Seattle's police intelligence auditor, who's charged with making sure police don't target political dissidents for surveillance, is a kindly volunteer named David Boerner. For the past ten years the retired lawyer has submitted audit reports twice annually, and he considers his work to be a public service to the people of Seattle.

Boerner got to his post through a 2005 appointment by Mayor Greg Nickels—who attempted unsuccessfully, during his term, to weaken the police intelligence ordinance at the urging of SPD. At the time the appointment was described as a three-year term, but Boerner told me recently that he was unaware his position was term-limited.

On Wednesday, finally responding to a series of unanswered e-mails and voicemails, Boerner told me that he doesn't check to make sure police delete photos they take of law-abiding protesters—something that SPD policy prohibits them from doing in the first place—and in any case, he wouldn't know how to check a digital camera if he wanted to. He also described his audit methodology. Essentially, it was: you trust me, I trust the police. "If you don't trust me," Boerner said, "then you should get a new auditor."

Mayor Ed Murray says he supports the department's policy prohibiting photographs of peaceful protesters. "People who are exercising their First Amendment rights should not be photographed," Murray says in an e-mailed statement. "The Seattle Police Department needs appropriate oversight of its intelligence gathering, including timely and regular audits of the department's use of photography."

What's more, when it comes to Boerner, according to mayoral spokesperson Jason Kelly "there is no record of reappointment during the second Nickels term or McGinn administration." Kelly tells me he confirmed this with city council staffers. Which sounds like official-ese for, "Our predecessors, and the city council, forgot that this guy's three-year term expired six years ago."

Kelly says the mayor's office will "review the appointment to ensure the position is filled appropriately." No word yet on a timeframe, however.

As for the intelligence ordinance itself, City Council Member Bruce Harrell suggested today that it isn't strong enough.

"I want to go back and look at the language which justifies officers taking photographs," he says. "That's much too vague of a standard. That allows them to, even with plainclothes, take as many pictures as they like. That shouldn't be the intent of the intelligence ordinance."

He says the city needs to do a better job of "digging deeper... to see what this business is about, of police taking photographs and not identifying themselves."

Harrell chairs the Public Safety, Civil Rights, and Technology Committee, to which the auditor's reports have been submitted—though Boerner hasn't been there personally to present them. Instead, a Seattle Police Department lieutenant has frequently presented the audits for him.

When the committee next meets, on January 7, Harrell says he intends to cross-examine Boerner. "If he's going on hearsay and he's not doing the job he needs to do, that's unacceptable," Harrell says. "I want to better understand how the auditor does his job, and I think the public has a right to know."