Biased Policing at the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Under the Leadership of Sheriff Lee Baca

Exactly 11th months to go

Sheriff Lee Baca is back in the news this week with yet another scandal. In a shocking new report, the U.S. Department of Justice accuses Baca’s department of violating the civil rights of residents receiving public housing assistance in northern LA County.

Among the Justice Department's findings, according to the statement:

• African Americans, and to a lesser extent Latinos, are more likely to be stopped and/or searched than whites, even when controlling for factors other than race, such as crime rates

• The widespread use of unlawful backseat detentions violating the 4th Amendment and L.A. County Sheriff's Department policy

• A pattern of unreasonable force, including a pattern of the use of force against handcuffed individuals

• A pattern of intimidation and harassment of African American housing choice voucher holders by sheriff's deputies

• Inadequate implementation of accountability measures to intervene on unconstitutional conduct has allowed these problems to occur.

LAPD Supervisor Lou Vince is challenging Baca in the Sheriff’s race in 2014. We have heard from him a few times this year on the issues of prisoner abuse and overcrowding in the LA County jails, and now he is expressing his disapproval of the kinds of appalling, discriminatory policing practices that Baca’s department is accused of.

Guest Post from Los Angeles Sheriff Candidate Lou Vince

After an exhaustive two-year investigation, the United States Department of Justice concluded that Sheriff Lee Baca’s Department violated the Constitution and federal laws in its treatment of African Americans, and to a lesser extent Latinos, in public housing in the Antelope Valley.

Officials found a “pattern or practice of discrimination against African Americans in its enforcement of the Housing Choice Voucher Program in violation of the Fair Housing Act,” and now the DOJ is demanding a $12.5 million settlement for the victims.

As the next Sheriff of Los Angeles County, I will ensure that all employees of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will enforce the law consistent with the Constitution of the United States of America. I will ensure that equal protection of the law is guaranteed to everyone. One of the Department’s most fundamental principles will be our commitment to treat all people with dignity, fairness, and respect.

Whenever the actions of members of the Sheriff’s Department are perceived to be, or found to be as in the DOJ investigation, biased, unfair, or disrespectful, the trust of the diverse communities we serve is severely diminished. The ability of the Sheriff’s Department to perform its job is dependent on the public’s approval and trust. As law enforcement officials, we need to maintain the trust and respect of the public in order to be effective at what we do. I will not tolerate any less.

I will not tolerate any discriminatory conduct on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or disability in the conduct of law enforcement activities. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies will not use race, color, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or disability to any extent or degree in conducting stops or detentions, except when engaging in the investigation of appropriate suspect specific activity to identify a particular person or group of individuals.

Sheriff’s Department personnel seeking an individual or group who have been identified in part by their race, color, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or disability may only rely in part on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or disability and only in combination with other appropriate identifying factors. Deputies shall not give race, color, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or disability any undue weight in taking law enforcement action.

Failure to comply with the above policy is a violation of an individual’s constitutional rights and is counterproductive to effective and professional policing. It amounts to biased policing and will be considered to be a serious act of misconduct. As Sheriff, I will demand that all Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department personnel are committed to serving each and every one of the diverse communities in Los Angeles County while protecting the rights of all people.

Justice may be blind, but the residents of Los Angeles County cannot be. The “ostrich optimism” so many have had relative to Sheriff Baca has been rebutted by nearly 16 years of Baca bringing us scandal after scandal. This latest biased policing investigation is just one more reason we need a change in leadership at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

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Ending Jail Overcrowding in LA County-- Guest Post from Los Angeles Sheriff Candidate Lou Vince

Last month we heard from LAPD Supervisor and LA County Sheriff candidate Lou Vince about the prisoner abuse scandal in the L.A. County jails under current Sheriff Lee Baca. For years, Sheriff Baca has been in denial about the >troubling events taking place in his jails.

As Vince noted in his guest post, a major factor in the scandal is the overcrowding of inmates in the county jails in California today. As he promised, he has penned the following guest post to explain what he would do to reduce overcrowding.

If you like Vince’s solutions, be sure to visit his website-- LouVince.com. Don’t forget, campaigns aren’t free, and Lou will need your support to make those reforms he talks about below. You can make a contribution to his campaign by clicking above.

Overcrowding has become an enormous problem in California prisons and the L.A. County jails. Due to a number of factors, the jails are operating beyond a reasonable capacity, and they can’t do it indefinitely.

As the general population grows, so does the jail population. Our jails are old and it is an unavoidable fact that we will have to make a tough decision as to how to deal with the overcrowding problem.

In the short term, there are basically two choices-- expand the jails to increase the capacity or contract with a regional jail to house inmates elsewhere, and I generally do not support either one of those options as they just create different problems. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road on finding a long term solution to overcrowding. New solutions must be implemented very carefully with cost effectiveness and public safety foremost in mind.

For the more long-term solutions, there are alternative sentencing options that can be successful, especially for first time, non-violent offenders, but they would require the justice system to take a leading role in their implementation.

I generally support programs that allow the inmates to work, and there are various possibilities-- such as work release and supervised probation-- that provide the inmates the opportunity to contribute to the community while still being held fully accountable for their crimes. I will also explore the emerging technology of “virtual incarceration.”

How did the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), indeed, the entire criminal justice system, get into this situation? Failure in leadership, failure to plan and failure to project population numbers are all part of the problem.

If the LASD, like any other major corporation, had a Formal Research, Planning and Analysis Division that issued formal population projections every six months, analysis of population trends and critical incidents, and cost-benefit evaluations of new LASD programs, this crisis could have been anticipated, managed and prevented.

Also contributing to the overcrowding of the County jails are other factors that need to be mentioned: the political stance of being “Tough on Crime;” mandatory sentencing for state prisoners and the trickle-down effect of squeezing inmates that would have gone to prison back down to the jails; the “Three Strikes” law (which I believe needs to be reworked); and, of course, California’s recent “realignment” of state prisoners to county jails.

It’s time to be "Smart on Crime," not just tough.

The current Los Angeles County Sheriff appears to be resistant to any reforms or purposely oblivious to the severity of the problem. His recent scramble to try to implement the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence recommendations, if 15 years of history is any indicator, will likely fall short.

Right now Sheriff Baca has actually proposed building a new jail, which he began lobbying County Supervisors for during one of the worst times in our economic history. I don’t believe we can spend our way out of these problems. We can use cost-saving measures to not only reduce overcrowding – but give inmates real opportunities to turn their lives around. Simply increasing capacity (building more jails) is simply not the way to go.

Here are four ways we can save money, free up space, and get lives back on track:

1) Investing in Virtual Incarceration

From ankle monitors to smartphone-tracking parole technology, virtual incarceration has been implemented across the country with almost universally positive results. With the budget problems we face in California, Los Angeles County should be leading the way on virtual incarceration techniques and have a state-of-the-art program for it by 2018. As Sheriff, I would make this a priority.

2) Creating New Data Collection Initiatives

A problem exists with the limitations of the County’s data collection system regarding Probation Violations and Non-Felony Bookings. There is insufficient reliable data to do a full scale analysis. LASD needs to facilitate policy analysis and improve the analysis of the flow of individuals and cases through the system with a Formal Research, Planning and Analysis Division. As Sheriff, I would create this important office.

3) Introducing Conditional Post-Conviction Release Bonds

We often allow for the early release of inmates from jail-- primarily non-violent offenders and juveniles-- so why not make these kinds of qualified inmates earn the opportunity to be released early by posting a bond? These bonds would not be available to hard-core criminals (like gang members, violent career criminals, and those that evidenced-based examination shows a high risk to re-offend) and would be revoked if the released inmate did not meet all the requirements of the program (like maintaining gainful employment and staying off drugs).

4) Improving Community Corrections

Intensive community supervision combined with rehabilitation services can reduce recidivism 10- 20%. For low-risk offenders, life skills training and education can mean the difference between returning to crime and returning to work. Sheriff Baca flaunts his Education Based Incarceration as a rehabilitative measure but it is desperately in need of reform.

The instructors are often jail deputies-- not credentialed teachers-- usually with a high school diploma and no teaching background, no class management training or awareness of how to educate students with special needs which describes most of the inmate population. Under this system, instruction amounts to, “Everyone get out your math book and put away your learning disabilities.”

This has to be changed. I propose creating an extensive team of credentialed volunteers, supported by paid staff, with experience in teaching an adult special needs population with bilingualism being a recommended criterion for acceptance.

Of course, there are many other reforms that can-- and should-- take place. Leadership is action, not position. As the Sheriff of Los Angeles County, I will take action and implement these reforms to the jail system.

And, to be clear, implementation is simply not enough. Any manager can implement something. The trick is to change mindsets and lead Deputies to incorporate the goals into their daily work lives.

Now is the time to move forward in a positive direction and effectively implement the reforms discussed in the body of this article, not just give them lip service and a column on a spreadsheet checked “implemented” as the current Sheriff has done.

Overcrowding in the LA County jails can be fixed, and I intend to fix it.

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Prisoner Abuse Scandal in L.A. County Jails-- Guest Post From Sheriff Candidate Lou Vince

In 2011, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a report in Federal Court giving L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca’s department a scathing review for his deputies’ treatment of prisoners. A New York Times article that year summed up the report:

One inmate said he was forced to walk down a hallway naked after sheriff’s deputies accused him of stealing a piece of mail. They taunted him in Spanish, calling him a derogatory name for homosexuals.

Another former inmate said that after he protested that guards were harassing a mentally ill prisoner, the same deputies took him into another room, slammed his head into a wall and repeatedly punched him in the chest.

And a chaplain said he saw deputies punching an inmate until he collapsed to the ground. They then began kicking the apparently unconscious man’s head and body...

“This situation, the length of time it has been going on, the volume of complaints and the egregious nature are much, much worse than anything I’ve ever seen,” said Tom Parker, a retired F.B.I. official who led the agency’s Los Angeles office for years and oversaw investigations into the Rodney King beating and charges of corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. “They are abusing inmates with impunity, and the worst part is that they think they can get away with it.”

But perhaps most troubling was the Sheriff’s denial of the problem. He “repeatedly dismissed any suggestion of a systemic problem in the jails, saying that all allegations of abuse are investigated and that most are unfounded.”

Last year, the County-appointed Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence cited Baca’s lack of leadership as a key reason why the abuse was happening.

Now the candidate challenging Baca in the 2014 race for Sheriff, LAPD Supervisor Lou Vince, who we first met last month, tells us his thoughts about the abuse problem and what he will do to solve it in his second DWT guest post.

If you agree with Lou’s plans for reforming the LA jails, be sure to visit his website-– LouVince.com. Don’t forget, campaigns aren’t free, and Lou will need your support to make those reforms he talks about below. You can make a contribution to his campaign by clicking here.

The L.A. County Jail System: "The Largest Psychiatric Hospital In The Country" 
-by Lou Vince

The episodes of prisoner abuse at the L.A. County jails are wholly unacceptable. Someone who has been arrested for or convicted of a crime can be reasonably expected to serve time as part of his or her debt to society. But it is not reasonable to expect them to face guards who callously beat them.

Marty Horn, the former Commissioner of New York City Department of Corrections and a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in his testimony to the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence (CCJV), told the commissioners that “Sheriff Lee Baca inevitably pays more attention to street patrols that are more visible to the public than to what happens in his jails.”

Patrols are important, but the jails are one of the Sheriff’s primary responsibilities, and in a jail system that has been suspect of problems for over a decade, it is unthinkable that the Sheriff could be so dismissive of this part of his job.

The good news is that there are solutions to the problems in the jails, and after years of studies and reports about the problems, it is time to implement the solutions.

One of the biggest problems is overcrowding in the jails. High density of inmates in the County facilities puts deputies on edge. Due to a number of factors, the jails are operating beyond a reasonable capacity, and they can’t do it indefinitely.

I will discuss the challenges of jail overcrowding further in a future guest post, but for now, I will say this: the challenges are not insurmountable. With “virtual incarceration” methods, new data collection initiatives, and conditional, post-conviction release bonds for non-violent offenders, we can sharply reduce the County jail population.

Another major problem in the County jails is the mental deterioration of prisoners with mental illnesses who are receiving little to no services while incarcerated. This problem is directly linked to violence in the jails.

The Los Angeles County jail system has been described by many experts and commentators as the largest psychiatric hospital in the country. The popular social movement of “De-institutionalization” of some years ago has turned into what some mental health experts now term “trans-institutionalization” because our society has transferred the population that once resided in psychiatric hospitals and mental institutions to our jails and prisons. 64% of jail inmates suffer from a significant mental health problem.

According to the opinions of Dr. Terry A. Kupers in a 2008 ACLU report, few inmates in the L.A. County jails were receiving mental health treatment and about 350 per 2,000 inmates were receiving only medications while being subjected to severe overcrowding or isolation but no mental health programming.

Additionally, in tours of Men’s Central Jail, Twin Towers, and the Inmate Reception Center he encountered a significant number of inmates who were either never diagnosed or were discharged from the caseload and transferred from mental health housing, administrative segregation, or disciplinary housing into the general population.

The connection between jail violence and mental illness should be obviously clear. Add jail overcrowding and you have a recipe for increased rates of violence, psychiatric breakdown, suicide, a loss of impulse control, temper flares, and increased noncompliance with rules and regulations.

Also of great concern was the fact that it was found that these mentally-ill inmates were rarely seen by psychiatrists and were being managed by Deputy Sheriffs who had no training in handling psychiatric patients. Deputies react to behaviors exhibited by the mentally ill. They become gruff, which is interpreted by the inmates as being “disrespected” and they, in turn, become angry. Their anger can and does result in being punished and so the anger escalates. Staff reacts and so the cycle continues.

As Sheriff, I would lobby the County Supervisors to mandate the Department of Mental Health to evaluate the need for substance abuse and mental health services among pre-trial and sentenced offenders, in both the incarcerated and community-supervised population, and develop a plan to fund and provide such treatment and services both in the correctional facilities and the community.

Finally, there is the problem of those deputies guilty of prisoner abuse. The old saying that it only takes “one bad apple” to ruin the bushel comes to mind. While prisoner abuse is not widespread among the deputies in the jails, it is well known that there are “cliques” of deputies who proudly engage in unprofessional behavior. There are also reports of deputies being instructed to abuse inmates by their superiors.

This behavior is unacceptable and has been accepted by the Sheriff for too long. I would make it a top priority to weed out those deputies who are guilty of conduct unbecoming of a law enforcement officer. Within the limits of the contract with the deputies’ union, I would reassign, reprimand, or even dismiss deputies who have violated the public’s trust.

Ultimately, the tasks of solving the problems in the County jails require leadership. Baca was elected in 1998 and, by the next election, will have had 16 years to spitball, plan, lead, guide, direct, train, motivate and implement any number of reforms, proposals and ideas. 16 years to bring in academics and subject matter experts. 16 years to try something “outside the box” or drill down and make existing processes more efficient.

Instead, while there has been some interest in reform only lately, it has only been stimulated by community outcry and the media shining the light on the issues that plague the County jails, and the LASD for that matter. While Baca has been the head of the jail system for 16 years, he has essentially been asleep at the wheel (something he more or less admitted during the CCJV hearings).

Leadership is action, not just a position or title. I will not tolerate inhumane or brutal treatment of inmates in my care and custody. As Sheriff, I will rely upon my integrity, experience, and desire for positive action to build a Sheriff’s Department the citizens can be proud of again.

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