Gloria, With Help, Makes Slow Progress on Police Reform – Voice of San Diego

Mayor Todd Gloria has, both during his campaign and since taking office, faced pressure from his left on criminal justice reform.

He has in many wayssignaled alignment with the reform movement, while also distancing himself from it by courting financial support from police unions and increasing police spending in his firstbudget.

In April, heannounceda police and public safety reform package, one he said was builton sensible and equitable changes to police practices.

His package included 11 items actions that range fromimplementing changes approved by voters, exploring ideas that havebeen hotly debated for years,making changes thathave since been changed at the state level, working with county prosecutors onlong-sought reformsand changing city structures in ways welcomed by reformers.

Six months later, we decided to check in on the progress of his reform package, both into whether its made changes, and how significant the criminal justice community perceives those moves.

Aspokespersonfor the mayordeclined to respond to a Voice of San Diegoinquiry on the progress of the reform package. Instead, his administration issued a press release on the topic last week.

In Glorias progress report, he took credit for completing five of the 11 items, and said he looked forward to complying with two items that have been changed at the state level before the city did anything. He gave no update on the progress of four items. One of the items he took credit for completing is not actually complete. Another is the subject of a much more significant reform package pushed by outside advocates that could come to the Council for a vote in the coming months.

Gloria changed the title of this initiative in his press release last week, dropping the second portion of it that has not yet occurred to emphasize on the first part of it that has.

This stems from the passage last year of Measure B, which Gloria supported, creating a new body overseeingtheSan Diego Police Department, the Commission on Police Practices.Unlike its predecessor, the commission would be able to conduct independent investigations into allegations of police misconduct, including subpoenaing witnesses, among other strengthened oversight roles.

And, indeed, Glorias first budget included $1.14 million for the new commission, within the range of the Independent Budget Analysts estimate that it would cost between $1.1 million and $2.3 million, largely dependent on the number of full-time investigators it hires.

But nearly a year after voters approved Measure B, it is not yet up and running. The city still needs to adopt an ordinance that would guide its creation, and that has so far been a bumpy ride, as Kelly Davis chronicled for us. This summer, City Attorney Mara Elliott released a draft ordinance,whichadvocates who supported Measure B panned. Elliottsaid shed try again, leading advocates to ask why the city attorney was writing the law in the first place, when the measure explicitlysought to separate from the city attorneys office.Elliott agreed in July tohire an outside law firm to write the ordinanceinstead, satisfying advocacy groups.

That ordinance could be finished in the comingmonths, andwouldneed to go to the City Council for approval. In his press release, Gloria said he was eager to sign the ordinance once the Council passes it.

Christie Hill, deputy advocacy director for the regional chapter of the ACLU, said shes glad the mayors package includes priorities the community has pushed for, but stopped short of praising the city for working to implement a measure approved by voters.

Implementing the Commission on Police Practices, thats something the city has to do, she said. Its required by law.

District Attorney Summer Stephan announced in April that shed end the use of civil gang injunctions by asking the Superior Court to lift restraining orders that dictated where people on injunction lists could go, their curfews and what colors they could wear.

Gloria included the move in his reformpackage, andpraised Stephans decisionwhen she announced it a few weeks later.

Before that, the elimination of gang injunctions had been a major priority for the citys Commission on Gang Prevention and Intervention. Before Gloria took office, the commission voted in September 2019to recommendthatthe mayor and Council eliminate gang injunctions, but the action never came before the City Council for a vote. Stephan and SDPD Chief David Nisleit opposed the decision.

We have been pushing for this for literally years, internally and externally, said Genevive Jones-Wright, executive director of Community Advocates for Just and Moral Governance, and member of the commission who pushed for the recommendation to end the injunctions.

Jones-Wright argued it was City Attorney Mara Elliott who kept the recommendation from going before the City Council, and so took issue with Glorias announcement pledging to work with Elliott to remove gang injunctions going forward.

Gloriasinitial announcement, though, didnt mention the gang commission at all. In his progress report, he noted that it came after years of advocacy by the Citys Gang Commission and community leaders.

When Gloria was still in the Assembly, heproposed a billlimiting police departments access to military equipment. His co-authorgot the action through this year, requiring law enforcement agencies to get approval from city councils or boards of supervisors before the go after such gear.

Gloria, meanwhile, hassaid he will unveil a new city policythat would outline clear guidelines for when the department can receive military equipment, what equipment they can seek out, and when it can be used, as the Union-Tribune reported in August.Gloria told the U-T thatproposalwouldgo before a Council committee last month, but it didnt. In his press release,hesaid hed releasetheproposal in the coming months.

Theres no indication Gloria or the city of San Diego have added anynewtrainingprocedures for SDPD officers on unconscious or implicit bias. Glorias progress report press release did not mention it.

In June, the cityreleased a studyby a third party think tank that found Black people are stopped by SDPD 3.5 times as often as White people, and that Asian and Latino people were searched about 1.4 times as often as White people once they were stopped. Controlling for neighborhood demographics and crime and poverty rates, the study found Black people experience non-traffic stops 4.2 times as often as White people. Those werefamiliar findingsas previous studies into racial disparities in traffic stops and searches in the city.

Even if the training had been implemented, though, Jones-Wright said it was not significant.

This to me is not a reform at all, she said. Its weak language for a weak policy. More training wont change adamnthing.

SDPD in Augustannounced a changein its consent search procedure, one that the department referred to as a minor procedural change, Gloria categorized as a completed part of his reform package andcriminal justice advocates called a half-hearted measure.

The new measure requires that officers can search a person only after theyve provided consent though that consent can include implied consent, or when a persons actions or responses effectively communicate permission to search. The policyrequiresofficers to notify people of their rights before asking them to consent to asearch, andallowspeople to revoke consent at any timewhile stipulating thatsearches not to be intrusive (such as by not damaging a persons property).

It doesnt go far enough, and isnt a substitute forPrOTECT, Hill said.

PrOTECT,is the Preventing Over-policing through Equitable Community Treatment,an ordinance championed for years by the Coalition for Police Accountability & Transparency, a group of criminal justice-focused advocacy groups. Thatordinancewould prohibit all pretext stops when officers pull a car over for a minor traffic violation because it presents an opportunity to look for evidence of an unrelated offense and consent searches, when officers dont have probable cause or a warrant, so ask for permission to conduct a search and often get it.PrOTECTwould prohibit searches unless officers proved probable causefirst, andwould ban officers from asking about prior criminal history except when its related to an investigation.

Pretext stops contribute to racial disparities in policing, Jones-Wright argues, and the idea of explicit consent is a misnomer: because police stops are intimidating, people are unduly coerced into waiving their rights and accepting a search.

This weak verbiage, this is nothing but an attempt to undermine gettingPrOTECTon the books,she said.ThePrOTECTordinance seeks to take away the tools used for racial profiling.

Slowly, thePrOTECTordinance is progressing, and could come to a Council vote as early as the coming months. When the City Attorney agreed to hire an outside law firm to write the ordinance implementing the Commission on Police Practices, shealso told Councilwoman Monica MontgomerySteppe in amemo that shed also have outside counsel write the citys version of thePrOTECTordinance the current version was written by CPAT indicating her office lacked bandwidth.

When it comes forward, though, itll still need to win support from the City Council, and the mayor.

Advocates arehopeful, butfeel confident they know where SDPD stands on it, after Officer Jenny Hall, community relations manager for the Mid-City division, sent an email to community members ahead of May budget hearings arguing that any budget cuts would hurt the department.

I also want to make sure you are aware of the Coalition or Police Accountability & Transparencys (CPAT) proposed PrOTECTOrdinance, she wrote. The ordinance would prohibit police officers from arresting persons for theft and vandalism, along with many other crimes.

In his own progress report, Gloria counts this as completed, based on his and SDPDs desire to recruit more diverse candidates.

That follows his announcement in August that SDPD wouldhost a career fair for just women candidates, in hopes of increasing the 17 percent share of the police force that are women. This springs police academy class, meanwhile, was the citys most diverse ever, withtwo thirds of the 48-member class being people of color, and the 268 officers hired since the start of 2020 (before Glorias term) nearly matching the citys demographics, the Union-Tribune reported.

After Gloria was elected but before he took office, the San Diego City Councilpassed two ordinancesfocused on surveillance and privacy. One would regulate the citys acquisition and use of surveillance equipment, and another that would create a privacy advisory board to oversee those concerns.

The ordinances, written with the help of the Trust SD Coalition,emerged after a series of debaclesregarding the citys use of surveillance technology without disclosure or guiding policies.

Gloria included them in his April reformrollout, butdid not mention them in his progress report last week.

They have not been adopted and implemented, despite their unanimous Council passage last year, because they need to go through the process of negotiating with municipal unions because they effect city staff. Once that happens, theyll require another Council vote before they go into effect.

Glorias first budget, though,included $165,000 in fundingfor one program manager to oversee the ordinances, if they emerge from negotiations and win Council approval.

Gloria correctly takes credit for having achieved this in his first year, moving the department from the purview of SDPD and rebranding it the Office of Emergency Services.

When former Mayor KevinFaulconerput the department within SDPD in 2019, as Jesse Marx reported, it made it easier for cops to distribute anti-terror funding throughout the region. The office controls about $15 million in annual federal grant funding on those issues. Now, its civilian employees who willmake those decisions, rather than police. Gloria said the change will allow officers to focus on building trust and relationships in communities.

Sacramento took care of this one for Gloria, with Gov. Gavin Newsom last month signing AB 48, written by San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez,to create statewide standards for the use of tear gas and rubber bullets.

The law requires officers to be trained in using so-called kinetic projectiles and chemical agents for crowd control, after injuries with such devices in the summer of 2020 during protests following the murder of George Floyd increased scrutiny on them.

It also forces police departments to publish on how theyve used crowd control weapons, specifically requiring justification for why they were used. Gloria looks forward to implementing this reporting requirement, his progress report reads.

Glorias progress report ignores this element of his reform package, too.

But criminal justice andhomeless advocates have both pushed for changes to the citys enforcement of crimes associated with homeless residents, even after Gloriapledged in March to inject compassioninto the way it cleans up encampments, which can lead to police enforcement.

Homelessness enforcement didnt get a mention in Glorias package, except insofar as alternatives to arrest for low-level offenses could apply to enforcementcommon among homeless residence. And its the absence of homelessness enforcementin his listthat Mitchelle Woodson, executive director of Think Dignity, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on homelessness, called absurd.

A lot of what we do in San Diego is criminalizing poverty through quality-of-life offenses like sleeping on the sidewalk or in cars, Woodson said. These arent just tickets theyre misdemeanor charges. For that not to be included in the reform package, it shows how disconnected he is on the issue.

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Gloria, With Help, Makes Slow Progress on Police Reform - Voice of San Diego