Puliafito (8/24/17)

Traditional Media Coverage

1. Hold the outrage on Pasadena police’s unfiled Puliafito report: Editorial

   Aug 24, 2017 | San Gabriel Valley Tribune

   By The Editorial Board
   
   
   Pasadena’s police department, the largest in the San Gabriel Valley, does much of its work exceptionally well, serving a community that is extraordinarily demographically diverse and performing big-city tasks — security for the world parties of the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl Game, for instance — on a medium-city budget.

Traditional Media Coverage

1. Hold the outrage on Pasadena police’s unfiled Puliafito report: Editorial

   Aug 24, 2017 | San Gabriel Valley Tribune

   By The Editorial Board

   Pasadena’s police department, the largest in the San Gabriel Valley, does much of its work exceptionally well, serving a community that is extraordinarily demographically diverse and performing big-city tasks — security for the world parties of the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl Game, for instance — on a medium-city budget.

   When it falters, as in the case of the prominent lieutenant close to the command staff who was granted many waivers for numerous purchases of firearms he later sold on the open market, according to federal investigators, it deserves to be investigated from the outside, as we have called for.

   But not all missteps require the appointment of an independent investigator, and not all are anything like indicative of an organizational culture in need of structural change. The handful of community leaders and frequent department critics who are expressing outrage over the handling of a single unfiled police report involving Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the Pasadena resident and former dean of USC’s medical school, and the illegal drug overdose of a young woman friend of his, have gone way overboard in their calls for an in-depth look at the department’s handling of the affair.

   As originally reported in the Los Angeles Times, Pasadena police and paramedics were called to the Hotel Constance on East Colorado Boulevard when Puliafito’s girlfriend overdosed and was taken to Huntington Hospital, where she recovered. A rookie police officer was on the case, and as is apparent inan audio recording at the hospital released by the city, was both not aware of Puliafito’s prominence and was properly skeptical of the physician’s version of events that night in March 2016.

   Because of the state’s “good Samaritan” law, in which people who report overdoses are not subject to criminal action themselves, the officer somewhat understandably thought that the Fire Department’s medical report was all the paperwork needed on the case.

   He was wrong, and later was ordered to file the report. The department has announced new procedures making the need for reports clear. But the department was certainly correct in its analysis that the small amount of methamphetamine later found in the hotel room — owner unknown — wouldn’t add up to a prosecutable case.

   Let’s save our outrage for more substantive misconduct on the part of police.

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