As a University of California-Berkeley law student in the 1970s, Merrick Bobb was stopped by an angry Oakland cop and accused of intentionally driving his car toward the officer, says the Los Angeles Times. Bobb felt helpless under the officer’s accusation, which he strongly denied. Berkeley police officers approached and said they believed Bobb. They told him he was free to go. “The discretion the police had stayed with me,” Bobb said. “They can be absolutely the best thing in your life – or your worst nightmare.”
Bobb, 59, a Los Angeles lawyer, now is one of the nation’s leading authorities on police conduct. For the last 12 years he has been an independent monitor of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Bobb’s organization, the Police Assessment Resource Center, contracts to monitor and provide guidance to departments around the nation. “Regardless of how much he gets under people’s skin, it has a positive effect,” says Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. “You need somebody from outside the structure who is free to call them as he sees them.”
Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-profile19sep19,1,2747980.story?coll=la-headlines-california