Limited Powers : Police Advisory Panel Approved by Council

Hoping to disperse a cloud of ill will between police and some city residents, the San Diego City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved the creation of a citizens panel to advise the police on how to get along with the people they protect.

Council members decided the 13-member panel will exist for two years--disbanding in 1987--rather than three years as originally proposed. The compromise on the panel’s life span helped win over council members who have been reluctant to support anything that looked like an attempt by citizens to pass official judgment on police actions.

As passed, the Citizens Advisory Committee on Police-Community Relations is charged with making the police “sensitive, effective and responsive to the needs of the city” by offering general policy recommendations to the department, which is under no obligation to take its advice. The panel, whose members will be approved by the City Council, is also charged with helping to promote better crime prevention.

The panel is far weaker than the kind of citizen review board called for by some citizens of Southeast San Diego, who have demanded that citizens be empowered to investigate specific reports of police misconduct. Police and council members have fought the notion.

Concerns about police-community relations were raised after the shooting death of Officer Thomas E. Riggs on March 31. Tempers in the Southeast San Diego community flared after witnesses claimed that Riggs and his colleague, Officer Donovan J. Jacobs, were shot after they verbally abused and beat 23-year-old Sagon Penn. Penn grabbed the revolver in Jacobs’ holster and fired at the policemen and a civilian riding with Riggs before driving off in a police car. He later surrendered himself to police.

The incident stirred duel emotions. Leaders of police unions complained that San Diego had the nation’s highest mortality rate among police on the job. But residents said the Riggs killing underscored the insensitive way some police deal with the black community.

On May 28, the department became embroiled in another controversy when police shot and killed Wayne Douglas Holden, a 21-year-old UC San Diego student, who was running through a San Carlos neighborhood wielding a 12-inch kitchen knife. Officers shot him after a footrace when Holden crashed through a closed glass window of a neighborhood house. Pictures of police with guns pointed at Holden appeared in all of the San Diego newspapers.

Police responded to complaints about the incident by explaining they had tried unsuccessfully to stun Holden with a Taser gun dart, and finally shot him when they determined he threatened the safety of neighborhood residents.

Councilman Jones said Tuesday he hoped the new citizens panel would be one of the many ingredients --along with such things as human relations training and recent public meetings in Southeast San Diego --that will be used by the city to defuse the current ill will.

“I think it’s all these things together, and people actually taking the time and being constructive,” he said. “People can be negative and criticize the department, and we can criticize the citizens. But I think the key is getting on the table something constructive.”

Jones emphasized that the panel will not review individual police complaints. That, he said, is up to the city’s Civil Service Commission, which, he added, has used its subpoena and investigative power in police personnel matters sparingly.

Police Chief Bill Kolender, who has openly opposed the idea of a strong citizen review board, said Tuesday he was hopeful the new panel would “strengthen the ties between the police and the community, and it will have my total support.”

At the same time, Kolender made it clear he will stand up to any attempt by the new panel to dictate how the department should be run.

“The board may try, but it’s advisory and we’ll take it in that context,” he said.

“It’s not going to be a ‘kangaroo court.’ It’s not a police review board. They do not make judgments concerning any kind of actions taken by police,” he said.

Councilman Ed Struiksma, who comes from a law enforcement background, said he hopes the new panel will stick with giving advice. To that end, he said, he insisted a city attorney be appointed as an ex-officio member to serve as the new panel’s “conscience.”

“Even though there is language within this ordinance that it is not a police review board, it will be watched very closely by the police community to make sure it adheres to its charge,” Struiksma said. “It’s very easy for a board of this nature to get into a gray area or, frankly, step over the line” to review police incidents and “lay blame on specific officers.”

The board will include citizens from every council district, a “human relations expert” hired by the city, one member from a police employee group and two people from the “social service, corrections, probation or other related field,” said the ordinance. A police psychologist was added Tuesday as another ex-officio member of the board.