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The commission's fecklessness under Brown has exhibited itself in other ways as well. For example, the panel did little to enforce its own 1999 order requiring police to collect data on the race of motorists pulled over by officers, until the ACLU in 2002 released a scathing report showing disparities in how black and Latino motorists were treated. That finally prompted the commission last November to order the department to ban police stops based on racial profiling and to submit monthly reports to guarantee that such profiling wasn't taking place.
In other instances, the panel has taken action in the face of public pressure only to reverse field when the tide of publicity has ebbed. A case in point occurred in March, at the apex of the clamor over the Fajitagate scandal, when the commission voted unanimously to have Deputy Chief Heather Fong draw up a list of outsiders to probe whether police commanders hindered the investigation of the street fight involving the three off-duty cops. But in June the commission quietly scuttled plans to bring in an outsider, opting instead to have the OCC review the matter. It isn't expected to do so until at least next month, by which time it will have been more than a year since the Union Street incident.
Commissioner Wayne Friday, the only one of the five panelists who responded to interview requests for this article, dismisses accusations that the commission is unresponsive. "We hear that all the time," he says. "People say, 'You're not doing anything. You guys are a bunch of so-and-sos.' But it just isn't true." He turns the criticism back on the panel's detractors, singling out Malaika Parker of Bay Area Police Watch and Mark Schlosberg of the ACLU. "They know what they're doing. They play for the TV cameras, and then they leave."
On paper, the Office of Citizen Complaints is impressive. By law, it must investigate every complaint it receives, currently about 1,000 per year, except for those that are clearly baseless. Police officers are required to cooperate with it. It has access to all police files, recommends discipline, makes policy recommendations, and publishes quarterly reports. It has a team of 15 investigators (among a staff of 32), the number of which is fixed by the city charter, which dictates that there be at least one OCC investigator for every 150 uniformed officers. Symbolic of its ostensible status as the Police Department's equal, its director, newly named Kevin Allen, an ex-public defender, sits at a table near one end of the commissioners' dais, as the chief sits at the same kind of table at the other end. But appearances are deceiving.
In reality, the OCC is more doormat than partner. Any doubt about the extent of the mismatch between it and the SFPD may have vanished in April with the release of a damning 84-page OCC report that provided a rare glimpse into just how unaccountable the cops in San Francisco have become. In detailing the meager level of police cooperation accorded it, the OCC also exposed, albeit unintentionally, the weakness of its own role.
Its report describes an "epidemic" of police defiance of the agency, including the department's stiff-arming of OCC investigators for weeks and even months over simple document requests that could be handled in hours or days. It details how officers refused to cooperate with civilian investigators in an astonishing 63 cases last year. In 29 of those cases, the cops never even bothered to show up for hearings. And that was the good news. Police brushed off the OCC in 88 cases the year before.
Chief Fagan has pledged to "fix" the problem. But the SFPD's inability, or unwillingness, to police itself continues to be a huge embarrassment. In a stunning revelation the day after the election, the department acknowledged that its record-keeping in cop misconduct cases is in disarray. Facing uncharacteristically hostile questions from commissioners, Capt. Dennis O'Leary, who heads the SFPD's internal affairs arm, admitted that case files were found to have been "lying around" for months at department headquarters. He could not say, even now, whether all of the 60 active cases submitted to the department by the OCC had been accounted for.
The development was all the more startling since OCC sources had privately said that the SFPD's cooperation with the agency had improved somewhat in recent months. But others, noting the microscope under which the Police Department has operated since Fajitagate, and the incentive Fagan undoubtedly has to score points in hopes of keeping his job should front-runner Newsom emerge as mayor from the Dec. 9 runoff, are skeptical as to whether improvements, if they exist, will last. "What's happening at the moment isn't the important thing," says attorney John Crew, who spent 15 years monitoring police abuse for the ACLU. "It's what happens next year and beyond."
Created by voter initiative in 1982 after years of public frustration at the lack of police accountability, the OCC has never lived up to its promise. It has been a political orphan from the time it opened its doors in 1983. Former Mayor Feinstein, who then (as now) enjoyed the loyalty of the politically powerful San Francisco Police Officers Association, had opposed it. "It was an uphill battle and a testimony to the frustration people felt about the police that [the initiative creating the OCC] managed to pass," former Supervisor Harry Britt recalls. Britt struck a deal with the police union to take a neutral stance on the '82 initiative in return for his support of two measures affecting police pensions and overtime. Otherwise, the OCC vote may never have gotten over the hump.
