Hey y’all. Mark-Anthony Johnson, Dignity and Power Now.

So LA Times put out an article today written by Maya Lau.

A court is blocking LA County Sheriff, Sheriff McDonnell, from handing over a list of 300 problematic deputies.

300. So, let’s talk about this. Right, so, his own Internal Affairs Bureau has identified 300 personnel, actually some of them are ranking officers, whose conduct within the department has included theft, bribery, brutality, the gamut. And he wants to give this list over to the district attorney.

I think it’s timely, right, you know, we’ve got the Tanaka trial, the Baca trial is happening. And given the history of law enforcement abusing folks, lying, making up testimony. Perfectly valid. That the DA should be able to look at this list of officers, who may be called to testify, and question whether their history of misconduct actually calls into question their testimony. Perfectly fair.

But what’s happening? The district attorney is rejecting the list. Just doesn’t want the list. The sheriffs’ union is making a whole stink about it, saying that it’s violating their officers’ privacy and they don’t want to demonize their deputies that may have done something a long time ago. And three, they got an appellate judge to block any names, to just put a hold on any names period being given to the DA right now.

1. DA’s rejecting the list
2. Sheriffs’ union blocking
3. Court judge is putting a hold

So what does that mean? If the sheriff himself, Sheriff Top Dog McDonnell, can’t even make a list of people in his own department that he’s identified as problematic, he can’t even make that list useful for the sake of transparency and accountability, then the people need to have the power to make misconduct reports, and documents, and records useful. For transparency and accountability. That means changing state law. Right? Just like in 25 other states around the country police misconduct reports are public. Ten of which you don’t even need a ruling, there doesn’t even need to be a ruling that police misconduct was even determined! But in California we can’t do that.

So, change the state law to make police misconduct reports public. And then make sure the civilian oversight of the sheriff’s department has the power to subpoena the sheriff’s department. For times like this. Exactly these type of moments. When the DA is rejecting the misconduct records, when the sheriffs’ union is blocking them, and when a court judge is putting a hold on them. Where do they go? They belong in the hands of the community. So we can expose it, so we can make them useful, for accountability and transparency.

Just sayin’.

Get at us Thursday 9:30 AM, Civilian Oversight Commission meeting, Bob Hope Patriotic Hall. Be there.

Transcribed from a video originally posted via Facebook Live February 20th, 4:24 PM.