Compiled from an email exchange by Scott Henson, 7-12-01.
In a running email exchange over the first two weeks in July 2001, Texas Monthly publisher Mike Levy (a self-appointed champion of mainstream public safety issues) forwarded anonymous emails from two APD officers to city councilmembers and other city leaders alleging grave incidents of mismanagement.
The officers must remain anonymous because of departmental policies that forbid them to criticize their employer. But their criticisms are of a type that could just as easily come from the ACLU as an Austin cop. When officers start breaking their Code of Silence, it’s like a canary in a coalmine -- a warning that something is terribly, terribly wrong.
Most disturbing were charges that felons may have successfully applied to become cadets. "Did you know that officers are being hired after having admitted to recruiters that they used felonious narcotics?" one asked. "Some even admitted to selling narcotics and still managed to get hired. Recruits may be required to take a polygraph test, but those whose results indicate deception can still be hired."
Both stated that proper background checks weren’t done on the current APD Cadet Class.
"Currently, Detectives and Officers are conducting background investigations on applicants. Many of these Detectives and Officers doing these backgrounds in addition to their regular duties. One Detective told me that he called the polygrapher to give him some specific issues to question an applicant about. He learned that the applicant had already had his polygraph interview. Another Detective received a phone call from a Recruiting supervisor asking about the completion of a background investigation on a particular applicant. It turns out that the applicant's oral board was the following day. It seems that we're scheduling oral boards prior to receiving the background investigator's recommendation. Another Detective relayed to me that if the applicant can 'explain away' an apparently deceptive entry on their application that they would be passed on. Previously, rightly or wrongly, any deception on the application had been an automatic disqualifier."
Apparently these types of poor judgment calls are being made because APD simply can’t find enough people who want to be cops.
"APD is currently well below authorized strength (as they have been for years). Although APD briefly reached "full staffing," it lasted only a few weeks, if not days. Despite a growing pool of qualified individuals borne of thousands of lay-offs in this city, APD cannot recruit the necessary number of bodies to fill budgeted vacancies. In fact, the most recent police cadet class was postponed while the Department scrambled to recruit more cadets."
Both officers explicitly invoked the Ramparts scandals in Los Angeles. Here’s an example:
"Do you remember the LAPD Rampart corruption scandal? A small group of LAPD officers stole and sold narcotics, robbed a bank, systematically beat and framed suspects, and then lied and covered up (and that is just a few of the highlights). In the wake of the scandal the LAPD launched an internal investigation to determine the root causes of such horrible corruption and how these crooks got hired. Directly from LAPD's public report:
"The fact that these men were hired with such egregious information in their packages leaves only two explanations: 1) Recognize that erosion has occurred and shore up the systems to prevent it from recurring, or 2) Insist that the application of our standards did not erode, which means that criminal conduct, drug dealing, financial irresponsibility and violent behavior are consistent with our standards.
"LAPD restructured their recruiting process. Why can't APD learn from such a hideous mistake without making it themselves?"
Both gentlemen offered important and significant suggestions for reform, in part based on LAPD’s experience. APD, one pointed out, leaves its officers relatively unsupervised. The LAPD internal report on Ramparts advocated a supervisor to patrolman ratio, for example, of 1:7 APD’s ratio is typically 1:12 and occasionally reaches 1:15.
"The Rampart report also found that all Area Commands should be housed out of a central facility, even in a city as enormous as Los Angeles, said the same officer, because officers that operated outside primary facilities were far less likely to receive adequate supervision. Today, APD has units scattered all over the city. LAPD included "community relations" employees in the high-risk group that must be housed in the primary building. APD's "district representatives" are often housed at satellite locations. In fact, LAPD even went so far as to note that by creating community policing "specialists" and physically basing them in neighborhoods rather than police facilities, you not only undermine the most basic concepts of community policing, but you also invite corruption. So why is APD still doing it?"
Both officers also criticized the creation of specialized units that siphoned
off resources from patrol duties. Most prominent of these new specialized units
is the Crowd Management Team, created last year to provide security for the
Fortune 500 protests in October. It was the Crowd Management Team that
swarmed 6th Street at the
Mardi Gras celebration in February. These specialized units bleed off resources
and manpower from core patrol duties that both officers pegged as core causes
for understaffing of patrols.
One gentleman in particular urged councilmembers and concerned citizens not to be fooled that LAPD problems were big city problems that didn’t apply to Austin:
"All of these weaknesses, or core problems, that allowed Rampart
to occur are not simply LAPD problems. They are American policing
problems. Most of them are alive and well in this and many other cities
in Texas. Sure, recruiting practices need to be inspected, but they are
only the tip of the iceberg. And heaven forbid, if hiring standards have
eroded, the other systems had better be corrected quickly.... If APD
provides the opportunity, there is likely someone with the motivation."
Click here to see the webmaster’s response to these emails sent to the Austin City Council.