ADDENDUM TO "THE HARD PART: THINKING ABOUT POLICE REFORM"

I elaborate on my blog’s first recommendation: “abolish all ‘advisory’ committees, especially the secret ones, on police-related matters.”  The list of 35 advisory committees to City Council indicates only one such committee, the Public Safety Select Committee, which operates in secrecy, and its entry identifies no contact (unlike all but one other committee, MV Public Housing Authority).   Current members of the Select Committee are Mayor Ken Miyagishima and his appointees, Mayor Pro Tem and District 1 Councilor Kasandra Gandara and District 4 Councilor Tessa Abeyta—, all for a “Life Term.”

 

The statements of “Description” and “Purpose” significantly misrepresent what this Select Committee does or intends to do.

 

Description

The duties of the Public Safety Select Committee shall include but not be limited to the following: (1) provide input, comment, or recommendations on proposed ordinances, programs, or initiatives involving public safety matters within the City; (2) provide recommendations to the City Council on matters of public safety; (3) provide information, recommendations, or assistance in the development and implementation of various existing and future public safety related programs; (4) encourage, collect, and present resident input regarding public safety service levels and priorities; (5) make recommendations concerning related department budgets and budget priorities.

 

Purpose

To improve the overall safety and quality of life of the community by providing recommendations to the City Council on safety initiatives, raising awareness of community safety concerns, and to serve as a mechanism for productive discussion on matters of public safety between the policy making body, individuals serving in the area of public safety and subject matter experts.

 

The “Description” statement is variously vague or false.  Items (1), (3), and (5) do not specify to whom the results of the Committee’s work go.  Items (2) and (4) could not have occurred because the other four members of Council and the public, respectively, had no idea that the Committee existed.  In view of the “Description,” the “Purpose” statement is, meaningless since the existence of the Committee has been unknown to  the full Council and the public.  The Select Committee appears to serve other purposes like interagency discussions to make decisions about police-related and litigation issues.  If it had operated as represented, the need for a Citizen Police Oversight Board might be less.

 

Because this Committee works in secret from the entire Council, it appears to violate a recent city ordinance signed by the Mayor himself and may contravene the spirit, if not the letter, of the New Mexico Open Meetings Act.  Although ordinances are no fun, read this one to ascertain whether the Mayor has violated the ordinance which he signed and whether two Councilors have disregarded his violations.  I emphasize some points.

 

COUNCIL BILL NO. 20-016

ORDINANCE NO. 2908

 

AN ORDINANCE AMENDING THE LAS CRUCES MUNICIPAL CODE (LCMC) 1997, AS AMENDED, CHAPTER 2, ART. 4, DIV. 7, SEC. 2-1101, SELECT COMMITTEES, EFFECTIVE AS OF JANUARY 6, 2020.

 

The City Council is informed that:

 

WHEREAS, LCMC Ch. 2, Art. 4, Div. 7, Sec. 2-1101 establishes the mayor’s ability to appoint Select Committees whose purpose is to provide information and advice on City Charter objectives; and

WHEREAS, the mayor determines membership, purpose, duties, and duration of Select Committees; and

WHEREAS, the mayor must notify the city council of the establishment and purpose of select committees; and

WHEREAS, it [is] the desire of the city council to expand the ability to create Select Committees for the benefit of the entire city council to support the goals and objectives of the City’s strategic plan.

NOW THEREFORE, be it Ordained by the Governing Body of the City of Las Cruces:

(I)

THAT Section 2-1101, entitled “Select Committees,” of the Las Cruces Municipal Code is amended to read as follows:

“Sec. 2-1101. -Scope.

(a) Select committees may be established by the mayor or city council to provide the mayor and city council with information and advice on the goals and objectives stated in the City Charter or the City’s strategic plan.  The membership, purpose, duties, and duration of the select committees shall be determined by the mayor or the city council and shall be made available to the public.

(b) If the Mayor establishes a select committee, the city council shall be given written notice of the establishment of all select committees.  This notice shall include the purpose for the select committee and the names of the members.

(c) The term of the select committee shall not exceed one year or the amount of time necessary to complete the specific established goals and objectives of the committee.

(d) The recommendations of a select committee shall not be binding and are subject to approval of the city council or the city manager in accordance with the city charter.

(e) The city manager may assign appropriate city staff or community members to a select committee for the purpose of providing information, recommendations, or subject-matter expertise. The select committee shall not include more than three members of the city council.

(f) Sections 2-187 through 2 -190 are inapplicable to select committee members.”

(II)

THAT City staff is hereby authorized to do all deeds as necessary in the accomplishment of the herein above.

 

DONE AND APPROVED this 6 day of January 2020.  [Signed by the Mayor]

 

A political point.  Councilors Abeyta and Gandara have, at one time or another, spoken about the importance of transparency and accountability.  There can be no better evidence of their radical hypocrisy than their membership on and work done in this secret Select Committee.  They show themselves untrustworthy and undeserving of re-election this fall.

THE HARD PART: THINKING ABOUT POLICE REFORM

Because of inflamed and politicized controversy about the police, thinking clearly and talking coolly are hard, hard, hard.  With differences of degree, I suppose that many people share my ambivalent feelings about police officers; I love them, and I hate them.  When I see a police car in my rearview mirror, I feel fear; then, when they pass me, relief.  But when I am pulled over for speeding and treated competently and courteously—do I benefit from white privilege?  Probably—, I respect them.  We depend on police officers when we need them; as Al Pacino says in Sea of Love, “in the wet-ass hour, who’s your daddy?”  But when, increasingly, we witness them behaving disrespectfully or dangerously toward others, we (should) react with disgust or outrage.

 

My thinking about police officers often begins with responses to their two most common defensive responses to criticism.  One: most police officers are good apples, but a few are bad apples.  I have big problems with this defense.  If most police officers were good apples, their unions would have leadership supporting dismissal of the bad apples and reforms which would help all police officers improve.  And, since the good apples know who the bad apples are yet do nothing about them, the good apples are not all that good.  I remind myself of the apt adage in full: a few bad apples spoil the barrel.

 

Two: police officers are just like us.  Desmond, a Black, Republican, court investigator says at the end of a New York Times interview (23-01-03), “Hey, at the end of the day, we’re just like you, just in blue.”  I could hardly disagree more.  I do not for one moment deny that police officers are people—or so much like them that it is hard to tell the difference—, but differences there are.  Put people in a police uniform, pin on a badge, issue them weapons, and train them to dominate in every situation—and their work places them in different situations and changes their behavior in them.  I agree only so far with Peter Goodman’s apology for LCPD Officer Jared Cosper; I agree that he did not get out of bed with the idea of murdering anyone.  But, once at the scene, he murdered Sra. Amelia Baca.  Trained as a soldier, instructed in rules of engagement, and having served in a combat zone, I would not have murdered her.  No, Desmond, you are not just like me, and I am insulted by your glib, self-serving comparison.

 

So what are we to think about police officers?  Of course, we can think of them as just plain folk, flipping burgers at backyard cook-outs, going to PTA meetings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera (“just like them”).  But the first thing to think about police officers is that they are members of society.  They must be regarded as people who share the attitudes, beliefs, and conduct available in the general culture.  Their roles and responsibilities reflect and may exaggerate, almost to the point of caricature, our cultural and societal propensities, but the populace must accept that they reflect its propensities writ large.  Society assigns them their roles and responsibilities; in justice and fairness, it cannot suddenly treat them as scapegoats.

 

The second thing is that police officers are no better or faster at changing lifelong attitudes, beliefs, and conduct than others are.  Indeed, for them, unlike other members of society, they are impeded by their commitment to their profession and its customs.  They aspired and trained to become police officers, and now serve.  They cannot easily redefine themselves and their life-long commitment to their profession, transform their perspectives and values, or adjust to changes in established customs of conduct—or as easily as society can redefine them in order to reform police roles and responsibilities.  In decency, society must make allowance for “cultural lag.”

 

An instance taking these two things together.  If society is racist, police officers are racist; if society renounces racism, police officers face the challenge of renouncing lifelong dispositions to think, feel, and act in previously sanctioned ways about race and members of a race.  Their challenge is great.  Doubters should remind themselves that antisemitism, though long publicly scorned, remains widespread and motivates antisemitic acts.

 

If citizens want reasonable, effective, and enduring reforms of police departments, they must be considerate of police officers.  They must think about how the necessary transition can be achieved with due respect for police officers facing both public criticism and personal difficulties.  For them, it is neither pleasant to have their life work reviled nor painless to have to adjust to career and attendant personal changes for an uncertain future.

 

That consideration for police officers is balanced by citizens’ expectations, even though they will sometimes be disappointed.  All citizens—indeed, all people, citizens or not--should expect police officers to treat them as equal under the law, with respect in all circumstances and at all times, and as innocent until proven otherwise.  People should expect police officers to comply with all laws and all Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and respect societal norms.  People should expect police officers to understand that their enforcing the law does not make them superior to the law and that the need for their services in public safety and law enforcement does not exempt them from liability under the law.  People should expect police officers to understand that, as public employees, they are not exempt from criticism, accountability, or transparency.

 

Yet talk of police reform too often seems contentious, not cooperative.  If contentious, it will be unlikely to succeed; if cooperative, it may possibly succeed.  I qualify this even-handedness by admitting that, because reform makes demands which will be difficult for most police officers to fulfill, I worry that their “cooperation” may be half-hearted or even bad-faith gestures.  But I proceed as if my worry is ill-founded.

 

Although I have supported local efforts for a Civilian Police Oversight Board (CPOB), its initial presentation suggests a hostile or adversarial posture toward the police.  The word “oversight” suggests evaluation more than analysis.  Of course, much about the CPOB has not been defined, and details might falsify this first impression.  One suggestion would be to include two police officers at its meetings: the Deputy Police Chief for operations (currently, Sean Mullen) and the officer for community outreach (formerly, Kiri Daines).

 

In lieu of that reform initiative, I propose the following suggestions, all in the interest of transparency.

 

1.    Council should abolish all “advisory“ committees, especially the secret ones, on police-related matters.  The fact that their existence and everything else about them has been concealed from most members of City Council suggests that their conduct is not in the public interest.  It is not clear how these committees are “advisory” and not “executive.”  As such, they may be in violation of the Open Meetings Act.  Mayor Ken Miyagishima and Councilor Tessa Abeyta should be condemned for such secrecy and their contempt for their colleagues on Council.  Abeyta should be repudiated at the polls this November for her sneaky conduct.

2.    Council should make itself the final authority on SPOs.  The current sequence of authorities—Chief of Police for development, City Manager for approval—, should insert the City Attorney between them for legal sufficiency and add Council as the final word for their acceptability in light of citizens’ principles and values for high-quality policing.

3.    Council should conduct at regular intervals, perhaps by ad hoc citizen/police advisory committee, a review of all SOPs to recommend eliminating obsolete ones; identifying ineffective or offensive ones; and suggesting others to remedy gaps.

4.    Council should review at regular intervals, perhaps by ad hoc citizen/police advisory committee, all police training materials to ensure that instruction is consistent with SOPs and high-quality policing principles and values.

LITTLE LAW AND LESS ORDER IN LAS CRUCES CITY GOVERNMENT

A Sun-News article (14 June) reports something about the previously clandestine departure of City Attorney Jennifer Vega(-Brown) seven months ago.  I publicly asked my District 1 Councilor Kasandra Gandara some simple questions about Vega’s departure, but, as is typical of this Mayor Pro Tem’s disdain for transparency, I received no answer.  Additionally, Gandara was very close to Vega and probably wants to protect her.  I knew her to rise to Vega’s defense by blaming another in the Law Office for its lies about IPRA exemptions to the NMOAG.  Gandara probably knows the reasons for Vega’s departure.

 

Those reasons, still undisclosed after seven months, cannot be good.  A friend who has heard conflicting versions of them tells me that, although I have an ability to find the worst in any situation—while some debate whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, I see no water—, the reason is worse than even I can imagine—no glass.  What little we know confirms that the reasons must be bad.  City Manager Ifo Pili fired her, surely for cause.  Otherwise, Vega, who won a $500,000 whistleblower suit against Albuquerque for retaliation for her filing a complaint for sexual harassment, would likely have sued Las Cruces were there a hint of wrongdoing on its part.

 

We do not know and probably shall never know the reasons for her firing.  There are many possibilities; I can think of four.  One is mismanagement.  Vega had a staff and may have played favorites, treated them abusively, or operated inconsistently or unreasonably.  Another is incompetence.  Vega managed a risk reduction committee and was expected to reduce the city’s legal risks, but she negotiated large settlements for police misconduct.  Yet another is dishonesty.  Vega was supposed to tell the truth about cases under her purview but sometimes departed from it.  Last, financial scrupulousness.  In appreciation of the larger settlements which she negotiated and recommended, she may have received kickbacks.  My guess is that, whatever the reasons, they also reflect so badly on others for their dereliction of duties that transparency is out of the question.

 

That Sun-News article also reports Law Office staff shortages and case backlogs.  Understaffing, five out of twelve positions—one city attorney, one deputy city attorney, two assistant city attorneys, one staff member—, does not occur overnight.  Presumably, Pili as well as Vega knew about it, but neither seems to have done anything about it.  Now, after her abrupt exit, City Council is rushing to the rescue with a larger and longer contract for legal services, and Pili is (at last?) looking for a City Attorney.  Given that Pili is supposed to be a Council pacifier, he will probably look for someone who can maintain peace and quiet.  Which means more big settlements in lieu of police reform—business as usual—and no more accountability or transparency than before.

 

(Council passed, with no dissenting vote, a contract to a local legal firm with a 75%—not, as reported, a 33%--increase in fee and an extension in duration.  Need detailed in the agenda package might explain unanimity.  Still, its sudden appearance on the consent agenda suggests prior discussion among Council members in possible violation of the Open Meetings Act.  If so, more clandestinity, not transparency, by Council.)

 

But the problems do not end there.  Police Chief Miguel Dominguez has been a disgrace since assuming this office.  After proclaiming himself “Mr. Transparency,” he has declined to being the producer of Baca eye-blear by means of doctored body-cam footage, to being the dissembler of truth to City Council and the withholder of information from the LC Police Officers Association (its 4 May 2022 letter of criticism indicts his leadership.  See extract below indicating that the rank and file have the same problems with Dominguez as citizens do.)  He may be nearing retirement—one can only hope—, or, if not, his incompetent leadership may soon wear out his welcome to his seniority-based promotion from an administrative job.  Pili’s first choice is a dud.

 

Poor Las Cruces.  When it comes to the city government’s legal community, there is nary a worthy senior official or officer in the city’s employment.  Yet the blame cannot fall entirely on the Police Chief or the City Manager.  The members of City Council have shown no interest in or commitment to good government, with good personnel operating according to good professional and ethical standards.  Of course; why would they, with little or no experience in an executive capacity or on civic committees related to government functions?  Having run only on good intentions, they have a flimsy basis for convictions, confidence, and courage to assert themselves and advance worthy causes.  So, in matters of law and order, Las Cruces will continue to have weak Council leadership which, though capable of funding programs providing social services, is incapable of facing problems affecting public safety.

 

 

Extract: “The department suffers from a lack of leadership, from a lack of transparency, from a lack of accountability, from miscommunication, and a discounting by the chiefs of the learned input of personnel, supervisory and non-supervisory, who possess specialized knowledge and skills that the department’s chiefs do not have.

LAS CRUCES'S CITY GOVERNMENT IS STRUCTURED TO COVER-UP POLICE MISCONDUCT

The history of Las Cruces includes unsolved or unpunished murders implicating the police.  Two notorious ones 75 years apart are the unsolved rape and murder of Ovida “Cricket” Coogler on 31 March 1949, and the unpunished murder of Sra. Amelia Baca on 16 April 2022.  (See note 1 on my use of the word “murder.)

 

I attribute the status of the Baca murder as unpunished to the gap between City Council and the Las Cruces Police Department.  As I noted in a previous blog, Council has no role in developing or approving the policies and procedures meant to guide LCPD operations.  It neither conducts nor sponsors independent, unfettered investigations of significant events or emerging trends.  Its contract terms and conditions have rendered its current police auditor, OIR, impotent and no longer credible.  It gives the Police Chief a free hand when it comes to accountability and transparency.

 

That blog analyzed the long-held, privileged position of the LCPD, which is presumably accountable and perhaps transparent but to itself only.  Its position raises several questions about the wisdom of the current structure of city government as it affects public safety.  During their inquisition of the proponents of a civilian review board—my terminology, not theirs—, several Councilors questioned the vaguely defined relationships between the board, and the Council and the LCPD.  In hindsight, their questions would carry more weight going forward if they had asked the same questions about the relationship between Council and the LCPD.

 

The Council funds the LCPD without any influence on anything other than staffing and salary levels, and facility and equipment requirements.  Whether LCPD officers operate in a manner serving the public interest in public safety is a matter of indifference to its members, an indifference expressed rather remarkably callously.  For example, not one member of Council commented at the time on Baca’s murder.  No sympathy for the family and their loss.  No outrage at the killing of yet another mentally distressed person.  Later, no anger at yet another multi-million-dollar settlement paid for by the taxpayers—citizens and companies—of Las Cruces.  What matters to them?

 

The city-manager form of government need not deny City Council the authority to review and approve LCPD policies and procedures, to assess the suitability of LCPD operations, and to oversee and investigate those operations and, if necessary, to direct its one employee, the City Manager, to make changes.  (See note 2 for a potent way to encourage police reform by self-policing.)  Indeed, the connection between Council and Manager is closer than that between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.  Yet Congress exercises oversight of the Administration by investigations into the conduct of its departments and agencies, and passes legislation to address deficiencies as well as advance initiatives.  Since Council does not publicly supervise the LCPD, it does not do one of its important jobs, one not understood or acknowledged as such by the inexperienced majority of current Councilors.

 

Suspect is the clandestine relationship between Council and the LCPD, so hush-hush that some members of the Council do not know what other members serving on secret law enforcement committees know.  Law enforcement issues remain closely held within the confines of the LCPD or these small committees of selected Council members and LCPD officers.  These committees reflect back-room politics at its worst and contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of the provisions of the New Mexico Open Meetings Act.  (The names of these committees seem to have been recently removed from the city’s website.)

 

The secrecy surrounding law enforcement is a shield of misconduct and has a corrupting influence on LCPD operations and police conduct because they are sanctioned at the highest levels of city government.  The shield enables a small number of elected officials and senior city employees, including the City Attorney, to minimize or eliminate accountability and transparency in major incidents, and to shape approaches to cases and settlements.  This coterie of the privileged may justify their clandestine conduct by purporting to be acting in the public interest.  But they cannot know the public interest because they keep a majority of Council members and all citizens ignorant of and apart from the decision-making process and the considerations—ethical, financial, legal, or political—involved.  So citizens would no more believe them than they believe the LCPD.  They do not reflect a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  Last word: Council members who think themselves Progressives had better think again.

 

NOTE 1: Some may question whether Sra. Baca’s death is a murder, but the body-cam film makes it clear, and the delay in dealing with this incident suggests prosecutorial fears of even putting an officer on trial, much less sending him to jail for a long time, for murder.  These fears have prolonged the investigation.  The facts are: the task force finished its investigation on 21 June 2022; Dona Ana County District Attorney Gerald Byers said he would make his decision in a few days; instead, he referred the case to the New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas forty days later, on 31 July; NMAG Raul Torrez answered my certified letter through a subordinate on 2 June 2023 that “While we would like to be responsive to your request, the NMOAG is unable to comment on pending/active investigations.”  What remains to investigate?  We know the victim and the perpetrator, and have seen and heard the fatal moments of engagement.  Is Torrez looking for some legal “spin” to exonerate the officer?  I view Balderas’s and Torrez’s stall as an effort to keep this investigation open indefinitely, prevent disclosure of the facts and findings, and run out the clock on the statute of limitations on lesser charges.  The law enforcement community likely will not put LCPD Officer Jared Cosper, returned to duty in November 2022, on trial for anything and likely will not explain the reasons for not doing so.  (See note 3 on my concerns about non-disclosure.)

 

NOTE 2: Council funds the independent operation of the LCPD and pays for approved settlements required by officer misconduct.  The LCPD has a moral and a professional incentive to reform, but neither of either nor both together are strong enough to effect reform.  Although the “good cops” know who the “bad cops” are, their loyalty to the force defeats reform.  One financial incentive to overcome such loyalty might be to make LCPD officers foot the bill for settlements.  LCPD payments of settlements might be arranged in several ways.  One would be to have union funds cover them.  Another would be to deduct the aggregate amount of the previous year’s settlements from either the city’s contribution to the LCPD retirement fund or the next year’s projected budget for salaries.  The latter arrangement may be the easiest to implement.

 

NOTE 3: My letter to Torrez made explicit my concerns about the non-disclosure of relevant information on a decision not to prosecute Officer Cosper.  As I wrote,

 

I am told that, when cases are dropped, officials do not explain their decisions. In cases involving residents only, such a practice may be appropriate to protect the privacy of private citizens. But in cases involving police officers, the public has an interest in knowing the basis of those decisions. Without that knowledge, the public cannot know whether rationales based on current policies and practices are appropriate, especially as the law and the values underlying it evolve. Otherwise, the public can easily suspect a cover-up capitulating to the political potency of police forces throughout the state.

WHO HOLDS THE LAS CRUCES POLICE DEPARTMENT ACCOUNTABLE? THE LCPD! (NO JOKE)

       In considering police behavior and police reform, I was surprised to learn—I should have known—that City Council plays virtually no role, and that an indirect one, in determining the policies and practices of the Las Cruces Police Department.  The implications of this discovery bear on the discussion about a civilian review board.

City Council hires and fires the City Manager.  The City Manager has authority over the LCPD.  The Police Chief, after consulting with LCPD officers, develops LCPD policies and practices for the City Manager’s approval and, with it, implements them.  The LCPD website explains their development:

 

Standard Operating Procedures are methods to be followed routinely for the performance of designated operations or designated situation.  The Las Cruces Police Department SOPs are referred to as General Orders.  These general orders are compiled, adapted, and published by the Chief of Police’s authority with the City Manager’s approval and concurrence for information, guidance, government, discipline, and administration of the Las Cruces Police Department and its personnel.

 

The statement defines a privileged position for the LCPD.  It precludes subordination to and oversight by elected officials.  It implies that City Council and citizens have little or no influence on the development of LCPD policies and practices of policing.  It implies that they have little or no way to indicate their approval of or opposition to them.  It also implies that the LCPD chief and other police officers know what policies and practices best suit the citizens of Las Cruces and are solely qualified to judge officers’ compliance with them.  However, officers may have interests in policies and practices not coinciding with the interests of citizens or with their evolving views about policing.  The LCPD’s privileged position may not be in the public interest.

 

This gap between City Council and the LCPD leaves accountability and transparency entirely to the police department.  The pretenses of this arrangement are that it involves no conflict of interest, that police can hold themselves accountable and be transparent, that Internal Affairs is a disinterested adjudicator of complaints, and that the police chief is an honest enforcer of policy and practice.  LCPD’s record supports none of these pretenses.  Moreover, the LCPD expects the public to trust it to do its job properly, but the public does not, regardless of whether the job is small or large.

 

Small are code violations.  Buried in an internal IA report is a finding that an officer’s allegations of code violations lacked evidence or proof.  Yet the IA report on a citizen’s complaint does not even mention the allegations.  Dominguez, knowing both the policy against false reporting and the falsity of the allegations, upheld them.  He refused enforcement to protect the LCPD against a more serious matter: bias-based policing (antisemitism in more than a few LCPD officers).  Dominguez held no one accountable and was not transparent about his decision based on personal or political grounds.

 

Large is police murder.  Dominguez tried to deceive the public with a biased PR film about the murder of Sra. Amelia Baca.  He and other LCPD officers participated in the multi-agency task force investigation and the review of the report to the DA, thereby compromising the integrity of the investigation.  He did not hold the LCPD officer involved accountable; indeed, he returned him to duty.  No one knows why.

 

No members of City Council have addressed this gap between City Council and the LCPD.  So talk by elected officials about accountability or transparency in police conduct is little more than political flatulence.  Councilors and the City Manager, to their shame, support a police chief who is an interested and self-serving person, has demonstrated bias and dishonesty, yet initiates and implements department policy and practice, and bases his decisions on them as he deems advantageous.

 

Many citizens distrust the LCPD because it is neither accountable nor transparent.  They fear its routine operations and resent funding its settlements for egregious actions by its officers, over neither of which it has any control.  Members of City Council, fearful of the LCPD’s political power, avoid police reforms, tolerate low-quality policing, and approve high-cost settlements funded by taxpayers.  They disregard citizens’ concerns for their safety by resisting a citizen review board because it would antagonize the LCPD.  Yet such a board would provide a useful service to the public.  It would enable citizens to state their concerns and share information in a public forum about policing, and develop proposals to Council for improved police policies and practices.  It would close some of the gap between City Council and the LCPD.

 

The contracted police auditor has not provided such service.  Council’s terms and conditions tightly circumscribed what and how it could operate.  Its recent contracts with the police auditor, OIR, severely constrained its audit, and clearly disposed it to tell Council what it wanted to hear.  In a flagrant instance, OIR’s representative testified that interactions between officers and citizens were excellent—a conclusion reached solely on the basis of police say-so, without any OIR contact with or input from citizens involved in those interactions.  New terms and conditions are unlikely to restore Council’s or OIR’s credibility after years of unprofessional, Council-pleasing work.

 

Except for a media commentator or two, almost no one believes that a citizen review board is the only or the best means to achieve police reform and higher-quality policing.  It is one of many possible means, all of which should be considered, to help improve policing.  But it is, I believe, the only one which enables citizens to have a direct voice in influencing police policies and practices, and to take an important step to define LCPD’s proper role as a public servant, not a public threat.