Report: Police ‘slow’ to make changes
Published: August 24, 2010
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An independent monitor tracking the Virgin Islands Police Department’s progress toward meeting the requirements of a federal consent decree has found — almost a year and a half after a judge signed the decree — that little progress has been made.
“This quarterly report demonstrates that the VIPD is still moving at a slow pace and has not been able to get traction on many important initiatives,” the report by independent monitors William Johnson and Steven Witzel, of the Fried Frank law firm, concludes.
The report notes that the monitors still believe Police Department leadership is committed to implementing the reforms required by the consent decree issued in 2009 against the V.I. Police Department by the U.S. Justice Department but that real progress has been slow.
Police Commissioner Novelle Francis Jr. said that part of what is causing the slow progress is that the individual officers required to make the policy changes “are the same individuals that are fighting crime on our streets.”
He said the department plans to hire a consultant to help develop policy changes — as the monitors recommend — but also has run into challenges trying to procure those services.
The Special Litigation Section of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division launched its investigation into the Police Department’s use of force in March 2004 after The Daily News publication of “Deadly Force,” a 44-page investigative report detailing the Police Department’s history of using excessive force and failing to investigate or prosecute the officers involved.
The investigation ended with the Justice Department filing a complaint in federal court contending that the Police Department was violating residents’ civil rights by engaging in a pattern or practice of using excessive force.
The federal complaint also charged that the V.I. Police Department has tolerated that conduct by failing to adequately train, supervise, investigate and discipline its officers and by failing to establish consistent policies, procedures and practices that appropriately guide and monitor the actions of officers.
The consent decree, which a judge signed in March 2009, forces the territory to remedy that situation over the course of five years.
It also sets the clock ticking on specific timelines for those improvements.
Although Francis and V.I. Attorney General Vincent Frazer have said repeatedly that they intend to achieve substantial compliance with the provisions of the consent decree before the five years is up, the department already is behind in beginning to meet a multitude of mandates.
The latest monitor report is the second quarterly report since police selected and hired an independent monitor. It notes that many of the obsolete policies that the U.S. Justice Department described in a 2005 letter it sent — in the midst of the federal probe leading to the decree — remain unchanged.
It also points to a positive step — the department’s designation of a compliance manager on St. Croix to work with its compliance coordinator. Both positions are department employees devoted solely to working on meeting the mandates of the consent decree.
The report notes that the Office of the Independent Monitor provided detailed feedback to police on several proposed policies, including a draft use-of-force policy. The comments will be detailed in the next report, it states.
The office will continue to work with police to set several key policies, including policies on use of force and Tasers. Francis in November suspended the use of Tasers by police after the U.S. Justice Department found the police draft use-of-Taser policy “critically inadequate and inconsistent with accepted best practices.”
The monitors found that the Police Department “would be well-served if it hired a policy consultant.”
Francis said in an interview that the department is trying to do just that.
The commissioner said the department had a candidate — a police policy expert — that the monitors had recommended, but the candidate found an assignment elsewhere while police were submitting a requisition to bring him on board.
The department now is pursuing other candidates, with input from the monitors and the U.S. Department of Justice, Francis said.
The report notes that the Police Department reformed its Policies and Procedures Committee to have six members instead of 14 to improve productivity, per the monitor’s recommendation.
However, monitors reported that despite the reorganization, “the committee had not fully engaged itself in the process of reviewing the department’s policies and procedures with a view toward satisfying the requirements of the consent decree.”
The report also found that the Police Department continued to lack a consistent and established system for tracking, reviewing and analyzing the frequency and nature of uses of force by its officers — another requirement of the decree.
Although police told monitors they are trying to use a manual system to track that information pending the implementation of a computer system, the monitor found that the department lacks a tracking system that meets the mandates.
In reviewing citizen complaints, incident reports and investigations, the monitors found some recurring deficiencies, including the failure to interview all potential witnesses, failure to prepare sufficiently detailed investigative reports and — in some investigations conducted by zone commanders — “the failure to avoid giving automatic preference to the officer’s statement over the complainant’s,” the report states.
The report notes that although the department does not have a Taser policy in place — and Francis has suspended the use of Tasers — police asked for approval to conduct a Taser training for another agency in July.
The Office of Independent Monitor recommended that police not do that until their own suspended Taser policy is revised. The report notes that police said there was a miscommunication with the request.
Francis said the request was made “"unbeknownst” to him.
“Clearly, I will submit, we do not have a policy in place, and we should not be doing training,” Francis said.
In other matters, the report found that the department has made some progress in establishing a citizen complaint process, although a policy has not been finalized.
It notes that police efforts to begin operating a risk management system have been delayed by technical issues.
It also states that training of officers and supervisors “continues to be inadequate” and that the Training Division has not made progress toward establishing a training infrastructure.
Over the next six months, the Police Department “must make great strides” on a number of measures, including setting several policies and protocols, including use of force, Taser, citizen complaints and other policies; complete installation of all computer systems and programs; and develop a training infrastructure, according to the report.
The department also must maintain consistent and reliable documentation of all uses of force through a manual system until computers are up and running, the report states.
There have been a number of delays and transitions in working with the decree — a few of them outside the control of the Police Department.
Most recently, Michael Bromwich, whom the Police Department hired as independent monitor, resigned his position with Fried Frank after President Barack Obama appointed him to be the new director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Bromwich later invited Tommy Beaudreau, the deputy monitor, to join him at the bureau. Johnson and Witzel have taken over monitoring duties.
Francis said those losses were significant to the Police Department, which went with Fried Frank in part because of Bromwich’s reputation for helping police departments turn around.
“He had a track record of getting the job done,” Francis said. “Despite Fried Frank being a little higher, we went with them because of his track record.” The current report, released Thursday, notes that the transition limited monitoring activities for the quarter that ended June 30.
