Pasadena NAACP Sues City Manager and Police Chief Over Body Camera Policy, Serves Lawsuit During City Meeting

The Pasadena Branch of the NAACP served a lawsuit on City Manager Steve Mermell and Police Chief Phillip Sanchez during a packed Public Safety Committee meeting at City Hall on Monday, accusing the pair of acting improperly in connection with obtaining a federal grant and in issuing a police body camera policy which the suit seeks to enjoin.

The unusual, extended two-hour-long meeting also generated the specter of a “constitutional crisis” as Committee members pondered the possibility of eventually directing the City Manager to “modify” the written policy. The discussion addressed the apparent conflict between Pasadena City Charter §604(J) which gives the City Council the power to instruct the City Manager on policy, and Municipal Code §2.295.030, which has been interpreted as allowing the Police Chief the authority to promulgate Departmental policy.

Attorneys Dale Gronemeier and Skip Hickambottom, representing the Pasadena Branch of the NAACP and co-plaintiff Michelle White, a local activist, served Mermell and Sanchez with the lawsuit documents.

The lawsuit accuses Mermell and Sanchez of procuring a $250,000 grant for the Pasadena Police Department from the U.S. Department of Justice through what the suit called a “bait-and-switch” application.

The suit also accused Mermell and Sanchez of fraudulently obtaining letters of support from the NAACP and other community stakeholders to support the grant.

The NAACP Pasadena Branch and White also allege that Mermell and Sanchez submitted in the City’s application to the Department of Justice a policy that Mermell and Sanchez knew would not be implemented as the Pasadena Police Department’s final, actual policy.

The NAACP and White allege that the City has never informed the Department of Justice that it adopted a different policy than the one it submitted “as the basis” for Pasadena being awarded the $250,000 for use on the body cameras.

Reacting to the lawsuit, Seattle Assistant Police Chief Perry Tarrant, President of National Organization Of Black Law Enforcement (NOBLE), said, however, that “Generally speaking, when a grant application is submitted, it’s the framework of a program, and not necessarily how the equipment is ultimately going to be employed.”

According to Tarrant, the Department of Justice provides guidelines for grants, and there is leeway between the initial application and what is finally applied on the street.

“I’m not aware of any Justice Department expectations in terms of policy,” Tarrant said, “or anything that says the policy can’t be configured to match the practice.”

In essence, Tarrant said that in practice the policy governing the use of the body cameras likely was not the only basis upon which the federal grant was funded, and also that changing the draft policy into a different final policy after the grant was approved is not unusual in similar cases of which he is aware.

The lawsuit seeks to halt the Pasadena Police Department’s use of its new body camera, known as “Policy 450,” which was issued November 4 and went operational on November 7.

Much of the public comment regarding camera policy centered around two issues — the amount of discretion given to officers in deciding when to turn the cameras on, and the policy of giving officers access to footage before providing testimony to investigators following an incident. In a national police survey, six U.S. cities do not allow officers viewing of video before investigative interviews.

“There are serious flaws in this policy,” said ACLU attorney Catherine Wagner. “Officers should not have as much discretion as they have been given in deciding when to turn their cameras on and off.This puts privacy rights in the hands of officers and not citizens.”

Wagner added that public viewing of incident footage is “key” to the policy and the department should not allow an officer to “cherry pick” what the public sees.

Rabbi Jonathan Klein, comparing the initial draft application submitted to the Department of Justice with the final policies presented to the City, said, “This is fundamentally not the same document. This policy is being shoved down our throats.”

The public comments followed two presentations by the police representatives — the first from Corporal Todd McDonald, who handed out body worn cameras to the members of the Council, and explained their technical usage and capabilities.

Lieutenant Vasken Gourdikian then detailed the two-year July 2015 to November 2016 testing period, emphasizing rules on the camera usage, and the number of public meetings held in the development of policy, as well. Ultimately, the body worn camera final policy was hammered out in “meet and confer” meetings between Chief Sanchez and the Pasadena Police Officers Association.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” sighed Councilmember Steve Madison, in reaction to the lawsuit and community comments. “The community asked for body worn cameras, and then…”

Councilmember Tyron Hampton offered that the Public Safety Committee should be writing the Body Worn Camera policy, but was reminded by City Manager Steve Mermell that that would be a violation of the City Charter, which mandates that only the City Manager may write official City policy.

“All those public meetings, but where is that input in the policy?” he asked. “We just checked a lot of boxes, and we didn’t get input. Where’s my bullet point?”

Committee Chair John Kennedy, noting that while City Council cannot write policy, asked the City Attorney’s representative, whether, given five votes of the Council, City Manager Mermell could be directed to modify a policy.

“Yes,” came the answer.

Kennedy then made a recommendation in his position as Chair of the Committee that he would ask Mayor Terry Tornek to add the discussion of the new body worn camera policy to the full Council agenda, “to determine the future of the camera policy.”

The parliamentary move could hold wide implications for the Council.