Somerton orders audit of police department
SOMERTON — The personnel structure and procedures of Somerton’s police department will come under review in an performance audit the city council has ordered.
The council voted recently to direct the acting city administrator to seek competitive bids from the private sector to perform what reportedly is the first such review of the department in more than two decades.
“There has not been an audit for many years,” City Attorney Jorge Lozano said in proposing the audit to the council. “We could take advantage of an outside firm coming in and reviewing the procedures and policies of the department, see the operation of the evidence room and do interviews with the personnel.”
Joining the city in May, Police Chief Jeffery Cavender said the last audit report he found for the police department was done in 1994.
Lozano said the audit would be similar to a performance audit currently taking place in the police department in San Luis, Ariz. That audit, ordered in December by the San Luis City Council and being done by LD Consulting of Glendale, Ariz., is reviewing that department’s policies and procedures.
One Somerton council member, Carlos Gonzalez, said an audit is overdue.
“It’s a very good idea, especially since one hasn’t been done in many years.” The audit will make the department “more transparent in the community.”
And, Gonzalez added, “if there are any recommendations in the audit (to improve police procedures), we need to take action quickly and not wait more years, and then after that, (new audits) need to be done at least every two or three years, for the good of the department.”
Somerton City Councilman Jesus Roldan said an audit would be opportune now, given the department has a new police chief, a new second in command and several new police officers.
“And better that it be done by an outside company that will tell us how we are with the police department,” he said.
The audit, which is not expected to exceed $30,000, will be paid for with funds from the mayor and council’s budget.
Somerton police Capt. Joseph Turitto, second in command of the police department after Cavender, praised the council for seeking the audit. “The standard in the industry is to have an audit of (a police department’s) operations and personnel at least every two years.”
A former police officer in Glendale, Turitto, in an interview shortly after his arrival in September, described the Somerton department’s evidence room as being in “complete disorder” and said the department’s policy manual had not been updated since 1994. He has since been working on the update.
Turitto told the council an audit would provide a “baseline of where we are and where we need to go, and would ensure we are going in the right direction.”