Transparency and Community Engagement

their own investigation and review.26 By assigning an expert to conduct a review before the criminal justice and administrative process had been completed and by then disseminating the findings, it potentially compromised those other processes and set up a possibility of contrary and competing findings.

RECOMMENDATION 39: The Department and other City officials should consider new and less contentious ways of dealing with its critics, particularly in the context of pending litigation, and should work to ensure that its litigation posture does not interfere with the rigor and objectivity of its administrative reviews.

Department Website

As mentioned above, the Department’s website offers a significant amount of new information related to prior officer-involved shootings and other critical incidents. This is a response to new state law requirements. Similarly, another state bill that recently took effect requires police agencies to post their manuals and training materials on-line. VPD has met this new obligation as well. That said, the current website configuration makes it difficult for a member of the general public to locate the information. Unless an individual was familiar with the relevant statutes or the number of the legislation behind the new transparency mandates, readily finding on-line information is a difficult chore. The police website – and the public – would benefit from addressing this through a reorganization. Clear headings and explanatory materials would make the site easier to navigate, and would reflect a recognition of the spirit as well as the letter of these new laws.

Indeed, we would also encourage the Department to consider additional ways it could use its website to increase public engagement and awareness. Potential examples include offering aggregate data about uses of force and misconduct allegations, and promoting different agency initiatives that might benefit from public involvement. By going beyond requirements and affirmatively sharing

26 It seems unlikely that a report finding a shooting out of policy or critical of the officers’ performance would have been disseminated the same way.

information about its operations, VPD could not only make itself more accountable but also potentially enhance appreciation for its work.

RECOMMENDATION 40: The Department should enhance the clarity and accessibility of its website in terms of required information, and should consider ways to further utilize the site as a vehicle for informing and engaging the public.

Community Engagement in Promotional Process

We discussed above how Vallejo’s public was very involved in providing feedback to City leadership during the recent Chief selection process. The community should be similarly invited to engage in promotional decisions at all ranks. Community members outside VPD’s culture provide insight and a fresh perspective on candidates that the Department already knows. Moreover, during the interviews, community representatives will likely focus on issues such as the candidate’s ability to productively engage with the public. VPD would be wellserved to bring community members into this discussion as these important decisions are being made to select the supervisors and leaders of its organization.

RECOMMENDATION 41: VPD should engage community members at the interview stage of its promotional process.

Surveys and other Feedback

The idea of “customer outreach” is of course widespread in private industry; companies value it so much that they persist in asking for survey responses and even offer incentives for people to do so. Public entities have less of a tradition in this regard, but it is nonetheless an avenue worth exploring.

In part because of the recent controversy surrounding uses of deadly force, the City has stepped up its public outreach town hall meetings and providing a way for its community to learn more and engage about police affairs through the City website. In addition to what has already been done, there are a variety of new approaches to this that agencies around the country are trying, and that might prove useful in Vallejo. For example, there are “text messaging-based” approaches that facilitate quick feedback from people who have just encountered the police in one context or another. A related initiative could take advantage of technology to automatically generate a short survey for individuals whose contact