Opinion: Running Out the Clock on the McDade Shooting OIR Report

In our previous Op-Ed, we explored the surprising disclosure in the OIR Report on the Pasadena Police Department’s shooting of the unarmed African-American youth Kendrec McDade that the PD had not given specific feedback on their plethora of mistakes to the Officers who shot and killed McDade. We opined that the PD’s no-feedback failure was not an irrational act but rather part of a much broader pattern by the Pasadena PD, the Pasadena City Manager, and the Pasadena City Attorney (collectively referred to herein as “the City”) to delay, deny, and deceive in order to save the City from paying millions of dollars more than the approximate $1 million it paid to McDade’s mother. This Op-Ed develops our belief that the City’s executives delayed completion of the OIR Report until McDade’s mother’s lawsuit was settled.

Why did the McDade Report take 4 times as long to issue as the time it took to issue the Barnes Report?

Pasadena PD Officers shot and killed Leroy Barnes on February 19, 2009. The Office of Independent Review Group (“OIR”) Report on the Barnes killing was issued approximately 7 months later in October, 2009. Pasadena PD Officers shot and killed Kendrec McDade on March 24, 2012. The OIR Report on the McDade killing was issued more than 29 months later in August, 2014 – i.e., the McDade Report took 4 times as long to be completed as did the Barnes Report.

Most of the delay on the McDade Report is attributable to the City. The OIR Group’s detailed billing records that we obtained through a Public Records Act Request indicate that the City was responsible for three long delays totaling nearly 21 months in preparing the OIR McDade shooting Report. The first delay was 5 1/4 months from the March 24, 2012, McDade shooting to September 1, 2012, when the OIR began work – i.e., the OIR’s work did not begin for almost as long as it took the OIR to finish the Barnes Report. The second delay was from December 7, 2012, to July 7, 2013 – a 7 month period after the OIR had investigated the shooting, met with the PD, and submitted questions to the PD until the time that the PD provided its responses to the questions. The third delay was from September 10, 2013-May 28, 2014 – an 8 ½ month period from the time that the City received the initial draft of the OIR Report to the time that the City responded to the initial Report and began negotiating changes to the Report. Thus, practically all of the differential between the time it took to complete the Barnes Report and the time it took to complete the McDade Report is attributable to the City. It might be argued that the McDade shooting was more complex and therefore required more time; however, it can also be argued that more of the time ought to be attributed to the City than these numbers attribute because it appears that the OIR had to spend a substantial part of its time on its McDade work dealing with the City’s non-cooperation and the City’s negotiating to tone down the report – work that was not required by the OIR on the Barnes Report. Our opinion is thus that most if not all of the delay in issuing the OIR Report on McDade was due to stalling by the City.

Did the City stall the OIR Report to get past the Slaughter wrongful death lawsuit?

Perhaps it’s just a remarkable coincidence that Michael Beck announced his exiting the City Manager’s job the day before we pried loose the overly-redacted OIR McDade Report, and perhaps it’s also just a remarkable coincidence that the City’s stalling on finishing the OIR McDade Report ended right after McDade’s mother’s wrongful death lawsuit was settled. Our opinion is that neither of these were coincidences.

Casual perusal of the OIR McDade Report discloses why the City would want it suppressed until McDade’s mother’s wrongful death lawsuit was over. The Officers were truthfully testifying that they had not been disciplined nor counseled nor given feedback that the McDade shooting was out of policy, and Chief Sanchez was testifying and saying publicly that the shooting was within policy. The City was blaming the shooting of McDade on a false report by the victim of a robbery that the robbers had a gun rather than on tactical errors and policy violations through which put the Officers in a situation where they may have feared for their safety. Release of even the overly-redacted OIR Report would have threatened the City’s narrative because it painted a radically-different picture – at least 4 violations of PD policy, at least 4 failures to follow recommendations made by the OIR Group in its Barnes Report, at least 7 rejections of OIR recommendations made prior to issuance of its Report, at least 10 tactical mistakes by the Officers that put them in that situation where they may have feared for their life, including the aberrant “box-in” tactic that was not taught nor authorized by the PD, and questions about whether the Officers really did believe that McDade was armed. That may be only the beginning; we don’t yet know how much more has been redacted but may yet be disclosed.

The City thus had a motive to run out the clock until McDade’s mother’s wrongful death lawsuit settled. Our opinion is that the City did stall to delay the OIR Report until after settlement of that lawsuit. But our opinion that running out the clock was its motive rests not only on the delay and on the City’s motive but also on other evidence disclosed in the OIR Report that will be addressed in subsequent Op-Eds.

Dale Gronemeier and Skip Hickambottom are local civil rights attorneys who represent Kendrec McDade’s mother and Pasadena police oversight organizations and activists in the still-0ngoing Public Records lawsuit seeking the maximum legally-permissible release of the full OIR Report.