Lockwood Wants Police Panel Named in 2 Weeks

Last March, San Diego City Manager John Lockwood said he was eager to appoint a civilian review board within a month to monitor internal investigations of police misconduct.

Five months later, the review board is yet to be appointed and representatives of the black and Latino communities have become increasingly critical of the plan.

Fending off the criticism, Lockwood said in an interview Thursday that he now hopes that Police Chief Bill Kolender will name 12 citizens to serve on the oversight panel within two weeks and prepare them to review actual cases by November.

The city’s minority leaders, however, say they are mounting a legal challenge against the city attorney’s opinion that the City Charter gives Kolender the sole authority to select the review board and does not allow civilians to oversee or participate in ongoing investigations.

Plan Under Attack

Since Lockwood announced his police review plan in April, he has come under harsh attack from minority leaders who have branded the model as toothless. Officials in other cities where police review boards are in place have described Lockwood’s plan as the weakest in the nation.

Recently, several Latino groups have protested the police review model by failing to respond to Lockwood’s request to furnish names of minority candidates. Last weekend, the president of the San Diego County black bar association sent a letter to black groups urging them to reject Lockwood’s proposal.

“Mr. Lockwood’s police review panel will do little to change the fact that the Police Department would still conduct their own investigations, giving whatever reports and evidence deemed relevant to a review panel selected and directed by the chief of police,” wrote Mary Franklin, president of the Earl B. Gilliam Bar Assn. “It is time city officials, Chief Kolender and the San Diego Police Department realize they work for us. We must persevere until San Diego gets what it needs--a credible citizen complaint process to prevent future police misconduct.”

Lockwood said Thursday that he plans to participate in the selection of the 12 panel members, which he said will include about six minorities. He said that, although the City Charter gives Kolender the authority to appoint the review board, the city manager will play a crucial role in assisting the police chief.

“I appreciate the distinction between whether the manager makes them or the chief makes them,” Lockwood said. “I understand the perception that if the police chief makes them, it is completely inappropriate, but the (panel members) would be the same.”

Review Plan Changes

Under Lockwood’s original plan, the panel would have been chosen from a pool of former grand jurors, retired judges and past members of the City Civil Service Commission. But Lockwood decided to seek nominations from minority groups in June when the 57 former jurors, judges and civil service commissioners who volunteered to serve included only one Latino and no blacks.

Even if minority groups refuse to provide a list of candidates, Lockwood said, the Police Department has plenty of minority candidates to choose from. Lockwood said he has received nominations from three black organizations--the Urban League of San Diego, the Catfish Club, and Neighborhood House. The city manager said he is giving other minority groups until next week to decide whether to suggest candidates for the panel.

“We’re ready to go,” Lockwood said. “If there are groups that have a hesitancy to (suggest names), that’s OK . . . There will be no hard feelings if they choose not to participate.”

The city manager said he would prefer that representatives nominated from the city’s black and Latino organizations participate in the police oversight panel.

“If you have problems, sit on (the panel),” said Lockwood, directing his statement to minority leaders. “You have a blank check to say whatever you want to say . . . If you don’t have that kind of participation, you are always going to wonder how effective it is.”

Lack of Trust Cited

But minority leaders do not trust Lockwood because the city manager is not willing to give them any firm commitments, said City Councilwoman Celia Ballesteros.

“He’ll tell you privately one thing and turn around and publicly say something else,” Ballesteros said. “He has not said this is my commitment in writing. Why should the community groups trust that?”

Ballesteros said that Lockwood initially talked about allowing the panel to call witnesses to testify about police misconduct, but later backed off and said the group would only have access to police reports. She added that Lockwood has been vague about who will decide the cases to be reviewed and how much access the panel will have.

Ballesteros said the refusal by minority leaders to submit names to Lockwood is “appropriate.”

Speaking to the city manager on behalf of the minority groups, she explained, “The community is not trusting you because you are not willing to commit to anything. We are not going to give you any of our names because it may turn out the whole thing is a sham and we are already out there with our necks on the line.”

The boycott has led at least one prominent Latino businessmen who reportedly was on Kolender’s list of candidates to remove his name. Gil Contreras, a close friend of Kolender’s, serves as president of the Mexican-American Business and Professional Assn., which voted unanimously this week not to provide a list of nominees to the Police Department.

“I’m sure (Kolender) can understand the position I’m in,” Contreras said. “As their elected president, I have to follow the wishes of my constituency. And if the vote was not to participate in the process, then my hands are tied. I can’t serve and maintain my credibility.”

Contreras said his group was following the recommendation of the Coalition of Hispanic Professionals, which decided to boycott Lockwood’s plan after representatives voiced their concerns in recent meetings with the city manager and Assistant City Atty. Curtis Fitzpatrick.

Ruling Questioned

Robert Garcia, a San Diego attorney who is president of La Raza Lawyers Assn., said that Lockwood and Fitzpatrick were not responsive to the group’s criticisms of the city attorney’s opinion that the City Charter requires the chief of police to select the members of the oversight panel. Both the La Raza lawyers and the San Diego chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union have called the city attorney’s opinion unfounded and erroneous.

“I really feel that this is a position they always wanted to have and all our opinion did is make them clean their opinion up and try to find something else,” Garcia said. “They are now basing it on this vague notion of habit and custom, even though they didn’t bother talking to former city managers or police chiefs.”

Frustrated by the lack of response from the city attorney’s office, Garcia said, the Coalition of Hispanic Professionals intends to ask the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Foundation to file a lawsuit challenging the city’s opinion.

The San Diego Police Officers Assn. has threatened to sue the city if the chief of police is stripped of the power to appoint the members of the oversight panel, Lockwood said.

The city manager acknowledged that his proposal for a police review board is receiving much more criticism than he anticipated, but said the attacks don’t bother him because he believes minority groups will be satisfied once the panel gets to work.

“I’ve got confidence that over a period of time as people work with it, they will make some constructive suggestions,” Lockwood said. “We’re going to be open to those. I think they will have a good feeling that the process is open and they can look at everything they want. We are not going to orchestrate something that is a sham.”