SAN JOSE — In its selection for a new civilian police watchdog, San Jose ultimately landed about 50 miles north.
Eddie Aubrey, currently head of the Office of Professional Accountability in the Richmond Police Department, was unanimously approved by the San Jose City Council on Tuesday to lead San Jose’s Office of the Independent Police Auditor.
Aubrey, who was the inaugural OPA manager in Richmond when that office was established in 2016, becomes the seventh person to serve as permanent IPA in San Jose. He succeeds Shivaun Nurre, who ended a lengthy career in the office last year following a controversial encounter at the San Jose Greek Festival in which she drunkenly accosted police officers working at the event.
In the interim, retired Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney Karyn Sinunu-Towery has headed the IPA’s office while the city searched for a full-time replacement.
Aubrey, whose heritage is African American and Korean, will take over the position on May 6.
“I am honored and privileged to to have been appointed,” Aubrey said at an introductory press conference Tuesday at City Hall.
He added that he follows “a north star” to “make a difference and add value to public safety and community service.”
“I saw that opportunity here and I said I wanted to continue that work,” Aubrey said. “I wanted to do that here for the community of San Jose.”
Aubrey brings an array of law enforcement and oversight experiences to the role. He served as a police officer in Santa Monica and Los Angeles from 1980 to 1997, the year he earned a law degree from Seattle University. In the Seattle area, Aubrey worked as a criminal and city prosecutor, led a community college public safety department, served as a pro tem judge, and ran a private law practice in the two decades before he relocated to the Bay Area to take the Richmond oversight job.
Within that time span, in 2009, he established a civilian police auditor office in Fresno modeled after the one employed in San Jose.
“Eddie will help maintain trust between our residents and the people tasked with protecting them,” Mayor Matt Mahan said at the news conference. “We’re incredibly fortunate to have a new independent police auditor with extensive experience both working within and overseeing the conduct of law enforcement agencies.”
Steve Slack, president of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, said in a statement that “we pledge our cooperation to Mr. Aubrey as he transitions into his new role.”
When asked about how his extensive law enforcement background could affect his connection with communities that are historically distrustful of authorities — one of the foundational reasons the IPA’s office was created — he pointed to a track record in Fresno and Richmond of both disciplining and clearing officers accused of misconduct.
“My demonstrated history shows that I have held officers accountable, officers have been terminated, they’ve been suspended, and officers have been found not sustained, exonerated or unfounded” when evaluating allegations, he said.
Sean Allen, a vice president for the San Jose-Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP and a retired Santa Clara County sheriff’s sergeant, said Aubrey’s varied experience shows “promise” that he can handle the delicate balance of the job.
“It’s fair to say the auditor has to respect the due process of everyone, including police officers, but you don’t want someone too cop friendly,” Allen said. “He’s going to have to get out there and communicate with our community, and all its diversity.”
Allen added, “We’re optimistic and will do whatever we can to help him, and to hold him accountable as well, to make sure he works for the public.”
San Jose’s IPA office was established in 1993 as a compromise between city leaders, who wanted a police commission, and the police union, which resisted creating additional civilian oversight. The office has gradually expanded its footprint in the past few years. Voters in 2020 approved authorizing the IPA’s office to audit internal police complaints — known as department-initiated investigations — and review police use-of-force records.
That measure also gave the city latitude to take on a larger role in police oversight, and the city explored the idea of moving SJPD internal investigations out of the police department and into the IPA’s office.
But that movement ultimately died out with the council deciding last fall to preserve the current system — in which the office makes policy recommendations but has no power to compel the police department to adopt them — and pledging to increase the agency’s staff and resources.
That is a notable contrast from Aubrey’s role in Richmond, where he was a civilian with direct oversight for the department’s internal affairs unit. But he said Tuesday that he believes that the existing IPA arrangement in San Jose can be leveraged to produce change.
“You just don’t make the recommendations, you have a discussion and a dialogue … that’s the kind of collaboration that I’m hoping to have,” Aubrey said. “Right now what I’m looking at is what do we have, what can we use, and how effectively can we use that model in the things that we’re doing. And we’re always open to entertaining other options.”
