Blog note: this article references a 2016 grand jury report.
LA MESA — Several dozen La Mesa residents met Tuesday night to discuss the possibility of creating a community oversight board for the La Mesa Police Department.
The forum, put on by the civic engagement group La Mesa Conversations and held at the city’s Masonic Lodge, drew a crowd of about 75 residents and a handful of activists and community leaders from around the county, including the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties and the local branch of the NAACP.
“If you want effective policing, you need trust, you need accountability,” said Andrea St. Julian, a lawyer and member of Women Occupy San Diego who was one of four panelists. “The best way to get those two things are by having a citizens oversight board of some type.”
According to Janet Castaños, a board member of La Mesa Conversations, the idea of creating a police oversight commission or review board — like San Diego’s Community Review Board on Police Practices, or the county’s Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board — sprang up after a white La Mesa police officer was recorded twice throwing a black 17-year-old girl to the ground at Helix High School in January 2018.
“They completed an internal investigation and found no fault with the officer, that he followed proper policy,” Castaños said last week. “Well if that’s OK, then maybe there’s something wrong with the policy.”
Councilwoman Akilah Weber, who was elected to her first term last year, said she and other council members were disappointed earlier this year when the outside firm hired to investigate the Helix incident presented its findings.
A lawyer from that firm said he was not allowed to share specifics of how the investigation determined that the officer did not use excessive force, that his actions were not racially motivated and that he did not lose his temper during the incident.
After that meeting, Weber asked Police Chief Walt Vasquez to speak to the council about the department’s use-of-force policy, which he did last month.
Weber also asked city staff around that same time to study how smaller cities and communities have implemented community review boards, she said in an interview Tuesday night. She expects the council will receive the results of that report at one of its July meetings.
In an email Wednesday, Councilwoman Kristine Alessio said that until the City Council has time to study the staff report, it would be “hard to opine” whether La Mesa needs an oversight commission.
“I’m in favor of proposals that strengthen the relationship between police departments and the communities they serve,” Alessio wrote in an email. “But ... without seeing the report it’s hard for me to say what sort of proposal I’d be for or against.”
Alessio said putting the matter up for voters to decide “could be a valuable tool to determine community support for any proposals,” but that it isn’t “absolutely necessary.”
Councilman Bill Baber said he sees no need for an oversight board, but said an advisory panel might be an option.
“Our police officers have a dangerous job, I won’t vote for anything that makes their job more difficult,” Baber wrote in an email Wednesday. “However, if the Chief wants to convene a committee of citizens to give him advice on neighborhood issues, that’s probably helpful.”
Weber, who is also on the board of La Mesa Conversations, said Tuesday night that the council must listen to whether the community wants an oversight commission, but Tuesday’s forum had “an amazing turnout, and it definitely sounds like (an oversight board) is something the community is interested in.”
Mayor Mark Arapostathis and Vice Mayor Colin Parent did not immediately respond to emailed questions.
Panelist Jamal McCrae, a La Mesa resident and former San Diego County sheriff’s deputy, said he believes creating an oversight commission is important, “not to police the police, but to show the community that La Mesa P.D. will do everything in its power to be transparent, to restore faith in the police force.”
La Mesa resident Jack Shu, another of the panelists who was also a former law enforcement officer in his role as a state parks superintendent, said that society gives police officers “a tremendous amount of power” and “huge amounts of discretion.”
“And actually I like them to have that discretion, because most of the time our law enforcement folks use that discretion wisely and do the right thing,” Shu said.
But he believes law enforcement leaders have a tendency to protect that discretion, and protect the misdeeds of some officers, rather than be accountable. He said he believes an oversight commission or review board is the best way to hold police to account when they do make poor decisions.
The new push for community oversight of police revives recommendations put forward in 2016 by the San Diego County Grand Jury.
In the grand jury’s report on police oversight boards in the region, it recommended that La Mesa and six other cities — El Cajon, Escondido, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Chula Vista and Coronado — establish citizen review boards or commissions, or create regional review boards to serve more than one city.
According to the report, the grand jury had received complaints from citizens in several cities without oversight boards who “felt there was inadequate resolution of their grievances.” The report did not specify if any of those complaints came from La Mesa residents.
In their response to the grand jury report , La Mesa’s mayor and police chief said the city had no immediate plans to establish an independent citizen oversight commission.
“Citizen complaints against La Mesa Police Department personnel are taken seriously and reviewed at all levels, including the Chief of Police,” Arapostathis and Vasquez wrote in the letter dated July 26, 2016. “La Mesa does not have a history of complaints about Police behavior that have not been resolved through existing channels and procedures.”
May 22, 2019
The San Diego Union-Tribune
By Alex Riggins
No comments:
Post a Comment