Deputy Involved Shootings: Town Hall Meeting September 17, 2009

Town Hall Meeting September 17, 2009 St. Francis Cabrini Church, Los Angeles, CA

On September 14, 2009 Darrick Collins, Sr. was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy through a wooden fence in his backyard. He was unarmed. He is not the first and others have since perished at the hands of deputies. Get involved and stay active. Its time to change the laws and police the police.

Attorney Describes Shooting

On September 17, 2009 members of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and the community met at St. Francis Cabrini Church for a Town Hall Meeting to address police brutality and the rising number of fatalities at the hands of deputies.

Speakers:
Matt Dendo, Captain of Lennox Sheriff's Station
Cecil W. Rhambo, Jr, CHIEF - Field Operations Region II
Michael Gennaco, Chief Attorney – Office Of Independent Review
Lt. Paul Becker – Homicide Bureau
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Matt Dendo - addressed the family members and thanked them for their attendance and on behalf of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department offered his sincere condolences, before giving his presentation:

“Upon arrival a couple of our units, as normal practice, checked the area where they were looking for robbery suspects. When they were in the vicinity of Van Buren and Poindexter the unit observed two African American males standing in front of a dark colored vehicle in front of the driveway at 1234 Poindexter Street. The Deputies in the car attempted to identify the suspects. As they approached the car Mr. Collins started to move away from the driver deputy southbound down the driveway toward gate that leads to yard area of the residence. The deputy noted that he observed Mr. Collins grasping something on his waistband area. When Mr. Collins got to the gate are and tried to open the gate with his hands at it was at that point that the deputy saw Mr. Collins turn towards him and still clutching something in his right hand resembling the butt of a hand handgun fearing for his safety and the safety of his partner he fired.”

---Mr. Collins was unarmed. He had his cell phone. ---

Cecil W. Rhambo, Jr, CHIEF - Field Operations Region II:
“First and foremost I want to let you know that I am not foreign to the community. I grew up here. I went to Washington High and Henry Clay so this is not foreign territory to me. I certainly have sympathy and understanding and heartfelt condolences to the family. I spoke to the Deputy earlier today and he is quite disturbed because this is something that is a mistake. We understand that. So as the Captain, there are several entities that come out. We are not investigating ourselves. The Office of Independent Review and quite frankly their job is to prosecute cops, are hired by the county of Los Angeles and the district attorneys office also takes a look at this. The Sheriff is committed to completing this investigation within ninety days. If you know anything about these kinds of investigations you know they can take up to a year to complete, particularly when the District Attorneys office is involved. The sheriff really wants to make sure that you guys get some answers. The investigation is still ongoing we don’t know all the facts yet. There are a number if steps in this process and there are mediators and many eyes are reviewing this.

One of the things that I noticed that came out of this and other incidents in the past is that the family was not treated as we would like to see them treated. Part of that is because of our reluctance, when we know that we have taken someone’s life its hard for us to come to the family. One of the things that the Sheriff [Baca] and I spoke about and Mr. Tanaka was in the meeting also, is establishing a protocol in which the family gets information sooner than later. What happens is intervention workers hear information, then there are rumors and deputies tend to say, “we can’t tell you anything” so no one knows what going on. We are working on protocol to make sure that the parents, the family gets information sooner. Transportation to the hospital is arranges and intervention workers and clergy, There are some things that we are working on that we realize we can do better on out there. Meetings like this are an improvement. Normally we wait until someone in the community calls a meeting.
We decided to share the information as soon as we can. We decided to invite everyone in and tell what we know up to this point.

Many of the questions you have ‘Why did this happen and how did the deputy mistake this,’ are for your attorneys to address in the civil arena. It’s hard to debate those issues here. Although it happens more often than we’d like, deputies encounter hundreds of people a day, thousands of people per month and when these incidents happen it’s not like it happens on a regular basis. Giving the kind context of how many people we actually contact with guns that have actually committed crimes. Yes we realize that being in possession of narcotics is not a capital offense. Yes, we realize that. We want more training issues. And things like this cause us to take pause, should we do some different type of training. We just had a meeting established a commission today of training experts together rethinking is the foot pursuit policy something we should be doing. Should we be chasing people and if we chase people what is the value in that. Because we realize that yes a person could give up and they would still be alive. However we don’t know why a person runs. We cannot control that behavior but we can try to control ours.

That is part of the training process. We are analyzing where we need to go in the future to minimize these kinds of incidents. We always strive for perfection but we realize we are imperfect and we are extremely sorry when things like this happen.”

Michael Gennaco, Office Of Independent Review:
“Sorry that it’s taken an event like this to get me to the community, I’ve spent my life as a civil rights attorney working in the civil rights division for a number of years, investigated and prosecuted police officers throughout the country, had grand jury investigations in twenty-three states and ended up prosecuting LAPD officers, Sheriff’s officers and other officers in Southern California for Excessive Force. Since we started the OIR, which is now eight years, we have unfortunately had the responsibly of reviewing over four hundred officer involved shootings. We have a lot of experience in review and prosecuting these matters. I say that to give you an understanding of my experience and what our role is at the office of independent review. While we work closely with the sheriff’s department and they provide us the access we need to do our job, we do not work with the sheriff’s department or the sheriff. We don’t we even work with the county. Its important in our review an when we give you answers that we are independent. We work independent and provide an independent assessment of the situation. Fortunately, Sheriff Baca has agreed to cooperate with our organization and as a result when the notice of that officer involved shooting came down, when homicide was called at about eleven o’clock saying that there was an office involved shooting in Lennox area about a minute after that we got a call. My colleague here with me tonight was there within minutes to learn about that shooting, to get inside that crime scene tape, to view the evidence, to understand and recognize if the protocols had applied here and start learning immediately the evidence as it starts coming in.

The evidence doesn’t come in like you see on television. First there is the on scene investigation, a lot of that results in photographs and processing of information, forensic evidence that needs to be assessed, the deputies need to be interviewed and they are interviewed that night, the autopsy need to be performed and the results of that autopsy need to come back. So the investigation starts coming back but in real time, because of our accessibility because Sheriff Baca has given us access, we are learning the results of the investigation at the same time as the department. This is critical for us to do our job. One of our responsibilities it to make sure that there is a fair and thorough investigation and that when it is time for the department to review this investigation that they do it based on evidence and that they review based on a fair assessment of the information that is available, that all the witnesses, all the forensic evidence is carefully compiled and fairly assessed.

One thing that has happened as a result of this incident and I think it’s a very good sign, I have been frustrated for eight years because the system that the Sheriff’s Department had used to investigate office involved shootings went like this: Lets say that there was a shooting on Monday night. Homicide would do an investigation. The coroner’s would bring the autopsy result to homicide, homicide would package their investigation together and within three to six months homicide would sent that on to the District Attorney. The DA would then review the case and that could take anywhere from three months to a year before the district attorney came back with his decision. Then and only then was the administrative investigation was looked at to see whether or not the department should take some action the deputies. So what does all that mean on a time line? It means that we were not able to provide answers on the outcome of the administrative investigation for something that happened in September of 2009 until 2011 maybe 2012 and by then maybe the community had moved on and were worried about the shooting happening in 2011 and 2012. So you can see how that presents a problem and a disconnect. I have been working with the sheriff and he announced that this case, another case and every case in which it turns out that the individual who is shot was unarmed, a mistake, every one of those cases will be done in ninety days now. No more of this waiting around a year or two before you guys get answers. That’s only a start but I think it’s a good start and you keep track of the clock. You call me at 323-890-5360 if three months have gone by and you haven’t had the answers you want. I promise you you’ll get them. That’s where we are now. We cannot discuss the pending investigation because it hasn’t been completed yet but I can talk about the process. I can assure that we will do our best to make sure the department gets to the bottom of this. Thank you. If you have questions that go beyond this incident involving Lennox Deputies Cindy Hernandez is your contact person.”

Lt. Paul Becker – Homicide Bureau:“Good Afternoon. There is not a lot that I am going to be able to add at this juncture. I would like to talk about what my investigators do when they have and deputy involved shooting roll out. We had four investigators that came out that evening. A deputy involved shooting on the sheriff’s department id given the highest priority and we do respond generally with four investigators as well as a team lieutenant. Generally what we do is we have a couple on investigators that are in charge of the scene, two will document the scene, evidence at the scene, everything that has to do with the physical location. The other two investigators are the lead investigators on the case, Det. Martinez and Det. Langford is still in to process of conducting interviews. The scene investigation is complete. It’s important that I tell you that we conduct a fair and impartial investigation. This investigation once documented will be send to the DA’s office. The DA will render a decision as to the legality of the shooting. As much as everybody always wants answers as early on as possible, as I would were it my loved one, we have to hold the integrity of this investigation so that we do it right. We simply do not put out information in great detail until the investigation is complete. At this point we are at the fact-finding stages of the investigation. We are receiving all the information that we can in relation to this case, documenting it, talking to people and getting all the information that we need to put together a comprehensive, thorough investigation. Thank you.”

Q&A followed:

Where to address your concerns:

Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff, ldbaca@lasd.org
Matt Dendo, Captain of Lennox Sheriff's Station, mdendo@lasd.org
Cecil W. Rhambo, Jr, CHIEF - Field Operations Region II, cwrhambo@lasd.org
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
4700 Ramona Blvd.
Monterey Park, CA 91754

Michael Gennaco, Chief Attorney – Office Of Independent Review
4900 South Eastern Avenue, Suite 204
Commerce, CA 90040 323-890-5425
Phone: (323) 890-5360 Fax (323) 415-7549
Email: mjgennac@laoir.com

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-558-3160

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

Copyright © 2009 Sardonyx Jade Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

America Lynching

Lynching is most often associated with the ritual murder by hanging, to maintain white supremacy through the use of terrorism. Usually, African-American men dying at the hands of a European mob, but Europeans were also lynching targets, for activism or outspokenness. Lynch Law, defined as the punishment of supposed criminals by agreement of a crowd and without a genuine criminal trial.  Lynch Law was used to deprive unpopular suspects of their rights and to satisfy a mob's thirst for vengeance (E.D. Hirsch, Jr. et al, 2002).

The definition of Lynch Law includes the word mob. However, the mentality of law enforcement officers is often one of groupthink.  In essence, they are legal mobs with the constitutional right to execute in the line of duty.  It is understandable how racism could permeate the judicial system in antiquity considering the original laws of America were written based on racial hatred and prejudice with the intent of controlling, assimilating and destroying the uncooperative “uncivilized”.  After 390 years, if we count from 1619 when the first slaves arrived in Virginia until today, the generalized opinion of African-Americans should reflect respect and reverence considering their hands and inventions built America.

The act of lynching has transformed from nooses to nine millimeter pistols carried by law enforcement officials.  African-Americans are continuously targeted as suspects.  The LAPD is infamous for harassing, beating and killing innocents.  In addition to racial prejudice, poor training is also a contributing factor in officer-involved shootings.  It is confirmed that as many as 33 percent of police shootings are in the mistake-of-fact genre and as many as 75 percent of those occur in low light.  The use of firearms is an extreme measure, which must be strictly regulated.  Conditioning officers to deploy their flashlights when walking into potentially threatening situations where they can't clearly see what's unfolding could dramatically decrease and possibly eliminate unarmed shootings (Aveni, 2005). 

The purpose of police is to protect and serve not intimidate and murder.  We must eliminate racial profiling and lethal force should be used only when strictly unavoidable in order to protect your life or the lives of others.  Too often the officers say something akin to: "the perpetrator pulled what I thought was a firearm, and in fear for my life, I shot to stop him..." The use of firearms is an extreme measure, which must be strictly regulated.  New rules are required for public safety. 

Darrick Collins, Sr. (1973 - 2009) is now among the many slain. He was shot three times through the wooden fence of his residence, on September 14, 2009.  He was going back into the house to avoid being a target for the police.  It is ironic that his life would end this way.  The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department deputy involved, claims that Mr. Collins fit the description of an alleged robbery suspect, that he ran and that he fired his gun after perceiving what looked like the butt of a gun in Mr. Collins’ hand.  The evidence at the property shows three bullet holes in the fence.  Mr. Collins suffered gun shot wounds to his side and the back of the neck.  His body fell approximately fifteen feet from the closed fence, suggesting that Mr. Collins was shot without warning.  He was unarmed save for his cell phone.  He is not the first and others have since perished at the hands of deputies. Get involved and stay active. It is time to change the laws, police the police and stop America lynching.

This is my truth.  I am Sardonyx Jade.