County OKs Strong Sheriff’s Review Board : Law Enforcement: Powers for the voter-approved citizens panel go beyond what Roache would have liked.

Saying that bold measures are needed to restore San Diegans’ faith in law enforcement, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved creation of a strong citizen review board for the Sheriff’s Department, with powers beyond those preferred by Sheriff Jim Roache.

By a unanimous vote, with Supervisor Brian Bilbray absent, the board empowered the review panel with wide-ranging investigative authority--including subpoena power--designed to ensure its independence from any internal sheriff’s probe into allegations of excessive force, criminal conduct and other problems involving deputies’ behavior.

Though top county officials hope to have the 11-member review panel in place by summer, lingering legal questions over the board’s powers conceivably could delay that timetable.

After Tuesday’s meeting, Roache said his staff will reexamine the supervisors’ action before deciding whether to accept it or possibly challenge it in court.

In creating a review board more powerful than its counterpart in the city of San Diego, the supervisors not only sought to send a message to a skeptical public, but also dealt a setback to Roache on one of the first major policy questions to arise since he took office in January.

Roache recently proposed guidelines--notably, one that would have delayed the review board’s investigations until after the Sheriff’s Department completed its own--that critics charged would have seriously diminished the panel’s effectiveness.

“The sheriff’s proposals would destroy the review board’s credibility and effectiveness,” Betty Wheeler, legal director for the ACLU in San Diego, told the supervisors during Tuesday’s two-hour debate. “Don’t put a leash on the review board and then hand the leash over to the sheriff.”

Concurring with that point of view, the supervisors argued that several of Roache’s recommendations would have undermined countywide voters’ intent in approving the review board last November.

“The reason we have a citizen review board is that public trust (in the Sheriff’s Department) was damaged,” Supervisor Susan Golding said. “At a minimum, the citizens wanted an independent voice. When the review board says there isn’t a problem, it will go a long way toward restoring public trust that there isn’t a problem.”

Under Tuesday’s action, the review board will be able to investigate allegations of deputy or departmental wrongdoing immediately after the claims are lodged, simultaneous with any Sheriff’s Department probe.

Roache had suggested that the citizen panel not begin its reviews until up to four months after the complaints were filed, so the department would have time to complete its own investigation and turn its findings over to the board.

Simultaneous probes, Roache warned, could result in investigators from the department and the board “tripping over each other,” impeding and perhaps damaging the probes’ result.

During Tuesday’s debate, Roache emphasized that, if enacted, the 120-day guideline would not be applied arbitrarily, stressing that his department plans to turn its findings over to the board as quickly as possible in each case.

Both public speakers and the supervisors, however, characterized any such delay as unacceptable, noting that it could create the appearance--if not the fact--of a police cover-up. Echoing a sentiment expressed by many, one speaker accused Roache of “trying to chain this watchdog to a wall.”

Any procedural guideline that, in essence, kept the citizen panel on hold until after the Sheriff’s Department finished its investigations “would make a mockery of what the people voted for,” Supervisor Leon Williams said.

Other major changes made by the supervisors dealt with how soon the citizen panel must begin its investigations after incidents of alleged wrongdoing occur.

Although Roache had recommended that any review of individuals’ deaths connected with deputies’ actions be required to begin within six months, the board extended that period to one year.

Similarly, the board extended from 60 days to one year the period within which citizen complaints of any kind must be filed with the board.

The supervisors also adopted some of the sheriff’s proposals, including one that would preclude the review board from investigating incidents for which no citizen complaint has been filed. That provision, county officials said, would prevent the board’s staff from acting as a legal investigative body, rather than the advisory, review panel it is intended to be.

Several of the more than dozen public speakers who testified during Tuesday’s hearing were victims of deputy brutality or relatives of people who suffered at the hands of deputies.

Many of the speakers, including Judy Hejduk of Cardiff, referred to a much-shown recent videotape of Los Angeles police officers severely beating and kicking a suspect as underlining the need for a strong citizen review board.

“What you witnessed was one third the brutality used on me,” said Hejduk, who said she was chained naked and beaten after being arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in 1985.

Despite their obvious difference of opinion about the review board’s scope, both the supervisors and Roache sought to minimize their disagreement.

With both sides enjoying restoration of cordiality and mutual respect in the board-sheriff relationship--a marked departure from the hostilities that characterized the final stages of former Sheriff John Duffy’s 20-year tenure--neither was eager to create the first fissure.

Even as they rejected most of Roache’s major proposals, the supervisors repeatedly stressed that their actions should not be interpreted as a personal slap, and Roache repeatedly eschewed admitting any disappointment with the supervisors’ action.

“This is business,” he said, smiling. “The sun will come up tomorrow, the world will continue.”