BLAME IT ON MOONBEAM’S REALIGNMENT, NOT JUST ON THE PROBATION DEPARTMENT

Here is another rip-roaring success story of Gov. Moonbeam’s prison realignment.

REPORT SAYS ‘WALK OF FAME’ STABBING DEATH PREVENTABLE, BLAMES PROBATION DEPARTMENT FAILURES
By Tami Abdollah

Associated Press
August 15, 2013

LOS ANGELES — A woman's fatal stabbing on Hollywood's Walk of Fame may have been prevented if there had not been several systemic failures in the Los Angeles County Probation Department, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday.

The 26-page report released in response to a public records request detailed multiple communication breakdowns between county agencies and law enforcement along with the Probation Department's inadequate detention policies and lack of staff training.

Dustin Kinnear, 26, is suspected of killing 23-year-old Christine Calderon on June 19, roughly two months after his April 6 release from prison. He was ordered to report to county probation officers for supervision but never did.

Instead, he was "flash incarcerated" — temporarily thrown in jail three times for failing to report to county officials for supervision. He also was arrested for lying to a peace officer, convicted of battery and sentenced to three days in jail.

Reaver Bingham, deputy chief of field services, said the Probation Department is revising its flash incarceration policy so that a probationer could be re-incarcerated after a first failure to report lands them in jail. Bingham noted it was impossible to ensure someone didn't re-offend once released from prison, but "we hope this will reduce the likelihood," he said.

"The moment there's a stepping out of line, we will move it forward with the most appropriate way of addressing that, which would be a zero tolerance for anything that endangers public safety, and pursue a revocation" of their release status, Bingham said.

The report found little communication between the staffs of the probation and mental health departments and said insufficient information was exchanged between probation and the sheriff's department, which could help determine if an arrestee should be released with GPS monitoring.

Probation officials said the department has struggled to deal with multiple data systems maintained by law enforcement agencies and in the case of Kinnear its workers had failed to access one of their systems where Los Angeles police had flagged his arrests.

"Had the department been aware of the additional criminal arrests that the defendant was incurring it MAY have raised his risk level to a point that a revocation petition would have resulted in a longer term period of incarceration," probation officials wrote in the report.

Meanwhile, Kinnear's case bounced between internal probation units with no clear designation of who was responsible for completing the revocation report that would take him off the streets, the report said.

Bingham said the department is creating a "complex case committee" that will examine cases of ex-cons released to county supervision who don't report to probation officers so these cases aren't missed. That committee will include involved law enforcement agencies, mental health officials when appropriate, and possibly prosecutors.

"If there are instances where new prosecutions need to be enacted or more stringent supervision techniques, be it GPS, be it increased reporting ... we're going to utilize that committee to do so," Bingham said.

The new policies and more thorough case work will be emphasized through better training for the probation workers, Bingham said. The report found that probation staff working on his case didn't have prior experience dealing with "adult field or supervision." And it noted that "it is very easy to ... come to a conclusion that the revocation was appropriate; however, given that the mental health information and new criminal behavior was not being relayed to the supervision staff, their failure to revoke is defensible."

Kinnear pleaded not guilty in June to a murder charge. Authorities say Kinnear was panhandling when he stabbed Calderon to death after she refused to pay him $1 for taking a picture.

Kinnear had been released to county supervision as part of AB 109, the criminal justice realignment program pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The law was in response to a federal court order to reduce California's prison population.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who requested the probation department's review of Kinnear's history leading up to Calderon's death, said the case was a "wake-up call" and that the probation department had identified critical communication "choke points" that needed to be fixed.

"Some of the rules were in place since AB 109," Yaroslavsky said. "They just weren't being followed."