Our Mission
We are a statewide coalition that advocates for and supports establishing, maintaining, and improving effective civilian oversight of county Sheriff’s offices, to bring accountability and transparency throughout California as authorized under AB 1185.
As elected officials, Sheriffs have enormous power but no checks and balances. The Sheriff’s department affects the community’s safety and quality of life. People of color have experienced unfair treatment and violence at the hands of law enforcement.
Civilian oversight provides transparency, accountability, and fairness, leading to increased trust in law enforcement, community safety and more effective policing.
Oversight bodies are responsible to the Board of Supervisors and the community, not the Sheriff. The entities need the power to obtain information, including from the sheriff, and the authority to undertake independent investigations, review policies, procedures, and practices, make recommendations, and issue public reports of findings to the Board of Supervisors, Sheriff, and community.
Civilian oversight is crucial for holding law enforcement agencies accountable to the community, ensuring transparency in their actions, identifying systemic issues, and promoting public trust by providing an independent body to review complaints and recommend improvements when necessary; essentially acting as a check on police power and fostering better community relations.
National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE)
CCSO was launched as a way for counties working on oversight to learn from and collaborate with each other. We want all 58 counties to have effective, independent civilian oversight of their Sheriff’s Office.
Focus areas
Our primary focus is to learn from one another about trends, challenges, and areas of opportunity in Sheriff’s office oversight. We will monitor and advocate for proposed and potential legislation and legal developments related to law enforcement oversight.
What we do
- We develop educational resources for the broader community.
- We are a learning community; we trade tips, challenges, wins, lessons learned, and best practices.
- We share experiences and build collaborative capacity for effective Sheriff’s Office oversight.
- We collaborate with national, state and local advocates for effective sheriff oversight.
- We partner with organizations such as the League of Women Voters of California, existing oversight bodies, NACOLE, and the ACLU to develop databases and scorecards on Sheriff’s Offices and identify best practices that can facilitate effective oversight across the state.
- We engage with and educate public officials and the community about effective civilian oversight of Sheriff’s Offices under AB 1185.
- We work closely with county supervisors to establish, enforce, and strengthen effective oversight.
- We document; we track what we are doing to build a shared database of what works, to help one another and other counties that are coming online with oversight.