At next Tuesday’s Board meeting, Supervisors Zev Yaroslavksy and Mark Ridley-Thomas will jointly introduce a motion to create a 5-person Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence to look into the abuse of inmates by sheriff’s deputies in the LA County jails.
The two Supes even have a smart plan for funding the proposed Commission with $$ from the Sheriff’s Judgments and Damages account, which seems exactly perfect.
If the motion is passed, the commission—which is to serve a function similar to that of the Christopher Commission, which was appointed after Rodney King et al— will be made up of five commissioners, each chosen by one of the supervisors.
Frankly, there’s no reason that the motion should not pass easily, and we applaud the action on the part of the two board members, a move that many jails watchers have been calling for. Even Sheriff Baca said he’d welcome a civilian group of this kind.
Certainly, a Citizens’ Commission, which has no actual legal power, cannot alone solve what is now a problem deeply embedded in the culture of guarding the jails. But its formation has the potential to be an important factor in the weave of elements that must be present to precipitate the kind of fundamental change in the custody division of the Sheriff’s Department that is now necessary.
Here’s a clip from the motion itself:
We trust that the ongoing FBI and Sheriff’s investigations into the facts will ferret
out the truth and lead to appropriate disciplinary action and criminal prosecution of
wrong-doers. But it is the Board of Supervisors’ responsibility to initiate and carry out a
community-level review of alleged inappropriate use of force by deputies assigned to
the jails. This can best be accomplished through the appointment of a Citizen’s
Commission composed of five distinguished County residents, each to be appointed by
a member of the Board of Supervisors. The mandate of the Commission should be to
conduct a review of the nature, depth and cause of the problem of inappropriate deputy
use of force in the jails, and to recommend corrective action as necessary.More generally, it shall be the task of the Commission to restore public confidence in the
constitutional operation of our jails by conducting a discussion on the nature and cause
of the problem, and by recommending potential solutions and holding this Board and the
Sheriff accountable for their speedy and effective implementation.
Kudos to Mark Ridley-Thomas and Zev Yaroslavsky for taking this first step.
In combination with a wider investigation by the FBI and, with luck, eventually a federal consent decree—which is a binding legal action—it could make a large difference.