Matt Leslie
The agenda for the Fullerton City Council meeting of Dec. 18 includes an item to approve the commencement of negotiations to hire Acting Chief Dan Hughes as Chief of the Fullerton Police Department. Although the department has been without a permanent chief since the final discreditable departure of Michael Sellers nearly a year ago, and effectively for many months prior to that date, the consideration to hire Captain Hughes or anyone else is nonetheless premature. Captain Hughes has vocal support from some quarters, notably many of the department’s officers, but also detractors in the community. However, his tenure as Acting Chief and his previous decades of service to the department should not be the immediate issue.
Before hiring anyone to the post the city council should form a police commission to oversee the troubled FPD. While Dan Hughes is reported to have accomplished the implementation of most of the fifty-nine recommendations of the report presented by Michael Gennaco’s Office of Independent Review in July, the city has yet to address the fifty-ninth, developing independent oversight of the Fullerton Police Department. To quote the report directly, “The City should consider creating an independent model of oversight to ensure that its Police Department objectively and thoroughly investigates critical incidents and allegations of misconduct and renders objective disciplinary decisions.”
The city currently lacks any such independent body to carry out this vital recommendation, and has yet to respond to a plan submitted to the city manager months ago by a group of citizens to create it. The Police Oversight Proposal Committee (POPC) plan specified access to complaints against officers, the power to subpoena testimony and documents, and the authority to recommend disciplinary actions as essential components of an effective oversight board. The city council has yet to place even a discussion of the subject, let alone consideration of POPC’s specific proposal, on any meeting agenda.
The Gennaco Report is explicit in noting that oversight boards are of not much use unless they have access to internal police documents. The report also acknowledges that state law, and recent interpretations of it, can make effective oversight of police by civilians difficult. Across the country oversight boards have a mixed record of success, depending directly on how independent they are allowed to be and how much access they are given to information.
There are no police oversight boards in Orange County, but Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait has publicly stated his support for some kind of review board in the aftermath of police shootings in his city this past year. Unlike Anaheim, which is a charter city, Fullerton is a general law city, making the implementation of necessary aspects of effective police review more difficult to establish, and requiring, for example, the cooperation of Fullerton’s police chief in allowing a police commission access to complaints and records. It is for this reason that it is critically important that the council adopt a resolution establishing a police commission prior to hiring anyone to the position of Chief of Police.
Even if, as his supporters claim, Captain Hughes has set the department on an even keel in the wake of the worst scandal in its history, he would not be Chief of Police forever. Eventually the council will need to hire his successor, and there is no telling who that might be, or who might be on the council by then. A structural approach is necessary to, as much as possible, guarantee that the people of Fullerton will have full control of the department charged to police us. Our civil rights and Fullerton’s financial stability could be at risk otherwise.
Two civil suits against the City of Fullerton within the past year have already ended with payments of $ 1 million and $ 350,000 respectively, and more civil actions against the city owing to past actions of alleged police misconduct are on the horizon. A police commission with access to complaints against officers might have headed off the serial activities of former Officer Rincon, who has already cost the city the aforementioned $ 350,000. Another FPD officer, still on the force, is the subject of a civil suit regarding an arrest that took place well before his presence at the Kelly Thomas beating in July, 2011.
Certainly, the Fullerton Police Department has been allowed to go far too long without a chief. It is of the utmost importance to hire the best candidate possible for the job, but none should even be considered before a police commission is formed to best ensure oversight of the FPD on behalf of the public it is sworn to serve.
fullertonrag.com 
It is not just the police employees who support Dan Hughes as Chief. He has support of numerous non-connected citizens who have seen him in action. The decision of implementing a citizen’s police review board with teeth is up to the city council not the police chief. We need one now. And it is a very good point that because police chiefs change over the years we can not rely on the excellence of one person and their reforms. Dan Hughes should be given a contract and we will be lucky if he accepts it. He has done an incredible job since being appointed in January and has made lots of needed reforms and brought integrity back to the department. And the council should also move on creating the citizen’s review board at the same time. Hughes has a proposal for a Chief’s Advisory Board which is also a good idea but should not be instead of a citizens review board with teeth. As we saw after the Kelly beating death – our council was unable to act. We need the added layer of a citizen’s board. People appointed to that board should be representatives from a wide range of established citizen’s groups and not just friends of council members.
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Ms. Kennedy,
The ends do not justify the means. Post the position, accept external applications, conduct interviews, and let the council debate. Not only are these required by the law in our town, it’s just the sensible thing to do.
Do you really think that the council playing politics with Mr. Dan Hughes is a good thing for our town? I don’t.
Follow the rules, do it right, and do it in the right order as Mr. Leslie has suggested.
–RC
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Sharon Kennedy’s comments above are both partisan and absurd. Have you actually read the letter by Office Ben Lira? How could we in good conscience hire someone to permanently head the Police Department without a formal interview process including questions about these claims? Matt Leslie and Ryan Cantor are right about this. It will be a travesty if the city hires Hughes this evening. Except more protests, and more division if they do.
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