Not that it really matters anymore, but heres some interesting information about Suisun City Police Chief Ed Dadisho, who until he dropped out on Wednesday was vying for the Baldwin Park Police Chief position.
Apparently, under Dadishos watch, the Suisun City Police Department received F grades two years in a row from a governmental watchdog group that performed public records audits of more than 200 law enforcement agencies across the state.
Kimberly K. Fu, a staff writer for the Vacaville paper, The Reporter, did some stories in 2006 and 2007 about the audit and the grades. Heres a excerpt from her January 2007 story.
Suisun City police officials also rejected their grade, noting special circumstances.
In Suisun City, all police records are stored at City Hall, which is located on the same property, just yards away. When the auditor was referred to go to City Hall for all of the information, it was scored as a failure.
This was an unusual case, admitted CalAware’s Franke. In many cases, the reason departments failed had much to do with failing a legal standard, but thats not the case here. This was a failure of customer service.
Francke explained that in order to pass, the Suisun department would have had to take ownership of the request.
In other words, instead of just sending a member of the public elsewhere, the police department would have had to take care of the request, by obtaining the information within 10 days, and then asking the customer to pick it up.
(…)
Suisun Citys Acting Chief of Police Ed Dadisho was disappointed in the score, because he noted that it is critical of the citys business practice, and is not really a reflection on the department’s willingness to cooperate.
As a police department, we are committed to being transparent to the community, which includes the media and other interested parties, he said.
We are in the process of revising our entire general orders, which havent been revised in over 12 years. The California Public Records Act is one of the areas that we will be focusing on in the revisions of our general orders, which will be done by the end of January.
I should also add that Suisun City PD has had its fair share of controversy. According to The Reporter, in 2006 a Solano County grand jury deemed former Suisun City police Chief Ron Forsythe a weak leader and said the city should hire a consultant to audit the Police Department. Allegations also surfaced that Forsythe was misusing public funds.
