Sonoma County could hire auditor to monitor Sheriff’s Office by February

Sonoma County supervisors Tuesday grilled two veteran police auditors about what makes civilian oversight of law enforcement programs successful.

Tuesday’s session came four months after the board voted to launch its first-ever watchdog agency and amid a six-week national recruitment effort to hire a director to build what’s currently being called the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach. Sixteen people have so far applied for the job and, of those, seven have the right qualifications, according to a county staff report. The final date to apply is Nov. 6, and a hire could start work as early as February or March.

Judge LaDoris Cordell, who recently retired after five years as San Jose’s police auditor, told the board that the oversight director should have unfettered authority to design the program, and the board’s primary job was to find a dynamic person it can trust to reflect the needs of the community and build a strong working relationship with the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.

“If you really want independence, you do not run that office, you do not micromanage it,” Cordell said. “It is not located in the Sheriff’s Office; it is not located in a county building.”

The board members asked questions about how Cordell and Stephen J. Connolly, executive director of Orange County’s Office of Independent Review, measured their programs successes. The proposed oversight program would create a neutral place for people to file complaints against sheriff’s personnel, review internal affairs investigations into those complaints, analyze trends, make recommendations to the Sheriff’s Office about practices and procedures and conduct community outreach.

“Do you feel that you’ve accomplished increased transparency and better relationships with law enforcement?” Supervisor Shirlee Zane asked.

Cordell pointed out that her office had no power to force the San Jose Police Department to incorporate her office’s recommendations, yet she said that they’ve adopted 97 percent of the recommendations made since the program started in 1996.

“That’s the power of the people. That’s the power of community,” Cordell said. “It’s the trust that law enforcement has in the integrity of our work. It’s still a process; there is still work to be done in San Jose.”

Connolly, who has run Orange County’s program since 2008, said transparency “inherently improved” when people outside of a law enforcement agency began reviewing “a process that is traditionally, legally closed off from the public.”

“In order for auditor to have a meaningful role, there has to be access to all of the departments confidential and investigative files, there has to be open communication,” Connolly said.

Tuesday’s meeting came nearly two years after a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed 13-year-old Andy Lopez, who was walking down a sidewalk in southwest Santa Rosa carrying an airsoft BB gun designed to look like an assault rifle. The shooting unearthed a deep distrust of law enforcement, especially for some Latino community members, and revived calls for civilian review of law enforcement shootings.

Three months after Lopez’s death, a county-appointed Community and Local Law Enforcement Task Force was convened and spent a year developing a proposal for a watchdog agency, as well as 20 other recommendations. In August, the board approved more than $800,000 over 1½ years to start the oversight program.

The name of the program has been subject to debate, with the most recent iteration discarding the word “oversight” for the less aggressive “review.”

However, Cordell told the board that oversight is an appropriate term, even when the sheriff is an elected official and the auditor program will have no management authority over the Sheriff’s Office.

“Law enforcement doesn’t like the term oversight,” Cordell said. “But this is oversight over the complaint process … independent eyes over the complaint process.”

An updated recruitment timeline prepared by county staff for the board said they aim to hire someone to start the job in February or March. Top candidates will participate in a series of interviews with community stakeholders and sheriff’s personnel and will go before the board in December.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.