Killing people is seen as a routine outcome, not as an indicator of the need for change: Orange County Sheriff's Department versus Fullerton Police Department

Fullerton Police Department.  Fullerton's police department completely revamped its use of force, training, and other practices after police officers beat Kelly Thomas, a homeless man, to death in July 2011

While the city paid out a big judgement to his family, rather than accept what happened as "an accident," the City of Fullerton evaluated various police processes and changed them, to reduce the likelihood of injury and death in interactions between the police and the public ("Here's how Fullerton police have improved since Kelly Thomas' death." Orange County Register).

The changes in practice were not limited to dealing with homeless people or people in mental distress, but in how all of the city's police officers interact with the public and how they are trained.

The police department has set a goal of being one of the best police departments in the country for its size, and measures its success through annual independent reviews.  From the article:

The study offers a half-dozen recommendations – compared with 59 in its first review – that range from striving to use the least force necessary to more cautious foot pursuits. 

... Four years ago, OIR Group recommended that officers – when safely possible – employ less force by increasing time and distance, using cover and concealment, creating barriers, and calling and waiting for backup.

“The department,” the document says, “has substantially addressed many of the shortcomings we noted in our 2012 report.” 

First, a new training room was built for officers to practice lesser-force techniques. Then, a video-based interactive training system was installed. It offers more than 200 bad-guy scenarios, and each one can be altered with the touch of a screen. 

“These upgrades in training facilities,” the report concludes, “allow trainers to emphasize the importance of tactical alternatives to force, particularly deadly force.” 

The training may be paying off. Citizen complaints have dropped from a high of 36 in 2014 to a low of 24 last year. 

Still, the new report offers new suggestions. They include requiring incident reports to check off threat perception, least-use-of-force efforts, and adherence to reporting policies. 

The process in Fullerton is appears to be a national model, unlike the whitewashes that seem to be happening in most other cities when it comes to evaluating police departments and officers in terms of excessive force and deaths at the hands of police officers.

--  Fullerton Police Department: Audit of Force Reviews and Internal Investigations, August 2016, OIR Group

Orange County Sheriff's Department deputies kill a homeless man in San Clemente, September 2020 ("DA clears deputy who shot and killed homeless Black man in San Clemente," Orange County Register). 

Officers from the homeless liaison unit !!!!!!! confronted a homeless man who was jaywalking.  In the struggle that resulted, they determined he reached for one of the officer's gun, so they shot and killed him.

The DA cleared the officers, saying he was reaching for the gun, but that is disputed.  Amazingly, the DA said that the man wasn't jaywalking (although they said he was crossing against a green light giving them still the reason to stop him).

Process redesign.  It's so obvious the officers in San Clemente mishandled this, and is just as egregious as the actions of the West Valley Utah Police Department in their apprehension and subsequent killing of a man in mental distress, which was documented by the Salt Lake Tribune ("A West Valley City police officer killed a man inside the police department. It was his third shooting") and later featured in a Frontline documentary, "Shots Fired."

It happens over and over and over again because police departments, their "overseers" -- the fact is that true oversight is minimal -- elected officials and the public see such killings as routine, maybe unfortunate, but not as an indicator of process failure.

For example, I argue that the high rate of settlements for police misconduct ought to be seen as an indicator of system failure ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?," 2020).

Instead, rather than get fired, the West Valley police officer serial killer got a commendation.  And the family just got a settlement "West Valley City settles lawsuit with mother of man shot, killed while handcuffed in police station").

Why is Fullerton's police department such an outlier?  This is something I need to track down.