Struiksma Plan Would Water Down Proposed Police-Conduct Panel

San Diego City Councilman Ed Struiksma, moving to provide an alternative to the Charter Review Commission’s call for a strong civilian panel to investigate allegations of police misconduct, Monday proposed a board appointed by the city manager that would not have subpoena power.

The proposal would, however, remove the police chief from the appointment process. The city’s existing police oversight panel, appointed in September, has drawn strong criticism because former Police Chief Bill Kolender was involved in the selection of its members.

If approved by a majority of the council, Struiksma’s proposal for a “citizens’ complaint evaluation board” would compete on the Nov. 8 ballot with the tougher police-oversight plan approved June 13 by the 15-member commission reviewing the city’s charter.

Negotiating with Police

The council has promised to place the commission’s proposal on the fall ballot without alterations, but Monday it postponed that decision until Wednesday to continue negotiations on the proposal with the San Diego Police Officers Assn. Under state law, the city must negotiate any charter changes that could affect officers’ working conditions.

Providing an unusual glimpse at the closed-door negotiations, Struiksma publicly unveiled his proposal immediately after the council ended a private session.

After publicly distributing his proposal, Struiksma won a 5-4 vote of his colleagues to discuss it as an alternative offer to the police union during a closed session scheduled today.

The move incensed Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who called it “diametrically opposed” to the decision that the council had made in closed session minutes earlier. “This is not proper,” O’Connor said. “We can discuss this publicly, but we can’t discuss the first half.”

As debate intensified, the proposal also led to a plea from City Manager John Lockwood that council members not discuss sensitive union negotiations in public.

Struiksma disagreed with O’Connor’s description, but in an interview said that listeners “probably could” infer that the council members supported the Charter Review Commission version in their closed-door vote.

Vote Will Be Revealed

O’Connor declined to discuss that vote, but promised to be explicit about which council members back the competing measure if it is placed on the ballot. “I got sandbagged once. I’m not going to get sandbagged again,” she said.

Struiksma, who was part of the 8-1 council majority that promised to put the Charter Review Commission’s proposals directly on the fall ballot, said he was taking advantage of a provision of that vote under which the council reserves authority to place competing measures on the ballot.

Police Officers Assn. leaders declined to comment on the proposal and said they had no part in drafting it. But union President Ron Newman said that “anything would be better than the Charter Review proposal. The Charter Review’s proposal is outrageous.”

The commission’s language calls for a review panel with its own staff and the power to subpoena witnesses who would testify under threat of perjury. Hearings would be conducted in private, with facts forwarded only to the police chief and city manager, accompanied by a conclusion on whether the complaint was justified.

The proposal by Struiksma, a former San Diego police officer, would not grant the investigative panel the power of subpoena and would not allow the mayor and council to appoint its members.

Under his proposal, appointive power and the right to determine rules and regulations governing the panel would be given to the city manager, who oversees the city’s Police Department.

“The Police Department is best served when you keep politics and politicians out of the Police Department,” Struiksma said in an interview. “The Charter Review proposal does exactly the opposite of this.”