New Police Commission Gets An Earful On Devin

Both the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Daily News have stories today about Tuesday's meeting of the 5-member Los Angeles Police Commission. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently appointed 4 new members (former Los Angeles Urban League president John Mack, bank executive Shelley Freeman and attorneys Andrea Ordin and Anthony Pacheco) and members of many communities are extremely interested in how the newly reformulated Commission will execute its duties to be the citizen oversight panel for the Los Angeles Police Department.

John Mack (who was unanimously elected President of the Commission) had the meeting moved to a large auditorium in Parker Center after "about 200 community activists packed the commission's hearing room to decry the pace of the investigation into the February 6 killing of [13-year old] Devin [Brown]. They demanded the firing of Officer Steve Garcia, who shot the teenager after he backed a stolen car toward a police cruiser. Garcia and his partner had begun pursuing Devin after he ran a red light."

The group contrasted the six-month lack of action against Garcia with Los Angeles County Sherriff Lee Baca's expeditious finding in 30 days that deputies who fired nearly 120 rounds at unarmed motorist Winston Hayes had violated both tactical and pursuit policies. Pastor Lewis Logan of the group Community Call to Action and Accountability warned that if the "police commission doesn't strongly recommend that this officer's service be terminated" then future commission meetings would be filled with protesters. Nation of Islam Minister Tony Muhammad said "We will shut this city down" if Devin's shooting is not adequately investigated. Surprisingly, John Mack agreed with the speakers. "These investigations go on forever…. This has to be done in a more timely fashion," he said.

However, Mayor Villaraigosa who sat through the nearly two hour meeting quietly in the audience said afterwards that he did not want to second-guess the LAPD on the pace of the Brown investigation, noting it is an "in-depth and exhaustive" probe that a federal monitor, mandated by a consent decree upon the department, will examine carefully.