Anaheim Police & the KKK: Office of Independent Review ‘Investigates’ Complaint Against Police Chief Raul Quezada

The Office of Independent Review is “investigating” a complaint filed last year alleging that Police Chief Raul Quezada made “inaccurate, false, and misleading statements” to the Anaheim City Council and Public Safety Board.

By DUANE ROBERTS
Editor & Publisher

The Office of Independent Review, a law firm run by Michael Gennaco, a former trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, is currently “investigating” a complaint filed last year which alleged that Police Chief Raul Quezada made “inaccurate, false, and misleading statements” to the Anaheim City Council, Public Safety Board, and general public about the “time sequence” of events that took place in Pearson Park on Saturday, February 27, 2016, where a violent confrontation ensued between knife-wielding members of the Ku Klux Klan and anti-racist counter-protesters.

The complaint in question, filed by Duane Roberts, Editor and Publisher of the Anaheim Investigator blog, was hand-delivered to City Manager Paul Emery at the Tuesday, April 12, 2016 meeting of the Anaheim City Council. Emery later forwarded it to Bill McCleod, then-Human Resources Director for the City of Anaheim, who was “directed to undertake an investigation.” In a terse letter dated Monday, May 20, 2016, McCleod stated that after interviewing “many witnesses, reviewing … correspondence and attachments, and other materials as necessary,” he concluded the “allegations are not supported by the evidence.”

At the Thursday, December 15, 2016 meeting of the Public Safety Board, Forrest Turpen and Robert Nelson, the respective Chair and Vice-Chair of that body, resurrected the complaint. At the end of the meeting, Nelson queried Emery about “the complaint made by Mr. Roberts.” He then made a “motion to recommend to the City Manager that the Office of Independent Review Group review the complaint made by Mr. Roberts,” which was seconded by Turpen. According to the minutes, out of the six commissioners that were present that night, five voted in favor of the motion, with only one abstention.

Despite some initial resistance to the idea, Emery told The Investigator that given “public interest” in this matter, he “handed over the HR [investigative] file to Gennaco” in mid-January–a fact that was confirmed at last Thursday night’s meeting of the Public Safety Board. When Nelson asked Gennaco how their review of “Mr. Roberts complaint” was going, he gave two word response: “very well.” When pressed further by Turpen if whether or not the Office of Independent Review was merely “auditing” or “investigating” the complaint,  Gennaco replied that he could not disclose that information at this time.