28 Feb Antioch Can’t Put Police Oversight Commission on Hold

Antioch Assistant City Attorney Kevin Kundinger, with City Manager Bessie Scott, told the City Council on Tuesday it cannot tell the Police Oversight Commission to pause its meetings, as the mayor had suggested. (Screenshot captured by Samantha Kennedy / The CC Pulse)

By Samantha Kennedy

Antioch Mayor Ron Bernal’s proposal to pause the city’s police oversight commission will have to wait. 

The Antioch City Council does not have the authority to stop the Antioch Police Oversight Commission from meeting because it was created as an independent commission. 

That means, according to Assistant City Attorney Kevin Kundinger, the commission would have to unanimously vote on its own to take a break. The council can still recommend the commission make the pause. 

“The council can direct APOC to consider certain actions,” he said at Tuesday’s council meeting. “But they do not have the authority to direct APOC to take certain actions.”

The city does have the option to change the ordinance and give the council the authority to do so. 

Bernal’s proposal came after commissioner Leslie May resigned this month. May’s resignation was the third in under a year — after chair Harry Thurston and commissioner Mahogany Spears — and meant only four members were still sitting. 

Under a five-year agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and Antioch, the city is required to have at least five members serving at once. 

After Bernal’s call for a pause at the Feb. 11 council meeting, APOC’s Feb. 17 meeting was canceled because of Presidents’ Day. Since its first meeting last March, around one-third of meetings have been canceled. 

An official pause on the commission could give the city time to fill the vacancies and train new and existing commissioners, according to the corresponding staff report. 

Commission chair Porshe Taylor and vice chair Devin Williams on Tuesday also called for ongoing training in their annual APOC policy recommendations to “improve oversight effectiveness.” 

City Clerk Melissa Rhodes said, in an effort to fill the vacancies, the city had been in the process of scheduling interviews with over 10 applicants. 

One of those applicants who attended Tuesday’s meeting said she wouldn’t be showing up for an interview.

“I’m not coming. I don’t want to be a part of this. This is messy,” she said. “Not because I can’t do it, not because I don’t know how to be the solution, but with these personal (attacks and issues), I don’t want to be caught in the middle of it.” 

Some residents said that was in part because of what they saw as divisive decisions and language since the election. May, for example, stated in her resignation letter she had faced numerous “dangerous attacks” since her appointment. 

Erika Raulston, May’s daughter, said several people were ready to step up and fill the vacancies in place of pausing the commission. 

“We deserve better than what we’re getting now,” she said. “This community has suffered at the hands of the police.” 

Bernal said his intention wasn’t to create division in the community. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be about the obvious conflict that this all created,” he said. “I apologize for this, but the bottom line is we want to make APOC as good as a commission as it can be.”  

The next Antioch City Council meeting is March 4.