It’s been more than a year since Pasadena’s Police Oversight Commission was established on paper — and it took years to get to that point — but commissioners finally met for the first time on this week.
The inaugural meeting of the 11 commissioners tasked with providing oversight of the more than 200 sworn officers in the Pasadena Police Department was fairly routine considering debate around forming the commission has consumed Pasadena City Council’s attention for nearly a decade.
All in all, the meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 25, lasted less than two hours. The most newsworthy occurrence was the selection of chair Raul Ibanez, an educational adviser at Pasadena City College, and vice-chair Juliana Serrano, who works as vice president of Advocacy and Equity at Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley.
This week’s long-awaited discussion began with remarks from city staff members, who took some time to detail the commission’s responsibilities in multiple presentations.
Duties include reviewing categorical uses of force by police and reviewing investigations of personnel complaints of bias-based policing. Recommending changes to police policies, procedures and training is under the commission’s purview as well, according to staff members, who said commissioners can issue subpoenas for records so long as they aren’t personnel files.
Public records, Brown Act violations and the dangers of serial meetings — a situation that could occur when commissioners debate a public issue in private — were presented before independent police auditor Brian Maxey highlighted the efforts he will undertake to assist the commission.
“If there is an issue or something that you wish to explore and want to know more about — I can do some research on it, I can dig up what was happening elsewhere in the country, I can advise on police practices,” he said. “And if I don’t know the answer, I can certainly find it out from others.”
Maxey assumes the panel will have priorities, “and I will caution you in my role as advisor not to try to do everything at once,” he said.
Instead, the recently hired independent auditor hopes commissioners will wait to have an organizational structure and then assign the commission’s priorities to himself and other support staff.
“You can bounce questions off of me and I can serve in that role. But what I don’t think I’m here to do is to tell you who you are and what your priorities are,” Maxey added. “I will certainly be bringing you my priorities and things you should consider but I do expect that this is a two-way street and I want to be responsive to the agenda that you develop.”
The 11 commissioners then moved to select a chair before unanimously agreeing to make the first Thursday of every month the preferred day of their regular meetings.
Following some back and forth about job responsibilities and time conflicts, Ibanez was selected chair, garnering seven votes to Florence Annang’s four. Serrano won the ensuing election against Commissioner Noemi Emeric-Ford for vice chair.
Both of the terms are expected to last one year.
Mayor Victor Gordo, who spoke early on in Tuesday’s meeting, said in a follow-up interview Wednesday that the formation of the commission is an important step, especially in the wake of officer-involved shooting incidents in Pasadena.
“It’s also, as I said before, an awesome responsibility that needs to be taken seriously,” Gordo said, echoing his statements made prior to this week’s meeting.
Pasadena’s police oversight commission is expected to meet again Thursday, Nov. 4 for it’s first regularly held meeting. The commission’s agenda will be posted online at cityofpasadena.net/commissions/community-police-oversight-commission/.
