Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza was played on paid administrative leave shortly after the pepper spray incident went down on November 18, 2011. The question now is what will happen to her.
The Task Force nails her on multiple occasions in their summary of event. They write, “Chief Spicuzza bears individual responsibility for failing to challenge the leadership team’s decision on the time of the police operation and for not clarifying the role the police were expected to play during the operation.”
They add: “She is also responsible for numerous deviations from best police practices both before and during the operation.”
The reality is even far worse than that as the report paints a picture not only indecisiveness but incompetence to the point where even her own people did not follow her orders.
The Reynoso report writes, “Police Chief Spicuzza, at least initially, argued to her officers that the police operation was to be limited in various respects. She attempted, unsuccessfully, to dissuade her officers from using batons and pepper spray or to prevent them from wearing “riot gear” during the operation.
They add, “There is also evidence that she wanted her officers to withdraw if they encountered resistance.”
The Task Force report describes a complete breakdown in the leadership in the UCD Police Department.
They write: “The command and leadership structure of the UCDPD is very dysfunctional. Lieutenants refused to follow directives of the Chief.”
They add a shocking and appalling statement: “This breakdown is illustrated by the heated exchanges between the Chief and her Lieutenants as to the scope and conduct of the operation and the Chief’s apparent concession that her officers will do things their own way and there is nothing she can do about it.”
For this and this alone, the chief needs to immediately be terminated. There can be no avoiding this fact.
Likewise Kroll relates to a discussion that Chief Spicuzza and her Lieutenants had regarding the use of batons and pepper spray. Chief Spicuzza according to an interview with Leticia Garcia-Hernandez said that didn’t want them to be used.
According to Ms. Garcia-Hernandez, “Both the Lieutenants echoed back to her, “nobody wants to do that. But we can’t predict if we’re gonna have to use them.”
Ms. Garcia-Hernandez “believed that the Lieutenants made Chief Spicuzza aware that both pepper ball guns and pepper spray were among the less-lethal weapons that they would have at their disposal.”
In response, Chief Spicuzza “lifted her hand up off the table, waved to them, like, ‘No, no. We don’t wanna use that kinda thing.'”257 The Lieutenants replied “we know we’re not supposed to use it, but … it’s the less lethal tool that we have.”
Chief Spicuzza replied “Yeah, yeah, I understand” and the conversation moved on to the mutual aid response.
Kroll furthermore reports, “Also that night, Chief Spicuzza told the Lieutenants that she didn’t want them wearing helmets and face shields, or “riot gear, as she called it,” according to Garcia-Hernandez.”
The Lieutenants replied, “you cannot tell somebody to walk into a situation like that without their safety gear” and called her suggestion “ridiculous.”
Kroll further notes that at this point, Lt. Pike believed they were planning for an early morning operation and that they had never resolved their differences regarding the use of equipment or pepper spray.
As we have noted previously, one of the key issues was the strategic and tactical decision to change the removal time from 3 am to 3 pm which possessed a number of problems including both legality and size of the crowd.
Kroll notes that “the evidence indicates that it was Chancellor Katehi who chose this time frame…and that police leadership opposed this time frame but failed to register a strong objection to it with the Leadership Team.”
Furthermore, Kroll views that the “timing of any police operation is a key tactical consideration” to be determined by the police chief. The Task Force writes, “Chancellor Katehi did in fact make a tactical decision: that the tents would be removed during the day.”
Kroll notes, however, that there was no objection by the police chief to this tactical intrusion, stating, “Meyer stated that there was no ‘push back’ regarding the 3:00 pm Friday afternoon time from Chief Spicuzza or anyone else on the conference call” and that “Chief Spicuzza did not raise any strategic or tactical objections to the 3:00 pm operation.”
The Task Force adds, “No member of the Leadership Team recalls such concerns being communicated to them by Chief Spicuzza.”
The Task Force assigns the responsibility of the decision to deploy police at 3 pm rather than 3 am to Chancellor Katehi.
Chief Spicuzza wanted to postpone the operation to 3 am on Saturday the following day, but “Leadership Team members on the call other than Chief Spicuzza worried that conducting the operation in the dark might be unsafe.”
Moreover, the Task Force and Kroll takes everyone to task for the failure to establish legal grounds for the action that they were undertaking, “Even on November 18, Police Department leadership continued to question their legal authority to remove tents during the day in order to implement legal prohibitions against overnight camping.”
The report also nails the Chief for either failure to clearly define or inappropriately define the roles of supervisors of the police in the field.
The report argues, “the assignment of the two lieutenants to the actual dismantling of the tents by the Chief of Police was an inappropriate role for supervisors, especially for the Incident Commander.”
Not only were there deficiencies in the operations plan, but the incident was not managed according to that plan and this, at least according Kroll falls on the Chief of Police.
As Kroll reports, “The actions of the Chief of Police caused confusion during this operation. She was not present at the pre-event briefing and is not listed in any form on the operations plan. Her role in the field, where she was present on the Quad but not with the police, and was calling in directions via the command post, was problematic and added to the confusion already present in the operation. Indeed, at least one officer stated in his interview that during the most turbulent minutes of this operation, he observed the chief standing opposite him in the crowd filming the police actions with her cell phone.”
There was no role defined for Lt. Pike who “appears to have made the command decision to use pepper spray. No one in a command position was in the Department Operations Center, which impaired coordination and communication.”
Furthermore, the Task Force writes, “There is no evidence that standard debriefings occurred after the incident or that after-incident reports were appropriately prepared. The lack of standard, after-incident reports impede a thorough review of what happened from the police perspective.”
C.
The Task Force report hammers Chief Spicuzza’s actions “both with regard to the Leadership Team (her superiors) and the Lieutenants in command of the operation (her subordinates) were critically flawed.”
They write: “In terms of the Leadership Team, those mistakes contributed to the imprudent decisions to deploy police at all, as well as to do so during the day. As Kroll explained and we discussed above, the decision to launch the operation in the afternoon “was a key factor in the growth of the crowd which resulted in the encirclement of police and the decision to use pepper spray.””
They add, “In terms of the police operations, the Chief’s mistakes led to poor tactical decisions and, in Kroll’s words, reflected a failure to “perform in the manner that police commanders during such an incident should . . . conduct[] themselves.””
They continue, “the Chief did not attend the department’s operational briefing for its Nov. 18 response, and yet – without assuming actual command responsibility – “from the moment her officers were deployed on the Quad, [the Chief] began relaying orders to them via her cell phone.””
They cite her again for failing to challenge the 3 pm proposed time for operations. They write, “Whether she voiced objections to the proposal is unclear; however, even if she had, “it appears that the objections were not clearly expressed to the . . . Leadership Team.””
Moreover they add, “As the highest ranking officer on UCDPD, she must have known of the tactical significance of the timing of the operation, and it was her duty to “affirmatively resist” the Chancellor’s misguided tactical direction.”
They conclude here: “Had Chief Spicuzza objected forcefully to the timing of the police operation or the Chancellor making a tactical decision, the entire Leadership Team might have hesitated to go forward with a 3 p.m. operation.”
But the report goes further than that.
They criticize the chief for her failure to clarify the police’s role in the operation and the legal basis for police involvement.
“She also failed to convey adequately to the Leadership Team the probability of escalating use of force in such an operation,” the report notes noting that Lt. Pike and OFFICER P insisted “on wearing riot gear despite her contrary instructions” thus suggested that any use of force would be difficult to avoid.
The portion of the report concludes this section noting, “the Chief should have been well aware of the risk and made that risk clear to the policymakers to whom she reported.”
There is also the curious actions of the chief during the operation itself.
Kroll reports that the Chief instead of staying at dispatch to make command decisions, went to the quad.
Kroll writes, “On Friday, November 18, Garcia-Hernandez “was asking ‘who’s gonna stay with me [at the DOC] and make incident command decisions?’ and the Chief says, ‘Well … I’m gonna go out to the Quad and scope it out myself.'” They continue: “And she disappeared.”
The Chief would then call Ms. Garcia-Hernandez on her cell and relay messages to Officer P.
There was an operational briefing that Lt. Pike held at 2:30 pm and Chief Spicuzza was not at the briefing.
Chief Spicuzza read the letter to disperse and gave it to the protesters and then sat her car at the edge of the quad.
Karen Nikos, a senior public information representative was with the Chief and reported to Kroll: “the Chief called them on her cell phone and said, “that looks really bad, I don’t want to come in here like an army. Could you change that?” And they apparently told her, “no.” Then Chief Spicuzza said “this looks bad. I don’t want to come in here forcefully. I want this to be very”-Nikos was unsure if she used the word “gentle” but she was kind of indicating that. Then Chief Spicuzza turned to Nikos and said, “you know, there’s a limit to what I can do, because they have training that tells them to do things a certain way.”
At some point Kroll describes that “Chief Spicuzza called Garcia-Hernandez and said, “Tell them not to use their sticks.” When she relayed this message to Officer P, he said, “We have a whole ‘nother problem here that … she’s not aware of.”
The most curious incident is that 15 to 20 yards away from Officer L, he said “was the chief of Police staring at me with her camera, videotaping me with her iPhone.”
Kroll notes, “Other officers said that they observed Chief Spicuzza outside of the encircled crowd observing the events.”
During a debriefing, Chief Spicuzza told the officers that they “did an outstanding job.” Moreover, she said, she was “proud of how we handled the situation.”
In summary, the Kroll team cites an order by the police chief without any asserted legal authority for the order to clear the quad. Furthermore, “Chief Spicuzza failed to challenge or question this administrative policy directive at crucial decision points. Indeed, according to Pike’s Supplemental Narrative Report, it was Lieutenants Pike and OFFICER P who demanded the last-minute call to Campus Counsel to obtain legal guidance.”
Kroll continues, “The timing of any police operation is a key tactical consideration and Chief Spicuzza should have affirmatively resisted this direction-that is, assuming she did not agree with it. Chief Spicuzza’s position is unclear: she clearly considered 3:00 a.m. on Friday morning as a first choice and 3:00 a.m. on Saturday morning as a second choice. Kroll has not determined whether Chief Spicuzza viewed 3:00 p.m. as simply the third choice or whether she strongly objected to this timing on tactical/operational grounds.”
Kroll goes on to argue that Lt. Pike “was hampered by repeated failed leadership of Chief Spicuzza, his supervisor, who did not attend the briefing for the operation, did not raise objections to the flawed plans suggested by the administration, and played an unusual, disengaged role at the scene.”
The call the Chief action deficient as “she failed to say “no” to the Chancellor when suboptimal tactical decisions were being promoted; when she saw things during the police operation not occurring to her satisfaction, she did not to step in and assume command. Rather, the Chief chose to call repeatedly the Department Operations Command post and relay instructions.”
Reading this account, it is difficult to imagine how the chief, whose own lieutenants are not listening to her orders and direction could keep her job. She has already been on paid leave since just after the incident, the only real question appears to be when the determination is made to terminate her.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I am just as troubled as anyone else by what the Reynoso/Kroll report reveal. The only problem with all of this is there is no opportunity for Spicuzza to defend herself. I would argue she is entitled to some sort of due process, before passing judgment…
Elaine: She chose to not defend herself. But remember no discipline comes from this report. That comes from the IA and she doesn’t get to recuse herself from the IA. So she will get to defend herself prior to a decision made on her.
I think the failure of leadership starts and ends at the top: The Chancellor.
By blaming lack of knowledge of her own office, and blaming her staff, she skated from the “donate and we will admit your under-performing kid” program that was operating right under her nose at the Univ of Illinois. She was being interviewed here at the time that the pay-to-admit program blew up; I think the U of I was glad to see her go.
(BTW, my mother and grandmother are U of I graduates, Champaign-Urbana Campus.)
Now, we have this mess where the Chancellor again claims not to know what her staff where doing; she was off raising money from corporations, right, instead of being on campus to take charge?
I remember reading about the Peter Principle, and running an admissions program was above the limit. Then she comes to run an entire campus.
I know there are many local politicos and businesses that probably want to see her go, but (rightfully) are afraid to say it.
Well, I will say it for them: time to go.
To all of you people claiming that John Meyer is at fault: no way. I knew him as City Manager of Davis, and later as a senior official at UCD. He is way too smart and organized and proactive to create the mess that happened with the tent clearing.
The problem starts and stops with his Boss: the Chancellor. She sent mixed messages and could not give clear instructions. The next official below her who could have stopped the disaster was the Chief of Police, and she should be terminated for failing to act. I would leave out of the liability picture the personnel who were between the Police Chief and the Chancellor.
So John Meyer has the Michael Harrington vote of confidence. Too bad the facts of the report contradict that completely. Michael- have you read the report?
[quote]Elaine: She chose to not defend herself. But remember no discipline comes from this report. That comes from the IA and she doesn’t get to recuse herself from the IA. So she will get to defend herself prior to a decision made on her.[/quote]
From a practical point of view she could not speak out bc she is under investigation, and I’m sure her lawyer advised her to keep silent (and rightly so). Just as the students were not free to speak that were charged by the DA…
To fully understand what happened, one needs to consider the culture of the 5th floor of Mrak, where most of the Leadership Team lives. I spent time there years some years back. It is something of a bubble, far removed from daily campus activity and student life. Most of the folks who inhabit the realm are not selected for their ability to deal with these sorts of crises. Many are academics who for one reason or another have decided to move from doing research and teaching into administrative positions. The pay is good. They deal with a lot of whining and posturing on the part of students and faculty, but rarely with large scale threats of disruption. They are not selected for that capability nor are they trained in dealing with major campus upheavals. Chancellors are hired to develop community relationships and bring in financial support. Chancellors are not hired on the basis of their knowledge of NIMS/SEMS. Clearly this Chancellor was out of her element in the current crisis. She has no training for it. She is an academic and an engineer with some college administrative experience. On the other hand, one would expect that a Vice Chancellor – Administration and Resource Management would have some expertise with regard to handling campus unrest. Or the Police Chief. Someone should.
[quote]To fully understand what happened, one needs to consider the culture of the 5th floor of Mrak, where most of the Leadership Team lives. I spent time there years some years back. It is something of a bubble, far removed from daily campus activity and student life. Most of the folks who inhabit the realm are not selected for their ability to deal with these sorts of crises. Many are academics who for one reason or another have decided to move from doing research and teaching into administrative positions. The pay is good. They deal with a lot of whining and posturing on the part of students and faculty, but rarely with large scale threats of disruption. They are not selected for that capability nor are they trained in dealing with major campus upheavals. Chancellors are hired to develop community relationships and bring in financial support. Chancellors are not hired on the basis of their knowledge of NIMS/SEMS. Clearly this Chancellor was out of her element in the current crisis. She has no training for it. She is an academic and an engineer with some college administrative experience. On the other hand, one would expect that a Vice Chancellor – Administration and Resource Management would have some expertise with regard to handling campus unrest. Or the Police Chief. Someone should.[/quote]
You make an interesting observation. It doesn’t sound as if anyone at the university, including the police, had any training in NIMS/SEMS. But it certainly sounds as if they do need training in such emergency protocols. I doubt very much that these people were hired with the idea in mind that they would be expected to be able to handle a full scale protest of the magnitude that happened on the Quad that day. As Reynoso concedes, it was a new phenomenon…
I have been informed that the NIMS Training is widely available to law enforcement. And one even sent me his/her certificate.
If even half of the Reynoso report is accurate with respect to Chief Spicuzza’s performance, she has to become a casualty of the incident and this investigation. Her failure to lead, to communicate her own advice to superiors, to command respect and obedience to her instruction, to assure adherence to the force’s own rules–she IS the weak link.
civil discourse: of course I did. I spent years working on campus; i studied complex organizations as part of my UCD Sociology BA; i worked for years at the FAA, including with the most senior administrators; I spent 4 years on the Davis CC dealing with a wide range of organizational problems and dysfunction; as a litigator, I regularly sue the federal government and large companies for causing harm to others; I have taken hundreds, maybe over a thousand, depositions of all kinds of staff from the top down to the bottom of organizations.
I am not a police conduct specialist, but this case is really more about a dysfunctional organizational structure where the Boss (Katehi) had long since hit hard against her Peters Principle Ceiling, and her Chief of Police was, somehow, clueless. And then you have Officer Pike, a mean person with a badge and gun who was well known for his attitude.
No, I dont blame the UCD personnel between Katehi and the Police Chief.
For the case of Police Chief Spicuzza, I do not know how to properly interpret the relation between her and the lieutenants. My interpretation is this:
At that time, Student Affairs had already failed to resolve the situation (91/190). They had already passed flier and talked with the Protesters. The police was the next resource to be deployed. Spicuzza understood the Admin’s desire to resolve the conflict with no violence, but she also believed that her department could not remove the tents the way the Admin wished (100/190: “They just don’t get it”).
On Nov18, at 2:23pm, Spicuzza went to the encampment personally to ask the Occupiers to remove the tents. According to normal Knoll’s perspective on NEMS, she should stay at the dispatch. However, what I saw from her action, was that she was desperately trying to stop what she believed would happen: That the police would show up, that the Protesters would resist. The Protesters would act in a way that intentionally or unintentionally force the police to use force.
From my perspective she was showing respect to the Protesters by asking them to remove the tents herself. Spicuzza sincerely hoped that the Protesters would just come to an understanding and evict themselves: (107/190)
[quote]It is now 2:30, and in accordance with that letter, I am ordering you to remove these items, tents, by 3:00 p.m. If you do not remove these tents, we will have to remove them, and we cannot guarantee that your property will be returned. Please ensure that you collect all your personal items prior to leaving the immediate area by 3:00 p.m. If you do not remove your tents, you must leave the immediate area while we do so. You may remain on another area of the Quad. If you do not comply with police instructions, you may be subject to arrest. It is our hope that there will be no arrests. You should understand the consequences of such an action. You are all adults, and an arrest can stay with you throughout your career. We do not want to have to arrest you. We are hopeful that you will be respectful of both the Chancellor’s request and the Police Department’s order to remove these tents by 3pm. Thank you for your time.[/quote]
The above was not a normal eviction order. It came from a genuine hope that the opposition would understand. It should be acknowledged that the Police Chief at least had no ill-intention nor animosity toward the Protesters. With Wood’s support, she asked the Protesters to remove the tents repeatedly (108/190). Spicuzza first thought that it was working, but then saw that the tents were only relocated to the center of the Quad. At that point, Spicuzza told Meyer and Wood that it failed, and called the police to move in (108,110/190).
Overall Chief Spicuzza seemed like a nice and kind person. If the campus had no protests, she would probably do fine. It seems that the hiring committee at least did not hire Spicuzza for her as an agent to suppress free speech. If that was the case I would expect a much more forceful Spicuzza from the report.
If I had to pick between a Police Chief that is kind but does not know NEMS/SEMS and a police chief that knows NEMS/SEMS but is unkind. I would pick the one who is kind. This is because easier to equip a person with NEMS/SEMS knowledge than to teach a person to be kind.
Chief Spicuzza apparently has no anger nor hatred. Those are cherishable traits.
Michael, you only skipped one–the one “between Katehi and the Police Chief.” The missed communication between him and the chancellor, the apparent lack of training and guidance for the officer force, a chief who “was, somehow, clueless”–stuff like this suggests that Meyer failed in his responsibilities as the chief’s supervisor.
Maybe he was great in his City of Davis position, but suffered the Peter Principle fate along with his own boss.
“Chancellors are hired to develop community relationships and bring in financial support. Chancellors are not hired on the basis of their knowledge of NIMS/SEMS. Clearly this Chancellor was out of her element in the current crisis. She has no training for it.”
I must disagree. Katehi was hired at a time of great economic stress and incredible increases in tuition costs. Clearly she was brought in because of her fund raising skills, but, to say that the kinds of protests the University is facing, as a result of the defunding of public education, could not be anticipated doesn’t hold up. In fact, Katehi was part of an FBI program to address student unrest. To suggest that she was brought in with her astronomical salary while cutting employee salaries and raising tuition without the expectation that she could be up to the task of dealing with protests that resulted from UC policy decisions is unbelievable.
As an example, when Reagan brought S. I. Hayakawa in to run San Francisco State during a time of student unrest they both knew what they believed needed to be done. To suggest that Katehi’s failure is because of the failure of Yudolf and the Regents to properly describe her job description and hire someone with the correct skill set only serves to indicate that the buck stops even higher up the chain of command. Yes, this is arguing that responsibility goes even higher than the Chancellors office. Is that what people really want to argue?
“Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza was played on paid administrative leave shortly after the pepper spray incident went down on November 18, 2011.”
Undoubtedly true, but she put herself in that position . (When I worked on the Muleshoe Gazzette, we always proofed before we published .)
While the reports seem to indicate that it was unclear that Katehi intended that no force was to be used by the police, I think it appears clear that Chief Spicuzza understood this from her attempts to dissuade them to use batons, pepper spray, riot gear, etc. In fact, it seems like Spicuzza was on exactly the same page as Katehi in terms of understanding her fears, concerns and direction. The failure occurred in Spicuzza’s inability to “convince” her lieutenants to act otherwise and her failure to notify Meyer and/or Katehi that her department would not do what Katehi thought they would do. While I understand to some extent Spicuzza’s officers positions on how to conduct the operation (although I believe this to some extent to be a failure of her department to understand that the conduct of campus police needs to be a bit different than the conduct of municipal police), the failure to notify Meyer and Katehi is one of the reasons the situation spun out of control. I suspect that had Katehi known that they would go in in riot gear and that the officers believed their would be active resistance to necessitate riot gear, that Katehi would not have had them go in at 3:00 p.m. that fateful day.
I should also say that I agree with the officers’ comments and belief about not being able to know in advance what force will be necessary when they are in a protest situation. However, one can choose the method of engagement or disengagement. If resistance is faced, you usually have the option of trying to disengage. We must remember, however, that despite all of the police missteps, the only misstep that resulted in all of this was Pike’s decision to use pepper spray. Absent that sole action, all of the other mistakes that were made still allowed for the possibility of a “good outcome”.
Finally, I strongly disagree with Michael Harrington that this whole incident is the primary fault of Katehi. He clearly has an ax to grind and believes she is overpaid. However, I firmly believe that it is ludicrous to say that the hiring of the UCD Chancellor at the time she was hired should have envisioned that the individual would have experience and capability of dealing with protests as a significant experiential criteria. I don’t expect many others to believe this, but it needs to be said. The Chancellor should be able to rely upon the Vice Chancellor in Meyer’s position to take responsibility for this. Additionally, given that Spicuzza was actually a part of the leadership team and had direct contact with Katehi through these meetings, the Chancellor had a right to expect that Spicuzza would speak up if the Chancellor was going in a direction where there were issues with tactics. Spicuzza understood and in fact agreed with the manner in which the Chancellor believed the tents should be removed, but failed to inform Katehi of the intended tactics and mindset of Spicuzza’s senior officers’.
There are a couple of points here that I am not clear about.
1) It would appear that there was uncertainty about the legal basis on which the action of the police to clear the
Quad was predicated. Whose responsibility is it to ensure that there is actually a law being broken prior to a
police action ? The police prior to acting ? The civilian command, in this case the Chancellor or her designee ?
Who is responsible for saying ” This is the specific law that is being broken and that we are enforcing” .
2) I have heard the comment made that the Police Chief was not in command of those under her. I have not heard
the word insubordination used. If indeed Lt. Pike and others made the deliberate decision not to adhere to an
order to not use riot gear or take in batons, does not this constitute insubordination, and are there not specific
penalties for this action completely separate from the issue of whether this should have been reported to the
civilian leadership prior to the action ?
David has a later story today about this very issue. One would hope tha everyone you list would know the laws under which they’re deciding to act. This would be a huge breakdown if the chancellor and her assistants are ordering illegal actions and the troops are carrying them out. Maybe there’s some retired police chief who can respond to the specifics of who has the responsibility to assure that every action is lawful.
With respect to insubordination, I can’t imagine things are much different than you learned in your military association. However, I don’t think the level of investigation undertaken here is close to adequate to stick anyone with insubordination charges. Sounds as though things were pretty confused, maybe too confused to assure that people disobeyed clear and lawful orders.
In any case, it doesn’t see like professionalism abounded or that the chief was given the respect and deference she should have been from above or below.