Morning Report: Vacancies Filled, Police Oversight Commission Looks To Get Back To Work

By the Voice of San Diego Staff:

When voters approved Measure B in 2020, they approved the creation of a new police oversight commission that, unlike its predecessor, would be able to investigate allegations of police misconduct, rather than just review the internal reviews by the San Diego Police Department.

Two and a half years later, though, the new commission was hardly functioning, after two thirds of its commissioner seats became vacant through a combination of attrition and inattention, as Kelly Davis reported for us earlier this month.

The City Council took a step toward addressing the situation Monday, filling 25 vacancies during a four-hour meeting.

The new group of commissioners includes, as Davis reports, Brandon Hilpert and Doug Case, both of whom have chaired the commission, LGBTQ activist Nicole Murray Ramirez, homeless advocate James Justus, community organizer Laila Aziz, and Dwayne Harvey, whose son, Aaron, split a $1.5 million settlement against the city of San Diego for wrongful arrest.

The commission isn’t out of the woods yet, though. The new commissioners need to undergo background checks and training before they can begin doing the commission’s work. And once that happens, the commission still needs to draft its own operating procedures – which the Council will need to approve.

Read the full story here.

Last week, environment reporter MacKenzie Elmer revealed the Metropolitan Transit System’s digital ticketing app is causing trouble for riders.

Riders often struggle to validate their tickets because the scanners don’t always work. This isn’t only an inconvenience for riders, but it’s also costing the transportation a lot of money.

Who can relate: After we published the story, many took to social media and San Diego Reddit to share their frustrations with the app. Some say they want to pay, but often jump on the trolley without doing so, or get waved through by bus drivers who don’t want to keep waiting.

“It’s a terrible system that is incredibly easy to manipulate and ride for free for months on end,” wrote one Reddit commenter who said they use both the bus and trolley almost every weekday.

In response, MTS pointed to a survey showing 92 percent of riders were satisfied with the service.

But that’s not what we heard from readers. And there’s other points to consider. Elmer unpacks the agency’s response and what people on the ground are saying about the tech in her latest Environment Report.

Read the Environment Report here.

The Morning Report was written by Andrew Keatts, Andrea Lopez-Villafaña and Tigist Layne. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.

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