Thomas Peele
mercurynews.com
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida recently published an incredible nine-day investigative series about bad cops in the Sunshine State.
Reporters Anthony Cormier and Matthew Doig pored through countless documents to inform the public about police with extensive misconduct records -- violence, drugs, thievery -- who kept their jobs because of lax enforcement, bureaucratic incompetence and powerful unions.When they showed a top state official the personnel records of a cop who had been fired five times and arrested on three occasions, yet had continually gotten his job back, the official, thumbed through the pages and exclaimed, "Holy (expletive)!"
The reporters were able to conduct their investigation because Florida police personnel records are publicly available.
In California, though, the same records are sealed away like state secrets.
Police unions have worked tirelessly to protect their own, beginning with a 1974 state Supreme Court decision involving former Los Angeles County Sheriff Peter Pitchess that resulted in the sealing of law enforcement personnel records.
The basic principle of government transparency is simple -- those who pay the bills get to know how, and on whom, their money is spent. The public is the ultimate employer of police, yet Californians have no right to know details about their employees and the liabilities they pose.
Police even fought rabidly to keep their salaries
hidden from the public, arguing fruitlessly all the way to the state Supreme Court.
California allows access to disciplinary records of all other public employees. Yet police, the ones who can snatch away your freedom with the cinch of a handcuff, or even take your life, are the ones about whom government allows us to know the least.
The ban on access to police disciplinary records is a moral travesty.
Cops say it protects them from false allegations of misconduct. But all it really does is protect bad officers from losing their lucrative jobs and even their best-in-the-nation pensions that allow retirement at age 50 with benefits as high as 90 percent of their last year's salary.
Even in high-profile matters -- such as the allegations of police abuses surrounding Occupy Oakland protests in October and November -- the public gets no front-door access to the result of misconduct investigations.
Was Scott Olsen -- a Marine war veteran -- intentionally shot with a tear-gas canister at an Occupy protest as some have claimed? Will the unknown cop -- at least to the public -- who lobbed a stun grenade at people who ran to Olsen's aid be fired? Demoted? Suspended?
And what will happen with the investigation into the actions of Oakland police Officer Victor Garcia -- whose name I obtained from sources because government leaders are banned from even naming cops under investigation -- who shot videographer Scott Campbell with a bean bag during a Nov. 3 protest?
What about Ersie Joyner III, the captain who approved the use of projectiles against people he called "anarchists"? He is being investigated, too, and could be fired or demoted. Joyner is one of Oakland's most high-profile cops and is also being looked into for his role in a shooting in May in which two men were killed.
As he awaits the outcomes, Joyner has, in police speak, been "benched," transferred to a bureaucratic job in the department's Office of Inspector General.
Salary data show Joyner grossed $173,993 in 2010 (2011 figures are not available), and it cost taxpayers more than $260,000 to employ him, counting pay, benefits and pension contributions.
That's a lot of taxpayer money to push pencils.
Yet when the investigations are over, the public will have no right to know the outcomes. That's unfair to everyone, Joyner included.
Under California law, cops being investigated can even quietly resign and apply for work at another department, knowing that officials at another police department cannot peek into the files of their previous employer.
Even with open records laws far superior to California's, Florida is awash with police unfit to carry a gun and a badge. Cormier's and Doig's reporting shows that.
Imagine what is being hidden here. Imagine the "holy (expletive)" moments you're missing, the agony inflicted on others and what it costs.