Pomona Rejects Civil Review of Police Dept.

Over the vocal objections of most audience members, the City Council this week rejected a proposal to create a citizen board to investigate complaints against police officers.

The council voted 3 to 2 Monday night against Councilman C. L. (Clay) Bryant’s motion to establish a seven-member public safety commission that would oversee the Police and Fire departments. As conceived by Bryant, the commission would have access to personnel records, be able to subpoena officers accused of misconduct and recommend disciplinary action.

Bryant said the commission was needed because of the Police Department’s slowness in handling complaints, such as one filed in February by a 29-year-old Pomona man who said a plainclothes officer verbally abused him, pushed him against a car and searched him after he was involved in a traffic accident.

Still Investigating

The department has yet to resolve the complaint, Bryant said. The Police Department is still investigating that incident, Chief Richard Tefank said, but the matter is “nearing resolution.”

The Pomona Valley branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, which called for a citizen review board last fall after accusing the Police Department of racism, endorsed Bryant’s proposal.

The Rev. Walter Cooks, the branch president, joined several other residents in arguing for such a commission, alleging that police officers routinely engage in verbal and physical abuse when dealing with members of the black community.

“I am in hopes that you will protect the people from further insane and illegal practices that appear to be perpetuating police mischief upon the citizens of this city,” Cooks told the council.

Bryant left the specific duties and powers of the commission undefined in his measure, saying those details could be worked out before its proposed formation in January.

Councilman Mark Nymeyer said he isn’t necessarily opposed to civilian review of police, but said he rejected Bryant’s proposal because it was too vague.

Work Out Details First

“We have a thumbnail sketch, and we’re being asked to rubber stamp it,” Nymeyer said. “I would suggest we work out the details and then vote. We may find out that we’re on the same wavelength, but first we have to turn on the radio.”

Mayor Donna Smith said the city already has adequate civilian review over police. Smith added that Tefank is planning to form a chief’s advisory committee, representing various community groups, that will suggest ways police can better serve citizens.

The city already has the Community Life Commission, which is empowered to take complaints about police from citizens and refer them to city officials, Smith said. However, the City Charter specifically states the commission is not a police review board.

Once officials are apprised of complaints against police, Smith said, the city’s current form of redress--an internal investigation by the Police Department--is sufficient. This process provides accountability to the public because the police chief must answer to the city administrator, who in turn is hired by the council, she said.

“We have an accountable council, we have an accountable city administrator, we have an accountable police chief,” Smith said. “I think we can handle these problems like adults without adding an extra layer of bureaucracy.”

Disrespectful Citizens

Councilman E. J. (Jay) Gaulding, the other council member to vote against the commission, said he was opposed to the whole idea. Most confrontations between residents and police, he said, are provoked by disrespectful citizens.

“I think most of them arise out of irresponsibility,” Gaulding said. “Our problems are in the areas where there is no respect for anyone, including a policeman. . . . If a policeman stops you, you should keep your mouth shut.”

Gaulding’s statements drew an angry response from Cooks.

“You have not lived in the black community,” Cooks told Gaulding. “Your sons have not been shot down. Your daughters have not been pushed into a corner and searched.”

The audience, including several NAACP members, showed its displeasure loudly when the council voted down Bryant’s proposal. Cooks said he was “disheartened and disappointed.”

Bryant upbraided Nymeyer and Smith, calling the reasons they gave for their opposition “a cop-out.” He urged the occasionally unruly audience to remember this police commission vote in March, when the terms of Gaulding and Smith expire.

“If you want a commission, you get out and work,” Bryant said. “You know what has to be changed. Get out and do it.”

Two Major Demands

A police review committee and the hiring of more minority officers were the two major demands made at a City Council meeting last October by Harold Webb, then president of the NAACP’s Pomona Valley branch.

Webb blasted Smith for an incident last August in which she brandished a shotgun at an 18-year-old Cal Poly Pomona student who had parked his car in front of her house at night. The student, who is black, said the mayor came out of her house with the gun, shouted obscenities at him and accused him of being in her neighborhood to buy or sell drugs.

At the time, Webb said Smith’s actions set a poor example for the rest of the city’s employees, particularly the police. Webb said officers also sometimes used abusive language and the threat of force against black residents who were not guilty of any criminal offenses.

In the seven months that followed, the mayor, the police chief and Councilwoman Nell Soto attended a series of meetings with representatives of minority groups to discuss ways of mending fences.

Affirmative Action Plan

The meetings yielded a new affirmative action plan, which calls for the ethnic composition of the city’s work force to reflect that of the overall population by 1993.

In addition, Tefank proposed creating the chief’s advisory committee, which will represent residents’ concerns but will lack the investigative powers of a review board.

“The committee itself will not be involved in reviewing and investigating complaints, but they certainly can bring forward a complaint, and I will refer the information to our investigators,” Tefank said.

A proposal to create a police commission or similar body was rejected by city officials during the mediation sessions.

Agreement Not Reached

“That was an item that was discussed by the various participants, but they weren’t able to reach agreement between the city officials and the minority representatives,” said Vermont McKinney, senior regional mediator with the U.S. Department of Justice’s community relations service, who oversaw the meetings.

Bryant said he made his proposal at this week’s council meeting to give the proposal for a police review board a hearing before the entire council.

Smith said she opposed Bryant’s proposal because the City Council had only a week earlier approved the joint resolution produced during the sessions, which included the chief’s advisory committee.

“We’ve not even given it a chance to work, and there are so many good things in that agreement,” Smith said.

Smith added that a commission with the far-reaching authority Bryant has envisioned would not be permissible under state laws, particularly the Public Safety Officers’ Procedural Bill of Rights.

That bill of rights, included in the state Government Code, prohibits verbal and physical abuse of officers while being interrogated by police internal affairs investigators and would probably have little bearing on a civilian review board, said Dave Baca, director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

However, the state Penal Code requires that all police disciplinary actions and personnel records be confidential, Baca said. The only authorities allowed access to personnel records are the district attorney and the county grand jury. The code also requires that disciplinary hearings be held in private, he said.

Smith stressed that a citizens review board is not a panacea for tensions between police and the people they serve. “I happen to know that they haven’t worked so well in other cities and they have been disbanded,” she said.

But in Berkeley, which has the oldest police review commission in the state, the system has had “a major impact” in reducing complaints against officers, according to Eileen Luna, that commission’s chief investigator.

In the year after the commission was created in 1973, citizen complaints of police brutality declined 67% and have continued at a rate of less than one a year, she said.

The Berkeley Police Review Commission investigates citizen complaints on offenses ranging from discourtesy to brutality, Luna said. It is not hindered by the officers’ bill of rights or Penal Code confidentiality requirements because it neither reviews personnel records nor recommends disciplinary action, she said.

Cooks said the NAACP will continue to press the issue of civilian oversight of police conduct in Pomona and will marshal its forces on Election Day to defeat council members opposed to it.

“We’re going to come back to demand an end to the excessive policing,” Cooks said.