I miss Rocky.
The Rocky who went to Nicaragua to rage against the Reagan administration's puppet dictators. The Rocky who sued on behalf of Utah prisoners fighting for medical benefits. The Rocky who irrationally and tirelessly tried to find answers for the families of four murdered young women, earning the lingering hostility of a good number of police detectives.
Not this imperious facsimile of the outsider who campaigned to be Salt Lake City's mayor eight years ago. This Rocky is a stranger.
The one I remember from the 1999 mayor's race was anti-establishment, criticizing the scandal-plagued, all-but-shut-down administration of Deedee Corradini. He saved his harshest words for then-Police Chief Ruben Ortega and his insular Civilian Review Board. When Rocky won, he swept both out.
But something has changed since then: Rocky has become the ultimate insider, as controlling and paranoid about police department records as Ortega ever was.
The mayor is trying to plug a leak. He and Police Chief Chris Burbank are focused on finding the unnamed sources who earlier this month told The Salt Lake Tribune the results of a Civilian Review Board hearing. Someone revealed the citizen panel had concluded officers used excessive force when they detained disabled veteran Miles Lund in November at Liberty Park.
And the hunt was on. Never mind that Burbank ultimately confirmed the board members' decision. Rules had been broken, protocol violated.
To start, the chief and the mayor wanted everyone's phone records.
How Nixonian. How George W. Bush-league. How un-Rocky.
The mayor and the chief could just be hunkering down for the court battle. While Lund, 74, was recovering from surgery for bleeding on the brain he blames on the police, his attorney sued the city for $10 million. But this is more than legal strategy. Rocky, onetime Mr. Open and Accountable Government, is allowing the city to become secretive and clannish, like the White House.
Rocky's Civilian Review Board is better than Ortega's. In 1993, half the panel's members were cops; the other half were residents. With no witnesses and police deciding which cases were heard, Ortega's board heard 20 cases in four years. Since 2003, Rocky's 12-member panel has looked into 128 cases and 230 complaints. In 73 claims of excessive force, the board sided against officers five times.
"At the end of the day, all of this information is available," Burbank said in an interview on KCPW.
That's true when the board agrees on the outcome. But when Burbank and the board part, the reports seem to disappear into a vault. The Tribune has challenged that policy and the State Records Committee agreed. But the city - Rocky's city - sued to keep the reports secret. The case is pending in court.
Rocky, where did you go?
walsh@sltrib.com
