Thursday, October 4, 2007
Page 1
Assembly Speaker Appoints Ex-Santa Monica Mayor to CJP
By STEVEN M. ELLIS, Staff Writer
Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez has appointed Nathaniel “Nat” Trives to the Commission on Judicial Performance.
A former mayor of Santa Monica with a background in law enforcement and education, Trives began his term as a public member of the commission yesterday.
“Nathaniel Trives has had a distinguished career in public service, law, and academia,” Núñez, D-Los Angeles, said. “The Commission on Judicial Performance – and all Californians who value an impartial and ethical judiciary – will benefit from his insights.”
“My life has been filled with this kind of work,” Trives told the MetNews. “It’s an area that needs dedicated people to have a look, see what’s going on, and keep things dedicated and straight.”
Trives, 72, is currently retired. He began his career as an officer, and later supervisor, with the Santa Monica Police Department, and received a degree in political science from Santa Monica College, a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from California State University, Los Angeles and a master’s degree in public administration from UCLA.
He later became a professor of criminal justice at California State University, Los Angeles, where he taught for more than 20 years and served as a special master for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California overseeing a consent degree governing the resolution of race and gender bias issues in the San Francisco Police Department.
In 1975 Trives was elected to the Santa Monica City Council for a two-year term and served as mayor pro tem. He was re-elected in 1977 and served as mayor until 1979.
After leaving the council, Trives served on the personnel commissions of the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District and Santa Monica College. He later joined the college’s administration as a deputy superintendent, and ultimately became its chief government relations officer before retiring in 1997.
A registered Democrat, Trives currently chairs California State University, Los Angeles’ Pat Brown Institute, a non-partisan public policy center dedicated to the living legacy of former Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, and is active in a number of charitable organizations in the community.
He has also served on the national boards of the National Urban League and the National Conference of Community and Justice; the national committees of the National Association of Independent Schools, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National League of Cities; and was a member and chair of the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training and the Los Angeles Regional Criminal Justice Planning Board, and a member of the Southern California Association of Governments where he chaired the public safety committee.
The Commission on Judicial Performance is the independent state agency responsible for investigating complaints of judicial misconduct and judicial incapacity and for disciplining judges, pursuant to article VI, section 18 of the California Constitution.
It has the authority to remove, retire, suspend, publicly or privately admonish, or censure a judge, and its 11 members include three judges chosen by the Supreme Court, two lawyers appointed by the governor, and six laypersons, two of whom are chosen each by the governor, the Assembly speaker, and the Senate Rules Committee.
Members are appointed to four-year terms, and do not receive a salary but are reimbursed for actual and necessary expenses relating to commission business.
Trives was appointed to fill a vacant position whose term will conclude on March 1, 2009.
Copyright 2007, Metropolitan News Company