Guest Opinion | While Pasadena’s City Manager Caved-in to the Police Union, Other Cities Are Embracing the Best Practice of Officers Giving Their Statements Before Viewing Video

The views in guest opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of Pasadena Now.

 

In our op-ed last Sunday entitled “The Science Deniers on Body Camera Policy”, we discussed the cognitive science basis for the best policing practice of allowing officers to view critical incidents video only after they have given their criminal investigation statement. We noted that the Pasadena PD had a draft policy early this year that embraced this best practice, but the City Manager and Police Chief caved-in to the police union’s demands during collective bargaining negotiations and instead opted for the worst practice of allowing officers to tailor their statements to video by viewing video before being interviewed. This Op-Ed sets out the fact that a number of major jurisdictions are not following Pasadena’s bad example but rather are putting in place policies with the best practices, and the law supports that police unions can’t demand that cities subject best policing practices to collective bargaining.

The California cities of Oakland, Fullerton, and San Jose are following the best practice. For a critical incidents (death or serious injury from police use of force or while in custody), Oakland prohibits anyone involved in or witnessing the incident from viewing video until after they have been interviewed:

No personnel involved in or a witness to the incident may view any audio/video recordings prior to being interviewed by the appropriate investigative unit and receiving command approval. (Oakland PD Departmental General Order 1-15.1, §IV-A-1)

Fullerton similarly provides that “officers shall not review the recorded files until an initial interview has been conducted” for critical incidents. (Fullerton PD Policy Manual, Use of Body Worn Camera Recorders,”Review of Recorded Media Files §j). San Jose also requires that the “initial review of an officer involved in an Officer-Involved incident should occur before the officer has reviewed any audio/video recordings of the incident.” (San Jose Police Body Worn Camera Policy §16).

In addition, the Inspector General for Los Angeles County, the Inspector General for the New York City Police Department, and the Executive Director of the Police Executive Research Forum all recommend that officers provide initial statements to investigators before reviewing body camera video.

More compromised policies that are still better than Pasadena’s are being developed in San Francisco and in place in Riverside County. San Francisco’s current draft of a policy would require officers to provide both a “public safety statement” and an initial statement that “shall briefly summarize the actions the officer was engaged in, the action that required the use of force, and the officer’s response.” However, the officer can then view video before being further interviewed. (05/27/16 Body Worn Camera Policy, Draft, §3-F-1). The Riverside Sheriff’s policy follows a similar approach that requires the officer involved in a critical incident to give a report stating “the threat perceived, limited to any known facts or situations leading to the use of force, the need for the use of force, the suspect’s actions that contributed to the decision to use force, and the amount of force used” before the officer can view video. (Department Directive #16-00, §XII).

We unequivocally support collective bargaining with police unions on salary, benefits, work hours and other bread-and-butter issues, and we supported the Pasadena police union getting a pay raise during the last round of negotiations. We are advocating that the Pasadena PD, which has the 2nd highest per capita ratio of police officers among the 40 California cities in the 100,000-200,000 population range, should reduce its staffing and devote some of the money saved for higher compensation for Pasadena’s officers. But we don’t think collective bargaining should extend to the traditional management prerogative of good police practices. And the law in California, as enunciated in the California Supreme Court decision in Claremont Police Officers Ass’n v. City of Claremont (2006) 39 Cal. 4th 623, is that cities such as Pasadena do not have to negotiate with unions on good policing practices. In the Claremont case, the police union contended that California’s statutory meet-and-confer process required that the City negotiate with the union on a tracking program to determine if police officers were engaging in racist profiling. The Claremont PPOA, following the all-too-common police union tendency to protect its bad apples, sued the City of Claremont to try to prevent implementation of the policy without the policy getting drug through the meet-and-confer process with all of its possibilities for management capitulating to the union demands. The Supreme Court said that such good policing practices are not within the statutory requirement that public employers have to meet-and-confer on”wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment;” rather, good policing practices are within traditional management prerogatives that aren’t subject to collective bargaining.

Pasadena now has in place some of the worst policing practices with its body-camera policy. The bad process of the City administration caving-in to the police union during secretive collective bargaining is mirrored by bad substance. Hopefully, the Public Safety Committee meeting next Monday at 4:15 pm at Pasadena City Hall will begin to reverse this bad process, change the policy to best practices, and join cities such as Oakland, Fullerton and San Jose in embracing the best practices.
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Skip Hickambottom and Dale Gronemeier are local civil rights attorneys who are active in CICOPP, the Coalition for Increased Civilian Oversight of Pasadena Police.