CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2023 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CALIFORNIA
COPS HAVE A WINNING SUMMER”
Things
were looking negative for individual police officers and police forces in
California earlier this year. Job vacancies piled up, state Attorney General
Rob Bonta seemingly launched constant brutality investigations and there was
copious negative publicity about so-called “capture-and-release” of shoplifters
and other misdemeanor suspects.
New rules
also compelled most police to wear body cameras tracking almost every move they
make.
All this
has been fallout from the police killing of the African-American George Floyd
in Minneapolis in 2020.
But late
summer brought a fast turnabout for law officers in many places.
Begin
with recruiting bonuses and starting salaries. As vacancies stared them in the
face and police response times climbed, many cities began offering large sums
to new recruits who complete training and become sworn peace officers.
San
Francisco now hands out $5,000 signing bonuses and has raised entry-level pay
to about $108,000. Richmond police won a labor contract giving them raises of
20 percent over the next two years. Los Angeles police are on the verge of a
new pact that will increase starting pay by 13 percent.
Incentives
also include free gym memberships and dry cleaning for uniforms in many cities.
But the richest benefits for rookie cops are coming in Alameda, whose force had
vacancies in about one-third of its authorized positions just last spring.
Money changed this quickly. Jobs are no longer going begging since the city
council of the Oakland suburb authorized $75,000 enlistment bonuses and a base
salary starting at $110,000 yearly, not including overtime.
Then came
the courts. Led by judicial appointees of ex-President George W. Bush and
ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, both federal and state courts have lately
expanded police privilege.
The
recent decisions may eventually be reversed, but for now, they’ve handed police
officers vast new license.
First
came the state’s Fresno-based 5th District Court of Appeal, where a
three-judge panel ruled early this fall that committing documented perjury as a
sworn witness may not be enough to guarantee a cop’s firing.
The 2-1
decision authored by Presiding Justice Charles Poochigian, a former Republican
state senator named to the bench by Schwarznegger, held that when a Merced
officer testified he had opened containers in a motel room accidentally, while
in fact they could not have opened without being deliberately unzipped, it was
not automatic grounds for dismissal.
“Whether
termination was an abuse of (police department discretion) should be (up to)
the trial court,” Poochigian wrote. So the cop’s lying about how he came to
open containers without a warrant, the judges ruled, was not necessarily
grounds for dismissal.
Mere days
later, a panel of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a
policeman who shot a naked man allegedly trespassing in a gym locker room was
not personally liable for killing the man, but was protected by “qualified
immunity,” which shields police from personal responsibility when they do not
violate “clearly established law.”
The panel
originally ruled last spring that circumstances of the shooting should leave
the policeman liable to pay damages for the fatal shooting, but one of the
original panel members resigned from the bench before that decision became
final. When a George W. Bush appointee replaced that judge, the newly-shaped
panel first voted to vacate the original ruling, then to reverse it.
In both
cases, dissenting judges were appointees of Democrats, and the majorities were
named by Republicans.
Both
decisions stand a strong chance of being reversed on further appeals, the
perjury result possibly by the state Supreme Court and the “qualified immunity”
ruling by an 11-judge “en banc” panel of the Ninth District.
In both
cases, the political leanings of the judges involved – not the facts – appeared
to be major factors. Republicans voted to give police more leeway and more
protection from responsibility for their actions, while Democrats voted to be
tougher on them.
At least for the moment, both
decisions remain on the books, giving law enforcement more legal shielding than
officers had lately appeared to possess.
All of
which has made the last few weeks the most relaxed time in several years for
police in California.
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Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough:
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
