Guest Opinion | Paul Vernon: Pasadena’s Police Oversight Commission Has a Credibility Problem

Pasadena’s Community Police Oversight Commission was not created to be an anti-police advocacy group. It was created, according to the City’s own description, to “enhance, develop, and strengthen community-police relations,” and to review and make recommendations regarding police department operations. That is a serious public mission. It requires independence, fairness, restraint, and judgment.

The recent officer-involved shooting involving Malcolm Buchanan is a test of whether the commission still understands that mission.

After reading Pasadena Now’s May 15 article and watching the newly released critical incident video, I came away with a question that should concern every Pasadena resident: what exactly is the city getting from this commission if its most vocal members appear to undermine police legitimacy even in a case where officers were responding to an armed suspect who had already shot one person and then shot a police officer?

This was not a random police contact. Officers were dispatched on March 2 to a reported shooting at the Sierra Madre Villa Metro Station. According to Pasadena Police, an arriving officer contacted a gunshot victim and obtained a suspect description. A second victim reported that the first victim had been shot while trying to intervene in a sexual assault. Officers later found someone matching the suspect description a few blocks away. When they attempted to detain him, he fled. During the foot pursuit, officers gave commands to stop. The suspect did not comply. An exchange of gunfire followed, leaving Officer Bryan Vasquez seriously wounded and Buchanan dead.

Pasadena Now reported that Officer Vasquez suffered life-threatening injuries, underwent surgery, spent weeks recovering at Huntington Hospital, and continued to receive medical treatment after being discharged. The case remains under criminal and administrative review.

Those facts should matter.

They should matter before anyone implies racism. They should matter before anyone suggests police malfeasance. They should matter before anyone turns an armed suspect into a symbol and the wounded officer into an afterthought.

Yet Pasadena Now reported that, at the May 14 commission meeting, Chair Esprit Loren Jones said she had attended Buchanan’s memorial service and repast. She also said Buchanan’s mother, grandmother, and father told her they had no contact from the department during the first 45 days. Jones said she had concerns but would save the issue for a later conversation.

Concerns about communication with a deceased person’s family may be fair game. But context matters. Chief Eugene Harris reportedly told the commission that the department issued a letter about the delay, contacted Buchanan’s family, and showed the critical incident video to involved officers and family members, including Buchanan’s family, before public release.

So what exactly is the “issue” of great concern?

A man was shot. Police were called. A suspect description was given. Officers found a man matching that description. He was armed. He ran. A police officer was shot and nearly killed. Officers returned fire. The suspect died.

If the commission chair’s public concern is that the family of the armed suspect felt insufficiently contacted, that issue may be worth clarifying. But it cannot be treated as morally equivalent to the actual sequence of public danger that brought police there in the first place. Nor should the chair of the city’s police oversight body appear publicly aligned with the family narrative of a man who shot a police officer before the investigation is complete.

Compassion is not the problem. A family can grieve even when their loved one did terrible things. Mental illness may help explain behavior, but it does not erase the threat Buchanan posed that night. The police officer did not have the luxury of conducting a clinical diagnosis during a foot pursuit involving an armed shooting suspect. He had a duty to protect the public. Based on the video and public reporting, he attempted to do exactly that — and was nearly killed for it.

That is why the optics of the commission chair attending Buchanan’s memorial service matter. Not because private compassion is forbidden. Not because the dead man’s family should be treated cruelly. But because public officials with oversight authority must avoid the appearance of prejudgment. When a commission chair appears closer to the family of the suspect than to the wounded officer or the public endangered by the suspect’s actions, the commission’s neutrality suffers.

If the commission chair believed it was appropriate to attend Buchanan’s memorial service and repast, one wonders whether she made any comparable effort to visit Officer Vasquez in the hospital or express concern to his family. Perhaps she did. If so, the public should know that. But if the only visible gesture of personal solidarity went toward the family of the man who shot the officer, then the problem is not compassion. The problem is imbalance.

And neutrality is the whole ballgame.

A fair police oversight system should do two things at once: hold officers accountable when misconduct is proven, and protect them when false, exaggerated, or unsubstantiated accusations are used to destroy reputations.

The ugly truth is that some civilians do make knowingly false complaints. Others make mistaken ones. Some complaints are driven by anger, leverage, politics, or litigation strategy.

If a civilian review board helps push stigmatizing claims into public view without adequate proof, that is not transparency. It is reputational punishment without due process.

The same problem exists when commissioners treat disparity as proof of discrimination. RIPA data can identify patterns worth examining. It can raise questions. But it does not, by itself, prove racial animus by officers. Yet in Pasadena, discussions of police stops too often seem to begin from the assumption that disparity equals racism and police activity is inherently suspect.

I saw that problem firsthand during my brief tenure on the commission. At one meeting, a professor presented a taxpayer-funded report that implied Pasadena police were engaging in disparate treatment toward Black and Hispanic residents. The report magnified a disparity by an order of ten. When I questioned the math, he answered, “Oh, I guess you read the report,” and admitted the error. But the error was never publicly corrected with the same visibility as the original accusation.

That matters. Public perception is shaped by official-sounding presentations, headlines, commission discussions, and selective outrage. When the accusation is loud and the correction is silent, the damage remains.

This problem also predates the Buchanan shooting. When I joined the commission as a retired LAPD officer, Pasadena Now reported that Chair Jones remarked, “We’ve got a groove that is being a bit disrupted.” A public commenter said, “I’m definitely keeping my eyes on you. I know you’re LAPD retired.” In isolation, perhaps those comments could be brushed off as ordinary skepticism. In context, they reflect a deeper problem: law enforcement experience was treated less like useful knowledge and more like contamination.

That attitude is poisonous if the commission’s mission is truly to strengthen community-police relations.

Police officers can accept scrutiny. They live with scrutiny every day: body cameras, supervisors, internal affairs, prosecutors, civil litigation, media coverage, public records laws, and now civilian oversight. What they should not have to accept is a city-sponsored process in which some commissioners appear to approach police work with open cynicism and ideological suspicion.

That has a cost.

It costs morale. It costs recruitment. It costs retention. It costs public safety when officers begin to wonder whether the city they serve will stand behind them even when the facts show they acted courageously. It costs taxpayers when litigation is encouraged by public officials who seem eager to validate one side before the investigation is complete. And it costs social cohesion when residents are repeatedly told, directly or indirectly, that their police department is racist, corrupt, or murderous without proof.

Oversight done well is valuable. Oversight done poorly is worse than useless. It inflames distrust while claiming to build trust. It demoralizes officers while claiming to improve policing. It gives activists a platform while giving the public the illusion of balanced review.

Pasadena does not need a commission that reflexively defends the police. That would defeat the purpose. But it also does not need one that reflexively distrusts them.

The city needs commissioners credible enough to criticize officers when they are wrong, disciplined enough to wait for facts before implying wrongdoing, and honest enough to defend officers when the evidence shows they acted lawfully and bravely.

The Buchanan shooting should have been a moment of moral clarity. A wounded victim. A fleeing armed suspect. A police officer nearly killed in the line of duty. A tragic death, yes, but one caused by a chain of violent conduct that officers were duty-bound to confront.

If Pasadena’s oversight commission cannot distinguish that from police misconduct, then the city has a bigger problem than one controversial meeting.

It has an oversight commission that may no longer be serving the purpose for which it was created.

Paul Vernon is a former Pasadena police commissioner and retired LAPD police officer with 33 years of experience.