Audit finds Burbank Police Department ‘healthy’ but raises some concerns over use of Tasers, vehicle pursuits

An independent review of the Burbank Police Department’s policies and internal investigations was overall positive with the way the department conducted itself, but the review also offered several recommendations for improvement.

Conducted by the Office of Independent Review, a police oversight organization, the audit looked at 29 cases handled by the department’s internal affairs division in the past year. It is the fourth report of its kind to be conducted on the department since it first contracted with the office in 2012.

The report was formally presented during a joint meeting between the City Council and police commission on Dec. 13.

“What we can say, in a general way, is that the department’s processes are very healthy,” said Stephen Connolly, an auditor with Office of Independent Review.

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Of the 29 incidents, 11 dealt with use of force and five with vehicle pursuits.

Although he praised the department for its thoroughness and transparency for its investigations, Connolly said auditors did find some issues.

With the use-of-force incidents, he said there were a few concerns over the use of Tasers by officers and whether or not it was consistent with department policy.

“Six of the 11 force cases we looked at had a Taser component,” he said.

In those cases, auditors found that officers were “arguably out of sync with BPD’s own policy requirements as well as the evolving and more restrictive legal standards for appropriate deployment” of Tasers. However, the review did not find the officers malicious in their intent.

The Office of Independent Review recommended that the department ensure that its officers are up-to-date on the latest standards for when to implement the use of force appropriately.

Deputy Chief Michael Albanese said the police department is, in fact, working on updating its Taser policy.

“The policy that we have we are in the process of revising because we have a new device,” he said. “There are some subtle nuances and changes to that policy and there’s new protocol issues related to that.”

Albanese said the new devices would have an audio component that would hopefully act more as a deterrent where a Taser wouldn’t have to be used.

When it came to vehicle pursuits, auditors found three out of the five cases were out of department policy.

A new policy was implemented several years ago by the police department in an effort to put restrictions on how and when an officer can engage in a pursuit.

Auditors found that one of the incidents didn’t rise to the occasion of a chase in the first place while in the other two, officers engaged in pursuits under false assumptions.

Officers incorrectly thought they could pursue a suspect in crimes that were not allowed under the new policy.

Much like the use-of-force policy, auditors recommended the department should reinforce its current policy on pursuits and implement any necessary additional training.

“Fortunately, nothing problematic occurred as a result of those [pursuits],” Connolly said.

Auditors also took an extra look at the department’s email practices in light of the controversy surrounding a former deputy chief, Tom Angel, who forwarded emails during his time with the department that were disparaging to multiple ethnic groups.

Connolly said the department has been auditing the emails of random officers since 2012, but that it did not conduct an audit of its own supervisors and command staff until recently.

With the most recent email audits, the department continued to conduct its own in-house review of officers’ emails while the Office of Independent Review conducted an audit of the entire command staff.

“From the audit, we found no smoking guns, nothing of the significance or concerns that was raised when the emails from 2012 unsurfaced — which is a good thing,” Connolly said.

However, auditors did find that both command staff and officers did occasionally use emails for non-business-related uses — in disregard of the department’s zero-tolerance policy for non-work-related emails.

Connolly said the non-business uses were more innocuous, such as sending vacation photos, rather than anything incendiary. It was recommended that the department should take a look at revising its zero-tolerance policy.

For its part, the department has completed some and agreed with most of the recommendations put forward by the auditors and is currently in the processes of implementation.

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Andy Nguyen, andy.nguyen@latimes.com

Twitter: @Andy_Truc