5 things you need to know about undercover operations in California prisons

from Kayla MichalovichCalMatters

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At least 10 cases have been filed in the California Supreme Court this year challenging convictions involving undercover agents in prisons, including stings carried out after suspects said they invoked their rights against self-incrimination.

District attorneys say the so-called Perkins operations are a powerful investigative tool to solve crimes or exonerate people. The practice has helped secure hundreds of murder convictions.

But critics say law enforcement has gone too far, arguing the operations are coercive, risk false confessions and disproportionately target blacks and Hispanics.

C the most comprehensive view yet in Perkins’ operations, CalMatters reviewed more than 5,000 pages of court records and conducted more than 40 interviews with academics, public defenders, district attorneys, prosecutors, legislators, attorneys and incarcerated people.

Here’s what we found:

Legal gray area

In 1990, the United States Supreme Court ruled that statements made by a suspect during a Perkins operation were voluntary; therefore, Miranda warnings need not be given. But several of the cases before the California Supreme Court today argue that the decision did not answer a central question: Can the operation continue after suspect invoked their Miranda defense?

In 2019, Supreme Court of California denied a petition for reconsideration in the case of a Kern County man who was the subject of Perkins surgery one day after he invoked his Miranda rights in a police interrogation.

Although the court declined to hear the case, Judge Goodwin Liu had harsh words for law enforcement.

“The use of deceptive schemes to extract confessions from suspects who have invoked their Miranda rights appears to be a widespread police practice in California,” he wrote. “How is it possible, one might ask, that the Miranda protection is so easily evaded?”

The Perkins Operation Book

The undercover operatives, also known as Perkins agents, are often described in court documents as older and physically larger than their targets. They often portrayed themselves as experienced gang members with a history of violence. In some cases, up to five are housed in a single-person cell.

Martin Flores, a gang expert who specializes in Perkins operations, said the agents presented themselves as “active, older friends with influence in the county jail and on the streets.”

“I think most of these Perkins operations are to impress the agent,” he said. “And why does that matter? Because it’s survival. If you look weak and vulnerable, you’ll become prey.”

A CalMatters analysis of Perkins’ operations showed jail cells equipped with recording devices, hefty cash payments to undercover agents and fake evidence tricks designed to “stimulate” conversation between agents and their targets.

Perkins operations under the microscope

CalMatters found Perkins operations in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Orange, Santa Barbara and Santa Clara counties.

Riverside County held its first operation in 2014, according to records obtained by CalMatters. Those records reveal that his law enforcement agencies conduct multiple operations each week—roughly half of which are conducted for unnamed outside agencies.

But as the operations have grown, more defendants say they are being forced to waive their Miranda rights before talking to police or to make self-incriminating statements after invoking those rights.

A landmark decision came earlier this year when the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals set aside the sentence of a Riverside County man who maintains his innocence after finding law enforcement violated his rights during a Perkins operation.

“When a suspect invokes and does not waive his right to counsel, and a known law enforcement official continues to ‘stimulate’ a Perkins operation in a manner that amounts to custodial interrogation, the suspect’s resulting incriminating statements are inadmissible,” the judges wrote.

Differences in who is targeted

Among the cases the California Supreme Court is hearing, four defendants are Hispanic, four are black and two are white. The youngest was 18 at the time of Perkins’ surgery.

The California Public Defenders Association and the American Civil Liberties Union urged the court to scrutinize the highly coordinated policing practice, which they say creates extreme racial disparities and perpetuates racially biased policing.

They cited recent data from the Riverside County Public Defender’s Office that found significant racial disparities when they analyzed approximately 881 homicide cases between January 2015 and June 2023, including 145 targeted by Perkins. The analysis showed that black defendants were more than four times more likely to be targeted in a Perkins operation than white defendants. They found that Hispanic defendants were targeted at twice the rate of white defendants.

Public defenders in San Diego County also raised concerns about racial disparities in the first-ever California Racial Equity Act petition regarding a Perkins operation. The law, passed in 2020, allows people to challenge a prosecution, conviction or sentence that they believe was based on racial bias.

In an analysis of approximately 40 Perkins operations in San Diego County, public defenders found that agents consistently used racially discriminatory language, including slurs and cultural stereotypes, to develop a false sense of understanding and generate incriminating statements.

But San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said in an interview with CalMatters that Perkins’ operations “applied across the board, anywhere it appears that a heartless killing could benefit … regardless of race, gender, orientation, cultural background or anything else.”

The operations are top secret

Law enforcement has gone to great lengths to withhold records about Perkins’ operations, including how much money they spend on them and how operatives are hired and trained. CalMatters filed nearly two dozen official public records requests with law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, Orange and Santa Clara counties. Almost all were denied.

After consulting with the First Amendment Coalition, CalMatters asked attorneys from the law firm Covington & Burling to push for more transparency. Over the course of several months, their efforts yielded a handful of exclusive recordings to law enforcement.

Kayla Michalovich is a contributor to California Local News.

This project was completed with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in association with Arnold Ventures.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.