To My Daughter, the Good Cop

Dear Daughter:

The first time I saw you in your sheriff’s deputy uniform, I was proud of you. I never dreamed that one day you would be a cop.

But I was hurt that you did not invite me to your graduation from the Sheriff’s Academy. I would have been friendly to your boss, Lee Baca. When I see him at the Astro Burger or at a fundraiser, we engage in genial banter: “I ain’t got no badges.” “I don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”

I wish you would listen when I try to explain that there are rotten apples -- that many law enforcement officers do use excessive force, commit perjury and write false reports to “cover up” their crimes.

I wish you would listen when I try to explain that in my youth, I was at the receiving end of police brutality, and not just say, “Dad, that was 100 years ago.”

One time, it was at the hands of a sheriff’s deputy after we held a demonstration at East L.A. College. Another time, it was an LAPD officer who nearly took out my eye with his baton at UCLA during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration that I was not even a part of. In both cases, officers of the law wrote false police reports.

Those experiences motivated me to become a lawyer, and are why I represent clients in civil rights suits against the LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department.

This is my request to you: If you see misconduct within your ranks, do not be afraid to report it to your superiors. And if they don’t listen, become a whistle-blower and take it to the FBI.

Do not become a part of the “Code of Silence,” where you get caught up in the “us” versus “them” mentality, where you come to believe that to report misconduct makes you a “snitch.” By reporting police misconduct you enforce the law, ensuring that police officers obey the law, just like everybody else.

Here are a few of the ways that officers enforce the Code of Silence:

(1) By collaborating on the details of a story as to how a civilian resisted arrest or battered an officer and had to be subdued with force. This version then becomes the official one within a police agency and the “script” for the attorneys representing the officers in civil rights lawsuits.

(2) By the way detectives and investigators prepare reports to vindicate the use of excessive force, regardless of the facts. Many reports uncritically rely solely on the word of officers and fail to credit testimony by non-police witnesses.

(3) By omitting from reports factual information and physical evidence that contradicts the accounts of the officers involved.

(4) By ignoring or suppressing physical evidence and other evidence that contradicts the officers’ version of events.

(5) By the practice of law enforcement investigators interrogating witnesses in a leading and suggestive manner.

(6) By the practice of filing of false charges -- of resisting arrest or battery or assault against a police officer -- against civilians who have been the victims of excessive force, unjustified shootings or false arrest.

(7) By the failure of police chiefs and sheriffs to establish a system for further review of all incidents alleging that a civilian resisted arrest or attacked an officer in which other witnesses provide contradictory or exculpatory evidence.

(8) By the failure to establish a system for independent review of all incidents in which witnesses have alleged that officers have engaged in excessive force, abuse of authority, falsification of police reports, fabrication of probable cause, perjury, racial profiling or other misconduct.

And so, dear daughter, please enforce the law properly and fairly. And remember, enforcing the law also means turning in rogue officers to face justice.

Luis Carrillo is a civil rights attorney.