In a department memo that went out Friday, Sheriff Lee Baca made good on his promise to disband and reconfigure the sheriff’s department’s top disciplinary board—a three person body known as the Case Review Board—that decides on what disciplinary actions should be taken when a sheriff’s deputy or department supervisor has done something wrong.
In the most recent past, that Case Review Board has been made up of three people—the undersheriff, Paul Tanaka, and the two assistant sheriffs, Cecil Rhambo and Marvin Cavanaugh.
Now, with this new arrangement, the sheriff makes it clear that the Board will be under his control, not that of the undersheriff.
It was the Case Review Board that reduced the sanction against the LASD sergeant—Timothy Cooper— who pointed a gun at the head of another department sergeant, Mark Moffett. According to the LA Times, it was recommended that Cooper be demoted, but then 3-person board opted for the much lighter punishment of a 15-day suspension, a change that the sheriff questioned, the Times reported.
The Board acts as a direct representative of the Sheriff and is comprised of three Sheriff’s Department Commanders. One Board member is a Leadership and Training Division Commander who serves as the Board’s Chairperson. The other two Board members and an alternate Board member are selected by the Leadership and Training Division Chief and approved by the Sheriff. …
The full text of the memo is after the jump.
IN A SECOND CHANGE, ALSO ANNOUNCED BY THE SHERIFF ON FRIDAY, Baca removed the existing head of the Internal Affairs Bureau, a captain who had been put into place by Undersheriff Tanaka last spring when he effectively took ever
In his position, Baca installed Captain John Clark, the former head of Men’s Central Jail, whom the undersheriff had transferred out of custody and sidelined after Clark attempted reforms in the troubled jail, which Tanaka very publicly reversed. (The undersheriff went so far as to call a meeting of all the jails’ deputies, a meeting from which the facility’s supervisors—Clark and others—were specifically excluded, according to one for of those who attended the meeting. It was a meeting that many believed had a disastrous effect on the authority of the jails’ managers.)
(Matt Fleischer reported on the blocking of Captain Clark’s attempted reforms and their thwarting by Undersheriff Tanaka here and here.)
