Despite Opposition by Minorities, Police Review Unit Named

San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender and City Manager John Lockwood on Friday named 12 people--seven of them minorities--to the new Civilian Advisory Panel on Police Practices, which will review investigations of alleged officer misconduct.

The appointments were made despite a boycott of the selection process by black and Latino organizations.

The Rev. George Walker Smith, a black minister and former San Diego school board president, was appointed chairman of the panel, which will review police investigations and make recommendations to the police internal affairs unit. The vice chairman will be retired Superior Court Judge Gilbert Harelson.

“I am very pleased with the group,” Lockwood said. “I think it accomplished all the purposes I wanted to accomplish. That was a group balanced with people who are experienced with the system and people who have not been politically involved. It is ethnically balanced, it is balanced male- and female-wise, it is balanced with age and geographical area and background.”

Smith, who is a friend of Kolender, said he did not want to serve on the panel but agreed after he was asked by both the police chief and Lockwood. Smith said he is not concerned about criticism by minority groups that the panel lacks the independence and authority necessary to effectively monitor police investigations.

‘Let People Complain’

“Let people complain . . . “ Smith said. “That doesn’t bother me. What is the alternative? Nothing. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

Smith said he sees the panel as “not a mouthpiece or a protector of the Police Department or to be used as a whipping boy for the community . . . It is to try and bring about respectability on the part of both sides.”

But several minority leaders said they cannot imagine how panel members could achieve any meaningful reform under the current review plan.

“The NAACP is opposed to that facade that has been created by the city manager and the chief of police here,” said Daniel Weber, an attorney who is president of the San Diego chapter of the NAACP. “The only thing it does is to mislead the public into believing that it has in place a police review board when nothing could be further from the truth. It is merely an extension of the Police Department, a body that is controlled from top to bottom by the Police Department.”

Weber said it does not matter to him who Lockwood and Kolender appointed to the board because the panel is an advisory body that will have access only to reports provided by the Police Department.

Other minority leaders, however, were directly critical of the appointments. They described many of the members as “establishment” San Diegans who “won’t rock the boat.”

“I have strong doubts whether they are going to have any meaningful input into the process,” said Barbara Davis, the president-elect of the San Diego County black bar association who helped organize the boycott. “I don’t see on here a great number of people who are going to fight for what is really needed. That is a change in attitude of the San Diego Police Department.”

Heard Nothing but Praise

Lockwood and top police officials said they heard nothing but praise on Friday for the caliber of people named to the panel. They reacted strongly to suggestions that the panel members were “cronies” of police and city leaders.

“There are no police administration pawns on this body,” said Asst. Police Chief Bob Burgreen, who sat in on all of the interviews of candidates. “These people are all solid citizens, many of who are not coming forward real willingly, particularly the Hispanic people. They are coming forward because they feel it is much better to work within the system if changes need to be made than to sit outside and gripe and do nothing.”

Kolender has been on vacation for the past two weeks and was unavailable for comment. He was briefed on the selections by Burgreen and gave his input by telephone, Burgreen said.

The panel consists of five whites, three blacks, three Latinos and one Vietnamese. They include retired Judge Harelson, who will serve as vice chairman; retired Marine Lt. Gen. Joseph Fegan; Howard Carey, executive director of the Neighborhood House Assn., the oldest social service agency in San Diego, and two former county grand jurors.

Also named on Friday were three alternates--one white, one black and one Filipino. They will be appointed to the board after one year when half of the panel is replaced.

Fegan said he was aware that the panel has come under attack from minority leaders but said he hoped they would give the board a chance.

“It’s certainly a start in the right direction,” Fegan said. “They should give it an opportunity to grow and be an asset to the administration of our city. Hopefully, they will find this group is important and true enough to come up with good, solid recommendations.”

Carey Backs Criticisms

Carey, who is black, said his decision to join the panel does not mean that he disagrees with the criticisms voiced by many minority leaders.

“I’m certainly concerned about some of the same issues that were raised by a number of organizations and I’m still concerned,” Carey said. “I don’t see my participation as being necessarily inconsistent with some of the same goals and objectives they are talking about . . . Let’s work to make it what it should be. I’ll do my part.”

Burgreen conceded that the selection process was hampered by the boycott organized by 10 minority organizations, including the NAACP, the San Diego Urban League, the Chicano Federation, the Black Federation and Barrio Station.

“Although I see this as a very strong panel, I do see the fact that certain community groups not giving us names detracted slightly from the panel,” Burgreen said.

One such candidate who was reported to be high on Kolender’s list but withdrew his name was Gil Contreras, a close friend of the chief and a prominent Latino businessman who is president of the Mexican-American Business and Professional Assn. That group voted unanimously to join the boycott, refusing to provide a list of nominees to the Police Department.

Lockwood recently asked 15 minority groups for nominations after his original plan to select the panel from a pool of retired judges, former grand jury members and ex-Civil Service commissioners produced a group of mostly elderly, white men. When only five of the groups submitted nominations, Lockwood accepted the names of individuals who volunteered to serve.

The minority groups boycotted the selection process to draw attention to their argument that someone other than the chief of police should appoint the members.

Witt Revised Opinion

Originally, City Atty. John Witt said the City Charter required that Kolender was the only city official with the authority to appoint citizens who would be given access to confidential police reports. After that opinion resulted in a storm of protest, Witt revised his ruling this week to allow Lockwood to participate in the selection process.

Minority leaders also were critical of Lockwood’s review plan because it fails to allow board members to independently interview witnesses or audit ongoing investigations. Instead, the panel will have access to police reports once the investigation has been completed.

Lockwood said he believes the public’s perception of the panel’s effectiveness will depend in large part on how the media describes the members.

“If the group is characterized as Lockwood and Kolender cronies or establishment or people who aren’t assertive and come across that way, the million people in town . . . are going to come to the conclusion that this group doesn’t have any punch at all,” Lockwood said. “If they are characterized as a broad cross-section of people, heavyweights who are independent and won’t be puppets, I think the public will have a different reaction.”

Lockwood said that he and Kolender have succeeded in selecting individuals who are not “a bunch of cronies.”

He added, “These people are not the kind of people who are going to take directions or orders from Kolender or Lockwood . . . You don’t tell retired judges or George Smith what to do. You’ve got school principals and doctors of psychology and three-star generals. That is why I’m really comfortable with the group.”

Lockwood said he expects the panel to begin reviewing police investigations of citizen complaints within weeks. The city manager’s office and police officials have been working daily for the past several weeks to put the finishing touches on the system under which the board will operate, according to Burgreen.

Panelists to Take Turns

He said that whenever the department has investigated a citizen’s complaint of serious police misconduct, it will pick the names of two panel members from a hat and ask them to spend an afternoon reviewing police reports and tape recorded interviews. This will occur about once every two weeks, and the names of panel members selected will remain out of the hat until all of them have been chosen.

The review will be coordinated by Cmdr. Calvin Krosch, the head of the internal affairs division, who will answer any questions.

“At that point, we will accept from them recommendations or observations of the investigations, including if they feel we need to do more or if they feel we have missed something,” Burgreen said. “We will take that into account. If they feel we should reinvestigate, we will hear them out. If we think the reason is good, we will follow their advice. They cannot order us to do anything.”

Once the investigation is concluded, police officials will ask the two panel members assigned to each case for their opinion of whether the complaint should be sustained. Burgreen said the department will consider the input before making a finding.

Once a month, the entire panel will meet with police officials to review all complaints and discuss the outcome of the cases. The chairman will prepare a quarterly report to the police chief and city manager evaluating the department’s objectivity, thoroughness and fairness in conducting investigations, Burgreen said. The reports will be made public.

“The group has a blank check to make any suggestions or constructive criticism they wish,” Lockwood said. “They can start doing it on day one or three months . . . I want to keep it really open, because we’re not set in concrete on it. We want to be a living thing and change as we need to, if in fact we need to.”