LAPD civilian watchdog panel picks FBI agent turned USC professor as new president

The Los Angeles Police Commission named a new president this week, picking an FBI agent turned university security director and professor to lead the civilian agency charged with oversight of the LAPD. Introducing Southers at the commission’s weekly meeting Tuesday, the outgoing president, William Briggs, praised his successor’s eagerness to meet with rank-and-file LAPD officers, department brass and police union officials “to learn more about the issues that are most important to them and that impact their work.” “Commissioner Southers has worked throughout his career to educate officers and civilians alike on best practices in policing and public safety,” Briggs said. “It means having enough personnel, it means having enough resources … but it also means having the necessary community relations so that people can help us help them.” It’s a “difficult task,” he said, but the two aren’t “diametrically opposed.” Some LAPD observers opposed Southers’ appointment because of his time with the Santa Monica Police Department and the FBI, and his later work as a counter-terrorism advisor. Hamid Khan, an organizer with the police abolitionist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, said Southers’ appointment sends the message that it’s business as usual with “a rubber-stamp body” that has historically failed to rein in abuses. Shields’ background as a former federal drug prosecutor, Briggs said, afforded her “intimate knowledge that crime has on our institutions.” Since joining the commission this spring she has become an advocate “for diversity and inclusiveness,” and had taken an interest in addressing recruitment,bias in police operations and use of force, he said.