City Council approves police audits

By Jeff Weisinger Staff Writer

ANTIOCH The people of Antioch have read the words of hate, now they are looking for accountability.

Following nearly dozens of pages of racist and homophobic text messages revealed and released after an investigation into the Antioch Police Department, Mayor Lamar Thorpe and the rest of the city council unanimously approved to proceed with several independent audits of the police department, including an audit into internal affairs process, the department’s hiring and promotional practices and an equity audit of the department.

“Every aspect of our community groups have a right to feel safe by their department,”

Thorpe said. “All of these people pay taxes and they pay for that police department, everybody pays a pot to fund the police department. So everybody should feel safe and right now people don’t feel safe. They feel angry, frustrated, and betrayed.”

The first item that the City Council approved Tuesday evening is an independent internal audit of Internal Affairs at the police department. The audit will look at investigations from the last six to eight years, the nature of the investigations and the results, along with what complaints have gone outside of the one-year requirements to ensure that officers were held accountable and if not, then why not.

Antioch residents hold a protest outside of the Antioch police department before a meeting about racist text messages.

“We need immediate and full disclosure and transparency,” Contra Costa County Chief public defender Ellen McDonnell told the City Council. “We can’t downplay this issue. This isn’t a few officers. We’ve reviewed there are 45 officers on these text chains that are disclosed thus far. Forty-five Antioch police officers, 16 of them are in leadership roles. There’s an internal affairs officer that’s part of these texts, see Audit page 14A