Recommendation to request City Attorney to draft a resolution in support of the establishment of the Law Enforcement Work Inquiry System (LEWIS) Registry, and request City Manager to have the Long Beach Police Department partner with the LEWIS Registry at the University of Southern California Price Safe Communities Institute, to help in the development, pilot and Beta-testing of a unified national database that documents all officers who were terminated or resigned due to misconduct.
item. And then after the budget, we will do all the other items on the agenda after the budget hearing. So let's go ahead and do item 23, please. Communication from Councilman Austin, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilwoman Allen, Councilwoman Sara recommendation to request city attorney to draft a resolution in support of the establishment of the Law Enforcement Work Inquiry System. And request City Manager to have the Long Beach Police Department partner with the Lewes Registry. Gentlemen. Thank you so much. First, I'd like to thank my colleagues, our council members and their hearts, Alan and Sorrel, for joining me on this item. And obviously, following the murder of George Floyd last year, one of the proposed reforms called for in policing at the federal and state levels was to create a nationwide registry of law enforcement officers who had been fired from this conduct, which would help curtail the ability of those officers to be hired elsewhere. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed the House of Representatives in March of 2021, and among its provisions, the Act would create a nationwide police misconduct registry at the Justice Department. However, as we all know, the prospects of passing the Senate and becoming law still remain uncertain. This is also one of the reforms identified here that are all city of Long Beach. One of the action items in the city's initial report on Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative. One of the goals of redesigning the police approach to community safety is to participate in policy reforms, efforts at the state and federal levels to establish a federal or statewide database of complaints against police officers to inform hiring decisions. And that's a quote from our our own policy. And this if that was passed, tonight's recommendations specifically address this goal. The USC Price Safe Communities Institute is working on establishing the first comprehensive, publicly available national catalog to collect data regarding officers fired or who resigned because of misconduct. Law enforcement agencies will also be able to access this critical analytical data regarding trends as well as patterns of potential miscount conduct casualties. The database is named for late civil rights pioneer Representative John Lewis. It's called the Law Enforcement Work Inquiry System or Lewis Registry. The objective is to restore the public trust of law enforcement's. Officers serving the community while also helping departments hire the best police candidates. And we all know that our city, Long Beach, has been proactive in recent years to implement policies addressing the use of force. This Council has been supportive of that and we've established the Office of Constitutional Policing and the Police Department this past year to re-imagine traditional policing, to foster equitable and constitutional public safety for our entire community. Long Beach is also the thorough background. I'm sorry. Long Beach already does thorough background checks for hiring of police officers, one that exceeds state standards, according to Long Beach PD. And I will have a few questions for our police department just a little later. But I think it's very important that we introduce who the Lewes Registry is and allow them to talk a little bit about their program. And so I'd like to allow Dr. Earl Suthers and I welcome Dr. Earl Suthers and Dr. Loren Brown, the USC, S.I. postdoctoral scholar. I'd also invite them to give a brief presentation about the overview of the Lewis registry, and they can step forward. Welcome, Dr. Scissors. Thank you. Councilmember Austin Councilmember Mongo now. Good to see you, Dr. Garcia. John, it's an honor privilege to be here in the interest of full disclosure. I became a police officer 40 years ago. I wanted to be the solution to some of the problems that we were trying to fix. I served in three law enforcement agencies, the Santa monica Police Department. I ended my uniform career at the L.A. Airport Police as assistant chief of Homeland Security Intelligence. And in between, I served in the FBI. I'm honored now to be the director of the Safe Release Institute. And if I could just show you a couple of items here to demonstrate how we have reached out over the past year to work on this initiative. As the councilmember mentioned, named after John Lewis. And we're honored and privileged to be able to name it after him. In this case, the acronym worked quite well for us because there's a law enforcement work inquiry system. And they're saying here that John Lewis used to always say, this really fits our mission with regards to the Lewis registry. There's a couple of things that we hope to achieve with this. Number one, all neighborhoods, communities want transparency with their agencies. We think we can have this now because we'll have a database. It's publicly available. I used to be a background investigator and now Background Office officers can go to the Lewis registry and in a matter of seconds, save thousands of dollars and many hours to find out that the applicant sitting across from them might be someone who's been fired someplace else. And you all know that California is one of five states in the country that when you get fired, you keep your certification. And so we want to eliminate that and keep armed officers from wandering. We are a research university, so obviously we're all about data. So we intend to collect information so we can come up with predictive indicators that can reduce the risk of officers having these problems and getting terminated. Increased retention in his department. And last but not least, we hope to influence policy. When I was at Santa monica, we had term limits on special details like narcotics and gangs because of the challenges that those officers may face after long periods of assignment in those roles. A couple of data points I'd like to share with you in this very brief presentation. Last year we went across all three political parties. We got 80% support for the Lewes Registry, 74% from Republicans, 90% Democrat, and 76% from Independent. This past couple of months, we reached out to 360 law enforcement executives, mostly municipal chiefs across the United States. We asked them, do you support creating a national registry of law enforcement officers who've been fired for misconduct? 76% said yes, whether they supported it or not. We then asked them in the second question if the national registry existed. Would you use the registry as part of your applicant screening process? Almost 95% said yes. I'll just end this by saying we have a diverse collection of supporters. Those are some of our most noteworthy people there, as you can see across the country. We have briefed the L.A. County Chiefs. We have the support of Art Acevedo to major cities chiefs. We have activists, we have academics, we have citizens, we have communities, and we hopefully have you. And I'll just end this by saying thank you for your time. We have 22 departments that are already on board the PAC 12 Chiefs, as well as the UC system chiefs. If you approve this recommendation, you'll be the first municipal agency in the United States to partner. With the Louis Registry formally. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much, sir. Councilman. Sir. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Southers, for etc.. I'm sorry, Sutter. Thank you, Mr. Sutter. So I want to thank Councilmember Austin for bringing this item forward with my colleagues. Councilmember Sunday has an Allen. You know, I think it's just so important to have transparent hiring practices in our police department and to have people who aren't, you know , coming that we're aware of what their background is when they're coming into the department and that it's really also crucial to building as I you know, I think, you know, share it is building stronger relationships with the public as well as the police department. And, you know, the public should know who's protecting and serving them. And, you know, and we've seen the possible outcome of police misconduct, and we should do what we can to avoid it. And I and this the chair of the Public Safety Committee and previous member of the Citizen Police Complaint Commission, building accountability within LPD is very important to me as well as transparency. So thank you so much. I support this item and I hope my colleagues will as well. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Thank you. Thank you for coming today. It has been a while, but I always appreciate your presentations and the great work that you're doing and I'm in full support of this item. And if I can be of any help in onboarding additional agencies, please don't hesitate to ask or we're definitely grateful for what you're doing. And and any opportunity to spread this work across the country only helps every agency. That's a part of it. Thank you. Madam Clerk. Any public comment? There's one public comment, Mr. Sand. I can very. So I can feel sixth district. I'm coming out today in support. Of the Lewis law. Enforcement work increase system that I'm trying to get the the acronym in order. I'm a big fan of Dr. Sanders and the work that he's been doing. I almost had a TSA head here just a couple of years ago. So it's an honor to have you here in the city, sir. This is a conversation about transparency. I think as members of the public, we can see various examples of why, you know, 18,000 plus law enforcement agencies across America should have the opportunity to have open ended dialog with one another about misconduct and past and former members of the police departments in various parts of the country. Should we, you know, municipalities should know who they're hiring and who they might not know who they're hiring. You know, we had a members of a Los Angeles Sheriff's Department gang clique, colloquially known as the Lynwood Vikings that had a Justice Department investigation in the late eighties. And a couple of members were fired and then proceeded to be hired later on into the Dallas Police Department and then create more misconduct. You know, when there's a pattern and behavior here is it needs to be public discourse, both from the community and on the municipal side with who is wearing these uniforms. This is a great opportunity to to disconnect the good from the bad. And I think that the city of Long Beach would be a leader. Within the justice, um, restorative justice conversation. As well as opening and repairing and mending some of the, the poor rapport between the public and our law enforcement with these kind of opportunities. So here in support and thank you for your time. Thank you very much, Richardson. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. So I wanted to chime in and just say, I think this is a great resolution. Resolutions can have an important make an important impact, particularly when other jurisdictions will follow you. And Long Beach has a history of when we move, other jurisdictions move, being a large, you know, second largest city in L.A. County and the second largest city in the entire 191 city sky region. This is important. So thank you, Councilman Ellison, for bringing it forward. I think this is one of many tools out of last year's reconciliation process, a number of tools. And they don't have to all be local tools. They can be statewide or regional and national tools to help us turn the corner and and be a city that really leans into racial equity. And this is a tool that I think just makes a lot of sense. And so I'm happy to support this resolution today. Thank you. Something awesome. I just wanted to thank my colleagues and the public for speaking out. Thanks for the presentation, Dr. Suthers. I wanted to ask a couple of questions of our own police department. I see Chief Luna kind of cued up. What is our current? Recruitment and training practices for four lateral officers hired into the department. Former officers were hired into the department. Mr. Mayor. Members of the city council. Thank you, Councilman Austin, for bringing this item forward. And the question for any lateral officer, just like any officer that we hire. I'd like to think that we have the highest of standards actually, for anybody who applies, less than 2% of the people who apply become Long Beach police officers because our standards are so high. We background everybody. We spend about 40 or 50 hours just to make sure that you fit our qualifications. So from a perspective of hiring anybody who has been terminated for a cause for it from another police department, we just don't hire those kind of people. Now, if somebody has been dismissed for maybe report writing or something else, that's something we may look at. But it's rare. But if you have anybody that's been dismissed from another police agency for moral turpitude, moral turpitude, ethical reasons, policy violations, which would include use of force and officer involved shootings. We just do not hire. I think that might speak to my second question. To your knowledge, has or does Romney's police department employ any formerly terminated officers, officers who have been terminated for misconduct? Currently. During the six and a half years that I've been chief of police. No, I have not. Well, that's refreshing. And and, you know, I think this action tonight actually speaks to to transparency, accountability, all of the. Things that our community cares about, but also this council cares about. I think this item is one that obviously I support and encourage my my colleagues to support. I think of us participating in this registry will make us a. Because stand out as a city but also plants our flag and that we care about the the the integrity of the work and understand that it's a privilege to be a police officer in the city of Long Beach or any city for that matter. Those are my comments. Again, thank you so much for indulging me and appreciate your chief for pronouncing those questions. Make a contribution to. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you all for bringing this forward. Councilmember Austin. Sorry. Dr. Summers out of here. Remember me? But when you were here, you worked in Long Beach for a couple of years as our youth coordinator, I think, if I'm not mistaken. At that time, I was a recruitment officer for the city of Long Beach. And as I constantly say, what am I? Duties at that time was to recruit for police officers. Ah. We had a lateral officer opportunity. That was a continuous examination opportunity. During that time, I'm not sure that we still have lateral officers that posted as a job opportunity. Yes, sir, we do. Okay. So we still get some applications or guessing of other officers from other jurisdictions and other departments as well. We do. It's a few, not as many as we do on our own when we recruit, hire and train them ourselves, sir. So I think that this motion here, I think, is long overdue. There was always a concern that could I be out in the field recruiting? And I had officers recruit with me to go find the best and the brightest to work for the city of Long Beach. There was always that concern being raised about laterals. They're not they're not the most. That that they're not the most qualified. But there's there's issues. There's a reason, as they would say, why they want a lateral from one department to another. But I never heard that they didn't want to come into law because it was about because it was the best that that was always at the top of their intent is to come to the best department that they could possibly find. So. But at the end of the day, it's about backgrounds and how qualified are they? And is there any kind of a blemishes on their on the record that we need to know about, and especially those that the chief mentioned that are of grave concern, especially when you talk about violations of policy or others, other things in the background. So thank you for bringing this forward and thank you for all the work you've done throughout the years. Dr.. So there's somewhat followed your career. You also worked in D.C., so I mean, you're just very, very proud that I got to know you and still know you. And congratulations, I'm bringing this forward. Thank you. Now someone's in the house. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you very much, Mr. Sutter, for this presentation. And I think that this is very much something that we as a city and as a department, I think need and will well, kind of be a little bit better into helping us build the trust that there is that we're lacking here in the community between the community and our police department. So I'm very hopeful and very thankful to Councilmember Austin for bringing this forward and for allowing me to sign on to such an important item, especially being one of the city's first cities. To actually participate in this register, I think is something that we should all be very proud of. So thank you. And Councilman Allen. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you council member Austin and Councilman Sun, Hoss and Ciro for signing on to this item. It's something that I feel strongly about. And as a former police officer, I, too, don't condone any misconduct in any form. And please percussion. And I agree with you. Dr. Sudders, on your comments. And your experience and your. Insight is. Incredible. So I appreciate you taking the time. To speak with us today. As a person who also. Did background investigations for the for the police department. I'm proud of what we did here in Long Beach. We did very extensive investigations, and I'm proud of that work. I'm I think. That this system is just another tool that can help all. The agencies across the country. And I hope that they can use it and they will use it. We have to take steps to make sure that officers who are fired for misconduct. It's easy for other agencies to know about that, and the. Information is also readily. Available for those backgrounds. I think this is. Just a concrete step forward. To include to increase public trust and help departments hire the best police candidates. So I'm just. Happy to sign on to this and thank you so much for bringing this forward. Members, please cast your votes. Motion is carried. Thank you. Then we will do the vaccination report. And then we'll go on to the budget.