The City’s Community Police Oversight Commission will discuss and consider recommending the City Council extend the contract of Independent Police Auditor Richard Rosenthal.
Last year, the City Council voted to authorize the City Attorney to enter into a one-year $150,000 contract with Rosenthal for IPA services.
The IPA’s duties include, among other things, serving as a best-practices adviser to the police oversight Commission, reviewing categorical uses of force by Pasadena Police Department officers, reviewing investigations of personnel complaints of bias-based policing, and recommending changes to PPD policies, procedures, or officer training,” according to a city staff report.
Rosenthal is the City’s second IPA.
Rosenthal replaced Brian Maxey who resigned just two months after the oversight Commissioners formally convened to study their duties, responsibilities and discuss their priorities and work plan.
The CPOC was established in October 2020 in the wake of the police involved killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Floyd’s death led to protests and unrest around the globe and moved the City Council to adopt the Commission. The City Council for years did not adopt police oversight.
The adoption of a Police Oversight Commission gave Pasadena several levels of police accountability, including the Public Safety Committee, which is made up of City Councilmembers.
Rosenthal has not been an anti-police rubber stamp.
In May, Rosenthal told the Commission after a review of data that he found no reason to believe that Pasadena officers engage in the use excessive force on a systemic basis.
“I did not find in any systemic way that police officers were using excessive force during this period of time related to these investigations,” Pasadena Now quoted Rosenthal as saying when he presented his findings to the Commission, following his review of the use-of-force cases closed between June 2021 and November 2022.
The IPA remarked the timelines of investigation and adjudication of use-of-force cases is “excellent.”
According to Rosenthal, cases are regularly resolved in less than 3 months.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a department that actually appears to take these [investigations] seriously enough that they require a timely review and adjudication,” he said.
Rosenthal said he will review 2023 use-of-force investigations to ensure investigations and reviews of categorical uses of force “remain timely.”
The department’s use of force policy provides guidelines on the reasonable use-of-force by police officers. The policy requires the automatic review by the Use-of-Force Review Board of any type of punching, kicking, application of a taser device, discharge of a firearm by the police, among other things.
The Commission will meet at 6 p.m. on July 6.
Computer or electronic devices, join the meeting at: cityofpasadena.net/cczoom
Telephone only dial-in: 1-669-900-6833, Meeting ID: 161 48.
Livestream with captioning will be available at www.pasadenamedia.org, and also at www.cityofpasadena.net/Commissions/agendas.
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