AB 109, the state’s new prison realignment law, will go down as one of the worst pieces of legislation ever enacted in California. As the list of its failures continues to grow, the only possible explanation is that either the bill’s supporters actually believe serious crimes should go unpunished, or that they are seriously incapable of crafting laws that protect the public.

The headlines behind this misguided “reform” of the criminal justice system trumpeted its dual aims of reducing the prison population and helping save the state millions of dollars. It’s now estimated that $5.9 billion in responsibilities was shifted to local counties. Californians were assured that criminals sentenced to imprisonment would still be held accountable in local custody. But this legislation’s disastrous consequences continue to add up.

Realignment’s latest outrage comes from Merced, California, where a public safety officer was killed by a DUI driver. Because of AB 109, that driver will not spend a single day behind bars.

On June 9, 2011, Amie Chick was driving with a blood alcohol level over .07, marijuana in her system and possibly while talking on a cell phone. At that same moment, 29-year-old Los Banos firefighter Andrew Maloney was riding his 2011 Suzuki motorcycle southbound on Highway 165 in Merced County when Amie Chick turned left in front of Maloney, killing him in the resulting crash.

Chick later pleaded guilty to one count of felony vehicular manslaughter and was to begin serving her sentence of a year in jail on April 23. Under AB 109’s terms, however, she was immediately eligible for a house-arrest program because she was classified as a low-level prison inmate sentenced for a non-serious, non-violent crime. This allows her to serve her sentence at home while wearing an electronic monitoring device.

This is only one of the many tragic cases now unfolding that demonstrate how in their haste to remake punishment in California, the legislature in fact gutted punishment as a consequence of crime. Will AB 109’s proponents tell Andrew Maloney’s family their intention was that his death not be punished, or that the complete lack of punishment for his killing was simply an oversight—a case of legislative incompetence?

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

The 20th anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles riots has been welcomed by countless news stories and retrospectives on this important event in our city’s history. But many of these retrospectives have included analyses that overstate the riots’ role in the evolution of the Department.

Any balanced analysis must recognize that policing in general has evolved across the nation. Changes in the Department were part of a larger national trend of evolving approaches to policing. Community policing was a new approach adopted by agencies across the country as its value was becoming clear. George L. Kelling’s Broken Windows theory, for instance, showed how new approaches to fighting and preventing crime in troubled neighborhoods could provide better results than simply putting more ‘boots on the ground.’

It’s true that the makeup of today’s LAPD officers has also changed considerably and now includes significantly larger numbers of minority groups; officers of Hispanic descent, for example, now account for 42 percent of the police force. But this change is as much a result of the changing community demographics as it is of any single event in the city’s history.

The changing makeup of the force also means that fewer and fewer current officers took part in the operations that brought the city back under control during the riots. Many LAPD officers working today were not on the job two decades ago. Of the current approximately 9,940 officers on the force, only 2,641 were on the job in April 1992. Nearly 7,300 had not yet joined the Department.

There are varying opinions about what led to the events that prompted the 1992 riots. These were a major event in the city’s history, as were the 1965 riots. But in all fairness, they were not the single impetus for change that many analyses claim them to be. And while much has changed, it’s important to remember what hasn’t. The men and women of the LAPD, both sworn and civilian, remain committed to the safety of Los Angeles residents. Courage and integrity, which have been hallmarks of LAPD personnel, have never wavered.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

To say that Los Angeles Police Commissioner Alan J. Skobin will be missed is an understatement. As many of you may know, the longtime commissioner has been nominated by the mayor to serve as a fire commissioner. And since police commissioners are limited by the Los Angeles City Charter to two five-year terms, the police department’s loss will clearly be the fire department’s gain.

Mr. Skobin was first appointed to the Police Commission in 2003, and was elected Vice President of the Board of Police Commissioners immediately upon his appointment. The mayor appointed him to a second five-year term in 2008. His department liaison and committee assignments have included Use of Force, Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence, Training, Budget, Transportation and Traffic, the Police Reserve Program, and Valley Bureau and Operations. He currently serves as chair of the Oversight Committee for the Office of Public Safety, City of Los Angeles Department of General Services.

What makes Commissioner Skobin a truly invaluable public safety advocate is his firsthand knowledge of law enforcement and his willingness to share it with his fellow commissioners. He has served as a reserve deputy sheriff with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for more than 30 years and currently holds the rank of reserve chief. He’s experienced in patrol, detectives and administration. Before joining the sheriff’s department, he served as a reserve police officer with the San Fernando PD for nearly eight years, attaining the rank of sergeant.

Commissioner Skobin has either initiated or taken a leadership role in many important projects and programs, many of which have directly affected the lives of our members. He was the driving force behind the creation of the LAPD Purple Heart Award, which recognizes the sacrifice of officers who were either seriously injured or slain while serving the public. Commissioner Skobin successfully developed the program to replace outdated and unsafe radios with updated equipment; he implemented a new program to manage and prevent officer-involved traffic collisions; and many more programs, projects and activities for the betterment and safety of LAPD employees and the public they serve.

With a record of community and civic service that spans more than 40 years, Commissioner Skobin’s efforts have made a significant positive impact throughout many communities. His achievements have been recognized with commendations and awards from virtually every level of government, including city, county, state and federal officials.

On behalf of the League’s members, the Board of Directors offers its sincere gratitude to Mr. Skobin for his dedicated service and unwavering support of LAPD officers. We invite everyone, especially the rank and file, to come and thank Alan for his service when the Police Commission formally recognizes him for his nine years of service to the LAPD on Tuesday, April 24th at the Police Commission meeting and a reception beginning at 0830.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

You’d think the same state legislators who backed the release of thousands of parolees from state prisons into local communities would at least ensure that local police could know the identity of these convicted criminals. But in its haste to enact prison realignment, the legislature made it too easy for parolees to slip into neighborhoods unencumbered by their criminal past.

Sacramento lawmakers failed to adjust state privacy laws, which currently restrict local police’s ability to get immediate information on the parolees coming into their community. As it stands, police chiefs must prepare and sign a statement declaring their need to know parolees’ names, addresses and criminal history in the interest of public safety. Only then can state parole officials provide the information.

State corrections officials should be able to provide police with a complete roster of former prisoners arriving in neighborhoods. Given felons’ high recidivism rates, it’s only logical for police to review parolee data when certain crimes occur in their area.

California Assemblymember Brian Nestande is among those who think police chiefs should be able to access this information without having to jump through bureaucratic hoops. “If there’s a way we can define that in law, that the police have the right to know without going through an unnecessary process, I’ll certainly look into working with others to make that correction,” Nestande told The Desert Sun. Assemblymembers from L.A. looking for a public safety issue to support would do well to make contact with Nestande.

The increased crime local communities are already seeing is one of the early failures of this poorly conceived law. At this point, all we can ask for is a chance to identify these convicted criminals so we know who is roaming among us in our communities. Here’s hoping the legislature is up to the task.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

It’s shaping up to be another tough year for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. After being reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 19 out of the 26 cases it reviewed in 2011, the trend appears to continue in 2012 to the benefit of police.

Last month, the Supreme Court threw out yet another 9th Circuit decision. This time the high court ruled that California officers could not be sued over using a possibly defective warrant to search a home. The case involved L.A. County Sheriff’s Detective Curt Messerschmidt and other police officials who were sued by Augusta Millender for the search on her house and confiscation of her shotgun.

According to reports, police were looking for her foster son, Jerry Ray Bowen, who had recently shot at ex-girlfriend Shelly Kelly with a sawed-off shotgun. Kelly told police Bowen might be at his foster mother’s house, so Messerschmidt obtained a warrant to look for any weapons and gang-related material on the property (Bowen was a suspected member of two local gangs). The detective’s supervisors, the district attorney and a judge all approved the warrant.

Neither Bowen nor his shotgun were found at Millender’s house, but police confiscated a shotgun belonging to the now deceased 73-year-old Millender. She sued, claiming the warrant was constitutionally overbroad because police had no right to look for any weapon at her house other than the one Bowen had used to shoot at his ex-girlfriend. Millender also argued that because the shooting was a domestic incident, police had no right to look for gang-material at her house. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court agreed, saying Messerschmidt and other officers should have known the warrant was overbroad and would therefore lose the immunity that police are normally granted against such lawsuits.

The Supreme Court overturned that decision on a 6-3 vote. This latest rebuke of the 9th Circuit came only one month after it was overruled in a case involving Burbank police officers responding to a reported rumor of a student threatening a school shooting.

Our judicial system of checks and balances is worthy of admiration and respect, especially in its ability to uphold the rights of law enforcement professions to carry out their job while safeguarding citizens' rights. We are grateful to the U.S. Supreme Court for another decision that recognizes the challenging and demanding work police officers in America face every day.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

When most people think about the L.A. City Council, they think of its regular meetings at City Hall on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10 a.m. (televised on L.A. CityView 35). What many don’t realize is that by the time an issue is ready for consideration by the 15-member Council, it’s already been reviewed and analyzed by one or more city council committees.

Not as visible as the City Council in session but crucial to the governing of our city, these committees perform investigative duties for the full Council and issue recommendations. The committee meetings are not generally televised but can be heard live and from the audio archives via Council Phone. Council Phone is a dial-up system that allows the public to listen to live coverage of the Los Angeles City Council and its committees from any phone using these numbers: Downtown (213) 621-CITY, West Los Angeles (310) 471-CITY, San Pedro (310) 547-CITY and Van Nuys (818) 904-9450.

The committees, and their chairs, are appointed by the President of the Council. When Councilmember Eric Garcetti resigned from the council presidency to run for Mayor, the Council elected Herb Wesson as his successor. Council President Wesson recently announced the committee assignments for 2012:

The Los Angeles Police Protective League’s Board of Directors looks forward to working with each member of the City Council and the council committees in 2012 in a spirit of cooperation and mutual respect.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

Once again, a driver with a suspended driver's license, whose vehicle was returned to her by the California Highway Patrol, continued to drive and subsequently killed several people. On Friday, Feb. 3, at the corner of Florence and Halldale avenues, Moreno Valley resident Tenina Calhoun, stopped one month earlier for unlicensed driving, killed three of her passengers in a crash. Because her vehicle had not been impounded for 30-days on the prior stop, Calhoun was driving that same car in Friday’s crash.

On that same day, two Los Angeles police officers were injured when an unlicensed driver in Jefferson Park hit their patrol car. And on Saturday, a Long Beach police officer on his way to an unlicensed/DUI driver checkpoint was hit by an unlicensed driver.

How many tragedies is it going to take before those clamoring for a stop to unlicensed-driver vehicle impoundment admit they’re wrong? In September, we highlighted the story of an unlicensed driver whose vehicle was not impounded and who five days later, was behind the wheel of the vehicle that killed a young boy in a hit-and-run crash.

The legislature passed the impound law allowing the impoundment of vehicles operated by unlicensed drivers as a public safety measure. Unlicensed drivers have either not proven they know how to operate a motor vehicle safely, or were previously licensed drivers who had their driving privilege revoked because of moving violations.

Allowing unlicensed drivers to have a vehicle returned to them will only encourage them to continue driving, and increase the danger for others. The deaths of Tenina Calhoun’s passengers are yet another tragic reminder of that.

Blog updated with new information February 10 at 2200 hours.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League’s objections to the latest proposed changes to the LAPD 30-day hold policy are twofold: the Chief’s proposal does not conform to state law and unlicensed drivers are unsafe drivers.

Unlicensed driving is a crime in California, and Vehicle Code Section 14602.6, which calls for vehicles to be impounded for up to 30 days, is part of the penalty structure the state legislature established for punishment of unlicensed driving. When lawmakers created the 30-day hold law, they were very clear with their intent and in fact, the legislature’s findings make it clear that the law was enacted to prevent damage to lives and property by unlicensed drivers.

In creating his own law, Chief Beck is asking officers to use a “progressive penalty” and only impound vehicles for one day using Vehicle Code § 22651(p). The purpose of this Vehicle Code is simply to allow officers to quickly remove vehicles from the streets; it was not intended to address unlicensed drivers.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles led a pair of studies in the 1990s that found unlicensed drivers were nearly five times more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than licensed drivers. Impounding vehicles, the DMV concluded, was an effective way to keep unlicensed drivers off the road. Two nationwide studies by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety concluded that between 13 to 14 percent of drivers involved in fatal crashes did not have a valid license at the time.

Our concern is for the safety of residents on the streets of Los Angeles. Returning cars to unlicensed drivers, who already have shown their willingness to disregard the law by driving when they are lawfully forbidden to, is simply bad public policy and not what the legislature intended.

We hope you share our concern for the safety of our roads, and that you’ll take a moment to contact your Los Angeles elected officials and ask them to reconsider this policy change for the sake of the public’s safety.

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Once again, a ballot initiative purporting to curb the influence of unions and corporations on elected officials has qualified for California’s November ballot. The initiative, pitched by proponents as the “Stop Special Interest Money Now Act,” would ban corporate and labor union contributions to candidates. More significantly, it would also prohibit corporations and labor unions from using funds collected through payroll deductions to be used for political purposes, hence “protecting” employees’ paychecks.

Similar initiatives specifically directed at labor unions were rejected by California voters in 1998 and 2005. But this time around, the initiative’s backers are hoping to sway voters by including corporations in the ban, disingenuously implying that prohibitions that impact all entities will impact them equally. This is misleading and ignores the reality of how unions and corporations currently participate in the political process.

Corporations very rarely use employee paycheck deductions to fund political contributions. Labor unions, on the other hand, rely on paycheck deductions as the primary means for political fundraising. The initiative would cut off the lion’s share of union fundraising while limiting only a negligible amount of corporate funds. The California School Employees Association has put together a fantastic fact sheet that explains how the paycheck deception initiative would silence the voices of public employees and increase the power of big corporations.

The League is joining public safety organizations and other labor forces throughout the state to oppose this measure. In the coming months, you will be hearing a lot more about this issue. We urge you to educate yourself on the deceptively worded initiative so you understand what is at stake. Labor fought and won this battle twice before and together we can defeat this paycheck deception measure once again.

On November 6, vote NO on the “Stop Special Interest Money Now” Act.

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It turns out that its pension funds performed well enough last year to save the City $90 million in anticipated contributions.

The cries of alarm from self-proclaimed experts looking to eliminate public pensions have been inversely proportional to the depth of the 2008 market collapse: the lower the market went, the louder their calls for ending public pensions became. Continuing to fund public pensions would lead to bankruptcy, they constantly claimed.

Yet, as actuaries and trustees have repeatedly explained, pension systems operate and invest over a long period of time. There are periodic upticks in the market, which in the past have been misused to grant “pension holidays” that allowed governments to skip their required annual payments. Likewise, there have been down times in the market, which have necessitated larger contributions.

As the League has pointed out many times before, skipped payments in good market times not only deprive the pension funds of principal necessary to generate investment returns, but also exacerbate the depth of a downturn since there is less money in the fund to cushion losses. The City’s sworn personnel are never allowed to skip their contribution payments–in good times or bad. But today’s self-styled “pension reformers” were deathly silent as the government shirked its pension obligations, which helped create the current problems of other pension systems.

A 7.75 percent long-term rate of return is sustainable in a well-diversified institutional plan that invests its assets for the long term. The long-term performance of the Los Angeles Fire and Police pension plan has validated this assumption. As for contributions by the City of Los Angeles, it is also important to point out that the percentage of the general fund paid into the pension system is within the historical range of what the City has paid, in good times and bad.

The news of this $90 million pension savings is a reminder that the funded status of pension systems ebbs and flows, as do the City’s corresponding contributions. Any proposed changes to pension systems need to be mindful of this fact, especially when affecting such an important benefit that provides security in retirement.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

It’s no secret that GPS tracking devices have been hot sellers of late to law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. Local, state and federal officials have used them in countless investigations, and their use in solving crimes has proven efficient and effective.

But alas, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that police need a warrant before they can put a GPS tracking device on an individual’s vehicle to covertly track the person. The high court’s unanimous ruling – a setback for law enforcement at all levels – was surprising. Attaching such a small device to a car’s undercarriage did not seem to rise to a violation of property rights, nor did it seem unreasonable for anyone driving on a public street to expect their movements to go unmonitored.

The case that brought the issue to a head involved a Washington man convicted on drug charges with the benefit of evidence collected by GPS tracking. One justice wrote in the court’s opinion that investigators trespassed when they attached the device to the man’s jeep and collected 28 days’ worth of data. Another wrote in a separate opinion that the four weeks of monitoring violated the man’s reasonable expectation of privacy.

In its argument before the court last year, the Obama Administration laid out a compelling rationale for allowing the use of GPS technology in this manner. Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreben asserted that police should not need to obtain a warrant because location information could have been obtained through ordinary surveillance methods. Anyone could track anyone – even Supreme Court Justices – without violating their privacy, he argued.

If there’s a bright spot in the decision, it’s that the ruling is narrow and leaves open some key issues in our new digital world. For example, the ruling provided no clear guidance on whether the government must obtain a warrant for access to such things as location data stored on an individual’s smartphone, or to emails archived by internet service providers.

The advance of technology is outpacing the courts. It’ll take many more cases and Supreme Court rulings to arrive at the exact restrictions criminal investigations must adhere to in their use of innovative technology. We can only hope that over time the right balance will be struck between citizens’ rights and law enforcement’s ability to use the latest technology to solve crimes in the most effective and efficient manner.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

What do you call a federal court that changes facts to fit its argument and issues rulings so far outside established law that it’s routinely chastised and reversed – often unanimously and without a hearing – by a higher court? You might call that court lawless and reckless, but here in California we know it as the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The latest reversal of the 9th Circuit involved Burbank police officers responding to a reported rumor of a student threatening a school shooting. Officers went to the home of the student, who’d been absent from school for two weeks, and were met by his mother and the student. She spoke to them outside the house but refused to invite the officers inside. When they asked if there were guns in the house, the mother turned and fled inside. The alarmed officers followed her inside, where they proceeded to interview her and the student for about 10 minutes before determining the school shooting threat was unfounded. No search of the residence was conducted.

The family sued the officers for entering the house without a warrant. The District Court found that the officers had qualified immunity because they faced a “rapidly evolving incident.” But last year, the 9th Circuit reversed this in a 2-1 decision, finding the officers’ actions unreasonable.

In an unsigned, unanimous opinion that was a stinging reversal of the 9th Circuit, the United States Supreme Court ordered that the case against the officers be dismissed. The Supreme Court first took the 9th Circuit to task for misapplying case law, writing, “No decision of this Court has found a Fourth Amendment violation on facts even roughly comparable to those present in this case. On the contrary, some of our opinions may be read as pointing in the opposition direction.”

The Court then went on to call out the 9th Circuit for changing the facts in the case to fit its legal conclusion: “Although the panel majority purported to accept the findings of the District Court, it changed those findings in several key respects.” The court concluded by rebuking the 9th Circuit for its “entirely unrealistic” analysis of the incident and its “second guessing” of the officers.

In 2011, the 9th Circuit was reversed in 19 out of 26 cases, with 12 of the reversals being unanimous. Some quotes from recent U.S. Supreme Court reversals highlight the lawlessness of the 9th Circuit: one decision was termed “as inexplicable as it is unexplained;” in another, the factual assertions by the 9th Circuit were “simply false”; and in a third, it was found that the 9th Circuit’s opinion undermined confidence because “judicial disregard is inherent in the opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit here under review.”

It is troubling when a reversal is unanimous because it is a clear sign that legal precedent was completely ignored.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

We congratulate LAPD Officer Joe Buscaino, who today was declared the winner in the election to fill the 15th District L.A. City Council seat, left vacant by now-congresswoman Janice Hahn.

Residents overwhelmingly chose to place their trust in the hometown candidate, a graduate of San Pedro High School and 14-year LAPD veteran. Buscaino may be an “average Joe,” as he frequently called himself during the campaign, but he nevertheless brings firsthand knowledge of the needs of his district and the city, and leadership experience from his years as a Senior Lead Officer at Harbor Division.

Buscaino’s energy and commitment to his neighborhood and the city bode well for the city’s future. We congratulate him once again and look forward to working with him and the rest of the Council to meet the city’s problems head on.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Lt. Al Stewart

CHP Officer Larry Wetterling

In 1973, Youngberg took the lives of San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Al Stewart, CHP Officer Larry Wetterling, and gas station attendant Robert Jenkins in execution-style murders. He was sentenced to death, but his sentence (along with hundreds of others’) was overturned in the mid-1970s when the California Supreme Court declared the state’s version of the death penalty unconstitutional.

Since then, Youngberg has applied for parole on 11 occasions and been denied each time. His last denial came in 2010 when he was told he would have to wait five years to reapply. But the enactment of SB1399 has made possible another hearing on Feb. 8, 2012, when Youngberg’s application for a medical parole will be heard by the Board of Parole Hearings at High Desert State Prison in Susanville.

“Although Youngberg is precisely the type of person who was not intended for medical parole, drafting provisions of that law make him eligible for an application,” said Sacramento Lobbyist John Lovell. “Since he has received a certification from the head physician at High Desert State Prison, defeating this effort will be a daunting one. This is true even though the stroke which afflicts Youngberg took place eight years ago, and he is not totally disabled. The only restrictions on his prison activities are that he is confined to a wheel chair and must have a lower bunk in a cell.”

Law enforcement agencies and organizations throughout California strenuously oppose parole of any kind for Youngberg. The League is joining the effort and encourages others to do the same.

Letters opposing Youngberg’s parole should reference “Penal Code 3550 Parole Hearing for Gerald Youngberg, Inmate Number B50097” and be sent to:

High Desert State Prison
Attn: C&PR/Records Office –Board Desk
475-750 Rice Canyon Road
P.O. Box 750
Susanville, CA 96127

Board of Parole Hearings
Attn: Lifer Scheduling Analysts
PO Box 4036
Sacramento, CA 95812-4036

We also wish to take this opportunity to call on SB1399 author Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, to consider amending his legislation to preclude the use of “medical parole” for anyone convicted of murdering a law enforcement officer.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

For over a year, we’ve been calling attention to the disturbing disconnect between declining crime statistics and rising assaults on police officers. Now comes news that these assaults are up dramatically for the first week of 2012. Twelve serious assaults occurred in this year’s first week, compared to two during the same week in 2011, and again two in 2010.

It’s too early to draw any conclusions from these numbers, but it is nevertheless a disturbing trend. We pointed out last month that assaults on LAPD officers in 2011 were up 26.7 percent compared with 2010. Chief Beck has noted that as assaults on police officers increase, so do the number of officer-involved shootings.

The increased violence toward officers is a reminder of the dangers they face every day. And although overall crime rates may be falling, the rise in these assaults should concern the public as a whole because an assault on the peace keepers of our society is an assault on society itself.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

Shooting suspect Steven Hoff in a May 17, 2011 mug shot. (Daily News Los Angeles)

Steven Hoff was paroled from state prison in January 2011, but the parole was suspended in July, which typically means he broke contact with his parole officer, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Parole agents had been looking for him for a parole violation when he allegedly shot and seriously wounded a parole agent on Wednesday. He was apprehended after an hours-long manhunt in Lake View Terrace that forced the closing of the 210 Freeway and lockdown of two schools.

Within hours, details of his violent past began to emerge. Among other things, according to the Times, Hoff was involved in a standoff with LAPD SWAT officers in the same general area nearly a decade ago. On Aug. 21, 2002, he barricaded himself in a Sylmar home to evade police and state parole agents searching for him in connection with a parole violation and the slaying of a motorcycle club member in Kern County.

In the coming years, the Steven Hoffs of the world won’t be supervised and tracked by parole agents. Instead, the state will have turned over the job to local law enforcement agencies. What will happen when they simply abscond to another county to get away from local supervision? Who, exactly, will go look for these dangerous individuals if there is no statewide parole agency?

Captured escapee William Scott Woodin. (OCSD.org)

And speaking of local inmate housing commitments, the first inmate sentenced to local jail in lieu of prison escaped on Wednesday. William Scott Woodin, jailed locally because of the new law, escaped from Orange County’s Theo Lacy maximum-security jail by ‘wiggling through a kitchen window.’ He may be the first inmate to escape from that jail in 20 years, but he is a precursor of problems that will only multiply in the coming years. Jails are built to house pre-trial inmates and low level offenders. They are not equipped – by facility design or in staffing levels – to house inmates for years on end. Woodin was a mostly a thief and drug addict; but what will happen when violent felons like Steven Hoff start filling our local jails on multi-year sentences?

We’ve already seen the death and destruction caused by the state’s now abandoned “low level, non-violent” release program, whose sole aim was to release unsupervised inmates into our communities. This state’s latest effort, placing inmates into county jails and leaving local authorities to supervise them, looks doomed to be just as much of a public safety failure.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

Anyone hoping we would see a downturn in assaults on police officers – in Los Angeles and nationwide – has to be deeply disappointed by statistics released last week by LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.

Chief Beck reported to the Police Commission that assaults on LAPD officers are up 26.7 percent this year compared with 2010. He noted that as assaults on police officers increase, so do the number of officer-involved shootings – up 58.8 percent this year.

The Chief’s reports were concurrent with other somber news. Police officer deaths in the line of duty have increased 14 percent across the U.S. compared to last year, according to a preliminary report released by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

Firearms-related deaths were the number one cause of officer fatalities nationwide, a change from previous years. “For the first time in 14 years, firearms-related deaths will outnumber traffic and ‘other’-related deaths,” said Craig Floyd, chairman and CEO of the fund, in a recent CNN article.

With a total of 10 fatalities, California was fourth in line of the states with the highest number of fatalities, just behind New York, Florida and Texas (data as of December 13, 2011). The 14 percent increase can be attributed to factors including budget cuts and a surge of violence toward police officers, according to Floyd. “We’re hearing about more brazen, violent activity today, more cold-blooded murders,” Floyd told CNN.

This increased violence toward officers is a solemn reminder of the dangers that police officers face on a daily basis. We again lament the stark disconnect between falling crime rates and assaults on police officers. There’s no compelling, clear evidence why this is occurring. All we can say with certainty is that despite declining crime statistics, policing remains a very dangerous profession.

To our law enforcement brothers and sisters, as the end of 2011 draws near, may you never forget the fellow officers that gave the ultimate sacrifice of their lives for the protection of others, and may you always look out for the safety of your colleagues as you protect and serve your communities.

Thoughts? Leave a comment below.

The City’s approach to its current budget problems is hiring just enough replacements for LAPD officers lost through retirements and attrition. This approach, however, has been accompanied by an abandonment of the middle management positions needed for the Department to operate effectively.

With scant attention by outsiders, but growing alarm among those in the Department, there is a burgeoning number of vacancies for police officer III (288), sergeant (88), detective (122) and lieutenant (26). These are critical positions that need to be filled, as they are both the frontline supervisors and the Department leaders who make the day-to-day decisions most noticed by the public. Allowing these positions to go unfilled by failing to fund promotion opportunities for rank-and-file officers puts the Department and the City at risk of retreating to a bygone era.

This is not a theoretical concern – it is being felt Department-wide at an alarming rate. Too often in debriefing of incidents where mistakes were made, we find a lack of effective supervision was the primary reason why department policies and procedures were not followed. These leaderless breakdowns have unfortunately led to taxpayer-funded legal settlements. We believe that the failure to adequately fill frontline supervisor positions is leading to a lack of proper supervision and ineffective command and control that is infecting the entire Department. Do we need history to repeat? Have we not learned the lessons of the Rafael Perez/Nino Durden scandal, the Christopher Commission and the Consent Decree?

Supervisors direct, evaluate and monitor officer performance in the field. They respond to the scene of significant incidents; review reports, including arrest and booking reports; ensure the integrity of applications for warrants and the use of confidential informants; and they ensure the appropriate treatment of persons in custody. This is why supervisory positions need to be filled.

It’s not that promotions aren’t being granted. In fact, the Department has promoted 22 command officers. During this time, there have been only six promotions to the rank of detective, 16 to sergeant and 20 to lieutenant.

Funding command staff promotions while ignoring the needs of the day-to-day frontline supervision necessary to police our city is a recipe for disaster. It’s also a cause of frustration for qualified rank-and-file officers waiting on promotional lists established over the last year-and-a-half. The ensuing morale problem can undermine the LAPD’s effectiveness throughout the City.

We know that the large number of vacant positions at the rank of police officer III and above is already a concern to Department leaders; there’s no reason why it shouldn’t concern the Mayor and City Council, too. While City leaders can take satisfaction in seeing that the number of officers is not declining, they still need to understand the damage incurred to the core of the Department by the current hiring and promotion process. We cannot afford to return to the days of rising crime and violence that plagued our City when supervisory ranks were thin.

We call on the Mayor and the City Council to recognize the dangers of continuing to tolerate large numbers of unfilled supervisory positions within the LAPD and do something about it immediately. If City leaders don’t step up to this obvious problem, the decision to continue hiring officers will need to be reconsidered. It makes no sense to keep hiring police officers if we can’t be assured they’ll receive adequate training and supervision when they are patrolling our streets.

Leaving supervisory positions vacant may make short-term financial sense for the City, but could it lead to another leadership breakdown within the Department? Weigh in by leaving a comment below.

On October 1, 2011, protesters encamped on City Hall’s front lawn and declared themselves part of the national Occupy movement protesting income inequality and corporate greed. City leaders promptly welcomed the Occupy L.A. protesters with open arms, with the City Council not only endorsing the movement but also inviting protesters to stay indefinitely.

The City leadership stated that the price of denying protesters’ First Amendment rights would be too great. So for nearly two months, LAPD officers policed the encampment, carefully balancing the Occupiers’ right to protest with the need to protect public safety and property. But as the costs of this policy started becoming apparent, the City slowly rescinded its support, and in perhaps the clearest example of its mismanagement of the situation, attempted to lure the movement off the City Hall lawn by offering them office space and other financial incentives. The protesters didn’t budge.

And so on November 30, long after encampments in other cities had been forcibly removed, our officers were finally given orders to disband the Occupy L.A. camp. The operation was efficient, orderly and involved a minimal use of force. The mayor lauded it as the LAPD’s “finest moment,” and indeed this was a job very well done, but to say that this was their finest moment did a disservice to our men and women in blue.

Our finest moments occur every day, every time LAPD officers prevent a crime, rescue people in danger, solve a crime or make an arrest. Our finest moments occur every time LAPD officers respond, capably, professionally and with appropriate restraint to the threats that arise organically in our society, not to problems fostered or even created by political calculation or attempts at political correctness.

This was a clear success for the LAPD and stood in contrast to operations in other cities, but many observers have recognized that there were serious and avoidable costs – far exceeding the price of repairing the City Hall lawn – resulting from the way the City handled this situation. Millions of scarce taxpayer dollars were squandered on over-accommodating protesters, some of whom abused the City’s goodwill by destroying public property and undermining respect for our laws. What kind of precedent has this set for future situations requiring the balancing of constitutional rights against public safety? The L.A. Times got it right in their editorial, “Handling the next occupation in L.A.”

We hope these costs will be fully considered should a similar situation arise in the future. LAPD officers, who must face considerable personal risk when carrying out orders to restore public order, deserve better. Taxpayers, many of whom are struggling with unemployment and reduced services, deserve better. Los Angeles deserves better.

More officers and better policing. That’s what a Los Angeles Times editorial stated recently as key reasons why L.A. is a much safer city today.

The editorial, “L.A.'s triumph over crime,” makes the irrefutable case for full funding of public safety. This article should be reviewed by every elected official at City Hall whenever budget priorities are being set.

Recalling the bad old days when L.A. recorded 1,000 murders a year, the Times stated that 800 families this Thanksgiving weekend enjoyed a holiday that would have been barren had they lost a loved one to a murder – “a social victory for which every resident of this city should be appreciative.”

Beyond saving lives, fighting crime with a fully-funded police department is the best investment the city government can make. As the editorial pointed out, for every crime there is a cost — property that is lost, medical bills to pay, workdays missed and the more difficult-to-measure effects of psychological damage to survivors. Using a methodology developed by researchers at Iowa State University, the Times calculates a savings of $1.36 billion annually for Los Angeles by eliminating 800 murders a year since the early 1990s.

While we give our thanks to the Times’ editorial board for reminding everyone of the importance of keeping public safety as our city’s No. 1 priority, we can’t help but wonder how many more people would be alive for the holidays if the city fully funded the LAPD. The Department estimates its budget is currently underfunded by $50 million and its cash overtime budget by $100 million.

We urge the residents of Los Angeles to join us and take the Public Safety First Pledge and oppose any reductions in the number of LAPD officers protecting our neighborhoods.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.