The Cautionary Instruction: Pittsburgh Police Department's morale problem

Matthew T. Mangino
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Ipso Facto
July 25, 2014
"What's going on in Pittsburgh is a crisis in confidence," said Councilman Rev. Ricky Burgess during acting Public Safety Director Stephen Bucar's confirmation hearing this week.
"I absolutely agree with you that there's a confidence problem in some parts of the city," responded Bucar. "In attending these police chief meetings, I can see some of the anger and frustration in some areas of the city."
Bucar acknowledged low morale at the police bureau, but he was quick to mention that the department is a “very professional organization.”
Bucar should be applauded for acknowledging the problem, but the mere fact that he brought it up points to the work needed to rectify the problem. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, when he was General Eisenhower was constantly concerned with troop morale. He once said, "The best morale exists when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy."
What Eisenhower meant was you cannot just talk about improving morale you’ve got to do something about it.
Bucar went on to say, the department has a “small number of bad seeds” and they get all the publicity. “It taints and paints with a broad brush,” he said, adding that public perception of officers affects their work.
Although research on police morale has evolved significantly over the years, almost all of the early research in this field focused on operational stress that officers face. The source of low morale was based on the premise that law enforcement professionals are placed in continuously difficult situations and are required to deal with these situations in the course of their duties.
What has evolved recently is the theory of organizational stress. A study of more than 2,500 officers indicated that “the findings reveal the majority of the 10 greatest sources of anger and frustration among officers have a crucial common denominator, their administrators.”
Low morale, whether operation or organizational, has consequences. A morale problem can increase turnover, absenteeism and low productivity — all of which make neighborhoods more vulnerable. Low morale can also spur civil liability which depletes resources and drives up taxpayer costs. Finally, and most tragic, low morale drives up officer suicide.
Bucar says the way forward is to build leadership that instills respect in the rank and file, and hire a new chief who not only can inspire officers but successfully reach out to communities that have seen a deteriorating relationship with the department.
“It can’t be somebody who hasn’t earned that respect by being in law enforcement for a number of years,” he said. “I have to build that trust and I have to be confident that my police chief shares that interest in drilling down in those communities that don’t trust the police.”

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Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George, P.C. He is the former district attorney of Lawrence County and just completed a six year term on the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole. His weekly column on crime and punishment is syndicated by GateHouse New Service. You can read his musings on the criminal justice system at www.mattmangino.com and follow Matt on Twitter @MatthewTMangino. His new book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010: The Crimes, Arrests, Trials, Appeals, Last Meals, Final Words and Executions of 46 Persons in the United States is now available from McFarland & Company publishers.
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Mangino interviewed on WFMJ-TV regarding Pennsylvania's tougher child abuse laws

Watch the interview on WFMJ-TV.           

(WFMJ-TV) Pennsylvania's new laws that just took effect in January, will come into play when a mother accused of a severe case of child abuse comes to trial.
Mary Rader, and her parents Dennis and Deana Beighley, who live together in a home in Greenville could receive as much as 20 years in prison if they are found guilty of aggravated assault and other criminal charges.
Police reports state Rader's seven year old son weighed about 25 pounds and was described as a human skeleton, by doctors.
Attorney Matthew Mangino said state lawmakers toughened Pennsylvania's laws after former Penn State University football coach, Jerry Sandusky, was convicted of abusing 10 boys. In the past teachers, coaches and others were not included in the definition of child abuser. Laws were also expanded to include acts of omission.
"So, if you are in a home where you know a child is being abused and you let that abuse continue, that omission could make you responsible as well," said Mangino.
Although Pennsylvania is one of 10 states without a statute specifically addressing torture, Mangino said the laws have always been a powerful tool that allows the county District Attorney to bring serious charges.
"There are certainly situations where torture wouldn't amount to aggravated assault. In this case, prosecutors are pursuing the most serious charge they can with the most serious penalties that are available," said Mangino.
In addition, people accused of abusing a child can be criminally charged whether or not they intended to harm that child.
The boy has gained significant weight but faces serious hurdles due to the alleged neglect.
A preliminary hearing for Rader and the Beighleys is scheduled for July 30.

Another botched execution, Arizona execution takes 2 hours

The 26th execution of 2014
A convicted murderer in Arizona gasped and snorted for more than 90 minutes after a lethal injection July 23, 2014, his attorneys and witnesses said, dying in a botched execution that prompted the governor to order an investigation and the state Supreme Court to mandate that the materials used in the procedure be preserved, reported the Los Angeles Times.
Joseph Rudolph Wood III's execution almost certainly will reinvigorate the national debate over the death penalty. He received an injection at 1:52 p.m. at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. The execution became so prolonged that reporters witnessing the execution counted several hundred of his wheezes before he was finally declared dead at 3:49 p.m. — nearly two hours after the procedure began.
The incident comes in a year in which lethal injections had already triggered controversy over botched procedures and secrecy.

Wood had fought without success to get more information about the drugs and the expertise of his executioners. His request, which was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, prompted one prominent appellate judge to call for the return of the firing squad.
The Arizona Supreme Court ordered officials to preserve the remaining drugs used in his execution and the drug labels.
Gov. Jan Brewer ordered the state Department of Corrections to conduct a full review, saying she was “concerned” about the length of time it took Wood to die.
“One thing is certain, however, inmate Wood died in a lawful manner, and by eyewitness and medical accounts he did not suffer,” Brewer said in a statement. “This is in stark comparison to the gruesome, vicious suffering that he inflicted on his two victims — and the lifetime of suffering he has caused their family.”
Wood, 55, was sentenced to death in 1991 for the August 1989 shooting deaths of his estranged girlfriend, Debra Dietz, and her father, Eugene Dietz, in Tucson.
“This man conducted a horrific murder, and you guys are going, ‘Let's worry about the drugs,'” Richard Brown, Debra Dietz's brother-in-law, told reporters. “Why didn't they give him a bullet, why didn't we give him Drano?”
Wood's last words were to his victims' family, according to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed the execution: “I take comfort knowing today my pain stops, and I said a prayer that on this or any other day you may find peace in all of your hearts and may God forgive you all.”
It took so long for Wood to die after receiving an injection of midazolam combined with hydromorphone that his attorneys filed emergency appeals to save his life.

“At 1:57 p.m [officials] reported that Mr. Wood was sedated, but at 2:02 he began to breathe,” said the legal filing in federal court from public defender Jon M. Sands. “At 2:03 his mouth moved. Mr. Wood has continued to breathe since that time. He has been gasping and snorting for more than an hour. At 3:02 p.m. ... staff rechecked for sedation. He is still alive.”
A Wood attorney also went to the state Supreme Court, which was conducting a hearing by telephone when he was pronounced dead.
The question of whether he suffered divided those who watched the procedure.
Another attorney for Wood, Dale A. Baich, was among them. He said that during the 1 hour and 40 minutes Wood was gasping and snorting, he could not tell whether he was conscious. “There was no sound in the witness room, so we could not hear,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Arizona attorney general's office who was also a witness disputed that. “There was no gasping of air. There was snoring,” Stephanie Grisham said. “He just laid there. It was quite peaceful.”    
Wood's execution revived memories of those in Ohio and Oklahoma this year.
Ohio used the same drug combination to execute Dennis McGuire in January. Witnesses said that “McGuire started struggling and gasping loudly for air, making snorting and choking sounds which lasted for at least 10 minutes, with his chest heaving and his fist clenched.” Ohio executions are on hold while a federal court reviews the state's execution protocol.
Then, in April, Oklahoma murderer Clayton Lockett die bout d of a heart attack 43 minutes after his execution began — and after the state had called off his execution as he writhed and gasped. Details about the lethal drugs and those who administer them are kept secret in many states.
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Federal Judge Calls for Firing Squad to Carry Out Executions

Killing people is a brutal and messy business, and if Americans can't deal with that, they shouldn't be condemning people to death, said a top federal judge, according to the website Newser. In a strongly worded dissent in an Arizona lethal-injection case, Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, calls the current system "inherently flawed" and says states that want to execute inmates should return to more "primitive—and foolproof—methods" of execution, NBC reports. "The guillotine is probably best but seems inconsistent with our national ethos," he writes. "And the electric chair, hanging, and the gas chamber are each subject to occasional mishaps. The firing squad strikes me as the most promising. Eight or 10 large-caliber rifle bullets fired at close range can inflict massive damage, causing instant death every time."
Kozinski says the switch to lethal injections in the '70s was misguided, the Guardian reports. "Subverting medicines meant to heal the human body to the opposite purpose was an enterprise doomed to failure," he writes, adding that drugs are used "to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful—like something any one of us might experience in our final moments. … But executions are, in fact, nothing like that. They are brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality."
The use of a firing squad is not far-fetched.  In my book, The Executioner's Toll, 2010 I chronicled the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner whose 2010 execution in Utah was carried out by firing squad.

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'Stand Your Ground' on trial in Detroit

Jury selection has begun in the murder trial of Theodore Wafer, a 55-year-old Dearborn Heights, Michigan homeowner charged in the shooting death of 19-year-old Detroit native Renisha McBride last year and whose case has grabbed national headlines drawing comparisons to the racially charged Trayvon Martin case in Florida, reported the Detroit News. Like the Martin case, shooter is white and a the victim black.

Wafer is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and felony use of a firearm in McBride’s death. Authorities say Wafer shot McBride in the face with a shotgun as she knocked on the front door to this home in the early morning on Nov. 2, following a car accident. The home is on the Dearborn Heights and Detroit border.

Police say they received a 911 call around 4:42 a.m. reporting a fatal shooting.

“I just shot somebody on my front porch with a shotgun, banging on my door,” Wafer said on the 911 call. Wafer’s lawyers have said he believed McBride was an intruder.

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FedEx Indicted on Drug Distribution Charges

FedEx Corp. was indicted on charges of shipping illegal drugs to online pharmacies that ended up in the hands of dealers and addicts. reported the National Law Journal.
The indictment, brought by a federal grand jury in San Francisco, says FedEx has been shipping controlled substances and misbranded prescription drugs, such as Ambien and Diazepam, for illegal Internet pharmacies since 2000. FedEx continued the activities despite warnings from the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Food and Drug Administration and members of Congress in 2004.
“The advent of Internet pharmacies allowed the cheap and easy distribution of massive amounts of illegal prescription drugs to every corner of the United States, while allowing perpetrators to conceal their identities through the anonymity the Internet provides,” U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said. “This indictment highlights the importance of holding corporations that knowingly enable illegal activity responsible for their role in aiding criminal behavior.”
The indictment alleges conspiracy and distribution of controlled substances and misbranded drugs.
According to federal prosecutors, FedEx couriers in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia had told senior management they feared for their safety, reporting that customers had stopped their trucks on the road, or jumped on them, demanding pills.
The indictment specifically names two online pharmacies, saying they fill orders without requiring a prescription from a legitimate physician.
Prosecutors want FedEx, which is expected to appear in court on July 29, to forfeit $820 million in proceeds from the illegal shipments, according to the indictment.
Last year, United Parcel Service Inc. settled similar allegations for $40 million.
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Missouri executes man who killed three people

The 25th Execution of 2014


Missouri inmate John Middleton was executed on July 16, 2014. His execution for the murders of Alfred Pinegar, Randy Hamilton and Stacey Hodge in Northwest Missouri in 1995 was scheduled to have happened at 12:01 Wednesday morning but was delayed through the day by various court filings.


He died peacefully at 7:06 p.m., strapped to a gurney in the Bonne Terre prison’s death chamber after a frantic two-day effort by his attorneys to save his life.


"You are killing an innocent man,” he said in his last statement.

Middleton barely moved as the lethal injection of pentobarbital was administered, turning his head slightly to the right after looking toward three members of his family when the curtains on the execution chambers windows were opened.  He showed no signs of distress or discomfort.

“Nineteen years seems like a long time to wait for justice,” said Michael Black, an uncle of Alfred Pinegar, after the execution, “It’s a lifetime for a little girl who had to grow up without her father…Our family has waited all this time, never forgetting that our son, grandson, uncle, nephew, father and best friend is not with us.”

“In those 19 years, we, as a family, have had to live with the thoughts of John Middleton being able to enjoy a meal, the smell of spring in the air or any number of simple pleasures,” he continued, “These are things that Alfred, Randy and Stacey cannot enjoy . These simple things we cannot share with Alfred.”

Black said he can go to Pinegar’s grave “and tell him it’s done now; he has finally been punished for his crimes.”

Middleton, a methamphetamine user and dealer in northwest Missouri, murdered the three, considering them “snitches” who had informed law enforcement about his meth dealings.

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