The Denver Posteditorial
Justice served
Friday, April 16, 2004 -
The 10-month suspension Denver police officer James Turney received Thursday for fatally shooting a mentally disabled 15-year-old boy sent a clear message that the days of wrist-slap police discipline are over.
In a break with the secretive practices of the past, Mayor John Hickenlooper's manager of safety, Al LaCabe, issued a letter explaining how he reached his decision on Turney's punishment. LaCabe overrode police chief Gerry Whitman's recommendation of a 20-day suspension for Turney, who shot Paul Childs, an African-American teen, to death in the doorway of his home last July 5. The lengthier punishment was for Turney's lack of judgment and the ill-advised tactics that led up to the shooting. LaCabe found that when the officer fired his weapon, he didn't violate department deadly force policy in shooting the youth, who was holding a kitchen knife. An alleged telephone death threat that Turney made to his former mother-in-law in Iowa the day before the shooting, plus 147 minutes the officer spent making calls on his personal cellphone while on duty that same day, also were factored into the punishment. When the suspension ends, Turney will be assigned to administrative duties rather than go back on patrol. Turney's suspension was less punitive than the year's suspension without pay urged by black clerical leaders but far harsher than the police union's demand that he not be punished for doing his job. Turney can appeal the suspension to the Denver Civil Service Commission. After the Childs shooting, Hickenlooper created a task force to produce a new deadly force policy for police. The department also has stepped up the number of officers who have received crisis intervention training to defuse volatile situations and acquired 100 more Tasers, electronic devices that can disable rather than kill a person. We favored Turney's dismissal, but the lengthy suspension is nonetheless a stronger sanction than that given in some previous police shootings. In the fatal 1996 shooting of Jeff Truax outside a Denver night spot, for example, Ken Chavez, an off-duty cop working security, received only a letter of reprimand. (Chavez has been involved in several shootings.) Firing a cop is difficult in Denver. After Police Chief David Michaud sacked Officer Matthew Graves in 1997 for pointing a gun at the head of a handcuffed suspect in a holding cell, the Civil Service Commission overruled him and Graves got his job back. The concept of "comparative discipline," under which no officer may receive a more severe punishment than other officers who committed similar offenses, is the Catch-22 that ties the hands of police commanders and the manager of safety in crafting penalties for infractions. But it's a rule much liked by the Police Protective Association, the union representing most Denver cops. Turney's punishment signals a commitment to implementing more meaningful police discipline in the future. Coupled with a better-defined deadly force policy, that should make the streets of Denver safer for everyone. |