Students for Police Accountability and People Acting in Community Together asked the San Jose State public to join them in a webinar on Monday.
Students for Police Accountability is an organization looking to increase authority for San Jose Independent Police Auditor, Shivaun Nurre, according to their Instagram.
People Acting in Community Together is a grassroots organization providing leadership training and experience to community members of different ethnic, religious and socio-economic backgrounds, according to their website.
The IPA’s office is a government agency separate from the San Jose Police Department, which suggests policy changes and addresses officer misconduct, according to their website.
Nurre discussed a number of ways the San Jose community can help the IPA’s office achieve better police accountability.
“The most important function I believe [the IPA] have is to hold officers accountable, and there’s only one way to do that, through the complaint process,” she said.
Nurre said the main issue with the current complaint process is that further investigation falls to SJPD’s Internal Affairs.
The department receives any allegations against officers from the public and looks to show responsiveness to any concerns community members may have.
Ray Montgomery, executive editor of People Acting in Community Together, said the biggest issue with investigations going to SJPD’s Internal Affairs, rather than the IPA, is it disallows the auditor to conduct their own investigation.
“Through this process, the officer does not lose his job because the D.A. doesn’t have any power over the employment process,” Nurre said. “There may be an injunction, but the individual officer is not going to be losing his job unless the department initiates an investigation.”
The IPA can only look at investigations conducted by SJPD’s Internal Affairs, and checks for a number of variables such as thoroughness, objectivity and fairness.
Should the IPA disagree with SJPD’s Internal Affairs’ decision, they can discuss it with them and potentially reopen the case, according to the office’s FAQ document.
Nurre said it's frustrating when SJPD resorts to extraneous measures when handling disturbances.
“A person was naked and outside somebody’s porch and masturbating, and officers put the canine on him and we had real concerns about why they did that,” she said. “In that case, officers were not interviewed, which we thought was so ridiculous.”
Nurre said Moeel Lah Fakhoury LLP, a consulting company, sent an exposition to the city council to create an alternative model for police accountability, but it did not identify a way to involve the community.
Nurre said while involvement on behalf of the community is not outlined, other places, including Oakland, give public volunteers the ability to question officers and review evidence.
She said she has a few concerns regarding civilian involvement in investigations.
“Having a civilian review board, at least in California, entails the question of who’s on the board, and this creates a lot of, frankly, a lot of political fights,” Nurre said.
She said the limited nature of the auditor’s role makes it difficult to go beyond police supervision and recommending policy changes.
“We’re only supposed to be an advocate for the system, and I know this frustrates some of our complainants because they feel that we’re not pressing hard enough for them, and their side and how they view the situation,” Nurre said.
