You know what the most surprising thing about the latest Merrick Bobb report on the LA County Sheriff’s Department and the SCV Sheriff’s Station is?
No, it’s not the fact that there are actually people in the SCV who would shove a black woman into a bush and call her a “nigger” (there are, read the report), nor is it the fact that the SCV has more anti-semitic cases than any other jurisdictions (it does), it’s the fact that for as long as I’ve run SCVTalk.com, the Merrick Bobb reports keep singling out the SCV Sheriff’s Station among all the LASD stations as “in need of improvement,” painting a picture of a station that is lax in its paperwork and reporting, doesn’t take complaints seriously, and doesn’t bother with (or even ignores) hate crimes taking place in the SCV.
In 2007, for instance, the report said the SCV Sheriff’s Station was in the “need of most improvement” for how it handled citizen complaints and misconduct investigations.
“Unlike the Los Angeles Police Department, when someone complains to the Sheriff’s Department about a deputy, the complaint is investigated locally at the station, rather than by an Internal Affairs Division. Bobb found that in Santa Clarita, when a citizen’s complaint conflicts with a deputy’s report -even when a third party witness is available- that the officer gets the benefit of the doubt,” I wrote in 2007.
And then, in late 2007, the Merrick Bobb report found that the SCV Sheriff’s Station’s “internal force reviews” weren’t completely thorough. Again, the report singled out the SCV Sheriff’s Station and said it needed improvement.
Even if those two reports elicit a collective shrug from the SCV, this new report ought to case some real soul searching.
That’s because the latest report finds that the SCV Sheriff’s Station, in a randomized sampling of hate crime cases, “did not always seem to go the extra mile to ensure a thorough investigation in which all leads were followed, all documentation collected, and all witnesses interviewed.”
The report mentions one SCV case in which a group of five white men surrounded a black woman and her white girlfriend. The men allegedly “pushed [the black woman] into some bushes, yelling Nigger and pretending to be monkeys.” According to the report, the SCV Sheriff’s station took a statement and noticed the scratches on the victim’s face, but never investigated this disgusting crime; the case was moved into an inactive file just six months later.
The woman never got justice.
There are other incidents mentioned as well (The Signal covers one in their report), but overall, the report found that the SCV Sheriff’s Station had one of the worst records for completing hate crime files:
And all that’s before you get to the other nugget in the report: The SCV Sheriff’s Station used more force in arrests from 2004-2009 than any other region except for Crescenta Valley Deputies.
To be fair, I think the Sheriff’s Station has improved markedly in the last few years. Back in 2005/2006, they had an absentee commander, a decrepit website, and very little media outreach. From my perspective, things improved dramatically when Captain Anthony LaBerge came on board: he built a new website, he appeared regularly at City Council meetings, he talked to the press, and he produced semi-regular reports. I see the same proactive attitude continuing with Captain Paul Becker, and, from my own personal anecdotal observation, the Deputies at the station are usually willing to answer questions and hand out information.
That said these reports keep singling out the SCV Sheriff’s Station, and that bugs me. The station says they are reviewing the latest report and will have a response (and we will post that response here on SCVTalk). In the meantime, here’s hoping that the next Merrick Bobb report doesn’t mention our Station at all.
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