While San Diego’s recent police scandal has received national attention and dominated local media coverage, the controversy doesn’t amount to those experienced by other big cities, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
Ten San Diego police officers have been accused in recent months of serious or criminal misconduct, including drunken driving, excessive force, stalking and rape. Three officers are no longer employed by the department and five face criminal charges. The police chief has publicly apologized and proposed several reforms last week to address lagging internal oversight.
But the series, although embarrassing, doesn’t add up to places like New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans, the Los Angeles Times reported. Here’s an excerpt from the story:
The cases do not appear to have the elements that often lead to long-lasting controversy at big-city police departments. There are no accusations involving racial or ethnic bias; there is no evidence of a cover-up among police officials; the allegations do not seem to point to one particular station house or division.
“The L.A. brutality [cases], New Orleans theft and excessive force [cases], and NYPD corruption scandals are of a very different character and seriousness than the San Diego cases,” said Paul Pfingst, who served two terms as San Diego County district attorney and is now in private practice, including criminal defense.
Pfingst said he sees the San Diego allegations as “individual, unrelated acts as opposed to a pattern of similar behavior engaged in and explicitly or tacitly approved by colleagues.”
To read the full story, click here. The Times also reported that City Councilwoman Marti Emerald wants to schedule a public discussion with the Police Department about stress among officers, which police have highlighted as a contributing factor to more misconduct.
And as I reported last week, several officers also point to the dissolution of an anticorruption unit several years ago and a police culture that allows greater room for misconduct to occur in its absence. You can learn about that story by clicking here or by watching the video below from our media partner, NBC San Diego.
Please contact Keegan Kyle directly at keegan.kyle@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5668 and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/keegankyle.