The Santa Ana City Council further postponed making any official changes to the Police Oversight Commission in its meeting on Tuesday, July 15.
Instead, after much back and forth, council members agreed to hold a joint special meeting with the Police Oversight Commission within the next 60 days to discuss proposed changes to the commission.
Established by the City Council in 2022, Santa Ana’s Police Oversight Commission aims to increase police accountability and transparency, but commissioners previously said they’ve struggled to make significant progress without an oversight director. It took almost three years before the city hired T. Jack Morse as its first police oversight director earlier this month.
The proposed amendments to the commission are meant to address concerns regarding compliance with state law; clarification of roles and responsibilities, including that of the oversight director; training and make enhancements that would safeguard information on police officers that may be considered “sensitive” to avoid risk of violating the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act and possible subsequent lawsuits.
The city manager’s office, which submitted the amendments to the City Council for review, said the changes are meant to “align” the commission with state law and maintain “best practices in law enforcement accountability.”
Changes to the ordinance include the removal of the word “independent” throughout the ordinance and in Morse’s recently landed title as police oversight director. The commission would be limited to reviewing cases involving in-custody deaths and instances where a First Amendment right was violated. It would not be allowed to investigate cases that haven’t been reviewed and confirmed as misconduct by the police department.
Bulmaro Vicente, a community advocate with Chispa, a political advocacy group for young Latinx in Orange County, whose organizing and educational campaign helped launch the oversight police commission, called the amendments “concerning,” arguing that most amendments are an attempt to weaken police oversight in his view.
“This isn’t what the community demanded and fought for,” he said.
The suggested changes were made in collaboration with Mayor Valeria Amezcua, Mayor Pro Tem Benjamin Vazquez and Councilmember Phil Bacerra, along with staff from the city manager’s office, city attorney’s office and the Santa Ana Police Department.
The City Council had been scheduled to debate a rewrite of the commission’s ordinance at a meeting earlier this month but ran out of time to do so.
Staff writer Hanna Kang contributed to this story.
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