Steve Hollister

Time to clean up the San Leandro Police Department

 Time to clean up the San Leandro Police Department  Featured, Police  10 Responses »
Jun 132011
 

SLPD officers involved in fatal shooting identified.

Anthony Morgan and Ryan Gill have record of police brutality.

The arrest of San Leandro Police Officer Jason Fredriksson for furnishing marijuana to a confidential informant with whom he was having an affair has put the San Leandro Police Department (SLPD) in the spotlight. In its wake, there have been several allegations of misconduct by Fredriksson and other San Leandro police officers. The SLPD has responded with its usual wall of silence and the City Council continues to look the other way. It’s hard to know how deep the problems at the SLPD are, but it’s becoming more and more clear than the Fredriksson case may be the tip of the iceberg.

Gwendolyn Killings

In late December 2010, a San Leandro police officer shot to death Gwendolyn Killings, an African-American woman from Hayward. Killings was driving a car that had been reported stolen earlier in the day; SLPD officers spotted it and chased it until it crashed just after the Oakland border, near the San Leandro city limits. The passenger got out of the car and fled. The two officers got out of their own car;  one officer chased the escaping passenger while the other approached the stopped car. That officer shot and killed Killings while she was in the car. The police would later say that the officer was afraid Killings would put the car in reverse and hit his partner. However, witnesses said the car was boxed in and couldn’t go anywhere. The SLPD has not disputed that account. The case is being investigated by the Oakland police as the shooting happened in Oakland, but no report has been released so far.

The Oakland Police, however, have released documents identifying Ryan Gill and Anthony Morgan as the two SLPD officers involved in the incident. We don’t know at this point which officer shot Killings but both officers have a history of allegations of police misconduct that should concern anyone interested in having a clean police department.

San Leandro Police Officer Ryan Gill

Ryan Gill, 33, is an affable and well-liked officer. He was named San Leandro Officer of the year in April 2011 and is admired for his broad knowledge and as a mentor of younger officers. He started his police career in the Oakland Police Department and was there for 7 years – which casts doubts on how  objectively Oakland PD will investigate their former colleague. In 2003, Gill shot to death an unarmed man. Gill and his partner entered the apartment of the victim while he was sleeping, woke him up and claim they were trying to restraint him when he struggled and tried to get Gill’s gun. Both Gill and his partner shot him. The City of Oakland settled the ensuing lawsuit. In another lawsuit settled by Oakland, Gill was accused of beating a man while arresting him. In a third incident, Gill walked out of a review board conduct hearing where he was to be questioned about a charge of falsely arresting a teenager after his partner ram a car into him.

San Leandro Police Officer Anthony Morgan

Gill’s partner, Anthony Morgan, has spent less time in the press but probably just as much in the courtroom. A quick search of the district court’s database shows two recent lawsuits against Morgan for police brutality. One was settled, but the other one is still open.

Unfortunately, the Killings shooting has not been the only recent killing at the hands of San Leandro Police. In 2005, SLPD officers tasered a man to death; the city settled that lawsuit for nearly $400,000. And Morgan is far from being the only SLPD officer with a history of brutality. Tricia Hynes, the lawyer most often appointed by Meyers Nave to represent the city in litigation, boasts on her webpage of how – thanks to her representation – the City of San Leandro only had to pay a few hundred thousand dollars in damages to seven plaintiffs who were beaten by a dozen SLPD officers while searching a home during a 4th of July party. She is even prouder of another case in which the brutal beating of an unarmed man by SLPD officers only cost the city $20,000.

Gill was hired by then-Police Chief Dale Attarian, an old-style San Leandro cop during whose tenure the City was subjected to multiple lawsuits for civil rights violations, sexual harassment and discrimination and police brutality. Attarian was hired by former City Manager John Jermanis, himself a product of the old-all-white-boys network that ruled San Leandro for decades. Jermanis’ hand-picked successor, Steve Hollister, was a former policeman and did not keep a close eye on the SLPD. Under both men, SPLD officers learned that they could do as they pleased with almost no risk of consequences.

SLPD Chief Sandra Spagnoli

It’s a new day in town, however. Sandra Spagnoli was recently hired as Police Chief with the express purpose of reforming the department – at least ridding it of its culture of sexual harassment. It is too soon to know whether she’ll undertake real, rather than purely cosmetic reforms. So far the indications are mixed – Spagnoli investigated the allegations against Fredriksson, but only after an independent witness had contacted multiple authorities with his accusations. Spagnoli has done nothing to discipline the handler of a police dog that got loose and killed another dog earlier in the year – and Gill was named “officer of the year” after Spagnoli became Chief.

San Leandro needs more than a perhaps-well-intentioned Chief of Police to clean up the Police Department of any criminality or maverick behavior by its officers. It needs elected officials willing to tackle the issue of the police head on. This is hard, because politicians usually kowtow to the police union in order to get their support during elections – Council members Ursula Reed and Joyce Starosciak, in particular, have relied on heavy police support for their campaigns. Starosciak herself is married to an Alameda County Deputy Sheriff.   However, even the strongest police advocates should note that a department that allows criminal behavior and abuse by its members tarnishes both the city and the institution of the police itself.

The City of San Leandro needs to do two things to nip this problem in the bud. One is to appoint a strong City Manager with experience dealing with insubordinate Police Departments. The other is to form a Citizens Police Oversight Commission (aka Review Board) to evaluate complaints of police misconduct, help set hiring practices and discipline standards and act as a liaison with the community. Currently, the city of Oakland is considering following San Francisco in getting private citizens to investigate allegations of Police misconduct, we might want to look into that as well. While Police Officers are protected by an incredibly generous bill of rights, a Citizens Commission could at least identify systematic problems within the police department and push for their resolution.

The question is whether the City Council has the political will to push for a meaningful review of what’s really going on at the Police Department, or whether the powers-that-be in San Leandro will just hope that the community forgets about the recent incidents and pray that there are no big scandals during their term of office.

A new City Manager for San Leandro

 A new City Manager for San Leandro  City Hall, Featured  14 Responses »
Mar 302011
 

Last December San Leandro’s current City Manager, Steve Hollister submitted his resignation, stating that he would leave when his contract expired in June.  The speculation was that his contract would not be renewed.  Under Hollister, the City managed to deplete its financial reserves almost completely, a number of major companies moved out of town, it developed an anti-business reputation and quality of life in the City declined.  Tony Santos took the blunt of the blame for this in November – losing a Mayoral race in a city that almost automatically votes for incumbents – but in San Leandro it’s the City Manager, not the Mayor, who is really in charge of (and to blame for) how the city is run.

With Hollister in the way out, San Leandro needs to hire a new City Manager.  Last week, 3 months after Hollister’s announcement, the City finally got around to posting the job.   Given the shoddy quality of the job posting brochure and the recycled verbiage, it couldn’t have taken that long to create.  It’s not clear to me, then, why the search did not start sooner.  Applicants have until April 18th, to submit their resumes/references,  a relatively short window of time.   The  City has chosen not to hire a search firm.

This suggests to me that the “powers that be” have someone in mind for the position.  I’ve heard rumors that neither our Assistant City Manager Lianne Marshall or Deputy City Manager Jacki Diaz are interested in the job – so it may very well be an external hire.  In either case, I would hope it’s someone who agrees to move to San Leandro.  We want to hire someone for the long haul, and that means someone who is willing to believe in San Leandro enough to make it his/her home.  And I want someone who believes enough on his/her own abilities that he can trust he’ll be kept around for as long as s/he wants to be.

I am concerned, however, that the current City Manager hiring process has no space for public input.  For one, while the City Council are the representatives of the public, they do not reflect at all the demographics of this city.  Asians and Latinos make up 57% of the city’s population, and yet there isn’t even one Asian or Latino City Council member.   Indeed, while whites only comprise 27% of the City’s population, 85% of the City Council is white.  There should be a way for the City to solicit the imput of Asian and Latino and other San Leandro citizens in the City Manager hiring process.

What I propose is that the City form an advisory committee composed of 7 members.  Each City Council member would appoint one representative, making an effort to appoint someone from a demographic group not represented in City Council (in addition to Asians and Latinos, this could mean gays, young people, non-Christians, etc.).  This group would review the applications of the top City Manager choices, and either interview them or submit questions for their interviews (and then review their answers).  They would then either individually or as a group, submit their recommendations and the grounds for these to the Council as a whole.  The City Council, of course, would be free to make its own mind.Group members would be made to sign confidentiality agreements prohibiting them from discussing the matter.  To expedite the process, City Council members could draw on their commissioners as possible members of this advisory group or tap community leaders.

I’ll send my proposal along to the City Council, let’s see what they do with it 🙂