Court Denies Appeal by Police Union to Suppress McDade Shooting Report

The Pasadena Police union’s appeal of an injunction ordering the City of Pasadena to release 80% of an external report on the Kendrec McDade shooting was rejected today as the appellate court ordered release of even more of the report than the trial court originally ordered the City to release.

The Court’s opinion said that the City attempted to use the police officers’ privacy rights to prevent release of the report’s criticisms of the City’s own investigations, practice, and policies.

City of Pasadena Public Information Officer William Boyer confirmed that the City  receive today the ruling from the Court of Appeals.

Read the Court’s Opinion in Full Here

The decision today by Division 2 of the California Court of Appeals rejecting the appeal by Pasadena Police Dept. Officers Robert Griffin and Jeffery Newlen and their union, the Pasadena Police Officers Association (“PPOA”), is the latest chapter in the shooting of unarmed black youth Kendrec McDade on March 24, 2012.

After the shooting, the Pasadena Police hired a consultant – the Office of Independent Review (OIR) Group – to examine the incident and offer recommendations.

The PPOA appealed the November, 2014, Los Angeles Superior Court judgment ordering that about 80% of that OIR Report be released to the LA Times, McDade’s mother, and Pasadena-area police-oversight activists; the PPOA claimed that the Report’s release would violate Officers Griffin’s and Newlen’s privacy rights.

The Court’s opinion today not only rejected the PPOA’s attempt to suppress the whole report or more of it; rather, it went further and ordered that more than the 80% of the Report ordered by the trial court should be released.

Today’s Court opinion held that “analyses of the PPD’s response to and handling of the investigation of the McDade shooting, and OIR’s recommendations for institutional reform, must be disclosed publicly.”

The opinion states “A number of redactions proposed by the City and largely adopted by the trial court protected not privileged information relating to the officers, but information or findings critiquing conduct by or the policies and practice of the PPD itself. Any redaction of such material subverts the public’s right to ‘be kept fully informed of the activities of its peace officers’ ‘[i]n order to maintain trust in its police department…’”

The published Court opinion has attached to it a sealed “Appendix A” which “contains a nonexhaustive list of material in the Report erroneously redacted by the trial court.”

The appellate court ordered the case remanded to the trial court with directions to “conduct the additional proceedings it deems appropriate and issue a new or modified judgment ordering additional redactions in accordance with this opinion.”

It also ordered that Appendix A be unsealed by the trial court when it issues its new judgment.

Skip Hickambottom, one of the attorneys representing McDade’s mother, police-oversight activist Kris Ockerhauser, and Pasadena-area organizations the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, NAACP, and ACT, said today’s appellate opinion “gives the City of Pasadena another self-inflicted black eye by revealing that the City Attorney’s office used the officers’ privacy rights to suppress the OIR’s criticisms of the City administration rather that to protect the officers’ privacy rights.”

Gronemeier was pessimistic that the Court decision would lead to a prompt resolution of the McDade shooting controversy, saying: “Unjustified delays by the City and the police union have prevented public disclosure of the OIR McDade shooting Report for at least 2 ½ years, and continued litigation by the police union will probably continue the suppression of the Report until at least the end of this year and possibly for years if the PPOA appeals to the California Supreme Court .”