LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The ACLU of Southern California welcomes the civil rights probe being conducted by the Department of Justice into the polices and practices of the Inglewood Police Department in the wake of a series of officer-involved shootings, and we applaud U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters for calling for an investigation. Use of force by law enforcement has been a persistent problem in Inglewood and has sparked well-founded community outrage. We agree that reforms are necessary and call for an overhaul of the Inglewood civilian review board.

The following statement can be attributed to Peter Bibring, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California:

“The Department of Justice now acknowledges what the community has long known: the Inglewood Police Department suffers from deep-seated and structural flaws. Its standards for use of force do not meet legal requirements, its systems for reporting and reviewing uses of force are inadequate, supervisors lack control over officers, and the process for receiving and evaluating civilian complaints is erratic. The result is a broken system that fails the residents of Inglewood and costs lives.

“The situation has spun out of control precisely because there is no system in place that holds either officers or supervisors accountable. The current Inglewood Citizen Police Oversight Commission lacks both sufficient authority and resources to meaningfully hold officers responsible for their behavior.

“To root out the systemic problems pointed out by the Department of Justice, Inglewood must embrace the changes the federal agency rightly calls for. But, to ensure accountability, it must also put in place an independent review board, one that has the powers necessary to fully investigate police misconduct, one that can initiate its own investigations and policy reviews, and one whose funding is free from the winds of city politics.

“Only when every Inglewood police officer, from rookie to chief, is held accountable by an independent oversight body, will the city be able to fix its police department’s flaws.”

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California is deeply disturbed by the Los Angeles County district attorney's decision not to prosecute an El Monte police officer who clearly violated the law by brutally kicking a suspect in the head even though the suspect posed no physical threat.

The following statement can be attributed to Peter Bibring, ACLU/SC staff attorney:

“The ACLU/SC appreciates the difficult, split-second decisions police must make in the heat of the moment. But while we give police officers great authority to detain, arrest, and even use force against Los Angeles county residents, that authority must be used lawfully. Here, video news footage on which the district attorney based its decision clearly shows that El Monte Police Officer George Fierro crossed the line of unlawful conduct when he charged at a suspect that was lying prone on the ground and kicked his head like a soccer ball.”

“As egregious as Fierro's unjustified blow to the suspect's head is, the district attorney's abdication of oversight responsibility in prosecuting police abuse cases is more troubling.
The district attorney's report isn't the adrenaline-fueled act of an officer after a car chase, but the considered decision of an agency charged with deciding what's legal and illegal after careful review of the evidence. The report goes beyond simply declining to prosecute, and bends over backwards to justify the officer's use of force. By effectively endorsing such a high-profile, flagrant violation, the district attorney's office gives a signal to police officers that they will face no consequences for unlawful uses of force.”

“In the case of officer Fierro, the district attorney suggests that he was justified in kicking the suspect in the head as a „distraction strike - because the suspect looked at him as he approached. But despite a prolonged and dangerous car chase, there was no impending threat on the officer once the suspect was cornered in a fenced yard, lying prone on the ground, with additional officers arriving seconds behind. The troubling conclusion raises serious questions about the judgment of the Justice System Integrity Division of the district attorney's office and its handling of police abuse cases in general.”

“Police abuse in Los Angeles County will continue until the district attorney's office holds officers to governing legal standards.”

A series of citations against a 67-year-old Army veteran for displaying the American flag upside down on federal property have been dismissed only days after the U.S. Attorney’s Office learned that the ACLU of Southern California was representing him in defense of his free speech rights.
Robert Rosebrock, who has been protesting the planned conversion of Veterans Administration property in the Brentwood area to a public park, received the dismissal order signed by a federal judge late yesterday. The order means that five citations Rosebrock received for displaying the American flag upside down as part of his protest have been dropped.
Rosebrock began protesting the planned transfer of VA land for use as a public park in March 2008. Since then he has virtually become a fixture outside the Brentwood-area property every Sunday, hanging a flag on a fence around it to draw attention to his viewpoint that the agency’s land is legally and morally bound to be used for the care and housing of veterans, particularly homeless veterans.
For more than a year, Rosebrock and his supporters hung the flag right side up, but in June they began hanging the flag upside down to signify their view that the property was in distress and that its transfer would endanger veterans. He received the first of five citations a few weeks later from federal law enforcement officers. Subsequently, Rosebrock got an e-mail from Lynn Carrier, associate director of the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration office, that said he “may not attach the American flag, upside down, on VA property” because “this is considered a desecration of the flag and is not allowed on VA property.”
“The government has no business telling Mr. Rosebrock that it is OK to hang the flag one way because it is fine with the message expressed, but that he cannot hang the flag another way because it expresses a different message that the government does not approve of,” said Peter Eliasberg, Manheim Family Attorney for First Amendment Rights and managing attorney for the ACLU/SC.
“Protecting the right of Americans to criticize government officials or their decisions is one of the key goals of the First Amendment of the Constitution,” Eliasberg added. “Displaying the flag upside down may be offensive to some, as burning the flag was in the Vietnam-war era. But in our society and in our courts, we have a long tradition of giving protesters wide latitude, and we uphold our principles as a free country in doing so.”