The Richmond City Council on Tuesday approved hiring a retired police chief to serve as interim investigator for the Community Police Review Commission (CPRC), the city’s independent body charged with publicly handling citizen complaints of police misconduct.
Bill Whalen, who served as Chief of Police for the City of El Segundo in Southern California, succeeds CPRC investigator Jerry Threet, who resigned in September 2024. Threet alleged bias and unethical conduct from commission members in an email sent to all city departments on his final day on the job.
The hiring was part of the council’s consent calendar vote, meaning it was approved along with a number of routine items that aren’t individually discussed unless council members choose to do so. That investigator is in charge of investigating allegations from the public against on-duty officers for excessive or unnecessary force, discrimination, sexual harassment and/or sexual assault.
Whalen’s appointment comes a week after the council voted 3-4 not to investigate Threet’s claims, as requested by council members Soheila Bana, District 4, and Jamelia Brown, District 1. Mayor Eduardo Martinez, who has supported the CPRC’s independence, was absent Tuesday so Vice Mayor and District 2 council member Cesar Zepeda led the meeting.
The city began searching for an interim investigator in November, and, according to documents the city provided, a CPRC ad hoc committee chose Whalen from a pool of three candidates that included Municipal Resource Group and Jonathan Dugas, who the city provided no information about.
When Threet resigned there were nine outstanding complaints against Richmond police officers, and since then another 17 complaints have been filed, according to a staff report.
The investigator’s “scope of work will involve review of the backlog of complaints, prioritization of the cases, and commencement of the investigations with the goal of reducing the backlog in preparation for the permanent placement,” according to the contract council members approved Tuesday.
Threet, an attorney who has since moved to Canada, was paid $107 an hour to work about 80 hours per month, at a rate of about $100,000 a year for the part-time job, staff said in its report, not mentioning Threet by name.
“Based on recent inquiries, it seems unlikely that the City will be able to identify an interim investigator willing to commit to the previous investigator’s compensation level,” city staff wrote to council members in November, saying 80 hours per month “is not adequate” to address the pending complaints.
Staff said complaints should be investigated “in a timely manner,” noting in November that three of them would be a year old as of February and that two others were more than a year old at that time. The CPRC receives an average of about one complaint a month.
“In light of the number of complaints needing attention, it is important that the City hire an investigator as soon as possible,” the memo, dated Nov. 19, 2024, stated.
Who is Bill Whalen, the CPRC’s interim investigator?
Whalen was El Segundo’s police chief for four years, retiring in 2021 after a 32-year law enforcement career, according to an article on the city’s website that said he had “a highly positive impact on the City organization in general, and within the El Segundo Police Department in particular.”
“Chief Whalen successfully enhanced community engagement initiatives, improved the department’s organizational structure, and skillfully guided the City through the COVID-19 and social justice emergencies,” the City of El Segundo said in Whalen’s retirement announcement. “Throughout his career, Chief Whalen has been an advocate for equity, unbiased policing, and effective police-community relations.”
“Throughout his career, Chief Whalen has been an advocate for equity, unbiased policing, and effective police-community relations.” — City of El Segundo
(El Segundo, which means “The Second” in English, got its name because it was the location of the second West Coast refinery for Standard Oil, now Chevron. Richmond was the first.) Before that, Whalen worked for the Garden Grove and Irvine police departments.
Whalen “honed his skills in conducting and reviewing misconduct investigations” and became “a seasoned use of force instructor,” according to the “about” page on the Bill Whalen & Associates website, which doesn’t list any other employees besides Whalen.
Threet’s complaints said that the CPRC “has engaged in conduct that reflects bias, or a failure to meet its semi-judicial obligations — particularly as they pertain to due process protections and adherence to objective investigative standards.”
His email to the city said that the CPRC ignores evidence “even when it is crucial to the questions at issue in the investigation, such as the officer’s state of mind at the time” and that commissioners describe evidence “in ways that are diametrically opposed to the actual facts in evidence.”
“Some commissioners have accused those with a different view of the facts with bias in favor of police officers for considering evidence that supports the officers’ actions as appropriate under the circumstances,” Threet wrote in the email.
Council members last week called Threet’s claims “weak” and declined to investigate them.
Whalen’s $50,000 contract begins today and continues through the end of the year while the city recruits a permanent investigator.
Richmondside reached out to Whalen for comment but had not heard back from him as of publication time.
Have you done your research and asked how many of the 17 new complaints were filed by Reimagine Richmond folks?
Or how many were PAID by Reimagine Richmond (or RPA or Safe Return Project) to file a complaint?