The marathon Dec. 7 joint meeting of the Pasadena City Council and its Public Safety Committee called to examine the Pasadena Police Department’s administrative review of a March 2012 incident in which two officers shot and killed unarmed 19-year-old Kendrec McDade was a meaningful initial discussion.

But no one has yet been held accountable for sabotaging the Police Department’s administrative review of the shooting.

The city’s contract with the Office of Independent Review (OIR) Group, which was hired by the city to review the shooting, expressly provided that the OIR Group would attend the March 15, 2013, meeting which conducted the administrative review meeting, but they were excluded from it in violation of their contract, and everything went south thereafter.

The department’s examination of the shooting went wrong when the OIR Group was excluded from this administrative review meeting. Up to that time, the department had completed a criminal investigation of McDade’s shooting, which the OIR Group reviewed and lauded as largely exemplary. However, police had not considered a lengthy list of relevant questions that the OIR Group said still needed to be answered. Those questions were not a criticism of the criminal investigation, because that investigation focused on whether a crime had been committed. The OIR Group’s questions needed to be asked for an adequate administrative review because of its focus on training, policy compliance and discipline.

Those questions were never asked because Chief Phillip Sanchez deliberately excluded the OIR Group from the very meeting that the city-OIR Group contract specified it attend. Because of that exclusion, the department’s administrative review followed a tunnel-vision analysis which inadequately examined tactical mistakes that put the two officers in a position in which they may have feared for their safety and killed McDade.

Chief Sanchez justified his decision by the rationales that he was concerned that the OIR Group’s presence would influence the administrative review’s outcome and chill frank discussion and that the OIR Group should not be present for discussions about personnel records.

A lightbulb finally went on for us when a Dec. 7 OIR Group comment sunk in. OIR Group representatives said at the Dec. 7 joint meeting they were surprised that, after submitting their list of questions for the administrative review, the next thing they were told was that the administrative review meeting had already been held without them. We finally connected the dots: It was the list of questions that led to their exclusion from the administrative review.

When Chief Sanchez explains that he was concerned that the OIR Group’s presence would “influence the outcome of the meeting,” he is correct; the OIR Group’s presence would have influenced the outcome by asking the 23 questions that unredacted portions of the OIR Group report indicate should have been asked, any additional questions that are still redacted in the report, and follow-up questions.

Chief Sanchez is also correct in saying that the OIR Group’s presence would have chilled the discussion in the administrative review meeting — not because, as he told the OIR Group, it would have chilled a “frank discussion,” but because it would chill the tunnel-vision discussion that avoided a frank discussion.

Chief Sanchez’s purported concern about officer confidential personnel information being discussed is inconsistent with the city’s contract with the OIR Group, as the contract expressly provides that the OIR Group is entitled to examine such confidential information.

Chief Sanchez’s rationales are unacceptable. So far, he has not been held publicly accountable for his indefensible rationales to exclude the OIR Group from the administrative review meeting. Chief Sanchez needs to answer direct questions about his unsatisfactory rationales rather than being allowed to duck them.

But accountability for intentionally breaching the city-OIR Group contract is a different matter. Chief Sanchez says that he had never read the contract so did not know that the contract provided that the OIR Group attend the March 15, 2013 meeting when he deliberately excluded it. Ignorance is an unflattering excuse, but not as bad as the alternative explanation of willfully breaching the contract. While we challenge Chief Sanchez’s rationales for excluding the OIR Group from the review, we accept his ignorance of the contract term requiring the OIR Group to be in the room, as he didn’t sign the city-OIR Group contract; rather, it was signed by an interim chief shortly before Chief Sanchez began. The left hand in bureaucracies sometimes doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, so Chief Sanchez’s not knowing the contract’s terms is plausible.

The Police Department’s administrative review policy provided for the City Attorney to participate in the March 15 administrative review meeting. The contract with the city also provided for the OIR Group to participate in that meeting. City Manager Michael Beck signed the contract and Assistant City Attorney Frank Rhemrev approved it in place of City Attorney Michele Beal Bagneris..

Through a Public Records Act request we’ve determined that two attorneys from the City Attorney’s Office — Javan Rad and Timothy Halford — were participants in the March 15 administrative review meeting from which the OIR Group was excluded in violation of their contract. Chief Sanchez would not be knowledgeable that he was breaching the city-OIR Group contract only if the City Attorney’s Office, with two attorneys sitting in the room, tolerated the contractual breach by failing to inform the chief of the contract’s requirements. The City Attorney’s Office needs to be held accountable for its omission.