The Santa Barbara Police Department got a near standing ovation from members of its Fire & Police Commission, who all praised the police department, its command staff, and Police Chief Kelly Gordon for the department’s “levels of effort, transparency, and data reporting” as being “exemplary.” The commission was revamped in the wake of the George Floyd murder of 2020 to provide a forum for the community to address potential issues of excessive force, police misconduct, and the possibility of ethnically based “bias by proxy.”
According to the first official commission statement, penned by Commission Chair Linda Dozer, there was a 37 percent reduction in use-of-force incidents over the last year, bringing the total from 147 to 93. Last year, the statement noted, there had been 26 complaints of officer misconduct, of which eight were sustained.
So far this year, there have been two. Both are currently under investigation; one was for failure to take reasonable action, and the other was for being disrespectful and discourteous in dealing with a member of the pubic. One of the complaints was filed by a member of the public; the other came from department administrators. “The numbers speak for themselves,” declared Dozer, a former FBI agent.