A few months ago someone asked me why the Vanguard focused so heavily on Ferguson and police issues that are so far away from us. I reminded them that the Vanguard was actually born nine years ago (this past week) from police issues.
In our time, police issues have been a recurring theme. In 2006 it was the Davis Police arrest (actually in the summer of 2005, ten years ago this month) of then 16-year-old Halema Buzayan. In 2007 began the series of trials charging Ernesto and Fermin Galvan with resisting arrest (in a horrific 2005 police beating incident by West Sacramento Police). In 2009, we had the shooting death of Luis Gutierrez by Yolo County Sheriff’s Deputies. In 2011, we had the ICE raid on the Oak Street home of Linda Clark. Late in 2011, we had the Pepper Spray incident on the UC Davis Quad. In 2012, it was the Tasering of Jerome Wren and Tatiana Bush by a now former Davis Police officer. In 2013, we had the “mowing while black” incident. And in 2014, we had the MRAP (mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle).
The Vanguard was founded because of my personal frustration about the inability of getting the truth out about what was occurring in this community. At the time, I felt like the authorities had an easy platform from which to do damage control and there was no platform for the people to speak from. While it is true that the mission of the Vanguard has greatly expanded from those early days, at our core we are about protecting the public from the actions of public officials acting under the color of authority.
That color of authority is not just law enforcement, but public officials in general.
I want to, for a moment, take people back to the Buzayan incident. It has been my endearing frustration that the truth never really came out in the case. The legal system proved to be long, expensive and ultimately completely unfulfilling.
First of all, I think that this was such a minor incident that it was gross mismanagement by the police and city officials, allowing it to reach the point it did in the spring of 2006. It was a minor bumper-bender in a parking lot, with an accusation of hit and run, and lying by the family. The family had actually paid for the damage to the car which, generally speaking, ends law enforcement involvement in non-injury accidents.
The family hired at great expense an accident consultant, who quickly determined that the damage did not match in terms of paint transfer, height and type of damage to the two vehicles.
The person whose car was hit was not interested in seeing criminal prosecution.
The four things that stand out about this incident are: (1) The fact that the Davis Police officer pursued this minor matter in the first place; (2) His decision to arrest the minor for a misdemeanor at 10 pm at night rather than have her father bring her to the station in the morning; (3) The officer ignored the minor’s request for an attorney – a Miranda violation; (4) The interrogating officer’s poor training in Professional Standards that led her to attempt to interrogate the minor about her role in the incident rather than her complaint about the officer involved.
What was interesting to me at the time and in retrospect is how trivial this incident actually was. There were actually quite a few other complaints around the same time, several of which I felt at the time were much more serious than the core issues surrounding the Buzayan case – they had to do with excessive force, botched raids, and other matters. But the “victims” in those cases were reluctant to come forward and so the Buzayan case was transformed into something that became a flashpoint in the spring of 2006.
The Human Relations Commission (HRC), which advocated for a civilian review board, became the fall guys for what would transpire, but most of what happened had nothing to do with the HRC. You had a local attorney who filmed his encounter with the Davis PD, who ended up suing and losing in court. In February 2006, you had about a dozen black residents come before council to complain about their treatment – that was organized by a student at the university.
You had an April or May march in 2006 from Mrak Hall to the Davis Police Station. Those were largely student protesters.
But it was the HRC who took the hit. When the Vanguard was founded, one of the first things we did was a public records request for the police chief’s emails. And we found that the police chief himself was orchestrating a counter-attack on the HRC, with a small group of citizens backed by the council majority which was bent on putting this to rest.
Finally, the situation boiled over when Police Chief Jim Hyde resigned from the Davis Police Department to take over in Antioch and he sent an email to council blaming it on the HRC and its chair, who just happened to be my wife. He called it the “most dysfunctional organization” he had been a part of and a few weeks later the council voted 4-1 to disband the commission.
I remember being in the parking lot of City Hall, it was 3 in the morning, and I was stunned and didn’t know what to do. I did not feel like the issue got a fair hearing. It was a lame duck council making a very political decision.
If you look at the data in the city of Davis, you see that in 2005 and 2006 the number of complaints against the police spiked. The number of government claims, which are the prerequisite to a lawsuit against the city, soared.
What we didn’t know at the time, and have since learned, is that there was great turmoil at the police department at the time. The rank and file were not happy with Chief Hyde and tensions were mounting, in part because of his poor management and in part because he was simply rarely around, getting his doctorate. We learned later he would go in through the front door so that he avoided running into other officers.
His efforts to ratchet up tensions between the police and community activists were efforts by him to distract from these internal problems.
What we have seen since is a much better run department. Chief Landy Black has helped improve the department in terms of personnel, in terms of management – they now have a very good management team, and in terms of improved morale among the officers.
We also have a system of oversight. While the HRC pushed for civilian review, in the end the city agreed to hire an ombudsman, which has now been renamed a police auditor. Bob Aaronson was hired in the fall of 2006, and he brings professional experience from an independent position.
If you look at the way the department is now run, we see improvement. When the incident involving Jerome Wren and Tatiana Bush occurred, the police, immediately upon their investigation, acknowledged that the situation was poorly handled. The officer went into a domestic dispute and, instead of calming the situation down, escalated it.
The officer was terminated.
When the incident involving “mowing while black” occurred, the police agreed to create a community-police mediation session, which ultimately resulted in the Alternative Conflict Resolution policy that could well transform the way police oversight is done.
As a result, even last year when citizens were angry at the police for bringing in an MRAP, most of the dialogue was based more on national and global concerns about militarization rather than accusations against the local police.
Now the police are bringing forth a new policy for body-worn cameras. And, while we have some concerns about the details of the policy, the police have been working with citizens’ groups in the last few weeks to explain the policies and to have discussions.
The discussions that we are having nationally about the police are issues that we have either had to deal with locally or are dealing with locally.
We have seen tremendous progress locally on this issue and a lot of that has been due to the willingness of the police department to engage, rather than do battle with local groups, and we would like to see more of that nationally as this debate continues.
The most recent national incidents – Sandra Bland and Sam Dubose – illustrate that it is not enough to have oversight, cameras and transparency. We need to have better training.
Last week at the HRC meeting, Assistant Chief Darren Pytel announced that they were implementing a new pilot program for training in Davis. It will start with eight police officers, but, if effective, will be implemented for all police office officers in the city in small groups. This training should help to teach law enforcement officers not only how to better deal with diverse populations but help them with techniques to diffuse rather than inflame potentially volatile situations.
It is obvious in looking at the videos of these two recent incidents that the officers in each case had the opportunity to defuse the problem by handling the matter a little differently.
While the Vanguard has expanded its scope in the last nine years, the need for transparency and accountability in the police department remains as pressing an issue today as it was when the Vanguard was founded.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Re: the ICE Raid on the Oak Street home of Linda Clark.
What was the outcome? Were any residents deported? Did they discover the source of the child pornography, i.e., who sent it in the first place? Or was it a sting- originated (sent) by law enforcement? Was it “real” photo’s or photo-shopped images?
Did the owner of the home ever get law enforcement to pay for their damage to her home?
https://davisvanguard.org/2011/06/davis-resident-still-searching-for-answers-in-wake-of-ice-raid-on-davis-property/
some pretty egregious incidents in yolo. a lot of them in west sac – galvan brothers, alvarez rapes, kevin hughey shootings, more.
the gutierrez shooting if caught on tape would probably show that the officers were lying just like we saw in south carolina and cincy.
the ice raid was egregious as well.
but no one wants to admit there’s a problem here.
I’ll admit it, and my family will admit it. For a while I had a friend who worked nights come to my home during the day to walk my lab. He was Latino. He told me he wouldn’t walk my dog any longer because cars would slow down, people would stare at him, and people would walk the other way when they saw him on the street or the greenbelt. I used to walk my lab by the arboretum and also by Putah Creek, too. He refused to walk over there – it was too isolated and he felt uncomfortable.
He was a medium built Latino. He tried to return a 40 oz bottle of beer once at a local market. When he bought the beer, and got outside, he noticed the cap had already been turned like someone had started to open it.)The clerk, a grown white man, was really rude to him. My 40 year old friend turned around and immediately came back into the store to return the beer. The clerk told him students buy alcohol, take a few sips, and try to return it. So he couldn’t return it and get his money back or even exchange the beer for another one. If a wealthy Davis housewife returned a bottle of wine, would she get that exact same treatment? Racism can be so subtle and exhausting you simple forget half the examples of it when trying to describe it. My kids are white but get very tanned in the summer. We have experienced it in very subtle ways. My Jewish friend looks mixed African American. She has also experienced it in Davis.
Re: egrarious cop behavior, he was stopped 2 or 3 time in Davis for flickering tail light, failure to make a complete stop at a four way stop, and failure to use his turn signal. He didn’t like Davis. He wouldn’t even jaywalk downtown, even if the street was totally deserted! But his daughter wound up going to UCD. I hope she got better treatment.
I think we go overboard with these types of stories attributing them to racial bias. Bias exists for sure, but humans routinely calculate probability, risks and returns in their interactions. Certainly race can be part of the assessment, but there are a lot of other things like body language and general behavior.
In my 20s I went with a friend to ski at Heavenly Valley ski resort in Tahoe. Niether of us were experienced skiers and it had been a few years. We somehow both made a mistake attaching our lift tickets to our clothing in a proper way. The lift operator would not allow us to pass. We ended up in the corporate office to complain and demand a replacement lift ticket or refund. We ended up being passed all the way to the chief operating officer and he took one look at us and explained that he could not replace or refund the tickets. He said that the resort loses a lot of money because of people scamming the lift ticket process.
Both of us were bank managers at the time but also played in a rock bank and had long hair. If either of had been black or Hispanic, would we have drifted into a racial victim mentality over this treatment?
part of the problem frankly, because you aren’t, is bias is all theoretical to you. you don’t live and experience it every day. as i walked in the community with my daughter or ex-wife, i could see how they were treated, i could see how it tore them down piece by piece, unless you experience that first hand or at least close at hand, i don’t think you understand it. you like to use the word victim mentality, but what do you think happens to someone beaten down each day?
I have tried to return alcohol two times in my life, bottles not opened, and was refused both times. I’m told stories are extra wary about booze, and there may also be stiffer restrictions on their return.
Check the bottle / package before you leave the store. Problem solved.
Good advice TBD and that goes for whatever color you are, white, black, green or tanned.
TBD, perhaps if the grown man who was the clerk had been more polite & civil to my friend, he would not have felt a racial component to the interaction. He literally turned around just outside the door & walked back inside. Also, I still believe if a wealthy white Davis woman had tried to return a bottle of wine because it tasted like it had turned or was not up to her standards, that clerk would have been more polite, and would have allowed her to exchange it for another bottle, which is what my friend, in a respectful and polite way, asked the clerk to do. Do you check every single item you are going to purchase at the market before you leave the store? Really? Every single time you shop? Wow.
I agree with DP. But I have only experienced a relatively few incidents in Davis, because I am white. When I’m with my friends of color,I am treated differently, occasionally.
It’s actually sort of nice that several readers deplore racism so much that they just can’t accept there is any in their village. I guess you folks want to believe Davis has evolved to a place where people are not judged by their skin color, sexual orientation, spiritual beliefs, degree of higher education, salary, etc.
It would be nice to hear first hand from anyone who lives in Davis who thinks it is not quite there yet.
Frankly
“Certainly race can be part of the assessment”
And this is the core of people’s concerns about racist bias. Your anecdote about you and your friend was a rather oblique means of trying to minimize the truth of your own statement. If race is ever a part of the assessment, it should not be. That is the point.
So when we have a serial killer, we shouldn’t look for a middle-aged, unemployed white male living in his Mom’s basement?
Race is but one of many issues we consider. When the little girl was abducted / missing in Santa Cruz, did we profile women equally to men? My guess is no.
The charge of racial profiling isn’t that police officers investigate based on known facts of a known criminal matter – it’s that they randomly pull over individuals who they have no reason to believe committed a crime for a minor infraction looking to see if they may have found a bigger fish.
While you are correct that you likely will use known facts or likely facts to narrow a search and create a profile of a likely suspect, that doesn’t translate into the complaint lodged about racial profiling about the random pulling over of people based on race.
“If race is ever a part of the assessment, it should not be. That is the point.”
Yep.
“Bias exists for sure, but humans routinely calculate probability, risks and returns in their interactions.”
Good afternoon, Frankly – What did David or I or DP write that would prompt you to reply w/ that sentence?
What calculated risk did you & your pal pose to the employees due to your choice of long hair? I’m truly not following your logic here.
So that’s it. This explains an incident I had recently because I was really wondering if it might be something else. My daughter bought a house with a pool and I’ve gotten really tan this summer hanging out at her house. The other day I got funny looks from a cashier at a local grocery store and I couldn’t imagine why. Now I know it must of been subtle racism because of my new tan.
I notice when I smile, and say please and thank you, I get treated better than when I am covered in paint or sawdust and looking filthy from a hard day’s work. Blue collar bias?
I had called a peaceful truce w/ you my dear Palin, a few months back. Maybe you didn’t read my comment because I had previously told VG readers I had stopped reading yours?
My kids are half Sicilian and their gorgeious olive skin gets very dark in the summer months. Combine that with a name that is spelled very simlilarly to a Latino last name and me, their Mom, having a common Latina first name; therein lies the confusion.
Years ago one of my family members was arrested in Dixon and treated a little roughly by the officers.A close friend in Davis told me: “Oh, they probably thought he was a Mexican. We have had trouble with those cops before.” I prefer to think the cops were having a bad stressed out day and perhaps they were working a double shift and were sleep deprived. I hate to remember the sleepy little village of Dixon as being racist idiots. I just can’t let my brain go there, it’s too sad.
Plz remember your broad spectrum sunscreen. I bear no bad feelings toward you. I value your opinion here. Plz value mine.
How do you know this is true? Unless Hyde said this himself this is all conjecture on the Vanguard’s part.
How do I know it’s true? I have the emails and the communications between Hyde, his assistnt and members of the community.
So Hyde admitted in some form of communication that he went through the front door to avoid other officers?
He also communicated to someone that he purposely ratcheted up tensions between the community activists and police as a distraction?
Or is this just all what someone thinks?
“So Hyde admitted in some form of communication that he went through the front door to avoid other officers?”
No I heard that one from the other officers. From what I understand it was obvious.
“He also communicated to someone that he purposely ratcheted up tensions between the community activists and police as a distraction? Or is this just all what someone thinks?”
What you see in the emails is him planning with various members of the community and then you see what the members of the community do in public. You are correct, that he never actually said let’s ratchet up tensions, you only see his actions and draw your own conclusions from it.
If you’ve been to the police station, as I have, you would see that the front parking lot near the front door is about one quarter the distance that it is from the administrative offices to the back parking lot. A friend of mine worked there and worked in the front area of the building, near where Chief Hyde worked. She and others who worked in the front of the building also parked in the front lot because it was a shorter walk.
Be that as it may, more than three officers told me about this after the fact as a source of tension for the officers and the chief, that ended up being among the unpublicized reasons the chief ultimately left.
How is it that David’s (and other liberal activists’) efforts to rally people who share their opinion to show up at Council meetings is a noble thing, while Chief Hyde’s efforts (and others who support the police and other issues counter to the liberal agenda) to get people with opinions counter to the liberal agenda to overcome their fear of publicly speaking counter to the liberal demagogues, and take advantage of the public forum of a Council meeting too, is a bad thing. That’s the problem with liberals, they’re all about free speech until it’s not their speech.
Thanks for your input QBDivan. There’s always two sides to every story.
Keep posting, it’s good to have other views.
My point was that the HRC was blamed for stirring things up when in fact, there were a lot of people who were involved in the mixture.
That’s not how I saw it and I know many others in the community who felt that the HRC was stirring it up. I for one was happy when the council disbanded the committee.
That’s how it was presented in the paper, spun by Hyde and Saylor and Souza. However, as I showed in my article, a lot of what was going on was coming from groups not affiliated with the HRC. A group of black community members showed up at council, unbeknownst to any of us. The only thing the HRC did was push for civilian oversight. The council especially Souza and Saylor were angry that the HRC continued to push for civilian oversight after they had decided to go with an Ombudsman. It became a powerplay from there. The HRC played a role, but there was a lot that was happening that had nothing to do with the HRC.
BP
“That’s not how I saw it and I know many others in the community who felt that the HRC was stirring it up.”
“Stirring it up” is an interesting phrase. It can mean that everything is fine and so there is no reason to be disruptive. Or it can mean that there are things that are not fine at all, but that people, usually those in power or those that agree with them would remain hidden.
Usually when there are vastly different interpretations of what is going on, there is some kind of question or problem or inequity that should be addressed. In these circumstances I will almost invariable promote transparency and a collaborative approach to problem solving which would be the antithesis of simply choosing to “disband” one’s opposition.
“When the little girl was abducted / missing in Santa Cruz, did we profile women equally to men? My guess is no.”
Re: serial killers, child abductions & murder, not sure how we got on that subject, but you do agree that the large majority committing those crimes are men, with the exception of Nancy Garrido and a few others?
DG– good job steering the Vanguard all these years! Lots of good timely articles. I admire the fact that you allow such strongly dissenting conservative (or anti-progressive) views and opinions to be expressed in the blog responses; no one can accuse you of biased censorship (censorship of blatantly noncivil remarks, personal attacks etc. is understood and I agree with this type of censorship).
I wish there were more progressives or liberals contributing comments here that I (and others) could butt heads with; there seem to be more conservative or antiprogressive bloggers than progressives or liberals. Though I consider myself a moderate, I’m also a bit of a reactionary and tend to want to balance out the far-progressive or far liberal view typical of the Vanguard articles (if the blog had consistently conservatively slanted articles, I would likely tend to criticize using arguments slanted to a liberal side).
I also applaud the Vanguard. I live in Arizona and & still read it. Our AZ blog that rec’d best political blog in AZ (see blogforarizona.net) is not nearly as good! It’s got some interesting local news, but it’s not organized into categories. Also, no moderator to keep folks on topic, and too much cussing and ranting (altho, it IS the wild west, after all!) for my taste. If I’m in a hurry, and only have time to read one news source, I used to go to CNN. Now I scan the VG.
Kudo’s, David & staff. I really hope all the regular posters contribute, if they can afford it. Even $10 a month helps to keep it running – less than an Emptyprize subscription, and superior journalism, imho.