Former Community Police Commission Director's 2025 Budget Slashed Staff Unnecessarily
The ex-CPC director, Cali Ellis, has threatened to sue for discrimination after being put on administrative leave and replaced earlier this year.
By Erica C. Barnett
Cali Ellis, the former executive director of the embattled Community Police Commission, has reportedly threatened to sue the CPC for discrimination, alleging that she was fired because of a medical disability she recently disclosed to the commission.
Ellis was quietly put on indefinite administrative leave earlier this year and replaced on an "acting" basis in August by former CPC director Bessie Scott, who just accepted a position as city manager of Antioch, California.
Before leaving, Ellis proposed eliminating the positions of several staffers, apparently in lieu of firing or disciplining the people currently in those positions.
Although Mayor Bruce Harrell asked every city department to identify potential cuts of 8 percent to help close the city's $250 million budget gap, the CPC and its 10-person staff were exempt from this directive because the police department is still under a federal consent decree, with a hearing on the agreement coming up in Judge James Robart's courtroom on October 16.
Nonetheless, PubliCola has learned, Ellis submitted a 2025 budget that cut two of the CPC's community engagement staffers—a reduction that would represent far more than 8 percent of the commission's budget. The move caused immense consternation among commissioners, who were unaware of Ellis' decision until it was too late to undo it.
Although the City Budget Office finessed the budget-in-progress to reduce the the proposed cut by half, they did so by keeping both positions but cutting them in half—a move designed to satisfy no one, except perhaps Judge Robart, because the budget would not show a reduction in the number of CPC positions.
Because the mayor's budget proposal is balanced and almost out the door, the CPC will have to go to the city council and propose cuts to some other department if it wants to claw back the positions—a potentially daunting task with a new, inexperienced council just going into its first budget cycle, with an agenda that has so far been heavy on police hiring and light on police accountability.
The CPC recently hired a deputy director, but currently lacks a policy director and is short several several staff, including a community engagement staffer who’s on loan to another department and may not return. Another community engagement staffer recently resigned in a mass email to the commission, CPC staff, and a list of CPC stakeholders.
"I was excited by the CPC’s mission to uplift the voices of the underrepresented and those most impacted by unconstitutional policing, along with helping to build bridges between SPD and the community for healthy police reform," the staffer, Jo-Nathan Thomas, wrote. "However, I believe the CPC has become a farce that I can no longer serve with true integrity."
Neither Ellis nor the commission's most recent policy director, Linnea Lassiter, responded to PubliCola's questions. Lassiter worked for the CPC briefly this year but also reportedly left involuntarily. CPC co-chair Joel Merkel declined to respond to questions, except to confirm that Ellis is "on leave."
The CPC has stopped holding regular meetings, which used to happen every two weeks; the most recent meeting, in early September, consisted entirely of an executive session to discuss pending litigation.