City Citizens Police Review Board Is in a Mess : Law enforcement: Panel designed to hear complaints about police has no phone, no staff, no address and no power.

They have no staff, no telephone and no mailing address. They can’t assurethose who complain about the San Diego Police Department that their gripes are under investigation because nobody is available to type a letter.

And, when they reach a conclusion, they don’t contact those who filed complaints in the first place.

The Citizens Review Board on Police Practices, established by voters two years ago, is in such a mess that at least one board member said he spent many sleepless nights pondering whether to quit the board, which he referred to as a “flawed instrument.”

And, though the board has studied controversial police shootings and complaints that sometimes raise serious questions, it can release nothing to the public except statistics that show whether it agreed or disagreed with the department’s findings and disciplinary actions.

Even the statistics are woefully late. A compilation of what the board has done between July, 1989, and July, 1990, is not expected to be released until today, months behind schedule. The statistics are to be accompanied by a report with a bleak message: the review board has big problems.

Exasperation hit a new level during Tuesday night’s meeting, when several board members admitted that the best they can do is to support City Councilman Wes Pratt’s proposal to get a new measure on the ballot to dissolve their board. In its place, some want to establish a new board with investigative powers similar to a county review panel approved by voters earlier this month.

Board members cannot even agree that a new panel similar to the county’s would even solve the problem. But many acknowledge that the board, although better than nothing, has much room for improvement.

“I have spent some sleepless nights asking myself if I could stay with the board and keep my integrity,” said board member Donald McEvoy. “I felt from the beginning that it was a flawed instrument. Knowing that, I intend to remain knowing that it is flawed.”

Problems run throughout the board’s operation. For starters, the 20-member panel, approved as Proposition G on the 1988 ballot, is empowered to review complaints against the Police Department, but it cannot accept public complaints.

The board has no telephone number nor a mailing address to register complaints, and no staff except for a member of the city manager’s office.

All complaints must first go through the Police Department, which Frank Jordan, a member of the San Diego chapter of the NAACP, finds curious and troubling.

“When people come to us and say they want to complain about the police, we ask them if they’ve filed a complaint with the Police Department,” Jordan said. “They say, ‘Are you crazy? You want me to go downtown to the agency I’m filing the complaint against?’ ”

The board has no set meeting location, and meeting times are often changed. Some are held in the Police Department headquarters in downtown San Diego, which some members of the public are reluctant to attend. Attendance has ranged from none to 25.

During Tuesday’s meeting, the board spent time in a closed session and left attendees waiting outside in the frigid air for half an hour.

Once inside, Councilman Pratt was surprised to hear that the board had no money to hire someone to handle paper work and type letters. All typing and photocopying and mailings must be done by board members, some of whom spend up to 10 hours a week doing review-panel work.

Beyond the clerical duties, board members say the citizens panel is further hampered by what it legally can investigate, which has led to frequent fights with city attorneys assigned to the board.

“Some of the frustrations are concerns about the limits that have been placed upon the board . . . by the city attorney,” said board chairman Murray Galinson. “We are concerned that we are not able to review everything that we feel is relevant in determining whether discipline is appropriate.”

The board is charged with investigating every serious allegation made against a member of the Police Department, ranging from excessive force and false arrest to conduct unbecoming an officer. Of the 454 complaints lodged from July 1, 1989, to July 1, 1990, the Police Department found that 81 were sustained, or had merit. The rest fit into categories of insufficient evidence, unfounded or exonerated.

The panel investigates all allegations and is given all files, tapes, interviews, notes and evidence in the case from the department’s internal affairs office. The board can ask internal affairs to reinvestigate or to ask further questions, a request that has been made sparingly.

The board can agree or disagree with the department’s findings. If it disagrees, it informs the city manager’s office. The city manager has the option of contacting the police chief.

Besides the findings, the board analyzes the department’s discipline against an officer. It is not permitted a detailed breakdown of a police officer’s disciplinary history, but rather a summary of how many times the officer has been disciplined for the same type of complaint.

If the board disagrees with the discipline, it forwards those findings to the city manager, who again can refer it to the police chief.

Board members have been demanding a complete history, which would include a listing of all punishments. They also want to be able to recommend discipline before the police command staff imposes a punishment as a means of influencing the department’s decision.

Results of the board’s disagreements with the Police Department are not permitted to be made public, under state law. Periodically, the board compiles a statistical abstract of the department’s findings and whether or not the board agrees with them.

“I think the fact that we cannot divulge certain information to the public is frustrating to us and the public and to the police,” Galinson said.

Not that the department and the board have been at odds all that much.

Between July 1, 1989, and Dec. 1, 1989, internal affairs investigated 164 complaints and found 20 with merit, 28 without enough evidence, 36 exonerated and 80 unfounded. Of the total, the board disagreed with the department only six times.

In the case of police shootings, the board cannot say anything about its investigations, including whether or not there is an investigation.

Board member Paul J. Pfingst, a former prosecutor in the district attorney’s office and now in private practice, said the board has achieved some success.

Pfingst said the board was instrumental in creating a state law that allows those who complain about mistreatment in the police departments to get a written response that lists the results of internal affairs investigations. Although the results are nothing more than the words “sustained” or “not sustained,” results were never given before last January.

Pfingst, for one, is not convinced that a board like the one created for the county through Proposition A is going to be any better than the one that now exists, because the same privacy rights for police officers and limits on public information will still exist.

“I’m not sure that, when all that time and money is expended with all these hundreds of thousands of dollars, that investigators on the board will make a significant difference in these cases,” he said.

Jordan of the NAACP said money should not be an issue.

“We spend millions of dollars to promote good will in this city,” he said. “We pay for an arts festival, we go after the Super Bowl and we spend money to show what a great city San Diego is. So why is it, when it comes to the needs of its citizens, the city coffers are dry?”