Anaheim's Public Safety Board Wonders Why It Exists, A Year After Its Creation
Members of Anaheim's Public Safety Board met last evening in the aftermath of the Ku Klux Klan melee and two controversial police shootings in February. It could've been a defining moment for the only board in OC that passes for civilian police oversight, but the meeting left more questions than answers. The Public Safety Board emerged out of the ashes of the Anaheim riots in 2012 amid calls for civilian oversight of police. What the public got instead was a nine-member lottery-selected panel bereft of subpoena powers. The board formed in 2014, but didn't have its first real meeting until January 22, 2015. Tucked away at the Gordon Hoyt Conference Room on the second floor of the Anaheim West Tower—does anybody know where that's at?— the quarterly meetings aren't archived with audio and video recordings—only minutes posted well after the fact.
And it's that inefficiency that activists and even one board member openly criticized last night.
Read more on my latest OC Weekly Navel Gazing Blog post:
