Shaping of Watchdog Panel for Sheriff to Begin in Earnest

American Civil Liberties Union representatives and other civic activists said they will meet this week to help decide how a citizen review board to monitor the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department should operate, and who should apply for membership.

Proposition A, which passed overwhelmingly at the polls three weeks ago, gives the County Board of Supervisors the right to establish a civilian panel to oversee allegations of misconduct in the Sheriff’s Department. Supervisors have said they will form such a panel.

Unlike the San Diego Police Department’s citizen review board, approved by voters two years ago, the county panel is proposed to work like a grand jury, with the authority to subpoena documents and compel witnesses to testify.

But a group of civic activists, including ACLU executives and a former Navy chaplain who was awarded $1.1 million in a jail brutality lawsuit, said they are organizing to make sure that the panel is not weakened when a proposed ordinance is drafted next month to create the review board.

“We want to keep the pressure on the county,” said Mike Crowley, co-chairman of the ACLU’s committee on police practices. “We want to impact the process every step of the way.”

Supervisors will consider an ordinance either a week or two weeks from today that will establish particulars of the board, according to Jim Smith, head of special projects in the chief administrator’s office.

Smith said the county will solicit names next month of those who want to serve. Chief Administrative Officer Norm Hickey will recommend names and supervisors will nominate individuals, who must be approved by the entire board of supervisors. From nine to 15 members will be chosen, probably sometime in January, Smith said.

The panel will then choose four staff members, including an executive officer, an investigator, a secretary and a clerk.

Proposition A mandates that the panel investigate citizen complaints, including instances of excessive force, sexual harassment, improper shootings, illegal search and seizure, false arrest, criminal conduct and misconduct.

The measure was placed on the ballot and supported by county supervisors and both sheriff’s candidates because of a rash of accusations by jail inmates and visitors alleging beatings and harassment. The county has paid several expensive judgments in recent years resulting from brutality cases.

Still to be determined is how the board will operate. The ballot language did not spell out who can be a member. It also has not been determined how complaints will be handled, what parts of the investigations will be open to public inspection, and how the investigations will proceed.

John Crew, an ACLU attorney in San Francisco who heads a project on police practices in Northern California, said establishing the panel is only the first step.

“The common experience in cities and counties where this has passed is that it was good news that it was voted in,” said Crew, adding that the battle is not over until the workings of the board are established. “But, in a lot of places, there is a postpartum resistance from administrators or unions about what takes place on these boards.”

Randy Dibb, president of the Deputy Sheriff’s Assn., said his organization opposes giving the panel investigatory powers, but the association has not decided how it will get involved in drafting the ordinance.

Sheriff-elect Jim Roache, who supports the review panel, said legal challenges are bound to surface.

“It’s inevitable that the Deputy Sheriff’s Assn. will be litigating a lot of this and the board of supervisors may request information from me that I may not be able to provide,” he said. “I think you’ll see some major controversy over this.”

San Diego-based ACLU attorney Mike Crowley and Betty Wheeler, the organization’s director, will meet this week with Jim Butler, a former Navy chaplain who accused sheriff’s deputies of beating him at the Vista jail in 1985. Butler was awarded $1.1 million in damages four months ago.

Butler and the ACLU may work with other attorneys and civic activists, and plan to appear at public hearings in December that will deal with the ordinance, Crowley said.

Butler, who has been compiling information about other police review boards around the world, said he wants to make sure that the panel has all the investigatory powers that voters approved.

Butler said he would like the membership to differ from those selected for the grand jury, some of whom, he said, enjoy the “social prestige” rather than the involvement it takes to make substantial changes.

The ACLU’s Crew, who has studied police review boards for years, said it is crucial that membership be representative of San Diego’s racial makeup and that those chosen are committed to independent citizen review.

“Nobody should buy into the trap, as they have done in some areas, that only retired police officers are the ones qualified to sit on a review board,” he said. “Members have to be representative of the population that the law enforcement community deals with.”