Who Polices the Police? What is Civilian Oversight and Does It Work?

A Peninsula Peace and Justice Event

Cost: Free forum,
When: Tuesday, June 05 2012 @ 07:00 PM,
Where: Community Media Center, 900 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto.

A conversation with
Judge LaDoris Cordell
Independent Police Auditor for the City of San Jose
Former Superior Court Judge

With the widespread use of mobile media such as cell phones and camcorders, police misconduct -- especially in cases involving "crowd control" at political demonstrations -- is coming under ever-increasing scrutiny. Some images of police using excessive force have become nearly iconic.

What happens when a police officer misbehaves? Who polices the police?

A movement to create citizen oversight of the police began in the 1970s, with citizen oversight in some form now established in 80 percent of the country’s 50 largest cities and in more than 100 municipalities. Efforts to create external or citizen oversight of the police have traditionally been fueled by public concerns that exclusively internal mechanisms to investigate and track police misconduct have not always resulted in unbiased, thorough, and timely investigations of citizen complaints of police misconduct. Proponents of enhanced civilian oversight believe that, even where internal processes have been adequate, police agencies benefit by the increasing scrutiny and transparency citizen oversight provides.

This month's Other Voices forum will take an in-depth look at civilian oversight of the police. How does it work in practice? What is the complaint process? What are the most common types of complaints against police officers? If an officer is deemed to have engaged in misconduct, what are the consequences?

Our guest, former Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell is the Independent Police Auditor for the City of San Jose, having been appointed to that position after a national search, in April 2010.

Judge Cordell, a 1974 graduate of Stanford Law School, was the first lawyer to open a law practice in East Palo Alto. In 1978, she was appointed Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at Stanford Law School, where she implemented a successful minority admissions program.

In 1988, Judge Cordell won election to the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, making her the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court in northern California. In November 2003, Judge Cordell, accepting no monetary donations, ran a grassroots campaign and won a 4-year term on the Palo Alto City Council.

Judge Cordell has been an on-camera legal analyst for CBS-5 television. Over the course of her distinguished career, she has received many honors for her contributions to civil rights and to the local community, including the Santa Clara County Trial Lawyers Association’s “Judge of the Year” award and the Silicon Valley NAACP’s Freedom Fighter Award.She was the 2011 recipient of the Don Edwards Defender of Constitution Liberty Award from the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the ACLU. And she is a 2012 recipient of the John W. Gardner Leadership award presented by the American Leadership Forum of Silicon Valley.

Free and open to all. Wheelchair accessible.

Simultaneous live TV broadcast on Mid-Peninsula cable channel 27.

Simultaneous live webcast on the Media Center website http://midpenmedia.org/watch/stream/ (select channel 27)

Event URL: http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php?story=Who_Polices_The_Police