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Austin American-Statesman - Au
13 June 2007

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To avert tragedy, police must

The killing of Kevin Brown was shocking enough, but it was stunning it happened less than two days after city officials announced the U.S. Department of Justice had accepted our complaint to investigate allegations of systemic excessive and deadly force and other illegal police conduct against East Austin's minority communities. Such Justice Department investigations are rare.

The facts surrounding Brown's death on June 3 crystalize the core of the Justice Department complaint. The video of Sgt. Michael Olsen's confrontation with Brown doesn't show any effort by the police to de-escalate the situation � just the opposite. And why is an officer with a history of physical abuse � and who was disciplined for lying in a previous abuse case, which cost the city $31,000 � working in a volatile situation?

The public has seen other videos of excessive force since we filed the Justice Department complaint. Two of them showed officers standing around, knowing the beatings were wrong. City Manager Toby Futrell and Acting Chief Cathy Ellison say there are new procedures and training in place. However, without effective discipline, they are "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Officers who adhere to the "code of silence" and don't report fellow officers violating people's rights should be treated as co-conspirators and, as in the criminal law, suffer the same penalty as the abuser.

And why not offer pay incentives to seasoned officers, who know how to de-escalate volatile situations and understand cultural differences, to help train younger officers in minority communities? The city could also offer a housing incentive for officers who choose to live in Austin, rather than travel into town as a large number of them do. Officers who live in Austin will have greater loyalty to the city than someone commuting from Seguin, for example.

There are also systemic issues beyond training, discipline and procedures. One is how the arbitration process so often overturns or reduces punishment. It's one thing to have a union that protects officers from officials' capriciousness, something we support, but quite another when arbitration effectively guts the disciplinary process and undermines citizen confidence in its integrity. This is an item the city manager must commit herself to changing during union negotiations in 2008.

When a police shooting occurs, the lack of transparency can cause people to profoundly doubt the police version of events, even to the point of suspecting officers are doctoring the scene, perhaps even planting a weapon, and getting their stories together.

Just as bad is how information is slowly leaked to the media in such a way to put the victim in as bad a light as possible and to paint the officer as good as possible. This, too, drives a wedge between the police and community.

District Attorney Ronnie Earle has a crucial role also in holding bad officers accountable. The perception is that he uses the grand jury system to shield officers. Even when a grand jury does indict, he can make an end run, as he did with the Christmas Eve dismissal of a falsifying records indictment against Olsen. When a citizen files an internal affairs complaint, the police warn the citizen he or she can be prosecuted for making a false statement. That should be true of the police, too, because their paperwork starts the operation of the criminal justice system against a citizen. The message to the police is they can operate with impunity; to the people, the message is fundamental unfairness.

Austin is in the process of selecting a new police chief. The first question to each candidate must be: How will the Justice Department investigation affect your role as chief? If the answer is "it won't," the city should end that candidacy. The only acceptable answer is "I will cooperate totally, conduct my own investigation and implement every reasonable Justice Department recommendation and those that result from my own investigation." This is the only way Austin can move past this terrible crisis in police-community relations, and avoid yet another senseless tragedy.

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Austin American-Statesman - Au13 June 2007

To avert tragedy, police must

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Austin American-Statesman - Au
13 June 2007