Students for Police Accountability met in front of San Jose City Hall on Thursday afternoon to call for more transparency about the Independent Police Auditor.
The group was protesting the city’s Public Safety, Finance and Strategic Support Committee's decision to defer hearing the “Investigation of Police Misconduct in San Jose” report until June.
The discussion aimed to delve deeper into the investigative branch of the Independent Police Auditor, according to a December 13, 2022 San Jose Spotlight article.
Cole Mitchell, sociology and information science sophomore and member of Students for Police Accountability, said he wanted to discuss the committee implementing a strategy into having oversight of the police department.
“They moved that particular conversation piece off this week’s agenda and moved it to June 15th,” Mitchell said. “So we are especially here today to say that they can’t just keep detouring, [and] that it needs to be addressed now.”
San Jose City Council unanimously approved adding an investigative branch to the Independent Police Auditor to investigate police misconduct complaints last year, according to the same San Jose Spotlight article.
Mitchell said he demands vice mayor Rosemary Kamei, who sits on the Public Safety, Finance and Strategic Support Committee, to do something with her power.
“The community is wondering why you’re not taking proactive steps to preventing police misconduct,” Mitchell said.
He said San Jose deserves a police department that is not going to hide its crimes.
“We’re proactive, we’re taking steps and if they won’t do anything, we will,” Mitchell said. “We’re not going to stop calling for reform and organizing until they do something about this.”
Sociology senior Kat Adamson, who serves as a member of Students Against Mass Incarceration, said there’s a stronger need for a better independent police auditing process.
“The things that the police do sometimes are absolutely absurd and there needs to be someone who is having that oversight,” Adamson said. “And it’s really important to have it be independent and not an internal investigation.”
She said it’s important to have transparency and the ability to speak to the Public Safety, Finance and Strategic Support committee.
“When they aren’t willing to talk about the meeting or about the agenda item it really delays the public’s knowledge of what’s going on and it makes it this really complicated process where no one knows what’s happening,” Adamson said.
Sociology junior Joseph Namba, a member of Students for Police Accountability, said the Police Department Internal Affairs Unit is not doing enough.
“It’s important because it will ensure more that cases of misconduct aren’t being treated with any bias towards the San Jose Police Department to cover up dirt,” Namba said.
He said the investigative branch to the Independent Police Auditor could have prevented police misconduct such as in the case of former San Jose Police officer Matthew Dominguez.
Last year, Dominguez was accused of masturbating in front of a family during a service call inside their house and was additionally later charged with two counts of sexual battery after allegedly groping two women in 2021, according to a July 15, 2022 NBC Bay Area News article.
“The IPA [Independent Police Auditor] would have conducted a thorough investigation from the start of the issue of this officer groping two women, but instead internal affairs handled it,” Nabmba said,
Mathematics freshman Tarentz Charite, a member of Students for a Democratic Society, said it’s important to give more power to independent police auditors.
“Having that transparency I believe is important because we can’t exactly make public comments and change when we don’t have the transparency needed to actually gauge exactly what they’re doing and how they’re doing it,” he said.
Charite said the committee's decision to push the agenda was purposeful and deliberate.
“The thing that they don’t know is that we’re going to keep coming and I’m a first year [student], so I’m going to keep coming until things happen,” Charite said.
