Alameda County Civil Grand Jury Report

[narya]

I am inordinately proud of the report that our Alameda County Civil Grand Jury just released. About eight of us were in on the final report writing and editing process, but about a third of the original report content was first drafted by me. I can't discuss details about what we uncovered, except what made it into the official report, but suffice to say there were many witnesses interviewed, many documents read, and many, many hours of writing. We investigated several governmental offices of Alameda County, California, including the Sheriff's office, the DA's Office, and the Child Support Services, as well as ethical violations county-wide. We also investigated the Oakland Police and visited several city and county jails, including Santa Rita Jail, one of the largest in the U.S. I'd recommend volunteering for the civil grand jury in your county, if you have the time (up to 20 hours per week) and the resolve.

Please take a look and make comments. https://grandjury.acgov.org/reports/ Click on the blue link for the 118 page pdf.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thank you for your civil service, narya!

[Maria]

That was quite a project, narya! Did you, as secretary, have to assemble the final report?

[narya]

I am speaking in generalities here, because I can't talk about the details, ever. You can deduce most of this by reading the report. There were four subcommittees. We were each assigned to two subcommittees, and each committee looked into several complaints, though most of the complaints (and some of the jurors) dropped out for one reason or another. I ended up as recording secretary for both of my committees, so I took prodigious notes, especially when interviewing witnesses. Then I'd clean up the notes and post them for the others. This came in very handy when it came time to write the report. My committee secretary duties were for a year, attending two or more committee meetings per week. In the last two months, some of us worked together on the final report. Each chapter of the report had a lead who wrote the first draft. Then some of the others pitched in with many edits, questions, and additional content for the lead author to incorporate. Then the 90% final drafts went to the editing committee. The editing committee members plus the defending authors would sit down together at numerous zoom meetings, over a course of several weeks and many hours, to polish each report chapter. Then the whole jury, and our legal counsel, had one last go-over. Then one of the jurors with good publishing skills did the final assembly. It was a grueling but valuable experience.

[Inanna]

Amazing, narya!