mvfree.org; [email protected] 1
October 6, 2025
Honorable San Rafael Mayor Kate Colin
Members of the San Rafael City Council
Police Advisory & Accountability Committee
Re: The PAAC Needs and Deserve City Council Support
Dear Mayor Colin and members of the City Council and PAAC, The San Rafael Police Advisory and Accountability Committee (PAAC) was created in the aftermath of the police beating of Julio Lopez to bring trust and accountability to the San Rafael Police Department (SRPD) through civilian oversight. But the PAAC has been forced to operate under an SRPD gatekeeper which has thwarted its ability to fulfill its mandate. We are writing to ask the City Council to honor the spirit underlying the PAAC’s creation and the hard work and dedication of the PAAC.
1. Please ensure that the PAAC’s equitable policing recommendations receive the full and timely consideration they deserve by placing them as an action item on a City Council agenda in the near term. MVFREE would be happy to assist the PAAC in presenting the recommendations and their evidentiary bases.
2. Please relieve the PAAC and SRPD from the untenable, conflicted gatekeeper relationship; the PAAC cannot effectively fulfill its oversight responsibilities while hampered by such limits. The PAAC needs a truly supportive Staff Liaison independent of the SRPD or other law enforcement interests.
The PAAC’s Equitable Policing Recommendations
On May 21, 2025, the PAAC voted to recommend the following proven strategies to reduce the SRPD’s significant overpolicing of Black and Latinx communities revealed in the 2025 report of the State RIPA Board (Racial and Identity Profiling Act).
1. Adopt a RIPA-informed bias-by-proxy policy and protocols to eliminate race-based calls for service. (Motion carried 7-0-1).
2. Implement a one-year pilot program eliminating pretext stops as recommended by the RIPA Board to significantly reduce Black and Latinx stop disparities in San Rafael. (Motion carried 6-1-1).
3. Establish and monitor performance metrics for SRPD equitable policing strategies using RIPA data. (Motion carried 7-0-1).
4. Conduct an annual RIPA equity assessment to map a course for continuous improvement toward safe and equitable policing in San Rafael. (Motion carried 7-0-1).
The recommended equitable policing strategies are based on best practices promoted by the RIPA Board and are designed to target specific practices and conditions in San Rafael that the data show contribute significantly to SRPD racial policing disparities. The vote was the culmination of two lengthy hearings where the PAAC reviewed extensive documents and statistical evidence and heard from multiple witnesses including data analysts from the Marin County Sheriff’s Office and from MVFREE. mvfree.org; [email protected] 2
MVFREE Request #1—The PAAC’s recommendations are obviously not self-executing. The PAAC is a civilian advisory body whose only real power rests in its authority to “make recommendations to the City Council regarding police policy, procedures, hiring practices, training and best practices.” PAAC Bylaws, Article 1, Sec. 1.3. After that, it is properly up to the City Council, not the SRPD or its representatives, to decide which recommendations will be implemented and to provide the necessary support and resources to bring them to life. Please place the PAAC’s four equitable policing recommendations on the City Council’s agenda in the near term to ensure that they receive due consideration.
The Impact of the SRPD Gatekeeper on the PAAC’s Effectiveness One of the most defining concepts of civilian oversight of law enforcement is independence … [the] absence of real or perceived influence from law enforcement, political actors, and other special interests looking to affect the operations of the civilian oversight agency.
National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, nacole.org/principles.
By designating an SRPD officer “Staff Liaison” to the PAAC, the City has empowered the SRPD to direct all aspects of the PAAC’s operations. All training, information and presentations that the PAAC receives (Part 1) and all of the PAAC’s output—from its annual reports to whether and how PAAC recommendations are presented to the Council (Part 2)—are entirely controlled by the SRPD Liaison, assisted by a Senior Management Analyst who is also a member of the SRPD.
1 This arrangement has thwarted the PAAC’s
effectiveness since its inception.
To be clear, the problem is not the particular officer whom the City has placed in the role of Staff Liaison. Any SRPD officer, regardless of good faith, would naturally approach this work from a law enforcement perspective and would possess a strong personal and professional interest in limiting and avoiding independent oversight of the Department that employs them and of which they are a part. The PAAC’s experience in the context of RIPA data and equitable policing strategies exemplifies the seriousness of the problem.
1. How the SRPD Controls the Information the PAAC Receives Each year, the PAAC identifies topics it wishes to consider. After thatthe SRPD Liaison takes control. The SRPD creates the PAAC agendas, selects the evidence and presenters that will come before the PAAC, and writes the staff reports for every meeting that are meant to guide and inform the PAAC’s work. Under the SRPD’s control, the vast majority of presenters on every topic since the PAAC’s inception have either been members of the SRPD or other law enforcement agencies, or attorneys and consultants who specialize in representing law enforcement interests.
It is, of course, important for the PAAC to hear from the SRPD, but the PAAC cannot provide meaningful oversight when the only information it is permitted to hear is the SRPD’s own laudatory self-assessments. A wealth of independent experts and practitioners are available in the Bay Area who could bring depth and balance to the PAAC’s deliberations and provide the tools and strategies the PAAC needs to conduct its own assessment of SRPD data, policies, training, practices and other issues. Under the SRPD’s management, the PAAC is not hearing from them. Instead of being well and fully informed, the PAAC is being managed as a vessel for SRPD indoctrination and manipulation.
The RIPA Equitable Policing Example—When the PAAC was scheduled to consider the topic of RIPA data and racial policing disparities in San Rafael in March of 2025, the SRPD Liaison invited two law enforcement officers to present and wrote his own lengthy staff report. That report offered irrelevant and misleading 1 The Staff Liaison, Lt. Eberly, is employed by and answerable to the SRPD. The Senior Management Analyst that the City has assigned to assist Eberle at the PAAC, Teresa Komodo, is likewise an employee and representative of the SRPD.
mvfree.org; [email protected] 3
comparisons of SRPD stop data to statewide racial demographics and cited theoretical and highly controversial objections to RIPA data promulgated by the law enforcement lobbying group PORAC. None of the law enforcement representatives at the hearing acknowledged or addressed the high rates of overpolicing of Black and Latinx people in San Rafael shown in the 2025 RIPA Board Report (Latinx people stopped by the SRPD at 1.8 times the rate of Whites; Black people stopped by the SRPD at 6.4 times the rate of Whites).
Eliminating these disparities—which mirror the pattern seen in more than 90% of California law enforcement agencies—is the core purpose of RIPA.
The SRPD Liaison not only presented a singular law enforcement perspective on the RIPA topic but sought to ensure that the PAAC would hear no other perspectives. MVFREE has been analyzing RIPA data in Marin County and working with the Mill Valley Police Department to implement RIPA-recommended equitable policing strategies since 2021. In January of 2025, we wrote to the San Rafael Mayor and City Council offering to assist the City in understanding and addressing the SRPD policing disparities shown in the 2025 RIPA Report. At the Mayor’s suggestion, we contacted the SRPD Liaison and offered to present a focused analysis of SRPD RIPA data to the PAAC, along with RIPA recommended remedial strategies. Our offer was met with stiff resistance. The SRPD Liaison insisted he would need to vet and approve not just our qualifications (we invited him to contact the Mill Valley Police Chief for a reference), but also the content of any presentation we proposed to offer.
Unwilling to present the RIPA analysis through an SRPD filter, MVFREE representatives attended the law enforcement RIPA presentation on March 19 and appealed directly to the PAAC at public open time, offering to present a view of the SRPD RIPA data informed by the formulas, tools and recommendations developed by the State RIPA Board. In response, the PAAC asked the SRPD Liaison to allow MVFREE to present. Only then did the SRPD Liaison agree.
You can view the video of the May 21 MVFREE Presentation to the PAAC (minutes 18:42 to 46:04) at the link provided. Following questions and deliberations, and brief but positive comments from the San Rafael Police Chief Spiller, the PAAC voted to adopt the four recommendations that are the subject of this letter. But the SRPD Liaison remained an obstacle.
2. How the SRPD Controls the Fate of PAAC Recommendations The SRPD Liaison has complete control over PAAC communications with the City Council and can prevent PAAC recommendations from ever reaching the Council in an actionable form. The bylaws call for the PAAC to present an annual report to the City Council. That report is written and presented to the City Council by the SRPD Liaison. The report includes a skeletal summary of PAAC meetings and recommendations throughout the year. Because the report is presented as an information item on the Council’s agenda, the Council is not invited or allowed to act on any recommendations mentioned in the report.
Outside of the annual report, the SRPD Liaison has tended to bring a PAAC recommendation to the City Council as an action item only when the recommendation is one that was initiated by the SRPD. For example, on April 15, the SRPD presented a lengthy sales pitch to the PAAC and obtained its support for the SRPD’s acquisition of new military equipment ($150,000 automated “Drone as First Responder” system). The SRPD Liaison presented the PAAC’s recommendation to the City Council on June 2 and received the Council’s authorization to purchase the equipment. But when the PAAC adopts recommendations that could subject the SRPD to new standards, scrutiny, or requirements—like the PAAC’s May 21 equitable policing recommendations—the SRPD Liaison has been more of a stumbling block than an assistant.
The RIPA Equitable Policing Example—In the four months since the PAAC adopted the four equitable policing strategies on May 21, the SRPD Liaison has made no effort to assist the PAAC in bringing those recommendations to the Council for consideration. Immediately following the PAAC vote, the SRPD Liaison suggested that the recommendations simply be included as information items in the PAAC’s annual report. mvfree.org; [email protected] 4
On June 16, MVFREE wrote to the Mayor, City Council, and PAAC (via the SRPD Liaison as he had instructed) offering to assist the PAAC in presenting its RIPA equitable policing recommendations and their evidentiary bases to the City Council. Rather than address that option with the PAAC, the SRPD Liaison apparently met privately with the PAAC Chair and arranged for the creation of a PAAC “work group” that would “focus on” the adopted recommendations under the guidance and supervision of the SRPD Liaison outside of public view.
At the end of the PAAC meeting on June 18, two days after the SRPD Liaison received our letter, the PAAC Chair announced the creation of the work group and its three pre-selected members. The matter was not agendized, the PAAC was given no opportunity to discuss whether or why a work group might be necessary or appropriate, and no information was provided to the PAAC regarding the purpose, process, duration, or expected work product of the work group. Since that time, the PAAC has received no information from or about the work group.
Diverting the PAAC’s actionable recommendations in this way is not only inconsistent with the requirements of the Brown Act but disserves the City and dishonors the service and dedication of the PAAC members. Once the full PAAC had deliberated and adopted the four equitable policing recommendations, there was no legitimate reason to revisit the PAAC’s amply briefed, well-considered, and virtually unanimous decisions. To do so in an exclusive work group led by the SRPD Liaison and created without the participation or consent of the full PAAC, was particularly improper. The recommendations should have been—and should now be— promptly presented to the City Council for consideration.
MVFREE Request #2—To preserve its essential independence and autonomy, the PAAC must have a Staff Liaison who is independent from law enforcement and dedicated to empowering the PAAC to carry out its mission. We urge the City Council to designate an independent Staff Liaison for the PAAC who will, among other things—
• Develop appropriate training for the PAAC in law enforcement oversight standards and practices and in the basic pillars of safe and equitable 21st Century Policing. • Work with input from the PAAC to identify experts and practitioners independent of law enforcement to balance the information offered by the SRPD and enable the PAAC to conduct its own wellinformed assessments of SRPD data, policies, training, practices and other issues. • Ensure that all actionable PAAC recommendations are presented on the agenda of a proximate City Council meeting in a timely and accurate fashion.
Thank you for your consideration of this important topic. We invite the Mayor and members of the City Council, the PAAC, and the SRPD to reach out to us with any questions.
Sincerely,
MVFREE Police Team
Tammy Edmonson
Tara Evans
Ginna Fleming
Frank Leidman
Celimene Pastor
Barbara Rothkrug
Edward Rusky
Frank Shinneman
Cc: San Rafael Police Chief Spiller
PAAC Staff Liaison, SRPD Lt. Eberle
PAAC Sr. Mgt. Analyst, SRPD Officer Teresa Komodo
Assistant City Manager Angela Robinson Piñon
Richard Halstead, Marin Independent Journal
Nikki Silverstein, Pacific Sun