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Sacramento Law Enforcement "Officer Hall Of Shame"

Submitted by Reverend_Rob on Wed, 04/11/2007 - 14:09.


When a Sacramento Police Officer or Sheriff Officer brutalizes a citizen, there is a major problem with the way the incident is handled. Most citizens are fearful of even reporting such incidents out of fear of further brutality, so typically such situations go unreported and uninvestigated, leaving the officer on the street to continue his despicable and irrational behavior. This fear is of course good for the departments involved because it keeps the reported police brutality statistics low.

 

Even in the cases that a citizen does make an official report it is typically handled by the Internal Affairs Division of the police or sheriffs department and citizens are not allowed to know what, if any, action was taken against the officer. This is of course by design because if we were allowed to know the outcome of these investigations there would be public outrage at the amount of violent crimes these corrupt public servants are allowed to perpetrate upon the fair citizens of our great nation.

 

We Deserve Full Disclosure of Officer Misconduct 

 

The reason typically cited by officials is the officers right to privacy and of course this is complete nonsense. An officer, or any other public official, has no right to privacy while they are on public time being paid by our tax dollars. I believe that each department should have an online database that is searchable by the general public with any and all complaints against an officer. Of course there is some information that should remain confidential for the officers own personal safety such as his home address and the like. There is no need to publish personal information beyond the officer’s name, date of birth and previous employment history.

 

An officer’s previous employment history and complaint history can be a very important factor in determining their disposition to commit further crimes. A good portion of our population walks around with their head in the clouds thinking that all police officers are good people and it is only the bad members of our society that have issues with them. This is simply not the case. While the majority of officers are good, decent people of which we should be proud, there is a portion that I wouldn’t hire to guard my dog.

 

Officers turn bad for many reasons, and some actually start their careers on the wrong side of the law. Some feel helpless because they were picked on in school, the pimply faced kid that was bullied by the popular crowd and now see a way to strike back by entering a job that puts them in a position of power over others. Some were abused as children and although their intentions are good as they want to prevent others from suffering a similar fate their methods of accomplishing this goal are not above board. These are the officers that assume everyone is guilty and often suffer from some type of mild to moderate delusional behavior such as narcissism or paranoid schizophrenia. This is actually a problem that extends beyond the police departments of America and also affects our Children’s Protective Service agencies as well.

 

And then there are the many officers that succumb to pressure from their peers or misguided coworkers and commanding staff. Like attracting like is one of the universal principles of human nature. Have you ever walked into a business and noticed that all the employees are happy, cheerful and helpful or noticed just the staff is completely uncaring, appearing unhappy and presenting the attitude that they could care less about you as a customer? The principal is the same regardless of wheter we are talking about a law enforcement agency or fast food restaurant. The employer will hire employees like himself and those he does hire will soon either leave or conform to the expected behavior patterns.

 

Back in the late 90’s I was working as a consultant for the California Department of Corrections (CDC) at their Information Services Branch on the outskirts of Sacramento. I was hired on to correct a failed installation of Microsoft SMS. One of their employees attempted to install the SMS services and screwed up over 5,000 computers. CDC is considered to be one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the nation and has a network that extends throughout most of California when you take into consideration all the prison and parole office locations that are interconnected.

 

An interesting side note to this story is I was at the time the only person in the State Of California that had complete and unhampered access to all systems on the CDC network including the warden’s computers and their own version of Internal Affairs. This was given to me without as much as a background check or the signing of a nondisclosure agreement as was typical before being given access to such a huge network filled with personal information of not only prisoners but employees. Another project that I worked on for CDC was the security for their parolee and inmate web based access site. A secret site ordered by the governor’s office that allowed certain individuals to access inmate and parolee data through a standard web browser. That system was a joke and, despite my recommendations that it be pulled offline until it was revamped, it remained.

 

Ok back from my rant about the completely mismanaged California Corrections Department and on to my point about like attracting like, or should I say evil attracting evil. While working for these guys I was sitting behind a control station and about a half dozen of the workers were gathered around talking about a visit to Folsom Prison. They were laughing and carrying on about how they, computer technicians, were allowed to participate in the beating of a Folsom Prison inmate because he had whistled at one of the female staff members. If you were to take a random sampling of folks and put them together in such a situation most would speak up about this type of outrageous behavior. However, because the good folks soon leave as they don’t fit in with the group, and the ones that stay conform to the groups actions, we end up with a crowd that condones such behavior.

 

Good Cops Gone Bad - Welcome To The Hall Of Shame

 

This is the reason that it is important to weed out the bad cops as soon as possible and send them on their way. Unfortunately the police unions step in and fight any effort to fire or discipline officers, making this difficult. Combined with the “code” that officers live by in protecting their own and the city, county and state's stance of protecting the agencies it becomes an uphill battle to protect our citizens from the protectors. This is self evident by statements from those even at the top of the command chain, such as Sheriff John McGinness stating that he could not comment on “ongoing litigation” regarding a suit brought against his department when a man was beaten in the Sacramento County Jail and the beating was captured on the jail surveillance system. These employees of ours (yes John, you are an employee of the people of Sacramento) are there to protect us, not the department. What will it take to get this message across to them?

 

Because of this secret society that they have created and the covering up of incidents involving officer abuse, I have decided to create the Officer Hall Of Shame. Even if they will not allow the reports to become public we can work together to make it happen. I will be creating a section on this site that photos can be uploaded and stories of abuse by officers can be told for all to know. My goal is to create an atmosphere where officers are shamed by friends, spouses and their own children into acting appropriately when doing their job.

 

I do know my first inductee into the Officer Hall Of Shame will be Sheriff John McGinness himself for putting the wellbeing of his department above the safety of our citizens and keeping the truth about officer violence from the public. Any meaningful change must start from the top and Mr. McGinness is in a position to effect positive chance, but it doesn’t appear that is on his agenda. Protect the people you were hired to protect John, not the criminals you have working for your department. You would have no problem speaking out about a criminal that isn’t a member of your department so why should one of your employees get preferential treatment when accused of a crime?