Hi Mike
I think if you posted the names associated with the cases you mentioned, it would be insightful to all of us and I for one would really appreciate being able to read about them.
Thanks !

Hey Mike, I haven't read all of your comments but this far they are interesting. Note on Goldstein, not only did the media cover the case it was largely due to Henry Weinstein's reporting for the L.A. Times that contributed if not helped lead to Goldstein's release. Cooley inexplicably refiled after the jailhouse informants were found as a result of newspaper reporters to have falsified all kinds of cases, including Goldstein's. I wasn't reporting on Long Beach at the time of the settlement but did write about it with 2 other reporters.

OMG Mike, this poor guy Thomas Lee Goldstein, a former Marine was jailed for 24 years on false testimony from a jail house informant and another "witness" who had been "swayed" by the cops to lie about Goldstein. How do these cops sleep at nite ? Why on earth do they feel it is OK to let the MURDERERS in these cases go free, walking the streets among us (and them) and put an innocent person in prison for murder ? And, then the cops aren't even prosecuted for THAT crime ? So, the residents of Long Beach got to pay him off too, nearly EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS.

I hear you Donna. But the first question that should be asked is why weren't these Long Beach Police Officers fired from the Department? Not only were they not fired. In some cases, they were promoted, which only acts to provide incentive to other officers to conduct themselves similarly. This is reoccurring and pervasive misconduct on the part of city employees that is repeatedly allowed. I have absolutely no faith our city government is taking care of business.

The next question that should be asked is why hasn't our City Council done anything about it? Almost everyone of these cases of police misconduct resulted in a huge settlement to the person harmed. ALL of those settlements had to be approved by the Mayor, City Attorney and City Council. The settlements are decided at city council meetings, but are done so on the consent callendar in order to hide the circumstances from the public who does not have an opportunity to see the facts.

Yet our elected representatives do have the ability to see the facts of each case and choose to do nothing to change the city's coverup culture, hence forcing me to become more vocal about their shortcomings.

These are two questions that taxpaying residents should certainly be asking their elected representatives. I know I have and have been shut down each time.

Excerpt from the above article, interesting behavior from Robert Shannon (LB City Atty) don't you think ?
************************
Speaking publicly for the first time since he was fired in January, Binkley testified April 16 in a civil case in U.S. District Court about the resistance he met from the police union and City Hall when he tried to discipline officers.
"(The) Civil Service (Commission) regularly, if not 75% of the time, reduced the discipline," he said.
In addition, Binkley said, City Manager James C. Hankla and Assistant City Atty. Robert E. Shannon instructed him not to investigate allegations of police misconduct, including brutality, when a complaint or lawsuit was filed.

Nothing has changed Long Beach's culture of city employee misconduct, not even the officials responsible for perpetuating the multiple coverups.

The victim in this case was unarmed and mentally ill
********************
Dominick Scaccia testified that he ran out of options to subdue the 147 pound man and was compelled by fear of his own life to use deadly force. Every testament uttered by Scaccia was refuted by eye-witnesses, other people of color from Sue’s neighborhood. There were graphic images and video which family attorney, Joe Barrett and associates from the Cochran Law firm complied over the course of a year. Barrett et al, built a surmountable trail of evidence against the Long Beach Police Department officer and presented a compelling fact-based case of police brutality to a jury of 6 whites and 6 minorities. The verdict returns against all odds.
In spite of the outcry of family and community, on Monday, June 15th, 2009 after 4 hours of deliberation, the jury ruled in favor of Dominick Scaccia. Scaccia is free to return to the street of Long Beach and is directly responsible for training new police officers fresh off the academy.

And thus the culture of Long Beach misconduct and murder is perpetuated.

This story is another sad one with a shocker at the end:
In December 2004, Officer David Garcia was fired by the Long Beach Police Department in the wake of a controversial shooting of an unarmed man, 22-year-old Keyante Reed. According to the reports, Garcia shot Reed once after a lengthy foot chase, he died the next day. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office looked into the incident but cleared Garcia.
*However, the review by the Long Beach Civil Service did not, saying that Garcia’s training called for him to take different steps.*
That commission called for Garcia’s dismissal, something supported by LBPD Chief Anthony Batts. Reed’s family sued the city in a case that was settled in the “six figure range,” according to Shannon. Garcia sued for reinstatement, and had the support of the Long Beach Police Officers Association in that suit. His attorneys brought in experts on use of force that backed what Garcia did as the right action.The court agreed.Today, Garcia is back on the force.
So, Garcia is back on the force, that is just disgusting. It was determined he didn't follow protocol, didn't follow the training he had. We, L.B. residents, once again paid out $ in the hundreds of thousands to the victim and re-hired the cop to go out on our streets and chase "bad guys", unarmed bad guys some more...

And thus the culture of Long Beach misconduct and murder is perpetuated.

Greet, how can you claim to assert what I take pleasure in?

Mr. Ruehle, I do not "claim to assert" what you take pleasure in. I really have no idea and I really do not care. What I *said* was that you *seem* to take inordinate pleasure in the lists like these that you post. I think you *seem* to take inordinate pleasure in this because that is pretty much all you do in virtually any public comment...bash city government, city public safety employees, and anyone who seeks to offer a view that might help counter-balance your erroneous assertion of a "culture of Long Beach misconduct and murder" and its perpetuation.

I think you *seem* to take inordinate pleasure in this because the only time...the ONLY time...in all of your hundreds of public postings each month you ever agree, and that ever so grudgingly, that "most of the department does a good job enforcing the law" is when someone like me suggests that this is the case.

By virtue of the sheer volume of city government and city public safety employee-bashing comments you post and the near absence of *any* comment praising the very good work being done every day and every night by the vast majority of our public safety professions, I think you seem to take inordinate pleasure in the former and only consider the latter as an afterthought and even then only very grudgingly.

Make sense?

Donna, in case you didn't know, John B. Greet is a recently retired Long Beach Police Officer who is certainly biased. While most of the department does a good job enforcing the law, I have lost respect for the entire department because those same good officers know all about the misconduct and perpetuate the coverups by doing nothing about it or in the case of the POA Union, supports the officers who committed the misconduct.

It's officers and former officers like Greet who help to encourage Long Beach Police misconduct because the bad officer always know they have Greet and the rest of the department behind them no matter what.

Donna: I have said, here and elsewhere, that every instance in which a police officer acts either unlawfully or unprofessionally, on-duty or off, should be thoroughly investigated and, where proven, the officer should be prosecuted and/or face appropriate administrative sanctions in the case of conduct that is improper but which does not rise to the level of being criminal.

So I do not believe Mr. Ruehle's claim that I "help to encourage Long Beach Police misconduct" is supported by the facts.

As a retired police sergeant I spent a good deal of time investigating many, many allegations of police misconduct. The vast majority of the allegations proved to be unfounded. The majority of those complaints that were sustained concerned minor training issues that were easily corrected. The majority of the remainder of those that were sustained resulted in the imposition of disciplinary measures that were both reasonable and appropriate.

The topic here was not "corruption at LBPD," it was the sentencing of someone who may or may not even still work at LBPD. It was Mr. Ruehle who moved the topic into the realm of a "culture of corruption at LBPD." And this is precisely my point. Mr. Ruehle moves almost *every* story like this in that direction, because he seems to take inordinate pleasure in doing so, and for the reasons I listed in my response to him.

Mr. Ruehle claims that I am "biased." Of course I am, and so is he. We all entertain biases. But for some reason Mr. Ruehle's biases against city government and our public safety personnel are to be considered acceptable, while my biases in favor of these are not. Mr. Ruehle makes his lists and then leaps to the erroneous conclusion that "good officers know all about the misconduct and perpetuate the coverups by doing nothing about it." He assumes facts not in evidence and then presumes to condemn others for his own erroneous assumptions. Part of what the POA does is provide legal representation for officers accused of misconduct. Police officers have no less a right to such representation as anyone else. I do not stand behind corrupt police officers. I DO stand behind the vast majority of our cops who are competent professionals.

Greet, you argue to not change a department that continues to employ police officers found in a court of law to have lied to sent innocent people to jail and cost taxpayers $millions? And then we read where the same police officers has done so repeatedly and still has his job at LBPD. And you don't see the hypocrisy in your claim that department discipline is reasonable and appropriate? Greet, you are part of the problem.

John, you're the bigger man. Anything you'll concede to Mike?

Doesn't he sort of fall into this category of citizen activist patriot you praised in comment here:

http://greaterlongbeach.com/01/04/2011/blight-makes-right-in-long-beach

"...In my opinion, government neither can nor will 'reform itself.' Ever. Because government, at least in this greatest of nations, is wholly and entirely a construct of the people it serves, it is the people who must impose reforms upon it, routinely and often.

"As an institution, our government is thoroughly self-serving, self-aggrandizing and self-protecting (e.g. Congress enacting laws regulating the rest of us from which it conveniently exempts itself.) Left to its own devices government grows and expands exponentially -virus like- at every opportunity. The only effective check or balance against this self-expansion is we the people..."

Isn't Mike "we the people?"

Mr. Ruehle, I have never argued to not change the department. Never. Not once. This is simply the manner in which you have chosen to misinterpret what I have said. I think the police department could benefit from several administrative changes.

Nor have I ever said that police department discipline is reasonable and appropriate in all cases. Usually it is, but sometimes it is not. Sometimes the department errs on the side of leniency but in some of those cases, as you yourself have noted, sometimes the department has imposed more severe discipline that was later overturned by the civil service commission. This is not something the department has any control over, but must abide by as a matter of law.

You would save yourself much heartache about me if you would try to not make so many assumptions about what I think and try to avoid mischaracterizing so much of what I do say. It is those practices, Mr. Ruehle, on your part, that are part of the problem.

Pan: I have conceded a good deal of points that Mr. Ruehle has made over the years. Mr. Ruehle is very much engaged in monitoring and critiquing his government and I have applauded him, on many occasions, for doing so. But monitoring and critiquing is one thing, and posting baltantly erroneous or mischaracterized information is quite another. I applaud Mr. Ruehle's civic activism, I do not applaud his insulting manner and his tendency to misstate facts and intentionally mischaracterize information.

To be fair, John, you did concede the point in comment above:

"Mr. Ruehle illustrates a long and, I think, tragic list of such behaviors [...instance(s) in which a police officer acts either unlawfully or unprofessionally, on-duty or off] and in some cases improper responses on the part of the department and/or city hall."

but coupled it with a suggestion that he "seems to take inordinate pleasure" in doing so.

Mike, I'm wondering why you choose to re-post the litany of offenses (with linked background) repeatedly on various threads, rather than posting a summary of the full list (and/or a particularly relevant example) with a link to a site of your own where your points can be made more coherently, permanently and in full? Your call, of course, but it leaves you open to accusations of spam-jacking a thread, I think.

That "murder" tack you guys were pursuing was getting interesting. Shame it flamed out.

The fact that he was observed for 10 minutes at a distance of 10-20 ft by cops that couldn't see in all that time what he held in his hand, and he was never addressed by them and then shot 20+ times is murder in my estimation. They never announced their presence, never gave him any orders, there was NO warning, no provocation and they also should have employed NON-LETHAL means to subdue (an already subdued subject) Not open fire with shotguns, rifles and handguns like freakin crazed idiots.
MURDER by AMBUSH

So break it down Greet. You are the one who brought up that the elements weren't satisfied. So provide all of the elements from the penal code for everyone to see rather than making your omniscient pronouncement that the killing does not proven to have met the elements. You sure like to talk a whole lot of crap without providing much backup.

Mr. Ruehle: I provided you the source and suggested that you access it. You will understand if I am disinclined to assist you further given your persistent habit of ridicule.

I have to wonder if it were your son or daughter, and the circumstances were the same, what your opinion would be. Honestly answer, please. And give it some serious thought, put your son or daughter in place of Doug and ask yourself how would you feel about the procedure that was used, and not used. Keep in mind they never spoke to him at all, he wasn't holding a gun, they observed him for upwards of 10 minutes at a distance they surely could tell the difference. These cops are in similar situations on a day to day basis, I find it impossible to believe not one of them made it their business to check out what he held in his hand, really.

Ms. Burns I understand you are hurt and sad and angry. I freely admit that I would be all of those things too. This was a terrible tragedy all around and I have never said otherwise. But to my knowledge, neither you nor I nor any other single person yet has all of the facts that are discoverable. This is the very purpose of these investigations, to discover the facts. Until the investigations are concluded it is pointless to speculate and entirely counter-productive to toss out inflammatory terms like "murder" and "ambush." You ask me for empathy. I would ask the same of you. Try, for just a moment, to put yourself in the position of those officers who, if reports are accurate were in the process of putting personnel and resources in place that might have allowed them to more safely assess Zerby and better determine what he had in his hands. Consider the possibility that the officers may very well have done everything they reasonably could given the time frame involved and the information they had. Consider the hundreds of officers who are shot in the U.S. each year just for trying to do their jobs each day and night and go home to their *own* families. It could very easily have been a gun. Our police officers encounter dozens of firearms in the hands -or conceraled on the persons- of people all the time. This time it wasn't, and what a tragedy that Zerby was shot. But what a tragedy that anyone is shot, whether maliciously or in error. May God bless you and yours.

John, I'd be interested to hear your response to Ms. Biele's comments about additional witnesses to Zerby:

http://belmontshore.patch.com/articles/police-chief-autopsy-shows-doug-zerbys-arms-outstretched-when-officers-fatally-shot-him-2#comment_407850

Pan: Very sorry, amid trying to sort through all of Mr. Ruehle's falsehoods, obfuscations and misrepresentations and call others' attention to them, I lost track of this request. I'll follow your link now and offer comment there if I think I'll have anything constructive to offer.

Mr. Ruehle, Once again you make it clear that you cannot engage in a discussion or debate in the arena of ideas in a respectful, courteous and mature manner. At the end of the day all you have are your insults and your insinuations, your pettiness and your spite, your petulence and your festering resentments.

Someone so capable of doing all of the research you did to find all of those links that you have posted could surely be capable of finding just one link which allows you to review the actual state penal code, rather than an inaccurate Wiki summary of it.

That you will not do so but, instead, choose to offer insults tells me all I need to know about the manner in which you chosse to deal with dissent. The you have chosen to post a Wiki summary (that conveniently supports your own erroneous construct) over the actual penal code (which does not) tellss me all I need to know about the manner in which you sometimes cherry-pick your information to support your pre-determined conclusions.

It is your opinion that the police murdered Zerby. Fine, acknowledge that this is only your opinion and move on. Stop mis-quoting easily-researched laws in a blatant attempt to support that opinion. When you do so, you weaken, rather than strengthen, your argument. And when you consistently resort to the offering of insult, you erode, rather than develop, your credibility.

Mr. Ruehle's comments in this posting are false and intentionally misleading. He knows they are false because he also posted them on another forum in which I put him on clear notice that they were false. 1. There is nothing in our Charter that precludes any police department employee (sworn or civilian) from serving on our CPCC. 2. Ms. Dempsey has never served as an officer (sworn or civilian) on the Long Beach Police Department. She worked as a civilian police department employee for several years before transferring to the community development department and being appointed as our city's first ever "Human Dignity Coorindator." 3. There is no former Long Beach Cop deciding which police misconduct cases are to be investigated and reviewed by the Commission, Ms. Dempsey or anyone else and, thus, there is no "terrible conflict of interest" in this regard.

Prior to being appointed as CPCC Executive Director, Anitra Dempsey was demoted (fired) from her job as Human Dignity Officer after she completely mishandled the Bixby Knolls Halloween beating case.

Ms. Dempsey showed a complete bias in favor of the perps and even misquoted hate crime laws in order to make her case. I think the quote that did her in was when she stated the Reginald Denny beating was not a hate crime. She even argued the point with the Chairman of the Human Relations Commission. Bill Pearl from LBReport covered this issue at the below link.

http://www.lbreport.com/news/nov06/humdig.htm

Ms. Biele, I have noted your comments. Thank you for sharing them. As I mentioned above, Ms. Dempsey is not, nor has she ever been, an LBPD officer, of either the sworn or the civilian variety. Just as his information about the Charter prohibiting a police officer from serving as a Commissioner on the Citizens Police Complaint Commission (CPCC) was, and remains false. This information from Mr. Ruehle was false and he knows it was false because I told him it was false when he posted it on another forum. Whatever other sources you may be relying upon for your information, I would strongly encourage you to consider every single bit of information you receive from Mr. Ruehle very, VERY carefully indeed.

Greet, I never said Anitra Dempsey was a "sworn officer" of the Long Beach Police Department. Your attempts to discredit me by misdirecting the argument are understandable, being a recently retired Long Beach Police Officer going out of his way to protect his fellow officers.

According to Ms. Dempsey's bio, she worked for the Long Beach Police Department for 9-years. Greet, answer a simple question. Are you saying Ms. Dempsey bio is incorrect and she never worked for the Long Beach Police Department?

Simple question, even for you. Either she did or she didn't work for the Long Beach Police Department.

Some of the information Mr. Ruehle has posted in this comment is false and intentionally misleading. He knows it is false because he also posted it on another forum in which I put him on clear notice that it was false. Further, after he posted this information there yesterday I put him on notice that it was false and despite this he made a conscious choice to post it there, again, and then to alo post it here, today. The decision to form the CPCC was not "fought hard by both the Police and Fire Department." On the other forum, Mr. Ruehle linked a 1990 LA Times article that he claimed supports his information. It does not do so. He knows it does not do so because I have told him there, twice, that it does not do so. Note that Mr. Ruehle wisely omits linking that article in this post, because he knows it does not support his false representation of the facts. Here is the article which Mr. Ruehly linked *twice* on the other furum but which he purposefully omitted linking here:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WiJ1LvZlNe8J:articles.latimes.com/1990-03-04/news/hl-2605_1_review-board+CITIZEN+POLICE+COMPLAINT+COMMISSION+1990&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com
Please also note that Mr. Ruehle is no longer falsely claiming that Ms. Dempsey had been an officer for the police department. Now he only refers to her as having been an "employee."

Greet, I said Anitra Dempsey was a long time “OFFICER” in the Long Beach Police Department. I did not say she was a “sworn officer,” a distiction you seem incapable of understanding.

Anitra Dempsey was an employee and officer in the Long Beach Police Department for 9 years much like Jackie Bezart, who was the department’s public information “OFFICER” before joining the the department’s ranks as a sworn officer (below link).

http://www.lbpost.com/news/allison/11162

The point is there is a terrible conflict of interest for Ms. Dempsey, who was an employee of the Long Beach Police Department for many years, to oversee and direct CPCC investigations.

Mr. Ruehle persists in asserting that Ms. Dempsey was an officer in the Long Beach Police Department. She was not. Mr. Ruehle's information is false. He knows it is false and yet he persist in posting it, and re-posting it, to support his position. Mr. Ruehle can continue to delflect, dissemble and post intentionally false and misleading information all he likes, but doing so does not change the facts. At some point I think it would be appropriate for websites such as these to remove posts from Mr. Ruehle which are false and which he knows are false, because he has been told, repeatedly, that they are false. He will not acknowledge that they are false, he will not retract his intentionally false statements and he continues to post and re-post the same false information over, and over. This is very, very unfortunate, serves no constructive purpose and does not promote either factual knowledge or honest and intelligent discourse.

Mr. Trapper: I am afraid you have allowed yourself to be swayed by Mr. Ruehle's falsehoods, misdirections, and obfuscations. Mr. Ruehle never said Ms. Dempsey had been a sworn officer. He said she had been an officer. This is false. Ms. Dempsey was never either a sworn or a civilian officer with LBPD. Despite that I pointed out that his information was false, Mr. Ruehle has never acknowledged this, let alone "corrected himself." He has simply repeated and repeated this falsehood, and several others since, on at least two fora of which I am aware, in attempting to support his position. Mr. Ruehle said Ms. Dempsey had been an officer in the very same comment in which he also used the terms "police officer" and "Long Beach Cop" in relation to Ms. Dempsey's responsibilities as CPCC Executive Director. In this way he not only intentionally mis-identified Ms. Dempsey's former position with LBPD, but intentionally tried to mislead readers into a belief that Ms. Dempsey had been a *police* officer. Mr. Ruehle has proven himself to be deceitful, duplicitous and misleading in his attempts to sway others to his position. I submit this is a terrible way for an advocate of *any* position to discuss or debate an issue. Mr. Ruehle has no less a right to hold beliefs and advocate for positions than anyone else. But when he repeatedly employs falsehood, obfuscation and and misdirection in his advocacy, I have a right to call him on it. This I have done and shall continue to do.

Mr. Ruehle agains seeks to deflect from the topic at hand and his own personal responsibility for knowingly posting false information on this topic here and elsewhere. In the exchange Mr. Ruehle has linked I made some mistakes of fact. I freely admitted to having done so and I wrote to Mr. Supernaw, directly, to apologize for my errors. None of this, of course, has anyhing to do with the topic at hand and the fact that Mr. Ruehle has knowingly posted false and misleading information here and elsewhere. Rather than simply assume personal responsibility for this and admit that some of his comments were false and then retract them, he, instead, chooses to repeat them, add to them with additional false comments, and spend his time linking other articles, on other topics, in which I committed some factual errors of my own. What a pity.

Mr. Trapper, I can assure you that I most definitely do not feel we should just have a blind trust in our system. I had a column at LBPost called "Our Liberty" for over a year and its basic theme was to question our government systems in Long Beach, to monitor them closely, and to excersize continuous control over and restrain them. I can assure you my column was no one's tool, other than my own and through it I called into question a very great deal about the various challenges I saw in Long Beach government and how I thought they could be met in the most contstructive way possible. I do not care whether Mr. Ruehle's information is always conclusive or always 100% true. I care when he or anyone else is *intentionally* deceitful. People are free to discuss and debate any issue and so long as they do not intentionally post false and blatantly misleading information (as Mr. Ruehle clearly has here and elsewhere), pretty much anything is fair game. There are any number of productive ways to ask questions or to place questions in people's minds without intentionally deceiving and misleading them. Mr. Ruehle should avoid such tactics because all they do is undermine his credibility. Mr. Ruehle usually does not ask, he usually accuses, and falsely. This is no seeking truth, it is bashing, berating, and insulting and it serves no constructive purpose whatsoever. More to follow...

I never once denied that Ms. Dempsey had previously worked for the police department. Not once. On your radio show, Ms. Dempsey said that she had worked in Community Relations and then, later, in the Chief's office and as a civilian in both cases. In neither case was she considered an officer, whether sworn or civilian, nor did her titles ever include that term. So when Mr. Ruehle claimed she had been an officer, that comment was *false.* Further, by including that false comment with the phrases "police officer" and "Long Beach Cop" within the very same posting, and doing so while concurrently referring *directly* to Ms. Dempsey's duties with the CPCC, the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn is that he intended to falsely claim Ms. Dempsey was an officer and he composed the balance of his comment to intentionally mislead readers into believing that she had been a *police* officer. This is not off the issue to any degree, because Mr. Ruehle made these false and misleading comments in specific support of *his* thesis that the CPCC and the LBPD are corrupt, the direction *he* chose to drag this thread in, from the very beginning...a direction that it had not been going until *he* chose to push it there. More to follow...

The fact that he will *not* acknowledge his comments were false and misleading, combined with the fact that he has since knowingly posted *additional* false and misleading comments to further support his thesis of CPCC and LBPD corruption, leads me to the only reasonable conclusion possible...he seeks to convince readers of his thesis in a manner that is both false and misleading. If no one paid any attention to Mr. Ruehle, none of this would matter. For good or ill, however, Mr. Ruehle has quite a follwing on this fora and at least one person has already swallowed his false information hook, line, and sinker and has now claimed that Ms. Dempsey had been a police officer. Mr. Ruehle crafted his false and misleading comment VERY carefully to achieve just that very result. Thus he has successfully deceived others on this topic and doing so was entirely unnecssary. His of his many links spoke very powerfully all on their own...he did not need to stoop to deceit and misdirection. But he did, several times, and he deserves to be called on having done so. And I have now made it my mission in life to call him on it, every single time he decides he has to falsify information to try to convince others. Thank you very much for the invitation, but I have zero interest in being in the same room with someone so very duplicitous and insulting. Be well and God bless.