[Author’s note: This article is not intended as a comprehensive review of the “City of Long Beach Citizen Police Complaint Commission Independent Evaluation Final Report” (February 2022) issued by Polis Solutions & Change Integration Consulting. Rather, it is a partial examination focusing on the recommendation that Long Beach jettison, rather than strengthen, independent citizen investigation of complaints against police officers.]
After evaluating Long Beach’s Citizen Police Complaint Commission (CPCC) for nearly a year, a 61-page report by a pair of consulting firms highlights numerous shortcomings with the current version of the CPCC and “recommends that the City of Long Beach use a new approach to police oversight involving an Auditor/Monitor hybrid model and a Police Oversight Commission,” which they say would better address systemic policing problems and “increas[e] the sense of legitimacy experienced by all stakeholders in the work of civilian oversight in Long Beach and to enhance accountability and transparency.”
But under this new model, authority to independently investigate complaints against police officers would be removed from the commission, leaving the Internal Affairs division of the Long Beach Police Department as the only determiner of whether individual complaints against officers are valid and deserving of action — despite the fact that the commission would be tripling its budget and staffing.
Polis Solutions and Change Integration Consulting, the pair of consulting firms jointly responsible for the report, recommend stripping the commission’s investigative powers because “[p]arallel investigations result in inefficiencies and squandered resources through duplicated steps by CPCC and Internal Affairs,” who at present each conduct their own investigations into every complaint.
[… M]any stakeholders point to the wastefulness inherent in the process, particularly given that CPCC does not have full access to LBPD information and personnel, so many CPCC investigations are incomplete. Finding recommendations are made even if the CPCC has not been provided with all evidence available to the LBPD Internal Affairs and, given this, it is understandable why the City Manager’s Office might arrive at a different final disposition than that recommended by CPCC. There is clear inefficiency in the system if CPCC does not have access to all information relevant to a complaint investigation, but nonetheless completes its work and the Commission expends time reviewing the matter and recommending a finding, only to have the City Manager base its final finding on facts only available to Internal Affairs.
The authors also point out that under the current model there is “concern that conflicts could arise given that the Police Department, Internal Affairs, and the CPCC all report into the City Manager’s Office, particularly since CPCC is intended to be an independent oversight entity. While no specific conflict incident was noted, the lack of transparency about the final decision-making process […] contributes to those concerns. A perception of conflict has similar impacts as an actual conflict.”
What the authors do not consider is the possibility of a strengthened CPCC, one with increased resources, full access to officers and police records (including subpoena power), and independence from the City Manager’s Office.
Moreover, under the proposed Auditor/Monitor hybrid model, the City Manager would retain a great deal of power over the commission. For example, although the Auditor/Monitor would have the authority to “[i]nvestigate specific types of issues, such as complaints against the Chief or Command Staff, complaints involving a conflict with Internal Affairs, an officer-involved-shooting, an in-custody death, or other critical incident,” they would be able to do so only “when requested or approved by the City Manager’s Office.” And any disagreements between the commission and the police department would be resolved by the City Manager, rather than an independent arbiter, despite the fact that Polis-Change Integration point to a lack of transparency and timeliness of action in the City Manager’s Office — even with recent improvements — as one of the problems limiting the CPCC at present. (The authors do provide recommendations for requiring the City Manager’s Office to improve in both these areas.)
Polis-Change Integration justify removing independent citizen investigatory powers under the theory that such investigations do not address core policing issues. “Although incident-based outcomes and disciplinary actions may answer calls for accountability and justice in the immediate term,” the authors state, “the failure to address underlying cultural and systemic problems that created and allowed for the incident to occur leave communities feeling like their efforts never address all police misconduct, causes of misconduct, or inequitable policing. Similarly, changes to leadership at the executive level often do little to affect change in the underlying culture of a police department.”
The authors do not address the possibility of a citizen oversight commission that would do both: “address underlying cultural and systemic problems” and effectively and independently investigate individual complaints.
As Polis-Change Integration note, “the current model as structured [i.e., the CPCC] does not meet the City’s or the community’s calls for increased transparency, accountability, and input on addressing broader organizational culture issues within the Long Beach Police Department.” But by removing, rather than strengthening, the ability of Long Beach civilians to independently investigate the actions of individual police officers, will the community feel their calls for police reform are being adequately addressed?
Although Polis-Change Integration have issued their recommendations, it is the purview of the city council how or whether to draft a new model for police oversight; and although many interim changes can be made to the existing CPCC, a complete overhaul would need to go to ballot for voter approval.
During a discussion of the Polis-Change Integration report on February 15, Mayor Robert Garcia and the city council expressed their intent to bring the matter to the ballot in November and provided city staff with instructions to begin the process based on the Polis-Change Integration recommendations. But during those two full hours neither the mayor nor councilmembers ever so much as questioned, let alone expressed any concern, with the recommendation that Long Beach citizens lose the ability to independently investigate individual complaints against police officers.
Barring any shift in that position, passage of a new model of police oversight will leave the LBPD as the only ones investigating whether individual complaints against their officers merit any sort of discipline.