Police Misconduct

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POLICE MISCONDUCT IN SAN ANTONIO

THE NEED FOR MORE ACCOUNTABILITY, TRANSPARENCY, AND RESPONSIVENESS

A TEXAS CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT 2011 HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT

WE ARE INDEBTED TO JOANNE HEISEY, RYAN NOVOTNY, ELOISE SANTA MARIA, DEREK MILLER, MELISSA RODRIGUEZ, KEVIN BLODGETT, JANINE WETZEL, AND NICHOLAS JACKSON, WHO COLLABORATED ON THE RESEARCH AND WRITING OF THIS REPORT.

Special thanks to the many organizations and individuals who contributed their knowledge, insight, and stories to this report, including:

Jaime Martínez, Founder, Cesar E. Chavez Legacy and Educational Foundation

Henry Rodriguez, Civil Rights Chair, and George Alejos, Housing Council, LULAC of Texas

M. Lynn Blanco, Miriam Elizondo, Carmen Vasquez, Deana Buril, and Sherrill Case, The Rape Crisis Center in San Antonio

Patrick Filyk and Edward Piña, Attorneys, former Presidents, ACLU San Antonio chapter

Ruby Krebs, former President, San Antonio Gender Association, member of SAPD Citizen Action Advisory Board

Mario Salas, Adjunct Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio, civil rights leader, and author

Jack Ryan, Captain (Ret) Providence, RI Police Department, Co-Director of Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute, Attorney

Timothy Maher, Associate Teaching Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis

Elena Guajardo and Dee Villarrubia, Texas Stonewall Democratic Caucus Oliver W. Hill, President, NAACP of San Antonio Margo Frasier, Austin Police Monitor

Texas Civil Rights Project The Michael Tigar Human Rights Center 1405 Montopolis Drive Austin, TX 78741

www.texascivilrightsproject.org

(512) 474 5073 (phone) (512) 474 0726 (fax)

© Texas Civil Rights Project, 2011 All Rights Reserved

Executive Summary

A string of incidents in the past few years has revealed a troubling pattern of misconduct by San Antonio police officers, ranging from illegal searches and sexual misconduct to unresponsiveness and indifference to victims. The thread connecting these incidents is the fact that better supervision, accountability, and transparency by SAPD could have prevented them. The Texas Civil Rights Project has documented many of these events, discovered through media reports, accounts from community members, SAPD records, and its own intake process.

A review of SAPD’s response to many of these incidents shows that misconduct is often addressed too late — after an officer does something egregious, and too late for the department to try and remedy the officer’s dangerous habits and tendencies. SAPD itself has commissioned a number of independent auditors to study some of these issues. To its credit, some changes are beginning to take place, though many reforms have not yet been considered, fallen by the wayside, or have yet to be implemented.

This report discusses a departmental culture that protects its own and is unwelcoming of supervision. Citizens report a variety of problems in dealing with the police, often when they are the victims and especially when they attempt to lodge complaints against the police. Internal Affairs’ policies and practices create a hostile environment for individuals reporting possible police misconduct. The agency also suffers from a serious lack of transparency that impedes public scrutiny, and many roadblocks protect officers against the possibility of serious repercussions for most of their actions.

SAPD’s current police chief, William McManus, has made efforts to move the department in the right direction by listening to citizens’ concerns and pushing for changes. In order to encourage continued improvement on this front, this report provides forty-one (41) specific recommendations that address institutional problems in SAPD’s culture, training, and policies. The recommended changes focus on the following areas:

• improving the investigation of citizen complaints through greater autonomy for investigators and providing better information and follow-up for complainants;

• increasing supervisor accountability for misconduct by subordinates when the supervisor fails to report or address it;

• facilitating supervisors’ oversight of police officers through the creation of standardized disciplinary guidelines and better monitoring of officers’ job performance;

• supporting officers in dealing with the challenges and pressures of law enforcement through access to mental health services, employee assistance programs, and supervisor training; and,

• equipping officers to deal better with victims and groups who are subject to discrimination, through regular in-service training and partnerships with community organizations, and adding two victim liaisons to the police force.

Note on Sources & Methods

TCRP conducted a broad investigation with the dual goals of documenting the forms of police misconduct prevalent in San Antonio and identifying improvements and best practices to stop these problems from continuing to occur.

A significant part of the factual information gathered for this report comes from SAPD and Internal Affairs records obtained through open government requests.

In addition, TCRP interviewed a large network of community leaders and organizations in San Antonio to learn more about the problems faced most frequently by different constituencies, some of which are not widely discussed in the news media.

TCRP’s own intake process and legal advocacy informed this report on specific issues.

Lastly, this report’s analysis and recommendations takes into account other recent studies of SAPD, including reports by the PERF committee and the Matrix Consulting Group.

More information on select references is available in the Appendix and on our website, http://www.texascivilrightsproject.org/go/sapd.

Table of Contents

I. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 6

 II. A Failure to Protect and Serve: Recent Examples of Officer Misconduct ..................... 7 

(a) Sexual Misconduct................................................................................................. 7 

(b) Failure to Respond to Situations Appropriately .................................................... 9 

III. Addressing the Problems That Allow Police Misconduct to Persist...........................11 (a) PERF....................................................................................................................13 

(b) Matrix .................................................................................................................. 14

 (c) Morris & McDaniel ............................................................................................. 14

 IV. What Has Improved.....................................................................................................14 

V. Problems That Persist, and the Need For Institutional Change....................................15

 (a) Internal Affairs’ Misguided Focus on Complainants Instead of Complaints......15

 (b) Empowering Independent Review of Police Actions.......................................... 18 

(c) Achieving Real, Not Perfunctory, Transparency................................................. 19 

(d) Compounding Factors.......................................................................................... 20 

VI. A Problem of Culture .................................................................................................. 21

(a) Better, More Consistent Training on Victims’ Services ..................................... 22

 (b) Reforming Anti-LGBT Attitudes Through Ongoing Training............................ 25

 (c) A Structured Process for Officer Conduct Review and Discipline ..................... 26 

VII. Summary of Recommendations ................................................................................. 28 

VIII. Appendix: References and Further Reading............................................................. 33