Members of the Community Police Oversight Commission urged City Manager Miguel Márquez to look for ways to include members of the commission in the ongoing process of selecting the next chief of the Pasadena Police Department.
They made the request after they learned from Márquez during their meeting on Thursday, October 6, that a panel is now in the process of interviewing candidates.
Members of the CPOC are not included among the members of the panel.
“We didn’t receive an email saying that chief selection is even occurring,” Commissioner Esprit Jones lamented. “Our commission was fully left out of what was happening.”
“I thought that maybe the chair or the vice chair was going to be on the interviewing panel,” Commissioner Florence Annang said.
Annang pointed out that having no commissioner involved in the process of selecting the next police chief sends a signal to the community on how the City regards the CPOC.
“For such a big decision that directly impacts our work as a commission, it’s disappointing to not even have a notice of the timeline of this interview let alone be consulted in regards to being able to participate in these interviews,” CPOC Chair Raúl Ibáñez said.
Márquez, who faced the commission for the first time during the meeting, assured that while the members of the CPOC were not involved in the process, the City made efforts to involve the community.
“We are currently going through the interview process and we put together a community panel to do the interviews and provide me with their feedback. That community panel did not include anyone from the CPOC here, but it did include a member of the community who was involved in the oversight activity of Los Angeles County.”
“We did involve the community to the extent we could in a variety of ways.”
According to Márquez, a virtual town hall where an executive recruiter entertained questions from the public has been conducted to get input from the community.
Márquez, who is tasked with selecting Pasadena’s next chief of police, assured members of the CPOC that he will hire “someone who expresses strong desire to work with not just CPOC and the IPA (Independent Police Auditor) but with the community and everybody else.”
“We want to do a very thorough vetting of whoever we’re going to select to be the next police chief and I think that’s going to take a number of weeks and I look forward to making the announcement when that happens but I think we’re still in the middle of the process,” Márquez added.
Márquez said there might be logistical challenges and the process might get extended if the commissioners’ request to have CPOC members at the panel be accommodated, but he also did not say no to the commission’s request.
“The challenge is we have candidates from not just here but all over and they have already come to do the interview. It just creates logistical challenges.”
“What I think [is that] the community also wants someone to be named sooner rather than later. It’s a timing issue at this point.”
“These processes are also guided by our Human Resources Department so I hesitate to make any commitment, but I will bring back the question to them,” Márquez told the commissioners.
The city has been without a full-time police chief since early January when then Police Chief John Perez retired. Last July 1, the filing period to apply for the position ended.
The ideal candidate will be “a seasoned professional with demonstrated success working through leadership transition in a diverse community while leading a law enforcement agency effectively in proactive community policing,” according to a brochure on https://koffassociates.com.
The CPOC, established in October 2020, is created by the city to enhance, develop and strengthen community-police relations and review and make recommendations regarding the ongoing operations of the Pasadena Police Department.
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