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September 16, 2003

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
·Mesa police — five officer-involved shootings in three weeks;
·"Desert Cities" at the Arizona Historical Society
In-Studio Guests:
· Craig Mehrens, an attorney who represents police in use-of-force cases.
· Nick Hentoff, an attorney who represents victims in use-of-force cases.

>> Michael: Tonight on "Horizon," five officer-involved shootings in three weeks.We'll take a look at police training, the use of non-lethal weapons, and the role of civilian review boards.

>> Michael: Plus, a museum exhibit showcases the growth of theValley of the Sun over the past 50 years.We'll take you to "Desert Cities" at the Arizona Historical Society.

>> Michael: Good evening, I'm Michael Grant.Welcome to "Horizon."

>> Michael: Mesa police served a search warrant this morning at the home of a teenager killed by officers three weeks ago. Police searched for two missing bullets, removed a door and took other items.The search came at the request of the county attorney's office, which is investigating the shooting. That controversial shooting is one of five involving Valley police officers over the past few weeks, four in Mesa alone. In a moment, I'll talk with a couple attorneys who represent police and victims in such cases, but first, Paul Atkinson has more on the recent polices hootings.

>> Reporter: Three weeks, five officer-involved shootings, three dead, two wounded. The first shooting happened August 25th, when Mesa police confronted a suicidal 15-year-old holding a knife. Police fired their guns after a stun gun failed to work.

>> Sgt. Mike Goulet: The Taser was ineffective, and the juvenile continued to advance towards the officers who had tried to retreat. And in the process, again, he continued to advance and threaten the officers at which point, the officers did fire their weapons at that individual.

>> Reporter: The parents of Mario Madrigal, Jr., say their son's death was unnecessary.

>> Mario Madrigal Sr: He was already down when they shoot him on the floor. He died like this. In this position with his head here, right there.

>> Martha Madrigal: He was like that. And he's still going, boom, boom, boom, boom!

>> Reporter: Police have released little information on the case.The second shooting took place September 6th at this trailer park in Mesa, where 23-year-old Maryanne Minchew came at officers with this knife. They fired bean bags before using lethal force.

>> Det. Tim Gaffney: She was advancing towards the officers with a knife in her hand in a threatening manner which is why one of our officers fired multiple rounds striking her.

>> Brother of Victim: They are accurate enough to hit her that way, why couldn't they be accurate enough to shoot her in the arm, shoot the knife?

>> Reporter: The third and fourth shootings happened September 10th. Mesa police responded to a disturbance call where they shot and wounded 24-year-old Jason Evans after police say he made a movement with a knife. Also that night police attempted to arrest D.J. Olvera for violating parole.The 22-year-old was knocked off his bike by a police car, then was shot in the buttock after police say Olvera pointed a handgun at the detective. His mother is not sure how her son was a threat to police.

>> Maria Olvera: They hit him with a car to get him off the bike.He turned around and ran, then they shot him. He was shot in the butt and i twent through his stomach. So he was running away.

>> Reporter: The fifth police shooting took place Saturday night in Phoenix, when a police officer fired his weapon on a suspect and another officer. The suspect was inside a DUI van and reportedly struggled with an officer for his gun. An officer outside of the vanshot the suspect dead and in the process wounded the officer inside the van. Mesa's police chief, Dennis Donna, sat down for 10-minute interviews with local media Monday to talk about his officers' involvement in the four shootings in the 17 days.

>> Dennis Donna: It points out the fact that the police job is a dangerous one, and that these situations unfold in seconds.Officers sometimes have very little time to prepare and react. They have to rely upon their training. That's what gets us through these things, the confidence that we have in our officers as police professionals to do the right thing.

>> Reporter: Donna says he wants to reassure his community that his department is sensitive to concerns raised over the shootings.

>> Reporter: The particular circumstances that is we were faced with over the 17 days I felt called for a public statement from me. I asked for patience with the community as we worked through these processes of review, firsta criminal review, which is a highly accountable thing, officers are under a great deal of pressure during that kind of review, and the subsequent internal reviews and the civil litigation period that we ultimately usually undergo when we have these kinds of shootings. I felt it was necessary to put these in perspective as well. We had six officer-involved shootings last year at this time. This was our 5th. The unfortunate thing is, it occurred in a very short time period. The bottom line is, it does give us an opportunity to build better bridges within our community, too, because I think the community and our officers have to have some understanding that the police cannot solve every one of these problems that they respond to.

>> Reporter: Monday night, a Mesa church organized a march and vigil to honor fallen police officers and those shot by police the past month. The organizer wants Mesa PD to institute a citizens' review board, something the police chief is open to.

>> Dennis: We're not resistant to outside review, whatever form that the city council and the citizens decide that will take will be fine with us, and we'll cooperate with that review. There's many different shapes and forms of citizen review. All of them have their pluses and minuses.Bottom line is, if the community believes that's the kind of review we're going have, we're going work with them, and we're going to try to help them understand what each one of these circumstances brought to the table.

>> Michael: Joining me now is Craig Mehrens, an attorney who represents police in use-of-force cases. Also here is Nick Hentoff, an attorney who represents victims in use-of-force cases. Gentlemen, thank you both for being here. Craig, one of the concerns here is the rash of four cases in three weeks. Is this just a collision of unrelated events? Or does it point to something deeper and more troubling?

>> Craig Mehrens: I would think it's seriouslyj ust a coincidence. It is not anything more than that.

>> Michael: Nick?

>> Nick Hentoff: I think to a large degree, it's a coincidence, circumstance of chance. On the other hand, whenever you have this kind of publicity, it has to be foremost on the officers' minds, what can happen in a life-and-death situation like that. So they may feed on each other. There is no way to tell.

>> Michael: Craig, I realize that different cases call for different procedures and solutions and that kind of thing, but in general, when one of these episodes occurs, is there a parallel process that goes on, one a criminal investigation of the facts, and then the second one, an internal or administrative review by whatever police department maybe involved?

>> Craig: Absolutely. Every police department has those two different functions and in cases like that, the internal section and the criminal side that looks at it.

>> Michael: Now, the officer or officers who may be involved, they normally -- a person normally has constitutional rights in a criminal investigation. How is the situation handled in an internal or personnel situation?

>> Craig: Well, in an internal investigation, the police department has the right to ask the officer to tell them what happened, and the officer then can say, well, I have a Fifth Amendment right, and I'd like to exercise that, and then the police department can say, if you don't tell us, we'll fire you, and if the officer then doesn't say anything more, he can be fired and that's been upheld, so the officer then gives the police department internally the information they want, which is then protected from being used against him in any way, in a criminal investigation.

>> Michael: Does that Chinese wall work?

>> Craig: It works pretty well.

>> Michael: What do you think, Nick? Does that work? You were telling me that the Chinese wall only works one way.

>> Nick: Yeah, it tends to work one way, because you have the two investigations that often progress on parallel tracks. So you have investigators that may be talking to the same witnesses and looking at the same crime scene. They may have different ballistics experts that are looking at the evidence, but ultimately what will happen is that while the administrative information, the information gathered in the administrative investigation isn't shared with the county attorney's office, or isn't shared with the criminal investigation, very often the material or the information that's developed in the criminal investigation can be used by the city in their personnel administrative investigation.

>> Michael: Are different police officers undertaking these two things? I would assume that they must be, otherwise you couldn't maintain this Chinese wall, but obviously, they are still part of the same police department.

>> Craig: Yes.

>> Michael: And Nick, that's always the question that will come up in these situations, even though you attempt to maintain this separation.This still, however, remains one department, in essence, investigating itself, and there is a fair amount of concern by the public that that's just too close, you can't get a good investigation of whether or not the officer was right or the citizen was right, so you need a citizen review board. What do you think?

>> Nick: Yeah, very often what you'll have if the city is investigating on an administrative or personnel track the conduct of the officer. At the same time, they have to realize that the superiors or the political leaders within the community are going to have to look to a possible civil lawsuit. And so you have a situation where they have an interest that may not necessarily gel. It may conflict with one another, the idea that you want to do what's right with respect to disciplining an officer who may have done something wrong, but on the other hand, if you discipline an officer who has done something wrong, that may lead to civil litigation, and they have to look towards the insurance premiums and protect the taxpayers' money.

>> Michael: Is this just too close to be objective in the minds of many?

>> Craig: Well, I wouldn't think it's too close.I think the police department takes a great deal of pains to make sure that these things are separated, and they try to do afair and impartial investigation.You know, in a perfect world, it would be great to have another independent body come in and investigate these each time, but it's --

>> Michael: Why isn't this a perfect world, though? Is a citizens review board an answer?

>> Craig: It's an answer. I would argue that it's not "the" answer. If you want to have investigation of possible criminal activity, it ought to be done by competent people, and that would be police departments.

>> Michael: We call, though, on regular citizens to be jurors all the time, who are not experts in any wide number of either criminal or civil cases on which they sit, but we're still confident in their ruling. We wan bring them expert testimony, we can bring them argument and they'll reach the right decision.Why do we approach a citizens' review board any differently than that?

>> Craig: Why do I? I don't think the citizens' review board is to make a determination on whether a particular individual has committed a crime.That's what juries are specifically for.

>> Michael: One of the functions of the citizens' review board is not to determine so much whether or not someone committed a crime, but whether or not personnel action ought to be taken, whether or not higher structural action ought to be taken in the department.What's your view on that?

>> Nick: I found your juror analogy really interesting, because there is actually a court case in the state of Arizona that says that criminal defendants who are using use of force or justification, self-defense as a defense in a criminal case where they are accused of using force improperly, that they are not allowed to call experts on the reasonable use of force in that given situation, because the courts have held that jurors are perfectly capable of making that determination for themselves. They don't need the assistance of an expert. It's not the same in civil cases, but in criminal cases, courts will rely on jurors to decide whether justification is an appropriate defense, whether somebody used force appropriately. I think it's important, regardless of whether it's an administrative investigation or a criminal investigation that results in a jury trial, to try and make a determination as to whether reasonable force was used and to give the appropriate punishment, regardless of whether it's personnel punishment such as a firing and reporting that to the Arizona Police Officers Standards and Training Board or in a criminal case of charging, indicting somebody and putting them to the test of the jury to see whether their actions were criminal or not.

>> Michael: Nick, I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly. Are you basically saying that, well, you shouldn't use a citizens' review board for an incident-specific kind of inquiry, but instead for the larger purposes that you outlined, or am I misreading you?

>> Nick: I think for both. I think a citizens' review board can be very, very valuable. I disagree with those who say that you need people who have been, quote, unquote, in the line of fire to understand the split-second decision-making that officers have to go through. There is no doubt that officers often have to make life-or-death decisions in a millisecond, but the concept of use of force that the courts have recognized is something that civilians, people without police training, generally can understand and can make decisions on. And that can take the form of a citizens review board of recommending appropriate discipline to police departments or to a city council or to a Board of Supervisors. And I think in terms of making the public feel that there's some sort of accountability and that the police department has some sort of a public oversight, that citizens review boards can be very helpful.

>> Michael: Can they --citizens review board, perhaps, Craig, in your opinion, appropriately applied at these more, for lack of a better term, policy-type levels rather than case specific sort of situation?

>> Craig: They can be helpful, but we've got a criminal jury system.We've got a civil jury system.We have the police internal affairs to deal and discipline the officer. Do we need a fourth board? I think we've got enough, but it seems like one of our propensities is to call another committee. I just don't think we need one right now.

>> Michael: Well, sometimes the public trust and confidence issue enters in. Do you see a role for it even from that standpoint? Just the citizen having faith and confidence that his police department is proceeding in the right fashion, supervising in the right fashion, training in the right fashion, those kinds of things?

>> Craig: Again, it -- you know, it can be helpful, but I just think that the public is -- if the review board comes out against the police officer, they are probably going to say that's great, if public opinion is swayed that way. If they are coming out the opposite way, they are going to say that the review board is stacked by whoever appoints them.

>> Michael: Craig, let me shift to training. I know that a lot of training is given on these subjects. Are there generally standard procedures, standard hypotheticals, standard real-life situations that a policeman is trained on, if you encounter this set of facts this should be your response, those kinds of things?

>> Craig: Sure, all of the departments have specific orders and all policemen are given thorough training before they can even be let out on the street. So, yeah, there is lots of training, and there's lots of rules, but as Nick was pointing out, these decisions that these officers have to make are almost always within a second or two.

>> Michael: Is the training adequate?

>> Nick: I'll tell you, I don't think that the training is adequate with respect to the alternative non-lethal methods of restraining or stopping a suspect.I get the feeling that they give short shrift to the idea that there is a great amount of training that is needed when you are dealing with non-lethal weapons as well as the kind of training that you need when you are dealing with firearms, and the more life-threatening types of police procedures. And I think that that's what's needed. I think that police officers need an absolutely clear guideline. Each department has its own use-of-force continuum that is set down in their operations orders, and they may differ slightly between departments, but it's essentially a blueprint of when officers can progress to the next level of force, and there has to be a clear understanding and clear training that is backing that understanding up as to when officers move to the non-lethal weapons and when they move from the non-lethal weapons to the lethal, deadly force weapons.

>> Michael: Have they got that clear set of demarcation guidelines or not?

>> Craig: I think they have the guidelines, and in hindsight, which is always 20/20, it's nice to talk about it, but when you are an officer, and you have to make that decision, you don't have the luxury of being able to have the time to go through these guidelines and the process as it scales up.

>> Michael: I think one of the concerns people will always have is the situation where there is a knife facing a gun. And you think, hold it, he only had a knife, and the officer had a gun, but a knife can be obviously a very lethal thing; correct?

>> Craig: Absolutely. As a car can be a lethal weapon.

>> Michael: Nick, you were making the point that there is -- you can move real quick in 3 seconds with a knife?

>> Nick: Standard training in any kind of an officer use-of-force situation is to demonstrate to officers how quickly somebody can advance on them with a knife.Very often, you'll see training scenarios that are videotaped and computerized and are synchronized with their own issued weapons where they can test scenarios, and very often, they'll find out if they wait too long that that encounter with somebody with a knife can prove lethal. However, given the situation where somebody is presenting a danger with a knife, I think you have to have other alternatives that are available, because each situation is not going to be the same, and if you have somebody who is mentally impaired, you have to have thorough training of officers on how to restrain people who are mentally impaired.You simply can't have a situation where people who are mentally disturbed can feel that the solution is to go out and threaten a police officer. That's just not the way we want our society to operate. We don't want to -- we want to have other alternatives aside from allowing people who are mentally disturbed to commit suicide by cop. It's just not a way that we want to run our civil society.

>> Michael: There has been a lot of debate and discussion about -- in one of these cases about where the person was shot. And what sort of conclusions you draw from that, but you don't necessarily always draw the correct conclusion from where the person was shot; right?

>> Craig: Absolutely. Absolutely right. The problem is between the time that the officer perceives the danger to him or herself, and makes the decision to draw the weapon and point the weapon and pull the trigger, that process from the brain down to hand and shoot, oftentimes the suspect has made a decision to turn and go away, and the suspect is shot in the back. When at the time the officer made the mental decision, it was perfectly justified and, yet, the headlines are, "suspect shot in the back," and the public then perceives that as being an improper shooting. And it's just not -- it's rarely the case.

>> Michael: All right. Craig Mehrens, thank you for joining us.

>> Michael: Nick Hentoff, our thanks to you as well.

>> Michael: It took three years to research the Arizona Historical Society's latest exhibit. It is called "Desert Cities" and chronicles how the Valley has grown in the past 50 years. Paul Atkinson and photographer Scot Olson give us a tour.

>> Reporter: For some folks, they are the glory years, the'50s, '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s. For the Valley of the Sun, they are the growth years.

>> Mary Melcher: "Desert Cities" describes growth and change in the Valley in the last 50 years.

>> Reporter: Curator Mary Melcher helped put the exhibit together.

>> Mary: People moved here for lots of different reasons. Many people came for jobs. Some came for the climate. Others moved here for health reasons. A lot of them pulled U-hauls like this one. This is a 1950s vintage U-Haul.

>> Reporter: Newcomers turned Phoenix from America's 99th largest city in 1950, to the 6th largest some 50 years later.

>> Melcher: When people come through the exhibit, they seem to respond to some of the photos and cultural icons like Bob's Big Boy, our photos of old diners, photos of motels that they remember. It brings back a lot of memories for long-time Valley residents.

>> Reporter: The exhibit uses personal stories in audio and visual form to examine four areas, housing and communities, economy, arts and entertainment, and environmental change.

>> Melcher: People recall when the land was a lot more open. We've designed the exhibit to give a feeling for openness in the environment section, right at the beginning where you have a sense of a lot of room, but as you progress through the exhibit, it becomes more congested, more crowded, just like the Valley has become more crowded as we've gone through this time period.

>> Reporter: The facade of one home in the housing and community section may look familiar.

>> Jean Reynolds: This is a photograph of Maryvale and this section here looks at home builders within the Valley who really started to build a lot of houses for all ofthe people coming in needing new homes, and John F. Long was the most prominent of those home builders, and he's still around, and he started the community of Maryvale in west Phoenix.

>> Reporter: But museum curator Jean Reynolds points out that many Blacks and Latinos couldn't live in such new communities. Segregation laws kept most fromo wning homes north of Van Buren until the 1960s. Some lived in run-down shacks with no running water. The exhibit looks at the rol epublic housing played in improving those conditions.

>> Jean: Well, there's two reasons for this exhibit. One is to showcase this collection of really nice photographs that we have that really documents the impoverished conditions that people were living in, and then showing how their lives were bettered by public housing. We have a nice collection within our archives. Also, it's basically to tell the story of how public housing got started, how it improved people's lives.

>> Reporter: "Desert Cities" highlights the one innovation that made living and working in the desert bearable. It also officers a glimpse of the behind the scenes, movers and shakers responsible for growth, such as the big three, Frank Snell, Walter Bimson and Eugene Pulliam.

>> Jean: One is an attorney, one is a banker, one is a newspaper man. He promotes the city through the newspapers. Bimson through Valley National Bank is giving out hundreds of loans to farmers, business people, homeowners, and then Frank Snell is promoting different ventures in the community. They worked with other people. They weren't the only ones, but they were called "The Big Three."

>> Reporter: Together they helped attract a burgeoning high-tech industry that played a major part in the Valley's growth.

>> Reporter: Duane Netty, Marty Robbins, and the Tubes are some of the many musical acts featured in the arts and entertainment part of the exhibit. Special listening stations allow visitors to sample artists from five different decades. The exhibit takes you back to popular pastimes such as the Phoenix JC Rodeo of Rodeos and parade.

>> Jean: In the '50s and '60s, the kids would have a western week at school, and then they would get a day off when they could --they didn't have to go to school, and they could go and see the parade and then attend the rodeo. So that was really exciting, and I remember one lady that I interviewed, she remembered very clearly that during western week, she got to wear pants, which was very important, because before that, they had to wear dresses all the time.

>> Reporter: Whether visitors rush through or take their time at the exhibit, those who put "Desert Cities" together hope visitors not only take away a sense of history, but also empowerment.

>> Mary: There are a lot of people that got together to make changes occur in this Valley, and I think that we all just need to be aware that we can make a difference in what kind of a Valley we want to have in the future, and I hope that if people come to see this exhibit, they'll get a perspective on the history and how it was created and maybe they'll be able to understand how they can make a difference in the future.

>> Michael: The Arizona Historical Society is located at1300 North College Avenue in Papago Park. The museum is open from 10:00 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon, Tuesday through Saturday, and it's open from noon to 4:00 on Sunday. Here's what's on "Horizon" tomorrow.

>> Reporter: After September 11th, congress passed the USA Patriot Act to enhance law enforcement's tools for stopping terrorism. But many feel parts of this legislation threaten our rights and freedoms. Now congress is preparing to consider the Patriot Act too. We'll look at both sides of the issue Wednesday on "Horizon".

>> Michael: Then on Thursday, we'll take a look at the future of Phoenix as various leaders examine what the state's largest city will be like in the year 2012. Thanks for being here on a Tuesday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.

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