Tonight, the Mayor’s police accountability task force held their first meeting in the Bertha Knight Landes room at City Hall. The Mayor’s office didn’t do anything to promote the meeting, but there were still a handful of people in attendance, including Sheley Secrest and Peter Holmes from the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board and James Bible of the NAACP.

Nine members of the panel showed up, and committee vice chair Bob Boruchowitz awkwardly joined in on speakerphone. Mayor Nickels made a 5 minute appearance to glad hand the panel, before he was whisked off to tonight’s Mariners game.

The meeting started off on a grim note when Assistant City Attorney Jeff Slayton informed the panel that while they are subject to public disclosure requests, they are not obliged to hold open meetings. Although committee chair Judge Terry Carroll &mdash who conducted the Port scandal investigation&mdash later pledged to keep the meetings as public as possible. Phew.

Carroll was joined by:

Bob Boruchowitz, the vice chair, a former directer at the Defender Association.

Attorney Jenny Durkan, who has represented Governor Gregoire and Paul Allen.

Lorena Gonzalez, a local civil rights lawyer and pug enthusiast.

Pramila Jayapal, the founder and executive director of Hate Free Zone.

Judith Krebs, general counsel for the Service Employees International Union Local 775.

Former Governor Gary Locke, who was, um, governor and a former King County prosecutor.

Hubert Locke, a former professor at UW’s School of Public Affairs.

Mike McKay, a former US Attorney and member of a 1999 police accountability panel.

Former Mayor Norm Rice, best known for his appearance on the 1,000th episode of Frasier.

And Jennifer Shaw, the legislative director of the Washington ACLU.

City lawyers spent most of the meeting giving the panel background on the Seattle Police Guild’s (SPOG) contract, which would have to be changed in order for any of the panel’s recommendations to take effect. Hubert Locke voiced his frustration with the red tape: “we risk having the integrity of our entire process muted [because] anything we do won’t happen until 2009. I don’t know if I’d have agreed to sit on this panel [If I’d known that].” Locke then asked that SPOG be “put on notice” that whatever recommendations the panel made, should be taken seriously. The panel also asked if they would have access to unredacted OPA files through the Mayor’s office, but they weren’t given a firm answer.

To wrap things up, Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) director Kathryn Olson made an appearance to explain ,what she called, the “ludicrously complicated and involved” OPA investigation process, and showed the panel a bunch of slides, charts and graphs.

Going into the meeting, I was really skeptical about Nickels’s high profile all-star team. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see the group engaged and haranguing city employees about cutting through formalities and bureaucracy. Of course, we’ll have to see how they hold up after several months of meetings and a soon-to-come public comment period, which will &mdash as most public comments inevitably do &mdash involve lots of yelling.

The panel meets again on August 20th. Bring your megaphone.