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New Public Safety Committee Chair John Kennedy Expects Monday’s Meeting to Set “Roadmap”

Published on Thursday, July 16, 2015 | 5:15 am
 
Pasadena City Councilmember and Public Safety Committee Chair John Kennedy

Incoming Public Safety Committee Chair John Kennedy said yesterday he expects the Committee’s meeting next Monday  will “set a roadmap” for the future direction of the Committee.

The July 20 meeting will mark the first time the Committee convenes under Kennedy’s leadership after his appointment last month. He succeeds former Vice Mayor Jacque Robinson.

The Public Safety Committee is the City Council’s standing committee charged with oversight of the Pasadena Police and Pasadena Fire Departments.

Kennedy renewed his call for greater law enforcement transparency, citing Tuesday’s federal court decision in the case of a police shooting in Gardena in which a judge ruled that the public’s interest in viewing the videos recorded by body or dash cameras outweighed the privacy rights of the officers.

“From a public policy standpoint I think it’s probably better in an open and free society that you have more disclosure than less,” Kennedy said. “Certainly this is an issue that will come before Public Safety Committee, but also the City Council as a whole. And as it comes before both bodies, I’m confident that my colleagues and I will provide significant leadership to help the police chief and our city lead through all of these.”

His statements come after the revelation that the funds allocated by the City Council in this fiscal year’s budget for police body cameras apparently fall far short of the amount need to deploy a working camera system. Police say high the costs of storing large amounts of high definition video weren’t included in the allocation.

Kennedy had previously said he was unaware of the additional funding needs for storage.

“My expectation [is] that there will be serious discussion about the issue of making video, the retention of video and who can actually have access to those files of information,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said he had asked the Police Chief Phillip Sanchez to provide the Public Safety Committee and the Council with the protocols, policies and procedure related to the recording and maintenance of videos.

“In my role, as the new chair of the Public Safety, I certainly requested that. Now we’ll see how that plays out,” Kennedy said.

In his first term as a member of the Committee, Kennedy advanced an initiative to fund a study of police oversight which was never approved or passed up to the full Council for consideration. However during the June budget process the Council agreed to allocate a $50,000 study of police oversight options.

Framing the directives for that study are among Kennedy’s objectives for the Committee.

“We’ll be setting up a process to have a workshop to discuss several matters but this will be more of an organizing meeting,” Kennedy said. “This is going to set a road map for the Committee hopefully to be responsive to our colleagues, the full Council and certainly the community as a whole.”

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