Merrick Bobb, one of many godfathers of the fashionable police oversight motion in Los Angeles and past, has died. He was 79.
Bobb, whose well being had deteriorated in recent times, died Thursday evening at Cedars-Sinai Medical Middle in L.A., his two youngsters, Matthew and Jonathan, confirmed Friday.
A Los Feliz resident for greater than 40 years, Bobb had 4 grandchildren, was fluent in a number of languages and was revered as one of many earliest champions of civilian oversight of legislation enforcement.
He had a protracted profession, shining a light-weight on issues inside main legislation enforcement businesses And he completed his most vital work with out the usage of his fingers or legs, which turned successfully paralyzed after he contracted a uncommon and debilitating autoimmune situation referred to as Guillain-Barré syndrome in 2003.
“He was all the time an individual who was actually engaged on the planet,” Jonathan mentioned in an interview with him and his brother. “I feel that rising up within the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties with the civil rights motion and different related actions was very seminal for him by way of instilling perception in justice [and] understanding the voices of historically underrepresented teams.”
For 20 years starting in 1993, Bobb served as particular counsel to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. In that place, he delivered semiannual reviews that detailed pervasive points inside the division, from widespread violence within the county’s jails to extreme power, driving quite a lot of reforms within the division.
In 2014, the board created the Workplace of Inspector Common and dismissed Bobb from his function with the county. That call of criticism that he and Michael Gennaco, the then-head of the Workplace of Impartial Assessment, had not carried out sufficient to cease the issues within the jails, which had turn into a significant scandal.
Two years earlier, a federal decide had to function impartial monitor of the Seattle Police Division’s consent decree with the U.S. Division of Justice. He held that place till 2020, when in protest of the division’s use of power and “highly effective and injurious” crowd management weapons towards protesters within the months following George Floyd’s killing by a white Minneapolis police officer.
In 2001, he based the Police Evaluation Useful resource Middle, a nonprofit that gives “impartial, evidence-based counsel on efficient, respectful, and publicly accountable policing,” the middle’s then-vice president Matthew Barge .
Earlier than that, Bobb served as deputy basic counsel for the Christopher Fee, which examined use of power inside the Los Angeles Police Division within the wake of the 1991 beating of Rodney King. The fee printed that yr that referred to as on then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates to step down and located the division had a persistent and pervasive downside with extreme use of power.
Bobb graduated from Dartmouth Faculty in 1968, then obtained his legislation diploma three years later from UC Berkeley, in accordance with . He labored for personal legislation corporations between 1973 and 1996. Bobb was named one of many high 50 legal professionals in L.A. by the Los Angeles Enterprise Journal that yr, when he left a significant legislation agency to deal with his legislation enforcement oversight work.
However for many individuals he met, in accordance with his sons, it was Bobb’s kindness that made the strongest impression.
“Irrespective of who it was in his life he was participating with at that time, he targeted in on them and developed a private connection,” Matthew mentioned. “You by no means knew if he was going to be having lunch with the previous chief of police or his former handyman who got here by as soon as per week, and everybody in between.”
Bobb is survived by his youngsters and grandchildren, his ex-wife Aviva Koenigsberg Bobb — a former decide with whom he remained shut — his sister Gloria Kern and his longtime assistant and caretaker, Jeffrey Yanson.
Bobb’s funeral will happen at 10 a.m. Sept. 5 at Mount Sinai Hollywood Hills, 5950 Forest Garden Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90068.
