A still from a video released by the Pasadena Police Department. Insert: Daniel Warren (Photo & Video – PPD)
An Independent Police Auditor released a report, dated February 1, 2024, of the Pasadena Police fatal officer-involved shooting of Daniel Warren on May 17, 2019.
By News Desk
The auditor, Richard Rosenthal, indicates that he has had a chance to review the criminal and administrative investigation reports, the Department’s Use-of-Force Board’s work, and the Department’s ultimate adopted findings about the shooting.
Long delay prevented effective oversight and deprived the department of useful feedback
The dominant finding of the auditor is that the long amount of time that this process took is a detriment to providing the department and its officers with valuable feedback that could improve its procedures and tactics for similar events going forward. Because of the long delay, he found that the “Use-of-Force Review Board work in this case ended up being more form over substance. In addition, the [PPD’s] Professional Standards Unit investigation was inadequate in that no witness interviews were conducted, and not all potential violations of policy and potential tactical deficiencies were identified and evaluated.”
Several violations of policy
Rosenthal detailed several violations of policy that occurred, including the failure of two of the responding officers to have their body-worn cameras on them and turned on. He also commented on the police department’s administrative review ignoring the recommendation from the previous Kendrick McDade fatal officer-involved shooting and failing to conduct any follow-up interviews of involved officers or of supervisors. He listed several issues that should have been examined by such interviews, such as the decision to hand-cuff Mr. Warren “even though by all appearances he was deceased at the time and not a threat to anyone.”
Auditor recommendations
The auditor recommends two significant changes to the policy and practice of Pasadena’s policing:
- “The Department should conduct concurrent administrative and criminal investigations of all police-related critical incidents. This is a practice that was adopted many years ago by the Los Angeles Police Department and is a proven way to ensure that a department can learn from its mistakes and adopt those learned lessons in a timely and effective manner.” In this case the PPD’s practice of waiting for the District Attorney (DA) to conclude its review of possible criminal charges meant a four-year delay in starting its administrative review. He calls on the Chief of Police to abandon that policy and conduct administrative reviews without consideration of the DA’s timeline to complete its work.
- “The City [should] consider supporting a Charter change to permit the PPD to confer with an Independent Police Monitor prior to the completion of internal investigations and during Use-of-Force Board meetings to ensure thorough investigations and administrative reviews of police-involved critical incidents by the Professional Standards Unit and the Use-of-Force Review Board.”
> You can view the entire report at this link.
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