Albuquerque Media Articles
concerning the activities of Donald B. Jeffries, Chairman, Albuquerque Police Advisory Board
Albuquerque Journal
September, 1980
The Albuquerque Police advisory board will take its meetings to the community to seek more citizen input.
Board member Donald Jeffries said the move is being made to improve police-community relations.
“In the past, all the meetings have been in the Police Department, but now we want to go to the people,” he said.
He cited poor attendance by citizens at the meetings as another reason for the move.
“A reason for the poor attendance is that coming to the Police Department for meetings has been intimidating for some people,” he said. “We want to change that.”
The board was founded in 1976 by ordinance of the City Council. The board’s early lobbying efforts led to the addition of one recruit class per year.
In August, a new administration for the board was elected. The executive committee is chaired by Joe DeBaca and co-chaired by Tom Williams and Jeffries.
The meetings will be held in various parts of the community and will be announced.
“We want to make it clear to citizens that we’re neutral and want better police-community relations,” Jeffries said.
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Albuquerque Tribune
February, 1981
Police Advisory Board is out of hibernation
by Ricardo Gandara
Tribune Staff Writer
The Police Advisory Board is getting out of the Police Department and into the community to become “neutral” and help improve police-citizen relations, the group’s chairman said.
Don Jeffries said the rejuvenated board is going to be more “aggressive and liberal.”
We’re not in hibernation anymore. We’ll be out in the public eye,” he said.
Jeffries said the board’s new attitude hopefully will improve relations between the community and police.
The City Council formed the board in May 1978 at the request of concerned citizens.
“It was not given judicial power, but instead power to advise,” the chairman said.
He became chairman of the 11-member panel in January, but the board’s change had begun four months before that.
“We elected new officers and decided to get out of the police department and into the community. We decided to become a neutral board. Before, the board was just a rubber stamp to the policies of the Albuquerque Police Department,” he said.
He said the turnover rate on the board was high during the first couple of years. The present board consists of Vice-Chairman Tom Williams, Joe DeBaca, Charlotte Toulouse, Nancy Pasternak, the Rev. Harry Summers, Ed Sandoval and Barbara Jones. Two slots have to be filled.
“When I came on in January of 1980 the board had a complete turnover. The board had become more activist, but just didn’t have the energy,” he said.
The initial group convinced the City Council that APD needed more than one cadet class a year to solve manpower problems. A second cadet class each year was approved.
The present board now meets on a regular basis, the first and third Wednesday of the month. The first meeting of the month in APD’s conference room is primarily for the board members. The second meeting is held in different sites in the community.
“After a community meeting with the full board we have two meetings in successive months by districts. We call these ‘response meetings.’ The fourth month is a community-wide educational form meeting,” Jeffries said.
He said the community-wide meetings deal with specific topics, the abuse of the 911 emergency number being one of the items. The board also explains to citizens the concerns of the department.
Jeffries said the board gets citizen input and relays it to Margaret Sandoval, Police Chief Elroy “Whitey” Hansen’s administrative assistant.
“We don’t handle anything like complaints against officers. That’s for the Internal Affairs Division. We are a liaison mechanism about the concerns citizens would normally feel intimidated about expressing to the department. We follow up the concerns and make sure they’re dealt with,” he said.
The group’s next meeting is March 18 at 7 p.m. in the Trumbull Community Center, 419 Pennsylvania S.E. The next community-wide meeting is April 15. The location will be announced later. The topic of the meeting is how women can best deal with crime and how to defend themselves.
An APD representative is present at all meetings.
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Albuquerque Heights Outlook
February 11, 1981
Page 1
Neighborhood input sought by police
by Jane Piper
Outlook Staff Writer
The Albuquerque Police Advisory Board is trying to bridge what is sees as a communication gap between the pubic and the police department.
By initiating a series of meetings in various neighborhoods across the city, the 11-member board is hoping to allay concerns of both sectors by establishing a better communications base.
Advisory board chairman Donald Jeffries said the meetings are designed to bring out specific neighborhood concerns and to give residents and neighborhood patrolmen an opportunity to talk.
The first neighborhood meeting was in the Trumbull neighborhood last November. A second public meeting has been scheduled at the Trumbull Community Center for 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 18. The center is located at 419 Pennsylvania St. SE. Jeffries encourages the many apartment dwellers as well as homeowners in the neighborhood to attend.
A third meeting is scheduled in Trumbull on March 18.
“Our neutrality is critical to the board,” says Jeffries. “The board is independent. It’s not our function to advocate police policy.”
The first meeting in each neighborhood will be a general meeting, Jeffries said, with all advisory board members present. A neighborhood patrolman and city council representative from that area also will be invited.
Two More Meetings
The general meeting will be followed by two more meetings over the subsequent two months to be chaired by the advisory member representing that particular district. Also present will be advisory board members from adjoining districts, Jeffries said.
Neighborhood residents are invited to all meetings, and are encouraged to make known area concerns and problems in the police/community relationship.
The public meetings mark the end of several years of hibernation of the advisory board.
Formed by a city council ordinance passed in May of 1978, the board’s function is to advise the chief of police, the major and the city council in police/community matters.
Jeffries was appointed to the board in Jan. 1980.
“It was apparent to me that we weren’t doing the community a whole lot of good,” he said. “It was time we got out of the police department and into the community where we could be more effective.”
The 11-member board is appointed by the major. Nine members represent the different council districts, and two are appointed at-large. Jeffries, named chairman of the group only a few weeks ago, is one of the at-large members.
The first meeting in Trumbull brought questions from residents that Jeffries thinks will echo common concerns all over the city.
“We weren’t sure what to expect,” he said. “No one had done this before.”
Residents’ Concerns
Residents’ concerns encompassed such subjects as drugs and gambling in neighborhood parks, abandoned cars parked on private lots, use of the emergency 911 phone number, worries of retribution from criminals after reporting crimes, and questions about what steps were being taken to restore APD credibility following its handling of the Phil Chacon murder last fall.
“I think we’re going to find a lot of the same concerns elsewhere,” Jeffries said, “but we’ll get specific ones for different neighborhoods, too. The kinds of crimes differ in different geographical areas.”
In addition to the questions from the audience, the meetings will also allow time for the neighborhood patrolman to relay information to residents on such topics as use of the 911 line, the scope of police power, how to react when witnessing a criminal situation, and the lines of communication available when dealing with APD.
The advisory board will then relay the concerns of the neighborhood to the police chief, council and mayor.
“We want to view this as citizens,” Jeffries said. “We want to make the citizens realize that the police are human beings, too, and make the police department aware that they are working with real people.”
“Our paramount concern is establishing a better communications base between the citizens and the police department.”
The February and March meetings will be held in Trumbull, and the April general meeting tentatively is scheduled for the Kirtland-South Broadway neighborhood.