Davis Police

Here in Davis we have two police departments, that being the Davis Police Department and the UC Davis Police Department. The UC Davis Police Department has jurisdiction over the campus and sections of West Davis. The Davis Police Department covers everywhere else but the two departments often work together.

Every election the subject of police comes up. Should we fund them more? Should we have more oversight? Should we create more committees and commissions to discuss the supposed problems of racial profiling and discrimination? Should we lecture the police on how they handle individual cases in our community? As usual in politics candidates make grand promises to the people and then find themselves unable to solve the problem. This is because there is only so much one council member can do concerning the problem and a lack of motivation by others.

It is probably true that the present City Council incumbents and probable challengers have more experience than me in how to work with the Davis Police Department. They may claim their years of interaction and communication with the Police Department but the thing they lack is vision and life experience.

My father is a Sergeant in the Redding Police Department. He was originally a Pasadena cop and then transferred to Redding in 1988 and has been a police officer ever since. He will retire in January of 2009 at the age of 50 after serving Redding for 20 years. Throughout my life time my father was a patrol officer, investigator, head investigator, SWAT team member, corporal, sergeant, and will go back to patrol within the year. During my life time I have read police reports, made acquaintances with several officers, shot different types of weapons, ride alongs, and I’ve been to the department quite frequently. My father had a tendency to bring his work home with him and I was naturally interested in the types of crimes that he was working on.

It was during this time that I found myself respecting the power of a firearm. I would on occasion go to the police range and I wasn’t bad at shooting. I would often shoot 9mm, .45 cal, .40 cal, and 380 cal. My favorite was the .380 even though it was a rather small gun. I could shoot one handed, left handed, it didn’t matter as far as I was concerned. I also had the opportunity to fire M16 rifles, MP5 submachine gun, and 12 gauge shotguns at various differences. When it comes to these weapons you can’t have a Hollywood attitude. These weapons are indeed powerful and it was with frequent practice with them that I learned their importance in police.

It is said that many people do not like the idea of SWAT teams having submachine guns, sniper rifles, shock bombs, pepper spray bombs, and so on. The truth of the matter is that a SWAT team is the least likely to kill a suspect armed or unarmed in a given situation; the SWAT team moves so fast that the criminal is arrested before he knows what hits him. Contrary to conventional thinking a cop is the most dangerous when he is alone with a suspect in a car. This is not to say that the cop is an enemy, but the kind of shootouts that do occur usually happen when a cop is the most vulnerable. A heavily armed police force is a force that brings more peace and tranquility to a community. As contradictory as that sounds it is the truth.

This is not to say that Davis needs a SWAT team nor can it afford one. This is a small town where violent crime is rather rare. As such a SWAT team would not be necessary but in the event we did have a SWAT team, be rest assured that the ACLU and other ultra liberal anti authoritarian groups would be protesting in the streets. It’s not because they actually feel threatened by a SWAT team but they simply don’t like police power due to their irrational anarchist political feelings.

There was a complaint on the Davis Wiki that cops were upgrading their weapons to assault rifles instead of shotguns. There was some hysteria that this was a bad thing for cops to upgrade their weapons; that we were becoming a police state of sort. The fact of the matter is that rifles are safer than shotguns because shot guns spray pellets all over the place and are not practical long range. A rifle bullet also tends to shatter upon impact upon hitting a wall but a pistol bullet will go through the wall. As such in close urban environments a pistol is more dangerous than a rifle. Too many anti-authoritarians see these high power rifles as a threat due to their ignorance and anti-police feelings. You would think that some of these people would desire to disarm all cops of any weapon.

And so the issues concerning the police are as follows. The police budget continues to expand year after year which is not all too surprising. The City of Davis pays its police department 13 million dollars or 140% more money than the entire ASUCD budget. This money is necessary for personal and equipment. As the town grows the police needs more money and there is also the problem of inflation and wage increases. Davis also needs to stay competitive because if we don’t pay cops the market amount we will lose them to towns like Dixon and so on. JJ Charlesworth, a candidate for Davis City Council in 2004 was wrong to want to cut the police budget. The Chief of Police righteously said that Charlesworth was uninformed on police issues. Perhaps Charlesworth was betting on cynical Davis residents who would be willing to vote for him based on that one issue.

There are the constant accusations of racial profiling that are always brought up by the anti-authoritarian groups. Cops are not paid more nor do they receive an incentive for racial profiling. In most cases cops arrest based on calls and complaints they receive. The problem seems to be is whether a cop pulls someone over simply because the person is a minority. So, if there isn’t a police policy concerning minorities then it must be the individual officers. It has been alleged that Davis must be recruiting racist cops, how else can we explain these happenings? But the fact of the matter is that there is a point of view problem. If you are a cop you pull people over all the time and see hundreds of faces a year during the term of your work. A minority suspect on the other hand only experiences getting pulled over once in four years and is stunned by the experience. This difference in perspective causes a lot of confusion among civilians. People make such a big deal over statistics. If minorities are arrested more often than their population percentage allegations of racial profiling are thrown about. What needs to be realized is that perhaps people are arrested due to their actions regardless of race. There are several other reasons for these stats. There is racial inequality due to economic, cultural, geographical, and circumstantial reasons. These inequalities can in some cases greater frequency of crimes. To say that minorities are arrested with greater frequency is due to racist cops is an oversimplification of the issue.

If a cop pulls you over it’s probably for a reason outside of your race. Will a cop pull someone over for a minor technicality on your car? It happens all the time and the cop may do just that if he has a slight suspicion that he may find more violations upon having a chat with the owner of the car. You will find that cops like to have conversations with a possible suspect to gather information; they will stop you in mid-sentence before you ask for a lawyer, and they will give you a coke, cigarettes, and other types of compliments as they chat with you. I have been told that cigarettes are a cop’s best friend in interrogation rooms.

Students also tend to complain against the cops for the enforcement of noise violations. Let us be clear. The vast amounts of students are law abiding citizens who do not have to deal with noise violations or the police in general. But on occasion you have a noisy party and the police are called out. The police come to parties not because they want to but due to a complaint. That means that a neighbor was annoyed and called the cops. On most occasions cops do not give citations but merely warn parties that they are too noisy. In some of these parties you have underage drinking and on rare occasions drug use. This cannot stand in a law abiding society and you should be busted if you engage in such actions. Sometimes you have students who actively insult and fight with the police over noise violations. This does not help relations between police and students. Are some cops jerks on occasion, yes, it happens. Are students jerks to police, yes, it happens as well. We are all human beings, but there is no trend or policy for cops to act like jerks towards students.

Now as far as abuse in Davis, if you compare us to other cities we are pretty well off. Every abuse listed on the Davis Wiki can be explained away with a clear understanding of the events and police policy. We do not have an abusive police, period.

In ASUCD there are leaders who have made statements against the police and actively fight the police. These same leaders are a walking contradiction. Senator Peake works for the ACLU, a notoriously anti-police organization, so as to create ties between students and police. On the other hand he promotes and marches in the May 1^st rally which advocates civil disobedience against the City of Davis to which cops have to show up and put people on buses. You have James Schwab, who invented the ASUCD Police Relations Committee, telling a fellow student to close a door on a police officer’s face to prevent the officer from seeing under aged drinking. The Police Relations Committee he was in charge of never got off the ground despite the fact that I applied for it and some other people I personally knew applied for it. He didn’t like me politically so he shut it down for six months despite the fact that I have two decades of police experience.

ASUCD passed a resolution in favor a Police Relations Committee made up of seven individuals. These individuals would be appointed by the City Council, the Police Chief, and ASUCD; the resolution was written by Rob Roy. The Senate didn’t get the police side of the story or the City’s side of the story mainly because it was an urgent resolution decided around 11pm. In the resolution they used the Halema case to justify their proposal. The City shot it down in large part because the Senate was not properly informed on the Halema case. Don Saylor famously voiced his opposing feelings on the issue. The ASUCD then used this response to say that the City Council was out of touch with the student body and further bashed the police. The truth is that the students didn’t vote for their leaders to make uninformed judgments in the form of an emergency resolution. The City Council and I were right, ASUCD was not. As this was occurring ASUCD created a new a police relations committee which, surprise, doesn’t function either. Why do these committees fail? It could have a lot to do with their being a total lack of complaints.

With the Halema case the District Attorney (then and now), the City Council, and the Davis Police Department believed that Police Officer Ly was in the right. Even City Council candidate Mike Levy stated that the police were technically correct and that people shouldn’t jump to conclusions. The City felt so strongly that they awarded Ly Officer of the Year. If one listens to the tape and the evidence it is clear that Ly was polite and professional. He was not racist, abusive, or an authoritarian jerk. There is some dispute over whether he continued to question Halema even though she wanted a lawyer. Although it may go against police policy to continue questioning someone after they ask for a lawyer it really isn’t that big of a deal. Any statements she makes after desiring a lawyer would simply be thrown out of court. One of the first meetings I was involved in ASUCD had James Schwab presenting his case about Halema and the police. Upon reflecting back on that April 2006 presentation I found much of what he said to be inaccurate. Halema and her family ruthlessly attacked Officer Ly, sued the Davis Enterprise, and then sued the Police Department after being busted for a hit and run and I am supposed to just let that go?

The City Council needs to have the leadership to defend the police, our own troops, from the attacks of anti-authoritarian groups that have an axe to grind against all police institutions. Groups like the ACLU side with criminals, child molesters, sex offenders, terrorists, murderers, and fight the police at every opportunity. They fight against the non-lethal TAZER and hopes to one day disarm the police entirely. They fight for anarchy and the destruction of an orderly society because they are crazy but also because they have a warped view of the world. We need a city council that will defend the police from these loons and we need a city council that will publicly fight back. We need a city council that will engage with ASUCD and educate ASUCD about the police, not just make chiding statements at 10:45pm on a Tuesday when no one is listening. It will be a disaster if an anti-police candidate wins in a city council election.

Only a pro-police city council candidate will have the experience and influence to make change. But the anti-authoritarians have weakened us. They have cost us the Chief of Police (he resigned) as well as four officers who also resigned. The Human Relations Committee’s constant attack of the police is inappropriate and it really served them right when the City Council disbanded them.

I know that the silent majority of Davis residents and students support the police. The question is whether they will allow the minority of anti-authoritarians to win in 2008.