NEWS > 09 March 2006

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San Jose Mercury News - CA, US
09 March 2006

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East Palo Alto police departme

East Palo Alto police officials have quietly been working for months on a complete overhaul of the department's internal investigations process and are preparing to roll out the first changes to the public within the coming weeks.
Atop their list is a more streamlined and structured complaint process and a vow to the public that all citizen complaints will be taken seriously and investigated fully within 90 days.
The changes come as two East Palo Alto police officers and a teenage Police Explorer face criminal charges of beating a man while off-duty.
One of the first things Police Chief Ron Davis did when hired last summer was to look critically at the department's complaint process. He found it was easy for complaints to fall through the cracks: the complaints were not prioritized according to their severity, there was not a clear process in place for who would investigate which complaints, and internal investigation cases would often be open for more than six months at a time. The department received 10 complaints in 2005.
``As long as you deal with people, you can train them, you can hold them accountable, you can lead them, but people are people and they're going to make mistakes,'' Davis said. ``To the extent that that mistake destroys public trust and confidence is not the mistake itself, it is the department's ability to admit the mistake, identify it and correct it. And if they think all we're doing is covering each other, and not holding people accountable, then everything's a powder keg.''
He later added, ``I don't want them to think, Nothing's going to happen, cops are just going to cover cops' . . . That to me is devastating to an organization.''
Davis expects to finalize changes to the department's complaint process in the coming month.
As early as April, complaint forms will begin appearing across the city in the library, in community centers, online and at the department's front counter. Each complaint, no matter how small, will be taken seriously and investigated fully, Davis said.
The citizen will receive updates every 30 days on the status of the internal investigation and a resolution in writing when the investigation is complete. After the investigation is complete, the citizen can call a meeting with Davis if he is unhappy with the outcome.
The point, Davis says, is to identify officers who need counseling or intervention before a serious incident occurs. A police lieutenant and two interns from Stanford University are currently developing such a system, with built-in trigger mechanisms to alert police when an officer is having problems.
``You pay attention to at-risk behavior as a potential indicator of future misconduct,'' Davis said. ``And so you have to track complaints, you track uses of force, you track sick leave, performance evaluations, driving . . . the symptoms would show up there.''
Davis said he expects the number of complaints to rise this year as it becomes increasingly easier for members of the public to register complaints against officers.

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Article sourced from

San Jose Mercury News - CA, US09 March 2006

East Palo Alto police departme

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San Jose Mercury News - CA, US
09 March 2006