Merrick Bobb, one of many godfathers of the trendy police oversight motion in Los Angeles and past, has died. He was 79.
Bobb, whose well being had deteriorated in recent times, died Thursday night time at Cedars-Sinai Medical Heart in L.A., his two youngsters, Matthew and Jonathan, confirmed Friday.
A Los Feliz resident for greater than 40 years, Bobb had 4 grandchildren, was fluent in a number of languages and was revered as one of many earliest champions of civilian oversight of regulation enforcement.
He had a protracted profession, shining a lightweight on issues inside main regulation enforcement businesses from L.A. to Seattle. And he achieved his most vital work with out using his arms or legs, which turned successfully paralyzed after he contracted a uncommon and debilitating autoimmune situation referred to as Guillain-Barré syndrome in 2003.
“He was all the time an individual who was actually engaged on the earth,” Jonathan mentioned in an interview with him and his brother. “I feel that rising up within the Fifties and Nineteen Sixties with the civil rights motion and different related actions was very seminal for him when it comes to instilling perception in justice [and] understanding the voices of historically underrepresented teams.”
For twenty years starting in 1993, Bobb served as particular counsel to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. In that place, he delivered semiannual reviews that detailed pervasive points inside the division, from widespread violence within the county’s jails to extreme power, driving a variety of reforms within the division.
In 2014, the board created the Workplace of Inspector Basic and dismissed Bobb from his function with the county. That call got here within the wake of criticism that he and Michael Gennaco, the then-head of the Workplace of Impartial Evaluate, had not carried out sufficient to cease the issues within the jails, which had develop into a significant scandal.
Two years earlier, a federal choose had appointed Bobb to function unbiased monitor of the Seattle Police Division’s consent decree with the U.S. Division of Justice. He held that place till 2020, when he resigned in protest of the division’s use of power and “highly effective and injurious” crowd management weapons in opposition to protesters within the months following George Floyd’s killing by a white Minneapolis police officer.
In 2001, he based the Police Evaluation Useful resource Heart, a nonprofit that gives “unbiased, evidence-based counsel on efficient, respectful, and publicly accountable policing,” the middle’s then-vice president Matthew Barge wrote in 2015.
Earlier than that, Bobb served as deputy basic counsel for the Christopher Fee, which examined use of power inside the Los Angeles Police Division within the wake of the 1991 beating of Rodney King. The fee printed a sweeping report that yr that referred to as on then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates to step down and located the division had a persistent and pervasive drawback with extreme use of power.
Bobb graduated from Dartmouth School in 1968, then acquired his regulation diploma three years later from UC Berkeley, in keeping with his curriculum vitae. He labored for personal regulation corporations between 1973 and 1996. Bobb was named one of many prime 50 attorneys in L.A. by the Los Angeles Enterprise Journal that yr, when he left a significant regulation agency to give attention to his regulation enforcement oversight work.
However for many individuals he met, in keeping with his sons, it was Bobb’s kindness that made the strongest impression.
“Irrespective of who it was in his life he was participating with at that time, he centered in on them and developed a private connection,” Matthew mentioned. “You by no means knew if he was going to be having lunch with the previous chief of police or his former handyman who got here by as soon as every week, and everybody in between.”
For the report:
12:55 p.m. Aug. 30, 2025An earlier model of this story misspelled the title of Merrick Bobb’s caretaker, Jeffrey Yamson, as Yanson.
Bobb is survived by his youngsters and grandchildren, his ex-wife Aviva Koenigsberg Bobb — a former choose with whom he remained shut — his sister Gloria Kern and his longtime assistant and caretaker, Jeffrey Yamson.
Bobb’s funeral will happen at 10 a.m. Sept. 5 at Mount Sinai Hollywood Hills, 5950 Forest Garden Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90068.
In lieu of flowers, Bobb’s household encourages individuals to donate to Docs With out Borders.
