Paper calls on Van Deventer to resign from Police Oversight Board

The Albuquerque Journal newspaper on Monday called on Police Oversight Board Member Chelsea Van Deventer to resign her position, saying her recent tweets against cops shows she's immature and biased against police officers.

Read the Journal's full editorial here. It's good reading, and we agree with it.

Here's an excerpt:

"The Civilian Police Oversight Agency serves a vital function as the Albuquerque Police Department moves to comply with a Department of Justice agreement designed to ensure constitutional policing by APD. So it’s no surprise the minimum qualifications listed on the city website include “a demonstrated ability to engage in mature, impartial decision making.”

"Board member Chelsea Van Deventer’s recent Twitter posts in which she profanely demonstrates hostility toward police officers disqualifies her on both counts. She re-tweeted, among other items, an analysis on the federal “Blue Lives Matter Bill” that includes a penalty of up to 10 years for assaulting a police officer and adds “F—THIS.”

"Hardly mature or impartial."

Here's another excerpt:

"Van Deventer doesn’t get it. She said she thinks “it’s rather absurd to expect a police oversight board to be comprised of people who don’t have an interest in the subject matter that is central to police oversight and accountability.” But there’s a difference between having an interest and having a bias, and between the private thoughts and the public words of a person in a position of authority who is supposed to be impartial."

Last month, ABQReport broke the stories about Van Deventer's tweets.Those stories are linked below.