Council Panel OKs Charter Proposal for Police Review Board

LONG BEACH —  A plan to radically alter the way the city handles citizen complaints of police isconduct began its journey to the ballot box this week when a City Council committee approved a proposed amendment to the City Charter.

Drawing from three different proposals, the Quality of Life Committee Monday put together a compromise that would take the authority to investigate citizen complaints of brutality and misconduct away from the Long Beach Police Department and put it in the hands of a new citizen board.

Long advocated by community groups but resisted by the council, the idea of a civilian review board won new-found support among city leaders this year after an activist’s secretly videotaped sting of two Long Beach police officers catapulted allegations of local police brutality onto national television.

The proposed charter amendment, which has to be approved by the full council before it can be placed on the ballot for a public vote, would establish an 11-member citizen board to review complaints of police misconduct. Each of the nine council members would appoint one member, and the mayor would appoint the remaining two.

‘Fairly Pleased’

In a key point to help smooth the way for the plan, the committee left the actual discipline of a police officer up to the police chief, rather than giving it to the review board.

Members of the three groups that had presented proposals to the council seemed satisfied with the committee’s version, saying they would be able to support it.

“We’re fairly pleased,” said Frank Berry, president of the local branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, which joined with about a dozen other community groups in drafting a plan that called for a 13-member board.

“I’m satisfied that it is going to bring about reasonable oversight,” said Larry Davis of the Public Safety Advisory Commission, which wrote one of the other plans considered by the council.

Although representatives of the Long Beach Police Officers Assn. did not attend the committee’s Monday night meeting, association President Mike Tracy said later that his organization had no objection to the committee’s action.

“I can’t imagine a proposal that would come out that we will not be able to support,” Tracy said.

The three council committee members, Clarence Smith, Evan Anderson Braude and Tom Clark, will take up the proposal again May 9 to further discuss details before sending the charter amendment onto the full council for a vote.

No Amendment Needed

One of the thorniest questions for the committee was whether to write the proposal as a charter amendment that will require a citywide public vote, or to try to establish the board by council ordinance, a much quicker and cheaper approach.

Despite arguments from members of the Public Safety Commission that a civilian board could be created without amending the City Charter, the committee heeded the advice of the city attorney’s office, which says a charter amendment is necessary.

The three proposals, in many ways similar, differed in such aspects as the number of board members, how long they should serve and who should have discipline authority. Ironically, the only group to propose taking away disciplinary power from the police chief and giving it the civilian board was the police officers’ association, whose members have complained that Police Chief Lawrence L. Binkley is too much of a disciplinarian.

As envisioned by the council committee, board members would have two-year terms and could only be reappointed once, serving a total of no more than four years. The board would have an independent investigator who would be appointed by the city manager, approved by the council and serve at the pleasure of the board.

The idea of establishing a citizen review board in Long Beach similar to those in a number of other cities across the country has benefited enormously from the wave of bad publicity that washed over the city in the wake of last January’s police sting by anti-brutality activist Don Jackson. A Hawthorne police sergeant on stress disability leave, Jackson was stopped for an alleged traffic violation by two Long Beach police officers. While a television crew secretly videotaped the traffic stop, one of the officers appeared to push Jackson into a plate glass window, shattering the glass.

The officers, both of whom have taken stress leaves from the department, are facing criminal misdemeanor charges for their handling of the incident.