Activists seek police accountability

Airing their frustration over police practices they said included racial profiling, abuse of authority and brutality, a group of civil rights advocates vowed Saturday to mount a sustained campaign for greater police accountability in Sonoma County.

Creation of a civilian review board, greater access to investigative reports and improved police training for mental health crises were among the themes of a daylong forum organized by a coalition of activists.

"This is not a thing that's going to go away," said Ann Gray Byrd, a forum facilitator and chairwoman of the American Civil Liberties Union, Sonoma County Chapter.

Byrd, ACLU Vice Chairwoman Sheri Graves and other organizers said that secrecy about citizen complaints and investigations into police conduct promote suspicion and uncertainty.

Others who spoke during the forum complained more virulently about what one called a "reign of terror" by police who are "out of control," police killings that amount to "murder," blanket assumptions about youth of color that subject them to harassment and land them on gang lists from which "there is no way out."

Police officers may be individuals, but "they are part of a racist, sexist, classist" system, said Sabina Ahmed with Petaluma Copwatch, whose members monitor police encounters with civilians.

Three elected officials attended parts of the event -- Santa Rosa City Councilwoman Susan Gorin, Rohnert Park Mayor Vicki Vidak-Martinez and Santa Rosa Junior College Trustee Marsha Vas Dupre, a former Santa Rosa councilwoman -- out of about 50 elected officials who had been invited.

Gorin said that the frustration vented at the forum underscored the council's need to pay attention, though she was not prepared to commit to a vote for a civilian review board.

"There are people in the community who have . . . a lot of different experiences and therefore they have different perceptions and different relationships with law enforcement than I do," she said

"But I recognize that sometimes perception is reality. If there is a perception out there that we have some issues, than that is what we should address," she said.

Though the forum focused broadly on police conduct and the formulation of a community action plan to improve accountability, eight law enforcement-related deaths during the past year provided a focal point.

They included three deaths at the Sonoma County Jail, four cases in which suspects were shot -- two of them while experiencing mental health emergencies -- and a fifth in which a man died two days after he was shot with a Taser stun gun.

No official representatives of law enforcement were present Saturday to defend themselves to the gathering of about 100 people.

Authorities in the past have said that critics fail to account for the criminal conduct and the decisions and behavior of people who have been killed in police encounters.

"You people are bringing hatred," retired CHP Officer Art Koenig told Byrd when his bid to speak was denied toward the start of the day.

Koenig, later allowed two minutes to speak, said he supported the public's right to make complaints where appropriate, but suggested that judging a police confrontation only by its result was unfair unless all contributing factors were assessed.

Koenig also noted that the grief for those who died in police custody had not been extended to the three CHP officers killed this year statewide, nor the nine who died in 2006.

Many organizers of Saturday's event had rallied together a decade ago amid a similar spate of officer-involved shootings that had provoked criticism of police tactics and prompted calls for independent, civilian review bodies to investigate some of the complaints.

A 1997-98 county grand jury also urged "greater citizen input and oversight" of police departments and chastised elected officials for being "conspicuously silent" in the debate.

The movement gained enough momentum that the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission held a daylong hearing that resulted in recommendations for civilian review boards to oversee the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, Santa Rosa Police and the Rohnert Park Public Safety Department in 1999.

Police and elected officials rejected such proposals, however, calling current review procedures adequate, including policies subjecting cases involving police use of force to review by the officer's own internal affairs department, another, separate police agency and the county district attorney.

Byrd said elected officials "don't get it," but also acknowledged, "We stopped. We didn't follow through."

"We are not going to stop this time," she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat .com.