A version of the following blog appeared in the Voice of OC

On the morning of Aug. 1, two Santa Ana police officers stopped a homeless man named Richard Gene Swihart for riding his bicycle in the Civic Center plaza.

A few minutes later, Richard was rushed to a hospital — the officers had shot him multiple times. On Aug. 14, Richard died of his wounds.

The aftermath of the fatal police shooting was captured on video and posted on YouTube, but the circumstances that led to the initial confrontation remain murky.

Police officials did not discuss the shooting at all until receiving press inquiries, then would only say that Richard was hostile and tried to grab a gun from one of the officers. The Santa Ana Police Department did not publicly disclose that Richard had died until Aug. 31 – 17 days after his death – and it still has not, more than five weeks after the shooting, identified the officers involved.

While the details of the shooting remain shrouded in mystery, the underlying cause is clear – Richard might still be alive if it were not for an ongoing campaign to criminalize homelessness in Orange County.

Every day, police harass homeless individuals in Santa Ana and other Orange County cities for violating nuisance ordinances that criminalize everything from riding a bike to simply trying to find a place to sleep. These ordinances are designed not to ensure safety, but to sweep a vulnerable population out of public view.

Now, the situation is poised to become worse.

On the evening of Sept. 6, the Santa Ana City Council passed a resolution calling for stepped-up enforcement of code violations around the Civic Center, where an estimated 450 people are living in tents.

In the resolution, the Santa Ana City Council declared a “public health and safety crisis” at the Civic Center and called for stricter enforcement to provide a safe environment for government employees and members of the public in and around the complex.

There is indeed a crisis – but the crisis is the result of failed government policies.

Public health concerns in the Civic Center, for example, stem from the city’s refusal to provide basic services like storage space, showers, and adequate public restroom facilities for people who have no other place. Hours before the Santa Ana City Council meeting, the Orange County Board of Supervisors addressed some of those concerns by voting to fast-track the conversion of a nearby defunct transit center into a hub for temporary shelter and services.

But the larger issue of the aggressive law enforcement approach to homelessness remains. If Santa Ana is serious about enhancing the safety of people living outdoors, it must cease punishing people for being homeless.

The city must also be held accountable for Richard's death, and the Santa Ana Police Department must be completely transparent about the circumstances leading up to his death, starting with the release of the names of the officers involved.

SAPD has not indicated if the two officers involved are still serving on the Civic Center Patrol Unit and interacting with the same people who were present during Richard’s shooting.

Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna told the Orange County Register that the two officers involved received special training on how to interact with people experiencing homelessness and mental illness. Richard's death calls into question SAPD’s policies and training. Left unanswered is whether SAPD employed de-escalation tactics before using lethal force.

The community deserves answers to these questions. Without full information about what happened in the shooting, the public cannot determine if SAPD is operating appropriately, or hold it accountable if it is not.

According to his best friend, Richard was an upbeat man who liked to crack jokes. One resident of the Civic Center recalled his love of chess. He was only 32 when he died. To honor his life, community groups are hosting a vigil on Wednesday, Sept. 14 at 9 a.m., near the Plaza of the Flags in the Civic Center Plaza.

Eve Garrow is homelessness policy analyst and advocate and Jennifer Rojas is community engagement and policy advocate at the ACLU of Southern California.

Death of L.A. teen at hands of cops was caught on tape. But refusal to release video has some questioning policies, use nationwide.

By Peter Bibring and Catherine Wagner

The following article was first published in USA Today.

Earlier this month, a too familiar tragedy unfolded in East Los Angeles when Los Angeles police officers shot and killed 14-year-old Jesse Romero. Witness accounts vary — the police department says Romero fled when officers approached him on suspicion of scrawling graffiti in his neighborhood, then fired at officers. Some civilians say he had a gun but tossed it away.

As is increasingly common, the incident was captured on officers’ body cameras.

Los Angeles officials have touted body cameras as a way to provide transparency and accountability and build trust between police and the public in moments of crisis. But that’s not how it has played out because the LAPD’s policies for body cameras don’t provide transparency or assure the public that officers will be held accountable.

Instead, the department has stated that it generally holds videos from public viewunless ordered by a court to release them. Romero's family has called for the footage to be released.

According to LAPD policy, officers are able to review body cam footage before talking to investigators. Instead of promoting transparency and trust, LAPD’s body camera program has resulted in more questions than answers.

When body cameras were proposed nationwide, there seemed to be wide agreement they could be a game-changer for police interactions, oversight and community relations. Public support has been through the roof. And body cameras have provided important evidence in at least some of the rare decisions to fire or criminally charge officers for shootings or dishonesty.   But as departments put cameras on the streets, the evidence of their effectiveness has been much more mixed. An early study of the small police force in Rialto, Calif., found that officers wearing cameras are much less likely to use force or to be subject to complaints from civilians.

But other studies are far less conclusive, with at least one showing an increase in the use of lower-level force, and another that use of force increases when officers have more discretion over when to activate cameras. Against this ambiguous backdrop, police reform advocates have raised concerns about the cameras’ privacy implications, surveillance potential and susceptibility to misuse.

Despite these questions, departments nationwide are moving to adopt body cameras. It is vital that those departments have strong policies that ensure cameras are used for accountability, not surveillance.

Departments must clearly require officers to record every investigative interaction with a member of the public. While constant recording could risk civilians’ and officers’ privacy, departments can — and must — monitor compliance and discipline those who fail to record when they should. Officers who repeatedly fail to record incidents should be identified and corrected — or fired — long before they’re involved in a serious incident.

When there’s a shooting or other investigation, policies must require officers to give initial accounts of what happened and why they acted as they did before watching the body camera video. Seeing the video allows cops who are inclined to lie to tailor their story to the evidence. Even for officers who try to tell the truth, seeing the video will impact how they remember an incident. What helps investigators piece together the whole truth is the officers’ subjective memory of what they thought at the time. The police don’t let other witnesses watch the video of a shooting before providing a statement, or show other suspects the evidence in a case before interviewing them. Police shouldn’t have such an advantage.

Video of shootings and other potential misconduct must be released, pursuant to policies that ensure they don’t just get out when it helps the officers. Transparency allows the public to judge for themselves whether police are acting in keeping with a community’s values, and whether the institutions charged with holding officers accountable are working.

Finally, departments should clearly prohibit use of body cameras as surveillance tools. Video shouldn’t be accessed unless there’s reason to think it contains evidence of crime or misconduct, and data-mining tools such as facial recognition mustn’t be used on the video. Moreover, strict limits should be placed on how long footage is retained. The public supports body cameras as tools for police accountability.  Mission creep into surveillance should be stopped at the outset.

The policies that govern the use of body cameras matter. Sadly, a recent study shows many departments’ policies are seriously flawed, if they have any public policy on the cameras at all. This can and must be fixed.

Body cameras will never be a cure-all for police misconduct or the crisis of confidence in law enforcement that many of us feel. But if they are to be any help at all — and they could be — they must be done right.

Peter Bibring is director of police practices and senior staff attorney at the ACLU of SoCal; Catherine Wagner is staff attorney at the ACLU SoCal.

By Jessica Cobb

New students are required to fill out an application, write a letter of intent, supply two references, attend a scheduled interview, and submit their registration packet with transcripts prior to beginning enrollment.

These instructions would not raise eyebrows if they were found on a college admissions webpage or a brochure from an elite private academy. But this policy is posted on the website of a public school in California – Delta Charter High School in Aptos – and it violates the mission of charter schools.

When charter operators open their schools, they make a promise that every child who wants to attend will have an equal chance of getting in. Indeed, that promise is required by law. But a review of charter school websites by the ACLU of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) and Public Advocates, Inc. (Public Advocates) uncovered hundreds of charter schools throughout the state that erect barriers to enrollment that keep out vulnerable students.

That’s a direct violation of the public trust and the 1992 state law that created charter schools. In California, charters are public schools, which receive public funding. These schools are granted more flexibility in developing their educational programs, but they still must comply with many rules, including the requirement that they admit all students who wish to attend. As the legislature made clear when it created the charter system, the purpose of these schools is to “increase learning opportunities for all pupils, with special emphasis on expanded learning experiences for pupils who are identified as academically low achieving.”

Yet many California charter schools are breaking their promises. The review by ACLU SoCal and Public Advocates found 253 charter schools with enrollment policies or forms posted online that are illegal or exclusionary. And these are only the violations that schools posted online; many other schools may maintain similar prohibited policies or practices that are hidden from the public view.

The review found that some charters “skim the cream” from nearby traditional public schools, selecting high achievers for enrollment through academic admissions requirements and pre-enrollment essays and interviews. Others shirk their duty to support English learners through pre-enrollment English-language proficiency requirements and requests for citizenship documents that discourage applications from undocumented children. Still others weed out certain families by requiring mandatory “volunteer” hours or by allowing volunteer “buyouts” through monetary donations.

These policies are rigged against the students who already face the most disadvantages. A boy who is raised in foster care may have no one to attend a parent pre-enrollment interview or fulfill family volunteer hours. A girl who translates for her immigrant parents may score below passing on an English-language test or struggle to write an essay that conveys her potential. Yet these children are no less deserving of educational opportunity than any others.

Like any other public school, by law, charters may not discourage or prevent students from enrolling based on income, national origin, academic performance, parent involvement, immigration status, language proficiency, or any other factor. If they have more applicants than spaces, they may choose students only through a fair, unbiased lottery or, in some limited circumstances, by the neighborhood where the student lives.

The California legislature put these rules into place because a free, quality, public education is a moral and legal guarantee. When charter operators create policies that discourage or deny enrollment, they betray not only particular students but also all Californians who are invested in the future of our state.

Jessica Cobb is legal intern at ACLU of Southern California.