Subject: "Progressive" CA City Lays Waste to Police
Oversight
FROM: MARK HALFMOON
"Progressive"
CA City Lays Waste To Police Oversight
On Tuesday, January 28th, the Santa Cruz City Council will most likely vote to repeal the ordinance that created the Citizen's Police Review Board
(CPRB) in 1994. Mayor Emily
Reilly and other council members believe
that the board is ineffective and a waste of
money. They claim that the city can save $90,000 to $120,000 per year by doing away with the
CPRB and that due to a current budget
crisis Santa Cruz can no longer afford
what they see as a non-essential program. Some of the council members say
that they support the idea of citizen oversight of the police but that it could
be done cheaper by using an "auditor" model.
Some members of the board feel that indeed the CPRB is ineffective because of
how it was created. When a person makes a complaint about police
policies, procedures, practices and individual behavior, it immediately goes to
the Police Department's own Internal Affairs (IA) investigator where it often languishes
for months while it's being investigated. The police conduct interviews with the complainant, officers
involved and witnesses. The investigator eventually makes a
recommendation to the chief or deputy chief and one of them makes a
"finding." The complaint, IA recommendation and finding are
then forwarded to the CPRB for review. The board then, at its next
monthly meeting, in closed session, attempts to make a finding of its own.
What is wrong with this process is that the CPRB has only the report by the
police themselves to use in determining whether they collectively or
individually have harassed, abused or violated a citizen's rights. Needless to say, there is a tendency by police
officers to downplay the wrongdoing of a brother/sister officer even to the
point of convenient amnesia and "mistakes" made in the report.
The fact that CPRB findings correspond to the findings of the chief in the
majority of complaints (usually exonerating the subject officer) is not an
indication that there was no police wrongdoing. But, given the restrictive
rules of the CPRB ordinance, an honest person, unknowingly misled by
overwhelming evidence provided by only one side in a dispute (which almost always
discredits the other side) has no choice but to agree with it.
The repeating patterns we see of infractions elevated to violence and arrest
and the too-tight handcuffs complaints excused by IA seems to indicate that
people who complain about police are either all hotheads and liars or that
there are some hotheads and liars on the force. The "lurching at
officers" as a justifiable pretext to violent police "reaction"
are just too damn common and not credible to myself, and to other members of the
CPRB. But, because of the repressively restrictive review process, we
find ourselves helpless under the current ordinance to do little more than make
policy recommendations to the city council, City Manager and Police
Chief. Based on our experience of trying to address problems in this
manner, it appears that our recommendations are gathering dust in "file 13."
After studying complaints and talking with would-be complainants who are too
intimidated to challenge the police and are afraid the CPRB is too weak to
protect them from police retribution, the chair and vice-chair have found that,
yes, racially biased and class biased policing (profiling) does exist in Santa
Cruz. After reviewing the claims against the city related to police
mistreatment we have found that Santa Cruz can not afford to not have vigorous
citizen oversight. To African-Americans, Latinos, the poor and teens
citizen oversight of the police is an essential public safety function.
If money is being wasted on the CPRB it is because the city gave it no power to
seriously address police abuse. It was crafted to be a "rubber
stamp" on the police-biased findings of the chief. The City Manager,
City Council and the Chief of Police have failed repeatedly to consider
recommendations from the board. They have, more often than not, not even responded
to our requests.
How can the council honestly claim that they can save up to $120,000 a year
when the board only has an annual budget of $83,000? As Council Member
Mike Rotkin is quoted as saying in a recent Metro Santa Cruz story, "no
amount of playing funny games with money" by claiming that the excess
$37,000 is from incidental and overhead costs, will help the council's credibility
on this matter.
The councils much favored "auditor" model requires the hiring of a
qualified professional, working full time with staff assistance. I
submit, after much study and consultation with professionals in the field of oversight,
that it is impossible to attain an effective auditor system for less than the
CPRB's current meager budget.
Berkeley has twice the population of Santa Cruz, less than twice the police
officers and more than three times the budget for police oversight. If
there is indeed a budget crisis, (never a budget crisis for police, jails and
military) maybe the city can scrape some change off of the $15,000,000 per year
police budget. Are abandoned vehicles such a big problem in the city that
the $114,000 allotted to the cops for "vehicle abatement" can be
considered one of those essential public safety programs that cannot be cut or reduced?
How about the nearly one million dollar "community relations" portion
of the police budget? Is all of that
essential too?
As I asked Chief Belcher, if you say you are committed to buying a new police
car and the price for one is thirty thousand dollars, are you really serious
about getting one if you will only offer $750 to the dealer?
Last year city employees complained to the SCPD that one of their officers drew
a loaded weapon on a pair of 12-year olds at the Teen Center. The police
told them that nothing improper had occurred. The two kids were black and
Latino and "resembled gang members." Santa Cruz needs police oversight. People on the CPRB have
become experts on it. If the city is going to disband its Citizen's
Police Review Board, have something effective be there in its place. Let
the board members who have been working (volunteering) at least 20 to 40 hours
a week in addition to their regular jobs for the past year studying citizen
police oversight models give the advice and direction to the city they were
appointed to give.
At least give them the courtesy and respect of consulting with them, returning
their phone calls or even letting them know that they are being disbanded before
they are informed by TV news reporters with cameras rolling.
Mark Halfmoon, Chair
CPRB In Exile