LINK: LBPD PRESS RELEASE: LONG BEACH POLICE CHIEF ROBERT G. LUNA TO RETIRE IN DECEMBER 2021
The chief’s retirement announcement comes ahead of a decision on his guilt by City Manager Thomas Modica. Last year the chief was accused by community advocates that he led an approximately 300-officer maskless photo op in an enclosed space in direct breach of City COVID-19 protocols and shortly before a November 2020 COVID outbreak in the police department.
The City’s police oversight commission (Citizens Police Complaint Commission) has already deliberated the matter and has apparently submitted its determinations to the city manager, without official public disclosure yet per its procedural rules. The city manager can sustain or overrule the commission’s findings.
The matter garnered widespread publicity nationally last winter. For example, on Dec. 17, 2020 the Washington Post published Hundreds of maskless Long Beach, Calif., police gathered at indoor ‘superspreader’ event, complaint says. The complaint against the chief has been covered in depth by the local Beachcomber.
The retirement announcement also precedes the first major police oversight reform process in Long Beach in the three decades since creation of the Citizens Police Complaint Commission by local ballot measure in 1990: CPCC Reform Public Listening Sessions Scheduled.
