Vanguard Analysis: Lt. Swartwood Criticized For Abdicating Duties as Incident Commander

The Vanguard fundamentally disagrees with the decision to redact names in the Reynoso Task Force and Kroll Reports.  We believe that responsibility needs to be taken appropriately by those whose decisions or actions contributed to this problem.

The identification is very obvious and, even without the duty roster, we could have figured it out.  However, with the duty roster it is a no-brainer.

We know from the report that Officer P was a lieutenant and the Incident Commander.  That makes identification fairly straightforward.

We can eliminate Lt. Carmichael, the new police chief, who was at the UCD Med Center in Sacramento.  We know that Officer P is neither, then, Chief Annette Spicuzza, who was named, nor Lt. John Pike, who was also named.

We also know that Lt. Swartwood was recently promoted from Sgt. when Nader Oweis was hired as the new chief at UC Santa Cruz.

The task force singles out Lt. Swartwood as he “bears individual responsibility for abdicating his duties as incident commander.”

Kroll calls a “key flaw of the police operations plan prepared by [Swartwood] and Lt. Pike,” that it “failed to address prisoner transport.”  Moreover, “The lack of timely decision-making by Lts. Pike and Swartwood to respond to this unplanned situation caused an escalation of an already volatile situation. “

Like Lt. Pike, Lt. Swartwood was critical of the plan.  He and Chief Spicuzza “called Vice Chancellor Meyer to tell him that there would be too few police officers available to implement the plan on Friday morning.”

Moreover, “Pike and [Lt. Swartwood] made sure she knew the timing was a problem – voicing concerns about the operation’s timing from the moment they learned of the change to immediately before the operation began.”

Furthermore, like Lt. Pike, Lt. Swartwood expressed concern “over the legal basis for removing the tents.”  It was he and Lt. Pike who contacted the Campus Counsel about “the legality of conducting a planned operation during the middle of the afternoon versus the early morning hours.”

Lt. Swartwood insisted, along with Lt. Pike, “on wearing riot gear despite [Chief Spicuzza’s] contrary instructions.”

The report singles out Lt. Swartwood at a critical point, “Nominally at least,” Lt. Swartwood “was the designated Incident Commander for the Nov. 18 operation. As detailed above and by Kroll,” Lt. Swartwood “did not act ‘in the manner that [a] police commander should.’ “

Indeed, Kroll notes that neither Lts. Pike nor Swartwood behaved like supervisors in as much as Lt. Swartwood, “nominally the Incident Commander, was moving throughout the scene, confronting protesters, and leaving the area to meet the newly arrived Davis Police Department (“DPD”) reinforcements. In short, none of the three [Pike, Spicuzza, and Swartwood] performed in the manner that police commanders during such an incident should have conducted themselves.”

The task force continues, “He failed to follow basic ICS/SEMS [Incident Command System/Standardized Emergency Management System] protocol from planning the incident to commanding it, resulting in unclear operational parameters and an unclear command structure, both of which contributed to his inability to command the operation effectively. His involvement with taking down the tents precluded him from obtaining an overview of the entire operation, a prerequisite to making informed command decisions.”

It is worth noting that the report finds that neither Lt. Pike nor Lt. Swartwood were aware that Officer F was able to simply walk the prisoners out.  Was that a function of his failure to obtain “an overview of the entire operation?”  Perhaps.

The task force notes, “There is no evidence that [Officer F] communicated with the Incident Commander.”  They add: “If Lts. Pike and [Swartwood] had been aware of Officer F’s success, they may have considered a different tactic.”

Like Lt. Pike, Lt. Swartwood did not interview with Kroll, but rather submitted a supplemental report on November 30.

Kroll hammers both Lt. Pike and Lt. Swartwood for rejecting tactical direction from Chief Spicuzza.  Lt. Swartwood was involved in the “heated” discussion among the three, with Chief Spicuzza saying that “she didn’t want sticks, she didn’t want them going in with helmets, and both the Lieutenants chimed in at her at the same time basically saying … ‘We can’t tell another Mutual Aid agency not to protect themselves. These are the tools of the trade, they’re designed to protect us.’ “

Kroll continues, “At this time, Pike also ‘mentioned something about … pepper ball,’ and Spicuzza answered, ‘We don’t want to use any of that,’ and the lieutenants replied, ‘Of course, we don’t want to use any of it. They’re tools of the trade. They’re less lethal.’ “

According to Lt. Pike, he and Lt. Swartwood “persuaded Chief Spicuzza to allow the officers to carry their batons in their belts and to wear their ballistic/protective helmets, arguing that ‘the potential for our officers to encounter resistance passive and physical was already heightened by the deadline imposed by the Chancellor in her letter as well as the networking of the Occupiers and their use of social media.’ “

Deborah Hammond, the executive assistant to Chief Spicuzza, overheard a conversation between Chief Spicuzza and Lt. Swartwood “in which he told her, ‘We’ll be in formation, we’ll be wearing shields’ … and she was very upset. She asked, ‘Why do we need to be in formation?” He responded with something about ‘regulation or procedure.’ “

According to Lieutenant Pike’s Supplemental Narrative Report, he discussed the use of pepper spray with Lt. Swartwood and “considered other force options.”

However, “In the Supplement Narrative Report,” written by Lt. Swartwood, “he does not say that he discussed the use of pepper spray or any other less-than-lethal force with Pike.”

Kroll reports, “Video footage shows that approximately one minute before Pike obtained the pepper spray from another officer’s belt,” Lt. Swartwood “stepped through the encircled activists to the southeast without incident.  The first mention of pepper spray,” by Lt. Swartwood “in his Supplemental Narrative Report is when ‘Lieutenant Pike displayed a can of police pepper spray’ to the crowd while was outside of the circle.”

In his narrative, he justified the use of pepper spray stating, “It was my belief that to step over the protesting occupiers with prisoners and weapons would be hazardous. The occupiers had collectively surrounded us and it was possible, if we did step over them, that they could attempt to free our prisoners (they chanted that they wanted them released) or attempt to grab us or our equipment.”

However, he was not aware that Officer F had accomplished this with minimal resistance, which Kroll believed may have caused them to “have opted to take a different tactical approach to the situation.”

Moreover, his words are somewhat at odds with his own actions, as the videos depict Lt. Swartwood “moving through the crowd – immediately behind the seated activists that are within minutes of being pepper sprayed – without using force and without being confronted by any violent reaction, and then returning with the four Davis PD officers and their supervisors who, again, part the crowd without using force.”

Lt. Swartwood’s action must be viewed as such.  He was the incident commander.  While he attempts to escape responsibility for the decision to use the pepper spray, it happened under his watch, and Lt. Pike claims to have discussed it with him.

Unlike Chief Spicuzza, it seems that Lt. Swartwood and Lt. Pike were relatively on the same page throughout the incident.  It makes sense that they would have consulted together.  Other than the actual use of pepper spray, which Lt. Pike used, it appears there is little difference throughout this incident between the actions of Lt. Pike and those of Lt. Barry Swartwood.

The internal review should be able to better determine whether Lt. Swartwood was involved in the decision to use the pepper spray.

—David M. Greenwald reporting