The BART police review planBy Tim Redmond
The BART Board has released a final draft of its new police-oversight policy, and you can comment on it at a public meeting tomorrow (Thursday) at 6:30 PM at the Joseph Bort Metro Center Auditorium, 101 Eight St. Oakland.
There’s a lot to digest; you can read the whole thing here (PDF). In essence, the Board would create an 11-member citizen oversight commission and an independent police auditor; the auditor would investigate complaints and the commission would monitor the auditor.
It’s going to be a fairly conservative commission -- each of the nine BART Board member gets to appoint one commissioner, and it’s a fairly conservative BART Board. And -- in a move that’s pretty shocking -- BART wants to allow the police unions to appoint their own rep to the commission. (A final member would be chosen at-large by the entire BART board).
And here’s the big problem: The auditor can’t impose discipline -- that’s up to the police chief (who reports, by the way, to the BART general manager, not the BART Board). Nothing weakens civilian oversight more than a police chief who won’t discipline the troops, and I suspect that’s what’s going to happen at BART, where the chief didn’t even bother to show up for most of the community meetings on civilian oversight.
So what happens then? Check it out -- the auditor and review board can appeal to the general manager (who will almost always support the chief). And when that fails:
If the Citizen Board disagrees with the General Manager with a super (2/3) majority, they may appeal to the BART Board of Directors. All reports developed as part of the investigation will be submitted to the BART Board of Directors, who will render a decision in a closed personnel session. BART Board of Directors decisions regarding discipline will require a super (2/3) majority of the BART Board of Directors for approval. In a confidential personnel session, the BART Board will notify the Citizen Board, General Manager and Chief of Police. The Chief of Police will implement the decision of the Board of Directors, which will be final.
In other words, it takes a two-thirds vote of BOTH the review board AND the entire BART Board to impose discipline on a cop. That’s an almost impossible standard.
So I can tell you what’s going to happen here. The next time a BART cop does something really horrible, the chief is going to decline effective discipline, the general manager is going to back up the chief -- and the review board and BART Board will fall short of the two-thirds needed to overrule them. Nothing will happen -- except more community outrage and protests.
Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who has a bill in the legislature to mandate police reform at BART, took on the current BART plan today in a Chronicle oped, calling it
a watered-down shell of civilian oversight that is far less than what the community deserves and has asked for.
His complaint is the same as mine -- BART wants to leave two people who have demonstrated their inability to control the cops (the chief and the general manager) in charge of all discipline.
My suggestion: Give either the review panel or the BART Board the ability to overrule the chief and impose discipline with a simple majority. Requiring two-thirds from each is a recipe for failure. And get the BART cops the hell off the police review panel.
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Comments (1)
That should stop all random cop shootings.
Now if we could just get this level of oversight onto street thugs we could all live in a utopia.
Posted by glen matlock | July 29, 2009 04:39 PM