Denver Reviews San Jose P.D. As a Model in Creating Reforms
AP / George Nikitin San Jose, Calif., police officers prepare for their tour of duty at a daily briefing. San Jose’s police auditor tracks 20 percent of all internal investigations spurred by citizen complaints and reviews all allegations of excessive force.
By Kris Hudson, The Denver Post
San Jose, Calif. -- Eight seconds after officer Chad Marshall entered the tiny apartment, he put a bullet through a diminutive Vietnamese woman’s chest.
Cau Bich Tran, a 25-year-old emotionally disturbed mother of two, held a vegetable peeler when Marshall entered her San Jose home to investigate a complaint of children running in the street.
Marshall ordered her to drop it. Tran, who spoke little English, either did not understand or chose not to comply. Seconds later, he shot her.
The single shot that killed Tran last July 13 prompted changes in San Jose’s supervision of its police that could reverberate as far away as Denver, where a similar shooting occurred. A year ago Monday, a Denver officer shot and killed Paul Childs, a developmentally disabled teen holding a knife in his home, an incident that sparked community outrage and fueled a push for stronger civilian oversight of police affairs.
Denver officials this year have studied other cities’ methods of allowing civilians to oversee police investigations, a practice often called civilian oversight. In announcing other police reforms recently, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper pledged to make a decision this month on which oversight system Denver will enact.
The city that drew the most attention from Denver leaders during their research was San Jose, which established its oversight system in 1993.
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“We looked at many different cities and models, and San Jose had established a civilian oversight program with an independent, professional component that seems to be working fairly well,” Denver City Attorney Cole Finegan said.
The cities themselves aren’t twins, though. Denver has two-thirds the population of San Jose but had twice as many shootings by its police officers last year.
San Jose’s oversight system - featuring an independent police auditor that monitors internal police investigations - mirrors the type of oversight model Hickenlooper has touted in recent months. Whether Denver hires such an auditor - and what that person’s powers would be - likely will foster public debate.
Many varieties of civilian oversight can be found among the 60 U.S. cities listed as practicing some form by the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. And oversight procedures can evolve, usually in the wake of controversial shootings or arrests.
The Denver Post studied three cities with varying civilian-oversight programs - San Jose, San Francisco and Kansas City, Mo. - and found that each has revamped and updated its practices within the past two years. At best, police and civilians describe the programs as a workable compromise. At worst, all three are criticized for creating acrimony.
“If the community of Denver is really looking for a solution based on change and accountability, our auditor’s office is a start,” said Rick Callender, president of the San Jose-Silicon Valley chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “But it’s still a skeleton of what is needed. Otherwise, a citizen review committee that can enforce accountability is a better solution.”
Teresa Guerrero-Daley, San Jose’s police auditor since 1993, considers San Jose a better city because of its civilian oversight.
“There is more openness about (an internal investigation) process that used to be secretive,” she said. “People are more aware of their ability to file a complaint without fear or retaliation.”
Powers and limitations
San Jose’s City Council created the independent police auditor post in 1992, hiring Guerrero-Daley, now 52, as its first police auditor the next year.
Guerrero-Daley brought a legal background to the job. She spent three years with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and several years in private legal practices. complaints from citizens. She requested further investigation from internal-affairs officers on 527, or 12 percent, of those. Guerrero-Daley disagreed with internal-affairs investigators’ conclusions in 297 cases, or 7 percent of the time. When the auditor and internal affairs disagree, the case goes to the police chief or city manager, who makes the final decision. Discipline is left up to the police chief or city manager and is usually private.
The auditor diplomatically describes her relationship with San Jose police as “cordial” at best.
Police said they can tolerate the oversight.
“What sold it to the police officers here is the mere fact that the Police Department still had control of investigations,” San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis said.
San Jose’s police union, the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, has countered the auditor’s moves to bring investigative powers to her office. Most recently, the association successfully lobbied against her proposal to allow the auditor into crime scenes.
San Jose’s oversight “works if she does what she was originally hired to do, which was to be an auditor,” said Sgt. Don DeMers, association president.
Shooting leads to changes
The Tran shooting provided an opportunity for San Jose to re-examine the role of its police auditor.
Nearly a year after Tran’s death, San Jose’s Vietnamese community still seethes.
Vietnamese leaders dwell on the city’s handling of the investigation of Tran’s shooting, decrying city leaders’ “lack of empathy.” Vigils and protests proliferated after the shooting and will return during the one-year anniversary next week.
“It was hard for people in the Asian community to understand how he had a gun, she had a vegetable peeler and she ends up dead on the floor,” said Richard Kanda, director of the Asian Law Alliance in San Jose.
A grand jury cleared Marshall of any wrongdoing in the case, and he has returned to the beat. The case arrived in the police auditor’s office less than two months ago, and she will not comment on pending probes.
Dang Quang Bui, Tran’s boyfriend, now raises two sons - Tony, 5, and Tommy, 3 - on his own. Bui, 35, must do so on the salary of a circuit-board assembler in one of the country’s most expensive counties.
Tony and Tommy saw Marshall shoot their mother. They clung to Marshall’s legs screaming in terror afterward.
“The boys are very sad,” Bui said last month, with his attorney translating. “They don’t have a mom. When they go to bed, they ask, ‘Can you ask Mom to come back?”’
Attorney Felicita Vu Ngo filed a civil-rights lawsuit last year against the city and Marshall on behalf of the two boys and Tran’s father. A settlement of the case “is going to be tough,” San Jose City Attorney Rick Doyle said.
In the Childs case in Denver, city officials reached a $1.325 million settlement with the family of Paul Childs before a lawsuit was brought. His mother, Helen Childs, received the first check last week.
Many aspects of the Tran case remain subject to debate. Vietnamese activists note that in a previous contact in neighboring Fremont, an officer talked Tran out of a volatile situation when she acted suicidal.
Tran’s “weapon” also attracted controversy. It was an Asian vegetable peeler called a dao bao. Police note that a dao bao looks much like a cleaver, often measuring 8 to 10 inches long.
“The community was outraged,” said Samina Faheem Sundas, executive director of the American Muslim Voice community group. “Where else can you be safe if you’re not safe in your own home?”
Marshall did not respond to The Post’s request for comment, left with his attorney.
In the wake of the Tran shooting, Guerrero-Daley sought and received measures broadening the police auditor’s power. Among them: The auditor will be included early in investigations of shootings by police; she can hire outside consultants on the subject of police training; and police must provide an expanded array of information to the families of shooting victims, including a liaison to answer their questions.
The Tran shooting “mobilized many people that had never been involved before,” Guerrero-Daley said. “I believe that helped our recommendations get approval to bring about some changes.”
In a police-initiated change, San Jose outfitted all of its 605 patrol officers with Taser stun guns in the past year. Denver has made a similar commitment, opting to buy 100 more Tasers to boost its total to 300. However, the proliferation of Tasers in both cities has led to criticism from citizens and in news reports of officers’ zealous use of the weapons.
“I’m very happy with the Tasers so far,” said Davis, the San Jose chief. “In not one of these cases have I seen a situation where it was a judgment call to use (a Taser) and they did.”
More cooperation
After a decade of experience with a police auditor, people in San Jose offer varying advice for cities considering similar systems.
That includes Denver, which not only must decide whether to hire a police auditor but also must mull the fate of its Public Safety Review Committee, a volunteer panel that reviews citizen complaints but lacks funding and authority.
San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales favors the police-auditor format over a commission of citizens responsible for overseeing the department.
“The advantage we see here is, by having an independent auditor and not a citizen review board, you get a higher level of cooperation from the officers involved and more cooperation from the police union,” he said.
Guerrero-Daley said a police auditor needs autonomy to take on unpopular issues - such as guidelines for off-duty work by police - without fear of retribution. She added that a city needs to make the financial commitment to keep the office staffed and compensated enough to encourage continuity. Guerrero- Daley, who will leave her job for a county judgeship at year’s end, receives a $143,873 annual salary from San Jose.
Some community leaders see the police auditor as inadequate for bringing about significant change.
“An auditor lets everybody off the hook,” said Gary Wood, a community activist in San Jose. “The office is the most watered-down version of police accountability.”