Sonoma County supervisors ask for revisions to changes to Sheriff’s Office advisory committee

Community activists and members of an advisory council tasked with forging ties between the public and Sonoma County’s Sheriff’s Office are at odds with the director of the county agency that oversees them.

Members of the Community Advisory Council contend Karlene Navarro, the director of the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach, presented plans to alter the council to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors this week without sufficient public input and that the changes would significantly weaken the group.

The dispute was on display at the supervisors’ meeting Tuesday, when three members of the council, Navarro’s predecessor and more than a dozen activists urged the board to reject the amended ordinance.

“If you guys pass this, I will be extremely disappointed and so will a lot of people who believe in democracy and who believe in some openness about a process,” said Martin Hamilton, one of the community members who spoke during ?Tuesday’s meeting.

As the office’s director, Navarro audits Sheriff’s Office investigations into complaints of wrongdoing by their staff, can propose policy changes to the agency and oversees the Community Advisory Council, or the CAC, among other tasks. She stepped into her role six months ago after the departure of her predecessor, Jerry Threet.

The ordinance changes, which county supervisors ultimately asked Navarro to redraft before presenting to the board again, included provisions that would have allowed the office’s director to dismiss council members who did not comply with her office’s ordinance or the advisory council’s bylaws. It would have given supervisors the ability to appoint members to the council, the only revision that received strong support among both supervisors and community members at Tuesday’s meeting. Threet, who stepped down from the position because of health concerns in February, made similar recommendations to the Board of Supervisors at the end of last year.

The ordinance proposal would have also reduced the number of members on the council from a maximum of 11 seats to seven, as well as the number of times the council meets. The change would allow the council to spend more time attending community outreach events throughout the county, and in turn reach a wider group of residents than those who attend the advisory council meetings, Navarro said. The currently monthly meetings take up a large portion of her time, Navarro said.

“Members of the Latino community and other communities of color do not come to the CAC meetings,” Navarro said. “It’s important that we balance all those interests with the limited resources that the office has.”

Critics of Navarro’s proposed changes defended the current structure of the advisory council, which like Navarro’s office was born out of carefully crafted recommendations compiled by a local task force that advocated for greater transparency and civilian oversight of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office following Andy Lopez’s death in 2013. Lopez, who was 13, was fatally shot by a Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputy who said he mistook the teen’s airsoft BB gun for an assault rifle it was designed to resemble.

“The public declared through that nearly 16-month long, weekly meeting process the desire to have a Community Advisory Council … (that would) have two-way policy discussions with the Sheriff’s Office,” said current Community Advisory Council member Jim Duffy.

“The Community Advisory Council was never intended to become unpaid employees of (Navarro’s office) focused on grant writing and number crunching,” Duffy said, referring to Navarro’s plans to create subcommittees within the advisory council that would focus on finding statistical trends within sanitized audit data and help her with grant writing.

The impassioned public comment at Tuesday’s board meeting mirrored statements made at a Community Advisory Council meeting held in Petaluma the night before, where community members such as Hamilton, a longtime Sonoma County resident, urged Navarro to withdraw her proposal to the county’s supervisors.

Elizabeth Cozine, another member of the advisory council, said Navarro’s ordinance changes as a whole would only weaken the council, though she did back the idea of supervisors making appointments to fill the council seats.

“I completely support the decision to pull back and wait to have the public have more of a say,” Cozine said after Tuesday’s meeting. “This ordinance (amendment) just didn’t have the time to get the dialogue and the input from stakeholders.”

Navarro told supervisors she talked to former members of the task force that created her office, as well as sought input from similar auditing offices in the area, before presenting her ideas to the board, among other groups. She did not respond to a call or email seeking comment after Tuesday’s meeting.

Supervisor Lynda Hopkins suggested Navarro give the public a greater time frame to view and consider future ordinance changes that would impact the advisory council, as the ordinance changes presented by Navarro were made less than a week before Tuesday’s meeting.

Board Chairman David Rabbitt said he recognized the challenges Navarro faced given the high expectations for her office and its small budget. Still, Rabbitt said he’d like to see the independent office prioritize completing audits, which he saw as its most important role.

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the audits are the most important thing,” Rabbitt said. “The CAC is not my No. 1 priority … community outreach is even more important.”

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com.