TASK FORCE TO TAKE ON NO-SHOW OFFICERS

The Panel Will Recommend Ways to Deal With Problems That Prevent
Police From Appearing in Court to Testify.

Reacting to a controversial report on drug enforcement, the city's top
criminal justice officials are pulling together a task force to attack
a problem plaguing the drug war: police officers who are "no-shows" in
court.

Police, prosecutors, judges and prison officials agree that tackling
the issue will require changes in how all parts of the system work,
officials said. Recommendations are expected by early next year.

"We have a working group to try to eliminate the schedule conflicts
for police officers," said Judge James J. Fitzgerald, who heads the
trial division of Common Pleas Court.

The task force will be an offshoot of the Criminal Justice
Coordinating Committee, which includes representatives from the
courts, police, Mayor Street's administration, the District Attorney's
Office, the Defender Association, and city prisons. Its main mandate
is to alleviate jail overcrowding.

Fitzgerald's counterpart in Municipal Court, Judge Seamus P.
McCaffery, said the newly formed task force agreed last week to find
ways "to put an end" to the problem of officers scheduled to testify
in multiple cases.

"We're looking to get real serious about this," McCaffery said. "We
have to take drastic steps to stop the multiple listings of cases for
the same officers. The bottom line is we need to evaluate our whole
process. It's broken and it doesn't work."

Officials say fixing the problem requires confronting an array of
conflicting interests. While drug arrests have tripled in recent
years, the department is also under pressure to limit court overtime.
Plus, judges feel pressed not to add defendants to an already
overcrowded prison system.

Due in part to the volume of drug arrests - up last year to 24,845
from 8,682 in 1997 - officers are often asked to show up to testify in
multiple cases at the same time. If officers don't show up, cases are
sometimes dismissed.

In her Oct. 23 report, police integrity officer Ellen Green-Ceisler
said that narcotics officers averaged 270 unexcused court absences per
month between 1999 and June of this year.

The police no-shows are just one of the issues raised by Green-Ceisler
in a 59-page report that cited weaknesses in screening, training,
command and discipline of narcotics officers.

While finding no evidence of widespread corruption among narcotics
officers, she warned that misconduct might surface without tighter
controls. She said court no-shows were a well-known "indicator of
misconduct and corruption."

In recent months, police commanders cracked down on a portion of that
problem - officers who fail to register with the department's
computerized court-attendance log.

Officers register by swiping an identification card when they report
for court. In October, after supervisors began closely scrutinizing
attendance records, police say they recorded only about 20 unexcused
absences from the thousands of hearings that month.

But the attendance system only tracks whether officers arrive at the
courthouse. It does not show if they attend each hearing for which
they have been subpoenaed. And many officers, especially those who
make the most arrests, find themselves with hearings at conflicting
times.

Part of the issue is police overtime. Deputy Police Commissioner
Charles J. Brennan, the department's computer czar, said court
overtime makes up the bulk of the force's overtime spending. Yet the
department has little control over which officers are called to
testify and when, Brennan said.

At times, he said, prosecutors intent on building a strong case
blanket the officers involved in an arrest with subpoenas, inevitably
creating scheduling conflicts, driving up overtime, and pulling police
from patrol duty.

"They all have their interests," Brennan said. "We have ours, and we
do butt heads."

This year alone, Brennan said, prosecutors have issued 400,000
subpoenas to officers among the 7,000-member force. About 1 in 5 is
issued in drug prosecution, he said.

The department maintains an elaborate computer system that tracks all
court notices sent to officers. Brennan suggested police and courts
could work together to expand that system so that it also monitors
police as they check in and out of individual courtrooms.

Such a system, police officials say, would improve police
accountability and also enable judges and lawyers to more quickly
locate officers when their testimony is needed in a courtroom.

Some officials have recommended creating a police-witness assembly
room in the courthouse equipped with telephones and computers so that
officers waiting to testify can do some police work.

Others have urged the courts to schedule late-afternoon sessions to
make it easier for officers to attend, or to set up special
courtrooms to handle cases made by officers who lead the department
in arrests.