By Jim Holt
Signal Senior Staff Writer
Members of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission were in town Tuesday but, unlike their town hall meetings where the public gets to weigh in on law enforcement, they reflected on the past year and scheduled items for the coming year, fielding only a couple of comments from the public.
Although 100 white chairs were unfolded in front of the commissioners’ table for the meeting, about a dozen citizens showed up and only four of them shared their concerns.
The meeting at The Centre on Centre Pointe Parkway near Golden Valley Road was scheduled to run 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. but organizers cut the meeting short at 11 p.m.
“This was not a town hall meeting,” commission spokeswoman Jennifer Osborn said Tuesday.
“This was a regular commission meeting to reflect on what we did in 2019 and schedule items for 2020,” she said.
Regardless of the procedural nature of Tuesday’s meeting, it was still a public meeting that invited comment from SCV residents.
The handful of people who showed up for the public comment portion of the agenda asked about the homeless and about immigration.
A couple of people commented on “sanctuary cities,” Osborn said.
Sanctuary cities are places that limit a municipality’s cooperation with the federal government’s effort to enforce immigration law.
“They also commented on SB54,” Osborn said, referring to California Senate Bill 54, which addresses the practice of law enforcement sharing data on suspects with immigration officials.
Osborn said no media advisory was sent out about Tuesday’s meeting since it wasn’t considered a town hall meeting.
The commission sends out notice of such meetings in an email “blast” to about 5,000 subscribers, and posts details of the meeting on Facebook.
The commission came into being Jan. 12, 2016, when it was approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors as a way to improve public transparency and accountability with respect to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
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