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by Mike Sprague

La Mirada’s City Council next week is expected to become the next city to approve a vote of no confidence in Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón.

Already, the cities of Beverly Hills and Santa Clarita have approved similar resolutions. A recall effort also has been launched but that must wait until six months after he was sworn into office before they can collect signatures.

Council members in interviews before the vote on Tuesday, March 23 said Gascon’s policies of not prosecuting some lesser crimes already are resulting in higher crime.

“La Mirada has been affected by his policies,” Mayor John Lewis said.

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by CBSLA Staff

DIAMOND BAR (CBSLA) — A Los Angeles County sheriff’s motorcycle deputy who died in a crash while on duty was given a solemn sendoff Friday.

Deputy Thomas Albanese was killed last month in a crash on Del Amo Boulevard near Paramount in Lakewood. He had been working overtime when he started following a driver suspected of speeding.

The driver of a Mercedes hit the deputy as he drove into the intersection on a changing light. Albanese, who joined the department in 2013, was declared dead at the scene.

Albanese was remembered by his loved ones and his law enforcement family at a memorial service in Diamond Bar.

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Why fire services are thriving and we are not

By Dave Edmonds

When it comes to disease, there’s a difference between treating the symptoms and finding the cure.

Police officer occupational discontent and job-caused stress are at their highest ever. Many LEOs are finding easier and more rewarding ways to make a living, and for more money, too. There are fewer good applicants, and fewer applicants, period. The commonly blamed causes — things like ineffective leadership, unrealistic workload, poor officer morale and public ingratitude — do deserve consideration. But what if these are just symptoms of a deeper root cause? That’s the way I see it, and I hope that we might finally move the discussion away from blaming the symptoms, toward naming and then curing the disease.

Law enforcement’s longtime inadequate service delivery model is that disease. There are real solutions for this, but unless government starts acting on them soon, the quality of our national police force may eventually merit the current ingratitude. Our service delivery model has not kept up with the ever-increasing demands. Over the decades, responsibilities and regulations have drastically increased, but we’re basically working the same way and with a lot of the same resources we did 80 years ago.

At the same time, however, there does exist a nationwide, widely accepted, highly functional service delivery model for public safety. It provides adequate funding for the mission, as well as maintaining generous, healthy and sustainable occupational conditions for its workers. Because of that, these public safety servants not only fulfill their mission with broad public satisfaction, but also enjoy a high level of job contentment and thrive throughout their careers. And finally, they live long, healthy and happy retirements. 

It’s a great public safety model. It’s just not ours.

For the last 25 years, whenever I’ve seen an old, fit guy at the gym, I’ve gone out of my way to greet him. After all, I want to end up the same way. I figure that if there are any patterns to learn, they’ll come to light. It turns out there is one pattern: A lot of them are retired firefighters. Figures. Everybody loves them, they get paid to sleep … and they live forever, too? We know that long-term job stress and inadequate resources make our jobs harder and our lives shorter. Abundant evidence shows that the opposite can be true, too. I call this the Firefighter Corollary.

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Police psychologists address trauma behind the badge

Dr. Stephanie Barone McKenny

The pandemic and the civil unrest protests have heightened the sense of professional purpose among police psychologists across the nation. Department police psychologists from the major metropolitan law enforcement agencies of Los Angeles (LAPD), Dallas (DPD), Atlanta (APD), Honolulu (HPD) and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) in Chicago have combined forces to highlight common themes suggesting police psychology is in a time of great need. Innovative strategies that any agency (regardless of its size) can do to increase law enforcement family connections (as well as decrease officer isolation/vulnerability) are offered.

The pandemic has impacted intra-organizational dynamics, officer well-being, police–community relations and inter-organizational collaboration. As such, there has been a significant quantitative and qualitative demand for police psychologist clinical and organizational services. It has also changed the way police psychologists do business.  Telehealth is a primary example. Whether you have access to a department police psychologist or an external contracted police psychologist, telehealth services are now routinely offered; expect this to continue in the future even after the pandemic has been resolved, due to several key benefits.

Access to care has been expanded. For example, officers are connecting with police psychologists on their smartphones from the stations before and after their shifts (and even from their patrol cars when needed during their shifts). Officers who could not be seen in person before (due to IOD, other significant medical conditions or residing in remote rural areas) are now able to routinely receive the support they need. Officer engagement has been improved; session no-shows have decreased and police psychologists are functioning as remote coaches for officers between sessions. Hours have been extended; police psychologists may be working late-night or zero dark thirty hours to meet the increased demands for services. Officer costs have been reduced; they do not need to commute to the doctor’s office for the session, and this has been particularly helpful to those assigned home without pay, but it may also reduce unnecessary ER visits. Doctor efficiency and officer satisfaction have increased. Overall, sworn and civilian employees tend to prefer the telehealth modality due to its convenience, flexibility and assurance of confidentiality through HIPAA compliance.

The civil unrest, protests and civic demonstrations have highlighted that trust has been fractured in communities regardless of any good works in the past. A re-examination of police tactics is critical for the evolution of law enforcement. A review of where we have been, where we are now and where we are going seems wise. It also seems wise to own any missteps along the way.

Nevertheless, it is true that the experience of the protests appears to be different depending on the department and city served. In Dallas, for example, such events may have been more traumatic given the July 7, 2016, ambush resulting in five officers killed, 12 officers shot and wounded, and over 400 officers exposed firsthand to the deadliest critical incident in U.S. law enforcement since 9/11, despite the fact that it began as a peaceful protest. In Honolulu, the struggles of 2020 started on January 19 when two officers were ambushed and killed in the line of duty. As a result, Honolulu police went into the pandemic and protests of 2020 with an emotional deficit and had to work hard to muster the energy to provide the services and the protection that the community still needed at a critical time in world history.

The pandemic, combined with the protests, has led many officers nationwide to feel abandoned by their department leadership as well as their top elected officials, perceiving that those leaders and officials had turned their backs on the officers who risk their lives every day for the community. Some officers have felt this is not the profession that they joined. Officers have questioned why their leaders are not protecting and sticking up more for officers, especially officers of color. Such biculturalism requires navigating between two worlds — law enforcement and race — like a tightrope walker on a high wire.

Police psychologists have found that their role may have significantly changed from what it was pre-pandemic. For example, depending on the department, police psychologists have seen a dramatic focus on marital counseling (whereas maybe they provided little or no couples counseling before), grief counseling (due to significant loss after loss), substance abuse and addiction interventions or the need for them to serve as public health professionals within the department. Police psychologists are not immune or isolated from the pandemic and protests. They are also exposed, restricted, having to navigate misinformation and keep their families safe. They, like the officers, are not operating in a cultural vacuum. It has become a parallel process.

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