Time for a Change (long post)

This past Friday. following the funeral of Officer Rivera, the Slum Times posted an article regarding the disciplinary record of her partner who tragically killed her. 

We'll link it, but we aren't going to quote it or cite it. We can't say we're surprised by the number of Log Numbers in his short career. If you work certain places, you're going to catch complaints. If you're young, you're going to do stupid things, especially if you're out drinking. If you're minimally aware of how hiring standards have fallen, you're going to suspect that certain red-flags that would have prevented hiring in the past aren't going to be as rigorously applied when no one wants the job. And the habit of this generation to record everything and the social media fixation continues to baffle us.

It's a perfect storm of crap.

We don't know what the final investigation will conclude, but we'll almost guarantee they won't address the most glaring deficiencies that led to this unspeakable disaster.

We will say this however:

• It is far past time to reinstate the Ceriale Rule and update it for the modern era.

For those who weren't around, Michael Ceriale was a CPD Officer who was on Tact, doing a narcotics surveillance in 002, when he was killed by a teen who fired a round at the location Ceriale was concealed striking him below his vest. He died six days later. Ceriale was only 26 and had a grand total of one year, three months and sixteen days on the job. Considering six months in the Academy, his street time was under ten months....and he was on Tact. While that was probably indicative of his drive, ability and skill, the brass belatedly realized that these admirable qualities didn't provide the greatest single attribute to a successful police career:

• experience

So downtown instituted a "probation plus three year" rule for any plain clothes assignment which back then meant Tact or Gangs. Anything past that usually required Tact or Gang experience anyway, so the other spots were covered automatically (barring phone calls - which still existed because why wouldn't they?) And it mostly worked. There was even a time where a separate training course was required before you worked plain clothes. It wasn't much of a course, but it was on paper.

Somewhere, it all went away. By the later stages of our careers, they were filling Tact teams via reverse seniority because no one with time wanted to voluntarily give up Contractual Rights and surrender days off to get sent all over the city for crappy parades in crappier neighborhoods that you had the seniority to avoid. But the Department didn't care - they had plenty of "volunteers" who would do anything to avoid midnights. If we're doing the math correctly, Rivera's partner had just hit three years on the street.

And here the Department is - the youngest and least experienced organization in over three decades, with lowered standards, overlooked red-flags, and a Personnel Department desperate for any warm body to fill a uniform. It's a recipe for disaster as evidenced in early June.

As we said above, it's past time to reinstate the Ceriale Rule with major updates:

• we'd suggest a five year minimum, with at least some of that time on midnights. First Watch is not natural, it damages the mind, body and soul, it takes a toll on families. But it provides experience in excess;
• a full week of training regarding plain clothes. This would include an emphasis on tactics. Tactics for traffic stops especially after that shooting in 011 where everything learned at the Academy seems to have fallen by the wayside. Approaching suspects, citizen interactions, proper equipment, etc. We'd even go so far as to suggest an actual tact "uniform" of utility pants and polo-type shirt with CPD insignia. The skinny jeans, ripped t-shirt, baseball cap look isn't professional and - valid or not - provides defense attorneys with far too many opportunities to claim "no one knew you were the police."
• supervisor recommendations on paper. Let's face it - Tact has devolved into a favor-based assignment. There have always been goofs, but it used to be cops with some significant drive who made the teams. Cops who could smell guns, spot hot rides, knew the players, could puzzle out the dope operation, things that come with experience. The really good Tact supervisors spotted these cops and recruited them. Nowadays, sergeants don't get to pick their teams, they get told who is coming over. Hell, the lieutenants don't even get to pick their sergeants. If the Department went back to actual supervisory input, then the white shirts (who talk among themselves) would know who the dedicated and smart workers are, and who's getting Court Deviations for missing Traffic Court or Log Numbers for verbally abusing citizens, and they wouldn't be on Tact. And then, make the supervisor responsible for the recommendations.

Unfortunately, there will be objections to these reasonable suggestions. We've made them before in one form or another, here and elsewhere. Our point, however clumsily we try to make it, is that experience is the greatest teacher in the police profession, and when combined with decent training is the only smart way forward to recover from this tragedy.

No one wants to be where where the Department is at today.