Who's Watching the Watchers?

A police-oversight agency is shuttered.


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Published: Jan 10, 2008

Oversight

Edwin Pace, deputy director of the city's most powerful law enforcement watchdog, is used to sorting through stacks of police documents, using that information to author reports that exceed hundreds of pages.

But the most important thing Pace has written during his time at the Integrity and Accountability Office was small enough to post on his office door. It's a one-page letter, dated Dec. 1, to then-Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson that concluded: "All investigations and audits by the [IAO] of the Philadelphia Police Department will be terminated."

The IAO is Philadelphia's most powerful civilian-controlled police oversight group. It was created in 1996 as a result of a lawsuit settlement between the local NAACP and the city after the 39th District scandal, when police officers were found using excessive force and tampering with evidence — like planting drugs — to win cases. The office was monitored by federal Judge Stewart Dalzell, and was granted somewhat superhuman powers: the ability to see most police documents upon request, publish reports with recommendations, and arguably most important, be a permanent office. (The IAO's civilian-oversight counterpart, the Police Advisory Commission, remains open, but doesn't have free access to police records.)

How can the city close a permanent office?

According to Romulo Diaz, city solicitor in Mayor John Street's administration, the watchdog group was no longer necessary and the NAACP agreed to close the IAO by withdrawing from their lawsuit settlement with the city.

"We feel that the police department has changed, and that it's not economically sensible to keep the office in operation," he said just days before he left office in January.

Pace is holding out hope for the new administration. When Nutter was Fourth District councilman, he created the Police Advisory Commission and recently appointed Joan L. Markman, an assistant attorney in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office, to the new position of chief integrity officer.

A spokesperson said that Nutter plans to reopen the office and is interviewing candidates for the position. Nutter has decided to revisit several decisions made during the final days of the Street Administration, like granting Sugarhouse a last-minute permit to level the ground where they hope to build a waterfront casino.

In his most recent investigation, Pace's was delving into the shooting of Steven "Butter" Miller, the 30-year-old man who was shot at 85 times (and struck at least 20) by police officers at a crowded South Philly intersection in July [Cover Story, "85 Shots," Doron Taussig and Tom Namako, July 26, 2007].

Miller was staggering around Tasker and Taney streets, high on formaldehyde-soaked weed and waving a gun around. Neighbors said seven police officers surrounded him and eventually made the questionable decision to open fire. Instead of reaching a conclusion, Pace had to cancel the investigation and place all his files into city storage.

"When you look at that, I don't think the department is at the point where it doesn't need oversight," Pace said during one of his final days in the office. "There are various incidents in the past that show that there's a need to keep a critical eye on them."

This need, he says, has only become more obvious in the past month.

Early on Jan. 1, police shot into the house of a man they thought pointed a handgun at them, grazing a 9-year-old boy in the side and killing 33-year-old Abebe Isaac. The family's attorney told the Inquirer that there was "no excuse" for the shooting.

That may be light criticism compared to the complaints anticipated for the areas declared a "crime emergency" by newly inaugurated Mayor Michael Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. On the campaign trail, Nutter said that hot-spot areas could be locked down to pedestrian and vehicle traffic and see an increase in stop-question-frisk tactics to determine if someone is carrying an illegal gun. (Johnson successfully tried similar tactics to stop drug dealing in 1998 when he flooded certain open-air markets with police.) While Pace said he's sure the police will professionally handle the crime emergency, an independent watchdog should still vet citizen complaints.

"As the new administration talks about stepped-up policing efforts, it could result in great tensions between the police and community," said Ellen Green-Ceisler, former IAO director who is now a Common Pleas Court judge. "One way to alleviate tension is for the public to be confident there's an independent entity that's evaluating police conduct or misconduct."

Talk about closing the IAO first hit newspapers in May 2005, when the local NAACP president, J. Whyatt Mondesire, told City Paper that they were withdrawing from the suit because "times have changed," and that "the office has outlived its usefulness."

The truth is, according to Green-Ceisler, the office was never given the credence it deserved: "It was supposed to be a permanent, it was supposed to be fully resourced, and it was never fully established that way."

Instead, the office was slowly fazed out. After Green-Ceisler left, relations between the office, the Street Administration and Police Department didn't get any better. Pace was left on his own, never being promoted to director yet never getting a new boss. His case load grew to an unmanageable size. And the department didn't implement any of the IAO's major recommendations from a report that addressed the inadequacies of the police firearms training program, he said, such as requiring officers to spend more time at a target practice range.

"Civilian oversight of police is on the rise and is being strengthened in cities around the country," Green-Ceisler said. "I would say closing the office is a step backward for Philadelphia."

(tom.namako@citypaper.net)