In the News

Two men received the state’s highest award for police valor on Monday, including — for the first time — one from San Bernardino.

Officer Marcus Pesquera, 24, was honored for his quick and life-saving action in the gunbattle that wounded his field training officer, Gabriel Garcia, in August 2014.

At the time, Pesquera had graduated only seven weeks earlier from the San Bernardino County sheriff’s training academy, but he calmly followed academy training, Gov. Jerry Brown’s office said in a written statement. Read More

San Francisco police are investigating whether two of their officers violated department policy by having a “graphic” conversation that was caught on video and posted on Instagram in which they discuss what they would and would not want to be captured on body-worn camera footage in an officer-involved shooting.

Officials with the police officers union called reaction to the footage “completely overblown,” but Chief Greg Suhr said he expects his officers to “maintain the decorum and operate by an order of standards, policies and procedures.” Read More

A recent Gallup poll finding that public employees are happier than private-sector workers with their pension plans and other benefits has elicited a condescending response from the conservative American Enterprise Institute’s economics blogger, James Pethokoukis.

At least we think it’s condescending. His post is headlined: “No surprise: Government workers are way happier with their pension plans than private-sector counterparts.”

For employees who spend a career in state government, generous pensions put retired public workers among the highest earners in their state.
– Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute
It’s possible, one supposes, that Pethokoukis thinks the superiority of public pension plans is a good thing, and that he’s implicitly arguing that private employers ought to meet the public sector’s higher pension standards in order to keep their employees happier today and comfortable in retirement Read More

EDDYVILLE, Ky. — A Kentucky state trooper was killed in a shooting during a chase, and officers fatally shot the suspect when he refused to drop his weapon after an hours-long manhunt, officials said Monday.

Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder, who was 31 and had been on the force less than a year, was conducting a traffic stop Sunday night on Interstate 24 when the driver fled, Kentucky State Police said.
A chase ensued with the suspect stopping abruptly, causing the trooper’s vehicle to “make contact” with the rear of the suspect’s vehicle, said Trooper Jay Thomas, a state police spokesman. Read More

Thirty minutes before the meeting at a South Los Angeles church was supposed to start, the parking lot was already full.

Hundreds of people packed the pews of Hamilton United Methodist on Sunday — so many that some were left standing even after the choir lofts were filled. There were elected officials, community activists and gang intervention workers. LAPD commanders and a police commissioner. There were mothers whose sons had been killed on the city’s streets, and one man who had been shot himself a month ago. Read More

The Los Angeles Police Commission has six months to re-examine some of its more controversial policies on the use of body-worn video cameras, commonly called body cams, before making any revisions. Those policies require officers to review body cam footage before completing reports.

And in cases where officers have used serious force, they must look at the footage before speaking with department investigators about what happened.

Those requirements fly in the face of the best research on memory. The available science tells us that the integrity of police officers’ reports requires that they not view the video footage, and the Police Commission should seize the chance to reverse its policy. Read More

SAN JOSE — In a move with no known precedent in its 165-year history, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office is recommending murder charges against three correctional officers in the death of an inmate last week at the main jail, accusing them of viciously beating the man and admitting to using force only after the man was found lifeless in his cell.

Correctional officers Matthew Farris, Jereh Lubrin and Rafael Rodriguez, all of whom have been at their jobs for no more than three years, were arrested Thursday morning and are being held without bail. They work under the Sheriff’s Office but are not fully sworn deputies, and are represented by a separate union. Read More

In the wake of unnerving incidents of police violence against civilians across the country, communities and police departments struggle with how to build trust in the face of what’s perceived as racial or ethnic profiling.

California’s Legislature can take that all-important first step to help by passing Assembly Bill 953.

The bill would require police to keep records of car and pedestrian stops including the race or other identifier of the individual, the reason for the stop, how the person was treated and whether an arrest or citation resulted. Read More

Excessive use of force has long been a problem for the Oakland Police Department, leading to civic distrust, costly lawsuits and the nation’s longest-running federal intervention.

Despite several recent officer-involved shootings, a Chronicle analysis of Oakland Police Department data shows such incidents are becoming less common. Officer-involved shootings, excessive force complaints and incidents in which officers used force have all declined precipitously over the past three years in Oakland. Read More

Citing “deep reservations” with the LAPD’s body camera policy, the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union urged federal officials on Thursday not to give the department money to buy more of the devices.

The ACLU’s 11-page letter sent to Washington, D.C., on Thursday morning was the latest in which the organization has voiced its concerns about how the Los Angeles Police Department cameras — and their footage — will be used. A key issue: The LAPD has said it doesn’t intend to make video from the cameras public unless required through a criminal or civil court proceeding.

“We believe that the LAPD’s policy does not promote — and in fact undermines — the goals of transparency, accountability and creation of public trust that body-worn cameras should serve,” senior staff attorney Peter Bibring wrote. Read More

The free Hazardous Exposure Listing Program (HELP) allows you to document all injuries and exposures that may potentially cause you physical problems years into the future. Every police officer has […] Read More

Roger D. Wilson Attorney at Law Rains Lucia Stern, PC The Problem: A Slow, Confusing and Frustrating System Sergeant Miller was faced with a dilemma: wait until the TPA authorized […] Read More

Amid a rush of negotiations over transportation and health care funding proposals in the final weeks of California’s legislative session, Senate Republicans installed a new leader Thursday, while the Democratic Assembly speaker sought to tamp down jockeying to succeed her.
Senate Republicans ousted Bob Huff of San Dimas, electing Jean Fuller to replace him as minority leader.
The move came months ahead of a scheduled transition in November, and most Republican senators declined to discuss the circumstances of the decision. Fuller, of Bakersfield, declined to provide the vote tally or say if Huff agreed to step aside ahead of schedule. Read More

A state parole board panel is set to decide Friday whether Jesus Cecena should remain in prison for killing San Diego police officer Archie Buggs in 1978.
Buggs, 30, an Army veteran who served during the Vietnam War, had pulled over Cecena — then 17, now 54 — for a traffic infraction. Cecena, handed a gun by a passenger and fellow gang member, came out firing, authorities said, and Buggs died at the scene. Cecena was arrested within hours.
If the panel at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla decides Cecena should be paroled, the issue returns to Gov. Jerry Brown for the second time in a year. Read More

A Hayward police officer’s gun was stolen during a car burglary in Oakland’s Fruitvale District on Wednesday, marking at least the third such theft in the Bay Area in recent months, authorities said.

The latest incident was reported about 10 a.m. when members of an unspecified law enforcement task force informed Oakland police that an officer’s duty weapon had been stolen from a car parked near a Starbucks at the Fruitvale Station shopping center on the 3000 block of East Ninth Street. Read More

California voters widely support lifting the veil of secrecy that prevents the public from learning about police disciplinary matters or viewing footage from body cameras, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The results of the July survey come as lawmakers and police officials grapple with ways to restore public trust in law enforcement, which has come under scrutiny after a series of high-profile killings by officers across the country. Critics have called for more transparency of police conduct to help hold officers accountable for their actions. Read More

The constitutionality of California’s death penalty system will be reviewed next week by a panel of three Democratic appointees on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judges Susan P. Graber and Johnnie B. Rawlinson, Clinton appointees, and Paul J. Watford, an Obama appointee, were randomly assigned Monday to hear an appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that struck down the state’s death penalty law as unconstitutional.
Graber is a former Oregon Supreme Court justice. After joining the federal appeals court, she was once asked to recuse herself from a death penalty case out of Arizona because her father was killed in a carjacking nearly 40 years earlier.
One of the teenagers sentenced to death for her father’s killing later had his sentence overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Graber declined the recusal request in the Arizona case, which also involved a carjacking and killing.
Rawlinson is viewed as one of the most conservative Democratic appointees on the court. A former prosecutor from Las Vegas, Rawlinson was the only member of an 11-judge panel to vote to uphold a felony conviction of Barry Bonds, the former San Francisco Giants baseball player. Read More

According to the Yahoo Internet Dictionary, the definition of “change” is: 1. the act or instance of making or becoming different; 2. the substitution of one thing for another; 3. an alteration of one thing for another.

We have changed! While we hope it’s for the better, one thing is for sure. We will never be quite the same again. Collectively we remain wary and suspicious, and rightly so. We know, for example, that as we deliberated about whether to vote “yes” or “no” on our global settlement package, the question of non-pensionable retention pay was a huge issue. Read More