2017

Taking the Lede

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 20:22:20 +0000

Taking the Lede Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/14/2017 - 14:22 CU News Corps

In the spring and summer of 2015, CU News Corps students worked on a documentary film titled “Taking the Lede.”

The 45-minute film tells the stories of Colorado high school journalists who have covered difficult stories during times of crisis; who have done ground-breaking investigative work that brought the Pentagon’s wheels to a grinding halt; and who have drawn attention to critical human rights issues.

News Corps enlisted the help of Dr. Marguerite Moritz, the producer of the award-winning documentary “Covering Columbine,” to help tell the story of student press freedom over the 25 years since the Colorado General Assembly passed the Student Freedom of Expression Law in 1990.

The film made its debut at the Rocky Mountain Journalism Camp, July 8, 2015, at CU Boulder. It has also been shown on Rocky Mountain PBS Channel 12 in Denver and at numerous sites across the country, including San Francisco, Palo Alto, Fort Collins, Minneapolis, and Bloomington and Franklin, Indiana.

“Taking the Lede” earned a Best of Competition Award at the Broadcast Education Association’s 2016 Festival of Media Arts.

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What Denver police can learn from Seattle’s de-escalation policy

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2017 17:04:13 +0000

What Denver police can learn from Seattle’s de-escalation policy Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/17/2017 - 11:04 Stephanie Cook

Last January, the Denver Police Department re-drafted its use-of-force policy in an attempt to better meet community standards for policing. Unfortunately, the department’s efforts fell short of the public’s expectations on several levels.

Courtesy photo

Perhaps the biggest issue was the complaint by groups who said they felt left out of the process.

Only after the policy’s release – and the subsequent outcry for more community engagement – did the department seek out community input. The department set up an email account where community members could respond to the new policy, and later scheduled three community meetings to discuss the new draft.

In addition to complaints about the process through which the department drafted the new policy, the policy itself was criticized and rejected. Citizen groups said the changes didn’t go far enough, and police organizations argued that the new policy could lead to more crime and set officers up for failure.

The current draft was overly vague with a standard below that of other major U.S. agencies, wrote Denver Independent Monitor Nicholas E. Mitchell in a letter to Denver Police Chief Robert White. In addition, Mitchell wrote, the drafted policy failed to adhere to national standards, including in its definition of “deadly force”.

It has been four months since the department first released its draft of the new policy, and so far little progress has been announced. There appears to be no end date in sight for releasing a new version of the policy, leaving officers and the community in limbo.

The department’s treatment of this process is important. The new policy will set guidelines for how much force should be used when engaging with suspects, what type of force to use and when to use it. These standards can change the whole philosophy behind a department and can make or break community relations.

Most importantly, when implemented properly, better use-of-force policies have the potential to save lives.

Denver is only the latest of a number of large cities working to re-think their use-of-force practices and add an emphasis on what police call de-escalation.

At its heart, de-escalation is the practice of defusing situations rather than inflaming them. It’s the art of creating more time, more space and more dialogue between an officer and a suspect in hopes that both will emerge safely from whatever conflict they’re in.

The officer-involved shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, followed by several high-profile incidents involving the death of black suspects at the hands of white officers, prompted more than a dozen cities and states to implement de-escalation trainings, either as part of their usual trainings or as a separate requirement.

According to a map created by the investigative news organization, AMP Reports, 15 states currently require de-escalation trainings.

Colorado officers are required to take two hours of de-escalation training during their first year, with additional two-hour trainings required on a two-year cycle, according to Colorado POST. Other cities like Dallas, Las Vegas, New York, Chicago and Minneapolis have embraced de-escalation tactics and use-of-force reform to seemingly positive results.

One of the most noteworthy cities to reform its use-of-force standards is Seattle, where only a few years ago the community’s anger over excessive force prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to become involved, issuing a consent decree. In its complaint against the department, the DOJ wrote that officers at the Seattle Police Department showed a pattern of conduct that “deprives persons of rights, privileges, and immunities secured and protected by the Constitution and the law of the United States.”

In 2012, SDP and the DOJ came to an agreement that reached into the heart of the department’s practices. The agency, once known for its aggressive and sometimes controversial tactics, would go on to become one of the first in the nation to make de-escalation guidelines a matter of policy.

Today the agency is a leader for de-escalation training, practices and policy around the country – referenced heavily and favorably in the Police Executive Research Forum’s Guiding Principles On Use of Force, which was published with cooperation by agencies around the country in 2016.

As DPD officials struggle to draft a use-of-force policy that satisfies community and police standards, Seattle can serve as a case study for what can go wrong and what can go right when it comes to use of force.

I traveled to Seattle to find out how SPD officers worked to change their use-of-force practices, and to see what officials in Denver can learn from a city where new policies led to positive changes.

SEATTLE – “Possible shooting, 159 Denny Way, we’ve got an employee that said someone was getting shot and then disconnected the line.”

This is what came over the radio about 20 minutes into my ride-along with Sgt. Dan Nelson.

The call made me cringe. Before moving home to Colorado, I spent three years in Seattle, and I recognized the address as being near the heart of the city.

Nelson, however, seemed remarkably relaxed. Navigating the steep, narrow streets of downtown Seattle, the broad-shouldered, good-natured officer cruised along, unfazed by the chaos of UPS trucks squeezing around corners and bikes flying through intersections.

Stephanie Cook/CU News Corps

Sgt. Dan Nelson fills out a report after responding to a shooting threat in downtown Seattle. These reports help SPD keep track of use-of-force incidents.

“You get a pretty good rush of adrenaline, so you have to manage it so you can make a clear decision so that we don’t end up in crisis,” Nelson said, steering an old black car recycled from one of the gang units down a hill crammed with cars parked on both sides.

We pulled up to a business complex where blue and red lights of at least eight other police vehicles flashed on both sides of the block. I braced myself before stepping out of the car to watch Nelson enter the glass doors of Emerald City Cleaners, where the call originated.

Inside, a cluster of officers surrounded a man who was looking up at them from a chair. A few crouched down in an effort to talk to him. No one was running or yelling, and there didn’t appear to be anyone injured inside or out on the street.

After a few minutes, Nelson emerged with an update. There was no shooting, he said. The man in the chair had come by the store earlier for a job interview, but his behavior made a female employee nervous and uncomfortable. The situation escalated, leading the man – not the employee – to call in the shooting that we heard over the radio.

This incident – involving false claims of a shooting, confusing information and a man who couldn’t reasonably explain himself – could have ended tragically under different circumstances. Instead, officers were able to quickly figure out that the man had no weapon and wasn’t an imminent threat, calm him down and begin searching for the best solution for the public and the suspect. To do this, officers looked into the suspect’s criminal history, as well and his mental health history.

“He does have a history of mental health issues,” Nelson said. “I called the crisis clinic and they told me that he’s not receiving services anywhere. We don’t have a diagnosis – there’s no hospitalization history – but he was enrolled in our municipal mental health court back in 2014, so we know that there is some kind of mental health nexus there. Right now he’s saying that he’s Jesus Christ and he’s pretty delusional, so they’re trying to figure out what they’re going to do with this person.”

The officers wound up with a choice between arresting the man or hospitalizing him. They chose the second option, and rather than sending him off in the back of a police car, the man was transported into an ambulance.

For Nelson, the coordinator of SPD’s Crisis Intervention Program, this incident showed the positive result of years of work trying to find ways of peacefully resolving confrontations between the police and mentally ill suspects.

Seattle once had an ugly track record of using excessive force in confrontations with its sizeable mentally ill and homeless populations.

One of the most high-profile cases took place in 2010, shortly before the 2011 consent decree, when an officer noticed a man walking through a cross-walk with his head down while holding a small knife. The officer left his patrol car, yelled to the man, and then and shot him four times, killing him in the street. The man turned out to be a Native American woodcarver named John T. Williams. He was holding a small piece of wood and a pocket knife that he used for carving.

The shooting, which was later ruled as being unjust by SPD’s Firearm Review Board, prompted a huge community outcry. Nelson’s mission is to help SPD officers avoid similar situations in the future, by teaching them to safely engage with suspects rather than going straight for their weapons.

When SPD began taking steps toward use-of-force reform, they asked Nelson to help design de-escalation trainings. He soon realized, however, that there was no real model to follow.

“They were like ‘Just go out there and whatever’s on the shelf, let’s go ahead and do that,’” Nelson said. “I’m like, ‘Perfect.’ And so I was in charge of Googling, and I was trying ‘de-escalation for cops’ and there was nothing out there – there was nothing.”

Nelson and the department looked at research, as well as other agencies in the states and abroad, to find ways to add de-escalation into their routines.

“We now have gotten to the point where de-escalation concepts are literally ingrained in all of our trainings,” he said

Some of the most effective methods of de-escalation seem incredibly simple. Officers can back up rather than charging forward toward a suspect. They can try to speak calmly and use open body language. Rather than folding their arms or holding the collar of their tactical vests – a common habit among police, Nelson said – officers can keep their arms out by their sides and turn their palms up when they address a suspect.

While these techniques are basic, they do require practice.

Learning and implementing de-escalation techniques can be especially difficult for veterans of the force, who may have been taught for years that they should act with absolute authority and resolve situations as quickly as possible by whatever means necessary. This group includes Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole, who attends mandatory trainings along with all other officers, trainers said.

Stephanie Cook/CU News Corps

Sgt. Dan Nelson (far left) and other officers stand by as a suspect is transported to the hospital for mental health treatment.

“I was trained to fight the war on crime, and we were measured by the number of arrests we made and our speed in answering 911 calls,” O’Toole told The New York Times in 2015. “But over time, I realized that policing went well beyond that, and we are really making an effort here to engage with people, not just enforce the law.”

Nelson finds ways to break the tension at trainings, so that officers don’t feel attacked or become defensive when learning to avoid problematic techniques of the past.

“This really helps set the stage for a little comic relief,” he said queuing up a projector. “Not really comic relief, but, um, it takes the edge off of talking about de-escalation. It’s a really hard topic to talk about with cops because they’ve been so heavily scrutinized.”

On the screen, Nelson played an old-timey black and white movie where officers find themselves dealing with people in various mental health crisis. The film was at once hilariously outdated and oddly pertinent.

“To a mental patient in this condition, the threat of a gun is meaningless,” the chief in the video says. “What is needed here is manpower.” The chief goes on to describe several of the exact same de-escalation tactics Nelson teaches today.

“This is New Orleans in the 60’s,” Nelson said laughing. “This is they’re training video and what were they talking about? They’re talking about experienced patrol officers, there talking about – jail’s not a great place for people with mental health issues – they’re talking about the reason we’re getting into trouble is because people try and handle things themselves – they don’t call in enough resources. It’s like, we’re having this conversation in the 60’s, here we are in 2017, you know this is not new material.”

The material isn’t new, but putting de-escalation into police policy is. There’s a whole section in the department’s manual on de-escalation, and the main point is as follows:

“When safe under the totality of the circumstances and time and circumstances permit, officers shall use de-escalation tactics in order to reduce the need for force,” the policy states.

This doesn’t mean officers don’t use their guns in Seattle.

When the public or an officer is in imminent danger, police are expected to shoot. However, under this policy, an officer who shoots his or her weapon should be ready to defend that decision, and explain any ways they tried to avoid such an outcome. Shooting should be the last choice an officer makes, not the first.

In the classroom, Nelson walks through these techniques using slides, showing photos of people in a parking lot holding various objects, sometimes with bystanders nearby and sometimes by themselves, and asks whether force should be used in each case. Even in a calm, controlled environment, it’s tricky to figure out when to apply force and how much to apply.

Of course police face much higher stakes in their jobs, where they don’t have time to contemplate all the possible outcomes. This is where SPD’s live trainings come into play.

Nelson’s colleague, Lt. Shannon Anderson, helps conduct these trainings, putting officers through scenarios that are as realistic as possible and then debriefing afterward.

The live trainings are conducted inside a warehouse-like building, sectioned off by tarps and mats to create various rooms that resemble low-budget theater sets. The whole scene is an odd contradiction between official police business and DIY-style ingenuity.

It’s amazing the things trainers have come up with, Anderson said, pointing to pieces of plywood on wheels that can be rolled around to create dark corners or dividers. Inside a long, dark hallway, the same wooden dividers were placed in shadows with posters of various suspects – some who looked creepy but had no weapon, and others who were wielding a gun.

After the simulations and after real-life incidents, Anderson encourages officers to constantly reflect.

courtesy photo

“We look at incidents and we say, ‘OK, what could we have done better?’” Anderson said. “And it’s not to say that we did anything wrong, it’s just to say, ‘What could we have done better? What could we have done differently?’ ”

SPD officers are required to take at least eight hours of critical incident training, aimed at dealing with people in the midst of a mental health crisis. Officers can also take 40 hours of training to receive an advanced certificate. Several of the officers who responded to the suspected shooting at Emerald City Cleaners, Nelson said, had earned the special certification.

Critical incident training and de-escalation training were traditionally separate, but the department is working to combine them into one track.

In addition to putting de-escalation into policy and implementing trainings, SPD started keeping better track of its daily encounters. Through these improved crime statistics, the department can better understand how much force its officers are using, when they are using it, and when they are successfully avoiding it.

Based on these statistics, the department’s efforts to improve its use-of-force practices and make de-escalation a priority seem to be saving lives.

According to a report on crisis intervention by the department throughout 2015, fewer than 8 percent of people experiencing a mental health crisis were arrested. Also, out of about 9,300 crisis responses the same year, 149 involved any use of force, with 36 of them involving force greater than low-level force. This means that in 2015, about 1.6 percent of incidents involving a person in the midst of a mental health crisis ended in force, and about .4 percent of those cases ended in more than the lowest-level force.

Denver and Seattle are different cities with different issues, but communities in both places want to know that the sanctity of life is at the forefront of officers’ minds. As Chief White continues to revise the city’s use-of-force policy, he should remember this.

DPD officials could make their commitment to the local community clear by making de-escalation a strong part of the department’s policy, and by adding de-escalation methods to all areas of officers’ training. The department should keep rigorous statistics on its practices so that it can monitor its progress and assess areas that need improvement.

Courtesy photo

In addition, the community, as well as other officers and officials, should be a part of this conversation.

Most importantly, Chief White shouldn’t wait for a wake up call to happen before these changes are made. Drafting the new use-of-force policy and implementing it effectively should be a priority with a clear and realistic timeline.

Back in her Seattle office, Anderson warned of the dangers of complacence.

“Everybody just kind of goes, ‘Ooh, we’re operating really well, we can concentrate on other things,’ and then something happens and we realize, ‘OK, wait a minute, we can’t let up, we have to keep these lines of communication open,’” she said.

That’s a lesson Denver can learn the hard way, or the easy way, depending on its actions moving forward.

The Supreme Court and Denver police

The legal precedent for use of force was set by the 1989 Supreme Court case, Graham v. Conner.

“The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight,” wrote Justice William Rehnquist in his opinion on behalf of the court.

Denver Police Department’s proposed use-of-force policy includes a section on reasonable and necessary force that mirrors the Supreme Court’s language:

“Reasonable and Necessary Force: A standard which requires officers to use only that degree of force that is reasonable and necessary under the totality of the circumstances to safely accomplish a legitimate law enforcement function. Reasonable and necessary force is an objective standard, viewed from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.”

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The Thin Blue Veil

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2017 13:06:42 +0000

The Thin Blue Veil Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/17/2017 - 07:06 Deepan Dutta

Why is it so hard to get police records in Colorado?

On the night of January 15, 2015, Aurora Police Department officers shot and killed Kavonda Payton.

Denver police on patrol downtown during 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Local news reports from the Denver Post and 7News covered the shooting the day after, but did not follow the story beyond that. Westword did a brief follow-up article about Payton and reactions from friends and family. None of these outlets attempted to seek out or analyze police reports or other records to try to reconstruct the shooting.

According to the 18^th Judicial District Attorney’s report of the shooting released eight months later, the incident began with an armed robbery at a convenience store and led to a high-speed car chase. After winding through the streets of northern Aurora for a few miles, officers used their patrol cars to ram the suspect vehicle into a ditch. One of the suspects, Payton, tried to flee from the wrecked vehicle by foot. In their reports, every officer reports seeing Payton pointing a gun in their direction before they shot him. After investigating, the DA concluded the officers’ shooting was justified, and filed no charges. This report remains the only official account of what happened that night.

Yet even that report raises questions and omits details; such as how officers were able to so clearly see a handgun in Payton’s right hand in the pitch-black darkness of the dirt road, or how Payton was shot three times in the back while turning to point a gun at officers, or why there is a discrepancy between officer accounts about which hand Payton was holding the gun with.

Raising these issues does not refute the report, nor assert that Payton’s shooting is unjustified. They address a broader point: transparency and access to police records. During the investigation, the public were unable to access records of Payton’s shooting, due in large part to the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act (CCJRA).

The CCJRA allows public access to law enforcement records such as police reports, arrest records, forensic analysis, witness statements, etc. The CCJRA is similar to the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), the statute that allows public access to government records, but with one big difference – if law enforcement officials really do not want to release something to the public, they usually do not have to.

“In Colorado, at least, it is a very discretionary law for law enforcement agencies,” said Jeffrey A. Roberts, Executive Director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition (CFOIC). “Most records can be withheld if the agency conducts a balancing test and determines that release would be ‘contrary to the public interest.’”

That language comes from C.R.S. §24-72-204(2)(a), and is broad enough to give law enforcement agencies a lot of discretion as to what information they can seal or redact.

Often, police custodians cite an ‘ongoing investigation’ that may be compromised if these records are released. “In a lot of cases, it is understandable where a law enforcement agency needs time to do its job,” Roberts acknowledged. “People get that.”

However, Roberts said, this excuse is sometimes used even long after the case has been resolved.

“This reasoning is used sometimes for investigations that are very, very old but they claim they are still open, so it’s a way to close off records entirely sometimes when there’s not much happening with the case.”

When it comes to police oversight, internal affairs records are often the most important for the public to access, as they contain information of possible police misconduct. However, police agencies often protect these records the most because of their sensitivity, and Roberts sees this as a significant obstacle to transparency.

“When a law enforcement officer is accused of acting improperly on the job, and there’s been an investigation into that and the investigation is complete, it is often in the public interest to know what that investigation revealed.” However, “those records are part of that large section of criminal justice records that can be withheld under that ‘contrary to the public interest’ provision.”

Civil rights organizations are also concerned about the difficulty of obtaining these records. Denise Maes, Public Policy Director at the ACLU of Colorado, said the organization favors police agencies to be as transparent as possible.

“We urge our policy makers to make Internal Affairs Bureau files explicitly subject to the CCJRA,” Maes said. “The public interest exception is big loophole in our transparency-first approach.”

Cost is often another barrier to accessing any public records. Both CORA and CCJRA allow a maximum 25-cent per page fee for all public records. Additionally, if a record custodian needs time to find and review records for sensitive information, they may legally charge 30 dollars per hour for research and retrieval — with the first hour free. Those fees can accumulate into thousands of dollars, and while CORA requires waivers for purposes such as education or journalism, the CCJRA leaves waivers at the sole discretion of police custodians.

In a recent blog post on the CFOIC website, Roberts reported how a Sheridan resident fared when he made an open records request to the city clerk for any e-mails relating to the city’s red light camera and photo radar systems. The city returned with an estimate of $20,000 to comply with the request due to the huge amount of work involved in recovering and searching the e-mails from an outdated system.

Roberts said that more often than not, cities are not trying to be malicious when they present these kind of estimates; they are simply not able to handle these kinds of requests because of outdated systems and record-keeping practices.

Regardless of whether the city is intentionally trying to create the cost barrier, it still creates a hindrance to access. Roberts explained.

“The bottom line is, yeah, they’re public records, but you can’t have them because there’s no way anybody can ever afford that.”

The Colorado legislature is trying to address some of the cost and access problems with recent legislation. SB17-040 would require custodians to store public records in the same digital format as they are created, as well as making them searchable – such as with a PDF format. The law would require local agencies to update or upgrade their systems as necessary to allow easier public accessibility.

Maes said the ACLU is supportive of SB40 to the extent that it resolves issues with accessibility. However, the organization is concerned about the direction the bill is taking.

“[SB40] has been bogged down by amendments that we think compromise government transparency and as a result, we are watching the bill carefully.”

In the end, the ACLU and CFOIC both agree that the introduction of the bill is a step in the right direction for public access to records.

“Ultimately,” Maes said, “transparency is the goal.”

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Prosecuting Cops: A Lawyer’s Perspective

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2017 13:06:42 +0000

Prosecuting Cops: A Lawyer’s Perspective Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/17/2017 - 07:06 Deepan Dutta

This piece is the opinion of its author, an attorney and a journalist

It is extremely rare for Colorado law enforcement to be charged with a crime after shooting people in the line of duty.

Colorado's Supreme Court Building

On June 23, 2016, a jury convicted former Rocky Ford police officer James Ashby of murder in the second degree for shooting and killing 27-year-old Jack Jacquez in the line of duty. It is the only conviction of the kind in living memory. Ashby was the first officer since 1992 to even be charged with murder in the line of duty. Before that was a case in 1977. In both previous cases, the officers were acquitted.

As a former criminal defense attorney who has spoken to colleagues who have experience with these cases, I have come to discover these cases are very hard to prosecute.

Colorado law gives law enforcement a certain amount of leeway when it comes to use of force. The relevant statute, C.R.S. 18-1-707, reads:

A peace officer is justified in using deadly physical force upon another person… only when he reasonably believes that it is necessary:

(a) To defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force; or

(b) To effect an arrest, or to prevent the escape from custody, of a person whom he reasonably believes:

(I) Has committed or attempted to commit a felony involving the use or threatened use of a deadly weapon; or

(II) Is attempting to escape by the use of a deadly weapon; or

(III) Otherwise indicates, except through a motor vehicle violation, that he is likely to endanger human life or to inflict serious bodily injury to another unless apprehended without delay.

The “reasonably believes” language is the most problematic for prosecutors. Even if there are contradicting witness statements, prosecutors are required to take the officer’s subjective belief of danger into account if it seems at all reasonable under the circumstances.

If a suspect reaches toward their pockets or waistband, or makes any other sudden move, or has any type of object in their hands, an officer can claim they perceived a danger and took a shot to prevent it. Prosecutors cannot contradict that claim without sufficient evidence, such as video.

Even if a prosecutor decides to file charges, they must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That burden is made harder when juries are often made up of people who are raised to believe law enforcement are “the good guys” and therefore less likely to see them as murderers.

Prosecutors specifically cited this statute when they refused to bring charges against officers involved in the shooting death of Jessie Hernandez and Naeschylus Vinzant. In the case of Jessie Hernandez, officers claimed that she attempted to run them over with her vehicle, while in Vinzant’s case officers claimed he merely lowered himself into “an athletic posture or fighting stance.”

In both cases, prosecutors found the officers were justified in their belief that their lives were in danger.

Officer Ashby’s case was exceptional in that his version of events provided no reason to believe that he or anybody else was in immediate danger. His version of events also contradicted the physical evidence as well as statements made by his own partner and the deceased man’s mother. Ashby also had a checkered history of internal affairs investigations and misconduct claims, which lowered his credibility in the prosecutor’s eyes.

The other issue is use of force policy for police officers. After paying out $14.5 million over just three years for civil settlements involving use of force, Denver police have been undergoing a series of reforms to their use of force policy, encouraging de-escalation of situations to prevent use of deadly force.

However, the policy has received criticism from police unions who say input from officers was not taken into account, as well as criminal justice experts who found some of the language to be unclear or providing loopholes through which unjustified force can still be used. The lack of consistency and clarity in use of force policies, as well as training procedures that mandate officers shoot to kill whenever they feel threatened, create great confusion for officers who make life or death decisions within seconds. That is asking for disaster.

The law needs reform to give prosecutors the tools and ability to do their job when an officer truly does go rogue and needlessly takes lives. However, reform is also needed on the policy side, so there is less ambiguity for officers when they put their lives on the line. The Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21^st Century Policing is a good basis upon which departments can push reform, and it should see more acceptance among the rank and file as it encourages input from officers themselves instead of forced adaptation to new rules.

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‘Suicide by Cop’ an increasing burden for police who are threatened by armed citizens

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2017 13:06:42 +0000

‘Suicide by Cop’ an increasing burden for police who are threatened by armed citizens Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/17/2017 - 07:06

Halina North

One October morning in 2016, Brandon Simmons walked up to the Champions Center on the �鶹��Ƶ campus wielding a 31-inch machete.

Stock image

He approached the building and scribbled a bevy of words on car windows—”murder,” “disrespect,” “cursing thy father’s name,” “judgment,” The Boulder Daily Camera reported. Simmons began climbing the stairs of the arena. When he reached the door to the fifth floor, which can be accessed only by key card, he encountered Officer Clay Austin of the CU Boulder Police Department and Officer Jason Connor of the Boulder Police Department.

The officers ordered Simmons to drop his weapon. When he did not comply, the officers opened fire. They fired 15 shots. Simmons was the third person killed by Boulder Police in 2016.

“Our job is to stop the threat, whatever means that takes,” said Scott Pribble, a spokesperson for the CU Boulder Police Department. “We prefer that it doesn’t involve an officer firing their weapon. We prefer that when we encounter that person, that they comply with orders and surrender their weapon. That’s not what happened that day.”

Neither deputy involved was available for an interview about the incident.

Pribble said Simmons moved at officers in an “attacking, menacing fashion.” This is when officers must make the split-second decision to handle the threat in a deadly manner.

Police retrieved two ripped-up letters from Simmons’ kitchen trash that hinted at a recent breakup and a potentially abusive relationship. In addition, the autopsy had evidence of THC and amphetamines in his blood.

Data indicate that the Simmons case is one of many examples of police firing weapons at individuals suffering from a mental health crises and addiction, according to Boulder District Attorney Stanley Garnett.

“When there’s a police shooting it’s often in a vacuum,” said Tampa Bay Times reporter Ben Montgomery. “We don’t know how to respond to it because we have this sense of maybe injustice, especially the more controversial shootings, but we don’t have the numbers to be able to offer context for these shootings, so that was the mission.”

From 2009 to 2014, The Tampa Bay Times found that 827 people in Florida were shot by police.

The Times discovered 246 of the 827 people shot showed signs of mental instability — 85 of those were placed in a category called “Suicide by Cop.”

Rebecca Stincelli, author of Suicide by Cop: Victims from BOTH Sides of the Badge, said “suicide by cop,’ refers to instances when a suicidal subject acts in a deliberately life-threatening manner, provoking police officers to respond with deadly force.

The Minnesota Star Tribune wrote a story about the people who died after an encounter with law enforcement after 2000. They found that 68 of the 155 cases —45 percent — had history of mental illness or were having a mental health crisis at the time of the incident.

“Most people that choose suicide by cop are under huge emotional distress; they want to die they just can’t pull the trigger themselves, but the officer doesn’t know that until after the event. They don’t know that the person was someone who was crying out for help,” Stincelli said. “That is the most tragic part of all.”

In a report by Kris Mohandie, Ph.D., on suicide-by-cop in officer-involved shootings found that 36 percent of the 707 research subjects were classified as suicide-by-cop. Most commonly, those involved were white males, with an average age of 35. In 62 percent of suicides-by-cop, the subject had a confirmed history of mental health issues.

Stincelli estimated that on average 12-24 percent of officer-involved shootings are suicide-by-cop. Data shows that mental health plays a prominent role in officer-involved shootings, but data on these instances is scarce.

In fact, a 2015 Colorado report required police agencies to send data on their officer-involved shootings, but it did not collect information on the subject’s mental health. The report did collect information about a variety of other topics, ranging from ethnicity of the victim to his or her sexual orientation.

Overall, officer-involved shootings are on the rise statewide. The Colorado Department of Public Safety reported that the number of officer-involved shootings jumped from 27 in 2011 to 52 in 2015. And the percentage of deaths in officer-involved shootings in the first half of 2016 was higher than any previous year.

Already, Boulder County has seen three officer-involved shootings in 2016 compared to eight over the five-year period between 2010 and 2015, according to DPS data.

Fort Collins Police also recorded eight officer-involved shootings during the five-year period. Other departments in urban locations with more than double the population, like Denver and Aurora, documented 40 and 24 officer-involved shootings during the five year period.

Stincelli said the rise in officer-involved shootings means law enforcement agencies should concentrate on mental health. She noted the general public should open a dialogue about suicide to end the stigma and increase the conversation around mental health.

“Suicide is a taboo subject to begin with,” she said. “I say talk about it. And then once we cross that hurdle, now let’s talk about suicide by cop.”

Boulder County Sheriff’s Office began a partnership with Mental Health Partners and created EDGE (Early Division Get Engaged) in 2014 to help deescalate situations involving individuals in a mental health crisis before they face arrest.

“Police are absolute experts in de-escalation,” said Charlie Davis, Program Director at EDGE. “Sometimes we’re involved in those [de-escalation situations], but most of the time it’s all de-escalated before the crisis worker gets there, for safety reasons. The cops have scaled it down to where we can now to get to the mental health behind that.”

Officer participation in the program is completely voluntary. On-call clinicians reach out to people with behavioral health issues and those diagnosed with mental illness, substance abuse, or any combination of the three, said Boulder Police Department’s Public Information Officer–Shannon Cordingly.

Officers are encouraged to call on EDGE any time they are dealing with a person who may be suffering from mental health or substance abuse issues. Clinicians work both in an office at the police department, and often ride with officers during their shifts, Cordingly said.

“We all know there are too many mentally ill folks in jail. So our goal was to try and keep them out of jail,” Davis said. He said that within all four law enforcement departments with which he has worked with, officers estimate that 70 to 90 percent of calls that police receive involve behavioral health to some extent.

Boulder Police Department, Longmont Police Department, and Boulder County Sheriff’s Department worked together to make mental health clinicians available to police to help solve these problems. Davis thinks the essentials are having a good relationship with the officers, and that police see the value the services have to their community.

Davis said EDGE has two main goals. First, to assist law enforcement with mental health issues on the job. Second, to attempt to educate the community about the mental health challenges facing law enforcement on the job.

“The police do not have the training, the resources, or the bandwidth to do their job and my job too,” Davis said. “And yet that’s what they’re doing and always have,” said Davis. What EDGE does is make mental health clinicians available to police to help solve these problems.

In addition, peer counselors work alongside officers and clinicians to offer a different kind of help for mental health patients. Peers have first-hand, personal experience with mental health or substance use that allows them to speak to patients in a different manner.

Davis says it can be beneficial to have an alternative to police. EDGE professionals are a tool to help cops handle the situation more effectively. “Officers overwhelmingly who have worked with this program are in favor of keeping it,” said Davis.

“I believe that this is going to happen all over the country, all over the world. I believe it has to happen,” Davis said. “I think the value in it is recognizing that law enforcement is mental health services.”

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President’s law-and-order stance carries dangerous potential

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2017 13:06:42 +0000

President’s law-and-order stance carries dangerous potential Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/17/2017 - 07:06 Katy Canada

This piece is the opinion of its author

Soul Ashemu wants the Denver Police to stop murdering black youth in his community.

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The CEO of Soul Progressive, a Denver-based movement rooted in progressive politics, took to Facebook Live on May 4 to publically condemn a basketball game that pitted some of Denver’s black youth against police officers.

“Let’s look into the efficacy of having police play basketball with black children when they cannot stop for a moment murdering us,” Ashemu said in his live video. “Because this is a program — like all across the country — of police doing coopt programs inside of the communities they dominate. Even Stevie Wonder could see that shit.”

The fact that police played basketball with the kids in communities they patrol makes no difference in whether those youth are going to be arrested, criminalized or get involved in stop and frisk tactics, he noted.

And with President Donald Trump in the White House, Ashemu worries, law enforcement officers will continue to hide behind half-baked PR stunts as they target minorities without consequences.

“Black lives matter,” he said. “Black youth matter. Black children matter, and blue lives kill,” he said in the video.

Researchers at New York University say Trump’s militant approach to criminal justice deals a blow to police accountability and will cause unequal prosecution of minority groups to escalate.

The 45th president of the United States not only made criminal justice a hallmark of his campaign and a major talking point at his inauguration, but he also signed three executive orders “designed to restore safety in America.” Those orders, signed by Trump in February, alarmed advocates.

Trump’s law-and-order mentality has already had consequences — at a time when crime rates are at a historic low — according to the study by the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU’s School of Law.

The study, published April 1, noted multiple key shifts since the Jan. 20 inauguration, including decreased oversight of local police. Under Obama, the White House conducted more than 20 investigations of police departments. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions labeled such oversight a “war on police,” and said he believes the government shouldn’t be “dictating to local police how to do their jobs.”

“It’s laughable,” Ashemu. “It’s a statement used to try to obfuscate the reality that our police force is operating as a military force on its homeland. If there is a war, it is a war that the police and those that control them have declared against the people themselves.”

The first executive order on criminal justice introduced by Trump directs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to form a Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, aimed at reducing drug trafficking, illegal immigration and violent crime. The second increases intelligence among law enforcement agencies to combat transnational drug cartels. The third executive order directs the Department of Justice to use existing laws to prosecute people who commit crimes against officers.

The logical outcome of the Trump administration’s “law and order” mentality is the upsurge of practices like racial profiling. In fact, Trump said he would direct law enforcement officers to engage in profiling if someone looked “suspicious.”

“Look what’s going on: Do we really have a choice?” Trump said in September. “We’re trying to be so politically correct in our country, and this is only going to get worse.”

But, Ashemu said, this administration’s tactics for controlling crime will unfairly target minority groups.

“The policies that are in place are detrimental to people of color, specifically, and the general public,” he said.

Ashemu noted that it’s a common misconception that people of color commit crimes at a higher rate than white people.

“It’s already been proven through data that whites smoke marijuana and use drugs as much, if not more, than people of color,” he said. “But people of color are arrested at a much higher rate than whites.”

Research indicates that Ashemu is onto something. A 2008 study by the National Institutes of Health examined drug use among college students, broken down by race, ethnicity and gender. The study shows that whites used drugs at a higher rate than black students.

Out of more than 6,000 students surveyed, 41.8 percent of white women used drugs, compared to 24.9 percent of black women, and 43.3 percent of white men used drugs compared to 36 percent of the black men.

Still, blacks are four times more likely to be arrested for drug-related crimes than whites, according to a report by The Sentencing Project, a prison reform advocacy group.

“Stop and frisk policies and war on drug policies give the police agency to arrest poor black, brown, indigenous and poor whites,” Ashemu said.

Trump’s thumbs up to racial profiling likely won’t end with stop and frisk practices.

Studies show that police shoot at minorities at a higher rate than they shoot at white people. A 2016 report of officer-involved shootings in Colorado indicated that 44 percent of all officer-involved shootings in Colorado involved individuals from minority backgrounds. According to the study, which was conducted by the Colorado Department of Safety, minorities account for only 29 percent of Colorado residents. For contrast, white residents make up 70 percent of the state’s population. But only 56 percent of the individuals that police fired weapons at were white.

That discrepancy will only grow as law enforcement agencies feel emboldened to act more aggressively, the NYU study said. This will empower officers to exercise what Ashemu called in his video “state sponsored violence.”

“State sponsored violence is violence that is OK’d by the state to kill, mame, arrest, detain in an effort to continue to make profit off its victims,” Ashemu said.

Trump’s policies also demonstrate a swerve away from his predecessor’s stance on criminal justice, which sought to use law enforcement agencies as champions of civil rights, as well as enforcers of the law. Under former President Barack Obama, the Department of Justice conducted frequent investigations of law enforcement.

“The impact of Obama’s Department of Justice taking some real nascent steps toward addressing inequity in the justice system was long overdue, but thank God it was happening when it was happening,” said Darren O’Connor, an active member of Boulder Coalition and Alliance on Race. “In response, a very entitled law enforcement across the country responded negatively.”

O’Connor also worries that because the Denver Police Department endorsed Trump during the campaign season, the people they supposedly work to protect won’t trust officers when they’re in real danger.

“There’s a history in Denver of supporting police violence and assuming the story of the police is true,” he said. “To change the way they operate is like turning a tanker. It’s slow, and we’d like it to happen faster. I think that Obama’s department of justice turned the wheel and got things started.”

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Report: Police-Involved Shootings Escalate in Colorado

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 20:00:45 +0000

Report: Police-Involved Shootings Escalate in Colorado Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/12/2017 - 14:00 Stephanie Cook

Note: This story was produced for The Denver Post and for Public News Service, and ran in the Post’s newspaper on March 5, 2017. Nearly 40 PNS stations ran an audio version of the story, and it also ran on the PNS website.

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The number of officer-involved shootings in Colorado has increased each year since 2011, according to a new report from the Colorado Department of Public Safety. Between 2011 and 2015, the number of incidents reported by law enforcement nearly doubled, from 27 in 2011 to 52 in 2015.

While data from the second half of 2016 is not yet published, a higher percentage of officer-involved shootings resulted in death during the first six months of last year than during any of the previous six years.

The report, released this week, includes data on officer-involved shooting incidents that occurred between Jan. 1, 2010 and June 30, 2016. Across the state, 75 law enforcement agencies contributed information to the report.

Of all incidents recorded in the report, one resulted in an officer’s death. In contrast, nearly half of all citizens involved in shootings with officers were killed – 132 of the 294 total. Another 34 percent of citizens were wounded, compared with 7 percent of officers.

Civilians involved in police shootings were more diverse racially than the officers themselves. Minorities comprised at least 43 percent of those shot – 29 percent were Hispanic and 14 percent were black. In comparison, 10 percent of officers were Hispanic and 5 percent were black.

According to data collected by the state demographer’s office between 2011 and 2014, Colorado’s general population is 70 percent white, 21 percent Hispanic, 4 percent black, 3 percent Asian and 1 percent American Indian. The divide between law enforcement and citizens, especially minorities, is something police and community leaders in Denver say they are working to address.

“People see a police officer for the uniform and not for the human that lives there,” said Alexandra Alonso, the program manager for the Colorado Latino Leadership Advocacy & Research Organization. “Looking at the other side of that lens, there were a lot of community members who showed up and said, ‘Police officers are not meeting us where we are. There’s not enough dialogue.’”

Alonso said Denver Police Department Commander Ron Thomas has made an effort to open up communication with the city’s Latino and black communities, holding meetings with organizations like CLLARO and Black Lives Matter 5280.

The new report is the result of a 2015 Senate Bill mandating that Colorado law enforcement agencies collect and report certain data specific to officer involved shootings. A previous report, spanning from 2010 to June 30, 2015, was the first to be completed under the law.

“We drafted SB 217 because we knew the issue was on the public’s mind,” said former Colorado state senator Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, who co-sponsored the bill with Sen. John Cooke, R-Greeley. “Rather than have it be addressed reactively, we wanted to get ahead of it.”

Roberts said she is proud that those behind the legislation acted proactively and with bipartisan support.

While 279 agencies meet the reporting requirements, only 75 participated. That number is up from 2016, when 48 agencies submitted relevant data. Of the 75 agencies that contributed to the updated report, only 48 actually reported one or more officer-involved shooting. This is thanks in part to a “no incidents” collection tool added this year, which resulted in 27 additional agencies to comply.

While the bill created a uniform procedure for compiling data on officer involved shootings, some agencies were already keeping track of these instances prior to the legislation.

“We were ahead of the bill,” said Aurora Police Department spokesperson Crystal McCoy. “We were reporting and prepared for the bill and doing it prior.”

Under the new reporting mandate, the state compiles information on a range of topics. The report outlines fundamental facts, such as the number of officer involved shootings that take place and how many people are killed or injured, as well as more detailed topics, including the racial makeup of officers and citizens involved, whether or not officers issued a verbal warning prior to shooting and what type of weapons were involved.

Some categories included in the report seem difficult for agencies to answer. For example, one table offers a breakdown of the sexual orientation of citizens involved in incidents. The table is vague, with 89 percent of citizens categorized as “unknown” and the other 11 percent classified as straight.

Asking questions about a person’s sexual orientation is not routine, McCoy said, but some suspects may offer the information voluntarily. Another table on the percentage of citizens with disabilities – and what type of disability they might have – is similarly vague.

State and law enforcement officials who favor the reporting mandate hope the reports will enhance transparency between law enforcement and the public.

“The data provided in this report allows the public to dig deeper to learn more about the factors and people involved in these incidents,” said Denver Police Department spokesperson Doug Schepman.

The Denver Police Department also goes beyond state reporting requirements by posting data on its state website and posting findings from officer-involved shooting incidents spanning back to 2010 on the Denver District Attorney’s Office website, Schepman said.

In addition, recording and analyzing data from officer-involved shootings can help the state avoid misinformation and identify any issues that may need to be systematically addressed, Roberts said.

“The benefits are that, to date, although it’s not been in existence a long time, we’ve not had a police shooting that I’m aware of where rumor got ahead of fact,” she said.

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Mapping Denver’s officer-involved shootings

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 18:15:08 +0000

Mapping Denver’s officer-involved shootings Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/03/2017 - 12:15 Max Levy

Using publicly available data, CU News Corps has mapped every officer-involved shooting reported by the City of Denver from 2015 to now.

Click on the markers to get information about each shooting, including profiles of each of the people involved. Markers also include links to the district attorney’s decision letters, where you can find pictures, diagrams and witness accounts of each incident. Use the options on the right to filter by race / ethnicity, fatality and armament.

The project will be updated with recent shootings as data becomes available.

View the map

The city defines officer-involved shootings as “incidents in which one or more Denver police officers discharged a firearm.” In all of the mapped incidents, at least one officer shot at one or more of the subjects.

Some observations about the data:

In the shooting death of Dion Damon, the subject was said to be armed with a “simulated weapon.” Technician Jeffrey Motz said that he saw Damon point a handgun at him, which prompted the shooting. The DA’s decision letter reveals that no gun was found in Damon’s car. However, a cell phone was found, which Motz may have mistaken for a gun.
In the shooting of John Clark, the subject was also said to have been armed with a simulated weapon, which turned out to be a smoking pipe.
It’s not immediately clear what constitutes a simulated weapon, apart from an item that a subject may have reached for or brandished, and which officers thought was a gun (note that there’s another category for “Replica or Air Gun”).
Between Jan. 1, 2015 and April 3, 2017, Denver officers were involved in a total of 23 shootings, 19 of which resulted in an injury or death. Non-whites and Hispanics made up 75 percent of all subjects who were injured or killed in those shootings.

Former Democratic state representative Beth McCann replaced Mitch Morrissey as Denver’s DA in January. According to the Denver Post, during Morrissey’s 12 years in office, he never once prosecuted an officer for their involvement in a shooting (Morrissey oversaw the investigations of at least 81 shootings).

CU News Corps has mapped every officer-involved shooting reported by the City of Denver from 2015 to now.

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