Police shooting files to be closed

The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office will no longer release documents from the case files of police shootings, ending a unique policy that allowed a rare, detailed view into the investigations of deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers.

In place of a trove of documents that were previously released, the DA’s Office will now begin publicly commenting on police shootings. Under a new policy, whenever an officer is cleared of criminal wrongdoing in a shooting investigation, prosecutors will issue a “determination letter” explaining their decision not to file charges.

The policy shift will fundamentally change what the public learns about police shootings in Riverside County. Hefty binders filled with files will be replaced by shorter, to-the-point statements. The decisions of local prosecutors will be easier to understand, but at a time when nationwide outrage over some shootings have increased calls for transparency, the public will ultimately get less information about each shooting in the county.

“In my mind, this is a better policy,” said District Attorney Mike Hestrin, who initiated the change. “It’s more transparent, because it puts our reasons down on paper in a way that is readily available for the public and the media ... Our analysis will be out there, as opposed to shoving a 1,500 page book at someone and saying ‘have at it.’”

Transparency advocates say the DA’s office should do both — explain its decisions and keep the files open. A policing expert added the new policy is bucking a trend amongst law enforcement, many of whom are now releasing more information about police shootings, not less.

Chris Burbank, a former Salt Lake City police chief who now works with UCLA’s Center of Policing Equity, said that since the shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson one year ago, the erosion of public trust in police has spurred many law enforcement agencies to start releasing documents, photos, audio recordings and video footage.

The local DA’s office chose an odd time to go against the flow, Burbank said.

“This sounds very unusual in comparison to where the nation is going,” Burbank said. “Most agencies, most cities and most district attorneys are moving towards a more robust release policy.”

Hestrin’s changes bring an end to the DA’s longstanding policy, which was unique among Southern California prosecutors and likely beyond. That policy was created to reassure the public that officers were not above the law after the controversial death of Tyisha Miller, a Rubidoux woman who was shot by Riverside police in 1998.

Under this policy, when an officer was cleared in a shooting investigation, the DA’s office would confirm the decision but make no other comment. The office would then give journalists and the general public a one-year window to review case files from the shooting investigation. These files — which spanned hundreds of pages — included interviews with officers, witness statements, shooting diagrams, autopsy results and sometimes photos.

The policy was so unusual because many of the documents were exempt from open government law but were released anyway. In the absence of a future lawsuit, most of these documents could not be obtained anywhere else.

This year, the Desert Sun used the DA’s detail-rich case file to scrutinize shootings in two investigative articles.

In February, the Sun reviewed more than 1,000 pages from the shooting of Marine Cpl. Allan DeVillena, a drunk driver who was shot to death by police in Palm Springs in 2012. The story revealed that the tactics used by Officer Chad Nordman left his partner with "no choice" but to pull the trigger, escalating a confrontation with DeVillena.

In June, the newspaper reviewed more than 500 pages from the shooting of Alejandro Rendon, an Indio man who was killed while fleeing by Indio Police Officer Alex Franco in 2013. The documents showed Franco had attended the funeral of a murdered officer one day beforehand, and was still in grief when he shot Rendon.

In both of these stories, the revelations came directly from transcripts of interviews with police officers. Although they were made public under the old transparency policy, these transcripts will no longer be released under the new policy.

The new policy was approved on June 23, less than a week after the story on the Indio shooting published.

Hestrin said the policy change was motivated, at least in part, by complaints from other media organizations, who claimed the DA’s Office was “burying” answers by releasing case files instead of answering questions.

“Why not do both?” urged Peter Scheer, a transparency expert. “Ideally, you want an explanation, but you also want the opportunity to dig into the documentation using that explanation as a road map. I think everybody is better off if you have both.”

Scheer is the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a California-based nonprofit dedicated to free speech and open government. When told about the policy change at the DA’s office, Scheer commended the office for releasing so many documents under its old policy, but said the new policy would ultimately be less transparent.

“I believe the more transparency there is about these decisions, the more credibility the criminal justice system has in its decisions not to prosecute,” Scheer said.

Burbank, the former Salt Lake City police chief, agrees.

“I would always advise you release as much as you can,” Burbank added. “It puts you in a position of trust.”

Although the new DA’s policy will halt the release of case files in most police shootings, Hestrin said he retained the authority to “open the book” in the case of an extremely controversial shooting. These requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The DA’s Office did not release a copy of the new policy. Hestrin said the new transparency guidelines are part of a larger policy that deals with police shootings in general, and portions of that policy were still being finalized and not yet ready for release.

On Friday afternoon, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Association released a statement praising the DA’s Office for the policy shift. The union said the new detirmination letters would end unexplained decisions about police shootings, which sometimes seeded public doubt.

“An unexplained decision by the District Attorney to decline to pursue charges in a police shooting case leaves a vacuum that all too often is filled by distrust, suspicion, speculation and innuendo, the union statement said. “A fully articulated and supported decision by the District Attorney will go a long way to restoring public and officer confidence and transparency in these volatile circumstances.”

Reporter Brett Kelman can be reached by phone at (760) 778-4642, by email at brett.kelman@desertsun.com, or on Twitter @TDSbrettkelman.