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What It Means When Police Ask: ‘Are You on Probation?’
Traffic stops are often at the center of claims that police officers engage in racial profiling. They’re the most common form of contact between police and the community, and some vehicle code...
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Rein it in, Citizens Review Board
Here’s a radical idea: Instead of spending $200,000 to test body cameras on San Diego Police Department officers because Chief William Lansdowne needs proof that racial profiling is a problem, let’s...
View ArticleThat Other Time the Police Department Used Body Cameras
San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne’s big reveal at last week’s City Council committee hearing on racial profiling was a request to outfit patrol officers with body cameras. Video and audio tapes...
View ArticleAll Roads Lead to Lansdowne
San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne has said his response to controversy plays a big role in how he’s evaluated. He’s in the thick of an astounding amount of it now, for good and bad. A major...
View ArticleA Federal Monitor to Protect and Serve
San Diego’s police department can’t police itself, say attorneys representing a victim of officer sexual misconduct. They argue the department needs an independent monitor to oversee its internal...
View ArticleIn Police Audit, Details Matter
This post has been updated. San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne told U-T San Diego last weekend he wanted to hire an independent, outside auditor to review how the department handles officer...
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Bring in the Police Department Watchdog
Police Chief William Lansdowne has said he’s willing to take his department through an outside audit. But I’d say San Diego’s force needs more than that. A court-appointed independent monitor would...
View ArticleScandals Are an Afterthought in Lansdowne Tributes
Police Chief Bill Lansdowne resigned in the midst of snowballing controversies Tuesday but a chorus of local leaders responded by singing his praises. City politicos, law enforcement leaders and even...
View ArticleScandal Finally Takes Its Toll on Lansdowne
San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne had survived many days over the past decade where scandal enveloped the city. Tuesday, though, was different. News broke an officer had been arrested for DUI....
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A Tale of Two Victims
Tuesday was a big day for a woman we know only as Jane Doe. Doe was a victim of former cop Anthony Arevalos, and is suing the city. In Tuesday’s court hearing, the city continued to attack Doe’s...
View Article‘Teflon’ Cop Avoided Serious Investigation for Years
Before former San Diego police officer Anthony Arevalos’ arrest in 2011, his supervisors knew he had made sexually charged comments to a woman with mental disabilities while transporting her to a...
View ArticleNew Top Cop Comes With an Expiration Date
This post has been updated. Incoming Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman can only serve as the city’s top cop for four years. Last year, Zimmerman enrolled in a voluntary retirement program that requires...
View ArticleLansdowne: Cops Felt the City ‘Abandoned’ Them
To help explain a spike in misconduct allegations against his officers in 2011, San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne has often pointed to years of budget cuts he said pressured his department. But...
View ArticleEverything You Need to Know About the Upheaval at SDPD
Things started to fall apart Oct. 6, 2010. San Diego police officer Robert Acosta stepped into a Riverside County courtroom that day to face felony charges along with his wife, for trashing their...
View ArticleFive Things to Know About the New Police Chief
If there was any break in city leaders’ parade of positivity that accompanied San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne’s recent exit, it came when City Council swore in his successor, Shelley...
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Takeaways From the New Police Chief’s Town Hall Meetings
The San Diego Police Department has come a long way since January, when then Chief William Lansdowne told Voice of San Diego and KPBS he wasn’t aware of racial profiling concerns in the community. Now,...
View ArticleWhat Lies Ahead for the San Diego Police Department
This post has been updated. The San Diego Police Department has traveled a rocky path these last few years. A spate of officer misconduct issues led up to the abrupt retirement of long-time Police...
View ArticleFirm Investigating SDPD Has Strong Ties to Ex-Chiefs
The ongoing Justice Department review of the San Diego Police Department is supposed to be independent. City leaders have taken great pains to emphasize that they will have no control over what’s in...
View ArticleSan Diego Police’s Program for Troubled Officers Is Itself Troubled
Last month, a federal jury found that San Diego police officer Ariel Savage did a bad thing. In June 2011, Savage and another officer violated a man’s Fourth Amendment rights by falsely arresting him...
View ArticleSDPD’s Revisionism on Community Policing
San Diego police leaders past and present seem to be rewriting history when it comes to the department’s use of a strategy called community-oriented policing. A lengthy Union-Tribune story this weekend...
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