Opinion: Is Pasadena PD’s Internal Affairs so Psychologically Fragile that It Can’t Stand Being Watched?

The Pasadena PD says it excluded the OIR Group from its administrative review of the shooting of the unarmed African-American Kendrec McDade. The reason given by the PD was that it believed it could not have a frank discussion with them watching. Is that believable? Is it any more believable than the PD’s assertion that it did not give feedback to the Officers who shot and killed McDade because it didn’t want the Officers to be “singled out.”

The PD breached the City-OIR Group contract by excluding the OIR Group from the initial administrative review

The OIR Report at page 6 and pages 28-32 indicates that the OIR Group was excluded from the Police Department’s March 2013 “administrative review” of the McDade shooting. Article 1, section 1-b of the City-OIR contract provides that the OIR Group attend all meetings such as the March 2013 meeting involving PD executives because it specifies that the OIR Group will participate “in any meetings by executives of the Pasadena Police Department … involving the formal administrative review of the shooting incident.” The OIR Report’s discussion of this breach indicates its exclusion seriously impacted its ability to evaluate the quality of the administrative review discussion.

We’ve heard there are mumblings by the City that, while the OIR was not allowed to participate in the March 2013 administrative review, the OIR Report unfairly criticizes the City because of all the after-the-fact information provided to the OIR about the administrative review. That criticism ignores the contract and ignores the difference between observing decisions when they are made and post-decision justifications, whatever the quantity of the justifications. The OIR Report criticized the PD for only conducting an “administrative review” that repackaged the information from the McDade shooting criminal investigation rather than the more robust “administrative investigation” that the OIR advocated but the PD rejected. So the PD conducted an administrative review that conducted no further investigation and then failed to even let the OIR Group into the room when it “reviewed” the repackaged information from the criminal investigation.

Are the PD’s internal reviewers thin-skinned shrinking violets who couldn’t review the McDade shooting in the OIR’s presence?

The PD does not claim the OIR’s exclusion from the March 2013 administrative review was a mere communication failure; rather the PD deliberately excluded them. The OIR Report disclose that the PD informed the OIR that it believed the OIR’s presence would have chilled frank discussion among the administrative review attendees. If there is another OMG moment in reading the OIR Report besides the disclosure that the PD did not give specific feedback to the shooting Officers because they thought it would single them out, this PD explanation is it. The PD is thus again explaining its dubious failures by the purported fragile psyches of the Department – in this case, the assumption that its executive and internal affairs staff is too thin-skinned to engage in a frank and robust self-critical discussion in the presence of outside experts about police behavior.

We don’t believe the PD’s chilling-discussion explanation. Nor did the OIR believe it – although the OIR Report is appropriately politic in not directly expressing its disbelief. Instead, the OIR Report notes that the OIR has never encountered the chilling phenomena that the PD purportedly feared in the 500+ administrative reviews they have observed and that the Pasadena PD’s asserted belief that there would have been such chilling is an idiosyncratic reaction. Our own disbelief is based on a number of frank discussions with Chief Sanchez and his subordinates; we’ve seen no evidence of shrinking violets in the command staff. Rather, our experience is that Chief Sanchez and his subordinates are articulate police managers who are willing to engage in thoughtful, self-critical, discussions. The chilling-discussion explanation is inconsistent with who they are and is a demeaning assumption.

The opposite reason from the one given by the PD explains the OIR’s exclusion from the administrative review

Our opinion is that the OIR’s exclusion from the March 2013 administrative review was because the City did not want a frank self-critical discussion and believed the OIR’s presence at the administrative review would ensure a frank discussion. Fear that the OIR’s presence would inhibit a frank discussion was not the reason for keeping them out of the room. Rather, fear that the PD would have to have a frank discussion if the OIR Group was watching was what kept them out of the room. Chief Sanchez has publicly said the administrative review was the basis for his finding the McDade shooting was within policy; because the OIR Report has been overly-redacted, we don’t know specifically what the rationale for his finding was, but it must have been based on the tunnel vision of looking only at the moment the Officers fired and ignoring the policy violations and tactical mistakes that put them in the position where they may have feared for their lives. The City did not want a frank, self-critical discussion that would have required counseling and disciplining the shooting Officers because that would have interfered with the City’s narrative in McDade’s mother’s wrongful death lawsuit that it was a good shooting. So the PD just did not let into the room the OIR group whose presence might have encouraged a frank discussion that recognized the McDade shooting was not a good shooting.
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.