Last week a Twin Rivers School District police officer was shot four times and the suspect wound up dead in the custody of police.
As Mr. Breton wrote, “About 30 years ago, if a guy accused of shooting a cop wound up dead in police custody, I know what I would have thought: The police killed him.”
He added, “In that void of accountability, mistrust hardened and hostilities grew. The suspicion of a cover-up always makes matters worse for the authorities, who were strictly following notification procedures at the expense of common sense.”
That the autopsy showed no signs of external trauma probably validates the police story, if not their handling of the matter.
But the matter gets worse for authorities. The Sacramento Bee reported last night that the Twin Rivers Police Officers Association sold T-shirt with the message: “”U raise ’em, we cage ’em,” surrounding a picture of a young child behind bars. The Bee provides a photo of the shirt.
Obviously, this is an egregious lack of judgment.
As one person quoted by the Bee put it: “There is nowhere on the planet where it is OK to wear a shirt like this.”
Clearly under fire last night, the association announced it would stop the sale of the T-shirts, which the union president now admits was a mistake.
“I don’t think this will be received well by the public, which is why we stopped selling them,” Twin Rivers police union President Arlin Kocher said. “Our chief came to us (about a year ago) when he found out that we were selling them. He asked us to take it off the union website. Our union, especially me, takes full responsibility.”
Billy Aydlett, a principal in Sacramento City Unified School District said he was “completely mortified about this story.”
He said, “The members of the Twin Rivers Police Officer Association make their living in service of the children and families of Twin Rivers School District. The sheer arrogance and prejudice needed to produce and sell a shirt with such a negative message is alarming, but for a ‘professional association’ to condone and sponsor such a deficit minded shirt goes beyond the limits of good taste, intelligence, and professional decorum.”
While the T-shirts show a tremendous lack of judgment and perhaps embody the mentality that surrounds the department, the Bee reports that community members have increasingly questioned why the department, with an annual operating budget of $3.7 million and 20 sworn officers, is making off-campus traffic stops and “call jumping” – responding to calls they were not dispatched to.
The state education code permits school districts to form police departments. The school district would point out that the state’s education code requires that officers receive training comparable to city police officers.
But as Marcos Breton points out: “OK. How about being accountable like real cops? Why circle the wagons and hide last week when all roads led back to them and their tactics?”
He adds: “The Twin Rivers officer was shot after he had made a traffic stop. Why was a school cop making a traffic stop on a Saturday away from any campus?”
My feeling is that being a police officer is difficult enough under the right circumstances – proper training, good supervision, proper oversight. Have we really learned nothing from the experience with BART police and the shooting death of Oscar Grant, among many other trip-ups?
Places like Twin Rivers District Police may have the same training, going in, as comparable city police officers, but do they have the oversight, accountability, supervision and support structure of other police agencies?
In my view, and I suspect the view of others, it is probably an interesting judgment call as to whether a school district ought to have its own police, rather than having a partnership with the city police.
It is probably a good deal less of a judgment call as to whether those police should be call jumping.
Whatever defense you can muster goes out the window when you see these T-shirts and realize that this district and the people who live in Del Paso Heights are among the poorest and most disadvantaged in all of Sacramento.
These are kids that need a world of help, and seeing those shirts likely just underscores the feeling of us versus them and embodies the distrust that so many disadvantaged youth already have for the police.
As I said, I think it’s time to re-think this police state that we are building, where every entity is able to form its own police force with possible insufficient training, oversight and supervision.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Why did the school district consider it necessary to form its own police force?
Elaine: High crime rate and very high rate of gang violence.
The TRUSD was just formed in 2007. It was created by merging four low-income school districts: the North Sacramento School District, the Del Paso Heights School District, the Rio Linda Union School District, and the Grant Joint Union High School District. Every one of those school districts suffered in the past from bad test scores, high poverty and crime rates, etc. The reason for the merger was to try to lower the cost of general administration, so they could have money for better security, among other concerns.
What strikes me is that these sort of special police districts very often have questionable police practices: BART has long had troubles with its officers; Twin Rivers has had 3 serious incidents this year alone; the Oakland housing authority police has been a nest of trouble*; and other school district police forces (I know the one in Oakland best) have had a lot of problems.
*Before I moved back to Davis, I lived in the ghetto in West Oakland near McClymond’s High School. One day, looking out of my back window — I lived in a live/work loft which had been an industrial laundry — I saw a kid, maybe 12 years old, getting the tar beaten out of him by two housing authority cops. The nearest “project” was at least a half mile away. I don’t know why they were beating this kid — for what it is worth, the child was black and so were the cops — but it probably had to do with drugs. Back then — in the early ’90s — the dealers would pay kids to patrol on street corners and work as lookouts. If they saw cops or rival sellers, the kids would use a beeper to alert their employers. That pissed off the cops, and perhaps that is why these two men in their 20s found it reasonable to beat the ess out of a 12 year old boy. … Denouement: I did not call the Oakland PD to report that beating. But a day or two later I mentioned it to an Oakland PD officer who I saw patrolling in our neighborhood. He gave me his card and told me to call him directly if I ever saw the housing authority cops behaving badly. He told me, “That force is a lawless piece of sh*t.” I never again saw anything like the beating of that child. But after I moved away from Oakland news stories reported that a lot of housing authority cops were involved in crimes, robbing drug dealers. That may have been why those cops were so mad at that kid.
Rifkin: Speculate much?
[quote]I [b]don’t know [/b] why they were beating this kid [/quote]
[quote]it [b] probably [/b] had to do with drugs[/quote]
[quote]That pissed off the cops[/quote]
[quote] [b] perhaps [/b] that is why [/quote]
[quote]That [b] may [/b] have been why those cops were so mad at that kid. [/quote]
???
AdRemmer, don’t be an asshole. Life is too short.
AdRemmer, I apologize for calling you an assh*le. My bad.
However, you might be interested in this tidbit ([url]http://www.sfweekly.com/content/printVersion/2027181/[/url]): [quote]From 1985 to 1993, Santiago was an officer and supervisor with the scandal-plagued Oakland Housing Authority Police Department. Documents, interviews, and news reports show that during his time there, [b]officers routinely beat up and stole from suspects, planted drugs on them, and lied about it in police reports and at trial.[/b] The security force was so notoriously corrupt that it became the target of local and federal investigations. Four officers went to prison. Steven Gore, the onetime Alameda County Public Defender’s Office investigator whose sleuthing helped bring the corruption to light, believed there was sufficient evidence to prosecute many more. “The idea that just four of these guys went to prison and Santiago continued as a sergeant was absurd,” he said.[/quote] I really knew nothing about the Oakland housing authority police when I lived in West Oakland in the 1990s. I didn’t live close to any “projects” and no one in my building or my neighborhood ever told me they were trouble. The incident I witnessed was the only such incident I saw of that kind. But it was scarring. I had no trouble seeing the beating or seeing the OHAPD car that the cops came out of. Obviously I don’t know what prompted those cops to beat that child. I do know they had no lawful right to do what they did.
It was after I left Oakland–moved to Davis–that the stories hit the news about what so many OHAPD cops were doing which was illegal. I also knew about the kids who worked as look-outs. I talked to those kids all the time. So I put two and two together and I speculate that the reason those cops were pounding on that child was related to drugs. In fact, I am sure it was drug related. I just don’t know if the cops were there to rob a dealer. If they were, that would fit the pattern of abuse in that department at that time.
[i]”It was after I left Oakland–moved to Davis–that the stories hit the news about what so many OHAPD cops were doing which was illegal.”[/i]
Correction: it was after I left Oakland [i]that I learned[/i] of the stories in the news about the corruption of the OHADP.
It will be interesting to hear what the autopsy results are for cause of death.
My guess is the wrong mixture of drugs with a pre-existing health condition (e.g. asthma) and stress.
David, hope you will keep us informed of autopsy results.
I agree that this T-shirt is horribly bad; at least PR-wise. Hopefully it’s just a bit of Halloween-type dark humor and not reflective of a deeply cynical attitude in the department!
In a confirmation of the arbitrary censorship that Dr Wu describes my post confirming his remarks was taken down for no reason other than they were critical of the censor’s failings.
rif, I apologize… My bad.
Acceptable.
DMG: Please make sure your readers know that the decedent was [u][b]NOT [/b][/u] in te custody of TRPD, when he died, so when you reference the 18 hr time frame are you pointing your fingers @ SPD?
oops – “the” custody…
Correct
[quote]Elaine: High crime rate and very high rate of gang violence.
[/quote]
Thanks for the enlightenment…