PASADENA NEWS: El Niño Program and Luncheon for Women Residents Page 12
SPORTS: Stanford Has Rose Bowl Audience in Awe - More Images Inside! Page 22
ENTERTAINMENT: The Huntington Art Gallery Hosts Contemporary Oeuvre - A Must See! Page 8
COMPLIMENTARY COPY VOLUME 20, NO. 1
pasadenaindependent.com
Your Voice, Your Community
Thursday, January 7, 2016 - January 13, 2016
Since 1996
A retaining wall gave way under the pressure of Tuesday’s heavy rains in Arcadia. The wall on Colorado Blvd. just west of Santa Anita collapsed in the early afternoon causing serious mudflow which ultimately shut the road down in both directions for hours. - Photo by Terry Miller
The Perfect Storm Is Here: El Niño Has Arrived … It Is Official BY TERRY MILLER A series of storms which started early Monday morning (Jan. 4) have brought welcome rainfall
across California and other portions of the southwestern United States this week. The track of these storms is fueled by El Niño in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
"The above-average temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, known as El Niño, tends to strengthen the storm track into the West Coast and occasionally California during the winter," said Alex
Sosnowski, AccuWeather senior meteorologist. While a parade of storms slammed into the northwestern United States during November and December, the southwestern
U.S. will receive almost daily rains according to the National Weather Service. While rainfall will be measured in inches from California and SEE PAGE 5
Pasadena Hires Consultant to Study Possible Police Oversight Models for PPD BY J. SHADÉ QUINTANILLA After much controversy surrounding the police shooting of Kendrec McDade, city officials have hired a consultant group to study possible police oversight models for the Pasadena Police Department. Slated to begin in mid-January, Kathryn Olson, head consultant of Change Integration, along with her
associate Barbara Attard, will conduct a study of the police department and put together a report with different oversight models the city should consider. Olson, former president of National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE), has already revealed two possible oversight models she will recommend--the oversight systems in Seattle, WA and San Jose, CA. Both Olson and
Attard are very familiar with both systems. From 2007 to 2013, Olsen served as the director of the Seattle Police Department’s Office of Professional Accountability, and Attard worked as San Jose’s independent police auditor for four years. The Seattle Police Department is supervised by a civilian director, an auditor, and civilian review board. The civilian director oversees police detectives who inves-
tigate public complaints of police misconduct and practices, while an independent auditor also has the authority to review all complaint cases. In addition, a civilian review board, made up of seven members, reaches out to the community about police accountability issues and reviews the operation of the city’s accountability system. In San Jose, police oversight is broken down into two independent parts. A com-
plaint filed against officers is first investigated by the police department’s internal affairs unit and an oversight auditor reviews the department’s analysis of the complaint to ensure that it is objective and not biased. If the independent auditor finds something wrong with their analysis, he or she brings it up to the internal affairs unit and discusses their disagreements. SEE PAGE 13
Pasadena PD Chief Phillip Sanchez. - Photo by Terry Miller