WITNESS
Merrick Bobb is the founding director of the Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC), a national resource center on policing and police reform. A lawyer, he was the first person to occupy the role of police monitor and has become a nationally recognized expert on police oversight and reform. He has monitored the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for seven years.
Over the past 10 years, Mr. Bobb has served as a legal staff member and then as a Deputy General Counsel of the Christopher Commission investigation of the Los Angeles Police Department; General Counsel of the Kolts investigation of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department; Special Counsel to Los Angeles County to monitor the Sheriff's department; and Special Counsel to the Los Angeles Police Commission to help establish the Office of Inspector General. Mr. Bobb conducted an investigation of the LAPD five years after the Rodney King incident and the Christopher Commission Report, resulting in the publication of a report in May 1996. He also has consulted for the United States Department of Justice on law enforcement matters since 1998. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and received his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
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STATEMENT
Over the last 15 years, it seems that a consensus has formed that law enforcement agencies rarely, if ever, confront problems on the streets or in the jails or undertake substantial internal reform on their own. Internal investigations of inmate-on-inmate deaths, excessive force by guards, inmate complaints of failure to provide medical or mental health services, or lapses in security and safety have proved, in many cases, to be slipshod and biased.
There remains genuine disagreement among advocates for police reform about the wisdom of a wholesale displacement of law enforcement's internal investigative apparatus in favor of outside review panels, particularly where the power to adjudicate and impose discipline is taken away from the department, whether in whole or in part.
Yet, even police reformers who question the wisdom of displacing a police department's power to investigate internal misconduct do not contend that self-policing is an inalienable right. Rather, both sides agree that the ability to police oneself is a rare privilege afforded only to certain, highly trained and disciplined professionals-be it university faculty, lawyers, doctors, or certified public accountants. The privilege comes with heavy obligations to demonstrate upon demand, in any individual case or in general, that the results reached by self-policing are fair, reasonable, and based on thorough and dispassionate investigation. If that burden cannot be met, then the privilege is no longer merited, and should be taken away; or, at least, the power to investigate must be shared with civilian overseers.
Excerpted from a written statement submitted to the Commission
Download the complete written statement
EXHIBIT
Special Report: The Death of Kevin Evans. Special Counsel Merrick J. Bobb and Staff of the Police Assessment Resource Center.
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