Office of Independent Review Recommended to Provide City Independent Police Auditor Services

On Monday, the City Council won’t just be considering approving three members of the newly created Community Police Oversight Commission.

The council will also be voting on a one-year $83,700 contract with the Office of Independent Review Group for police auditing services.

The OIR will serve as a best practices consultant to the city’s 11-member Community Police Oversight Commission (CPOC), review use-of-force incidents and investigations, and recommend changes on police procedures and officer training.

The group is led by Michael Gennaco, a former federal prosecutor whose agency has performed external reviews and other work on more than 700 police shootings and other critical incidents.

The group provides oversight and investigations but does make determinations on criminal aspects of a given case. 

Locally, the OIR is currently investigating the officer-involved shooting death of 32-year-old Anthony McClain on Aug. 15. 

McClain’s shooting touched off protests during a summer of demonstrations around the country against police brutality sparked by the videotaped killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25. 

In the McClain case, the Police Department has released dashboard and body-cam video of the encounter.

The OIR also provided oversight of the police investigations of the officer-involved shooting deaths of Kendrec McDade in 2012 and Leroy Barnes in 2009.

In the McDade case, Officers Matthew Griffin and Jeffrey Newlen fired on the unarmed 19-year-old McDade after a brief foot pursuit that ended on Sunset Avenue, near Orange Grove Boulevard. The chase began after a man named Oscar Carrillo-Gonzales told a 911 dispatcher that McDade and a companion robbed him at gunpoint.

The officers, believing McDade was armed, shot the teen seven times. Local investigators spent 48 hours searching for a weapon before Carrillo-Gonzales admitted that he had lied about the gun.

But rather than being transparent about the results of the OIR investigation, as was the case in the Barnes shooting, then-City Manager Michael Beck sided with the police union and initially refused to release the report on the incident. The city later changed its position in court, but the union continued to block the release of the document and claimed it was a personnel file and could not be released.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge later released a redacted version of the document which contained  26 recommendations, including one that would require statements be gathered from officers the day of an officer-involved shooting incident.

After the McDade shooting, Newlen and Griffin were separated and sequestered, but not officially interviewed for 36 hours following the shooting. The OIR also recommended that there be no review of evidence by the officers until after their statements are provided to investigators.

Gennaco also cited tactical errors made by Griffin and Newlen on the evening of the shooting, including their failure to use their lights and siren while pursuing McDade, exiting their patrol car without a plan, the officers’ decision to separate and activate a foot pursuit, and not broadcasting that they believed that the suspect was armed. 

The OIR also criticized the officers for using a “box-in” technique, which “created numbers of officer safety issues, and increased the likelihood of deadly force.”

The OIR made more than a dozen policy recommendations after the Barnes shooting in 2009. Barnes was shot and killed by Pasadena police officers during a traffic stop on Mentone Avenue, just south of Washington Boulevard. Police shot Barnes 11 times — seven times in the back — after he refused to remove his hands from a backpack after one of the officers had entered the backseat and attempted to take Barnes’ hands out of his backpack.

During the struggle, Barnes fell out of the car and brandished the gun, but was shot before he could fire on police. 

In that case, the OIR ruled that “the methods used by the two officers were not “clear, consistent or focused” as they approached the vehicle Barnes was riding in.

The OIR later recommended 14 policy changes, and the department accepted all but one, which would have forced the department to send training personnel to police shooting scenes immediately. 

Recommendations that were accepted by Pasadena police included training officers on not using leading questions, training officers on advising witnesses of their rights, and making a written policy to ensure that officer-involved shooting investigation files are kept by the department at least as long as the involved officer’s career. 

The OIR also recommended the department continue its commitment to transparency in providing timely information to the public, but redouble its efforts to ensure that such information is completely accurate before doing so.

“It is anticipated that the [Independent Police Auditor’s] work can begin in earnest when the members of the police oversight commission are selected,” according to a city staff report included with Monday’s council meeting agenda.