Councilmember Ken Houston wants to dramatically scale back the independence and power of Oakland’s police oversight board.
His proposal, made public last week, would eliminate a volunteer selection panel that currently picks police commissioners. In place of that, each councilmember and the mayor would pick a commissioner. The District 7 representative’s plan would also take away the commission’s ability to appoint the inspector general — a person responsible for auditing OPD’s practices and policies and recommending improvements. And he wants to take away one of the commission’s most important jobs: helping hire police chiefs. Under the current system, the police commission selects finalists and the mayor hires the chief from that batch.
Houston told The Oaklandside he is still working on his ballot measure’s language, and that he accidentally left out a key provision in his legislation: eliminating the commission’s power to fire the police chief…