From the Mayor and City Councilors to the City Manager and LCPD and LCFD Chiefs, we hear much about accountability. Yet I know of no instance of accountability. I do not know what it takes to hold anyone accountable, who holds anyone accountable, how anyone is held accountable, and whether anything happens if and when anyone is held accountable, and, if so, what. So I do not know what accountability means, probably because the word has been rendered operationally meaningless. I suspect that the city’s powers-that-be like it that way because vagueness about accountability makes it unlikely.
I learned that accountability is an empty political slogan after trying with a formal complaint, blogs, letters, and meetings to hold the LCPD accountable for five false allegations of animal code violations. In such a trifling matter, accountability should have been no big deal. In theory, the LCPD should have required the ACO to account for them. Either the ACO’s commander or an IA investigator should have asked the 10-year veteran to justify each allegation with evidence or proof. Did you see the owner release pets or let them run loose? Did you see excessive pet waste? Did you establish that the owner lacked valid permits, licenses, or shot records? And, if the justifications failed—if they did not reflect the truth—, the IA interviewer should have recommended retracting the warning notice from my police file and dealing with the ACO.
In practice, neither interviewer asked these questions or showed a concern for the truth or falsity of the allegations. Both ignored LCPD policy (103.17 Truthfulness). With truth ruled out, anything else could be ruled in. In a 11 September 2019 memorandum to the Police Chief, the Chief Codes Administrator defended the ACO by stating that the warning notice “consisted of the possibility,” not the actuality, of the alleged violations. In a 5 February 2020 memorandum to the Police Chief, IA Sergeant (now-Deputy Police Chief) Sean Mullen reported irrelevant material and perverse excuses in the ACO’s account of events to avoid or obscure false allegations and clear the ACO of misconduct. He also discredited me by misrepresenting my views and deploring my blogs refuting the ACO’s story and false allegations. Both memorandums reveal LCPD policies and practices which the LCPD accepts as suitable in investigations, despite departures from LCPD policy or accepted legal principles. LCPD Chiefs Patrick Gallagher, Miguel Dominguez, and Jeremy Story, knowing Mullen’s performance, have done nothing to address it, amend LCPD policies or practices, or clear my file. Accountability, anyone?
Three major LCPD failures in handling my complaint should discredit any LCPD claim to investigative integrity. One, although Mullen concluded that there was no evidence or proof of the alleged violations, he did not recommend that the LCPD revoke the warning notice retained in my file. Two: IA closed out my complaint by misrepresenting it as a complaint about the ACO and omitting any mention of the allegations. Three: under guidance from the City Attorney, the City Manager, after first admitting error, reversed himself and refused to admit error (she even asserted that the alleged violations had occurred and were well documented.) These failures mock the basics of law and law enforcement, and make accountability impossible and abuse of citizens inevitable.
Mullen’s past does not augur well for the present or the future. As an IA investigator, Sergeant Mullen did not hold the ACO accountable and was not held accountable. He tacitly tolerated some perverse police practices and deviant legal principles. As Deputy Police Chief responsible for IA investigations, he is unlikely to hold others accountable or to be held accountable. The details of his conduct of this investigation show the police tendency in response to criticism to put protection of the LCPD above a citizen’s rights or public service. In this connection, reports like Mullen’s play a significant role in skewing the police auditor’s reviews of cases and complaints.
Mullen’s 9-page memorandum is repetitious and padded with details about the ACO’s site visit and phone call with me. Few details are relevant to the truth or falsity of the alleged violations. Mullen gave the ACO opportunities to explain the allegations away and exonerate himself, and gave himself opportunities to disparage my motives and means in protesting them. In his one-sided investigation, Mullen accepted the ACO’s account at face value, made no attempt to confirm or refute it, and made no attempt to compare his account of events with mine. Indeed, he never contacted me during his investigation. Mullen defends an officer and attacks a citizen—contrary to best professional practice in police investigations but maybe compliant with LCPD policies.
Mullen’s memorandum has four major sections: “COMPLAINT SUMMARY,” “FACTS,” “ANCILLARY ISSUES,” and “FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS.” In “FACTS,” Mullen stresses the ACO’s story and excuses, all unchallenged, and excludes my facts. In “ANCILLARY ISSUES,” Mullen buries his conclusion about the alleged violations, which are central to my complaint: “Mr. Hays’ warning notice had several violations marked to which there was no physical evidence or proof an actual violation had occurred.” By burying this conclusion, he makes it unlikely that anyone would notice or act on it. Copied on this memorandum, his IA Chief ignored the violations in her close-out letter. Handling an adverse complaint by hiding it in this manner is probably LCPD practice, if not policy.
Mullen accepts the AOC’s mistakes in making allegations. He says that the violations were “checked based off an anonymous caller’s complaint and ACO standard practice.” Both officers assume that the complaint is true, ignore that an anonymous complaint is no basis for alleging a violation, and disregard that the purpose of an investigation is to ascertain the truth or falsity of the complaint. (Note: IA does not investigate anonymous complaints about police.) Both fail to consider that, when owners are not present to show proof of permits, licenses, and shots “upon request,” allegations of code violations are not justified. Both show no concern that LCPD policy or “standard practice” urges or allows officers to allege violations even if they have no evidence or proof or are too busy or unable to check the pertinent records—in other words, to lie.
Mullen also accepts some oddities in the ACO’s account and excuses, and his muddled logic. He reports the ACO saying that “it wasn’t that he saw violations, but he must still educate the owner about the city ordinances.” But, if he saw no violations, he knew that none occurred and so had no need to educate the owner, who must be presumed to know and comply with the ordinances. Mullen also reports that the ACO explained one alleged violation by saying that “he was unsure if there was any animal waste in the parts [of the yard] he couldn’t view/access.” An officer’s state of mind—uncertainty—is no basis for alleging a violation; alleging a violation on this basis assumes that the owner is guilty until he/she proves his/her innocence (so, too, in the case of absent owners). This bizarre statement raises questions about the ACO’s, Mullen’s, and the LCPD’s understanding of and fidelity to fundamental principles of American law.
Mullen shows the same lack of appreciation of such principles in the “FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS” section of his memorandum, a section initially redacted when it was released to me. He expresses his irritation that “Mr. Hays…protested the facts in emails, blogs, phone calls and meetings.” But, since I was right about the facts, as Mullen himself recognizes, I had every right to be outraged by five false allegations of code violations and to protest the injustice of them. Plainly, Mullen does not like people exercising their First Amendment rights, at least when they expose LCPD mistakes and especially when he knows that the LCPD has doubled and tripled down on them instead of admitting the truth and correcting them. In his emotional statement disregarding Constitutional rights, Mullen reveals his intemperate temperament. It shows him to have been unfit for his past, to be unfit for his present position, and likely to be unfit for the position to which he likely aspires. But, if Mullen is not held accountable, his prospects for advancement remain undiminished.
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