Fresno Mayor Presents Independent Police Auditor Proposal

It's genius! Let's pretend to give the people what they want even though there's really no change just another person on the payroll!
An IPA who reports directly to Souza is worthless, this plan was designed by Souza and Dyer and is worthless, this proposal protects officers, not community members. I know alot of people have fought a long time for this, sorry to tell you this fight is far from over...

Wow the IPA seems like another high cost government official to me. Who cares if the IPA is located in a different office then the police. Their going to report to the same person as the police and get payed by the same source. What makes the IPA so independent? This arrangement feels like the court room, if you have ever received a public defendant to handle a case, and seen how friendly your so-called lawyer was with his co- worker the district attorney. Who's job is to find you guilty, and they're supposedly independent of one another, yea right. I think we all know how this is going to pan out. No wonder Jerry Dyer all smiles that's a bad sign in its self.

damn sure the Bee aint gonna do that, or ask the opinions of people who know whats needed versus what needs covering up. I wonder how the Fresno Police Dept would get along without the Bee there to prop them up?

In the era of the Copley decision with the police lobby having such a powerful voice in Sacramento, any kind of citizen oversight by a government body is severely hobbled.

The "Independent Police Auditor" model is one of the weaker models. I understand it has largely failed in San Jose--or such was my undertanding talking to Copwatch activists in the 90's. Admittedly, conservatives recently got rid of Barbara Atard because she was "too liberal".

The strongest police review board in California (and the oldest) was the Berkeley Police Review Commission, which actually was required to investigate every complaint, actually did subpoena officers, was independent of the PD, and even then lacked teeth according to local political activists.

In Santa Cruz we have a "Police Auditor"--Bob Arenson--who gets the money the old Citizens Police Review Board got before it was strangled by the City Council in 2003. He's barely worth discussing, since he issues no public written reports (an oral report once a year to the City Council).

We struggled with a gutless police review board for 8 years. When it finally began to take an interest in real issues, it was eliminated. I discussed some of the issues here: http://santacruz.indymedia.org/newswire/display/3043/index.php .