The search for an outside investigator to lead the probe into a Picnic Day brawl between police officers and a crowd of revelers started from scratch Monday following former Sacramento County Sheriff John McGinness’ under-fire withdrawal from the inquiry.
That topic dominated the public-comment period at Tuesday night’s Davis City Council meeting, where many of the more than two dozen people who spoke said the Police Department should have no role in selecting McGinness’ replacement.
“If that is Davis police’s first choice to lead an investigation, they shouldn’t get to make a second choice,” resident William Kelly said. “That is a clear indication that the police cannot police themselves.”
Some also called for the firings of the officers involved in the April 22 fight, as well as their boss, Chief Darren Pytel.
Pytel, who was at the meeting, said today it was “difficult to hear that the public wants to see you fired, especially when all the evidence has not been evaluated in this instance.”
“The department has a commitment to be transparent, but I have to balance that with the officers’ due process rights,” Pytel added. “If discipline does result, I have to ensure that we arrive there in a fair, impartial way.”
McGinness pulled out of the internal affairs investigation hours after Davis City Councilman Will Arnold issued a blistering statement regarding “ignorant and insensitive” remarks McGinness recently made on his radio show.
“They deserve and need a good product, and if there’s going to be any questions about the integrity or veracity of my investigation, then I want to take myself out of the equation and let things go,” McGinness told The Enterprise in a phone interview Tuesday.
McGinness — who, according to his contract with the City Attorney’s Office, was being paid $100 per hour plus expenses to conduct the investigation — said he won’t bill the city for the 30 to 40 hours of work he’d put in thus far.
While McGinness declined to say whether he had reached any preliminary conclusions, “my belief is that the Davis Police Department is in good hands, and this investigation needs to continue and be completed by someone with no perceived conflict,” he said.
Arnold called for McGinness’ ouster Monday morning, three days after the KFBK radio program during which, in comparing socialism to capitalism, McGinness said the United States was at its best when “capitalism has been unbridled, unfiltered. If you look at certain groups within our broad population, for example, African-Americans in this country did much, much, much, much better before the Civil Rights Act.”
McGinness added that while slavery was “a horrific period in our history,” he went on to say that before the 1964 Civil Rights Act — which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin — “and there were efforts specifically undertaken to theoretically prop up one race of people, African-Americans in this country were doing much, much better” in terms of economic growth, intact families and completion of education.
Stream the radio show here: http://kfbk.iheart.com/media/play/27768359/
Three African-American men who were arrested during the Picnic Day melee have alleged that the police officers engaged in racial bias as well as excessive force.
“I have thus far remained silent regarding the Picnic Day incident in hopes of allowing an independent, unprejudiced investigation to take place,” Arnold said in his emailed statement. “But the recent on-air statements of former Sheriff McGinness are beyond the pale, reveal an ignorant and insensitive view toward African-Americans, and threaten the very independence and lack of prejudice we must preserve.
“Therefore, I am calling for the immediate replacement of Sheriff McGinness to lead this investigation,” Arnold said.
McGinness explained Tuesday that he was not sharing his personal opinion, but rather “data that’s been collected and memorialized by the U.S. Census Bureau. It had nothing to do with this case” involving the Picnic Day fight.
But the comments struck a nerve among local residents who at Tuesday’s council meeting raised allegations that Davis officers have engaged in racial profiling and police brutality. Multiple speakers criticized the decision to deploy plainclothes officers during a major community event like Picnic Day.
In addition to the officer firings, some called for a rejection of criminal charges against the three arrested men and for the establishment of a citizen-based advisory committee to provide independent police oversight.
Pytel responded today that the department recently completed a three-year strategic plan that includes the development of “appropriate civilian oversight.”
“There are significant portions of the plan that deal with transparency — the most that the department’s ever had,” he said.
The community outcry comes less than a week after Pytel announced he’d ordered an internal investigation into the April 22 brawl on Russell Boulevard. Multiple witnesses to the incident disputed the Police Department’s account of how it transpired.
Officers have alleged that crowd members attacked them after they stopped their unmarked van to move along people who were blocking the roadway. Witnesses claimed the officers, dressed in street clothes, did not identify themselves as police, and that one began throwing punches as he exited the van.
A video of the incident released by the Police Department in an attempt to identify additional witnesses seemed to fuel the disagreement. See it on the department’s website: cityofdavis.org/city-hall/police-department.
McGinness already had launched his investigation when Pytel disclosed that he’d been retained by the City Attorney’s Office to determine whether the involved officers engaged in misconduct, or whether any changes to department policy or training needs are warranted.
City officials cited McGinness’ “extensive experience in conducting investigations and also in law enforcement management” among the reasons for his selection, although some immediately raised concerns as to whether the former sheriff could maintain an objective view of the officers’ actions.
The city’s current police auditor, Bob Aaronson, was not selected to head the investigation because, according to Pytel, his role is to review completed investigations to determine whether they were conducted properly and reached reasonable conclusions.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene