LULAC RELEASE ON POLICE MISCONDUCT

California LULAC Civil Rights Commission
P.O. Box 433 Torrance CA 90508-0433
http://www.calulac.org

For Immediate Release: February 13, 2006
For Information: Jan B. Tucker (310.618.9596 or Cell 818.720.3719) Angel Luevano (925.813.2547)

CALIFORNIA LULAC CALLS ON GOVERNOR TO
FREE WRONGFULLY CONVICTED INMATE
Proposes Major Reforms to Combat Police Misconduct

The board of directors of the California League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) voted unanimously on Saturday February 11 to ask Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to order the release of Timothy Fonseca who is serving a sentence for his alleged role in the April 23, 1995 murder of Austrian immigrant Arthur Mayer in Los Angeles. In a related move, the board also unanimously adopted a resolution adopting a “Model Ordinance for Civilian Oversight of Police Misconduct” and proposed a series of reforms to combat police misconduct, citing the recent San Bernardino County police shootings of African American Tyrone Brooks and Latino Elio Carrion as examples.

Fonseca’s case has been championed by Michigan based Project Innocent as well as the Canadian based Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC).

The resolution adopted calling for Fonseca’s release cites police blunders in the way that eyewitness identification procedures were conducted and calls upon law enforcement to adopt better practices including adoption of National Institute of Justice procedural guidelines first published in 1999, “sequential” as opposed to “simultaneous” identification procedures in which suspects are ruled out one by one instead of compared to each other, and “double blind” procedures in which the officer conducting the line-up or displaying photos does not know who the real suspects are in order to prevent improper or inadvertent coaching of witnesses.

According to Angel Luevano, LULAC State Director, “Timothy Fonseca has passed a lie detector test conducted by nationally recognized polygraph expert Dr. Louis Rovner. With this example we are calling for amendments to the California Evidence Code to make conclusive polygraph results admissible in death penalty proceedings and with Habeas Corpus petitions. In fact, the state of California should pay for them to save the taxpayers money: it costs $30,000 or more to incarcerate California convicts each year and only about $500 for a polygraph test. For each innocent prisoner freed, the first year’s savings will pay for 60 more tests.”

The resolution adopted by California LULAC which adopts the “Model Ordinance for Civilian Oversight of Police Misconduct” proposes a wide array of reforms for state, county, and city governments, including:

• Elected civilian police commissions with representation from the unions representing police officers
• Broad investigative authority for commissions to investigate police misconduct as well as complaints by officers regarding the administration and supervision of their departments
• Admissibility of voluntary polygraph results in commission proceedings with tests administered by licensed private investigators who are American Polygraph Association certified
• A requirement that victims of Information Practices Act violations by police departments (the California equivalent of the Federal Privacy Act) be notified of the violation along with a prohibition against the employing agency from paying a punitive damage award for the offender
• Authorization for the commission to use the services of police personnel and/or licensed private investigators, both of whom are required to cross train in a variety of types of investigative fields and to take ethnic studies courses consistent with the populations that the respective jurisdiction contains
• Adoption of the 1999 National Institute of Justice eyewitness identification guidelines and mandating “sequential” and “double blind” procedures.

The Model Ordinance was authored by Jan Tucker, California LULAC Chief Investigator for its Civil Rights Commission. The resolution was moved and seconded by LULAC Civil Rights Commissioners Tomas Gonzalez and Gil Flores who have been active in a series of investigations against incidents of police misconduct by California LULAC.

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