Our laws protect criminal cops
http://www.elkgrovenews.net/2019/11/our-laws-protect-criminal-cops.html
By Dan Walters | CalMatters Commentary |
When the state of California licenses professionals, it
is telling Californians that they can depend on licensees to perform their
services competently, that miscreants will be disciplined and that in serious
cases, their licenses will be lifted.
For instance, the state bar, which oversees attorneys,
publishes all of its disciplinary actions, along with the underlying
information that justifies its censures.
Alas, it doesn’t always work that way. Licensing
agencies are often dominated by the professions they regulate and are reluctant
to act on complaints. Moreover, professional trade associations lobby the
Legislature for special protections.
Police unions have been especially aggressive in
erecting barriers to disciplinary oversight, including a “peace officers bill of rights.” Politicians,
from the governor down, have been eager to do their bidding because their
campaign endorsements are precious political commodities.
Cop unions’ political clout has waned a bit in recent
years, most noticeably in failing to block measures that impose stricter
standards on use of deadly force and require the release of information on such
cases.
However, our laws still make it difficult, or even
impossible, to discipline rogue cops, and one of those laws is back in the
spotlight because of an extraordinary journalistic effort.
Last weekend, dozens of California newspapers published
a shocking article,
revealing that more than 80 police officers who had committed serious crimes
were still on the job.
In response to a series of fatal police shootings, the
investigating reporting program at UC Berkeley sought disciplinary records on
cops.
The Department of Justice rebuffed inquiries, but the UC
journalists submitted a Public Records Act request to the Police Officers
Standards and Training Commission (POST) and received data on 12,000 men and
women with criminal histories who had applied to become police officers, had
worked as officers or are currently employed.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra, threatening
prosecution, demanded that the records be returned.
The journalists not only refused but collaborated with
dozens of California newspapers to delve more deeply into the histories of
criminal cops who are still on the job and find out why. One revelation:
McFarland, a small San Joaquin Valley town, has an especially large number of
cops with criminal records.
The article points out that California was an early
leader in creating professional standards for police officers via POST,
including the power to take away certifications — in effect, their professional
licenses — for misconduct. However, when POST sought to tighten up standards in
the 1990s, police unions pushed a 2003 bill to take away that power.
The measure, Senate Bill 221,
was sponsored by a phalanx of police unions and supported by POST itself.
Carried by then-Sen. Gloria Romero, a Los Angeles Democrat, it whipped through
both houses of the Legislature on the “consent calendar” with no debate and was
signed by then-Gov. Gray Davis, whom the unions had helped win election and
re-election.
“They were protecting their working members by doing
something that would keep POST from ever getting a bigger bite of the apple,”
Mike DiMiceli, POST’s former assistant executive director, was quoted as saying
in the article.
POST now just adds a notation to officers’ training
records when they are convicted of felonies and doesn’t even note other, less
serious crimes. Thus, whether a cop is fired for some act is left to his or her
employer.
California is now one of just a handful of states that
cannot decertify criminal cops. That’s a civic embarrassment. Fixing it is in
the hands of today’s Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
CalMatters is a public-interest
journalism venture committed to explaining how California's state Capitol works
and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary. Elk Grove News is a media partner of CalMatters.
Post a Comment