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Indybay Feature

Mayor Quan Hires Longtime Right-Wing Cop to "Investigate" OPD Attacks on Occupy Oakland

by Fox Meet Henhouse
Yesterday, it was announce that Thomas Frazier has been hired to "investigate" Oakland police department violence against Occupy Oakland protesters. Mayor Jean Quan has touted the investigation as supposedly independent, but let's take a look at who this guy is. He is currently already a paid special adviser to the City of Oakland police department, helping lead the city in it's never-ending Negotiated Settlement Agreement compliance efforts. Tom Frazier was the Director of the COPS Office in the United States Department of Justice, Police Commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department, served twenty-eight years with the San Jose Police Department, and was a Military Intelligence officer in Vietnam. He has a "close relationship" with the Major Cities Police Chiefs Association (http://www.fraziergroupllc.com/?page_id=166). He works with the very right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank responsible for much of the increasing economic inequality and despair of the last thirty years. And he was past president of PERF (Police Executive Research Forum), a group that assisted in organizing and coordinating the recent raids on Occupy encampments nationwide in the United States (http://inewp.com/?tag=thomas-c-frazier). What's not to love about Thomas Frazier doing this investigation?
thomasfrazier_opd-occupyoakland.jpg
The Mayor is bragging about hiring a special investigator to look at OPD and the Occupy Oakland crackdown. Never a better case of the fox asked to guard the henhouse... There are various tentacles to this...

This guy Frazier was hired to do the investigation: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/12/21/auditor-to-investigate-police-response-at-occupy-oakland-protests/ Here is his group http://www.fraziergroupllc.com/

Captain Richard L. Cashdollar, USCG, Retired works for him, and developed Fusion Centers: http://www.fraziergroupllc.com/?page_id=67

Frazier himself is a Heritage Foundation guy (on a Homeland Security committee led by Bremer and Meese): http://earthops.org/sovereign/homelanddefense/heritagereport/The_20Heritage_20Foundation_20Homeland_20Defense_20Task_20Force.pdf

WTF!?! And so the city that supposedly doesn't have enough money for schools or libraries has $100,000 to hand over to this guy for a whitewash of OPD violence. Thanks for nothing, Mayor Quan!
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by DW
...can evaluate the actions of police departments. Heck, our former police auditor here in Fresno was a former police officer, now lawyer. Ivory tower folks need not apply. Frankly, I expect the OPD to get a reasonably clean bill of health.

Every law enforcement officer I've talked with and whose letters to the editor printed in newspapers around the state I've read all find no fault in how the Occupiers have been dealt with--even at UC Davis. It boils down to this--refuse to obey a lawful order to disperse, then engage the cops, they're gonna use whatever force it takes to remove the problem. And, that's legal under California statute. The place to argue whether a dispersal order was legal is in court, not in the street.

In the UC Davis incident, one officer down south commented that the protesters were given a dispersal order, then refused to leave. He said, from the video, the officers then made arrests and were surrounded by protesters evidently trying to block them from leaving with the arrestees. That's called lynching in the California Penal Code. The pepper spray was used, according to the officer, to extricate the officers from a dangerous situation. His view was that the UC system needed to grow a pair and support its police officers instead of engaging in political correctness.
by WD
can be the judge of when it's time to go to war and when.

This whole "civilian control" thing is bunk.

And I believe anything I hear any cop or soldier say, so I know better than to believe my own eyes. It doesn't matter what I see on video. If they say it was a dangerous situation, then by all means they have the right to abuse and kill anyone they want. They are just doing their jobs, following orders, and anyone committing non-violent civil disobedience deserves whatever the police or the military choose to dish out. Why even bother to do independent investigations when we already know cops and the military are always right in everything they do from reading cop blogs?
by DW
...in California....

Well, WD, the notion of publicly-accessible investigations of law enforcement in California is a non-starter, due to state Supreme Court precedent (the Copley Press ruling).

One of the fundamental ideas behind police review in California originally was the concept of the "bully pulpit." Troublesome officers' conduct could be investigated by a reviewer or a review panel, and made public, naming the officer.

Then came the Copley Press decision several years ago. The state Supreme Court ruled that police review investigations and reports fell under the definition of "personnel records" protected by the Peace Officers Bill of Rights. Hearings looking into misconduct could not be open to the public any longer. Officers' names had to be redacted from any report released to the public.

The Copley Press case essentially gutted the moral power of police review in this state.

Here in Fresno, a vocal group in the community pushed for an independent police reviewer for more than 10 years. The mayor supported it, but the city council and the police officers' association did not, so it was not put into place. Following the beating of a homeless man allegedly resisting officers, the new mayor was able to get a watered-down version of the original proposal passed by city council--reluctantly I must say.

The county civil grand jury looked into the twin issues of officer-involved shootings and the independent police auditor (who worked for the City Manager) last year. We concluded the auditor was a "feel good" measure and, unless the city council was willing to give the post real investigatory powers, should be abolished as a waste of scarce resources.

Fresno's auditor abruptly left town in June (the city said he left on his own, he says he was fired), and the city manager is now the auditor--in name only.

I'll close with this: in a number of books on policing and military history I've read over the years, I've come across this statement: "You sleep in your beds at night and go about your daily business safely because rough violent men are there in your stead to keep the peace against those who would harm you."
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