Council Extends Police Review Panel, Despite Duplication

Despite objections that the panel was duplicative and had outlived its existence, the City Council on Monday extended indefinitely the term of the Citizens’ Advisory Board on Police-Community Relations.

The council’s action means that the advisory board will work alongside the newly formed Citizens’ Review Board on Police Practices. While the advisory board will continue to make recommendations about police policies and procedures, the review board enacted under Proposition G will monitor how police investigate individual complaints about officer misconduct.

It is that conceived similarity in missions between the two boards that prompted some council members, along with the Police Officers Assn., to urge that the four-year-old advisory board be disbanded.

“We think it’s duplicative of the citizens’ review board,” said Harry Eastus, a POA spokesman. “It served its purpose, and now there’s no need for it.

“The two boards are nothing more than confusing to people. There’s a board for everything in this town.”

Majority Saw Difference

But a majority of the council, along with Murray Galinson, who has headed both boards, saw a distinct difference between the two panels and sided with extending the life of the advisory group.

“The difference is day and night,” Galinson told the council. “The advisory board has worked for four years and only one group has voiced an opposition to extending the life of this group. That’s the POA, and I think they are dead wrong on this issue.”

Eastus said the POA and the council’s Rules Committee earlier had reached a compromise whereby the advisory board would be extended six months, then dissolved.

“These sorts of organizations should have a life,” said Councilman Bruce Henderson. “But to just perpetuate them indefinitely is simply wrong. It’s a process of government I’ve always disagreed with.”

Manager Sought Extension

But the city manager’s office, which receives and generally approves the advisory board’s recommendations, instead asked the full council to extend the life of the advisory board indefinitely.

Councilman Wes Pratt, in encouraging his colleagues to vote for the indefinite extension, discounted the arguments by the police officers union. “This council would be short-sighted in siding with the paranoia of the POA,” he said.

The vote for an indefinite extension was 6 to 3. Pratt, Bob Filner, Judy McCarty, Ron Roberts, Abbe Wolfsheimer, and Mayor Maureen O’Connor voted for the measure. Henderson, Gloria McColl and Ed Struiksma voted no.