Santa Ana’s Police Oversight Commission has begun reviewing citizen complaints alleging police misconduct — a key duty of the 3-year-old commission that has faced years of administrative setbacks and delays.
The commission, created by the City Council with the purpose of increasing transparency, accountability and public trust in the Santa Ana Police Department, reviewed eight citizen complaints filed in 2025 during a closed-session meeting on Thursday, Jan. 8.
“This is the first initial meeting that will set a precedent for how we move forward with future complaints,” Commissioner Amalia Meija said. “I personally hope that we can establish a procedure moving forward that expedites the complaint process, as opposed to this long process that some individuals haven’t heard back from.”
In 2022, the Santa Ana City Council approved an ordinance establishing the civilian oversight body, made up of seven appointed residents and an independent oversight director. The commission’s duties include reviewing citizen complaints of alleged police misconduct, authorizing the director to collect additional information or investigate a complaint, and making recommendations to the city manager’s office regarding the Police Department’s policies and practices.
There were 36 complaints submitted to the oversight body in 2025, according to Police Oversight Director Jack T. Morse. He said 11 addressed other agencies and 16 regarded conduct that fell outside the commission’s authority.
The commission directed Morse to seek further information on three of the eight complaints discussed during last week’s meeting, which Mejia said lasted more than two hours. The review of complaints happening during a closed session is due to strict California laws that protect law enforcement personnel files, said Morse, limiting what can be publicly discussed prior to any final official decision being made.
Morse said the Police Department has demonstrated it is “on board with reform” and has been “super cooperative” with the commission’s requests for data and information, calling it a “testament to their commitment to transparency and acknowledgement that oversight has value.”
“I think it’s been long overdue,” said Bulmaro Vicente, policy director of Chispa, a Latino community advocacy organization that advocated for the oversight commission. “It’s been nearly three years since the commission was passed, so the public was really hoping that the commission would be up and running.
“The fact that it took a while, I think, is a big disservice to those who worked on it and those who submitted complaints that have already expired,” he added.
California’s Public Safety Officer’s Procedural Bill of Rights Act has a one-year statute of limitations for police complaints. The portal for submitting complaints went live in March 2024.
Previously, commissioners could review complaints on an individual basis by visiting the city attorney’s office in person, but no collective discussion occurred until last week.
Having to go to the office to review complaints without being able to keep formal track of the submissions as they came in raised concerns for Commissioner Carlos Perea. He said the oversight body has been disconnected from the complaint process, having been unable to directly receive the complaints submitted through the complaint portal since it opened.
“I’m not going to say it’s intentional, but it’s concerning that a good number of complaints that were submitted the first year the portal opened can no longer be reviewed by the commission,” he said.
Meija said the delay in reviewing the complaints as a commission was mostly due to the lack of an oversight director — Morse was hired in July. He is a longtime police oversight investigator and a senior attorney at Oppenheimer Investigations Group.
Since the commission only has a narrative from the submitted written complaint to go off of, Morse explained they may also request to review relevant police body-worn camera footage or other additional information that might shed light on the interaction before determining how to move forward. If the commission directs him to conduct an investigation, Morse said he would write a report and present it to the commission with his findings and recommendations.
“This is all new to everyone,” Morse said. “We’re establishing the procedures in real time.”
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