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Sonoma
Civil Liberties
Winter 2015
#68
Annual Awards set for May 3
John L. Burris, an Oakland-based civil rights
attorney, will be the keynote speaker for the Sonoma County ACLU’s Annual Awards Celebration
and Luncheon to be held at noon Sunday, May 3,
at the Flamingo Hotel in Santa Rosa .
officer on New Year’s Day 2009. Burris will speak
about “Litigating Cases to Bring About Social
Change.”
Burris and his law firm have represented hundreds of victims of police misconduct throughout
California, as well as clients in class-action employment cases and criminal matters. He is a
founding board member of the National Lawyers
Guild’s National Police Accountability Project and a
frequent lecturer about police, criminal justice and
race and gender issues..
As always, the event will gather supporters of
civil liberties and the ACLU’s struggle to defend
them in Sonoma County. Highlights will include
presentation of the 2015 Jack Green Civil Liberties
Award to Elbert “Big Man” Howard, a founder of
the Black Panther Party, and his wife and collaborator in human rights action in Sonoma County,
Lunch in the Ballroom of the Flamingo, a Santa
Carole Hyams-Howard. The Mario Savio Student Rosa landmark at 2777 Fourth St., will feature a
Activist Award will go to Sandy Espino-Valenciano, choice of entrees among chicken, fish and vegetara Sonoma State University student and organizer ian dishes. There will be a cash bar.
with the North Bay Immigrant Youth Union.
Cost of the lunch is $55 full price and $25 for
Keynote speaker Burris has successfully han- low-income, students and children under 12. A
dled many high-profile cases including the Los limited number of free meals will be available for
Angles homeless woman beaten by a California those unable to pay.
Highway Patrol officer in July 2014 and Oscar
Reservations are required. Please see the orGrant, who was shot to death by a BART police
der form on Page 3.
Task force studies plan for oversight
Nearly 17 months after 13-year-old Andy Lopez was killed by seven bullets fired by a
Sonoma County sheriff’’s deputy, a citizens’ task force appointed by the Board of Supervisors continues to wrestle with the aftermath, including a proposal for a law enforcement oversight body.
The 21-member task force and its three subcommittees have held discussions week
after week, looking into ways to heal the community after Andy’s death and to try to
prevent such a thing from happening again.
Formally known as the Community and Local Law Enforcement Task Force and
chaired by community activist Caroline Bañuelos, the group has come up with 21 draft
recommendations. They include separation of the offices of coroner and sheriff -- now
joined -- in the interests of greater transparency and avoiding a conflict of interest in
the investigation of officer-involved fatalities.
Other recommendations address ways to reach out to the community and build trust
between residents and law enforcement. One recommendation – ignored so far – calls
(Continued on Page 2)
Keynote speaker May 3 — Civil
Rights Attorney John L. Burris.
Smile, you’re
on police
body camera
Sonoma County law enforcement
agencies are moving rapidly toward
using video devices known as body
cams to record encounters between
officers and members of the public.
The Board of Supervisors voted in
December to spend nearly $1.2 million
to outfit all 241 county sheriff’’s deputies with body-mounted cameras for
five years, according to the Santa
Rosa Press Democrat.
The contract was awarded to Taser
International, which will provide each
deputy with a $400 camera called the
Axon Body, as well as data storage
and camera maintenance, the newspaper reported. The Sheriff’s Office
expects to have deputies equipped
with the cameras by late March or
early April.
(On March 3, the Associated Press
reported Taser International has cultivated financial ties to police chiefs
(Continued on Page 4)
Page 2
Winter 2015
Meet your ACLU Chapter Board of Directors
Omar Figueroa
Carole Guffanti
Notley
Evan Livingstone
Erik Hawkins
Bonnie Madrid
On Jan. 20, Sonoma
County ACLU members
filled the Peace and Justice
Center in Santa Rosa for a
movie, “American Violet,”
and the election of the
Chapter Board of Directors
for 2015.
Marty McReynolds
Nancy Palandati
Kimberly Barbosa
Soeiro
Task Force studies oversight
(Continued from Page 1 )
for the Board of Supervisors to ask Sheriff Steve Freitas to remove
Erick Gelhaus, the deputy who shot Andy Lopez, from active patrol
duty. Gelhaus was restored to his former duties after being cleared of
any wrongdoing.
A key recommendation is the establishment of an Office of Independent Auditor (OIA) modeled on an oversight body in San Jose,
which would have its own budget and staff, and be housed separately
from the Sheriff’s Office. Auditor staff would include attorneys who
would be able to review confidential personnel files related to complaints against sheriff’s deputies, jail staff and probation officers. They
would field complaints and set up mediation of low-level complaints
when both parties agree to it.
The OIA would not have the power to subpoena witnesses – a
main feature of the ACLU’s 11-point list of requirements for effective
oversight. And it would function only for county law enforcement personnel, not the police forces of Sonoma County’s cities.
The task force is scheduling public meetings before every city
council in the county, as well as the Santa Rosa City School Board
and various community organizations through March and early April.
A decision on the group’s final recommendations is expected in April,
followed by presentation to the Board of Supervisors on May 12.
Books worth reading
Wherever There's a Fight:
How Runaway Slaves, Suffraby ElaineImmigrants,
Elinson (Stan Yogi
(Author) and
gists,
Strikers,
Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in
California
By Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi
----------------------In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU
By Samuel Walker
---------------------Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio
and the Radical Legacy of the
1960s
By Robert Cohen
---------------------The Essential Mario Savio:
Speeches and Writings that
Changed America
By Robert Cohen and
Lynn Hollander Savio
Winter 2015
Page 3
ORDER YOUR TICKETS TO ACLU’S AWARD LUNCH
SUNDAY MAY 3, 2015 12:00 - 3:00 pm FLAMINGO HOTEL
Reserve your tickets at
aclusonomalunch.brownpapertickets.com
or use the form below to reserve your space.
Luncheon Tickets: $55 (Regular Price), $25 (Student, Low Income, Child Price)
Please
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Type
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Return registration and check to:
ACLU of Sonoma County, PO Box 14181, Santa Rosa, CA 95402
For more information call (707) 765-5005 or visit www.aclusonoma.org
*If you are not able to afford the low-cost ticket please contact [email protected]
Sonoma
Civil Liberties
P.O. BOX 14181
SANTA ROSA, CA 95402
(707) 765-5005
WWW.ACLUSONOMA.ORG
Winter 2015
#68
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Teachers, Community Groups:
Want a speaker to discuss
civil liberties issues?
Contact us!
We’ll provide a speaker!
Printed on recycled paper
Page 4
Winter 2015
Smile, you could be on a police body camera
Continued from Page 1 )
whose departments have bought the recording
devices, raising a host of conflict-of-interest
questions. Taser is covering airfare and hotel
stays for police chiefs who speak at promotional conferences, according to interviews and a
review of records by the AP. The firm is also
hiring recently retired chiefs as consultants,
sometimes just months after their cities signed
contracts with Taser, the AP said.)
The cameras have the potential to help
protect the public against police misconduct,
and at the same time help protect police
against false accusations of abuse, according
to an ACLU policy statement.
“The challenge of on-officer cameras is the
tension between their potential to invade privacy and their strong benefit in promoting police
accountability,” the ACLU statement said.
“Overall, we think they can be a win-win—
but only if they are deployed within a framework of strong policies to ensure they protect
the public without becoming yet another system for routine surveillance of the public, and
maintain public confidence in the integrity of
those privacy protections. Without such a
framework, their accountability benefits would
not exceed their privacy risks.”
The Board of Supervisors authorized the
purchase of cameras without spelling out such
policies, however, leaving it up to the Sheriff’s
Office to determine when deputies will be required to turn on or off the cameras and how
the video recordings will be handled and
stored.
“The current policies allow deputies to deactivate their cameras any time they believe the
use of the camera is no longer necessary,” Jim
Duffy, a Rohnert Park resident active in the
discussion of police conduct in the wake of the
killing of Andy Lopez by a sheriff’s deputy in
October 2013, told The Press Democrat.
“If deputies are free to turn the cameras off
as they please, then the role in providing a
check and balance against law enforcement
misbehavior is destroyed,” Duffy said.
By the end of this year, most law enforcement officers patrolling Sonoma County’s
streets will be wearing cameras capable of
capturing events as they unfold, according to
the Press Democrat.
Police forces in Cotati, Healdsburg and
Sebastopol have been recording traffic stops,
field sobriety tests and other encounters with
the public for much or all of 2014, the newspaper reported. It said some officers of the Santa
Rosa Police Department and Sonoma County
Sheriff’s Office have been wearing cameras
since last spring, and both agencies expect to
outfit most patrol personnel with cameras by
the end of 2015.
The Axon body camera