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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. If you've ever seen a cop TV show or movie, you're familiar with the Department of Internal Affairs, the cops who investigate other cops. Hollywood always portrays that group as being at great odds with the rest of the department, yet Internal Affairs is decidedly inside the tent of law enforcement, something much more independent and objective. It is a position that Eugene has had for a long time, and in many ways, leads other cities. The Independent Police Auditor today on the show, you'll meet Craig Renetzky, the new auditor for Eugene, and learn what his role is and how it helps both the police and citizens find resolution to complaints and find a better path forward in policing. Craig Renetzky, thanks so much for coming in and talking to us.
CRAIG RENETZKY: My pleasure.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Why don't we start with this? What does an auditor do?
CRAIG RENETZKY: So first of all, the independent auditor, which is kind of one of the key things, okay, we are independent of the police station and the police department. We don't work for the police department. We're not based in the police department. But it's a part of an overall concept that actually predates George Floyd. A lot of people think that this all came out of the George Floyd era. Okay, it's the idea of having civilian oversight onto the police department and their activities.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Talk about why that's important.
CRAIG RENETZKY: So, it's important in the sense that when the police do a good job. The auditor's office takes compliments and commendations, and if the police don't live up to their expectations or performance, you really, in essence, don't want, as the famous saying goes, the fox guarding the hen house. So, since I don't report to the police chief, I report directly to the city council. If there's any sort of misconduct that's identified. It doesn't allow for the police department to just hide it. It's a second set of eyes that are watching what's going on. And since the police work for the public, it's really the public watching the police.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, how does it differ from something that I think a lot of people are familiar with, mostly through Hollywood and TV, is Internal Affairs?
CRAIG RENETZKY: The dreaded internal affairs…The internal affairs departments or divisions, whatever they want to call it, most police departments, they report to the police chief. Okay? So, they are basically somewhat subject to political pressures or police pressures from the chief. Let's give an example. The police chief really doesn't want this particular case investigated. Okay, the police chief can kind of put a kibosh on that, whereas I don't answer to the police chief. So, if I see misconduct, I'm able to move forward without having to go to the chief saying, you know, please, let me move forward.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, why don't you take us through, sort of how it works, how your office works. You know, how complaints get to your desk and then, and then from there? How does it all happen in terms of investigation?
CRAIG RENETZKY: Absolutely, so in the modern era, people go to our website, they can go to a portal and enter complaints there. We have a physical office, again, it's not located in the police department. We're right in downtown Eugene that people can walk up during office hours. People can call the office. So, to me, that's all really important, by the way, because if you are fearful of the police and you don't want to go to the department, you're not walking into the department. You can file complaints anonymously. We prefer when it's not done anonymously, so we can follow up and ask additional questions and report back what happened. Okay, but some people literally go on to the portal, they'll enter their complaint, and they can log back in and check the status, okay.
MICHAEL DUNNE: How did you get into this? Talk about your career and why you became a police independent auditor.
CRAIG RENETZKY: Well, this has been a long path. I graduated from law school. I was a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County. There's about 1000 deputy days out there. And as a prosecutor, I started off doing misdemeanors and infractions all the way through murder cases, and during that time, I ended up representing the state of California on cases where officers were victims, and I also ended up prosecuting some officers during my time there, so it gave me a perspective of both. And at some point, I was assigned to the major Narcotics Division for the District Attorney's Office, where I got to spend five years. Uh, sub assigned to the sheriff's department a federally funded narcotics Task Force, where I got to see law enforcement in the field doing their daily activities. And just prior to getting that assignment, I was involved in prosecuting and a deputy sheriff that was stealing money on search warrants. So, believe it or not, the first assignment for this task force was out of that very same station that I had just sent a deputy to jail from. So, I had the impression that a lot of the public often does, oh, there's a thin blue line. They're going to hate me. I was a little concerned going in there, and I was shocked to find that the police or the deputies in this case were very different. They were like, that was not a cop, that was a crook, that was someone across the line, and they were thankful that I ended up prosecuting that person.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You come from a massive city with a massive police force, a famous police force, not always for the right reasons. But I'm wondering, you know, coming to a smaller community like Eugene, first of all, do cities the size of Eugene, does every city the size of Eugene have an independent auditor? Auditor? Is it a fairly unique position, and going down to a smaller community? I'm kind of just interested in your perspective of how things may be different but also may be similar.
CRAIG RENETZKY: Sure. Excellent question. So, besides the LAPD, I also do hearings involving sheriff's deputies and probation officers, so I've had to see a lot of different departments. It's also something that I taught when I was teaching my college classes, and I can tell you that the oversight that the city of Eugene has over its police department far exceeds anything I've seen in any other city. Wow. They have a police commission that watches the police department. They have their internal affairs group, they have my office, the auditors. We have something called the civilian review board. There's a lot of oversight, and Eugene is also somewhat special, and in that it's not a new department. I think we're coming up on our 20th or 25th anniversary, which is, if you think about it, there are a lot of times in recent history that people were like, We need oversight. Eugene was the head of the game, and I really think there's nothing. Everyone should not be concerned that someone's looking over their shoulder. I think that's a good concept. So Eugene really has an outstanding police oversight thing. And like I said, my office takes both complaints or commendations and complaints. So I think it's important that we are not only calling the officers out when they do make mistakes across the line, but we also compliment them when they go above and beyond. And I've actually seen that as well. So it's really kind of nice to see this sort of system out there.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I've talked to Chief Skinner several times, and one of the things he impressed upon me was this idea that, yes, it's the police, they have a very difficult job to do, but in some ways, they're also customer service representatives. And so I asked, I bring that up as I ask you about a lot of complaints I imagine against the police. Aren't, you know, what we'd see in some Hollywood rendition. It's, were they rude to me? Were they, you know, I imagine some of the complaints are very again, what you might see is a complaint against a store clerk or something like that? Is that correct?
CRAIG RENETZKY: Absolutely. What people sometimes forget is the way the community is set up. The last line of defense is frequently the police. If you have, let's say, a problem with someone that's living on the streets, and you've called this group, or you called that group, a lot of those calls eventually end up with 911, if someone's having a mental health crisis and there's no one responding, it goes to the police. Sometimes, someone's just having a bad day, they're suicidal, it could go to the police. So the police frequently see people at their worst, and that's the reality. And during my five years when I was assigned to the sheriff's department, I saw that frequently, and what people forget is that the police are humans. They go out there sometimes and they're having a bad day. So it is not unusual to see people complain. You know, no one likes to get pulled over by the police. Those red lights go on behind you, you're not about to jump for joy, so you're already in a bad mood, sure, and the police may have just come from a death investigation, so they're not feeling great. And I see these sorts of things, and that's just the reality. And again, you know, we look at complaints and we have to classify them, and a lot of times. When the cooler heads occur, it's a few days down the line, the police that are involved or a supervisor will meet with the community member that was unhappy, and they can kind of learn and see things from each other's perspectives. And you sometimes get excellent outcomes.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Right now in this country, in this state, in this community we seem to be living in this time of tremendous tension, there's going to be a lot of attention on police generally, isn't it?
CRAIG RENETZKY: It's been the whole policing profession has, quite frankly, changed. Okay, they're much more professional. In the old days, they might not even require a high school diploma. Now, there are police departments that want a college degree. They are no longer necessarily attracted to the officer where they say, hand grenade and the officer jumps on it. They want police officers that will use their heads and think things through, and the police a lot of people forget don't get to make law. We're throwing them into situations like with immigration, where they are told that this is where they must perform and they must do certain things, and yet they have an underlying duty to protect the public, and that includes protesters, and that also would include an immigration agent, a group of people are attacking and beating the living you know what? Out of an immigration agent, they have to intervene. That's they're under a duty to protect lives. But they're also told, Well, you're not supposed to assist. So it's definitely we're asking them to walk a much finer line, and we're asking them to do that without saying, hey, what do you think about it? They're just told that this is, this is how you have to do your job, and it makes their job more difficult. But people, I think the general public, understands that they're given restraints and they're also given limited resources. That's another reality. We're asking the police departments to do less more with less money. We're asking them to become experts on things that they never needed to be experts on. And mental health isn't a perfect example. You learn that you know someone's having a mental health crisis they don't have. They're not psychologists, they're not psychiatrists, they're not given those tools, and yet we're asking them to intervene. So I think all of that has made the job more complicated, but that's why it's a profession now, to an extent, and it makes, of course, my job more difficult, because I have to judge them fairly, and I also have to understand both sides of those issues.
MICHAEL DUNNE: So, my last question for you is, what are your goals for your organization, for your department, what do you want to see happen today and a few years down the road?
CRAIG RENETZKY: So, like I said earlier, I think oversight is critical. We give the police very special powers. We say to you, we are going to give you the ability, in some cases, to take a life, and that has to happen. And not only are we going to do that, we're going to give you the gun that you may need to take that life. And then we say, go out and follow these situations and follow these rules. So we're giving them great power. And there's a very famous saying that says, with great power, absolute power comes absolute corruption, or I know I'm messing that, with great power comes great responsibilities. That would work too. So, the idea of my office being able to fairly judge and look at situations to make sure that the police are following the rules to make sure that they're doing it in a way that it wouldn't exist if we didn't have independent oversight. But it comes down to to me, to the most simple, basic concept the police work for us, the public. And what that means is that we as the public have the right to set realistic expectations and to make sure that they are also following the rules. Police are people. People make mistakes. Some people will own those mistakes when they make it. Others don't. Police will make mistakes, sometimes they will own it, and sometimes they won't. And I need to step in, much like a parent, in a way, and say, You really shouldn't have done that. And if discipline is warranted, I can send it through the chain, and then the police chief ultimately decides on that discipline. And there's some cases that I will look at, and so that this is what the law says. This is what happened, and no, discipline is not appropriate. It's not criminal. We're not going to raise allegations against the officer. So that's the first goal. The second goal is to be transparent. The public should be able. This is not a secret process. Some of it they're not entitled to know because of Oregon law, okay, for example, the ultimate discipline decision, that's not public. It's a personal thing, much like if you work for you. Now, Acme Corporation and someone files a complaint against the coyote, you want to be able to come in and you know, not necessarily, should be able to dive into the coyotes personnel file that he chased the Road Runner just a few too many times. So, I want to do that. I want to be a source where the public is comfortable coming in and letting us know when the police do great work and when police don't do great work. Feel comfortable that we will take their complaints seriously. So, part of my real goal is to get out to the community and let people know about our office, let them know about the process. I think the era of police transparency and oversight will continue to grow, and I think that's the new norm, and I think it's a great thing, quite frankly.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Good enough. Good enough. Craig Renetsky, he is the new independent police auditor for the city of Eugene. Thank you so much for coming in and talking with us.
CRAIG RENETZKY: Thank you for having me.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Monday on the show, we'll talk about the controversial new license plate reading cameras installed in some of our local communities. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon On the Record. Thanks for listening.
