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| NEWS > 12 April 2007 |
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Chicago offers lessons on comp
As the former chief of special prosecutions in Chicago responsible for police misconduct, among other areas, I have found the content and tone of recent statements by union officials representing Eugene police very disturbing.
During the four years I headed that bureau in Cook County in the 1980s, more than 100 police officers were indicted and convicted of every imaginable crime — from murder for hire to drug dealing out of squad cars to systematic traffic shakedowns.
During this time the Cook County judiciary and bar also came under investigation for fixing court cases, fro... Read more
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Times Picayune - New Orleans,L
12 April 2007
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New Orleans Police Department,
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Public Integrity Bureau tries
Under an overpass in the 7th Ward, a woman with a tough jaw and a tight t-shirt saunters around, casing the block.
A suspicious character, for sure, and designed to appear just so. She's an actor playing a suspect, a decoy in a multi-faceted police scheme. In her pocket and inside her car lies the bait, a fat wad of bills that amounts to more than a day's pay for a street cop.
Undercover police officers stand at the ready, waiting patiently for uniformed cops to arrive -- and to pounce if they take the bait.
After a few minutes, a squad car pulls up. Undercover eyes and a camera lens or two focus on the officers, suspected of being on the take.
Are they dirty? Or clean, the victims of a bum complaint? Either way, they haven't a clue at that moment that their careers depend on whether the decoy leaves the scene with all the money in her pocket.
The Public Integrity Bureau, a small division in the New Orleans Police Department but one given wide leeway under Superintendent Warran Riley, operates independently and with little restraint. They police the police, investigate citizens' complaints and internal squabbles, squash careers or set the record straight.
Riley unapologetically said he wants officers to worry that someone could be looking over their shoulder at any moment.
"It is our attempt to get ahead of police misconduct, to ensure our police officers that we are holding them accountable," he said. "It is also our attempt to instill some paranoia within our own organization, that you need to do the right thing," Riley said.
Riley estimates about 85 to 90 percent of his officers are honest and hard-working. It's the remaining group -- no small number of cops -- that gives his department a black eye.
The department has ample reason to closely watch its own, given its history, both ancient and recent. In the last month alone, NOPD officers sparked a barrage of unsavory headlines: an officer was indicted on aggravated rape, kidnapping, extortion and public bribery charges; another reassigned amid a payroll fraud probe; and still another pleaded guilty to malfeasance after taking money from people he arrested.
In addition, Causeway police arrested a New Orleans cop for allegedly blowing past a roadblock and leading them on a chase at speeds above 100 mph.
And the department fired two other officers, one for allegedly punching a handcuffed man and the other for for his role in an off-duty bar fight.
The bureau's staff of 28 uses wires and surveillance and decoys and drops -- all covert tactics more commonly seen on television cop dramas. They set up stings worthy of major crime kingpins. They hide in trees, hole up with cameras inside private homes, and set up shop in "The Starship"-- a surveillance vehicle outfitted with plenty of tools the bureau just as soon not make public.Nearly all police departments have similar investigative departments -- most are simply called Internal Affairs. The New Orleans department, initially called the Public Integrity Division, was born out of the Internal Affairs Division in 1995.
Officials increased its staff and it moved out from the NOPD headquarters and into its current confines in the 100 block of North Rocheblave Street. In 2002, Superintentendent Eddie Compass named it the Public Integrity Bureau, making it a separate bureau that reported directly to the superintendent.
Two FBI agents currently work in the bureau, determining if any of the internal investigations warrant federal charges.
In 2006 the office fielded 817 complaints, ranging from "an officer was smoking inside my home" to police beating and corruption claims, police said. From those complaints, the bureau conducted 381 formal investigations and sustained 196 cases.
The 2006 investigations resulted in the arrest of 15 officers. In addition, the deparment dismissed 57 cases, suspended 121 officers and reprimanded 130 others, police said. Forty-eight officers resigned or retired under investigation.
Statistics from 2005 were not available because many records were destroyed in the flood.
Anthony Radosti, vice president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a watchdog group that frequently critiques the NOPD, heaped praise on the bureau.
"The Public Integrity Bureau is one of the bright spots of the New Orleans Police Department," Radosti said. "In the past, things tended to slip through the cracks or weren't handled properly because of policy decisions. Now, the bureau is doing stings and integrity checks. There is a no-nonsense approach."
Like any business employing 1,400 people, inter-office politics, egos, attitudes and policing styles cause the occasional rancor among officers. For better or worse, many of the gripes play out through the PIB.
Many officers view the integrity bureau as part enemy, part friend. The office investigates the mundane administrative quibbles as well as major criminal allegations.
Riley described the investigations as a "necessary headache" in which integrity takes precedence over hurt feelings. Unless the department roots out criminals in its own ranks, it can't regain the public trust it needs to fight crime.
Riley worked in the internal affairs unit early in his career, for about five years in the early 1990s. He also was the subject of at least one investigation, which resulted in a neglect of duty charge and a three-day suspension for failing to report a complaint in a timely fashion. That reprimand was never enforced, however, because of confusion about department regulations at the time. Riley declined to comment on the incident.
Asked when he last underwent an integrity check, Riley said it took place that morning, when he read crime news in the newspaper.
Critics of the internal investigative bureau say the system enables Riley and other top cops to settle old scores, to demote those who have challenged leadership and to investigate officers on the outs with the reigning police clique.
Deputy Chief Marlon Defillo, the head of the bureau, has heard the murmurs.
"People tend to say, 'Oh well, PIB is biased,'¤" Defillo said. "I can tell you, there are checks and balances in place. I believe in fairness and accountability. We let the chips fall as they may."
Sgt. Donovan Livaccari, a Fraternal Order of Police employee representative and 12-year veteran of the department, said officers are acutely aware of the bureau's watchful eye."I think officers are afraid to a certain degree, but a lot of it is unwarranted," he said. "The attitude, the concern is that people will be railroaded."Livaccari said the bureau has successfully rooted out many of the cops whose work, especially during the 1990s, went largely unchecked and unquestioned.
A pair of recent high-profile cases involving two captains, both held in high regard among many fellow officers, have particularly rankled the rank-in-file.
An integrity bureau investigation led to the firing of Harry Mendoza, a 30-year department veteran, last July for seven separate counts of neglect of duty. The investigation was kicked off by a complaint to PIB. Investigators tailed Mendoza for several weeks, taking photos and keeping notes. Defillo said investigators found the captain attending not to work but to a busy schedule of personal activities, including tennis.
Mendoza's attorney argued that Mendoza wasn't an hourly employee and was not tethered to a time clock. He said Mendoza often conducted business by phone and was on call 24 hours a day. The case is currently pending, awaiting a ruling by the civil service commission.
Late last month, Capt. Joe Waguespack, Sr., the former head of the homicide division and most recently the head of a juvenile crime division, was reassigned to a communications office desk job. A complaint to the bureau prompted investigators to look into criminal charges of malfeasance and payroll fraud for Waguespack's role in off-duty details.
Waguespack's attorney said the continuing investigation will show Waguespack did not commit fraud.
Though the investigate their own, the bureau's investigators carry out cloak-and-dagger police work that include elaborate stings.Late last year investigators used a police informant to pose as a drunken migrant worker in order to snare an officer who was taking money from people, mostly Hispanic laborers, who he had arrested.
The officer, Donald Battiste, resigned after his arrest and late last month pleaded guilty to malfeasance in office, for which he'll serve a year in prison. In the sting earlier this month, investigator Lt. Bruce Adams set the wheels in motion with a decoy. The women carried marked money, and laid it out in plain view in her car.
The investigation started with a "pretty good" complaint into Adams' office. Someone said a veteran officer made a habit of peeling off bills from the suspects he encountered. Adams ran some paperwork, checked the officer's background and gathered a group of plainclothed PIB investigators.
With the decoy in place, and undercover police converged on the designated spot, Adams manipulated the communications office and put in a call for a "107" -- a "suspicious person" matching the decoy's description. Adams makes sure the cops he's targeting respond to the call.
With his cell phone and police radio, he dictates the drama from inside his sport-utility vehicle near the scene. His squad uses code names. One cop goes by "Old Man."
The squad arrives and the radio crackles to life. The officers question and search the decoy.
In the span of about three minutes, the service call is over. The officers release the woman and their car pulls away.
Old Man shouts over the radio, "You want me to tail them boss?" Adams replies, "Yeah."
Once she swings around the street corner, the decoy calls Adams.
"Do you still have your prop?" he asks.
She says yes, the marked money is in her pocket. The money inside the car was never touched because the officers didn't search the vehicle.
In a couple months, the officers will receive a letter that says they passed an integrity check. It won't say when or how, just the all-important "passed."
Adams drives back to the office to meet the decoy. He's less vivid, less excited than before. Asked to classify the sting, he treads delicately.
"This is successful. The officers have passed," he says.
Yet doubt still lingers.
"They will be tested again. Soon. I have a few more cases to do, but I will be back on them in about a week."
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