Group meets law enforcement to discuss race

A commission met Saturday with police chiefs and Sheriff Mike Carona to discuss racial profiling.

 

IRVINE Top-ranking police officers and sheriff's deputies met with members of Orange County's black community Saturday afternoon to discuss racial profiling and recent incidents with law enforcement that have left some residents worried about their safety.

The Oden Commission convened at Christ Our Redeemer AME Church with Sheriff Mike Carona, Irvine Police Chief Dave Maggard, Huntington Beach Police Captain Bill Stuart and about a dozen officers and deputies. In their second meeting in two months, they discussed the Oct. 2 killing of Aliso Viejo resident Kevin Powell after a police pursuit and other incidents that attendees said indicated unfair treatment of minorities by the county's troopers.

Speakers, including widow Minez Powell, shared stories about being pulled over for no apparent reason or not getting sufficient information from the police.

"I have heard a woman say she has more concern about her son with the police in Orange County – Tustin to be specific – than her son in Iraq," said Thomas Parham, vice chairman of the Oden Commission, named after Beverly Oden, a U.S. Olympian raised in Irvine who in May was held in a police car for more than an hour and questioned by sheriff's deputies about an incident to which she had no connection.

 

The law chiefs said their departments are implementing cultural sensitivity training.

"We recognize there were some overt acts that we need to investigate," said Carona, who's facing his own federal indictment charges, which he refused to discuss Saturday.

"A lot of events have happened in my life," the sheriff said. "I get it. I get the message."

Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters did not attend.