Month: October 2012

Supes step up sheriff scrutiny

Sheriff Lee Baca assures the Board of Supervisors of his cooperation in reforming the jail system.

Confronted with a scathing report on brutality and mismanagement in the Los Angeles County jails, Sheriff Lee Baca has repeatedly insisted that he’s committed to implementing scores of recommended reforms. But given the beating the sheriff himself took in the report, the Board of Supervisors isn’t taking any chances.

The board unanimously voted this week to hire a monitor to track implementation of more than 60 recommendations made by the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence after a year-long investigation. While some of those recommendations address narrow but important policy issues, others urge a major overhaul of the department’s structure and accountability, including creation of an independent Office of Inspector General. The supervisors also voted to require the sheriff to provide progress reports during monthly appearances before the board.

The supervisors’ stepped-up scrutiny—which Baca on Tuesday told the board he supports—reflects their determination to build on the momentum of the jail commission’s widely-praised work and avoid criticism down the road that county leaders again neglected to act.

In its final report, the jail panel accused Baca and other top department officials of failing to rein in violent deputies, despite years of warnings and recommendations from various civilian watchdogs concerned about the treatment of inmates and the county’s potential liability. One of those monitors, Special Counsel Merrick J. Bobb, has written 31 semi-annual reports since serving on the landmark Kolts Commission, which, in 1992, advocated numerous reforms to curb widespread excessive force.

The jail panel noted that many of Bobb’s roughly 100 recommendations involving use of force and personnel issues in the jails went “unheeded” or “languished for more than a decade before the department responded.” The commissioners said concerns voiced by another monitor, the Office of Independent Review, also went unaddressed for years.

“At a fundamental level, the failure to heed recommendations made—and advanced repeatedly over time—is a failure of leadership in the department,” the seven-member commission wrote. “As the sheriff has acknowledged, it was his responsibility to ensure that reforms recommended by these oversight and advocacy groups were implemented and that problems of excessive force in the county jails were addressed. Yet, his response has been insufficient.”

Passages like those prompted the Board of Supervisors this week to intensify its involvement in the implementation of the latest recommendations. The “sheriff alone cannot restore long term-integrity to the department and fidelity to its core values,” Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said in his motion to hire an “implementation monitor.”

But, as Special Counsel Bobb knows better than most, there’s actually little anyone can do to impose changes on the Sheriff’s Department unless the sheriff himself agrees to them. Unlike the Los Angeles Police Department’s chief, who is appointed by the mayor and reports to a civilian commission, the sheriff is publicly elected. As a result, he has wide legal authority over his department.

“There is no entity, person or institution who can direct the sheriff to do something,” Bobb says. “It is up to the unfettered discretion of the sheriff.”

 That’s not to say that the five members of the Board of Supervisors are without leverage; they hold the department’s purse strings, a powerful incentive for the sheriff to be accommodating. The board members also can use their high-profile positions to exert public pressure on the sheriff.

Bobb says it’s been “terribly frustrating” over the years to see his recommendations for departmental change get so little action beyond what the jail commission described in its report as “lip service.” But Bobb says he’s heartened by the department’s movement toward adopting several of his recommendations during the past year as “tremendous pressure mounted on the sheriff and the supervisors to react and respond.”

Perhaps most crucial—and challenging—for the Board of Supervisors is the jail commission’s call for the creation of an inspector general’s office, which would assume responsibilities of the three existing Sheriff’s Department monitors. Those include Bobb’s modest operation, as well as the offices of Independent Review and Ombudsman. The jail commission concluded that this multi-agency approach has been “undermined by the lack of an overarching, consolidated strategy that marshals and leverages their collective strengths.”

The commission stressed that, to be effective, the inspector general must report directly to the board—a point Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky made clear during Baca’s testimony at the supervisors’ Tuesday meeting. When Baca said he’d be “open to a collaborative selection process” of the inspector general, Yaroslavsky cut him short.

“Stop right there,” Yaroslavsky said. “You’re not going to select the inspector general…The Board of Supervisors is going to select the inspector general.”

“Fine with me,” the sheriff quickly responded.

Still, Yaroslavsky did acknowledge the realities of keeping tabs on an agency whose top official is elected by the public. The creation of an inspector general, the supervisor said, requires the sheriff’s cooperation. “He can’t inspect what he can’t see.”

Baca assured the board that the department has not withheld information from monitors in the past and won’t be doing so in the future. The Board of Supervisors, he said, “will decide what priorities you want this person to fulfill, and those priorities will be honored.”

Sheriff watchdogs: Special Counsel Merrick Bobb, left, and Michael Gennaco of the Office of Independent Review.

Posted 10/18/12

The big inmate shift: one year later

Appointed last October, Probation Chief Jerry Powers promptly became responsible for realignment’s rollout.

Don’t expect a lot of folks in Los Angeles government to be toasting Sacramento in celebration of this month’s one-year anniversary of the most dramatic remake ever of California’s criminal justice system. Called “realignment,” it triggered a massive overnight transfer from the state to its counties of responsibility for supervising certain ex-prisoners and jailing a new, more serious class of offender.

The changes were pushed by the governor and legislature despite strong resistance from local authorities, who argued that the plan was being rushed to relieve the state of its prison crowding and budget problems at the expense of public safety and the dwindling resources of local governments.

Now, data collected by Los Angeles County suggests that the impact here is even more challenging than anyone envisioned, prompting a scramble for new solutions and dollars.

County officials say, for example, that they received more “high risk” former state inmates to supervise than they’d initially predicted, and many arrived with mental illnesses that were far more serious than expected. Those individuals have been placed in costly lock-down psychiatric facilities, leap-frogging other patients who’ve been bumped to waiting lists and, as a result, are consuming precious beds in public hospitals.

Meanwhile, more than 30% of the 11,000 former state inmates whose supervision has been transferred to the county’s Probation Department were rearrested during the past year for allegedly committing crimes ranging from vehicle code violations to serious felonies, including 16 murders, 23 attempted murders and 205 robberies. County officials emphasize, however, that these same alleged offenses could just as easily have occurred had state parole officers remained responsible for post-release supervision.

And it doesn’t end there. County probation Chief Jerry Powers says another provision of the realignment law, AB 109, carries the potential of even more problems, placing new strains on the county’s already bursting jail system and raising more questions about risks to the public.

Under AB 109, the county is now responsible for jailing criminals convicted of non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual crimes—offenders, who, in the past, would have been sentenced to state prison and placed on parole after their release. But under the realignment law, there’s no requirement—or funding source—for them to have any supervision, or “tail,” at all after their release from county jail.

“Frankly,” Powers told the Board of Supervisors this week, “that scares me more than this population that is coming from the state prison system [for county supervision.]”

The news, however, is not all grim.

With a new class of inmate in the jail, the stakes for public safety have risen.

Reaver Bingham, the point man for realignment in the county’s Probation Department, says his agency has, among other things, begun to beef up supervision ratios because of the unexpected number of ex-state inmates who are considered to be higher risks to commit new crimes. “If they mess up,” he says, “we’re right there to address the violation.”

He also said that 90% of the former state prisoners who’ve been ordered since last October to report to the county had done so, allowing authorities to create customized supervision and treatment plans for them. Of those who failed to show, Bingham says, warrants were issued and most of the missing individuals were contacted or picked up within 30 days. As of this week, he says, there are 917 active warrants, not counting the 529 warrants issued for individuals who’ve now been deported. Bingham acknowledged that some of the county’s new charges have been arrested for new crimes—some of them serious—but he says most are property- and drug-related offenses. More than 600 cases, for example, were for methamphetamine possession, while nearly 400 involved arrests for burglary, according to Sheriff’s Department records.

Bingham says the recidivism among the group is not surprising. Although these ex-inmates were transferred from the state after completing sentences for non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual offenses, they often have earlier, more egregious convictions. “I think it’s safe to say that over 50% have serious and violent crimes in their past,” says Bingham, a 30-year veteran of the probation department.

Like his boss, Powers, Bingham says he’s also concerned about the lack of post-release supervision for inmates who, for the first time, will be serving sentences in county jail rather than in state institutions. So far, the average jail stay for these individuals is 12 months, excluding time already spent in custody and automatic reductions in sentences.

“When they’re out, they’re done,” Bingham says. In the past, when this same class of inmate was released from state prison, they’d receive years of parole supervision, giving California authorities leverage to try to avert bad behavior and reduce recidivism. “Without supervision, we have no opportunity to determine whether these people have benefited from programs they’ve received during incarceration with us,” Bingham says. “We have no idea whether the rehabilitation took to them.”

Law enforcement authorities throughout California have been pushing for legislation that, at a minimum, would attach a “search and seizure” requirement to the release of inmates from county facilities, just as the state has been doing for the same class of prisoner. This would give authorities the right to search a person and his property. Any violations could lead to the filing of new charges.

“At least that way, the system is still in their life,” says Mark Delgado, executive director of the Countywide Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, which has played a key role in the realignment process here.

From the start, one of the most difficult populations to address in realignment has been those inmates with mental health needs. Initially—until the intervention of the governor’s office—county officials couldn’t even get complete medical histories of these individuals from the state to create treatment programs.

Dr. Marvin Southard, director of the county’s Department of Mental Health, says some of these ex-inmates have “garden variety mental illnesses,” for which about half are engaged in treatment. “The challenge has been that there’s a second minority group with very severe mental illnesses.”

These people, Southard says, have been immediately placed in secure, privately-owned psychiatric facilities with which the county has contracts. “Any one of those cases could have been problematic for individual and public safety,” Southard says.

But, according to Southard, there’s been a price to pay—both in dollars and in the operation of the mental health system. These AB 109 clients, he says, “have jumped the line,” creating a backlog among patients in serious need of those same beds. “This has put more pressure on the psych wards at the county hospitals. It backs up the system.”

Still, Southard, Delgado, Bingham and others say there has been a bright spot in all of this: realignment has forced an unprecedented level of cooperation among agencies throughout the county.

Just last week, for example, the Department of Mental Health, the Sheriff’s Department and the Department of Public Health teamed up to begin providing the new AB109 inmates in county jail with a promising anti-addiction drug called Vivitrol.  

“We’re working together more synergistically now than we ever have,” says Bingham, who credits his staff with helping make interagency strides.

“Whether you agree with realignment or not,” adds Delgado, “everyone has pulled together, committed resources and been fully invested in doing whatever they can to make this thing work.”

Posted 10/12/12

 

Street fighting man

The annual Oscar challenge: getting the limos to the Academy Awards safely and on time. Photo/Hebig via Flicrk

In this, the land of cars, all roads lead to Aram Sahakian.

With one false move, one slight miscalculation, he could bring L.A.’s traffic to a hellish halt. There are plenty of powerful jobs in Los Angeles government, but even the mayor takes a back seat to this street-smart guy when it comes to keeping the city moving.

Sahakian oversees special traffic operations for the city’s Department of Transportation and is thus responsible for mapping and implementing street closures for every big event in Los Angeles. Perhaps you know his work: Carmageddon (and next week’s sequel), the Academy Awards, championship parades for the Lakers and Kings, CicLAvia, presidential visits, the L.A marathon and, of course, The Rock’s journey to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“I have an extremely understanding wife,” Sahakian says of the relentless hours and maddening deadlines of his job. “When you work for me, you better expect not to have much of a personal life.”

Sahakian and his Los Angeles Marathon street closure manual.

Now Sahakian and his small staff are preparing for one of their biggest logistical challenges—getting the retired space shuttle Endeavour from LAX to its new home at the California Science Center in Exposition Park. The shuttle is scheduled to arrive at the airport on Friday. On October 12, it will start a two-day journey to the Science Center, passing through Inglewood and into Sahakian’s turf.

Already, hundreds of trees are being felled to accommodate Endeavour’s 78-foot wing span. But that’s just the beginning. Sahakian says that once Endeavour actually gets rolling on its low-slung, remote-controlled transport, nearly 50 traffic signals along the route will have to be rapidly taken down as the shuttle approaches and then immediately restored after it passes—all in a single day.

“There’s no room for error,” says Sahakian, a 23-year veteran of the department. “If we get a picture in the Los Angeles Times showing the shuttle stuck because of a signal standard, this would not be good.”

In recent days, another complication has surfaced: Sophisticated tests of the streets along the route through South Los Angeles and downtown have revealed vulnerabilities beneath the surface, where sewer and water lines are located. These 14 areas, Sahakian says, could become sink holes under Endeavour’s 78 tons. This would not be good, either.

To fix the problem, Sahakian says that at least 150 plates of thick steel will be placed under the transport’s wheels to distribute its weight along the worrisome stretches. “And I’m not talking about a couple spots here and there,” Sahakian says. Details of the effort are still being worked out, but he expects the entire intersection of Crenshaw and Martin Luther King boulevards to be covered with steel.

Although the logistics of all this may seem dizzying, Sahakian says he has a bigger concern. “This is a cakewalk,” he says of the tightly choreographed traffic plan. “We can do this in our sleep. The big unknown is the crowd.”

Sahakian, who also oversees emergency response for his department, worries that thousands of people could turn out for the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of the shuttle’s 12-mile urban journey. But this is not like artist Michael Heizer’s granite rock, which drew huge crowds during its slow-motion trip to LACMA, where it became the 340-ton centerpiece of “Levitated Mass.” In the shuttle’s case—because of its width and NASA’s desire to keep the public at a safe distance—there’ll be few places to stand, except at the end of streets that intersect the route or in designated viewing areas.

“What I worry about,” Sahakian says, “is a Rose Parade situation where we’ll have thousands of people out there with no place for them to park or see the shuttle.”

CicLAvia has made Sahakian’s job even bigger.

These are the kinds of scenarios that can haunt a planner’s waking—and sleeping—hours. Sahakian says that whether it’s the Endeavour project or the many others he’s constantly juggling, he may get an idea in the middle of the night. “Sometimes, I’ll send emails at 3 a.m. so I don’t forget,” he says.

Sounding more like an inspirational speaker (a la John Wooden) than a traffic engineer, Sahakian says his motto is: “Not planning is planning for disaster.”

Consider the Oscars. It is Sahakian’s job, among other things, to make sure that the fleets of limousines ferrying nominees and other VIPs don’t get tangled up outside the Dolby Theatre, formerly the Kodak, on Hollywood Boulevard. To that end, he has created a “serpentine” of concrete K-rail, through which each limo must slowly (but not too slowly) pass in an orderly fashion—a technique he’ll also be employing for this weekend’s Emmy Awards at Staples Center.

But the planning begins long before the stars emerge from their luxurious rides. “One of the most important elements of traffic planning,” he says, “is to know where people are coming from so you can facilitate the route.” That’s why his crew jotted down limo license plate numbers a few years back and studied their points of origin. Not surprisingly, most were arriving from the Westside.

Sahakian is not necessarily expecting any awards from the motoring public for his efforts. “If it’s a Lakers parade, they’re happy,” he says. “If it’s a 5K fundraiser, they’re not so happy.”

More often than not, he hears, “You guys are messing up the whole city.” Or maybe, “Whose bright idea was this?”

Still, he knows—even if the public doesn’t—that things could be a lot worse.

Last week, in his cramped office on the edge of downtown, Sahakian told a visitor that he’d recently worked with organizers of the hugely popular CicLAvia to change the date of its latest event, which was scheduled for the same October weekend as Endeavour’s journey. “Thank God CicLAvia agreed to move up its date” to October 7, Sahakian said with obvious relief.

A few hours later, however, his visitor got an email that spoke volumes about the man and his work. “Just to make it more interesting,” he wrote, “now I have Obama visiting on 10/7. Yes, Ciclavia :)”

Endeavour on its way to L.A., where Sahakian will help orchestrate its final journey. Photo/Los Angeles Times

Posted 9/19/12

The grandest opening of them all

Bandaloop brings its aerial artistry to City Hall on Saturday, for the opening of Grand Park’s final segment.

It’s been rolling out, bit by bit, since mid-summer, but this weekend, Grand Park will finally get the grand opening Los Angeles has been waiting for.

As the third and final section of the 12-acre space opens to the public, a festive block party is being planned on Saturday, October 6, from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., with dancing around the fountain, Cuban jazz on the lawn, food trucks on the street and, at the park’s eastern boundary, a soaring aerial ballet up the sides of L.A.’s iconic City Hall. Then on Sunday, the park will leap into action as a hub for the wildly popular CicLAvia.

“It’s really exciting,” says Dawn McDivitt, who has managed the park project for the county’s Chief Executive Office. “The opening of the first two blocks in July drew 5,000 people in the first weekend, and we think this weekend will draw even more.”

Stretching from City Hall to the Music Center, the new park—an inviting 4-block rectangle of grass, plants, water and hot pink lawn chairs—has been drawing crowds since its first segment opened this summer, offering the first substantial stretch of green space in downtown L.A.  

Conceived nearly a decade ago as part of a plan to redevelop Grand Avenue with luxury hotels, condos and retail, the park moved ahead while other elements were postponed by the economic downturn, largely because of a $50 million payment that was negotiated upfront from Related Cos., the project’s developer.

The first section, opened in July, is anchored by a Starbucks and the Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain, which features an ankle-deep membrane pool that has become a major weekend draw for nearby families. The middle section features a community terrace with a Court of Flags, a Vietnam Memorial and 24 cherry blossom trees from the Japanese Consulate.  The final section, at the City Hall end, will offer a dog park and a spacious event lawn that planners already are programming for local gatherings. Also on tap for the future is an anchor restaurant or café at the City Hall end of the park.

“I think if you ask anyone, the park is already a success,” says McDivitt, noting that none of the park events so far have drawn fewer than 200 to 300 people.  “And when you compare that to the mall that was there before, where, if you saw 20 people in all three blocks, you were lucky—just looking out my window at the Hall of Administration, it’s amazing. People who have driven in from their communities for events, neighborhood people from the lofts, mothers sitting around the membrane pool with their children. There are more people than I’ve seen down there in 22 years of working here.”

This weekend’s kickoff is expected to draw crowds from throughout the county, starting with 11 a.m. dance lessons at the Music Center Plaza in a salute to Latino Heritage Month. 

At 4 p.m., the Grand Park celebration will officially begin with “A Fanfare for Grand Park,” a reprise of a dance performance that premiered at the park’s July dedication.

At 5:30 p.m., down the hill on the park’s performance lawn, the Latin jazz duo Dos y Mas will launch the park’s new World Jazz Series, and at 6:45 p.m. outdoor videos will be projected onto the wall of the county’s Richard Neutra-designed Hall of Records building that flanks the park.

After a welcome from public official and dignitaries, the party will move to the event lawn. There, at 7:45 p.m., the aerial dance troupe Bandaloop will perform a spectacular vertical dance on the walls of the city’s towering City Hall building, suspended hundreds of feet off the ground by climbing ropes.

Park officials view Saturday’s celebration as just the start of Grand Park’s new role as a downtown centerpiece. Programming will be handled for the first three years by the Music Center, and Park Director Lucas Rivera has predicted the park will soon be home to farmers’ markets, arts festivals, book fairs, and other regional gatherings. McDivitt says she won’t be surprised to see regular movie nights, with outdoor films projected on the Hall of Records. Already, one segment of the park is home to the downtown speakers’ series Zócalo.

Events scheduled for the near term include an October 14 Pooch Party for dogs and the people who love them on the event lawn, an October 27 performance by the AXIS contemporary dance company, a November 2 night time Dia De Los Muertos party and a November 4 arts happening called Flash Fest.

Says McDivitt: “This really is a brand new chapter for downtown L.A.”

Posted 10/4/12

Sheriff agrees to broad jail reforms

Breaking a nearly week-long silence, Sheriff Lee Baca says he applauds the commission’s efforts. Photo/AP

Chastened and conciliatory, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said Wednesday that he fully agrees with—and will begin implementing—dozens of recommendations from a blue-ribbon panel that accused him and his top command of failures in leadership that fostered a culture of brutality among jail deputies.

“I couldn’t have written them better myself,” Baca said of the more than 60 recommendations issued last week by the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence, which concluded a year-long investigation with a blistering report on management breakdowns inside the nation’s largest jail system.

But, in response to a question during a packed news conference, the elected sheriff brushed aside talk of a possible resignation. “I’m not a person who thinks about quitting on anything,” he said.

Baca convened the massive media gathering in the chapel of the Men’s Central Jail, an aging facility on the edge of downtown Los Angeles, where the vast majority of brutality allegations against deputies have been leveled over the years by inmates and civilian monitors, including the ACLU.  As Baca spoke from the pulpit under a large cross, more than 20 members of his jail command staff sat solemnly behind him, some on risers. In the pews—behind a bank of TV cameras—were rows of inmates, dressed in L.A. County’s jailhouse blues.

It was an usually theatrical setting for the sheriff’s first response to the 194-page report by the jail commission, which was appointed by the Board of Supervisors and included former judges, a police chief and a longtime South Los Angeles pastor. And he went to great lengths not to criticize any aspect of the commission’s effort, which he said he supported from the outset. “I’m paid to take criticism,” said the sheriff, dressed in uniform. “Even when it’s unfair.”

In fact, as he has in the past, Baca was quick to accept blame for use of force issues that had been intensifying for several years. Those problems became especially acute under the leadership of Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, according to the commission. The panelists concluded that Tanaka had “exacerbated” the problems by, among other things, publicly belittling internal affairs investigators and unilaterally killing a plan to break-up deputy cliques by rotating them into new jail assignments.

“They needed me to set a higher standard for performance,” Baca said of Tanaka and other key members of his command staff, whom the sheriff said had failed to alert him to the brewing problems inside the crowded county lockup.

The commission was highly critical of Baca for not holding Tanaka and others accountable for their conduct, saying his failure to act has sent a troublesome message to the rank and file. Repeatedly pressed on that point by reporters on Thursday, the sheriff sharpened his tone. “I’m not a person who acts impulsively or in my own self interest when it comes to someone else’s career. We will either have the facts or we won’t have the facts.”

Baca, who said he is reviewing Tanaka’s conduct, added: “I don’t lead with my ego. I lead with my intellect.”

The sheriff said Tanaka, a certified public accountant who was not at Wednesday’s event, would remain with the department, overseeing administrative services and the agency’s budget, a far smaller portfolio than he once held.

Among the commission recommendations (read the panel’s executive summary here), Baca said he supports two that, in concept, would vastly enhance oversight of the jail operation.

One would create an independent Office of Inspector General reporting to the Board of Supervisors. The new agency would essentially consolidate and broaden the review responsibilities of three existing civilian bodies—the Special Counsel, Office of Independent Review and the Office of the Ombudsman. The idea for an inspector general is modeled after a watchdog agency that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department. Exactly how such a body would be created and function for the Sheriff’s Department will likely be a matter of considerable public debate.

The second recommended reform would be the creation of a new assistant sheriff position, staffed by an experienced corrections leader from outside the department. This person would report directly to Baca, who said he supports the idea and already is seeking candidates.

The commission also called for tougher discipline for excessive force and dishonesty, a simplification of the disciplinary system and creation of a new investigations division that would report directly to the sheriff.

Baca said he welcomes these recommendations as a way to make “a stronger and safer jail,” a place where deputies respect the humanity of inmates, who, for their part, can learn life skills and end the cycle of recidivism. “I do have some deputies who have done some terrible things,” he said.

Still, Baca stressed that since last October when the ACLU presented him with numerous accusations of excessive force in the jail, he aggressively instituted a series of measures that have reduced “significant force” in the jails by 53 percent—“a historic low,” he said. He said he also has initiated tough new policies while increasing supervision, video surveillance and training. Baca said he and his management team have “responded massively.” (A video of Baca’s hour-long news conference can be seen here.)

In its report, the jail commission acknowledged the significant improvements Baca had brought to the custody operation after he belatedly became engaged with the issues. But commission member Robert Bonner, a former federal judge and ex-head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said those measures do not go far enough and that the department needs sweeping cultural and structural changes.

“The modest steps taken by the sheriff are not permanent, institutional reforms,” Bonner said during last week’s commission meeting. “They are Band-Aids—meant to staunch the bleeding.”

Posted 10/3/12

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