Vallejo Police Oversight Commission hasn’t started work months after appointments

VALLEJO – Members of Vallejo’s new Police Oversight Commission have not started a monthslong required training program eight months after they were appointed by the Vallejo City Council as a nine-month deadline to complete the training approaches and one member’s term nears its close.

Commissioner John Lewis said this week that he had still not heard from city officials about start dates for the extensive training program that is required for commissioners to begin their work. 

“The community and families impacted by police violence have a right to expect that the commissioners are doing something but we aren't,” Lewis said.

On Tuesday, a day after the Vallejo Sun inquired about the delays, commissioners received an email from the city clerk with a request for commissioners to indicate their availability on a list of possible training dates in November and December.

The creation of an oversight body is one of 45 reforms required by the state Department of Justice in a 2020 agreement, but it has faced years of delays. The City Council adopted an ordinance to create the commission in December 2022 and commissioners were appointed in late February of this year. The commissioners were sworn in on Aug. 20 after a background check.

But a training program, which is expected to take as long as six months, has not started. The ordinance requires commissioners to complete sessions covering 12 subject areas within nine months of their appointment. Any extensions must be approved by the City Council. 

Lewis is facing another deadline, his term ends in February 2025 and at this point it appears unlikely that he will be able to complete the training program by then. When the commissioners were appointed, they were randomly assigned staggered term lengths and Lewis was assigned the shortest term of only a year. 

Commissioner Mike Nisperos was also frustrated when the training did not start soon after the commissioners were sworn in. Nisperos is a retired trial attorney with a lengthy and varied career, he served as chief counsel for the State Bar, worked in defense and prosecutorial roles for U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General Corps and he was a deputy district attorney for Alameda county. 

Nisperos is no stranger to police oversight, he was involved in Oakland’s Citizen Police Review Board in the mid-1990s and in 2017 he was appointed to Oakland’s police commission. Nisperos served on the Oakland commission until the end of 2018 when he moved to Vallejo, where he participated in drafting and negotiating Vallejo’s police commission ordinance as a member of the advocacy group Common Ground.

Nisperos said that the background check was unnecessarily long and the commissioners should have been sworn in much earlier so the training could get underway.

“Everything, to me, seemed like a terrible act of stalling,” Nisperos said. “And my guess is the stalling was because they are trying to protect their relationship with the VPOA because nobody else would be interested in stalling.”

Nisperos said that when he was drafting the ordinance, he used the same training program subject areas that are used for Oakland’s police commission so Vallejo can easily convert Oakland’s training modules. Nisperos noted that there were political problems within Oakland’s police commission but he feels that the actual charter amendment is sound and was created with the understanding that it could end up serving as a national model.

“If the Vallejo city attorney’s office tries to recreate the wheel, they are going to end up with a square wheel,” he said.

City Attorney Veronica Nebb told the Vallejo Sun in an email that the police commission ordinance requires a “meet and confer” process with the Vallejo Police Officers Association which is ongoing, but she expects it will conclude in November. She added that none of the training materials are under negotiation and the meet and confer process is not holding up the training program. 

Nebb said that the implementation of the training program has been delayed for several reasons, but did not provide specifics. She said the delays are now resolved and the city clerk is currently identifying dates for the initial training, which should occur in November or December of this year. 

VPOA president Michael Nichelini said in an email response that city officials ultimately caused the delays by adopting the ordinance prior to initiating a meet and confer process with the union.

“They kept pushing and pushing to get it done. If they had only met with us prior to going to Council, we could have done this together - like a normal harmonious employer/employee relationship should be.” he said.

Nichelini said that the meet and confer process was concluded in June and that the city “wanted a VPOA representative to go to Council with them to show collaboration as there were going to be changes to the ordinance needed."

"However, since then, it’s been crickets from them,” he said.

The training subject areas include confidentiality requirements, training on state laws such as the California Political Reform Act and the Ralph M. Brown Act as well as sessions on due process and administrative hearings that are afforded to officers. There are also sections covering the constitutional rights of all residents, union negotiations, the California Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act, anti-bias training and procedural justice. 

The ordinance specifies that, if possible, the training sessions should be recorded and made available to the public. 

“That six months of training should not be just for the commissioners,” Nisperos said. “It should be for the public at large. How many residents truly understand the Fourth Amendment, how many understand search and seizure or the de-escalation policies of the Police Department? All those should be shared. That training is to educate the commissioners but also to educate the community.”

Editor's note: This story has been updated with comments from VPOA President Michael Nichelini.