Vacaville approves spending thousands for audit of police department
(File photo)
City officials in Vacaville this week approved spending around $80,000 to hire an outside agency to conduct an internal audit of the Vacaville Police Department’s practices and culture.
The OIR Group was hired in part based on their prior work in Vallejo and Davis examining police practices and certain specific, high-profile incidents.
The audit of the Vacaville Police Department was announced earlier this year following the departure of long-time police chief John Carli, who was temporarily succeeded by Joe Allio, a retired police chief from Fairfield.
The Vacaville Police Department has been at the center of several high-profile controversies that took place immediately before and after Carli’s resignation, including the treatment of community activists who were arrested following a peaceful park clean-up event; the fatal shooting of a man at the end of a short, high-speed pursuit; the punching of a police dog during a training session; and the assault of a teenager with autism that was caught on a residential surveillance camera.
“This is not intended to be a ‘Gotcha!’ audit, and it will not be a ‘Gotcha!’ audit,” Michael Gennaco, a former federal prosecutor and civil rights attorney who now operates OIR Group, said at a city council meeting on Tuesday. “It will be an audit intended with the ultimate objective of using what we see, what we learn about your department, and then turning that into a blueprint to improving your police agency — not to criticize for criticism’s sake.”
As part of the audit, workers with OIR Group will conduct an in-person or virtual “site visit,” conduct meetings with community activists, review possible conflicts of interest and scrutinize the effectiveness of the agency’s administrative functions.
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