The secret police deal

THE SAN FRANCISCO Police Commission was on the right track six months ago when it passed a new policy giving civilians at least some limited role in determining which police shootings were proper. The policy, approved after months of community discussion and input, put one commissioner, along with the director of the Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC) as advisory members on a new Weapons Discharge Review Board, which would review every instance in which a cop fires a gun. Several sworn officers would also sit on the panel, and the cops would be the only ones who actually got to vote.

But now, after a legal threat from the police officers union and a series of closed-door meetings, the commissioners have gone back on that arrangement and made a significant policy shift – without any real public debate.

That's a big problem, and the panel needs to scrap the secretly crafted plan and come up with a new one, in public.

The Weapons Discharge Review Board was designed to be powerful: The members would determine whether a shooting was within department policy, and when the officers involved can go back on the streets. The San Francisco Police Officers Association is vehemently opposed to any civilian presence on the weapons board. And when the plan to put a commissioner and the OCC director aboard (even in an advisory role) was approved, the union threatened to sue, saying the OCC director and the chief of the agency that reviews police misconduct cases, had a conflict of interest.

That's an arguable point, but there's a simple answer: Find another civilian. Let the commission appoint someone qualified to sit on the panel (or two people, if the POA doesn't want a commissioner either). "I don't care if it's the OCC director or not," Mark Schlossberg, the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) police practices lawyer, told us. "There needs to be civilian presence on that board."

But instead of taking that simple approach, the commissioners locked themselves in closed session, ostensibly to discuss the POA's litigation threat, and came back with an amended plan. The OCC director and a commissioner would still sit on the panel – but the weapons board would be stripped of its ability to determine when an officer could go back on active (armed) duty. In fact, a different police board could send a cop back out onto the streets even before the weapons board decided if the shooting was proper.

This undermines the whole idea of civilian oversight and amounts to a significant change in policy. But it was never debated in open session, and nobody (except the commissioners and their legal counsel) knows how the new plan was conceived.

The Sunshine Task Force needs to look into this, and the ACLU or some other activist group ought to file a complaint and attempt to get the minutes of those secret meetings released. In the meantime, the commission needs to go back to the beginning, work out a plan for effective civilian presence on the weapons board, and debate and vote on it in public.