Struggling Dallas police officer fired

Shinette Johnson struggled to make it through the Dallas police academy, ultimately graduating near the bottom on her second try. Once on the street as an apprentice officer, she ran two red lights on one shift, had a preventable car accident on another and was injured after bungling an arrest, training records show.

She was given four weeks of "intensive remedial training," but by late October eight different training officers had determined that she was unfit to be a Dallas police officer and had recommended she be fired.

A termination letter was prepared for Interim Chief Randy Hampton's signature on Nov. 11 – the same day The Dallas Morning News requested Ms. Johnson's training records. But he didn't take action until Wednesday, when Ms. Johnson was fired for failing to complete probation.

Chief Hampton did not return a call seeking comment. Assistant Chief Thomas Ward, who also approved the termination, said the delay was not lengthy, given that Ms. Johnson's career was at stake.

Ms. Johnson, 40, was one of the last beneficiaries of a controversial recruit "recycling" program that police say they recently abandoned as unsuccessful.

She initially told The News on Wednesday that she took issue with assessments about her report-writing skills and knowledge of Dallas geography, but she acknowledged that she'd made mistakes in the officer-safety portion of her field training. She said she had been an officer in the Chicago area for 14 years but found the Dallas Police Department stricter. "There's a lot of things I might have gotten away with in Chicago as far as safety, but here they are very particular about certain things you do," she said. "The majority of what some of the officers said for safety, I was wrong in. I can't deny that."

Later in the day, Ms. Johnson said she had talked with a sergeant – whom she declined to name – and had changed her view of her performance.

"As far as protecting my fellow officer – I worked for the Chicago Housing Authority for 10 years and three other police departments, so I have never had any officer safety issues. I have over seven commendations from different departments," she said.

Ms. Johnson noted that she had done well during the first two phases of field training. She said her troubles began in the third training phase after a personality conflict with a female trainer. Ms. Johnson said the woman complained about her to subsequent training officers and that she was denied transfers to other stations, which she believes helped lead to her downfall.

"To me, they [Dallas] would be losing a valuable employee," she said. Ms. Johnson added that she is so confident of her abilities that she believes she will be able to stay in law enforcement.

Deputy Chief Alfredo Saldana, who oversees the Northwest patrol division where Ms. Johnson was assigned, said: "The termination of this recruit was based on the documentation that was supported by the training officers. ... [Termination] was the recommendation that was sent up and concurred with by the acting chief of police."

Ms. Johnson's firing came one day after the department released her training records to The News under state open records laws.

The department's handling of Ms. Johnson is seen as symbolic both by officers who criticize the quality of recent Dallas police recruits and by minority police leaders who say black and Hispanic recruits, particularly women, are evaluated more harshly than white candidates.

"As far as the politics are concerned, you've got a rookie that shouldn't be out there," said former Sgt. Christopher Rivera. One of several officers to urge her termination, Sgt. Rivera resigned in late-November after 13 years with the department.

Though Mr. Rivera attributed his resignation to a "general frustration about the whole department," he said the fact that Ms. Johnson was allowed to continue as an officer "just showed me that things were not going to change."

"[Chief] Hampton, he should ride with her," Mr. Rivera said. "He should answer a few calls with her. You've got to experience it. [She's] nice, but as for police work, how long should we be required to train somebody? I just don't get it."

Since late summer, dozens of police officers have contacted The News to complain that the department has lowered its employment standards; many have cited the Johnson case as an example.

But Sgt. Thomas Glover, head of the predominantly black Texas Peace Officers Association, said Ms. Johnson is the latest casualty of a biased system in which minorities – especially women – are more quickly put into remedial training, which carries a stigma. "It's really a political thing, where if you don't say or do what you're expected to say as a recruit, then it becomes hard," Sgt. Glover said. "All of the people who don't make it on training are predominantly minority female.

"People feel as though blacks and Hispanics have had to have special favors given to them in order for them to make it. ... We know that there are white females that had tremendous problems" that were allowed to stay in the department.

Sgt. Glover said he believes that Chief Hampton bowed to media pressure and that this decision indicates "the acting chief of police is not prepared to make tough decisions. He made a decision that is popular. You can't be a chief of police and do that."

The police association president said that if Ms. Johnson and other black apprentice officers who experienced problems had been placed "with some black trainers, they'd pass with flying colors, get good grades and become great officers."

In fact, Sgt. Glover said, he had spoken about six times with Chief Hampton about Ms. Johnson and had suggested that she be sent to work with experienced black trainers in the Southeast patrol division. He said he told Chief Hampton that "if one of them says she couldn't make it, then my organization will agree with you. They're going to be fair. They're going to teach her."

According to training records obtained by The News, one of the officers who conducted remedial training for Ms. Johnson was Senior Cpl. Anthony Greer, who is black. Former Sgt. Rivera, who oversaw her remedial training, is Hispanic. Ms. Johnson said that as soon as she improved in one area, the field trainers would find something else negative about her performance. She said she believed she had been unfairly forced out of the department, adding that she had copies of positive field-training reports written by the same officers who later recommended her firing.

Sgt. Glover said Ms. Johnson is the fourth black police officer fired from the department in about six weeks, which he called the unfortunate aftermath of the Derrick Evans case.

Officer Evans was fired in August after the off-duty shooting of a teenager at a recreation center where his stepdaughter had been involved in a fight. He was terminated after The News discovered that he twice had been the target of emergency protective orders in Alaska and that he had failed a lie-detector test related to an unsolved Dallas slaying while he was a police recruit.

"I think it's time for black police officers to start marching and protesting regarding the way we're being treated and singled out," Sgt. Glover said.

Ms. Johnson's personnel file shows that she came highly recommended by former supervisors at the Chicago Housing Authority Police and at three small Illinois police departments.

The new recruit began experiencing problems almost immediately after entering the Dallas police academy in July 2002, failing three consecutive tests, which dropped her average below the mandatory minimum of 70 percent. As part of a controversial recycling program that offered second and sometimes third chances to recruits experiencing academic and performance problems, Ms. Johnson was moved into a subsequent class to try again. Though she still failed five of 16 exams, according to her records, she was able to keep her average above 70 and graduated 29th in a class of 32 in April.

The recycling program – unique among large police departments in Texas – was abandoned in January, according to Dallas police, after results proved less than satisfactory. Many veteran Dallas officers criticized the program, saying it put marginal and unqualified officers on the streets. Ms. Johnson's files showed that each of her eight training officers expressed the same concerns – officer safety, driving skill and report writing – and recommended that she be fired.

According to field trainers, she repeatedly had trouble handcuffing suspects and frequently left her squad car unlocked with a loaded shotgun inside.

In her last conversations with The News late Wednesday afternoon, Ms. Johnson denied having such problems.

She said that she had 14 years of experience handcuffing prisoners and had tried to use the techniques she learned in the Dallas police academy but that some field trainers pressured her to ignore those.

"I'm using the safety measures I know," she said. "Everything I'm doing, I'm doing with caution."

In his evaluation of Ms. Johnson, Senior Cpl. Robert Sours said the rookie officer hesitated in handcuffing a suspect in a criminal trespass case, which resulted in a struggle and a foot chase before the man was arrested.

"Recruit Johnson and I both received cuts to our hands and arms from the incident," Cpl. Sours wrote. "I strongly believe that this incident would have been avoided if Recruit Johnson quickly handcuffed the suspect instead of hesitating for an unknown reason."

According to one supervisor, the recruit once took four hours to complete a report on a drunken driving arrest. Cpl. Sours' evaluation said that Ms. Johnson "spent 20 minutes writing a single speeding ticket, which was ultimately incorrectly written."

Her evaluator consistently declared her a dangerous driver. According to records, she was involved in a preventable crash during the first phase of her field training, ran red lights, drove through a flashing railroad crossing with a prisoner in the car, and became so engrossed in operating the on-board computer that she drove her squad car into oncoming lanes of traffic.

Problems at the academy and during training, according to Sgt. Glover, head of the Peace Officers Association, aren't necessarily accurate indicators of future performance.

"The political atmosphere right now is so bad that if somebody like Shinette ... is given a second chance, they're going to say, 'Oh, they're lowering the standards,' " he said.

Mr. Rivera, the former sergeant who recently resigned to work in real estate, also sees the atmosphere as politically charged, but from a starkly different perspective:

"The person or persons who should be making that hard decision, that decision they're getting paid to make, they're just not making it. ... These hard decisions get passed on and on. There's pretty much a vacuum of leadership."

"To me, they [Dallas] would be losing a valuable employee," she said. Ms. Johnson added that she is so confident of her abilities that she believes she will be able to stay in law enforcement.

Frighteningly enough, she is probably right.

I work in a startup with 25 other people. In the past 9 months, we fired three people who could not cut it. We have a very intense hiring process, so firing people after we hire them is not something we want to do. If Shinette's firing IS A FREAKING NEWS STORY it makes me wonder about Shinette's cousin Shinola and her brother Shinhead who are still on the force, equipped to kill.

Next time the jackboot lickers show up to defend putting 43 bullets into a cell phone user, they need to be reminded they are defending Shinette.

Translation:: Black trainers will ignore the rules; lower the standards and play favorites.

The female Federal Judge ordered our dept. to give her a job for 5 years making $35,000 a year.

If that judge ever makes a 911 call, send that officer over. That way, they can enter hell together.

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