only people who ever file California Public Record Act requests are the folks from the Los Angeles Times, and they aren’t interested in every critical incident. Heck, sometimes Paris Hilton is in town!
LAPD could be in compliance with the opinion by merely waiting for that California Public Records Act request and then cheerfully complying. That would at least give us a day or two to see if there will be rioting and to determine if the involved officers will be safe. But, no. The Commission’s policy, in the name of transparency, is to trot your names right out there. Not only that, a few months later they’ll post their opinion of your tactics and use of force on the Internet, complete with a detailed analysis of your actions for all to see.
Of course your names are cleverly hidden by referring to you as “Officer A,” “B” or “C.” Don’t worry that a Google search for police action on the date in question will usually bring up the incident from newspaper accounts, complete with your name, or that another computer search can easily result in your home address.
The Pasadena Police Officers’ Association (POA) actually went to court last year to prevent its department from releasing the names of two officers who had been in an OIS of a gang member. The POA feared retaliation. The judge agreed and restrained their department from releasing the names. The Los Angeles Times intervened and the battle raged on. Finally, the judge ruled that his order was moot because the newspaper had already published the officers’ names, which they had obtained from other police documents. The officers had also been named in a lawsuit. The final legal determination would not be worked out.
We know from the murder of our own Officer Tom Williams that these things happen. How long before it happens again? The Police Commission should hear warning bells before it is too late. There are times when it is too dangerous to be politically correct under the guise of transparency. That time is now.
Be legally careful out there.
