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Dallas Morning News - Dallas,T
25 December 2007

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Dallas Police Department, TX

Ticket-writing inquiry shows f

An extensive inquiry into the problematic ticket-writing practices and other activities of three Dallas police officers also reveals flaws in the way the Police Department investigates its own.

At key points during nearly a year of investigations, questions were not asked and witnesses were not interviewed.

The investigation may also have been hampered by officers' fear of reprisal for not reporting possible misconduct sooner and an early belief among high-ranking officials that the three officers � Senior Cpls. Jeffrey Nelson, Al Schoelen and Timothy Stecker � were simply gruff, old-school cops who didn't mesh well with younger officers.

Officials said they now realize that belief wasn't entirely correct.

Cpls. Nelson and Schoelen face discipline after investigators found that they engaged in a pattern of unacceptable enforcement activity. One activity included arresting vagrants, prostitutes and other habitual offenders and adding citations that are mailed, even though many of these people did not have stable addresses. The officers were also issuing tickets to people under more than one name at the same time.

Investigators also concluded that Cpl. Nelson used inappropriate force in an incident involving a handcuffed woman. They also later concluded that Cpls. Nelson and Stecker made homeless people, prostitutes and others sign blank citations so the officers could fill out the tickets later.

But it took about 10 months and investigations at several levels within the department to get there.

In August, Cpl. Stecker was cleared of serious wrongdoing before The Dallas Morning News located a man who said the officer made him sign a blank ticket, which prompted investigators to take another look at Cpl. Stecker's activities.

Police accountability experts say law enforcement agencies often have difficulties investigating their own.

"You often find that internal affairs is reluctant to expand the scope of the investigation beyond the initial charges," said Merrick Bobb, a Los Angeles area-based police accountability expert and head of the Police Assessment Resource Center. "They put blinders on with respect to the other problems that arise. They interpret their mission very narrowly."

Deputy Chief Calvin Cunigan, commander over the internal affairs division, said he believes his investigators conducted a "fair, very thorough and impartial investigation."

"You make your decisions based on the facts that you know at the time," he said. "As you uncover facts, that helps to determine the additional scope and depth that you go with in the investigation And I think certainly that was accomplished and achieved in this investigation."

But Police Chief David Kunkle acknowledges that the department struggled to get a handle on what was going on during the overnight shift worked by the three officers in Old East Dallas. The department was actively trying to get at the truth and there was no effort to cover anything up, he said.

"When you look back, it looks like there were warning signs or patterns that could have been identified that weren't," Chief Kunkle said, adding that the department is reviewing the way it goes about conducting internal affairs investigations, such as doing a better job trying to find potential witnesses.

"I think there's an opportunity to do things better," he said.

Cpls. Schoelen, Nelson and Stecker had long worked the overnight shift with the strong backing of supervisors. They received glowing reviews for their work dealing with habitual offenders who plague the area. Detectives often called on them for help in solving the higher-profile cases not usually investigated by beat officers.

But in mid-February, another veteran officer filed a formal complaint about the officers. In March, he publicly claimed that they had lied in police reports and made false arrests.

About the same time, another officer also told police commanders that Cpl. Nelson attacked a woman in August 2006 after she had been arrested for public intoxication and was handcuffed, sitting in a police car on Fitzhugh Avenue. The allegation was not referred to the department's internal affairs division until after The News inquired about it in March.

Mistaken impression

Chief Kunkle said then that he had been under the mistaken impression that no one other than the original officer who complained had come forward with a first-hand account of alleged misconduct. He also said that he was disappointed at the way that the situation was handled.

Supervisors were also convinced that the initial complaints about the three officers were more about "differences in personality, differences in style," Chief Kunkle said in a recent interview.

Rumors were rife around the central patrol station about alleged misconduct, but he said investigators struggled to find officers who would admit to having first-hand information. "Maybe they were fearful of retaliation," Chief Kunkle said.

The chief appointed a special panel in mid-March to look into the situation.

In the spring, police requested copies of tickets issued by the three officers between January 2006 and March 2007, the same period for which The News was analyzing tickets.

A rookie police officer also told investigators in April that he had seen Cpl. Stecker have someone sign a blank citation. But the officer said he did not know the man's name or recall where or when the incident happened.

Investigators did not initially question Cpl. Stecker about the incident � despite the fact that the rookie had only worked with Cpl. Stecker for a few days, leaving open the possibility that his steps could have been retraced.

The special panel concluded in April that other officers believed that the three officers "only did what they wanted to," that other "officers avoided them and were very uncomfortable" backing them up "because of how they operated." But the allegations were short on specifics.

Those findings were added to the internal affairs investigation.

After examining the thousands of citations, the internal affairs investigators concluded in October that they had found a pattern of adverse conduct based on about 35 individual incidents on Cpl. Nelson's part and about 25 on Cpl. Schoelen's part. By then, Cpl. Stecker had been exonerated of any serious wrongdoing.

Most of the problematic tickets involved prostitutes, the homeless and other habitual offenders that the officers routinely encountered. Yet officials acknowledge that internal affairs initially did not try to find and interview them.

In early December, investigators began talking to some of those people about whether they had been made to sign blank citations after The News uncovered evidence that Cpls. Nelson and Stecker had made people sign blank citations.

Cpl. Stecker was questioned this month about the incident described by the rookie after The News found out the name of the man who said he had been made to sign the blank citation.

When questioned, Cpl. Stecker told investigators that he allowed the man to sign a blank citation as a "courtesy." Cpl. Nelson then also told investigators that he, too, allowed some people to sign blank citations as a courtesy.

Chief Cunigan has said that he "wished" in hindsight that the question had been asked sooner.

But "if Stecker was asked about it, and he said, 'I don't remember it, or I didn't do it or I don't think so' then where would you have ended up?" Chief Kunkle said.

Deep distrust

Police officials have repeatedly said that they had difficulty proving many of the stories of misconduct that circulated among officers.

That may have been, in part, because like police elsewhere around the country, many Dallas officers deeply distrust the department's internal affairs division.

A 2004 City Council-commissioned efficiency study concluded that the perception among many officers is that "the goal of the internal affairs unit is to find an infraction for which an officer can be disciplined � even if it is unrelated to the initial complaint that was being investigated."

That leaves many officers uneasy � they don't want to be a part of any witch hunt.

"Everybody mistrusts IAD � from the public to the officers," Chief Kunkle said.

Several officers interviewed by The News say they didn't tell investigators everything they saw or knew about the three officers because they feared retaliation from within the department.

One officer said department officials told him at the beginning of each interview that they couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't face punishment for violating a rule requiring that employees immediately report alleged misconduct.

Some of the questionable incidents witnessed by officers happened long before they were approached by investigators.

"That told me they were discouraging people from coming forward with the truth," said the officer, who requested that his name not be published because he feared getting in trouble. "There were a lot of people who could have said something but they didn't want to risk retaliation."

Police accountability experts say departments should consider on a case-by-case basis giving officers amnesty for their earlier failure to report potential misconduct.

"It really puts the officer in a hard situation," Mr. Bobb said.

"I think I'd rather focus on the fact that he or she did come in rather than to focus on the fact that it took a while to do so."

Steve Rothlein, an internal affairs expert and retired Miami-Dade Police Department deputy director, said those who have the courage to report misconduct should be rewarded rather than punished.

"We have to do a better job in law enforcement of recognizing the courage it takes to come forward on those types of things," Mr. Rothlein said.

"You rarely ever see somebody like that get a commendation or recognition. It's not the type of thing that we reward people for and we should, because it takes a lot of courage to do that."

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Dallas Morning News - Dallas,T25 December 2007

Ticket-writing inquiry shows f

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Dallas Morning News - Dallas,T
25 December 2007