Police Will Hire Outside Consultant to Investigate Complaint of Racial Profiling

The Piedmont Police Department will hire an outside consultant to investigate a complaint that a PPD officer harassed four Piedmont teenagers because of their race, Chief Rikki Goede said Monday.

Goede said that because the complaint is a personnel issue, she could not discuss details of the incident.

The officer who was the subject of the complaint was not responding to a call or report by Piedmont residents, she said.

The formal complaint was filed by Ginger Wilson, a Piedmont resident whose two sons were among those she says were harassed by Officer Steve DeWarns on Sunday morning, April 28, as they and two friends were in the driveway and in the front yard of the Wilson home on Lake Avenue.

Three of the teens are African American, one is Latino. All four attend Piedmont schools, according to Wilson.

In a blog posted on Piedmont Patch Sunday, Wilson said her older son was backing a family car out of their narrow driveway while two of his friends who had visited overnight and her younger son, 13, waited on the Wilson property.

Officer DeWarns blocked her son's vehicle with a patrol car, questioned three of the boys and made them get down on a curb, Wilson wrote. He also ordered her older son out of the car and onto the curb, she said.

DeWarns continued to hold the teens after her older son showed identification that matched the address of the Wilson home, she said. He also called for back-up from another Piedmont police officer, she said.

"The police department and I take these situations very seriously," Chief Goede said, "but there will be no definitive conclusions until after an investigation."

Goede said that under California law, the investigation must be completed within a year but that she hopes it will be finished "as soon as possible."

It is common for smaller police departments which — like Piedmont — do not have their own internal affairs unit to use an outside investigator, she said.

Piedmont police officers took diversity training in 2011 after officers stopped and questioned two black Piedmont HS students, leading to accusations of racial profiling from some residents. http://piedmont.patch.com/articles/police-chief-takes-action-in-addressing-bias

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