by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyrigh © 2014 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
Michael Maryland,
Marjorie Cohn, Catherine Mendonça
Jack Bernanker, Bob
Kundland, Thomas Streed
“Law enforcement
officers are aware of the implications of a single man coming into contact with
women in a patrol car,” Thomas Streed, 23-year veteran of the San Diego
Sheriff’s Department, said at a public forum on police practices sponsored by
the San Diego Debate Club and Activist San Diego’s public radio station KNSJ
(89.1 FM) at the San Diego Repertory Theatre November 19. “One thing I was
taught in the police academy is that the uniform is a ‘babe magnet.’ Officers
are taught to be alert to this particular thing. Some officers have
psychopathologies that drive them to victimize people.”
Though the forum
was announced as being a debate over whether police in general are doing their
jobs or going too far, the words “babe magnet” galvanized the audience and hung
over the rest of the event like a cloud. Most of the attendees were skeptical
of the police to begin with, and the words “babe magnet” seemed to summarize
the whole attitude of law enforcement, especially towards women. It didn’t help
that all three of the panelists defending the police were white men of
retirement age — the other side included a white man, a white woman and a
Latina — or that Streed’s comment was a response to the lead panelist on the other
side, Catherine Mendonça of United Against Police Terror — San Diego, telling
about how she was a victim of police abuse herself.
“I was sexually
assaulted by a Los Angeles police officer a few years ago, and it opened my
mind to what police can do with impunity,” Mendonça said. “Rates of sexual
assault and domestic violence among police officers are higher than in the
general population. I work in a domestic-violence shelter and many women there
say they have called police when they’ve been endangered, and the police have
done nothing.”
The other two
panelists on the “police are going too far” side pointed to Streed’s “babe
magnet” remark as evidence of the attitude women victims of sex crimes and
domestic violence get from officers, and why such crimes are often not reported
at all. “‘Babe magnet’ is quintessential ‘blame the victim’,” said Thomas
Jefferson School of Law professor and former National Lawyers’ Guild president
Marjorie Cohn. “Women don’t report rapes because they’re afraid the first thing
they’ll be asked by the police is, ‘What did you do to deserve it?’”
“Words fail me
to describe the nonsensicalness of that statement,” Streed replied. “To suggest
that law enforcement officers are challenging women and blaming victims of
sexual assault sickens me. In my 23 years in law enforcement I don’t recall anyone suggesting a woman brought sexual assault upon
herself.” Streed also tried to explain his “babe magnet” remark, saying that
back in his days at the police academy “one thing a training officer said is
that in some cases that uniform can constitute a ‘babe magnet.’ Women may be
attracted to the uniform.”
The third police
skeptic on the panel, civil rights attorney Michael Maryland — who specializes
in lawsuits against police departments and individual officers alleging abuse —
mentioned the recent conviction of San Diego police officer Anthony Arevalos on
six charges from an indictment alleging 21 cases in which Arevalos made
improper advances or solicited bribes from women he stopped. The city has also
agreed to nearly $9 million in settlements of civil suits brought by women
Arevalos victimized. What’s more, allegations have surfaced that Arevalos was
merely the tip of the iceberg, and that other officers assigned to the San
Diego Police Department’s Sex Crimes Unit, which investigates rapes, routinely
made disparaging remarks about women and hung posters in their precinct
officers reflecting what women activists call “rape culture.”
Streed’s “babe
magnet” comment “raises for me the stories we’ve had of sexual assaults by
uniformed SDPD officers,” Maryland said. “The officers who did that felt they
could get away with it, and supervisors and middle managers let them get away
with it.”
“It’s important
we not say ‘all women’ or ‘all police officers,’” said Bob Kundland, a panel
member who worked for the SDPD, the Sheriff’s Department and the Marshal’s
Department before retiring. He admitted that he didn’t have personal knowledge
of “the issues regarding the chain of command” — Maryland’s allegation that
SDPD officials let officers they were supposedly supervising get away with
sexually harassing women — but said during his time at the SDPD three officers
had observed a colleague behaving inappropriately, “and one of them reported it
to me.”
“The problem is
one of power,” said Maryland. “The police officer has enormous power, and
certain people, given that power, will abuse it. The question is how we’re
dealing with the small percentage of officers who abuse that power.”
Asked by the
debate moderator, former San Diego city attorney Mike Aguirre, if the San Diego
County Sheriff’s Department had had similar problems to the SDPD, Streed said,
“Every police department has a problem
with some police conduct. I provide expert testimony in court as a witness on that
kind of behavior. I happen to be concerned with that.”
“There’s tons of
evidence that the SDPD sex crimes unit has a number of victim-blaming posters
on their walls,” said Mendonça. “Anthony Arevalos was able to get away with it
for years.”
“One of the
problems is the code of silence,” Maryland added. “Officers are afraid to blow
the whistle on other officers. I have represented police officers who have been
driven out of their departments for doing the right thing. The police culture
makes it difficult for good officers to blow the whistle on their colleagues.”
“If there is a code of silence, it’s disgusting,” Streed replied.
“It’s based on a fear of alienating someone who’s around and may not provide
backup when it’s needed. But we recognize it and we have put mechanisms into
place to address it.”
Aguirre also
asked a question about the allegations over the last 30 years that the San
Diego Police Department received reports of the murders of 20-plus prostitutes
and did little or nothing about it.
“I was the lead
investigator on that series, and I haven’t felt safe talking about it since
1983,” Streed said. “We found a lot of people who didn’t do it. There are a lot of questions. At one time we
had 48 dead prostitutes. The head guy [on the investigation] said, ‘Get out
front with the media,’ and one guy said [at a press conference], ‘Let me assure
you. We don’t have a serial killer.’ I turned and looked at him, and one of the
other reporters asked me, ‘Dr. Streed[1],
do you agree with that?’ I said, ‘Yes, we have 28 dead bodies and 28 different
people could be killing them exactly the same way and dumping them in the same
place.’”
Marjorie Cohn
reminded the audience that, despite Streed’s arguments with his colleagues,
“these crimes were not properly investigated and solved.” She also said you
can’t address the issue of police misconduct without talking about race, and in
particular the tendency of police officers to treat people of color more
harshly than whites in similar situations. “Even President Obama has been
pulled over because of his color,” Cohn said. “When you’re Black or brown
you’re much more likely to be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.”
“I represented a
police officer who was a victim of racial profiling by the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA),” said Maryland. “It can happen to anyone, and
we have to make sure law enforcement addresses it.”
“Those engaged
in sex work are referred to by police as ‘NHI’ — ‘No Humans Involved,’” said
Mendonça. This term, which was first publicized in San Diego in the early
1980’s about the prostitute murder cases, also includes homeless people and
Transgender people. “Police have this view based on who they are, not what they
do,” Mendonça alleged. Her argument was that by writing off certain classes of
people as “not human,” police ensure that they’re more likely to be convicted
of crimes and less likely to be
protected against crimes in which they’re the victims.
An audience
member named Erika asked why 97 out of 100 rapists never get punished at all.
The source for her statistic was a recent report by the Rape, Abuse and Incest
National Network (RAINN), available online at https://rainn.org/news-room/97-of-every-100-rapists-receive-no-punishment.
Retired San
Diego County deputy sheriff Jack Bernanker, one of the pro-police panelists,
replied, “First of all, if they’re unreported, we don’t even know that [these
rapes] occurred.” The RAINN statistics say that 46 percent of rapes are reported to police, but only 12 percent of rapists
are arrested, 9 percent are prosecuted, 5 percent are convicted of a felony but
only 3 percent ever serve time.
Bernanker also
said that when he was in law enforcement, “if there was a rape allegation, it
was investigated and a special unit would write the case up and submit it to
the D.A.’s office.”
“There is a
systemic amount of violence in the U.S., especially against people of color and
communities which are underserved,” said Activist San Diego executive director
Martin Eder. “Two-thirds of Latinos feel they are likely to be discriminated
against by police. The number of unarmed shootings of youth of color,
especially Black people, speaks to a police force that has the ethic of controlling
the streets and shooting first and asking questions later. Racialized justice
has been the norm, not the exception.”
Eder’s comment
was the first time anyone alluded to the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown
by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri last August. The debate
took place five days before the refusal of a Missouri grand jury to indict
Wilson for killing Brown touched off demonstrations throughout the U.S., many
of which ended in riots. One of the allegations against authorities in Ferguson
is that their heavy-handed restrictions on street protests just escalated the
situation and made violence more likely.
“Ferguson is
just the tip of the iceberg,” said Cohn. “Young Black people are hassled and
shot by police every day. [In Ferguson] they’re trying to keep people from
protesting, planting officers to spy on protest leaders, making false arrests
and staging raids on churches and homes, using acoustic devices and chemical
and other weapons, and arresting reporters. When you read the press coverage,
think about that.”
“You’re dealing
with a lot of people in the community who are going to protest and let their
voices be heard,” said Kundland. “What do you do when someone fires a gun,
throws something or creates an issue? When does a peaceful protest become a mob
and a riot?”
[1] — As Streed explained it while introducing himself at
the event, while working as a San Diego County Sheriff’s Department homicide
detective, he also went back to college and majored in psychology to learn more
about why criminals behave the way they do. He earned a Masters’ and eventually
a Ph.D.
