This post first appeared in the Politics Report.
These two were probably never meant to get along.
On Thursday, the San Diego Police Officers Association (the union) published a statement online accusing the city’s independent police oversight body of bias.
The oversight agency, called the Commission on Police Practices, had posted a news story on its Instagram page the day before. The story from NBC 7 was about three officers arrested in recent weeks; two for disorderly conduct and the third for domestic violence.
Posting the news story might imply an officer’s guilt before any investigation had taken place, the statement said. (For what it’s worth, CPP’s post didn’t make any commentary on the article.) The union has raised complaints about CPP’s social media posts on two previous occasions.
The Politics Report asked Jared Wilson, the union president, whether there was any world in which the union and CPP might get along.
“I do foresee a world where the POA and the PD and CPP can work together. But CPP has to be unbiased and at no point in their six years have they shown they can be unbiased,” he said.
CPP was created by a 2020 citywide ballot measure, Measure B, but it has been very slow to be implemented. CPP is supposed to have subpoena power to investigate serious incidents involving officers, such as shootings, but it still doesn’t have that full power. The City Council, police department, union, city attorney’s office and commission have all been negotiating exactly how the commission’s power would be applied in practice.
The police union officially stayed neutral in the lead up to Measure B, but union leaders have been vocal about what they see as problems with the commission ever since its formation.
According to the statement from Thursday, the union “supports independent civilian oversight and recognizes the mandate given by San Diego voters.”
We reached out to the relatively new director of the CPP Roger Smith for his reaction.
“The CPP is delighted to learn five years and nine months after the fact that San Diego Police Officers Association supports the passage of Measure B and independent civilian oversight,” Smith said.
Smith said that he and CPP stand behind all of its postings to its websites and social media channels and that the commission isn’t biased.
Speaking to KPBS back in April, he said the department is actively preventing CPP from doing its work.
Measure B’s official language said the commission would be “required to receive, register, review, and evaluate all complaints against city police officers.”
A loophole has since emerged. CPP has not been able to review two-thirds of the complaints of officers, as KPBS revealed. The department’s Internal Affairs manual states that CPP is not entitled to review miscellaneous complaints, though it’s unclear exactly how that determination was made.