The Votes Are In!
2024 Readers' Choice is back, bigger and better than ever!
View Winners → Politics Mar 01, 2025
Sean Kennedy resigned Feb. 17 from the Civilian Oversight Commission. | Photo courtesy of Los Angeles County Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission/Facebook
by
share with
The Office of Los Angeles County Counsel Dawyn Harris fired that latest rhetorical salvo Friday in an escalating dispute with the Civilian Oversight Commission that monitors the sheriff’s department.
Since last year and intensifying in recent months commissioners are crying foul over alleged withholding of information about incidents involving possible deputy misconduct. Last month the commission asked a court to weigh in on the matter, triggering a stiff rebuttal from the Office of the County Counsel.
Commissioner Sean Kennedy resigned a day after after he received a Feb. 16 letter from county attorneys threatening legal action if he filed an amicus brief detailing the commission’s claims that the prosecution of former LA County Assistant District Attorney Diana Teran is hindering the COC’s work. With the commission’s support, Kennedy filed the brief on Feb. 17.
On Feb. 20, the commission urged the LA County Board of Supervisors to not accept Kennedy’s resignation and to investigate the County Counsel’s actions that influenced his decision resign.
On Friday, the Office of the County Counsel issued this statement:
“The Civilian Oversight Commission, mandated by the Board of Supervisors to improve public transparency and accountability for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, seems to have lost its focus. We fully support its efforts to seek the information it needs to play a powerful oversight role on behalf of LA County citizens, but we cannot support the grandstanding and divisiveness now on display.”
According to county attorneys, “The dispute comes down to a simple fact: the COC — like every other advisory commission created by the Board of Supervisors and all county departments — is not allowed to act independently of the Board of Supervisors. It is the Office of County Counsel’s job to help all commissions and departments navigate federal, state, and local regulations to ensure their actions are consistent and in alignment with the policy and legal direction from the Board of Supervisors. This is exactly what the Office of County Counsel has done for the COC.
“The COC believes its work would be more effective if it were an independent commission and has voted to amend its ordinance to make itself more independent. However, under the current law, it is not independent but advisory. Therefore, just like all the other 200-plus commissions in the county, if the commissioners wish to seek the approval of the Board of Supervisors on any of their requested actions, they simply need to utilize their executive director and assigned county staff to accomplish this task.”
At a COC special meeting on Feb. 13, Kennedy said commissioners “have heard from the leadership of the (sheriff’s) department that they cannot give COC ad hoc committees confidential documents. They’re afraid that their employees will be prosecuted by the California attorney general just as Ms. Teran is being prosecuted.”
Last year, California Attorney General Rob Bonta charged Teran with violating state hacking laws in 2021 when she sent a colleague public court records from lawsuits involving allegations against sheriff’s deputies.
State prosecutors allege Teran only knew about the court records because of her access to confidential disciplinary files when she was employed at the sheriff’s department three years prior. Bonta’s office alleges Teran broke the law by later sharing the documents with another prosecutor.
Teran pleaded not guilty in July. A California appeals court took up the matter in December and requested Bonta’s attorneys attend an April hearing to show why the justices should allow the case to proceed rather than grant a defense request to end it.
In his resignation letter to the Board of Supervisors, Kennedy elaborated on his reasons for stepping down.
“The County Counsel threatening to report me to the court for making ‘misrepresentations’ because I filed an amicus brief regarding oversight issues — after public debate and a unanimous COC vote — crossed a personal red line,” Kennedy wrote.
“The County Counsel has made meaningful civilian oversight of the LASD nearly impossible by opposing all efforts to clarify the COC’s independence and by advising the Sheriff to withhold requested confidential documents that the COC needs to review to make recommendations about policies and procedures,” the letter continued. “Both positions conflict with the best practices established by the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. …
“Former President Obama’s Task for on 21st Century Policing warned that without robust, independent oversight ‘it is difficult if not impossible for the police to maintain the public’s trust.’ I hope that this Board will encourage the County Counsel to support the COC’s independence rather than continue thwarting it,” Kennedy wrote.
The counsel’s statement Friday concluded with denunciations of COC tactics regarding the amicus brief and the commission’s opposition to Kennedy’s resignation.
“As for the amicus brief itself, there are other simple solutions, all of which the COC, unfortunately, has declined to pursue,” county attorneys said. “If they are not interested in seeking the Board’s approval, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Bonner can resubmit their brief filing in their individual capacities, for example. The commission’s wish for the Board to reject Sean Kennedy’s resignation could also have taken a simpler route — no press release is required, a simple letter would do.”
Kennedy has served on the COC since its 2016 inception and is the executive director and a professor at Loyola Law School’s Center for Juvenile Law and Policy.
