COMMISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

On April 14, community activists gathered inside the Art Pick Council Chamber, seeking to deliver, or in some cases, forcefully inveigh their opinions to the city council on the matter of the Community Police Review Commission. At stake was the commission’s ability to investigate officer-involved deaths on its own terms and in a timely manner, as it has since its inception in ’01.

William Howe, retired chief of police at UC Riverside and former commissioner, insisted the city had no call to interfere with commission reviews or put a timetable on their investigations. “If you wait,” said Howe, “people move away and witnesses are intimidated.”

The commission was formed in response to the outcry and controversy over the 1998 shooting of Tyisha Miller, a black 19-year-old woman shot and killed by Riverside police officers. In 2001, voters succeeded in getting the commission added to the city charter with the primary authority to look into officer-related shootings and deaths.  

On that much, the city and its constituents can agree on. But as the swords were drawn, the debate became bogged down amidst the introduction of concepts such as parallel investigations, allegations of trampling on secure crime scenes, charges of corruption and clarification of the original intent of the commission’s own policies and procedures.

All of this in the wake of a dizzying six months of controversy, starting with the commission’s decision in August to investigate the death of Martin Pablo, a man who died handcuffed in police custody. Shortly after, City Manager Brad Hudson put the kibosh on city funds for any kind of commission review until after the police department had finished its own investigation, a move that delays the CPRC’s own investigations by months or longer.

This caused enough of a stink within the community—but the worst was to follow. Since September, there have been four officer-involved deaths in Riverside (there had been 14 in the prior eight years). Last month, Jim Ward, the commission’s longest tenured member, abruptly resigned, calling the commission a “rubber stamp” for the city.

Among the council, the discussion became an ideological battleground between two members. On one side sat Ward 4 rep Frank Schiavone, chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee. The GAC did their own investigation of 18 similar police review agencies in California, such as one in Long Beach, and found that all others waited until law enforcement and/or DA investigations were completed to begin their process.

Riverside’s commission should have been operating in this manner all along, Schiavone’s argument goes. A GAC report claims the Riverside commission was set up to be consistent with the Long Beach police review board. “We want to maintain protocol,” says Schiavone. “It’s the CPRC that is not adhering to their own policies.”

Opposing Schiavone was Ward 1 rep Mike Gardner, one of the commission’s original members. Gardner quickly refuted Schiavone. “Long Beach had no language on how to handle investigations,” says Gardner. Gardner then said that for the first CPRC review, the commission indeed did wait until law enforcement finished its investigation. “It took a year . . . [which was] too long.” Subsequent reviews were handled differently, but attempts to draft language to codify the new policy were never completed.  

Schiavone and Gardner put up competing motions, with Gardner’s going down to defeat 5-2 (Ward 2’s Andy Melendrez sided with Gardner) before Schiavone’s own motion passed by the same 5-2 vote—giving an official blessing to City Manager Hudson’s prior directive.

Still, the fight is far from over. It is not clear what authority the council has to pass motions regarding an independent commission. According to the City Charter, Chapter 2.76, the commission is an advisory group to the council, the city manager and the police chief. Other than appointing (or removing) commission members and reviewing an annual commission report, the council seems to have no other official jurisdiction over how the commission operates.

As it now stands, a city mechanism that was intended to serve as an independent watchdog of the police isn’t so independent any more and a body that was touted to promote police accountability appears fully accountable to City Hall and not the citizens it was intended to serve

—Kevin Ausmus