Editorial: Antioch City Council Voted Down Additional Police Supervision and Transparency

As the political grandstanding in the city of Antioch is surely going to continue, one thing that must not be overlooked is the past actions, or in this case inaction, of its Antioch City Council.

Last week during the Mayors comments, Lamar Thorpe admitted to sweeping things under the rug. While he did not go into any detail, he sure provided innuendos which he likes to accuse others of doing.  Perhaps its time for the mayor to be more specific on what he was referring to.

1. When did this occur and how many times?
2. What was swept under the rug?
3. Was this limited to only the police department or city hall?
4. Why did he not saying or speak up?

This week, the Antioch City Council will hold a special meeting for police audits.  I encourage this to occur. However, the city council has to be included in this conversation because they have made some poor decisions on public safety over the past decade. It’s easy for this council to place blame and take cheap shots at past police chiefs who are not there to defend themselves, but that is both boring and lazy leadership–or in this case, the low hanging fruit.

Anyone watching Tuesday’s meeting can see the council is deflecting blame on Antioch police leadership from Chief Ford, to Chief Brooks, to Chief Cantando and Chief Hyde when in fact they had the opportunity to increase police supervision and police oversight at any point over the past decade.

The city council simply never thought there was a problem until the national rhetoric changed in 2020 and it became “politically cool” to talk police reform.

In fact, you had a mayor attempting to take credit for things already occurring at a state and county level–especially when Thorpe called for Eight Can’t Wait policy reform to occur only for  Chief Brooks to came out and explain Eight Can’t Wait was already occurring within Antioch.

To make matters worse, Thorpe and the council prevented Chief Brooks from giving public presentations at the city council for two years–which they could have brought up supervision, transparency and officer concerns at any point. Today, they are calling for Chief Ford to come before them every 60-90 days with updates.

To anyone paying attention, it is quite obvious that the council is distancing itself from past votes and it’s failure to take any leadership responsibly when it comes to police supervision or complaints–including those who brought complaints to the city council or by police chiefs who asked for more tools to prevent issues from arising.

Ironically, it was the past police chiefs who sought more supervision, accountability and transparency—from adding supervisor positions to body cameras, the council simply took no action for years.

Back in January 2017, prior to his retirement, the city council (including Thorpe, Wilson & Ogorchock) ignored former police chief Cantando’s recommendation for an additional sergeant position—a budget increase of just $46,601 at the time for a position reclassification. The request came when police added 16 new officers (who he pointed out were young and learning), but had not yet added additional supervisor positions.

At the time, Antioch currently had 98-officers with 9-sergeants, whereas Brentwood Police had 10-sergreants for 81-officers. It was pointed out Brentowod and Pittsburg had a ratio of 1-sergeant to 6 officers while Antioch had 1-segeant to 10-officers.

Cantando explained to the council, “Obviously this individual (sergeant) will be out there monitoring what the officers are doing and what the civilian staff is doing. If there are issues in performance, that supervisor will address it. If there are issues that come up that management is not aware of, that supervisor will identify those areas that need to be corrected or addressed.  Its having an extra set of eyes and be a resource.”

At the meeting, Councilmember Tony Tiscareno motioned to authorize the additional sergeant position—no one offered a second, which included Lamar Thorpe, Monica Wilson, Lori Ogorchock and then mayor Sean Wright. The item died with no action.

Now I am not saying having an additional sergeant would have prevented the horrible text messages, but maybe it could have been caught much sooner. As for the alleged targeting, abuse of the badge or other complaints, it certainly doesn’t hurt having additional supervision and feedback in the field. After all, managing six officers is easier than managing 10 officers.

In terms of police body cameras, former Mayor Wade Harper stated in a community letter in September of 2016, that they were 6-months to 1-year away. He was wrong as future councils fumbled over the issue under chiefs Cantando and Brooks until March 2021—at that point, it took newly elected Mayor Pro Tem Mike Barbanica 6-attempts to get the body camera item onto the agenda which they were not even tuned on until July 2021 due to the council further stumbling over themselves debating body camera policy.

I am sure Councilmember Tamisha Torres-Walker would have liked body cameras active when police were in pursuit of her children. Just as I am sure the defendants (Terryonn Pugh, Eric Windom, Keyshawn McGee and Trent Allen) at the center of these text messages would have liked body cameras. Or anyone else who has a dispute with Antioch Police as it keeps everyone honest.

That is five years where politics prevented the use of body cameras to protect not only the community, but also provide proof that what an officer reported, did in fact happen the way they said it did. Its better for everyone!

Even worse, now we find out no police performance evaluations since 2017. Talk about a council asleep at the wheel.

At the end of the day, I am all for audits, lets do it.

But the city council has to be open to owning some of the blame of how  got to where we are at today. Until the council can admit they are part of this problem (Thorpe, Wilson & Ogorchock), its difficult to take them seriously—given their own past transgressions from arson, burglary, DUI, interfering with police, to sexual harassment.

Show us the text messages Mr. Mayor. Show us the body camera footage of Torres-Walker. Explain to the public how exactly this council came up with its  hiring process and administrative leave process with City Manager Cornelius Johnson. We already know one former employee got a huge pay day. How many more are coming?

I’ll say it again, just because we are fact finding, does not make someone racist or a bigot just as asking difficult questions of the police department doesn’t mean someone hates the police. But calling people “Karen’s” and accusing people of “dog whistle racism” or saying “these people” does spew hate.

The great deflection of this council blaming past police chiefs, past mayors, past city councils to everyone else in the community must stop. Wilson was elected in 2012, Ogorchock 2014, and Thorpe in 2016 — the three of you have had plenty of time to initiate cultural changes and if you haven’t used that opportunity to do so its on you.

Own it and remove the line in the sand so the community can work together and buy into a plan to ensure this never happens again and one day a black eye can hopefully be removed from the Antioch Police Department. But most importantly, if you want to rebuild the trust of the public, transparency is a must and the most recent council agenda again is a perfect example of failing the public.

Sadly, it is same old game of politics ruining everything. But, is anyone really surprised where Antioch is given the lack of leadership?

I can’t wait until the day where people who I fundamentally disagree politically with with can at least agree the process is fair, accountability and oversight is in place, trust is on the uptick, and progress is being made for the betterment of everyone in the community and not just specific segments.

If the city council can’t even be honest with itself and instead would rather pass blame onto others, we will continue to spin our tires in the mud until the next election.

---

Mike Burkholder
Publisher of ContraCosta.news
burk@contracosta.news