Commentary: Deconstructing Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel

Police Chief Darren Pytel
Police Chief Darren Pytel

By David M. Greenwald

As someone who has watched Darren Pytel for the last 15 years, starting when he was a police captain up through his time as police chief, he is a complicated figure—and on Tuesday he positioned himself at times on the progressive end of policing, but at other times not so much.

City Manager Mike Webb was praising his efforts: “Darren Pytel, I applaud him for really being at the forefront of chiefs in Yolo County working to advance this efforts and being a very strong supporter of it.”

I give him decidedly more mixed reviews.

In what follows, I pull from his comments on Tuesday and respond when appropriate.

As noted in the Joint Subcommittee report: “Black people are arrested at a rate 5.9 times more, and Hispanic people 1.5 times more, than their population share; when considering only Davis residents, Black people are arrested at 5.0 times and Hispanic people 1.4 times their population share.”

I was disappointed that no one on council really pushed back on Chief Pytel here when he responded: “I didn’t say it was impossible to benchmark the city, but it is complex because you have to look at many different way to benchmark the data and then extra people who aren’t part of your Yolo County and Davis benchmarks.”

He added, “Until you properly benchmark the data, that’s not necessarily an accurate figure.”

He said, “It would be naive to assume that there is no disparity because all studies have shown—and even properly benchmarked to the state study which is a better benchmarking system, show racial disparity.”

This really isn’t that complex.  As I pointed out earlier this week, we have the UC Davis Travel Data and we have the state of the city report, so benchmarking the average daily population in the city of Davis has been done, the university has their ethnic and racial breakdown, and frankly the needle isn’t moved nearly as much.

I thought Pytel was on stronger ground on the Crisis Now/Mental Health stuff.

Some people question whether there is cost savings in these models.  It really is going to depend on which model.  The chief maintains that they can reduce calls for service by 90 percent and that only 5 to 10 percent of all calls will entail the need for a police response.

Part of the savings here is not going to be a reduction of budget but rather a shift from money spent on law enforcement to money spent on mental health services.

However, Pytel believes that, in a lot of incidents, they don’t even need a physical response, but rather the ability to refer people to the appropriate services.

He told council, “It’s estimated that 90 percent of the people who are in crisis don’t need an actual physical response at the time they make a phone call.  They’re reaching out to get services or find out more information to deal with their immediate crisis.  That doesn’t necessitate an actual visit by anybody.  If we’re able to start diverting 90 percent of the calls in the next month, that would be a huge benefit.”

They would also have their embedded clinician who would be starting soon.

Vice Mayor Lucas Frerichs questioned this figure, asking, “90 plus percent of non emergent mental health calls being diverted via usage of a crisis phone line…that seems high. How does that work?”

Pytel responded: “A vast majority of people currently without having crisis lines when they call in and say I’m thinking about killing myself or suicide or depressive thoughts or I feel like hurting somebody or damaging something, right now without any other system in place law enforcement has become by default the responder to that.”

He said they drop them off at the ER.

“What they’re really finding through a lot of good research and through practice at many very large cities is that a vast majority of people even when they’re having that type of crisis don’t need anybody showing up at their front door.  What they really need is somebody who is able to talk to them… and then offer services ,” he said.

“Law Enforcement only becomes involved in the rare cases where the mobile crisis team determines that based on the nature of the threat… that a duel response is needed.”

That is a duel response where law enforcement waits for the crisis team before responding.  It’s really an integrated program.

Pytel continues, stating that we deal with unhoused who suffer from mental health crises, “which oh by the way, is a driver to some of our crime in Davis.”

Pytel said “we are really working with the county on the existing 24/7 crisis line to try to start diverting as many calls as possible very quickly.  That will be happening probably in the next month or so.

“If a crime is in progress, under all of the models we contemplate there is going to be a law enforcement response to do some minimal amount of making the situation safe and then involving mental health services.”

He noted that in the Built Out Model it has a location to take people for ER and a location for people who have committed crimes.

He said, “Let’s say you have someone who’s in crisis but also does a minor crime, rather than take him to jail, which we all can agree that that’s not a really good way to deal with a lot of people, you would instead take him to the facility that would immediately start working on the mental health part of it.”

This was probably Pytel at his best, recognizing that, for a lot of crimes, it really doesn’t do us a lot of good put someone in a jail.  I’m not sure a lot of people picked up on that comment, but that was quite persuasive.

While I think Pytel’s thinking here is a lot more progressive than most others in law enforcement, there is another piece that a lot of people are going to miss.

When you think about the notion of Reimaging Policing (if we want to get away from the idea of Defunding the Police), one of the points is not to run mental health services through the police department and this model and conception continues to do so.

Why not allow mental health to run the show here and call on the police when they need an armed response or when there is a dangerous crime in progress that cannot be handled through a mental health professional?

To put this another way, this model is an improvement over what we have now where police show up, they have no particular skill and really only the ability to arrest or take to ER for a 5150 hold.  But we can take this another step and remove the police from the response completely, except in those 5 to 10 percent of incidents where it requires it.

Finally, Pytel still really doesn’t seem to understand unconscious bias and systemic racism.

He gave this long explanation to Gloria Partida.

First he acknowledged answering Partida’s question from December poorly.

As he explained, “The analysis of our arrest data shows that people of color have more charges.”

He said, “At the time I said, it kind of doesn’t matter because the DA is the one that charges.  That’s still actually a right answer, it just didn’t answer your question.  It really is the officer who determines what the charges are for arrest.  But we actually don’t charge somebody, the DA’s office does.

“It’s a recommendation,” he continued.

But that’s not as important as what he explained next when he tried to understand, “what’s the deal of still having disparity in stop data after agencies—us and other agencies—have invested so much time and energy into unconscious bias training?”

He fashioned an explanation: “It kind of hit me… basically (what) I believe is we never actually bridged the gap between what unconscious bias training was supposed to do to bring issues to the conscious realm from the unconscious realm and how that affects decision making in the law enforcement process.

“An officer sees someone go through a stop sign and that’s a legitimate violation and something an officer can stop them for.  In unconscious bias training, a lot is talked about if you’re going to stop a person, here’s all the biases that may take effect and can impact thinking,” he said.

But as Pytel points out, “Studies don’t show that unconscious training doesn’t change the stop data and the racial inequities. Also doesn’t prevent those rapid decision-making.

“Unconscious bias training should translate to officers making more conscious decisions when there’s time—and 99 percent of the time, there’s time to consider what is it that I’m doing during this stop that may negatively impact a person and ends up just feeding the machine for the sake of feeding the machine (ie the entire criminal justice system) .”

He continued, “I think everybody would agree that there’s disparity in the criminal justice system.”

He said over the next year he wants to see if they can “individually bridge that gap and see if we can make those unconscious biases that everybody is affected by and see if the officers can bring that to conscious realm and make different decisions in every single stop or contact.”

Unfortunately, Chief Pytel still doesn’t understand the nature the problem here.

The first thing is that a lot of times, people aren’t being stopped because they committed a moving violation.  The bias happens because of things they talk about before—looking for cars that are out of place, cars that are in worse shape, running plates and things from that, and stopping people on the basis of these non-safety violations.

This is where Berkeley stepped in and basically said no, unless it’s something that’s a safety hazard, you shouldn’t be using those pretexts for stops.  Pytel, by using the stop sign running as the rationale for pulling over the vehicle, completely brackets that discussion and never discusses the Berkeley model and no one on council asks him about it.

Second, he runs through this litany after the stop: license and registration, they run the driver’s license, they find that the guy is on probation and use that as a reason to search.

Two responses here show the shortcoming.

First is the response to probation—just because you can search someone, doesn’t mean you have to search someone.  One reason that the hit rate on searches is so much lower in all the studies for Blacks versus whites is that police are using evidence-based reasons to search whites but procedural reasons to search Black, some of which is probably based on who they are rather than the circumstances of the request to search.

This was never discussed or addressed by Pytel, but is a huge part of the implicit bias that somehow needs to impact policing.

But the second problem and reason why implicit bias training is not going to solve these disparities is that Pytel continues to implicitly assume that this is about individual actions of police rather than systemic racism.

In the probation example as a prerequisite to a search, we already have systemic racism baked in without the officer having to acknowledge it.  The disparity between whites and Blacks being on probation in the first place.

Maybe you can shift your operating assumptions, as he touches on but doesn’t really explore, but until you deal with the systemic problems there are always going to be huge disparities.

In the end, the council is moving in the right direction.  They may have taken more steps.  But I think, looking at the discussion, there are key problems here that still need to be addressed in some way.

—David M. Greenwald reporting


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Author

  • David Greenwald

    Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

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23 comments

  1. This really isn’t that complex.  As I pointed out earlier this week, we have the UC Davis Travel Data and we have the state of the city report, so benchmarking the average daily population in the city of Davis has been done, the university has their ethnic and racial breakdown, and frankly the needle isn’t moved nearly as much.

    Davis is a college town so does the data you outlined account for the influx of out of towners traveling to Davis to eat, drink and party?

    1. That’s my whole point – we have the data – UC Davis travel survey and the State of the City report. If anything thing taking into account that data moves the needle towards more racial inequity, not less.

        1. What do you think that number is? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

          As pointed out in the article, we did run the data on stops for just those from Davis and it didn’t move the needle much. I don’t expect the folks coming from out of town to party to move the needle much either way against the nearly 30,000 coming to the university to work.

        2. What do you think that number is? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

          So there is no data on out of towers coming to party, etc?  That’s what I thought.

        3. The data on the number of out of towners is available in the studies for the Downtown Plan. It was a disappointing 10-15%, which means that Davis if far from being a tourist destination. Most of the traffic and business visits are by City residents (counting UCD and El Macero as part of the community.)

        4. The data on the number of out of towners is available in the studies for the Downtown Plan. It was a disappointing 10-15%

          I doubt that data had stats on the racial demographics of the Davis out of towner visitors.  After all, that’s what this is all about.

           

          1. I keep pointing this out but the number of out of towners is not sufficient to change the numbers overall.

        5. How would they even know how many visitors are coming to town during any given period?

          For example, do they record how many arrive at 2:00 a.m.?

          1. I do – but you have to look at the number of people coming in every day which exceeds 30,000 and then recognize that the small numbers of people coming into town – look at the numbers cited by Richard McCann, those are not going to move the scale.

        6. David:  You would probably need to run the numbers (e.g., how many non-residents are arrested, vs. how many residents are arrested) to make that claim.

          I would think that the most important number (for someone attempting to provide evidence for your theory) is to look at any disparity between those stopped (but not arrested), vs. those arrested.

          And then, you can look at skin color, from that.  (Implying that skin color was disproportionately the “reason” for the stop – for those not arrested.)  But even then, that would not be “proof”.

          But as far as Richard’s “numbers” are concerned – does that even capture all “visitors” in the first place? For example, “visitors” arriving at 2:00 a.m. – possibly for some nefarious purpose? And, not necessarily for the purpose of patronizing one of the fine, downtown business establishments? 🙂 And, what if those folks are “disproportionately represented”?

          I think this is my fifth comment.

          1. “I would think that the most important number (for someone attempting to provide evidence for your theory) is to look at any disparity between those stopped (but not arrested), vs. those arrested.”

            We looked at that data last summer, it’s in the RIPA report

  2. I think the data on racial disparities is weaker as a discussion topic than actual procedural bias (searching people on probation more often, conducting procedural based search instead of evidence based search).

    If you simply drill the police on each actual instance where they search based on procedure, the discussion would be more effective.

    The racial disparities topic might be what prompted you to investigatest, but the actual error should be the focus.

    If the police can agree that it is wrong to do procedure based search, even when the subject is in probation, then focus on that and it would fix any racial disparities due to that.

  3. In the probation example as a prerequisite to a search, we already have systemic racism baked in without the officer having to acknowledge it.  The disparity between whites and Blacks being on probation in the first place.

    “Systemic racism” is a theory in this example, not an evidence-based conclusion.  This type of pseudo-science implies that all disparity is the result of systemic racism.

    This type of theory does not explain why more males and young people are on probation, either. (Which according to this logic, should be labeled “systemic sexism”, and “systemic ageism”.)  Nor does it explain “under-representation” of Asians in that system.

    1. Nor does it explain “under-representation” of Asians in that system.

      Good point.  Aren’t Asians supposed to be included in this so-called systemic racism supposedly baked into the DPD?

      1. According to the logic, that should be labeled “Asian privilege”.  🙂

        And actually, that’s not so different than what one S.F. school board member alleges, in regard to (relative) Asian success. The same school board member who is now suing her colleagues, and the SF school district itself.

        1. There is no analysis which enables one to conclude that systemic racism is the “cause” (or even “one” of the causes).  Nor does it rule that out.

          Just as there’s no analysis which enables one to conclude that sexism or ageism is a cause for disproportionate representation.

          1. You’ve said this several times. I don’t know how I would prove that systemic racism is the cause – I have a theory that happens to fit the facts.

            I will point out…

            What Pytel said is:

            (1) “It would be naive to assume that there is no disparity because all studies have shown—and even properly benchmarked to the state study which is a better benchmarking system, show racial disparity.”

            (2) “what’s the deal of still having disparity in stop data after agencies—us and other agencies—have invested so much time and energy into unconscious bias training?”

            The reason for having the RIPA data and seeing the racial disparities is to figure out the source of those disparities and how to address them.

            Now as I point out in my piece, I don’t think Pytel at least in his comments really understands where systemic racism is going to impact those disparities. And I go into detail on that point.

  4. The term systemic racism is helpful only if it is used to emphasize that racial disparities at a level is not necessarily caused by any fault by actors at thar level.

    For example, if the law expects the police to procedurally search people they stop who happens to be on probation, then those on probation would disproportionally show up on the data on searches conducted by tbe police.  But in such case the police is not at fault.  The disparity simply passed down to them.

    Is it confirmed that the police should not be searching more if someone is on probation?  Is there data that Davis police searches more if the person on probation happens to be black?

    The police can’t just reverse systemic racism passed down to them.  You would need to focus on racism that is not sytemic, that is individually caused by the officer having a bias.

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