The Pasadena City Council is scheduled to decide if it will approve the Pasadena Police Department’s responses to Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury recommendations to change the Department’s citizen complaint process.
The Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury recently investigated 12 police departments in the County of Los Angeles – including Pasadena’s – and looked at how citizen complaints and internal affairs investigations are conducted.
The Civil Grand Jury report made seven recommendations to the Pasadena Police Department. The police department’s response, presented during a previous meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, is to implement five of them immediately, and take two others under consideration and review.
In an Agenda Report for Monday’s meeting, Interim Pasadena Chief of Police John Perez listed the Civil Grand Jury’s recommendations and the Pasadena Police Department’s proposed responses, to be finalized by the City Council.
On the recommendation to implement “clear signage indicating the location of complaint forms in multiple languages reflective of the community served by the police department,” the City agrees with the recommendation and has already created and posted signage in English and Spanish in the front lobby of the police department.
On the recommendation to “develop the ability for complaints to be made online,” the City agrees with this recommendation but disagrees with the Grand Jury report factual findings which indicated online forms were not available.
Perez said complaint forms were available online at the time of the Grand Jury investigation; he said the City does agree that the forms could be labeled differently and made easier to access online. The City has re-labeled the forms as Compliment/Complaint Forms which should now be easier for complainants to locate online.
On the recommendation to “remove warnings that may intimidate or discourage persons from making a complaint,” the City agrees with this recommendation and is in the process of removing the language and printing new forms. Perez said this has been completed as of August 6.
On the recommendation to “take steps to be in compliance with the legal requirement to provide written notification to the complaining party of the disposition of the complaint within 30 days,” the City agrees with this recommendation and will track all written notification to complainants in a tracking software system known as lA Pro. This has already been implemented, Perez said.
On the recommendation to “accept and log all citizen complaints regardless of their initial assessment of the seriousness of the allegations,” the City will take this recommendation under consideration and this effort will require more time to identify a completion date.
On the recommendation to “promote detailed and on-going education and training in all aspects of the citizen complaint process,” the City agrees with this recommendation and will implement education and training to the public and department employees about the complaint process.
On the recommendation to “consider developing an appeal process to be initiated when a complainant is dissatisfied with the result of an investigation or disposition,” the City will take this under consideration and review and will make a determination no later than December 2018, Perez said.
At the City Council meeting on Monday, the Council is expected to finalize the responses and authorize Mayor Terry Tornek to transmit them to the presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court.
The City has until October 1 to submit the responses to the court.
August 27, 2018
Pasadena Now
From staff reports
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