Gal notes,

These days, networking is synonymous with a successful business. Networking is also the key to a good social life. No matter how big our office, how colourful our flyers, how powerful our computers or how many degrees we have, it is the quality of relationships we establish with ourselves, our family, our friends, our customers, our suppliers and, more than anything else, with people we don’t know, that will determine our success in our personal life or in business.

And as a story in yesterday’s Fresno Bee demonstrates, what’s true in business and our personal life is also true in law.

The story — and there have actually been several in the Bee over a few days — tells of allegations of physical abuse.  Paul and Alex Grenier, sons of a Visalia pastor, filed a criminal complaint with the Visalia Police Department this past February.  The complaint alleged that when they were children, their father repeatedly abused them, beating them, punching them in the face with his closed fist, slapping them upside the head and even “beating one son repeatedly with a tree branch.”

Apparently, however, nothing is being done about the allegations because the statute of limitations has allegedly passed on all the crimes reported.  Oh, and when the boys asked for a copy of the report — the report the police created of the complaints the boys made — they were told they couldn’t have a copy because the investigation was ongoing.  However, the boys were also told that no investigation would be done because the statute of limitations has passed.

Hmmm….I wonder what else is going on. After all, something has to help us make sense of this “ongoing investigation/no investigation will be done” situation.

As it turns out, networking isn’t just synonymous with a successful business: it’s synonymous with helping out when you do bad stuff.  Most of the time.

The elder Grenier’s connections to law enforcement run deep in Visalia. The introduction of his self-published book “A Common Miracle,” telling his life story, includes praise from former Visalia Police Chief Bob Carden, Sheriff Bill Wittman and District Attorney Phil Cline. And the staff at Calvary Church includes a retired sheriff’s lieutenant. (Lewis Griswold, “Sons of Visalia preacher allege abuse” (July 17, 2010) The Fresno Bee.)

Now it’s entirely possible that every crime reported by the boys is time-barred.  California has — not without some difficulty — attempted to extend the statute of limitations on certain types of abuse almost indefinitely.  In the 2001 case of Stogner v. Superior Court, for example, they held that sex crimes which had been previously time-barred — that is, the statute of limitations had run; the time to prosecute had expired and the accused person could not be persecuted prosecuted — could, after all, be persecuted prosecuted.

The United States Supreme Court, imbued at that time with slightly more sense than today — I’d hate to see what the Roberts Court would do with this now — reversed California.  The Court did this because of two concerns: first, that the specific statute addressed in Stogner violated the ex post facto restriction; second, that the passage of time “has eroded memories or made witnesses or other evidence unavailable.”  (Stogner v. California (2003) 539 U.S. 607, 615 [123 S.Ct. 2446, 156 L.Ed.2d 544].)

Both those issues are interesting enough and involved enough that further discussion will have to await another day.

In any event, while California continues to believe that the absence of evidence in allegations of long-forgotten, suddenly “recovered” memories of sexual abuse (see Trear v. Sills (1999) 69 Cal.App.4th 1341, 1344 [82 Cal.Rptr.2d 281]; Code Civ. Proc. § 340.1) may be pursued in the absence of any real evidence, the same “courtesy” has not been extended to alleged victims of non-sexual abuse.

And so, as I said, it may very well be that the statute of limitations has run on all the allegations of the minister’s children.

What caught my attention about this story, however, was this:

The brothers spoke with investigators for more than an hour, but were disheartened that the finished report left out what they say is crucial information.

“The report did not include the brutal nature of the many beatings,” Alex Grenier wrote in an e-mail. “It was a seriously watered-down version of what we reported and left out the most serious allegations of abuse.”

And this:

Visalia Police Chief Colleen Mestas defended the report, saying police reports are summarized to get cases started in the court process. “You don’t put in every detail,” she said.

The time lapse between the beatings — in the 1980s and 1990s — and when the charges were made affected how the report was written, Mestas said.

The statute of limitations expires after three years for felony physical abuse and after one year for misdemeanors. “If the statute of limitations has passed, it doesn’t matter how much you say,” Mestas said.

Then why take a report at all?  Why not just say, “Sorry, kids, but there’s nothing we can do.  The statute of limitations has run.”  And why say, later, that the report is unavailable because the investigation is ongoing?

The likely truth of the matter here is that the report is watered down — regardless of the question of the statute of limitations — out of deference to the allegedly-abusive father with close ties to the police department.  The bogus explanation that the amount of time which had passed colored how the report was written is just that: bogus.  The point of police reports is, among other things, to provide information necessary for future handling of any case by providing a record of what has come out of the investigation thus far.

What colored the police reports wasn’t the passage of time; the report hasn’t yellowed with age.  The coloring of the report here comes from the close relationship of the boys’ father and the police department: it seems to me someone edited these reports with a thin blue pencil.

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• Clowning Around With Justice
• Spin Sells: The Fresno Bee’s Yellow Journalism
• Nothing to Fear

At any rate, it’s about time the Fresno Superior Court recognized that the Sheriff’s Department is not above lying.  I wonder if this will carry over to greater recognition of prevarication in the courtroom by individual officers?  (Hahaha!  Sometimes I make myself laugh!)  

It’s not often you see the Fresno County Superior Court calling it like it is, so when the presiding judge is talking about the Sheriff and says the court should have been “certainly less trusting,” you know things are bad. 

According to the Fresno Bee,

Court officials also say that the Sheriff’s Office falsified records once it became aware of not being in compliance with the contract.

The Bee is nothing if not fair and balanced in its reporting on local law enforcement, however, and gave the Sheriff’s Department the opportunity to respond. 

[Assistant Sheriff Tom] Gattie said the complaint was investigated by the office’s internal affairs, which found no wrongdoing. 

Imagine that.  The Superior Court for the State of California, County of Fresno, complains that the Sheriff’s Department not only overbilled them by more than a million dollars, but falsified records to cover this up once it was discovered and when the Sheriff’s Department investigates itself, it finds “no wrongdoing.” 

The reports were apparently created by the department’s new hands-off SFR system — the same one they use when writing up investigatory reports in crimes where accused people “consent” to unconstitutional searches of their homes and cars which turn up all kinds of illegal things. 

“SFR,” of course, stands for Self-Falsification System.  This is what allows internal affairs to investigate and find “no wrongdoing” whenever there appears to have been some wrongdoing.  The SFR is not human; it’s just computers.  Computers are not moral creatures.  Hence, when they can blame the SFR, there is “no wrongdoing.”  

Mark my words, next week a follow-up story will no doubt inform us the issue has been resolved: it was all a computer error.

At any rate, the Fresno County Superior Court may wish to take heed.  Sheriffs’ Departments do not take kindly to criticism by mere judges. 

And lest you wish to comment to tell me “Fresno is not Maricopa,” I can tell you that I was in court two weeks ago when a judge made a suggestion and the bailiff’s response was “No!,” followed by the only slightly less emphatic “That’s not how it’s done.”

Guess who backed down?

And guess who’s going to back down this time? 

If nothing else, you’ve got to give Sheriff Mims credit for knowing how to both keep the judges in line and make up for her budget shortfall at the same time. 

This “two birds with one shot” approach makes the Fresno Police Department’s need to use multiple bullets to kill one citizen look paltry in comparison.

Comments

• September 1, 2010, Mark writes: Not the kind of rhetoric you hear every day in a court room.

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Nevertheless, I’m going to put it up anyway, in the hopes that some visitors here are able to properly parse sentences and will get the point.

I’m not going to give my usual disclaimer, either.

Oh, okay.  Just for the denser readers, I will again state the disclaimer.  Let’s see if they’ll be able to read it when I put it up like this:

NOT ALL POLICE OFFICERS ARE LIARS.  MANY OFFICERS ARE TRUTHFUL.  EVEN THOSE WHO SOMETIMES LIE ON THE STAND ARE OTHERWISE ORDINARILY GOOD OFFICERS WHO ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT DOING GOOD AND HAVING PEOPLE THINK WELL OF THEM.

The problem is, police officers — and not as many people believe (hope?) just a few — actually do “misstate the truth.”  Police officers are human beings who are frequently under a lot of pressure.  And that pressure takes many forms.  Everyone thinks about the pressure officers are under when they face potentially life-threatening situations.  Not many people think about the moral pressures officers face.  Probably it’s because few of us actually have to face such moral pressure ourselves, so it just doesn’t occur to us.

Like practically every other human being on the face of the planet, police officers face decision-making tasks.  And like practically every other human being on the face of the planet, while making those decisions they seldom consider the moral implications of the processes they go through in making their decisions.

Notice I did not say, “they seldom consider the moral implications of their decisions.”  That is a separate question.  Certainly their decisions have moral implications.  Certainly part of what I’m concerned about — and part of what all of us should be concerned about —are the moral implications of their decisions.

Just as important, however, are the processes we go through in arriving at a decision.  For that is the area where many problems arise.  Setting up sting operations utilizing people of questionable character is something unavoidable in police states.  (In constitutional democratic republics, this isn’t as much of a problem, because officers will be looking for people who have already committed crimes rather than trying to find people they believe have a propensity to commit crimes.  But constitutional democratic republics are a thing of the past.)  Frequently these people of questionable character must be paid money to perform their tasks, which, on top of their already questionable bona fides, gives them an incentive to do bad things; i.e., to make things up, so as to show their “value” to their handlers and collect fees.  So special care must be taken in arresting people on the say so of paid snitches.

Evaluating the actions of others before deciding whether or not they are worthy of arrest is another area fraught with procedural moral difficulties.  Unconscious attitudes about others — not exclusively, but not infrequently, seen when white officers interact with non-white “suspects” (or simply when officers interact with “suspects,” regardless of the colors of either party) — impact interpretations of behaviors.  Unconscious attitudes about others are unavoidably impacted by “typological beliefs.”

I say “typological beliefs,” by the way because I don’t merely mean “stereotypes.” Certainly stereotypes are one form of typological belief.  They’re generally shared, like cultural memes, and generally caricature-like.  But people develop their own idiosyncratic beliefs based on their own experiences which are not necessarily characteristic of “ordinary” stereotypical views.  But this is perhaps a more complex point to be discussed more fully in any comments that may pop up about it, or in another post dedicated to that issue.

Then, of course, there are the attitudinal issues.  Increasingly, officers are a cynical lot, suspicious of anyone not wearing a uniform.  As one former law enforcement officer has written, this “us versus them” mentality leads to a generalized mistrust for “civilians.”

Ultimately, officers make mistakes.  Not just the “ultimate” mistakes in terms of getting their decisions wrong, but the more subtle mistakes that lead them to these “ultimate” mistakes in the first place.  The distrust of “civilians,” the “us versus them” syndrome leads officers to believe that anyone working with them can be taken at their word.  Anyone vetted by an officer, vouched for by an officer, becomes one of the good guys.  Even if they aren’t.  Anyone who contradicts an officer becomes an enemy of law enforcement.  Even if they aren’t.

So, increasingly, innocent people are arrested for crimes they never even dreamed of committing, let alone actually committed.  Once in awhile, they get lucky.  They can prove they are innocent.

The problem is, it’s rare for someone to be able to do this.  It’s difficult.  In the end, when someone is innocent of the crime of which they’ve been accused, it boils down to their word against the officers’.  On top of that, since one officer will believe or take his cue from another officer, the single innocent citizen will usually be telling his story in the face of more than one officer who contradicts that story.

The officers may believe what they’re saying is true.  Even those who don’t will believe what they’re doing is right.  After all, they’re putting away “the bad guy(s).”

This article is not meant to be a diatribe against the police.  It’s not meant to say that they should never be believed.  Before I became an attorney, I worked for a multi-millionaire chief executive officer and owner of a large company who liked to say:

Trust but verify.

This is why we have jurors.  Not so that when police get up and testify at a trial, the jurors can say, “Oh, dude must be guilty.  The cop said so.”  And, remember, because they frequently influence one another, the number of officers testifying does not necessarily change things in this regard.

To those jurors and potential jurors out there who may be reading this, I’m simply saying, “Okay.”  You want to trust the officers?  I have no problem with that. I only ask one thing: Evaluate the evidence that supports what the officers are saying.  Evaluate the evidence that contradicts what the officers are saying.  And in the end, don’t just discredit evidence because it contradicts what the officer(s) is(are) saying.  Officers are under tremendous moral pressures which can lead them to falsely — perhaps unintentionally, but still falsely — accuse innocent people.

If it’s an officers job to keep us safe, to arrest bad guys, to collect evidence and to testify against people, it is a juror’s job to evaluate all this evidence and testimony.

In doing your jobs, it’s okay to trust.  But remember that it’s also okay to verify.

Comments

• June 14, 2009, shg writes: I never knew you worked in the Reagan administration. Go figure. .-= shg´s last blog ..Soapbox Justice =-.

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