Sacramento Officials Ask State to Investigate Police Performance in Boardinghouse Slayings

City officials have asked a state panel to investigate the Sacramento Police Department’s operation and policies, including those related to the handling of mass-murder suspect Dorothea Montalvo Puente.

“We know some things went wrong last week that shouldn’t have gone wrong,” Mayor Anne Rudin said Tuesday. “We want to assure the public that whatever it is will not be repeated.”

She said the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training agreed to conduct the review as “a group of people familiar with police departments.” The mayor said she hopes for a report within a few months.

Police Chief John Kearns supported the proposal, saying: “I think it’s a positive step, not a negative one. . . . We are a public agency open to scrutiny.”

Mayor Rudin and City Manager Walter Slipe, who also supported the review proposal, said it stemmed from two controversial police decisions in the Puente case.

The first was the decision to release Puente without keeping her under surveillance although parts of a body had already been discovered in the yard of the boarding house she managed. Six other bodies subsequently were found, and Puente, 59, was charged with murder.

The second decision was an agreement by police to fly Puente back to Sacramento from Los Angeles, where she was arrested, on a plane chartered by Sacramento station KCRA-TV. Defense attorneys charged that the flight and an interview with Puente on the plane violated her constitutional rights.