Thread: Legal battle begins : Police treatment of minorities

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With a lawsuit looming over Cincinnati Police treatment of minorities, The Post offers a four-part series looking at how similar legal battles have played out across the nation.

Lawyers: New police rules won't stop suit
By Paul Gottbrath, Post staff reporter

Passage of a racial profiling ordinance under consideration by Cincinnati City Council won't stave off a class action lawsuit over alleged police misconduct, say attorneys preparing that case.

But the admission of top police leaders that the practice goes on among their officers fuels hopes that the suit might be resolved quicker and with less rancor than in some other cities, said one of the attorneys.

City Council Member John Cranley said this week he planned to expedite action on a racial profiling ordinance that has lain dormant since November, in hopes the lawsuit would be dropped.

But attorneys Ken Lawson and Scott Greenwood, who are working on the suit with attorney Alphonse Gerhardstein, said that's not going to happen.

''Does he want the ordinance just to avoid the lawsuit?'' Lawson asked.

''The city has engaged in significant self-flagellation, but to date has not done a ...thing,'' Greenwood said. ''It's only because of the threat of a lawsuit and saturation media coverage that they are doing anything.''

Greenwood said he found it encouraging that Police Chief Thomas Streicher and Assistant Chief Ronald Twitty had admitted publicly that police here engage in racial profiling.

''I am heartened that public officials are paying attention to the problem,'' Greenwood said. ''It's not worked that way in other places.''

He cited the Los Angeles Police and the New Jersey State Police. Leaders of both police departments there adamantly denied racial discrimination by their officers, but both wound up operating under consent decrees with the Justice Department to clean up their operations.

Streicher said racial profiling is not a systemic problem in the Cincinnati Police Division nor condoned by it.

''To say it has not occurred here is an absolute lie,'' Streicher said. ''But it's the exception, not the rule. The overwhelming majority of officers are doing the right thing at the right time.''

The racial profiling ordinance is expected to contain a provision that will require police to begin collecting data on motorists stopped by police, not just those cited. The theory behind that is it will give a much clearer picture of who police are dealing with, since many more people are stopped than cited or arrested.

The prospective litigants, police officials and leaders of the Fraternal Order of Police all say their position on that change will depend on particulars.

''What's done with the information and the police culture will determine its value,'' Greenwood said.

Streicher said he would like to see expanded data collection become a component of a comprehensive system that looks at every aspect of officers' performance, recognizing positives as well as problems.

''We want to prove the effectiveness and efficiency of our people,'' he said. ''We don't always want to be looking for the bad.''

The FOP has given President Keith Fangman the authority to negotiate with the city over increasing data collection. Fangman has said the union could live with a system that can be done mostly by checking off boxes on a form, an approach that Greenwood termed reasonable.

Cranley said if the racial profiling ordinance could not prevent the lawsuit, he hoped it could speed the case to resolution.

''In a democracy, it's better if the elected officials address controversial issues head-on,'' he said. ''A lot of the problems we have now are because politicians didn't have the stomach to resolve them.''



Columbus officers challenge decree
By Paul Gottbrath, Post staff reporter

Columbus may yet be a model for litigants in a class action lawsuit expected to be filed over Cincinnati Police Division conduct, but it won't provide an example of a negotiated settlement.

Not that city officials there didn't try that kind of resolution. They appeared close to signing a consent decree with the Justice Department in the fall of 1999 to resolve complaints that some police officers routinely roughed up residents without justification and retaliated with false arrests against their critics.

Columbus leaders agreed to beef up training for officers, revise procedures for handling citizen complaints and institute a program to help problem officers get help before their misdeeds provoked litigation - or worse.

The Urban League and the NAACP endorsed the proposed consent decree and then-Mayor Greg Lashutka called it a ''tool to move the department forward.''

The only player not at the table was the police union - the Capital City Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police. That was a critical omission, because terms of its collective bargaining agreement required the union's endorsement before the city could sign the decree.

The union refused to budge, said president Bill Capretta, because the consent decree contained 44 violations of the FOP's contract with the city.

Today, more than a year later, instead of being linked in a partnership with the Justice Department, the city and the FOP are co-defendants resisting federal intervention into the Columbus Police Department.

Officers have agreed to $25 paycheck deductions per month to raise $2.5 million in funding the FOP will need. The case is on hold for the moment, while a federal judge ponders whether to allow the Justice Department to amend its original complaint to add a charge of racial profiling.


Racial lawsuits prompt change
By Paul Gottbrath, Post staff reporter

Attorneys preparing a class action law suit alleging misconduct by the Cincinnati Police Division against African-Americans will have a roadmap of sorts for their case - the agreements that other cities, counties and states around the nation have made to settle complaints against their police departments.


''We'll be looking at the orders entered in Maryland, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Steubenville - places that submitted to orders to change their police departments,'' said attorney Alphonse Gerhardstein, ''to see if they are potential models for what we might achieve here.''

Circumstances are different in other places, ''but we can look at all of these cases and get a good, overall scope of the situation,'' said Scott Greenwood, who along with Gerhardstein and Ken Lawson, forms the legal team fashioning the class action here.

The accords have usually come in the form of consent decrees, legally binding documents signed by the government responsible for the police department and the litigants who complained about its conduct. In many instances, the American Civil Liberties union has been a party to those lawsuits. In some of those cases, pressure by federal authorities has persuaded local leaders to settle rather than continue to fight.

Decree signatories have run the gamut from Steubenville to Los Angeles, from the state police in New Jersey to the county police in Montgomery County, Md. They've addressed allegations of interconnected abuses, from excessive force to false arrest to racial profiling.

The decrees have proved an ideal means to straighten out police departments that have shown a longterm pattern of civil rights violations, agencies ''that could not or would not police themselves,'' said David Harris, a professor of law at the University of Toledo and a national expert on racial profiling. Frequently they've given police the financial resources, previously denied to them by their local governments, to make substantive change, he said.

Pittsburgh Chief Robert W. McNeilly Jr. wanted to establish a sophisticated personnel management system, but couldn't get the city council to approve funding for it. When the city signed a consent decree in 1997 with federal authorities, ''it broke the logjam and gave McNeilly the leverage he needed to make the changes he wanted,'' Harris said.

Now the Pittsburgh police management system is one of the best in the nation, Harris said.

Those looking at consent decrees from the other side complain they are an artillery barrage approach to problems better dealt with by selective sniping. ''A disaster,'' said Bryan Campbell, attorney for 20 years for the Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police. ''They went out of their way to brand the entire police department. Any group that size has bad apples. Get them help or weed them out.''

Pittsburgh's was the first local government to settle with the feds under a 1994 law that gave the Justice Department authority to intervene in police departments that showed patterns and practice of police misconduct.

Plaintiffs in a 1996 ACLU lawsuit that spawned the case alleged that officers used excessive force and made false arrests of blacks for years with virtual impunity.

The case gained momentum from the death in 1995 of black motorist Jonny Gammage in circumstances that bear eerie similarities to the death last November of College Hill resident Roger Owensby.

Both men died after scuffling with officers, with coroners in each case ruling the cause of death suffocation or being choked. In each case, two officers were prosecuted on criminal charges. The Pittsburgh officers were acquitted; the cases against Cincinnati officers Robert Blaine Jorg and Patrick Caton are pending.

Four years into the Pittsburgh decree's five-year term, the decree remains controversial. Police officials hail it as changing their agency from an object of local derision to a national policing model. The FOP calls it heavy-handed and misdirected. Civil rights leaders applaud the progress that has been made, but worry what will happen once the order is lifted.

The decree required more training and data collection, as well as intro duction of standard management practices such as annual performance evaluations for all personnel. But its most controversial implement has been the management system that Harris lauded, which is supposed to red flag officers whose stops deviate significantly in race, ethnicity or gender from those of other officers doing similar jobs in similar areas.

''Early warning'' has identified officers doing good police work as well as those needing help, said Commander Albert Preik, the veteran cop assigned to oversee implementation of the consent decree.

Campbell counters that the program has been plagued with erroneous information that has unfairly stigmatized good officers and failed to identify bad ones.

The proof he offers: Termination or discipline of officers identified through early warning has been overturned repeatedly by independent arbitrators who found the actions unjustified.

Worse, says FOP second vice president Chuck Bosetti, the system chills officers' enthusiasm for the kind of investigative enterprise that good policing requires. He cites the example of a black female officer flagged because she was stopping an inordinate amount of black females.

''Turns out she had made one stop in that six-month period - of a black female,'' Bosetti said.

Civil rights leaders wonder what will happen if the consent decree expires as scheduled next year. Particularly troublesome to them: how will the public access stop data after the Justice Department auditor who now publicizes it bows out of the picture.




Feds act on police bias cases
By Paul Gottbrath, Post staff reporter

When Congress passed the Clinton administration's crime bill in 1994, the law's promis e to put 100,000 new police officers on the street grabbed headlines.

But a lesser publicized provision that gave the federal government authority to intervene in local police departments that received federal funds and displayed patterns or practices of abusive behavior has proved to be of far greater impact.

The U.S. Department of Justice has used that power to go after at least 18 city, county and state law enforcement agencies where it alleged problems, winning consent decrees against four. Cases are pending against the other 14.

Attorney Ken Lawson, who with two colleagues is fashioning a class-action suit alleging misconduct by the Cincinnati Police Division, said he's proceeding on the assumption there won't be federal intervention in the case.

But some others in the African-American community here said they would like to see Justice Department involvement.

''I think an outside agency would be best to look at this type of situation,'' said Roy Goosbey, an East Walnut Hills businessman and community activist. ''They certainly would give a fair and impartial investigation.''

''I'm open to that kind of strategy,'' said the Rev. Damon Lynch III, president of the Cincinnati Black United Front, a group that has been helping to recruit plaintiffs for the lawsuit. 'But I want their investigative arm, not their mediation arm.''

Whether federal officials will continue to pursue such probes aggressively under the hand of George W. Bush is unclear, however.

Attorneys Timothy O'Brien and Bryan Campbell, on opposite sides of a legal battle that eventually resulted in the city of Pittsburgh signing a consent decree to reform its police bureau, both expect a cooling of the Justice Department's zeal for policing police.

''I assume the new attorney general general will do a significant change in how he approaches this issue,'' said O'Brien, lead attorney in an American Civil Liberties Union suit that prompted the Justice Department intervention.

''I'd be surprised if a Republican administration would continue on this path,'' said Campbell, who has represented the Pittsburgh FOP since 1972.

But Thomas Wood, president of Americans against Discrimination and Preferences, said he thought the new administration would not back away from local situations where racial profiling is alleged.

The organization grew out of the successful 1996 effort to pass Proposition 209, which ended affirmative action on the basis of gender or race in California.

''My guess is that the Bush administration will continue to address the issue of racial profiling,'' Wood said. ''Bush has stated very clearly that he's opposed to it. ... It's in his interest since matters of race are very sensitive and important to the incoming administration.''

Bush's new attorney general, John Ashcroft, told the Senate Judiciary Committee during confirmation hearings that he would make cases against racial profiling a priority.

Ashcroft said he was opposed to ''racial profiling and other abuses of civil rights by law enforcement authorities,'' he said.

Although he said he would work with Congress to make new law on racial profiling, Ashcroft chaired a Senate Judiciary subcommittee last year that bottled up the Traffic Stops Statistics Study Act after the measure had passed the U.S. House.

The proposal, requiring police to collect several categories of data on each traffic stop, is expected to be re-introduced this year.

Budget considerations also could affect the degree of Justice Department intervention in the future.

Bush is looking to slash as much as $1 billion from the agency's funding to help make possible his $1.6 trillion tax cut.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the national office of the Fraternal Order of Police, says he sees the Bush/Ashcroft team steering clear of the big stick approach used by the Clinton administration.

''Bush's position is that local police department functions and conduct are best left to state and local governments,'' Pasco said.

Dennis Ray Martin, spokesman for the National Association of Chiefs of Police and the American Federation of Police, said he expected the revamped Justice Department to continue to come down hard - on a few selected police agencies.

''They need scapegoats to scare others into compliance,'' he said.

Columbus Police union officials are counting on an about-face in Washington to remove the Justice Department sword hanging over their heads head since late 1999, when they rejected a proposed consent decree.

Those who've dealt with the Justice Department urge other cities facing similar threats - or potetential threats - to hang on.

Said Bryan Campbell, the Pittsburgh FOP attorney: ''If I were the people in Cincinnati (and the Justice Department intervened), I would stonewall until the new attorney

Logging racial data a trend
By Paul Gottbrath, Post staff reporter

If the Cincinnati City Council does pass an ordinance next month requiring the city's Police Division to begin collecting racial, ethnic, gender and other data on people stopped rather than just those cited, the agency will be joining a regional and national trend.

Louisville and Lexington police, the Ohio Highway Patrol and the Kentucky State Police are among agencies that have started the practice in the past two years. Nationally, police departments in half of the nation's 50 largest cities have expanded their data collection to stops.

Local debates over racial profiling are fueling that move. Advocates say that because far more people are stopped than cited, the practice gives law enforcement agencies a clearer picture of their clientele.

That helps them defend themselves against allegations of racial profiling - or deal with it if revealed.

''You can say all day long that you don't have racial profiling, but unless you can show the numbers, you have no credibility,'' said Cincinnati Assistant Police Chief Ronald Twitty.

Lexington was the first city in the region to expand its data collection to all traffic stops, in August 1999. Officers gather not only racial, ethnic and gender data, but are required to give anybody they stop a form that explains the reason.

Louisville started its program Jan. 15. For every stop of a pedestrian or motorist, officers must complete a 23-question card that includes racial, gender and ethnic data and the reason for the stop. Both cities acted after residents complained about police conduct.

But similar claims against the Columbus Police Department have not prompted it to expand its data gathering beyond those ticketed or arrested.

The Hamilton County Sheriff's Department and the Dayton and Indianapolis Police also collect information only on people they cite or arrest.

The Ohio Highway Patrol began collecting information on those given traffic warnings a year ago. The reason: to make sure the agency is capturing information that will enable it ''to guard against bad police work,'' said Lt. Gary Lewis, a spokesman.

Kentucky State Police expanded their data collection to stops last fall to comply with an executive order issued by Gov. Paul Patton. Patton acted at the request of state Sen. Gerald Neal after his bill to mandate stop data collection died in the state legislature.

Ohio is one of about 25 states with legislation pending on the practice. House Bill 108, now before a House committee, would require law officers to record data on everyone they stop, and pass that information on to the state attorney general for analysis.

Advocates of collecting traffic stop data say a national standard is needed, but there has been little momentum toward accomplishing that goal. A proposal that would require the U.S. Attorney General to do a study of collecting traffic stop data and provide financial incentives to police departments to try the tactic has failed to get out Congress the past two sessions. It will be reintroduced later this week.

The National Association of Chiefs of Police is ''leaning'' toward endorsing stop data collection, said spokesman Dennis Ray Martin. ''We believe it would set to rest accusations made by certain racial groups around the country,'' he said.

In Miami Dade County you are not allowed to ask if a minority is a legal resident or citizen due to those lawsuits. This letter came out to officers from the legal department and one of the higher ranking officers. In several posts I have mentioned the problem with day laborers at the Home Depot on 163rd St. in Miami. Last week there were arrests there as it is an ongoing problem. The main reason why they were successful avoiding the racism comments is due to the fact that black officers were involved and one of them made the arrests. This is extremely sad when it has to come down to this.

You're not allow to ask a "minority" but you are allowed to ask a "non-minority?" Isn't that discrimination towards the non-minority? And are the "minorities" really a minority population in those areas?