The Mayor’s Office is currently in the final stages of selecting a new director for the Office of Police Accountability. Read more about the final candidates under consideration below, and watch a forum featuring community-driven questions with each candidate here.
Eddie Aubrey
Eddie Aubrey has a unique 360-degree perspective and subject matter expertise of civilian oversight and law/justice, serving Washington and California in leadership roles for 40 years. His lifelong mission is to make a difference and add value to the community, regardless of internal or external forces or political pressure.
He is currently the Manager of the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA), overseeing the Richmond Police Department in California. Previously, he was the Independent Reviewer for the Office of Independent Review (OIR), overseeing the Fresno Police Department. He has also spoken on behalf of NACOLE and is a Certified Practitioner of Civilian Oversight.
He was born in Tacoma but began his journey growing up in the culturally diverse inner city of south-central Los Angeles and became a police officer in L.A., hoping to make a difference. One day, he found himself wearing riot gear and looking out a bus window at his childhood neighborhood in flames, triggered by the riots following the Rodney King incident. Because of the social injustice he felt, his evolution began, and he went to law school in Seattle. Later he became a Prosecuting Attorney for King County; the Chief Prosecuting Attorney for Renton; a Judge (pro tem); Director at Tacoma Community College; and then he went into civilian oversight of law enforcement.
Lastly, Mr. Aubrey is a licensed Attorney in Washington. He graduated from Seattle University School of Law and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management from the University of Phoenix.
Gino Betts
Gino Betts is a highly experienced and committed career public servant. He is a product of Chicago’s South and West Sides, areas most impacted by police misconduct. Gino currently serves as a Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney where he leads the Southside Community Justice Center. His current work includes collaborating with community leaders, law enforcement, and elected officials to problem solve local concerns and reduce area violence. Gino also represents the nation’s second largest prosecutorial office at several community events, panels, and webinars, while managing a full caseload of violent felony offenses.
Previously, following a national wave of police misconduct incidents, Gino was recruited to serve as an attorney at Chicago’s new police accountability agency. There, he worked on several high-profile cases, including allegations against former-Police Sergeant Ronald Watts. Watts ran a team of corrupt officers who extorted residents and falsely arrested those who objected. Gino’s work helped secure administrative findings and discipline against several involved officers and over 200 vacated convictions for wrongfully incarcerated community members.
He also worked as the Cook County’s Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management attorney, where he was quickly promoted to interim chief-of-staff. Gino studied International and Comparative Constitutional Law in Cape Town, South Africa. He also teaches legal writing at DePaul University and trial advocacy at University of Illinois at Chicago. Outside of work, Gino has served on several nonprofit boards, including those focused on community engagement, public safety, and diversifying the legal field.
Gino is a father of a two-year-old boy and husband to his college sweetheart Jessica, who will celebrate a 10-year anniversary later this year.
Overall, he is excited to bring fresh ideas, a commitment to community building, and thorough and transparent misconduct investigations to serve Seattle residents.
Ginale Harris
Ginale Harris is a fact-focused, community-driven advocate for those impacted by systemic racism brought to her community by the multiple agencies of the state. A mother of 5 sons and a well-known community and family advocate who comes from generations of incarceration in her own family, she has committed her career to right the wrongs of inequities in her community. Throughout her life, she has had a passion for applying a community-led holistic public health approach to violence prevention that focuses on having interventions to achieve the safety and stability of communities most impacted by violence.
Ginale brings decades of extensive experience in driving program development and implementation for government and non-profit agencies providing a broad range of services to meet the needs of formerly incarcerated, low-income, and otherwise disenfranchised individuals and families. In her heart, she brings her commitment to “Truth Over Peace” to her professional career and community volunteer work.
Most recently, in the area of police reform and reimagining public safety, she has been hugely impactful serving as Vice-Chair of Oakland’s Police Commission for two years playing a key role in establishing a framework to transform police accountability and oversight through policies and legislation, as Chair of the committee that created the nation’s most progressive use of force policy and as a task member on the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force in Oakland, committed to being the bridge to police accountability and community through the public transparency approach she so deeply believes in. Ginale brings the values of love, transparency, accountability, and collaboration to every table she sits at.
Valiza Nash
Valiza Nash has dedicated over 34 years of public service as a Paramedic/Firefighter and in law enforcement. As a law enforcement officer, she was an originating member of a not-for-profit organization, Community Oriented Police Spirit (COPS), whose goal was to promote positive relationships, life essentials and activities for the children and adults of the community.
Nash retired from the North Chicago Police Department in 2017 at the rank of Sergeant. She worked in Patrol, Investigations, and Administration. Nash held positions as a Patrol Sergeant, Evidence Custodian, K9 Unit Supervisor, School Resource Officer (SRO), and Field Training Officer. She received Life-Saving Awards as an EMT-Paramedic/Firefighter and as a Police Officer.
She also worked as Chief of Police for the Village of Oakwood Hills. There, she managed a small police department of sworn and civilian employees, fostering positive relations between the community and law enforcement by implementing evidence-based policies that ensured constitutional freedoms and transparency measures.
She is currently a Special Victim Supervising Investigator for the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) with a mission to provide citizens and police officers with a fair investigative process that is thorough, unbiased, and transparent. Additionally, she works as a Crisis Intervention Instructor/Evaluator for Northeast Multi-Regional Training.
Nash holds a BA in Criminal Justice Administration from Columbia College, Missouri, and an MS in Criminal Justice Advanced Homeland Security Counterterrorism from Southern New Hampshire University. In addition, she attended Supervision of Police Personnel, Staff & Command and Executive Management at Northwestern University.