Community Commentary:

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Gary Bric read a statement regarding the issues facing the Burbank Police Department. This statement was drafted by Bric and me and approved by the entire City Council. We felt that the community needed to hear from their City Council regarding the seriousness of the issues facing our police department and what the city has been and is doing to address them.

Unfortunately, I believe the story that ran in the Wednesday Burbank Leader (“FBI probes Police Dept.”) may have left readers with some rather significantly wrong impressions. The story omitted some important facts, so I’d like to clarify the important points that I believe were inaccurately portrayed in the article.

The first and probably most important area where the story omitted a very important fact was in regards to the Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigation. The story omitted that the sheriff’s investigation was initiated at the request of our chief of police, Tim Stehr. The statement said: “Chief Stehr requested the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department come in and perform an independent investigation.” I think it is important to know that the Police Department themselves were the ones to bring in an outside agency to investigate the allegations against itself.

The story also reported that the mayor “blew the lid off the investigations” after the council had remained silent on the legal action building against the city. While our statement contained more detailed information on the investigations, the fact that there are both internal and external investigations looking into issues at the police department was disclosed publicly in response to oral communications at a council meeting as far back as May.

I also want to note that the investigations were started before the filing of the claims. According to the Los Angeles Times, the FBI has stated that its criminal investigation is not addressing the claims in the lawsuits. The claims that have arisen from the recent lawsuits continue to be investigated by the outside counsel and investigator brought in by the city.

I encourage you to read the statement we made, as there are a number of areas that differ from the story. It is available at www.burbankusa.com.

Your City Council remains committed to seeing that all of the issues regarding our Police Department are investigated thoroughly and appropriately dealt with. We will also update the community as we can through this process and share whatever information we are legally permitted to do so. I think that it is also important to repeat that we strongly believe that the majority of the men and women in our Police Department are not involved in these issues and again recognize the excellent job they do protecting the safety of our community on a daily basis, even during these difficult times.

 DAVE GOLONSKI is a member of the Burbank City Council.