Two Tucson police officers are facing discipline for their actions during an immigration rights protest downtown last year that turned violent, the department said Thursday in announcing the findings from reviews of that incident and another one in which a motorcyclist was killed during a police chase.
The reports released Thursday are from the department’s new Critical Incident Review Board, which has been tasked to look into what Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus called “sentinel events” for the department. These are incidents, he said, such as shootings involving officers, police chases that end in injury or death, or other events that could result in the community losing confidence in the department.
In addition to the protest review, the 16-member board also found that two officers involved in the motorcycle chase violated department rules but that the cause of the accident was the motorcyclist’s attempt to flee from police and not from officers’ violations of department policies.
Magnus said by reviewing the incidents in a detailed manner with a panel made up of officers, city officials and civilians would result in ways to make the department better and provide for more transparency for the public.
“We want to learn from the past to do better in the future,” the chief said at a news conference downtown.
The panel was formed last year and has been busy, Magnus said. The board is currently dealing with nine incidents.
Magnus wouldn’t go into details about the discipline of the two officers who handled the immigration-rights protest on Feb. 16, 2017, near the federal courthouse, saying that it had to be handled through proper internal channels and would likely be made public in several weeks. Four protesters were arrested on suspicion of assaulting officers when a large group moved from the sidewalk into the street. Some of the protesters later filed a lawsuit against several officers.
The CIRB’s report on the incident listed two officers who violated the department’s general orders including Officer Ryan Green, who is seen in a widely distributed video of the protest knocking an elderly woman to the ground and using pepper spray on several other protesters. The report said he violated five department rules, or general orders, including unjustified use of force in knocking the woman to the ground, using pepper spray on a female protester and using an “impact push” on another protester that was not justified.
The report also said Lt. David Leotaud violated three general orders. The report was particularly critical of Leotaud’s actions during the protest, saying his failure to respond to an emergency call for officer assistance issued during the incident was “unacceptable.”
“Lt. Leotaud had command responsibilities he did not meet,” the report said.
The report said the supervision of the incident was inadequate, prioritization of tasks was lacking, and an incident commander was not properly designated during the protest.
Magnus said the department will use the CIRB report and recommendations to make changes in the way it trains officers, supervisors, improve chain-of-command issues and how the department responds to future demonstrations and police chases.
He said changes have already been implemented on how the department handles large protests, including developing a better chain of command, requiring an incident commander at the event, and creation of a new section in the department rulebook called “First Amendment Activity” that outlines expectations of officers in dealing with crowds.
The department has also created a team of specially trained officers, called the Community Network Team, that will work with groups planning gatherings. The officers will be on hand at the events to “engage with the public, have an open demeanor and promote dialogue,” Magnus said.
He said the team has already worked several gatherings with success, including working with groups that turned out to protest and support the recent speech by former President Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
Fatal motorcycle chase
The board review of the police chase that lead to the fatal motorcycle crash on July 11, 2016, said the incident occurred as a result of the suspect, Christopher Hoffman, fleeing from officers, and not from violations of department rules. Hoffman was killed when his motorcycle collided with a police car, driven by Officer Adam Smith, that was making a U-turn on South Swan Road and East Holmes Street.
The report said Smith did not violate department rules and was simply trying to make a U-turn when the crash occurred. Smith told investigators he didn’t think the motorcyclist was near him when he made the U-turn.
The report did say there were deficiencies in policy, training and equipment that were contributing factors to the fatal incident. The board also said that direct supervision was lacking during part of the incident, the role of the department’s helicopter in pursuits needs to be better defined and there were radio communication problems.
Two officers were found to have violated general orders in this incident.
Sgt. Vinicius Da Cruz was determined to have violated five general orders, mainly for his supervision during the incident, and Officer Nicolo Solarino was identified in the report for violating five department rules during the chase.
Magnus said the department has made numerous revisions to its rules concerning vehicle operations to enhance safety, improve training and give better guidance on when officers should pursue a suspect. The department is also working with the city to begin using a driver behavior monitoring system in police cars to help improve safety.
