Block to Put More Women on Sheriff’s Advisory Panel

Sheriff Sherman Block agreed Tuesday night to add more women to the citizens panel he appointed to investigate his department, but the panel took no action on a request that the County Board of Supervisors be allowed to appoint additional members.

Earlier in the day, two supervisors had requested the right to appoint people to the sheriff’s ad hoc committee in an effort to enhance the committee’s credibility and independence.

Block resisted that request at the supervisors’ meeting, but said he took no position on it during his panel’s first session, which took place behind closed doors Tuesday.

The committee’s leaders said they had tabled the supervisors’ request, but refused to elaborate.

Instead, the committee took up the issue of women’s representation on the panel. Of the group’s 21 members, only three are women, including Gloria Allred, the panel’s co-chairwoman. Block said he would add an unspecified number of women to the group of civic leaders, educators and law enforcement officials he has asked to investigate his department’s training and procedures in the wake of several controversial deputy-involved shootings.

“The number of women is too low,” Block said at the conclusion of the committee’s meeting. “The committee recognized that and I recognized that and we’re going to try to improve upon that gender balance.”

The two other women on the committee are Los Angeles school board member Leticia Quezada and Eleanor R. Montano, a member of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission.

At the supervisors’ meeting Tuesday morning, Supervisors Ed Edelman and Gloria Molina said it would increase public confidence in the panel if supervisors could add some members to the commission.

The sheriff, however, declined to endorse the move.

“This term independence is constantly coming up,” Block said. “I get the feeling that people are more focused on the process rather than substance.”

Molina said the public is not only concerned about allegations of excessive force in the Sheriff’s Department but is also concerned “by the fact that we’ve had officers charged with stealing credit cards from senior citizens and skimming drug money.”

“It’s in your interest,” Edelman told Block. “We’re in this together . . . because (settlements involving the Sheriff’s Department) we pay out are part of the county budget.”

Block responded, “The committee has not had an opportunity to do anything yet. . . . Allow this process to go forward and see what develops. And ultimately, I have to be answerable.”

Block’s exchange with the supervisors came during a presentation on the panel’s mission by the sheriff and the two co-leaders, Allred, an activist attorney, and Julian Nava, a former Los Angeles school board member and former U. S. ambassador to Mexico.

At Tuesday night’s committee meeting, Block said he had tried to add more women to the panel but was turned down by several women, whom he did not identify.

Allred said she had pushed for more women on the committee.

“I think women should be involved in each and every aspect of policy-making and recommendations on governmental entities,” she said.

Nava said the panel is scheduled to meet again in three weeks.

In another matter Tuesday, the supervisors approved a measure designed to recruit more women to county boards and commissions. The motion--introduced by Molina, who co-authored a similar motion while on the City Council--does not set quotas but encourages the county to widen its outreach efforts.

Only Supervisor Mike Antonovich voted against the motion. “I don’t believe in quotas or a proposal that aims at some sort of quotas,” he said. “I think people should not be judged as a matter of their sex.”

Representatives of four womens’ organizations, including the Fund for the Feminist Majority, testified last week in support of the motion, noting that women hold fewer than a third of the seats on county boards and commissions.