Council OKs Commission on Human Relations

In an effort to foster ethnic harmony, the City Council has unanimously decided to revive the Human Relations Commission and to set up an inner-city police substation.

Both moves had been proposed by a group of local ministers who have called for reforms in the wake of what council members now simply refer to as “the incident”--the controversial arrest of activist Don Jackson in a videotaped confrontation aimed at exposing alleged brutality by Long Beach police.

The commission approved by the council will recommend “policies and programs to promote good will and better relations among all people.”

Councilman Clarence Smith, a strong supporter of reviving the panel, said the commission will not conduct investigations of specific incidents. Instead, it will review larger issues dealing with race and human relations, he said.

Mayor Ernie Kell will choose a single member from each council district and four at-large members, for a total of 13, subject to council confirmation. Members are to be “broadly representative” of the many minority groups in the city, including those based on sexual orientation, age, religion and disability, as well as ethnicity and race.

Kell said he strongly supports such a commission, but he provided no timetable for nominating members.

The commission was disbanded by council action in April, 1981. Since then, the city’s racial minority groups have steadily grown. For instance, Long Beach, once a haven to snow-weary Midwesterners, now has more Cambodian refugees than any other city in the nation.

The idea of bringing back the commission had been under study since last summer and gained new momentum in the wake of the Jackson incident.

In that incident, a white police officer was secretly videotaped allegedly pushing the head of a black man through a plate glass window during a routine traffic stop on Pacific Coast Highway. The black man was Jackson, a Hawthorne police sergeant on long-term leave who came to Long Beach with an NBC camera crew in a “sting” operation intended to expose police brutality.

The incident is under investigation by police, the district attorney’s office and FBI.

The videotape, made from cameras hidden in Jackson’s car and in chase vehicles, was broadcast locally and nationally. It brought calls for reforms from the clergy, the Long Beach Chapter of the National Assn. of Colored People and other groups. The suggested reforms included reviving the commission.

The Rev. Norman D. Copeland, organizer of Concerned Clergy of Long Beach, endorsed the council action, though he said he wants to see how it is implemented.

“I think they’re moving in some positive direction now,” said Copeland, who is also pastor of the Grant African Methodist Episcopal Church. “We need to have a watchful eye on how the Human Relations Commission is organized (to see) whether it has teeth or gums.”

Councilman Les Robbins said he supports the idea of a commission, but was worried about adding to the city’s costs with the budget already tightly crimped.

But Smith, the council’s only black member, said the cost of running the commission amounts to an ounce of prevention that will help resolve community strife before it can erupt into full-blown crises.

The police substation would be set up in the multiethnic central area of the city, possibly at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, officials said. It would be called a “Police Community Service Center” and would be primarily aimed at crime prevention, receiving police complaints, issuing bicycle licenses and similar tasks.

At a hearing last week, Concerned Clergy representatives said a substation would help police officers establish better communications with minority communities. Police officials said they have wanted to make more efforts to improve communications in the central city.