Denver’s former (and so far, only) independent watchdog of the police and sheriff’s departments, Richard Rosenthal, was a controversial figure until his resignation in January. But we have a feeling that any watchdog who does the job as it should be done would be controversial on occasion, too.
That doesn’t mean the job is miscast. It means the job is important.
We say this because we see no reason whatever for curtailing the independent monitor’s duties, and believe that a mayor-appointed committee reviewing the ordinance would be making a terrible mistake if it reached any such recommendation.
It’s fine for the committee to take a look at clarifying obscure language in the ordinance, including passages that a 2011 audit found “problematic and prone to varying interpretations.”
However, it’s essential that this exercise not evolve into an effort to clip the monitor’s wings, as at least one task force member clearly desires.
As The Denver Post’s Tom McGhee reported Sunday, the lawyer for the Denver Police Protective Association, David Bruno, believes Rosenthal “stepped outside the boundaries” when he was monitor and would like to see clearer limits on his successor’s power.
“The monitor’s ordinance is very vague, and as a result, there is lack of clarity to what the monitor’s role is in all these cases,” said Bruno.
But Rosenthal didn’t seem to have trouble understanding what his oversight role was, or to appreciate that he must function fearlessly as the public’s eyes and ears — and never mind departmental pushback.
This week’s news that the FBI is probing possible criminal behavior in the brutal police beating of Alexander Landau in 2009 after a traffic stop is a reminder of just how alarming police conduct in recent years sometimes has been.
True, Manager of Safety Alex Martinez was initially critical of Rosenthal, too, even claiming at the time of the monitor’s departure that “he has confused his role and overstepped his bounds” — a judgment that left us extremely nervous. But Martinez’s subsequent behavior suggests he shares the same low tolerance for misbehavior as Rosenthal himself, and is not afraid to use strong words in defending an officer’s termination against institutional critics.
When an officer whom Martinez had fired for driving 143 mph in a 55 mph zone was recently reinstated, for example, the safety manager complained that it deprived him of the “authority to impose reasonable discipline and disrespects the efforts of the many honorable law-abiding Denver police officers to maintain high standards of professionalism.”
We suspect that if Rosenthal were still in town, he too would have some pointed words for the civil service panel’s decision to override Martinez’s decision, assuming he’d been following the case.
His successor should enjoy the same freedom of action.
