PASADENA - Changes are on the horizon for the Pasadena Police Department and its officer complaint procedure, officials said Thursday.
Reeling from months of public criticism both for the shooting of an unarmed teenager and a spate of alleged police misconduct scandals, top-ranking officers in the department are working on reforms to how the department processes and tracks citizen complaints.
Under the proposed changes, supervisors will relay complaints filed by residents to a panel of senior members of the police department, including Police Chief Phillip Sanchez. The reports will be verbal and will replace the current system of just sending the complaint by paper.
"There will be verbal presentations made by supervisors when there is a complaint that needs to be reviewed" and discussed, Lt. Phlunte Riddle said Thursday.
Department officials are also calling for technological upgrades for filing and tracking complaints. New software would automatically provide the sender with an electronic receipt of the complaint on file at the police department.
The department is also looking at installing a system called IAPro, which lodges officer complaints and tracks training, Riddle said.
But implementation of the technical improvements won't be immediate.
"Our hope is to be able to have it in place in the next few months," Riddle said.
The suggested changes come as the Pasadena Police Department finds itself mired in controversy and besieged by critics, some of whom claim the department is not being serious in its attempts to change its internal culture.
"All this is subterfuge," community activist Martin Gordon said Thursday.
Gordon, a member of the Pasadena Human Services Commission, said simply upgrading tracking software at the department does little to heal the strained relationship between the police department and Pasadena's African-American and Latino communities.
Much more effective in Gordon's eyes would be a citizen oversight committee similar to the Use Of Force board.
"If you look at the police Use Of Force board, it has within it some substance that is useful to the community," Gordon said.
Such a board could advise the chief and the department on what policy and patterns of conduct are acceptable, Gordon said.
With a board in place, the community could tell the department "Here's what we think about an officer beating up a witness," Gordon said, referring to a recent allegation made against a Pasadena police officer.
Sanchez disbanded the Use of Force board shortly after he arrived in Pasadena in 2010.
Concerns about whether the citizen board complied with California's open meeting law and state privacy laws for peace officers led to his decision, he said at the time.
However, the police chief had the authority to bypass the Use Of Force board. Since all the board saw were uses of force deemed justified by the chief, Pasadena-branch NAACP President Joe Brown said the now-disbanded body was merely a "rubber stamp" for officers' actions.
But Gordon said the Use Of Force board should have been tweaked, not dismantled.
"The structure was something we could use," Gordon said. "The functionality needed to change."
The call to restore citizen oversight has come from Gordon, the ACLU and the Pasadena-branch NAACP. Now, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Pasadena-Altadena Chapter, has joined the chorus of calls for restoration of the Use of Force board.
"I think they should have citizens to review them. As citizens, we see what officers do from a different point of view," LULAC, Pasadena-Altadena President Norma Valenzuela said Thursday.
Frustrations with the department are beginning to boil over.
Two Pasadena cops are under investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Internal Affairs Bureau for their actions on the force.
Gordon and Valenzuela said they believe the police department often employs harsher tactics when dealing with minorities.
Valenzuela, who said she trained in a citizen police academy, said tactics taught at the academy differ from those she sees being used on young blacks and Latinos.
"We think sometimes the Pasadena Police Department is racist and they do things to minorities like African-Americans and Latinos that they don't do to whites," Valenzuela said.
The department hasn't been deaf to the demands by many in the public for a citizen oversight group.
"It's under advisement," Riddle said.
But Gordon and others want reforms quickly.
"I am willing to move incrementally," Gordon said. "But if the city refuses to allow the community to have oversight and says that (Council members) Steve Madison, Jacque Robinson, Margaret McAustin and Gene Masuda are going to do oversight they're wrong, Gordon said. "They are too busy to do effective oversight."
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