The Avalon City Council this week directed the commander of the Avalon Sheriff’s Station to leave names out of the weekly Sheriff’s Log he writes for The Catalina Islander.
The council didn’t cast a formal vote on the matter, but none of the council members argued in favor of keeping the names.
City Attorney Scott Campbell didn’t comment during the meeting, though he participated by phone. When the Islander requested a comment on this issue last week, he politely declined comment.
The Islander is a privately owned newspaper. City governments have no legal say over the contents of a newspaper. However, the Sheriff’s Log is written by Capt. John Hocking, commander of the Avalon Sheriff’s Station. The city has a contract with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to provide Avalon with law enforcement services, which gives the City Council a say in station operations.
From the start of the discussion, Hocking made it clear he would do what the council wanted.
Yesenia S. De La Rosa proposed leaving names out of the Sheriff’s Log during a July 21 council discussion of the #8CANTWAIT reform campaign to reduce police brutality. De La Rosa was concerned that putting names in the log would promote racism and racial stereotypes.
De La Rosa elaborated on her position in a July 23 email: “We are moving into a society that encourages and facilitates help for individuals to rebuild their lives. To accomplish this, we need to get rid of these antiquated ways of shaming people publicly. It is an ethical and moral problem. It creates discrimination and has become a social-justice issue. The sheriff’s log is a tool to alert the community of when and where crimes are occurring, not to incite gossip. This content lives on forever on the internet. A 3-minute read is unfair to the lifelong effects it can have on someone. The legal principle in the American criminal justice system says innocent until proven guilty, and by adding names we take that away.”
During the Aug. 4 council meeting, De La Rosa said the issue with her was including the names in the log. She said she looked it up and she had determined no other city in Los Angeles County does it.
However, Councilmember Cinde MacGugan-Cassidy said that in a brief 20-second Google search during the Aug. 4 meeting, she was able to look at the daily booking report for the Santa Monica Police Department which included names, birthdates, sex, race and primary charge against arrestees.
“It’s is actually a factual statement that there are names put in other newspapers,” Cassidy said.
And she said in some cases the logs are issued by the police agencies themselves.
Mayor Anni Marshall pointed out that the all the information is public. “Anybody could get that information and write an article and submit it to the Islander,” Marshall said.
“Yes, but why contribute to the issue?” De La Rosa asked.
Councilmember Lisa Lavelle said she supported including the age and gender of an arrestee and the general information, but opposed including a name. She pointed out that a first name was recently misspelled in the log and there was another person on the Island with the same first name as it was misspelled in the log.
Capt. Hocking later said it was his only mistake in 2008 logs. He accidentally dropped one letter “L” from a name.
While Cassidy supported leaving names out of the log, she didn’t agree that putting the names in was necessarily a racial issue.
Of the logs she reviewed all the way back to 2014 (and in a 1962 Islander), she found no group represented by name more prevalently than another.. She said someone might have a particular name and might not have that heritage.
Cassidy said there was a barrage of race-related issues that the community needs to address
“I don’t expect people to admit that it happens,” De La Rosa.
According to De La Rosa, putting names in the log has affected people who have moved to the mainland.
Sheriff’s Station Commander Capt. Hocking read a list of the things the law allows law enforcement agencies to release: name of arrestee, the current charge, the arrestee’s occupation, physical description, time and date of arrest,, time and date of booking, location of arrest, the factual circumstances surrounding the arrest, amount of bail, time and manor of release, where the individual was held, other charges including warrants probation and parole status. Law enforcement may also release calls for service, time location, nature of the response, age of the victims, descriptions of suspects and more.
Some mainland law enforcement agencies provide summary logs with a minimum of information. Others release redacted (censored) dispatch logs.