MANSFIELD: Tearing Down the Blue Wall

In what can only be characterized as a desperate attempt to exculpate the four officers accused of brutalizing Edward Henderson on New Year’s Day, Cleveland Police Patrolman’s Association president, Steve Loomis, is vaulting over the legendary and long-standing “Blue Wall of Silence.” Similar to the Mafia code of Omertá, police officers historically protect wrongdoing by fellow officers with tacit silence, if not outright support. Those who even think of breaking The Code will find themselves without backup on the street. So, The Code allows officers — even those who are known by other members of the force to be trigger-happy — to remain on the streets. Sadly, some of these cowboys even get labeled “Supercops.”

But Loomis, who hasn’t worked the street in years, wants to shift the blame to senior officers, claiming that if they had been present at Henderson’s arrest (as he claims now they should have been), nothing untoward would have happened to the mentally-ill man as he lay handcuffed, face down on the ground. In Loomis’ version, the fault lays with the weak command structure at the police department… an allegation that, based on past performance, actually has somewhat of a ring of truth to it.

So, if I’m following his logic correctly, a jury in a federal civil rights case is supposed to believe that a sergeant, lieutenant, or captain should have magically appeared at the scene of the arrest of Henderson and said to the patrol officers “Stop, don’t kick that handcuffed man’s head like it’s a football!” Everything would then have gone by the book, at least in Loomis’ mind. Please. Should it have taken a senior officer to tell patrolmen that allegedly standing on a suspect’s neck and then kicking him in the head is not a nice thing to do?

Indeed, Loomis might succeed in getting the F.B.I. to look closely at the Cleveland police department’s command structure (which is probably just as weak at the top as many others across the country) but that in no way is going to mean the four accused officers should get a pass on their alleged brutality by saying they weren’t properly supervised. While a failure of supervision as Loomis claims might exist, his move will most likely backfire and put more senior officers — indeed, the entire system — under the federal microscope.

If federal civil rights investigators really want something else to look at in Cleveland, maybe they should listen to some members of the bar who are documenting that someone in the department’s Internal Investigations Unit or Office of Professional Standards (OPS) is breaching protocol by sharing information with Loomis. They are suggesting strong evidence exists that when a citizen files a formal complaint against an officer, information about the content of the complaint is available to police union officials and therefore the Cleveland Police Patrolman’s Association itself (a private entity) — who should not be privy to it. Two things follow from this alleged custom and practice: The officer(s) identified in the Complaint are notified directly or indirectly so they can get their cover-up stories together, and second, sometimes the person(s) who actually filed the compliant is intimidated by being charged with a crime. If there is a shred of truth to these allegations by the civil rights bar, rest assured the feds will get to the bottom of them.

The feds might also want to investigate the accusation that if someone graduates from a certain near-west side high school and is desirous of becoming a Cleveland police officer, they are prepped for the Civil Service exam by a certain police captain who all but gives them the answers to the questions. The attorney providing this information said that only the graduates of this certain high school need apply. Interesting.

Locals are often too provincial; they don’t get the “big picture.” Anyone who has read one of Attorney General Eric Holder’s speeches should realize what’s going on: The fact the local U.S. Attorney’s Office took over this case (instead of waiting to see if the city and county could handle it in an unbiased and professional manner) is clear: The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has at long-last been reinvigorated. It was gutted under the eight years of Bush’s tenure. But AG Holder has been saying for some time now that how justice is meted out in this country needs to be reexamined, and he’s saying it for one main reason: Nationally, the number of reported cases of alleged police brutality has been on the rise for far too long. Some rogue cops around the country have been serving up ass-whippings like lunch, and it’s way past time for this brutality on the part of a select few officers to stop.

When the feds want to send a message, they look around the country and find a particularly egregious case (when the video of this incident is finally made public it will be abundantly clear why this case was selected) of brutality and zero in on it. The timing, for these four officers, could not have been worse. If convicted, they’re going to be used as examples for the rest of the country. And any union officials who think they are clever enough to somehow rig or circumvent (because they have always been able to in the past) are in for a rude awaking. That knock on the door just might be the F.B.I.

One thing is abundantly clear, Loomis is not publicly reciting the mandate of their Use of Force Policy, 2.1.01 which applies to patrol officers and supervisors. This policy states:

                At the scene of a police incident, many officers of the
                Division may be present and some officers may
                not be directly involved in taking police actions.
                However, this does not relieve any officer present
                of the obligation to ensure that the requirements
                of the law and Divisional regulations are complied
                with.  Officers of the Division of Police are required
                to maintain control if the use of force against a
                subject clearly becomes excessive.

Clearly the duties and obligations of officers were not met in the Henderson case, and they remain silent in other cases. The moral of this story is that the Code is alive and thriving in Cleveland, and Loomis and certain police officers will never stop invoking it if the feds fail to follow through with their mission, their duty, their effective prosecution.

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.