Officer Involved Shootings Cost City $14.5M

What can we learn from it?

On July 26, 2016 we learned from a glowing City of Long Beach press release that the Long Beach Police Department was awarded a $600,000 state grant for strengthening law enforcement and community relations.

Fifteen days later we learned from the Los Angeles Times that the Long Beach City Council unanimously approved wrongful death settlements related to the 2015 police shootings of Hector Morejon ($1.5 million) and Jason Conoscenti ($2 million) – both unarmed – and that a month earlier the city agreed to pay $3 million to the family of Tyer Woods, an unarmed man who was shot 19 times after running from police in 2013.

The city also recently paid $8 million resulting from the 2010 wrongful death lawsuit over the police shooting of Douglas Zerby – a tragic police killing of an unarmed father that the city attorney took to jury trail, lost and then filed an ill-advised appeal and lost – all events that seem to have not qualified for a city hall press release.

Why do I join these two points of information – and accounting – into the same column? Because both relate to police accountability, responsibility, training, transparency and the need to strengthen law enforcement and community relations in a manner that will reduce police-community tensions – the subject and goal of the $600,000 Board of State & Community Corrections (BSCC) grant.

I thought that a look at the grant application submitted by the city to the BSCC just might give us an idea as to where the city and the LBPD saw itself in terms of what is needed. So, I asked for a copy. The city was not forthcoming so I asked the good folks at the BSCC in Sacramento for a copy. They sent one over the next day.

The grant application is 30 pages long and in it the city proposed three programs in order to get the $600,000 grant. They are categorized under the broad headings of: Community Police Academy (CPA), Technology and Social Media and Training and Education.

Because I served as the LAPD’s Chief of Personnel and Training (P&T) for several years prior to retirement, I was anxious to learn more about how the LBPD plans to implement the training and education part of the grant.

However, a request made to police academy personnel for information related to instruction and curricula was politely rebuffed. I was told to file a public records act request (PRA). PRA’s usually take many weeks and often months, so it’s going to be some time before this column can report on that part of the program.

However, as part of my job as the P&T bureau chief, I also chaired the LAPD’s Shooting Review and Use of Force Board and had a front row seat to the rights and wrongs of police shootings, investigations, review and adjudication processes – all of which armed me with the depth of experience that I applied to a review of the LBPD’s plan for their grant supported Community Police Academy (CPA).

The grant application argument to justify funding for the CPA begins with comment about community reaction to several officer involved shootings, one of which was the killing of 19-year-old Hector Morejon, the subject of the $1.5 million settlement identified at the top of this column.

The city application stated that, “an officer responded to a trespassing call and when 19-year-old Hector Morejon turned to face the officer with an unknown object in his hand, he was shot. Morejon later succumbed to the injuries.”

The application then pointed out that the LBPD, “conducted internal reviews to determine whether the officer response was within department standards stating that, “as is standard in all officer involved shootings, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office conducted an independent investigation.

But that the incident still received, “substantial media attention, and some community members complained that LBPD did not deliver information about the investigation in a timely, transparent fashion” and that, “subsequently, both families have filed civil lawsuits prior to LBPD’s review findings. The preemptive filing by the families may speak to the level of distrust certain segments of the community have with the LBPD.”

All of that led to a LBPD conclusion that, “educating the public and engaging in open conversation about police procedures will increase public perception that the department conducts business both ethically and transparently.”

The problem with all of that is that the LBPD heaps the entire burden for better police-community relations upon the community to better understand – and accept – what the police do, while the LBPD proposes nothing in its CPA justification to look inward and examine existing policy and procedure for the kind of changes that will enable the department to do a better job of policing and provide a greater level of transparency that will convince the community that the LBPD does in fact, “conduct business both ethically and transparently.”

Let’s take the Morejon shooting as one example of how the LBPD might look inward and make the kinds of changes that will polish the legitimacy of their public presentations.

First, the grant application itself is ingenious for not spelling out the full details of the Morejon killing that occurred on April 23, 2015. The first, and only, description of the police killing to come from the city was a LBPD press release the day following the shooting.

What the community – and the family – learned from the press release is that when the officer looked though the opening of a broken window he observed a male suspect standing next to a wall and, “The officer observed the suspect turn towards him while bending his knees, and extended an arm out as if pointing an object which he perceived was a gun.”

What the community was never told – until publication of the Los Angeles Times story 16 months later (August 11, 2016) – is that Morejon was shot in the back.

A copy of the autopsy report I obtained months ago also reveals that, “Law enforcement personnel from the Long Beach Police Department and the DA’s office witnessed the autopsy,” on April 28, 2015, five days after the shooting.

So, why does it take a reporter to dig out the facts surrounding a lawsuit settlement 16 months later for the community to be informed about all of this? Why do the people of Long Beach have to learn from a reporter’s interview of the Morejon family attorney that the LBPD’s shooting review board, “ultimately decided that the shooting did not violate the department’s deadly force policy?” Why is it that the LBPD did not announce – and justify – that decision to the community?

Several LBPD officers have informed me that they have been told, “There are no bad shootings in the LBPD. The department has your back.”

The Morejon decision appears to corroborate that this kind of dysfunctional culture does in fact exist inside the LBPD – and the two day Force Science Institute (FSI) training course to which the chief of police invited over 100 city influence makers – and others – to attend in March 2016 makes one wonder if the city was expecting some fallout when the Morejon “in policy” decision was ultimately revealed.

I raise this question because the FSI training is based upon the discredited junk science psychobabble research findings of its founder, Dr. Bill Lewinski – a popular “expert witness” for city attorneys faced with defending bad police shootings.

According to research by reporter Matt Apuzo of the New York Times, “Lewinski’s conclusions are consistent no matter the circumstances. The officer acted appropriately, even when shooting an unarmed person. Even when shooting someone in the back. Even when witness testimony, forensic evidence or video footage contradicts the officer’s story.”

The city may have even been thinking of the Jason Conoscenti shooting in addition to the Morejon killing when they brought Lewinski’s disciples in to indoctrinate city leaders – because video evidence shows the unarmed Conoscenti running down a flight of stairs leading to the beach with both hands on the rails when he was hit by police gunfire – in spite of the LBPD press release that said Conoscenti, “was shot while reaching for his waistband.”

Two other major policies the LBPD can fix before implementing the CPA relates to the integrity of the investigative process applied to officer involved shootings (OIS).

Internal investigations conducted by the department require an interview and audio recording of all witnesses – accused and otherwise – by the assigned investigator. Absent that process, there is no investigation. Absent that process no one can make an informed finding.

But, in the LBPD, when it comes to an officer involved shooting (OIS) all of that is out the window, per the LBPD manual that states, “The involved officers are responsible for documenting their statements and are not (to be) interviewed by OIS Investigators. They will not be audio or video recorded. The officers shall prepare a statement on an investigative follow-up report.” In short – an inferior investigation is guaranteed from the start.

The second change needed goes to the grant statement that purports to convince the BSCC that the LBPD’s investigations should be unquestioned by the community because, “as is standard in all officer involved shootings, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office conducted an independent investigation.”

Not true. The DA’s “independent investigation” is just as flawed as the LBPD investigation. Why? Because the LBPD and the DA have a deal and that deal is clearly spelled out in the LBPD manual of instruction to its homicide investigators: “The District Attorney has agreed to accept the Long Beach Police Department’s reports as the statements of the officer involved and as the statement of any police officer witness.”

These kinds of investigations do not find the truth. Their only value is to protect the city’s image – and treasury – and to mislead the community at the expense of effective and ethical police administration.

It is our recommendation that the LBPD take a look inside and fix a few things before they begin, “educating the public and engaging in open conversation about police procedures that will increase public perception that the department conducts business both ethically and transparently.”

We also hope that FSI’s junk science psychobabble is not made a part of the Community Police Academy or the training and education component of the grant program.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Public sentiment is everything. With it nothing can fail. Without out it, nothing can succeed,” which fits well with former New York City detective Frank Serpico’s testimony when he said, “Police work is an honorable profession if you do it with honor.”

Stephen Downing is a resident of Long Beach and a retired LAPD deputy chief of police. For a copy of the BSCC Grant application send a request to: 

stephen@beachcomber.news