How California Law Shields Violent Police Officers

[marmar]

ColorLines / By Ali Winston

How California Law Shields Violent Police Officers
Is a police officer's right to privacy more important than the right of the community to know who's policing them--and whether they have a record of brutality?

August 17, 2011 |


This story was produced with the support of the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC-Berkeley.


March 21, 2009, was one of the bloodiest days in the history of the Oakland Police Department and California law enforcement.

It began with a trifle: Two traffic officers, Sergeant Mark Dunakin and Officer John Hege, pulled over 26-year-old parolee Lovelle Mixon for running a traffic light. After Dunakin radioed in Mixon’s driver’s license and learned it was fake, both officers approached the car with the intent of making an arrest. Mixon leaned out of his window and, according to a Board of Inquiry report, “methodically shot each officer twice.” As the officers lay wounded on the sidewalk, Mixon crawled out of the window of his car, stood over them and shot each in the back.

Over the next two hours, roughly 200 officers from several police agencies tore through East Oakland on a manhunt. The magnitude of the response and the absence of OPD brass from the field for 90 minutes would prove critical in shaping the remarkable carnage that followed—three more people killed and two seriously wounded. The lack of senior personnel led to a situation where, as the Board of Inquiry put it, “many responders self-assigned(ed) their own activity.” At a moment when OPD’s response needed to be orderly and focused, officers operated without supervision and on their own initiative. One of those officers was Sgt. Patrick Gonzales.

Gonzales would emerge from the day’s dramatic violence as a department hero; some colleagues nicknamed him “Audie Murphy,” the most decorated American soldier of World War II. But to many in the black and Latino neighborhoods Gonzales polices today, he has long been known as something else: a loose cannon. During Gonzales’ 13-year career he has shot four suspects, three fatally. “He’s left a trail of victims in his wake,” says Cathy King, the mother of one of Gonzales’ shooting victims, “but he’s (considered) a valued member of the police department.” ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152063/how_california_law_shields_violent_police_officers/