During the July 13 City Council meeting, community member Veronica Villa steps forward to say she is willing to raise money for an audit of the police department, whether it costs $10,000 or $50,000. Photo by Sean Roney.

After a decision by the City Council to investigate the police department, King City is now looking into how to pay for a $10,000 audit. Meanwhile, the City has received a report from a free audit conducted in January.

The Council decided during their July 13 meeting to have Arvin Chief of Police Tommy Tunson perform an audit of the King City Police Department, following allegations made by citizens of police misconduct. That same day, a final report had come in from Peace Officers Standards and Training, which had performed a free audit on Jan. 27.

“The sooner we get this going the sooner it will be over with,” said King City Chief of Police Nick Baldiviez. “Our next step is to cooperate with Mr. Tunson's requests. He's going to be needing information from us, and we'll comply with anything he may need.”

While the police prepare for an investigation, the City government is looking into how to pay the $10,000 price tag, on top of a city-wide budget gap of $600,000.

“We're going to ask if we can pay for Tunson out of Supplemental Law Enforcement funds,” said City Manager Michael Powers. He described the state funding as being, “Meant to pay for front line law enforcement. Expenses such as computers, vehicles, things that officers use day-in, day-out, as well as paying for services. We're paying for Mohorko out of it currently.”

If a request to use SLEF money is not approved, Powers said using money from the City's general fund would have to be considered. He did bring up that at the July 13 Council meeting, community members expressed interest in helping collect the money, including Veronica Villa, who personally said she would raise $50,000 if that would have been the final cost.

Also during the meeting, citizens were informed of the existing methods of filing a complaint. When asked if any formal complaints had come through since the meeting, Baldiviez said there have been none.

What wasn't brought up during the meeting was POST audits, free of charge to police agencies, meant to evaluate compliance with POST standards.

“POST is to a police agency, what ABC is to a liquor store,” explained Baldiviez. He said they typically perform audits of police departments every three years.

Baldiviez said he had not had a chance to review the final report from POST regarding the January audit until after the Council meeting. However, he said the City government, including himself, City Attorney Roy Hanley and Powers were all aware of POST's free audits and that he was aware of the January audit.

“The purpose of the audit was to assess the level of compliance with POST standards for selection and training,” said Baldiviez. “Everything is accurately reflected. Our agency roster, our training standards, our selection standards. All our files were complete and in good order.” He went on to read from the report about the KCPD, “Your commitment to meeting or exceeding POST standards is evident.”

Baldiviez noted of POST, “Those aren't the only audits they do. They can come in and audit the structure of the police department. They do it for free upon request.”

While the operations component of an audit could have been handled for free by POST, Baldiviez explained that handling citizen complaints about officers is not something they handle. For that, it would take an internal affairs investigation or an audit such as the one about to be conducted by Tunson.



For the complete article see the 07-28-2010 issue.

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