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A bill to jump-start police oversight in California passed the state Senate 21-10. Less than 24 hours later, the L.A. City Council voted 12-1 to endorse SB 1019 before a vote by the Assembly that would make it law.

"Cities must be able to decide for themselves if they should allow open hearings," the ACLU/SC's Peter Bibring said before the council vote. "No one can credibly profess to support open and transparent policing without endorsing this bill."

SB 1019 will reverse a recent court decision that threatened 30 years of police reform. Los Angeles and several other California cities previously allowed access to disciplinary hearings for the media and members of the public.

The ACLU/SC believes effective civilian review of complaints and use-of-force incidents protects citizens from police misconduct and builds trust between police officers and the communities they serve. SB 1019 won the support of key police leaders across the state and California newspapers. The bill now goes to the Assembly for final approval.

LOS ANGELES — The ACLU of Southern California has become the first ACLU affiliate in the nation to adopt a resolution condemning the Iraq war. The measure also condemns the Bush Administration's many instances of abuse of power during the so-called "war on terror."

The Board of Directors of the ACLU/SC took the action at its meeting last month and will present the resolution at the organization's National Biennial Conference in Seattle, June 13-16, where delegates from all 53 affiliates will gather to discuss issues and policy.

"The Bush Administration, both as part of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in general, has committed serious violations of the Constitution and of civil rights and civil liberties that constitute a systematic abuse of power," the resolution states.

It then lists 16 separate examples of how the Bush administration has abused its power, including:

- Presenting false, incomplete and misleading information to justify the Iraq invasion

- Using the National Security Agency to spy on telephone conversations without warrants

- Intercepting mail and listening to privileged communications between attorneys and clients

- Detaining individuals for unreasonable periods of time without access to legal counsel

"This administration has violated some of the most sacred of our constitutionally guaranteed rights and protections," said Isabelle Gunning, ACLU/SC president. "Our board felt we were morally obligated to state our objections to the Bush Administration's illegal activities. And since these violations are inextricably connected to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we felt we had to speak out against these wars as well."

LOS ANGELES — ACLU of Southern California staff attorney Peter Bibring today criticized the L.A. Police Department's preliminary after-action report about the May 1 action at MacArthur Park. His expanded remarks to the L.A. City Council are below:

"The City of Los Angeles was promised an open and thorough investigation into the LAPD's use of force to disperse a peaceful, permitted assembly on May 1, 2007, at MacArthur Park. The department's preliminary after-action report falls disturbingly short of that promise. In its omissions of the critical facts and failure to address the pivotal questions, the preliminary report threatens to be the first draft of a revisionist history that will gloss over any failures in training, tactics or command and thereby fail to find any need for improvements and reforms.

"The report presented to the Police Commission yesterday purports to address what occurred minute-by-minute, but does not say when or why the LAPD decided to clear the entire park of thousands of peaceful participants, including many families. The report does not mention what training, policy or order could have made officers think they were justified using foam bullets and batons on members of the media whose credentials, microphones, and cameras were obviously displayed, and who were neither resisting arrest nor posing a danger to officers or others. The report did not mention that the dispersal orders were given only in English, not Spanish.

"These are the questions the residents of Los Angeles need answered most, and they were ignored by the Department's report, and would not have been raised but for the questions of Police Commissioners yesterday and Councilmembers today.

"Recent discussion about how many Metro Division officers received crowd-control training, and how recently, obscures a more basic question: How can LAPD officers think that use of force is justified against a person who is responding, in their eyes, too slowly to a dispersal order, but is not resisting arrest and poses no threat to the safety of officers or others? The error evident from videotapes is not advanced crowd control, but basic use of force.

"The constraints on public investigation under the Police Officer's Bill of Rights apply only to investigations by a police department used to determine officer discipline. This need not hamstring transparency in this extraordinary case. The City Council can and should order a fully public investigation — with public testimony, evidence and expert opinion — by an independent body that can be held entirely in the open so long as it is kept walled off from disciplinary proceedings by the Department. The ACLU of Southern California calls on the City Council to deliver the degree of openness that has been promised; it is what this City needs to trust the investigative process and to begin to heal."