Premier Christy Clark, Richard Rosenthal and Attorney General Shirley Bond  (photo courtesy Government of B.C. and  Send to News)

Vancouver, B.C.-  The Civilian Chief of the  new Independent Investigations Office is Richard Rosenthal.

Who is he?  He  had 15 years experience as a public corruption  prosecutor in Los Angeles,  then took on a role as police monitor in Portland Oregon, and most recently held  a similar post in Denver Colorado.

He has extensive experiencin this job says Premier Christy Clark.  His first task will be to hire staff and set up his office. That is expected to happen  within  the first half of 2012

He says he has three  goals which include:

ensure provincial police policies of uses of force, and  lessons learned will  be used to improve training and practices and transparency to the process "I want to publicly report on significant investigations".

He says he is looking forward to meeting with the  public servants who will be  working  with him to  establish an office location. Those  public servants have already been selected and are ready to  work with him.

"There is substantial work yet to be done" says Attorney General Shirley Bond.

The budget for the office has not been finalized, but Premier Clark says it will likely be close to $10 million  annually. 

Background on Richard Rosenthal:

He served for 15 years as deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County, where he worked on various assignments, including:
* The central trials division, prosecuting violent felonies, including homicides
* The major fraud division, investigating and prosecuting high-profile financial crimes.
* The special investigation division, where he investigated and prosecuted public officials, judges and police officers.

In 2001, Rosenthal was hired as Portland’s first director of the independent police review division of the city auditor’s office. In that capacity, he created Portland’s first professional police oversight agency.

He was then hired in 2005 to be the city and county of Denver’s first independent monitor, with jurisdiction over Denver’s police and sheriff departments. He is responsible for monitoring all officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths that occur in Denver, as well as all
internal criminal and administrative investigations of police misconduct.

Rosenthal has made recommendations to the police and sheriff departments about administrative findings and the imposition of discipline. He has also been responsible for issuing public reports on a quarterly and annual basis relating to the Denver Department of Safety.

Rosenthal helped implement key changes to the Denver police and sheriff departments’ disciplinary processes and created a community-police mediation program that is one of the largest and most respected in the United States.

Rosenthal has held teaching positions at various universities, including Loyola Law School, Portland State University and the University of Colorado at Denver. He served for five years on the board of directors for the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE). Rosenthal was a member of the executive committee used to create the National Guidelines for Police Monitors, published by the Police Assessment Resource Center in 2008.