Distributed by the Green Party of the United States
Emailed to contact.ipr@gmail.com
News Advisory
THE GREEN PARTY OF CALIFORNIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, January 9, 2009
Contact: Susan King, spokesperson, 415.823-5524 sking@cagreens.org
Erika McDonald, San Francisco Green Party, 415-337-1499 erika@dolorespark.org
Cres Vellucci, press secretary, 916.996-9170 cvellucci@cagreens.org
Democrats blocked legislation holding police accountable for
misconduct; political solution may have prevented shooting death of
Oakland youth on New Year’s Day, charges Green Party
OAKLAND - Political remedies to hold police more accountable for
outrageous acts such as the shooting death of an African-American
youth here on New Year’s Day have been blocked by even supposedly
“sympathetic” Democratic Party politicians, charged Green Party of
California spokespeople Friday.
Greens said the killing of 22-year-old Oscar Grant by Oakland police
should spark a renewed interest in police misconduct, transparency and accountability.
“Elected officials, including lawmakers representing the Bay Area such
as Democrat Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D-SF), have been blocking police accountability for years in Sacramento, She helped kill police
accountability legislation in 2007,” said Erika McDonald, a
spokesperson for the San Francisco Green Party.
Ma was a member of the 2007 Assembly Public Safety Committee which refused to even bring to a vote two pieces of legislation, SB 1019 and AB 1648, which would have given the public access to police records about misconduct and discipline involving police officers, including excessive force, officer-involved shootings and dishonesty.
“Another young man of color is dead. So much for change we can believe in, and an end to a practice of allowing law enforcement officials to act as a protected class. Supposedly ‘progressive’ Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, and the District Attorney, both Democrats, have not done what needs to be done,” added McDonald.
“Public access to police records about sustained police misconduct not
only protects the public by helping deter police misconduct, but it
generates public confidence in the police by holding police
accountable,” said Cres Vellucci, Green Party spokesperson and member of the ACLU Board of Directors in Sacramento.
Prior to a relatively recent court decision, there was access to some
discipline records of police with virtually no problems regarding the
rights of police officers. Now police are protected from any real
disclosure of discipline problems.
Posted to IPR by Paulie
2 responses so far ↓
1 Toxic Reverend // Mar 24, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Five percent of the police were shown to be
responsible for over fifty percent of the cases of
reported police abuse in a study titled,
The Use of Statistical Evidence to Address Police
Supervisory and Disciplinary Practices: The Chicago
Police Department’s Broken System*
By Craig B. Futterman, H. Melissa Mather, and
Melanie Miles1
Excerpt from “Broken System”
Less than five percent of the Department account
for nearly half of all abuse complaints against the
Chicago Police Department.
Indeed, 662 Chicago police officers, a little less
than 5% of the CPD’s 13,500 member force,
amassed 11 or more official misconduct
complaints between 2001 and 2006. Because the
vast majority of officers get only a few complaints
in their entire careers, it is easy to identify those
who may be engaged in a pattern of abusive
behavior. They literally jump off the page.
Figure 4, Complaints Against Chicago Police
Officers, 2001-2006, illustrates the distribution of
complaints among Chicago police officers.49
End of excerpt from “Broken System”,
2 Democrats Blocked Bills That May Have Prevented Oscar Grant’s Shooting Death By Police | Dailycensored.com // May 20, 2009 at 3:01 pm
[...] accountable. You can read the Green Party’s press release by clicking on this link: http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/01/california-green-party-release-democrats-blocked-b... –Bill Gibbons “I’m a Truth Addict, aw shit I got a head rush!” [...]
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