Councilors praise police auditor in performance review

Presenter: The City Council reviews the performance of one of its direct employees, the Independent police auditor. On May 27, Council President Lyndsie Leech:

Councilor Lyndsie Leech: Thank you, Auditor Renetzky. You certainly didn’t come into this position in an uncomplicated time, and I really have appreciated your steadiness and your leadership [inaudible] department, really helping the community.

And I know you have done that and you will continue to do that in a way that’s helping them understand our system, how it works and functions. Not every city has a really well working civilian review board, independent—truly independent—police auditor system. And when it’s functioning well and doing exactly what it’s intended to do, everything is smooth and you have enabled our department to feel smooth that way.

Every time that I’ve felt like I needed to reach out and communicate with you, you’ve proactively reached out to me first, and given me the information that I needed to be able to make informed decisions and know what to do in moments that have been really tense. And so just really appreciating that steady and calm leadership. And so thank you for your work.

Presenter: Councilor Randy Groves:

Councilor Randy Groves: Thank you, Auditor. Appreciate the work that you’ve done so far. I really don’t have any questions. You have a tremendous amount of experience, very impressive. You have excellent credentials and the past nine months, a very, very credible job. I’m interested in hearing your assessment [of the Eugene Police] department and its leadership and culture. You’ve had a chance to interact [inaudible]. I’d like to get your nine-month impression. Thank you.

Craig Renetzky (Eugene, independent police auditor): I think they do an outstanding job overall. I think a lot of police departments have issues and Eugene Police Department is no exception.

Two things are very telling. One is that a number of the complaints that are generated come from the department itself. That means to me that they are holding themselves to a standard and when they see something that needs to be reported, they’re comfortable reporting it.

The second thing is, like I saw after the recent incident, that officer resigned and resigned quickly, and I think that is because he knew he would not be tolerated at the department. To me, that’s also an outstanding sign.

Every department, like I say, has issues. The bigger problem departments, those issues are accepted and tolerated. Everybody that I’ve spoken to within the police department since that incident made it very clear that they did not appreciate his thought process. It doesn’t represent them.

So I think all of that points to a department that is definitely a lot better than other departments that I’ve seen in the past.

Councilor Randy Groves: Thank you for that explanation. I’ll just add my experience overseeing a fairly large public safety organization. People carry on that kind of dialogue that we experienced with us, with people they’re comfortable with, and the fact that he was speaking with people. out of state and not with other EPD officers. That’s something I noticed right from the get-go.

Anyway, and I know there’s a lot of people out there that think, ‘Well, this should have been by listening to the recording,’ but how many people would you have to have on staff to listen to all the police recordings that are generated 24/7/365?

Craig Renetzky (Eugene, independent police auditor): That’s an impossible task. Most departments don’t do that. One of the things that people need to understand is the body-worn videos are activated typically when they’re on a call. I believe this was what we call an accidental activation. He did not know it was activated.

And you’re correct. He was talking to someone out of state. Notably. I mean, if he was talking to another Eugene Police officer—that was one of my initial concerns. I was relieved to see it was not.

But yeah, there are departments that that’s tolerated and accepted, and it’s not in Eugene. I have had other people complain about things like that when they occur, which, that’s what we want.

But, yeah, it’s impossible to detect all misconduct. I’m just going to be honest and realistic with that. It can’t be done. But what I think is most important is that when it’s identified, it’s squashed like a bug. You know, and just indicate that we will not tolerate it and we’re done.

Councilor Randy Groves: You cannot know it’s in everybody’s heart, I get that. I understand that. I’ve been in similar situations.

I really appreciate how fast you jumped on this, too. I mean, within five minutes on that Saturday of me becoming aware of the situation (from a call from a constituent that had seen it on social media), I was just getting ready to call you and the chief, and you called me before I could even call you.

So I just really appreciate that proactiveness and jumping right on, you know, what is a community impact situation, an awful situation.

Presenter: Mayor Kaarin Knudson:

Kaarin Knudson (Eugene, mayor): I want to acknowledge again my appreciation for your clear, consistent, available communication. and the work that you have done to help our community understand the value of an independent police auditor and understand that as exactly what it says in the title—independent of our police department and a separate doorway for our community to engage with when the question is about public safety and the extension of community values and consistency with our policies and local laws.

I want to especially appreciate that earlier in this year, reaching out to both you and to Chief Skinner, to make a very clear public statement about three different legs of support that our community has when dealing with public safety and community concerns about public safety: that they have elected officials—they have a mayor, they have a city council; they have a chief of police; and they also have an independent police auditor.

And that collectively, the work to ensure that we are working together but also for our community’s benefits and being having integrity in our work, having transparency in that work, and also accountability in that work, it’s really a dynamic system between all three of those and the public.

And I really appreciate the way that you’ve approached this work, the seriousness that you’ve brought to this work, and the availability of this work and the fact that you openly observe our continuous opportunities for improvement. That is very much appreciated by myself.

Presenter: Councilor Alan Zelenka:

Councilor Alan Zelenka: Craig, you’re doing a great job so far in the nine months you’ve been here. The transition went as smoothly as I could have hoped for. And so I applaud you for that, your skill in being able to do that.

I was talking to the mayor earlier when we were talking about, ‘How long has he been here? It seems like he’s been here a long time,’ and he just kind of hit the ground running, which has made me think that we did make the absolute right pick when we picked you to be the next police auditor. So thank you for the job well done.

I also thought that the way that you handled the racist officer incident recently was really well done, represented the office well. And I’m wondering if you thought that we could have done anything differently than the way that was handled.

Presenter: Eugene Police Auditor Craig Renetzky:

Eugene Police Auditor Craig Renetzky: Well, I haven’t completely finished looking at the way we handled everything. I want to look at some of the hiring process to make sure nothing was missed. But I think as a general rule, it surely seems like there would have been nothing that could have been done to detect this.

I think it’s important to note that most officers ride alone, which means that they’re not necessarily communicating with another officer that would hear that. In this particular instance, he was on the phone with an out-of-state officer.

I get the feeling, but I have no way of knowing it, of course, that if he had had that same conversation with the Eugene officer, I would have found out about it because it would have been reported.

Other than that, other than perhaps expanding the timelines for people reporting things, getting more reports, I really love it when people come to my office and say, ‘Hey, this is what I’ve seen,’ or, ‘This has been my experience,’ because it gives us a chance to look into it. That’s the whole front line is if we’re not aware of it, we can’t look into it.

So the public are really the eyes and the ears. And when they come forward, that is where the process gets started. So I don’t know that we could have done anything differently other than just encourage people to come forward when they see things.

Councilor Alan Zelenka: Yeah, thank you for that. People have criticized it. There’s a culture of racism. Racism is strong and well in America, especially recently, and Eugene’s not immune from that, from the racism. It exists here, unfortunately, in Eugene as well.

And the question here is how pervasive is it within the police department? I don’t know, but I can point to a couple of things that leads me to believe it’s not extremely pervasive:

• The chief’s response that this was unacceptable.
• Your response that this was unacceptable.
• The union came out right out of the block saying this is unacceptable and this racist officer does not represent us.
• And then the fact that the officer was not talking to anybody in EPD, but was talking to a friend out of state in Utah.

He probably didn’t have that feeling you could talk about that, like you just said, within the EPD. All that kind of leads me to think that it’s not pervasive.

But I’m wondering what you think would be the next steps for training, because you get to recommend training about police and more awareness about this kind of circumstance.

Craig Renetzky (Eugene, police auditor): So that’s really the second phase, and I have not gotten through the full evaluation.

My background is—I taught a class on racism. So I got to tell you, with this incident, was I surprised? No. Was I shocked? No. Was I disappointed? Absolutely.

There is no magic wand. There is no way of making things change. And you’re right, Eugene is no different than any other city, and it gets it. I think the most important takeaway from this that I saw is twofold, or threefold, actually.

The union’s response, but just talking to officers, they’re really disappointed that this guy was among them. I think that’s very telling.

But also the chief’s response. The chief is the one that sets the tone. The chief clearly wasn’t going to tolerate it. I wasn’t going to tolerate it.

Education is never a bad thing, but I’ve got to be honest with you. I don’t know that education alone is going to stop racism. We’ve tried that for years. So if I knew the magic trick to it, I think we all would have solved it a long time ago.

So I think we just need to do whatever we can, continue to send a message that it will not be tolerated, try some more additional education, but do I hold hopes that we’ll wake up tomorrow and racism and sexism will be gone? No, I don’t.

Councilor Alan Zelenka: Yeah, I agree with that—if anything, it’s getting worse…

Well, finally, just the seamlessness of becoming the new police auditor really speaks well to your qualifications and the job that you’ve been doing. So thank you very much. (Thank you.)

Presenter: Councilor Matt Keating:

Councilor Matt Keating: I have a whole laundry list of comments that I was going to make, and I do plan on making them that are laudable in regard to the auditor’s service to our community. You’ve been wholly accessible, transparent, you’re engaging, and your community outreach plans that you’ve articulated both publicly and privately are welcome and appreciated.

I do, however, have some issue with amending a contract on the fly. This is the first I’m hearing about a longing to seek outside employment or engage in a teaching capacity at the University.

At this juncture, when there’s so much turnover in the auditor’s office, from my perspective, it seems that the auditor would benefit from having as much hands-on engagement with your new employees, and especially at this tumultuous time in history.

I would be very interested in exploring that outside of employment, maybe year two, once we have a full year under your belt. But there is no mention of this amendment in our AIS or our most recent one-on-one, even. So this is coming as a bit of a surprise for me. So I would not necessarily be interested in honoring said amendment, because it does seem kind of 11th-hour.

I recognize the intent is that you would not detract from your commitment, I get that. I would want our auditor at this point in history—any one of our three employees: our auditor, our municipal court judge, our city manager—to be wholly focused on the duties that this Council has hired them to do.

Police Auditor Craig Renetzky: My thought with teaching is essentially this: These are the next generation of leaders in law enforcement. In the past, I have taught a lot of people that have gone into law enforcement, a lot of people that have become public defenders or lawyers.

One of the things is there’s a scarcity of experienced police auditor-type people, so that occasionally I’ll get requests: Can I consult on this? Can I advise on this? And the answer is ‘No.’

I think teaching a class or making myself available for those sorts of things that don’t conflict with the city work would be helpful. Obviously, it makes up the compensation, but I think it also benefits the community as a whole.

Councilor Mike Clark: I have long thought that the University’s Police Department—which are armed officers on our streets and do not have any sort of auditing function for their officers—I’ve long thought that they should, frankly, at the U of O.

And I think the opportunity to have you, Craig, teaching there, opens a doorway between the city and the University in a way where certainly at least—at the very least—students will get more comfortable with the idea of the importance of an auditor function for the police at the university and perhaps open a new channel towards seeing the University’s police have an auditing function as well, or maybe combining with our city’s office in some way.

So I think it’s a good idea that could lead to better options for the whole community.

Presenter: City councilors praise the out-of-the-gate performance by Independent Police Auditor Craig Renetzky. Councilor Matt Keating was the only vote against recognizing the auditor’s positive contributions to the city and authorizing him to teach locally.