Community Police Review Commission - Regular Meeting

Pursuant to the city council meeting rules adopted by resolution number 20 400255, members of all boards and commissions and the public are reminded that they must preserve order and decorum throughout the meeting. In that regard, members of all boards and commissions and the public are advised that any delay or disruption in the proceedings or a refusal to obey the orders of the city council or the presiding officer, constitutes a violation of these rules. The city of Riverside is committed to fostering a workplace that provides dignity, respect, and civility to our employees, customers, and the public they serve.

Good evening. We'd like to welcome you to the Community Police Review Commission meeting of October 22. This meeting is called to order. Can we get a roll call, please?

Commissioner Huntley? Commissioner Dillon? Here. Commissioner Lundy? Here. Commissioner Ward?

Here.

Commissioner Ferguson? Here. Commissioner Tigert? Here. Chair Bell? Here. We have quorum.

Thank you. Welcome, commissioner Hundley. Commissioner Teichert, would you be willing to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? We'll now observe a moment of silence. Thank you.

I will move move to public comment. To comment on matters within the jurisdiction of the Community Police Review Commission, you're invited to participate in person or call at (951) 826-8688. Press 9 to be placed in the queue to speak. Individual audience participants is limited to three minutes. Do we have any comments from the audience or callers?

No callers online, no participants in chambers, and we did not have any pre I'm sorry, e comments prior to this meeting.

Thank you. We will now move to the consent calendar. Does anyone wish to pull any items from the consent calendar for discussion? Do we have a motion to approve consent calendar as is? Thank you. Commissioner Dillon. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you, Commissioner Ward. Please vote.

Motion passes.

Thank you. We'll now move to presentation portion of the agenda.

Good evening, members of the commission. I want to welcome William Huntley for his first session here tonight. Thank you for joining us and being a part of this. Just to explain to you what I'm doing right now, William, anytime somebody dies in police custody, either by an officer involved shooting or in our presence, we have to do what they call an in custody death investigation. So, unfortunately, I'm here to report another one that's occurred here in the last couple weeks to all of you.

I don't have a presentation because I didn't make the posting in time because I wanted to get to you as timely as possible. But I want you all of you to be aware of what happened. On Saturday, 10/04/2025, at around 8PM, a Riverside police officer assigned to field operations observed a vehicle run a red light at Garfield And Van Buren. The officer conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle. The driver exhibited behaviors of being under the influence of a controlled substance and was later identified as 32 year old Jose Luis Serrano junior of Riverside.

He was detained, handcuffed, and the officer soon after requested medical aid due to his apparent level of intoxication. During the contact, mister Serrano admitted to having ingested methamphetamine earlier in the evening. Firefighter paramedics from Riverside Fire Department provided medical aid to Mr. Serrano who was then transported by ambulance to a local hospital. While receiving treatment, his condition deteriorated.

Despite lifesaving efforts by medical staff, Mr. Serrano died at the hospital at approximately 12:30 a. M. Detectives assigned to our robbery homicide unit, along with investigators from Riverside County Sheriff's Force investigative detail, or FID, as you will commonly know them, responded and assumed the investigation. The exact cause of death is still pending from the coroner's office, and along with the toxicology results. This investigation is being led by Fidd, and that's all the details I have. As you guys know, that we don't get all the details till later on because we don't conduct the investigation. Questions? None. Just handcuffing.

Mr. Hunley, so you're aware, these things will take course over a couple months, and then we'll do a video release, which we'll share with the commission to kind of get more perspective on what happened. And then, later on, we'll present the entire investigation to the commission. And then all of you will rule and have your input as far as what happened that night. If anything, can change in policy, procedure, something to prevent this in the future. For sure. Anything else? No?

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

We'll now move to the discussion portion of the agenda. Item number six, the 2025 racial identity identity profiling data review. As previously discussed back in May and in June, commissioner Ward asked that we put it back on the agenda. We have chief Gonzales. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. Good evening, chairperson Bell, rest of the commissioners. Larry Gonzalez, your police chief. Happy to be here and and talk to you guys tonight. I thought it would be more of a well, it's on the discussion calendar, so having a discussion.

I just thought it'd be worthy of just a few just a couple comments before we get started. And if we talk about this board's inception in 2003 was when we were starting off our stipulated agreement consent decree through the state attorney general's office. And one of the very things that we were mandated to do was demographic reporting, much very similar to RIPA. Every self initiated activity, we'll record the reason for the stop, ethnicity of the person, whether they were cited or not, whether they were released. And we gathered that data for for five years and ultimately, off by the monitor and a couple different case studies by a gentleman named Larry Gaines.

He was a doctor out of Cal State San Bernardino that this department was not engaging in racial profiling. And I was thinking before I came to the meeting tonight, there's probably gonna be some of the same questions that we got back then because there's disparities, which obviously I know we're gonna ask about. So I'll try to, my best ability, try to explain kinda some other things to take in consideration when we look at this report. But with that, I did bring also one of our other captains, captain Kevin Townsend, who I used to brag about him. He's got his doctorate, but he also did a study on this very topic, RIPA, which is being he wrote an article for the California Police Chiefs Association.

It's gonna be published later this month. So the hard questions, I'm gonna have him come up and answer. But but in all seriousness, I'm I'm on the executive board for Cal Chiefs. It means a lot that somebody like him has done some research that we can share throughout the state of California for other fellow law enforcement agencies. So with that, I would just thought I would just open up and take any questions you guys or any concerns you might have.

So before we bring it to the commission, open it to the public, we invite the public to comment regarding this item. The public is invited to participate in person or by calling (951) 826-8688 to comment on this item. Press 9 to be placed in the queue. 6 to speak to participate by Zoom. Select raise a hand function. You have three minutes. Do you have any comments?

No. No callers online. No participants in chambers.

Thank you. Commissioners? Is use the make sure you use the raise the hand on your little keypad if you have comments. Commissioner Dillon.

Yeah. Just one question, and it it came up the last time we discussed this. The information is based on census data for Riverside. However, they count stops regardless of the residents of that person stopped. So So it seems like that would skew the numbers as well. Has there been any movement at the state to change that?

Unfortunately, there has not, but I did recognize that. That's one of the thing probably the number one topic we do talk about is our transitory city, our transient population. I'm not talking transients, homeless. I'm talking people that are in and out of the city. And it's very difficult because RIPA doesn't capture that that data. For instance, I just came from a major case debrief where we had a couple of shootings in the last couple of weeks. We had one right here in this back lot at City Hall. Right? Three suspects, two victims. Nobody's from Riverside.

That's just a small example of, you know, the the suspect from Bloomington, Fontana, Moreno Valley. That's our downtown every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. So that is it's very difficult for us to gauge that, not just the transitory population that comes through the city on certain nights or days of the week. But remember, doesn't capture calls for service. I think you guys talked about that before where we were required to report RIPA data on where we're being called to respond to a call. There's no self initiate activity. There's no vetting the person they call 911. We are going to respond out there. If it results in somebody being detained, we will have to put that in our RIP of that as well. So it is one of the bigger concerns.

Like I said, I just point out the downtown area because it's pretty crazy during the week you know, the weekend nights. But also down in our La Sierra area, by the Tyler Malvee Galleria, where we have several county facilities where a lot of different agencies bring their folks in our city. So it gets very populated there with people that are not that are not from Riverside. So it's it's something that that doesn't take in consideration when we're gathering the RIPA data.

Commissioner Ward.

Good evening chief and thank you being here to share additional perspective. We appreciate that. A few months ago when we had this on the agenda, a couple of the numbers struck me as high. So I wanted to have some further conversation but I needed to better understand RIPA better. So the time has allowed me to kind of go on their website check see how they do their analysis just get a better perspective in general for their role and and what's expected of them so I could put in perspective what the data that we extract out for Riverside.

But when I looked at the data or when we saw the data a few months ago, the number for African Americans were fairly high in all cases starting with the stops and then it followed through in all the rest of the analysis. So the question that I had at that time was about does the city have a perspective of is something an issue? Because the the presentation didn't necessarily conclude that there were issues. And I don't know if that's by design or it I I I don't know why that is. So my first question was, well, the data is telling us something.

What is it telling us? So that question was one that I was hoping to get a better understanding of. Do we believe that there's an issue? And if we do, then the next question is, what's the approach to help mitigate that? So I'll stop there.

Great questions, observations. I think know, our population is 6% African American. It was 16%. Right? It was almost double.

It was double.

And first of all, RIPA's put in place to for us as a department to identify patterns of behavior, hopefully, that we're not engaging in. So that's the first thing. And that could be a mandatory audits that we do on traffic stops at the patrol level. It could be based off a citizen complaint, which you guys see all of those as well. But other things to take in consideration is, yes, let's say it's 6%, 5.8% African American in the city of Riverside.

That's the population, but it's hard for us to distinguish a difference on when we go out to calls for service or say the downtown area and we're doing traffic enforcement, that that's a direct reflection of our 6% of African American folks in our city. That's what's hardened. And like I said, I go back to the transitory thing where, other things to take in consideration. Like I said, our calls for service certain days or times of night? And ultimately, are they from that population that we're talking about? That's not captured or identified in this data.

So calls for service clearly seems like a mismatch to being included in that data. Residents or no residents. Has there been any discussion about running the numbers both ways so that you include everybody because profiling is profiling if it exists regardless But of where you're has there been any discussion about potentially running those numbers both ways? So where you run it like it is now, but then you run it minus out those who aren't living here. And I'm sure we can capture that because they're taking they're looking at licenses and what have you. Yes. So any thought to those? Honestly,

commissioner, we're trying really hard at the state level to get that data into the RIPA report. So we're working with our legislators and different groups that are up there. Because one of the things that caught me off guard is somebody said, I think it a victim right advocate in Sacramento. I spent a lot of time there, it seems like. But we're talking about that the calls for service in one city were only 10% of the calls. And that's I don't know whether there's any city that has that's 10% of their calls. It's gonna be at least 40 to 50% of the of our responses. But I would love to be able to capture that. You know what else I'd love to capture is the curtain of darkness talk that we talk about. Do the officer did he really know or she really know who she was pulling over at midnight?

You know, I I challenge people that I and you guys are always welcome to go on a ride along. Go in the middle of the day and get behind a car and say what color, what ethnicity is that person that you're pulling over. Those are things we'd like to get introduced as well. Visibility or just reviewing body worn camera footage to see that nobody could tell who was in that blacked out car with tinted windows until you get up to the window and see. But I'm sorry. The short answer is we are trying to work with our legislators to introduce that and some of the RIPA data because our first thought, to be honest with you, in law enforcement was we don't need it. This is not a direct reflection of what we're really doing. Law enforcement's like, why are we doing this type thing? We know it's not going away. We know it's not.

And because this was passed very strongly through legislation. But we wanna be able to work with our partners up there to try to get a truer reflection of of the enforcement efforts that we're doing, if that makes sense.

Yeah. It makes sense. I guess the question would be, if there are issues with the methodology in terms of how the data is analyzed, do we count what's being done or do we or are we waiting for correction to the methodology before we say okay this information is good enough to move on because if we are waiting then you know, if there are issues, those issues just continue to to go on.

I I understand your and and we are concurrent. We are going by the methodology that's there now. Okay. So there's an issue, we will we will address it. And but at the same time, we're trying to add those factors to the RIPA data.

Okay. Okay. Other question that I had asked back then were the degree to which we had deviation standards around the expected distribution versus what actually winds up being the result, the actual. So that when we do see something, we know, okay, it's an issue because it's outside of our expectation of the norm, the distribution. We can expect a tolerance within, I don't know, fifteen, twenty, twenty, whatever the percentage is.

But when it goes beyond that, it's a red flag and it's something that maybe we start to take a look at. Are there any or have we thought about establishing any deviation standards that tell us when to go look further?

Absolutely. And that goes back to I briefly touched on random regular audits of these traffic stops because what we can find out is which officers are making certain stops and because they're reporting it themselves. And if we see any type of pattern or they might not see it as a pattern, but we see it as a pattern, we will look into that and take it very seriously. We'll look into we do an audit sometimes. We've had officers in the past that have been involved nothing not not this, but another case where there was an internal affairs complaint. So we audit their last two years of traffic stops and pull every one of them. So if there was some red flag that came to our attention, that's exactly what we do. We start doing that audit and address the problem that way.

In terms of us rendering some kind of input back to the city, How do we do that when we're not sure what the standards are for saying something is an issue?

That that's a great there's not really an answer. I think it's city by city, county by county. When you say expected distribution, I I guess you're referring to the the DOJ report that you guys get and that information.

Well, if something is 6% of the city, the expected distribution is six times numerator is.

So

yeah, that expectation. And so we got we I'm thinking we would have a tolerance around that. And therefore anything that goes way above

We work

for that's the flagging. And again, for us to make a decision on what to recommend back for policy or otherwise changes, that would be a recommendation actually. Actually that if we don't have them that we establish them as best we can given the data as it exists and perhaps that is something that can I think would certainly help me? The rest of the Commission can speak to to that as I I stopped talking. Let somebody else talk.

Like I said, the methodology, we will we're working off the current methodology. We will continue to do that. And so the rest the whole commission knows it. We welcome recommendations as a police department. We will take that and take in consideration. We I've been in this, like I said, going on thirty three years as department. I've been with involved with this commission for several years. And there's more than a few more than a couple times that we've taken policy recommendations and put them into our own policy. That could be the case. But I wanna make sure everybody understands that we are welcome to any type of recommendation of this policy, especially from this board.

Then the last thing that I would have would be in the the report there's a pretty hefty section on recommendations and I was curious to the degree that those recommendations are reviewed and are there things in there that we're adopting as a result of some of their recommendations to kind of again do further mitigation because they're saying from a California standpoint that for African Americans and for Latino, Hispanic that it's it's quite above the norm. So they've got some recommendations in there. So the degree to which we're looking at those and considering some of those, I'm curious about as well.

Yeah. We will absolutely take the recommendations from Department of Justice, look at them, see if there's any changes that we need to make, any any training we need to roll out to our officers to and and let them know what the report says. You know? So we we do take those recommendations seriously.

Thank you very much.

I Commissioner appreciate Tekker.

Not sure if that's on or not. Chief Gonzalez, thank you very much for being here and giving us the overview again of the history of creation of this commission and dating back to Taisha Miller

and Yeah.

Was here during those days.

Yes, you were.

It was a hard time for the city to go through and I think for the community to go through. And that's why we're here is to one of our big purposes is to make sure that the relationship between the police department and the community is a positive one. And that is determined largely by the behavior of the police department. And I've been very pleased with everything I've seen with the police department.

Thank you, Mark.

Concerns are though with respect to these numbers that appear in our city's RIPA data. Really the state of California's data were kind of consistent with what appears throughout the state. So I'm not so focused on whether or not the census data we have is based on the city and then the stops are based upon

Everybody.

Non city. Everybody. Everybody. It's really I think that's kind of irrelevant to the issue of race and identity profiling. It's we don't want to have that happening to anybody whether they're a citizen of the city or not.

So I've been looking to and I appreciate Commissioner Ward bringing up the recommendations that appear in these RIPA that are produced annually by the state. And the recommendations that appear in each of these reports are prepared by the state's RIPA board that gets appointed. And I've been going back through and this year's RIPA report recommendations were pretty slim. The one that is pertinent to us is that the board recommends that law enforcement agencies, municipalities, and legislatures should explore how limiting officer discretion in stops could reduce racial disparities and make specific findings from their study to act on. When you look back to the prior year's board recommendations, they go into more specifics about things that municipalities should consider in making sure that

those

discretion and stops reduces those racial disparities. Some of them, I won't read all of them there. It's a good dozen or more. But one in particular, the first one they list is that the city can adopt internal policies that prohibit district attorneys from filing and law enforcement agencies from submitting to the district attorney's office for review. Misdemeanor criminal filings on stand alone resisting arrest charges if it is the sole charge listed at the time of arrest and is not accompanied by other citable offenses.

And then it gives exceptions unless extraordinary circumstances exist, such as an identifiable continuing threat individual or exist in other circumstances of similar gravity. That is just one that would reduce the impacts upon the racial disparity. We wouldn't have so many people, African American in particular in our city, wouldn't be facing these resisting arrest charges if that's just a standalone. Like I said, there are a good dozen or so recommendations And that they I would think it would be a good thing, good activity for this board is specifically created to grapple with these issues. Again, like I said, we want to make sure that the community has good faith in the police department to know that you're sincere in what you're doing and I believe that you are sincere in what you're trying to do and you're trying to provide the best policing services to that city and I really appreciate that.

But we need to make sure that the public feels that way too and understands that way. When they see data like this, the feeling it's not so warm and fuzzy that that's the case. So I would like to make a recommendation that perhaps we create an ad hoc committee to study some of these recommendations and then bring it back to the full commission and the police department to consider certain if we decide we would like to make certain policy recommendations that would reduce this racial impact that we would do so. And so I just wanted to throw that out there.

Can I add a real

quick Appreciate your thoughts on that?

No. Thank you, Commissioner. And I know you know the history. You've been the city for a long time, and I think you know me well enough that it would I lose sleep thinking that I would ever lose the trust of our community. We need that more than anything. We we we need to know they need to know where my heart is, where the department's heart is, and we've worked so hard in the last twenty something years. And I'm very aware that one incident can blow all that away. Yes. I under this is what this is what got us here. You know? So we worked so hard at developing those relationships in the community. So I would welcome those recommendations. Anything we can say we're doing? I will add this though before you get the ad hoc committee together. There are certain things in those recommendations, maybe not this year, might have been last year.

And and I just say I was adamantly against it in my position as the president of Riverside County Chiefs and Cal Chiefs Board. One of the recommendations was no traffic stops on equipment violations. And I think that would be a huge disservice for our community that if a guy has a broken windshield or broken taillight, that could lead to several other things. But to tell my officers they can't do that, and there's been a couple cities in the state that have adopted an ordinance like that. And I that's just just for the board to know.

That would be something I I would not be able to support. I understand where they're going with working with the DA on just a one forty eight charge, right, resisting arrest with no other details to it. I that's on the district attorney. But some of the things that we struggled with in the legislation last year was things like this, the Lalova traffic stops for an equipment violation and, you know, the ability for us not to ask to search somebody. You know, that's an officer safety issue, not just officers, but our community that we want so those are some of things I know that came up in the past that but I would love to have the dialogue with you just moving forward.

I'm I'm glad you recognize the fact how important that is to our department to maintain the trust in our community. I mean, it's just there's stuff that comes up. You know, we talked at council two weeks ago about a resolution. Alright? I don't wanna be put in the middle of that. You know? I don't want to put we've worked too hard to get put in the middle of this or that. And I was thankful that the council and actually most people are here were very protective with their police department. That wouldn't have happened if we didn't build up the trust that we've had to this point. So I won't rant anymore. I just wanted to add that in. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I just had a quick question for you, chief. Yes. You you mentioned the the legislation, the state legislator. Who who is responsible for taking these these recommendations or changes for RIPA that we that you you mentioned that are needed to to the legislators?

There is a RIPA board. Like, commissioner Tyker was saying, there's a board that meets. The problem we're having is oh, Kevin, is it fifteen, sixteen people on the board? 19? I think there's two law enforcement representatives on that. And that's our fault. We need more people representing to talk to that board about changing some of things we talked about earlier. But it is that board that would would work with legislators. And, whether it's the, you know, the Black Caucus, we will meet with them through Cal Chiefs or, victims rights groups. We'll meet with them.

But it it's there hasn't been any budge as far as, you know, the criteria in the last year. Like I said, we we were asking to just do can we get a sunset on this? You know? That was out of the question. Like, five years. That's what we did when we we had it here. We did five years. They showed no pattern of official profiling. But it's a whole different world of bureaucracy in Sacramento. But it would it would be initiated by the RIPA board. And then whatever legislatures were sponsoring certain bills or or the the direct contact for the RIPA board, it would be them.

K. Just one last question. I know I know it's not required by the state to break it down even further. You know, like, this is the area that majority of these calls are coming from or, you know, these stops are happening. Is there a way that we could do something for do you know that publish it even on the city website when RIPA comes out? We also publish this is a further breakdown for the city standard.

I I'm glad you brought that up. There is there's consulting companies. There's a guy that we're working with. We his name is Greg D'Angelo. He's a professor out of Claremont Colleges. We signed on for a dashboard project, a pilot project about two years ago. So they really break it down for your city to where they'll put the traffic stopping. They'll put, like, a heat map on where all of our calls for service are. You see they're very similar. You know? So we're responding to calls. But but we we could do that. We're still working on it. We we stalled out a little bit with that pilot program because two of the four agencies didn't have the ability to download their data correctly for them. So it got stalled out.

But it was us and Oxnard, and then San Bruno PD, and Beaumont PD. So now we've got Greg D'Angelo to work on because everything comes with money too. So each agency has to pay for this information. But hey. How about we do something for all of California police departments police chiefs and get it could be a page of talking points to your CPRC or to your council, but break it down individually for your city. But I don't know about the pretty heat maps and stuff we had planned to do, But we're still working on that to get more specific information, more of a breakdown.

Thank you. Commissioner Ward?

Just a follow-up to that question. Do the officers see the data results that we saw for instance in terms of how the city ranked? Do they see that?

Yes. We posted on our website too.

Okay. Right. Thank you.

Any other questions, comments? So we did have a a motion to establish an ad hoc to go over the recommendations for RIPA by commissioner Teichert. We would need a a second or further discussion.

I'll second.

Thank you, commissioner Ward. So for the I guess, would we need to vote to take that start to establish an ad hoc and then look at the duration and the members?

Well, pursuant to the rules, your bylaws, the chair has the power to appoint an ad hoc committee as needed, which you have that power because of the agreement. And then it each shall consist of a chairperson and at least two other commissioners. It has to be well defined in what its purpose is. It's a single purpose or a limited purpose. And then you should put a timeline on it because it can't be indefinite. So those are kind of the parameters.

Do we vote for the motion and then establish or do we establish that before we vote for the motion?

So, understanding is you've got a motion to appoint I'm not convinced you need a motion. I think you have that power. Okay. But I would go ahead and finish that. And Generally, they do is ask for volunteers and then you make the determination.

Okay. Very good. Okay. So we have a motion.

A good thing to do is in the motion, identify the specific purpose and the duration and have that voted on. Would be

Very good. I'll give

you some clarity.

Thank you. Commissioner Teichert.

Yes, my motion would be to establish an ad hoc committee to study RIPA board recommendations regarding racial identity profiling within the city of Riverside and that we would bring that back to the entire commission for consideration. And the commission then would bring that if if any any recommendations to the city council committee, the relevant city council committee for them to consider whether or not the city would adopt that policy.

And what would that duration of the ad hoc need to be?

I I would recommend nine months. Sounds reasonable.

Nine months. Too long? So that'll put us We'll have next year's RIPA presentation by then.

And I think the appropriate bar will be safety, wellness, and youth for the law enforcement. They would be the first step. But usually, that's what they go to for us.

So the the motion is to establish an ad hoc to go over recommendations for RIPA and to present it to the board within nine months. Okay. Do we have any volunteers to join that ad hoc?

I'll volunteer.

Thank you, commissioner Ward.

I'll volunteer.

Thank you, commissioner Linden. Commissioner Teichert, did you wanna serve on that?

Yes, please.

Alright. And we would need a a chair for to for that ad hoc.

Would you like to be the chair?

I'm on a committee too.

So, an ad hoc committee. It's just time.

Yeah. I'll chair.

Okay. Commissioner Ward is the chair. Okay. So commissioner Ward, commissioner Lundy, and commissioner Teichert. All right. We'll vote on I guess we'll vote on establishing the ad hoc as laid out. Please vote.

Motion passes. Passes.

Thank you. Thank you, chief. Thank you. So we'll move on to discussion calendar number eight, continuing review stage four of the criminal case book for officer involved death case 2022Dash00362 with Jay Tracy. You

can well, let's just do come.

So so at this time, we invite public comment regarding this item. The public is invited to participate in person or by calling (951) 826-8688 to comment on this item. Press 9 to be placed in the queue and 6 to speak. To participate by Zoom, select the raise the hand function to speak. You have three minutes. Do we have any comments in the audience online?

No callers online, no participants in chambers.

Thank you. Frank.

Thank you. Good evening, Chair, Commission, City Staff. This is continuation now on the OID case with Joseph Thomas Tracy the fourth. This incident having occurred 01/18/2022 at twenty two thirty hours. The Travelodge motel in the city of Hemet.

Four officers were involved in this. It was a task force. Out of the four officers involved, only one of those was a member of the Riverside Police Department. So you have been reviewing this particular officer involved death case for several months. And one of the issues that had arisen with all this is the fact that there was no body worn camera or surveillance camera video that was attached to this in order for the commission to review that.

The items that you've already been provided have been the Department of Justice report, also the Riverside County Sheriff's Department report, and that of Hemet PD. Those have been the items that you've had the opportunity to review the only thing that has not been reviewed and because it wasn't available are the body worn camera videos and also surveillance cameras As you recall, we sought to receive those items through a Public Records Act request that I submitted to the City of Hammond Police Department and also to the Riverside County Sheriff's. And as I reported previously, the Hemet Police Department, City of Hemet did not reply or respond to any of the requests. The Riverside County Sheriff's Department did. However, they directed the commission to look at the presentation that they had given to the community at large which they do with all of these cases which is not what you had requested what you requested was the body worn camera videos and surveillance camera videos so what's happened is that there is a protective order that was issued on this case through the the court system and do that protective order it protected these items from being reviewed or being provided so when the PRA was we gotten over with that.

We had the subpoena that was issued, and there was still no response. The issue being that these are items that cannot be reviewed in closed session. They had would have to be reviewed in open session, which is something that through the protective orders not going to be it's not going to happen. So that brings us to this stage where we are right now, still in stage four review. So in my my viewpoint, there's one of three options that this commission has to proceed.

Option number one is going to be that you are able to review this and establish your finding without the reviewing the body worn camera video or their surveillance camera videos that based upon the DOJ report and the reports submitted by the Hemet Police Department Riverside County Sheriff's Department that you find that there is sufficient information for you to render a decision. That's option number one. The second option would be to be able to just state that you cannot come up with a finding because you don't have access to the materials, the body worn camera, the surveillance camera videos, and just leave it at that, that you felt that based upon not having that, you can't come up with a finding, and just leave it at that in your public report. The third option would be this. This case goes to trial 01/27/2026.

During that trial, the whatever evidence is admitted into court, which would be if there's body worn camera video that's been admitted or the surveillance camera videos that are admitted, then that is something that you would have access to because then it becomes public information which means your third option is to wait and not proceed until this goes to trial and you're able to make a determination whether you're going to be able to have those materials to use in further review, and it'll just have the motion would have it would be a matter of just continuing this on until that is gonna be accessible to you. But at this juncture, because of that protective order being in place, it's something that you're just not gonna have access to. And the only way that's gonna happen is once it goes to trial and it becomes something that's used and admitted into evidence in the trial. So it's gonna be up to this commission to take one of those three options.

So this might be a question maybe for miss Cook. So if it's not if the evidence if the videos are not presented in the trial, they're not called into evidence, is there a possibility if we do choose the wait option that we still don't get to see the videos even after at the end of the trial?

I'll state it in a sentence. After the trial, there is no chance you don't have access to it. It absolutely becomes a matter of public record because the only reason it's being held is because of the trial. Once that happens, it can't be held.

It doesn't have to go through, wait for the whole appeal process and if whatever the judgment through, say it's, you know, seven years down the road to finally go through all the appeal process all the way up to the supreme court, whatever it may be. Then we get to. So eventually, there could be but we may not be on the commission in that time.

So what I would suggest that absent something unusual and I have some experience in excessive force appeals in federal court for sure. If there's a trial and they don't use it then the records closed. You don't need it then after the fact and appeals. If it's in trial and it's part of the appeal, it's already been disclosed as public. So, I think that absent something very unusual, it would be bizarre.

I think that the most likely course is if the case doesn't settle and resolve it before trial and that happens often. The trial will generally be fairly brief about a week to ten days And during that, we'll know whether it's been made public and then once the trial ends, it's not an issue anymore because it's not part of the trial record and it can't be part of the appellate record if it's not in the trial record.

Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Teichert?

All right. Sensitive button here. Could you give me just a very brief who are the parties to the trial?

It's all a matter of public record and I will tell you what I know from memory. Don't have it in front of me. I probably could look it up but I think your question is pretty simple basics. The parties are going to be Mr. Tracy's heirs. They're a party, the heirs because Mr. Tracy is deceased. They're the plaintiff and they have sued Riverside County Sheriff. They sued Hemet and they sued the city of Riverside. There's a lot of causes of action.

Most of which have, believe it or not, nothing to do with the excessive force issues that are under your purview. So, when you sue, you sue for everything. It's my understanding that the county has settled out and they're no longer a party to the action or not in the action but Hemet and the city of Riverside are. Because the records of the county are still central to the trial, they are subject to the protective order. I hope that answered.

Yes, thank you very much. To me again, it's very important that we see that body worn camera video. We've waited a long time. This was January '2 when this happened. If we have to wait a bit longer, I don't think it's going to harm anyone or anything. So my recommendation would be that we would take the third option that you've outlined. Frank, thank you. Commissioner

Dillon.

Yeah. Just a couple of things. Mean, I I think we're going to have to wait. That seems like the the reasonable thing to me. I I don't want to render a no finding, and reviewing the current info just simply isn't enough. So I I don't see much option. One question I had, and I'm not sure if it should be you that answered Frank or our city attorney. AB eight forty seven that you informed us about, does that have any impact on our availability of this information? Does that supersede this judge's order?

I don't I don't believe so. That assembly bill is primarily giving counties the opportunity to review items in closed session, and having access to reports and things in a closed session. And the other part of course to that is changes in 832.7 of the penal code on what you have access to through a public records act request.

Right.

And things of that nature. So at this, from my understanding, and then correct me if I'm wrong, that it hasn't changed, it doesn't change anything here that the the weight is still

I just thought that

it Because of that

particular allow us to go into closed session with some of this data if if that information could be taken in closed session instead of in open session.

Yeah. I'd have to I'd have to look into that because, again, what what that assembly bill allows is for counties to establish a commission, a review board, and then that review board would have to develop their policies and procedures and the way in which they will view things, but it does allow for things to be viewed in closed session. So how that would affect this right now I can't be 100%. Okay.

So if I can give you this insight. Brilliant legal minds fall on both sides of the issue and the only way that we could resolve it is to go through either a judge or to challenge like enforce the subpoena. Given the closeness of the trial and what everybody's objectives are and our general friendly nature with other agencies, We have chosen that the best approach is not to fight each other on this issue and let it flow out through some other process especially given the imminence of the disclosure through the trial process. I mean, what is it November? It's going to be January.

It would be faster to have that happen than to go through the dispute resolution but there isn't a simple yes or no answer. Really smart lawyers have said yes to your answer or your question and really smart lawyers have said my opinion is no. There either there is no yes or no that I think can be resolved by just looking at the law.

Yeah. I mean, in this case, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, we're talking January. This trial may last a week, maybe two, so we're looking probably by the January, early February. But future, that may be some other that we have so anyway that's it thank you guys so

yeah absolutely that is very true as we look into the future and do an analysis on what this now means with the changes to that penal code section

Thank you, Frank. So, I think we had a motion to the option number three, which was to stay. I'll second that motion. Yeah. Thank you, commissioner Lundy. So commissioner Teichert. Commissioner Lundy. And then we'll go ahead and vote.

Motion passes.

Thank you.

What I can offer at this point if you'd like is that I will keep track of that trial, and what is happening in that trial, and report back to you what is actually happening with it, and when we can get access to anything that's in there. If you'd like me to do that, that's part of my job, I'm more than happy to take care of that, and keep you informed.

Thank you, Frank.

Any other questions or concerns? No, I just have blank faces I'm looking at. Okay, thank you.

Alright, now we'll move to a closed session. Madam Secretary, announce closed session case.

Pursuant to government code five four nine five seven, the commission will discuss case number 25Dash01004.

Chair, no reportable actions.

Thank you. Brief report on conferences, seminars, and meetings attended by the CPRC.

Commissioner Dillon? Just briefly, I attended the Riverside for responsible representation meeting in La Sierra earlier in the month, and it was interesting. So

Next week, I'll actually be attending the Nicole Conference in Minneapolis. So I'll be able to report back on that, on things I hear. It's the National NACOL, sorry. National Association of Citizen Oversight of Law Enforcement. So it's all the CPRCs from across the country come together to discuss things that are going on and updates.

What is that?

Sunday through Thursday. So I fly out on Saturday. CPRC Ad Hoc Committee updates. I know we discussed last month, commissioner Ward was going to join. Commissioner Tykur was is out. I don't think we have any updates since the last time we met. But we'll get that next meeting scheduled for that. Any other anything else on that? Commissioner Teichert? No. Very good. Riverside Police Department updates.

So, just a reminder, this Friday, outside of the police department, it's actually a 05:30. It's the trunk or treat. Commissioner Bell was asking about it. So, if you have any little ones or family you want to come out and It's one of our, maybe probably our last one here, because as you know, we're building the new station. So, it might not happen here for a couple years, but that's still in the works.

So, the plan is still that we're gonna probably tear down this station and start the construction on the new one July 1. So, that's our target. That's really all we have going on right now. If you've noticed in our videos, a lot of us are doing our donations to cancer, and that's why a lot of us are growing beards right now. This year's cancer donation is in honor of Detective Aaron Brandt, who is one of our bomb technicians who died of leukemia at a very young age of 45, and that's what this orange pin right here is on our uniform's for. So we're doing this in his honor this year. So, other than that, I'm here to answer any questions any of you might

have. Commissioners?

I just want to thank each and every one of you. I know it's a lot of work and a lot of videos. I also want to congratulate you because I think this is the first time in the four years I've been involved in this commission that we're all caught up on cases. So, I said something to celebrate. I've looked down the barrel of 13 cases in the folder before, so Frank's done a good job of getting them out and having a fair amount each month so we can catch up. But as many of you know, next month in November, we are no meeting. We're closed for shop for November. And I think we have one early in December to finish the year. So, we have one more meeting this year. So, if I don't see any of you, just wanna say have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thank you for all that you do for this commission, and we're always here if you need anything. Please reach out to us, and we'll be glad to help whatever questions you have or whatever you may need, okay?

Thank you.

So, thank you. Thank you.

City manager's office updates.

I do have an update. We want to thank Daisy for all her time and efforts in assisting this commission. This will be her last CPRC meeting, I believe. She will be joining another department and we don't have a replacement yet. So she may come back in December but we're not sure yet. We're hoping to get somebody before then to take her role. Thank you very much Daisy. We appreciate you and we will miss you.

Thank you Daisy.

Thank you. Item

15, items for future community police review commission consideration. Anything the commission would like to speak to or have presentation for? Nothing? Anything? Alrighty. Well, the next regular meeting is scheduled on Wednesday, December 10. The meeting is adjourned. Okay.

Thank you.