By: Erica Zucco, KOB Eyewitness
News 4
Recommendations from a task
force to overhaul the Police Oversight Commission will be introduced at the
Albuquerque City Council meeting on Monday.
The 217 page document details
the process for making recommendations and gives suggestions for the council to
approve.
One of them is that the APD
chief must respond in writing if he or she does not follow the commission's
recommendations for discipline. There is also a recommendation that the
commission should be able to suggest changes to APD training and policies, and
a condition that the commission should get more access to APD documents and
data.
The Albuquerque Police Officers
Association says the proposal goes too far.
"A lot of the changes that
they're trying to make wouldn't be something that we'd expect in the judicial
system for the regular citizens," APOA President Stephanie Lopez said.
But there is a change the union
and citizen advocates agree on – making commission members go through more
training on what it's like to be an officer. In the past, members got very
little.
"How can you judge
somebody in their job when you don't even know what the details or what the
regiments of going through that process is? It's like me being on a panel and
deciding whether an attorney did his job or not," Lopez said.
