SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Nearly a decade after its creation to give residents a voice in shaping police policy, the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission functions largely as “window dressing” — a symbolic body without the resources or authority to drive meaningful change, according to a report released June 25 by the 2025-26 Sacramento County Grand Jury, a civilian panel that investigates the operations of local government.
The Commission traces its origins to July 11, 2016, when Sacramento Police Department officers fatally shot Joseph Mann, a 50-year-old man experiencing a mental health crisis, firing 18 rounds and striking him 14 times. The shooting drew significant public attention and became the catalyst for establishing civilian oversight of the department. Mann’s family later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging officers should not have used lethal force against a man showing clear signs of a mental health crisis, ABC News reported.
Following the shooting, the then-mayor convened an ad hoc City Council committee that recommended creating a commission empowered to review police policies and investigate citizen complaints, supported by a dedicated officer, a budget analyst, an independent investigator and a $600,000 budget. That proposal was never submitted. On Nov. 29, 2016, the Council instead adopted a substantially different version that omitted all funding and staffing, despite public objections that the body would lack the tools to function effectively. Council members described the measure as a first step, with further steps to follow; in the decade since, no further amendments have been adopted.
The consequences are reflected in the numbers. Since its creation, the Commission has submitted 178 recommendations on issues including the use of military equipment and the handling of citizen complaints. SPD has voluntarily implemented 10. The Council has heard seven and voted to adopt just one — a 2021 use-of-force policy. Between 2018 and 2021, the Council labeled all 110 recommendations it received as “received and filed.”
The lack of power is not a new concern. In 2019, as community leaders criticized the body as symbolic following the police killing of Stephon Clark, then-Chair Kiran Savage acknowledged in an interview with Sacramento television station ABC10 that the Commission held no real authority over the department. “We have no actual oversight power of the police department,” Savage said, adding that meaningful change depended entirely on the mayor and City Council choosing to act on the Commission’s recommendations.
The Commission operates without basic infrastructure: no public-facing website, no commissioner email addresses, no dedicated public contact information, no budget and no required training for its 11 members. Public notice of its meetings appears only on the city’s general boards and commissions page. Neither SPD nor the Council is required to respond to recommendations or act on them, and no entity tracks their status.
The Commission produces an annual report, work plan and recommendations that, with few exceptions, are routinely placed on the Council’s consent calendar and ignored, the Grand Jury found. Citing the Council’s failure to fund outreach, the report notes that Commission meetings rarely draw more than five members of the public.
The findings echo a November 2021 report by the Sacramento Office of the City Auditor, which identified unclear roles, insufficient resources and inadequate tracking of recommendations as barriers to the Commission’s effectiveness. Five years later, the Council has not adopted or implemented any of the audit’s recommendations. Every interviewee — from SPD, the Commission, past and present, and the City Council — confirmed the body cannot function effectively, according to the Grand Jury.
The Grand Jury issued seven recommendations, each with a Dec. 31, 2026, deadline: establishing a public website and dedicated email address, developing procedures to consider and track recommendations, requiring formal written responses from SPD, mandating commissioner training and formally responding to the 2021 audit. Under California Penal Code Sections 933 and 933.05, the Sacramento City Council must respond to all findings and recommendations within 90 days. Responses were also requested within 60 days from interim Police Chief Zachary Bales, City Manager Maraskeshia Smith and the Commission chair.
Meaningful community participation in policing builds trust and promotes accountability, the Grand Jury wrote, concluding that the Commission’s inability to bring about change only reinforces the public’s view that residents have no voice in the policing that shapes their neighborhoods and lives.
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