The top assistant to the former executive in charge of the San Diego County Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board has been named interim leader of the oversight panel until a permanent successor can be recruited.
Members of the office known as CLERB appointed Chief Deputy Nawras Hakak to lead the panel in the wake of the unexpected resignation of Executive Officer Paul Parker earlier this month.
Hakak was hired by the review board in August 2022 as a data analyst, according to her profile on the LinkedIn social networking platform.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Baghdad University in Iraq and a master’s of business administration in marketing from the University of Hull in Yorkshire, England.
Parker announced =March 11 that he was leaving and served his final day March 22.
In an interview after he decided to vacate his position, he said the volunteer board had not fully embraced his efforts to reform the civilian oversight practices he proposed to improve monitoring of the county Sheriff’s and Probation departments.
“I think I was maybe too strong for this board,” Parker told The San Diego Union-Tribune after he resigned but before his last day at work. “I was maybe too proactive.”
The former review board official also criticized the county Board of Supervisors for not moving to expand the board’s authority, a step he saw as critical to providing effective oversight of local law enforcement.
He also chastised Sheriff Kelly Martinez for not doing more to prevent people from dying in county jails and for withholding records from both his office and the public.
“CLERB is advisory, and that’s the issue,” Parker said in his final days as a county official. “I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall, and the county doesn’t seem to want to do anything to have true oversight.”
County officials, including CLERB Chair Eileen Delaney, praised Parker’s service as executive officer but did not respond to questions about his reasons for resigning.
Parker was first hired as the oversight board’s executive officer in 2017 but left the following year to accept a senior position at the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.
He returned to San Diego County in 2020 and set about broadening the board’s authority.
In response to his efforts, county supervisors boosted the agency’s staff and budget but resisted his push to add jail medical staff to the CLERB oversight authority, a key change because so many of the deaths in custody are due to lapses in healthcare.
Parker said the current civilian-oversight model is not structured in a way that allows the review board to provide effective monitoring of the Sheriff’s and Probation departments.
County supervisors should grant the review board auditing authority and mandate access to internal department records, he said.
The board should be able to interview deputies and probation officers and visit facilities as needed, Parker said, and policy recommendations issued by the board should not be ignored or optional.
The Hakak appointment was approved by the volunteer panel at its meeting this week. It was not immediately clear when a permanent successor might be named.
