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
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/
