Mayor Sarno stumbles with the new city council, the public and the police

When Ward Four City Councilor E. Henry Twiggs put out the call last week that his committee would be discussing proposals for a new Civilian  Police Review Board, I'm sure he had no idea that Mayor Domenic Sarno would release his own proposal by executive order the day before the meeting.  For some strange reason, the city council actually thought it would have some input into the proposal, given that nine police officers in two separate incidents are now under investigation and at least some councilor's phone have been quite busy with calls from constituents.

But the meeting still took place last night in Room 220, and members of the Civil Rights and Race Relations Committee-- E. Henry Twiggs, John Lysak and Keith Wright-- were joined by Melvin Edwards, Katari Walsh, Michael Fenton, Thomas Ashe, Zaida Luna and Timothy Rooke!  With James Ferrera and Tim Allen in the audience, the only city councilors who weren't in attendence were Clodo Concepcion and and Jose Tosado.

On one side of the room sat members of the Springfield Police Department.  On the other side sat about 40 community members.

The first part of the meeting was given over to a presentation by City Solicitor Edward Pikula, who had completed the thankless task of coming up with the civilian police commission plan.  He was closely questioned by council members about some fairly complicated elements that shaped the plan-- Police Commissioner Fitchet's contract, civil service requirements, charter change and the police union's contract.  Councilor Twiggs made it clear he was not happy that council members were not consulted in the drafting of the proposal.  Then the meeting was turned over to speakers.

Police Union President Joseph Gentile spoke first, and said that the union did not support Mayor Sarno's new civilian police commission.  He said he wanted very much to see race relations in between the police and the community improve, and thought that community policing, which we no longer have, would do it.  He reminded us that the original police commission, which was disbanded as a condition of Commissioner Edward Flynn's hire, had the power to seek funding, develop program, hire, fire, commend and discipline as well as other powers.  Gentile's solution was something close to the original commission.)

(I'm going to stop here for a moment to .remember Ed Flynn as one of the most arrogant and incompetent persons I've ever met.  He wanted to be Commissioner, not Chief; he wanted all the powers of the Police Commission, and he left for a job in Milwaukee only 19 months into a five year contract. In trying to his leaving, he said, "I am two things ... and they're both real. I am an idealist about this job, and I am ambitious. The gap between the two gets filled with guilt," said Flynn, a well-traveled, pedigreed executive in blue, whose presence in Springfield has been unwelcome by many among the rank-and-file of the department."  Republican.   Some of the problems we're facing right now belong on his shoulders.)

Most of the people who spoke next talked about their intense disappointment  in being excluded from the process of determining the form pf police oversight; some, such as Arise for Social Justice and Rev. Talbert Swan, had submitted written suggestions. Others spoke about the mistrust in the community and the need to make sure that allegations of police brutality were thoroughly investigated by a commission with real powers, lacking in Sarno's commiission. 

I spoke near the end.  The point I wanted to make is that people who voted for ward representation in Springfield did so with the expectation that their councilors would be able to participate in decisions that affected their neighborhoods.  But first, I mentioned that I had been arrested in that very room about five years before at a city auction of tax title property, and charged with disturbing the peace, which was true, seeing as I was speaking out of turn, and with assault and battery on a police officer, completely untrue, and that the charges had been dropped when the officer failed to appear in court..  At that point I inclined myself toward the police officers, and said, ruefully, "You know, guys, that's the kind of thing-- putting charges on people they don't deserve-- that breeds cynicism and mistrust and that has to stop."

After I sat down, I glanced over to the officers' side of the room. It happened so quickly that at first I wasn't sure what I saw, but what I saw was an officer with his hand in the shape of a gun, held low to his lap, and pointed directly at me.

How the issues of police management and accountability in this city will be resolved, I don't know, but it's clearly not over yet.  Councilor Ferrera will be introducing his own version of a police commission on Monday night, which Councilor Twiggs has already said he doesn't support, but as Ferrera said to me this morning, at least the council will have the opportunity to debate, amend, accept or reject his proposal, an opportunity they were denied with Sarno's executive order.   And although no councilor at the meeting overtly expressed anger at Mayor Sarno (Ed Pikula was the stand-in for that), relations certainly haven't been improved.  It was only this January 20 that City Council President Jose Tosado called the lack of communication between the mayor and city council "institutionalized disfunction."  Ward representation can't be effective if the council continues to be shut out of the government.

Drawing from Shell's Daily Drawing.

What do homeless people want from the police?

The Sacramento Police Department came in for some criticism this week when an officer towed the uninsured, unregistered car of a homeless woman. She was left on the curb with her belongings in the rain.

The SPD blog acknowledged that criticism but wanted to make sure the public knew that the officer involved tried to assist the woman in phoning friends to help her move her belongings.

The sentiments of readers who called to complain about the towing of Van Slate’s car are understandable. However, we doubt that anyone would want to find themselves in a collision with an uninsured motorist. The Sacramento Bee’s own recent article on February 6 (Road hazard: uninsured driver rates climb), stated that the numbers of uninsured motorists are rising nationwide. This also means that the frustration and expense incurred by insured motorists who find themselves in accidents with the uninsured can also be expected to rise.
According to the Insurance Research Council cited in the article, rising unemployment rates correlate to the rise in uninsured motorists (3 million more uninsured motorists than five years ago). More insured motorists in collisions with uninsured will be picking up the tab for auto repair, injuries and court costs after accidents. This also means police officers everywhere are going to increasingly be faced with difficult situations like the one on Friday, and will have to wrestle with the aftermath of negative public opinion in order to protect all of the drivers on the road.

The blog also calls attention to the larger societal issue of homelessness, and says society's efforts would be better spent solving that problem than blaming officers for enforcing the law.
These are all fair points. So what is it that homeless people really want and need from law enforcement.
First, they want to be treated with dignity. The police departments in various cities tend to reflect the attitudes toward homeless people that are held by their superiors and by the city's elected officials. When Edward Flynn was hired as police commissioner in Springfield, Massachusetts, my home city, his focus on "quality of life" issues led to officers being told to photograph homeless people, with or without their consent, ostensibly so they could be identified if found dead. Homeless people were frequently rousted and told to move on. Sometimes their tents were destroyed.Homeless complaints about the police have declined (thought not disappeared) under the new police commissioner William Fitchet, who is focusing, with some success, on reducing serious crime.

Second, homeless people want the police to use their discretion humanely when homeless people are technically violating laws which are rarely if ever enforced for other populations-- jaywalking, loitering, vagrancy-- as long as they are otherwise behaving.

Last but scarcely least, homeless people want the police to help keep them safe. When Steve Donohue, a homeless man, was murdered by another homeless man last summer, the Springfield police comforted his friends and moved swiftly to apprehend the killer. Those actions went a long way in closing the trust gap between the homeless community and the police. With the terrible increase of violence against homeless people, the homeless community needs the police as much if not more than the community at large.

According to Springfield police, you might be a gang member if...

According to the Springfield Police, you might be a gang member if you're a kid, ride a bike, and carry a backpack.

Here's what happened: Jeff, a friend of the family, 20 year old Puerto Rican kid, has been stopped twice by a Springfield MA police officer while riding his bike-- once late afternoon and once late evening; once by Allen and Plumtree, once in the North End. Both times the officer asked for identification and "asked" to look in his bag. Both times my friend complied. One officer was polite and one was verbally abusive.

My friend wanted to know if he had the right to refuse to open his backpack. I said that in general, he did have that right (at least one exception would be if the officer felt a weapon was present in the bag and he might be in danger) but that I couldn't guarantee him the outcome if he did.

Just for the hell of it, I called the squad room at the police department and asked for the duty officer. I gave him my name (which he did not) and described the situation with my friend.

The officer asked me where this had occurred and I told him.

"Well, you see, we have reported gang activity in those areas."

"On Plumtree Road?"

"Yes." Of course I had to wonder if my friend had been in an area without gang activity, if he would have been stopped because he looked out of place!

I told the officer my friend had asked me if he had the right to refuse to show the contents of his backpack.

"I told him that he did have that right, but that if he refused, the officer might very well find some other reason to arrest him."

He didn't contradict me. "If the kid's got nothing to hide, why not let the officer look?" he said.

Well, lots of people would agree with that statement. We do have a gang problem in Springfield, as the recent murder of Mario Hornsby Jr. reveals so clearly. Lots of people would say, Who cares how police officers act, Who cares if every young person is searched on sight? Of course the folks saying that are not usually the ones being stopped.

We have a new police commissioner, William Fitchet, the promise of 50 more police officers, and the re-establishment of the anti-gang task force. But one thing that hasn't changed-- and in fact, has gotten worse-- is the lack of oversight of the Springfield Police Department.

Once upon a time, we had a police chief, not commissioner, and we had an appointed police commission with a variety of duties including hearing civilian complaints against the police. This commission had some binding powers, although they very rarely found against a police officer.

When Edward Flynn was hired to replace Police Chief Paula Meara, one of his conditions was that he be commissioner-- the only commissioner. The existing police commission was disbanded. Flynn got then-Mayor Ryan to hire a firm to make recommendations about civilian oversight of the police. The firm's name escapes me now, but as I recall, their recommendation was not what was established under Flynn. We now have a nine member "Community Complaint Review Board."

This Review Board has met exactly twice since being established. So far, it has not reviewed a single complaint. (This doesn't mean there haven't been any, just that we know less about it than ever before.) Not only that, all the Review Board has the power to do is review decisions already made by Commissioner Fitchet-- they can't hear from complainants, witnesses or officers directly. And even if they decided Fitchet's decision was wrong, they have absolutely no power to change his decision.

The current process lacks transparency and accountability. It is under these circumstances that we are likely to find complainants turning to civil lawsuits, being awarded sums of money that can't be disclosed to the public.

But the situation is unlikely to change unless that's what the public wants.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

I won't miss Commissioner Flynn

Seems like it's all over but for the official announcement-- Springfield's Police Commissioner Flynn will be leaving Springfield less than halfway through his five-year contract for the greener pastures of Wilwaukee. Good riddance, as far as I'm concerned.

My beefs with Flynn are minor compared to his impact-- or lack thereof-- on our community. The last thing we need is another dose of cynicism.

Is violent crime really down in Springfield? You couldn't prove it by me, and nobody knows what figures to believe.

From Flynn's very first day in Springfield, he made it clear that he was going to focus on "quality of life" issues, changing the "perception" of downtown Springfield from dangerous to less dangerous. Part of changing the perception was driving out homeless people. What good has it done?

My civil libertarian friends won't agree with me, but I thought that placing cameras in strategic places downtown and elsewhere was a good idea. People are less likely to commit a crime if they think they can be easily identified and caught! Whatever happened to that initiative, does anyone know?

Maybe the best thing Flynn did was to create a Civilian Review Board. However, I was just on the Springfield Police Department website, and couldn't find any mention of the board.

The faster our city can move on from Flynn, the better.

This should make the Springfield Police happy...

On Friday the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court ruled that it is legal for an officer to frisk a pedestrian on the street if he/she thinks the pedestrian might be carrying a weapon or drugs. The ruling overturns a lower court's decision which threw out the conviction of a Mattapan man on weapons charges.

District attorneys and police are happy; civil libertarians are unhappy. And the everyday citizen?

We already know the U.S. is full of folks happy to give away their liberty in exchanged for perceived security.

Many other folks, though, would say, "What's new?" The court's ruling just confirms life as already experienced by people of color, young people, homeless, poor, working class or otherwise "wrong place, wrong time" residents of Springfield.

I found this great picture of a police officer. It's so much how we want the police to be. I think they'd say they have to be the way they are because of the way everybody else is. Police have a terrifically tough job. I wouldn't want to be one. Anyone whose chief job is enforcing the rules runs the risk of starting to believe that the rules exist in and of themselves, for themselves, and forget the big picture and their part in it.

Arise and the ACLU got Police Commissioner Flynn to agree to stop having his officers photograph the homeless. Of course it still happens to young people all the time.

Flynn has set a tone for his officers but it is not one that has promoted courtesy and compassion.

Domenic Sarno: the man who would be mayor

Ah, Domenic Sarno…God loves him, his family loves him, he would have the city love him (at least enough to vote him in as mayor) but when I think about him, my mouth twists to the side.

I asked in an earlier post: how is Dom Sarno like President Bush? One answer: he can’t admit a mistake.

Now, poor people, including poor activists, can’t ever get very close to the seat of power in this city, so other people might have even better examples of Dom’s inability to own up—or maybe even examples that contradict my own experience—but here’s how he looks from the Arise side.

On August 17, 2006, Arise members and a number of homeless people attended a Civil Rights subcommittee of Springfield City Council, chaired by Domenic Sarno; the topic was homelessness. We thought that the meeting was about the civil rights of homeless people; it turned out to be about the civil rights of our housed citizens who don't like to be asked for money by poor people, or see them sleeping in doorways, etc.

At the end of Sarno's opening remarks, he said (I’m paraphrasing, seeing as the City Council does not keep verbatim transcripts) "Lastly, I have heard some disturbing information, if it is true-- that Arise is getting people from Northampton to come to Springfield, pretend they are homeless, and take pictures of the police."

I protested that this was untrue-- we have our own members who are really homeless, we don't need to get people to pretend. Sarno cut me off and said that his info was credible and that he’d gotten it from Police Commissioner, Edward Flynn (also present at the meeting).

Attempts to hold Flynn’s office accountable for this misinformation were fruitless (another post).

In October, I met with Bernie Glassman of the Zen Peacemakers, who was interested in doing “something” for the homeless. He mentioned that a dozen people from his organization had slept on the streets for a week over the summer, so they could find out what homelessness in Springfield was all about. I’d actually already heard about this from my sister Liz, who works at the Warming Place, because some homeless people had had to sleep on the floor the night that the Peacemakers, in disguise as homeless people, had turned up at the shelter. Suddenly it hit me, and I told the story of Sarno’s remarks to Glassman.

“I’ll bet it was you and your crew that Flynn reported as Arise members to Councilor Sarno,” I said.

“I’ll bet it was,” he said with a smile.

The following month, on November 17, Dom held a special subcommittee meeting to introduce the Zen Peacemakers to the Springfield community—they seem to have really hit it off. I attended the meeting, and before it actually began I thought, What a perfect time for Dom to acknowledge that it wasn’t Arise members out on the street, it was the Peacemakers, and to offer us a public apology for his misinformation. I put my thoughts in a quick note and went up to the rail to hand it to him. He was taken aback by my handing him a note—he was already pumping my hand and thanking me for coming when I slipped it to him—and I saw him read it as a video presentation about the Peacemaker’s work in Brooklyn was being prepared.

Dom stood up to open the meeting, and began by saying, “Before we actually begin, there’s something I’d like to tell you…”

Here it comes! I thought.

Well, what he actually said eludes me now, but as you might guess, it was not an acknowledgement of his error. I think the twist in my mouth that occurs whenever Dom Sarno is mentioned began at that moment.

A small affront, to be sure, in the grand scheme of things, but one that tells me much.

I have had many differences with Mayor Ryan about how he is working to solve the homeless problem in Springfield, but at least he’s trying.

Sarno’s solutions, on the other hand, range from wanting to put skunk-scented spray in empty buildings to discourage the homeless from sleeping in them to criminalizing shopping carts and panhandling.

It’s going to be an interesting mayoral campaign.