More than words: Civilian review here and there
A columnist at Creative Loafing wrote an interesting if scathing review of well, the civilian review board in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was created like many of the boards and commissions which have preceded it, in that its creation stemmed from a series of high-profile fatal incidents involving the city's residents with its police officers. But what has it done since?
Civilian review board or public relations tool?
Tara Servatius writes in her column about complaints that have come from those who serve on Charlotte's civilian review board which include among other things that they are not given enough information from Charlotte's police department to make decisions on complaint findings. Instead of receiving material from the actual investigations, they are provided with case summaries that they have determined were written in such a way that they slant favorably towards the officers. Or as one person in the column put it, the board only receives information that the police department wants it to receive the way it wants it to receive it.
That issue came to a forefront in the case of a man who was a double amputee who had been shot and killed by the SWAT team. Servatius wrote that the way the police department presented it, it was as if the SWAT team had "gently cajoled" him to surrender before shooting him. Radio tapes presented a different picture but the civilian review board was never allowed to hear them. It ultimately voted to uphold the department's finding on the shooting by its decision not to take the process to a full hearing.
What has happened in Charlotte has happened in many other cities as well, including Riverside, California. The citizenry wants, no demands a civilian review board so the beleaguered local government gives it one, usually by ordinance. But, often there are strings attached and Charlotte's residents have just run into one of the bigger ones. The city residents wonder why there is so much resistance until they remember that they were the only ones to want a civilian review board in the first place.
(excerpt)
The review board was supposed to rip the veil of secrecy off of the police shootings that for two decades had torn the community apart. Unfortunately, no one looked too closely at the rules governing the board, so no one noticed that the review process was rigged to produce a predetermined outcome.
What the city council actually created was a bizarre kangaroo court, a useful public relations tool primed to clear police of wrongdoing and to give them an added layer of legal protection.
In other words, residents are beginning to think it's basically a public relations tool for the city to use to create a buffer zone between the community and the police. It's this reality that often causes people to wonder why the police labor unions fight civilian review boards as vigorously as they do. Most people don't waste as much energy, money and time fighting the best thing that's ever happened to them. Only in this case they do, at least until they figure out the truth. For some cities and counties, that process takes place more quickly than in other places.
Riverside's own commission entered into a new era after City Manager Brad Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis came to town. Neither apparently wanted a serious police accountability mechanism in place, but instead a public relations tool directed by their office. Which is interesting, because given how intimately connected the CPRC is with the Riverside Police Department and how both are with the city manager's office, one can only ask if that agency is being micromanaged anywhere close to the extent that the CPRC has been.
But what's also interesting is that when both men first arrived, neither appeared all that interested in what was going on with the CPRC. In fact, when two separate and conflicting findings were sent to the city manager's office regarding the fatal officer-involved shooting of Summer Marie Lane, Hudson opted out of the decision making process entirely. He blames that decision or rather lack of one on the fact that he had just arrived in his new position of city manager, even though he had been in the position for six months and promised the public that if given the same information and circumstances as presented by the Lane case, next time would be much different.
One wonders how the city council would have reacted if he had been so hesitant to be involved in development issues until six months after his hiring. But in the case of the CPRC, even its purported supporters on the dais were silent on the issue.
Hudson and DeSantis' interest increased in 2006 after the fatal shootings of three unarmed men including two African-Americans and peaked during the past holiday season when they appeared to be set to make changes to the CPRC especially how or even if it would continue to investigate officer-involved deaths. Those changes were watered down in January after community leaders began to protest, catalyzed by the "resignation" of executive director, Pedro Payne. If people had not been feeling so upset by Payne's departure, most of them would have laughed at the city's official explanation that he had left his position to seek greener pastures in the form of new career opportunities. People who knew him said this was hogwash, because even when Payne had to choose between directing the CPRC and directing the Human Relations Commission, it wasn't a decision at all. The CPRC had been his choice all along, several city residents reminisced after his departure.
Problems in Charlotte stemmed from threats that its sustained findings could lead to civil litigation against the city or place it at risk of civic liability. In other words, the civilian review board became the convenient scapegoat for what was really creating these problems if indeed there were problems.
(excerpt, Creative Loafing)
Review board members say they are routinely warned by police that if they vote to go to a full-blown hearing to learn more about cases, it could encourage complainants or their families to file costly civil suits against the department and against officers who aren't paid much to begin with.
The pressure to vote against complainants is enormous, they say.
It's hard to know whether issues like the above that are currently being faced by Charlotte are an exception or are more widespread. But for that city, some difficult discussions lie ahead.
In Riverside, the city government hasn't been very interesting in holding similar discussions. Hudson and DeSantis are not particularly community friendly and the city council knew this when it hired them. Hudson was a no-show at a recent commmunity forum on civilian review even though he had promised to attend if not participate on the panel. Instead DeSantis appeared and sat in the audience watching both his employee, Chief Russ Leach address the issues as well as one of his employers, Councilman Andrew Melendrez.
As mentioned earlier, Hudson and DeSantis' interest in the civilian review board had increased greatly after the third fatal officer-involved shooting, that of Joseph Darnell Hill on Oct. 19, 2006. Around that time, DeSantis had informed Payne that he was essentially banned from doing public outreach even though it was included in his job description, which apparently was being rewritten at about that time.
Then Hudson provided a preview of what was to come at a public safety committee meeting last November when he said that the police department didn't wait until it received a finding from the CPRC before it made its decision. This was significant because apparently under Hudson's system, it's the police department that is making the final decision, not the city manager's office. What was interesting is that a community member tried to obtain an audio recording of that meeting, but the city clerk's office apparently couldn't find the original recording after being informed that they had basically provided a blank CD to a community member who had requested the recording. It had apparently never been downloaded from the original recording device.
City residents are overtaking the city council or that's what the Press Enterprise's article written by Doug Haberman seemed to imply. But ever since Belo Enterprises in Texas bought out one of the last medium-sized family owned newspapers in this country, its coverage of the city government has suffered. It's getting rarer to even see one of its reporters regularly attend a city council meeting anymore.
In the article, Haberman lists a series of recent incidents but although he addresses disruptions by the city residents, he makes very little mention of all the times that the public has been disrupted by the city council.
Mary Humboldt, the "city council critic" makes a very salient point when she attributes the recent skirmishes to the city council's decision on July 12, 2005 to pass a measure that among other things banned city residents from pulling items from the consent calendar for further discussion.
July 12, 2005 minute records on item
According to the minutes, Councilman Dom Betro made the motion, Councilman Steve Adams seconded it and it passed 6-1 with Councilman Art Gage passing the sole dissenting vote.
Last week, Mayor Ron Loveridge proposed sending the code of conduct to the governmental affairs committee to add more restrictions on it. The city council voted 6-1 to approve this measure with Councilman Andrew Melendrez casting the sole dissenting vote. It will be interesting to see if anyone will dissent if the governmental affairs committee approves Loveridge's recommendations. Committee member Ed Adkison said that nothing had been set but it's very unlikely that Loveridge would bother to send recommendations to the governmental affairs committee unless he already knew he had the votes needed to pass them.
On a related note, the Associated Press wrote this story on how across the country, "sunshine" laws are routinely violated by local governments and these laws remain unenforced. Sunshine laws are those that ensure an accessible and open government whether it is through accessing public documents or attending public meetings.
(excerpt)
Advocates for open government say public trust is at the heart of our democracy, that scrutiny keeps public officials honest, and that information is the foundation of informed debate.
"We're in an era, clearly, where there's a lot of distrust in government," said Bill Chamberlin of the Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project at the University of Florida. "The more the public officials are open in their conversation and show the documentation that they're basing decisions on, it's going to help the public have faith in what officials are doing."
Exactly.
For more information on California's sunshine laws, you can visit the California First Amendment Coalition or the Californians Aware Web sites.
Civilian review board or public relations tool?
Tara Servatius writes in her column about complaints that have come from those who serve on Charlotte's civilian review board which include among other things that they are not given enough information from Charlotte's police department to make decisions on complaint findings. Instead of receiving material from the actual investigations, they are provided with case summaries that they have determined were written in such a way that they slant favorably towards the officers. Or as one person in the column put it, the board only receives information that the police department wants it to receive the way it wants it to receive it.
That issue came to a forefront in the case of a man who was a double amputee who had been shot and killed by the SWAT team. Servatius wrote that the way the police department presented it, it was as if the SWAT team had "gently cajoled" him to surrender before shooting him. Radio tapes presented a different picture but the civilian review board was never allowed to hear them. It ultimately voted to uphold the department's finding on the shooting by its decision not to take the process to a full hearing.
What has happened in Charlotte has happened in many other cities as well, including Riverside, California. The citizenry wants, no demands a civilian review board so the beleaguered local government gives it one, usually by ordinance. But, often there are strings attached and Charlotte's residents have just run into one of the bigger ones. The city residents wonder why there is so much resistance until they remember that they were the only ones to want a civilian review board in the first place.
(excerpt)
The review board was supposed to rip the veil of secrecy off of the police shootings that for two decades had torn the community apart. Unfortunately, no one looked too closely at the rules governing the board, so no one noticed that the review process was rigged to produce a predetermined outcome.
What the city council actually created was a bizarre kangaroo court, a useful public relations tool primed to clear police of wrongdoing and to give them an added layer of legal protection.
In other words, residents are beginning to think it's basically a public relations tool for the city to use to create a buffer zone between the community and the police. It's this reality that often causes people to wonder why the police labor unions fight civilian review boards as vigorously as they do. Most people don't waste as much energy, money and time fighting the best thing that's ever happened to them. Only in this case they do, at least until they figure out the truth. For some cities and counties, that process takes place more quickly than in other places.
Riverside's own commission entered into a new era after City Manager Brad Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis came to town. Neither apparently wanted a serious police accountability mechanism in place, but instead a public relations tool directed by their office. Which is interesting, because given how intimately connected the CPRC is with the Riverside Police Department and how both are with the city manager's office, one can only ask if that agency is being micromanaged anywhere close to the extent that the CPRC has been.
But what's also interesting is that when both men first arrived, neither appeared all that interested in what was going on with the CPRC. In fact, when two separate and conflicting findings were sent to the city manager's office regarding the fatal officer-involved shooting of Summer Marie Lane, Hudson opted out of the decision making process entirely. He blames that decision or rather lack of one on the fact that he had just arrived in his new position of city manager, even though he had been in the position for six months and promised the public that if given the same information and circumstances as presented by the Lane case, next time would be much different.
One wonders how the city council would have reacted if he had been so hesitant to be involved in development issues until six months after his hiring. But in the case of the CPRC, even its purported supporters on the dais were silent on the issue.
Hudson and DeSantis' interest increased in 2006 after the fatal shootings of three unarmed men including two African-Americans and peaked during the past holiday season when they appeared to be set to make changes to the CPRC especially how or even if it would continue to investigate officer-involved deaths. Those changes were watered down in January after community leaders began to protest, catalyzed by the "resignation" of executive director, Pedro Payne. If people had not been feeling so upset by Payne's departure, most of them would have laughed at the city's official explanation that he had left his position to seek greener pastures in the form of new career opportunities. People who knew him said this was hogwash, because even when Payne had to choose between directing the CPRC and directing the Human Relations Commission, it wasn't a decision at all. The CPRC had been his choice all along, several city residents reminisced after his departure.
Problems in Charlotte stemmed from threats that its sustained findings could lead to civil litigation against the city or place it at risk of civic liability. In other words, the civilian review board became the convenient scapegoat for what was really creating these problems if indeed there were problems.
(excerpt, Creative Loafing)
Review board members say they are routinely warned by police that if they vote to go to a full-blown hearing to learn more about cases, it could encourage complainants or their families to file costly civil suits against the department and against officers who aren't paid much to begin with.
The pressure to vote against complainants is enormous, they say.
It's hard to know whether issues like the above that are currently being faced by Charlotte are an exception or are more widespread. But for that city, some difficult discussions lie ahead.
In Riverside, the city government hasn't been very interesting in holding similar discussions. Hudson and DeSantis are not particularly community friendly and the city council knew this when it hired them. Hudson was a no-show at a recent commmunity forum on civilian review even though he had promised to attend if not participate on the panel. Instead DeSantis appeared and sat in the audience watching both his employee, Chief Russ Leach address the issues as well as one of his employers, Councilman Andrew Melendrez.
As mentioned earlier, Hudson and DeSantis' interest in the civilian review board had increased greatly after the third fatal officer-involved shooting, that of Joseph Darnell Hill on Oct. 19, 2006. Around that time, DeSantis had informed Payne that he was essentially banned from doing public outreach even though it was included in his job description, which apparently was being rewritten at about that time.
Then Hudson provided a preview of what was to come at a public safety committee meeting last November when he said that the police department didn't wait until it received a finding from the CPRC before it made its decision. This was significant because apparently under Hudson's system, it's the police department that is making the final decision, not the city manager's office. What was interesting is that a community member tried to obtain an audio recording of that meeting, but the city clerk's office apparently couldn't find the original recording after being informed that they had basically provided a blank CD to a community member who had requested the recording. It had apparently never been downloaded from the original recording device.
City residents are overtaking the city council or that's what the Press Enterprise's article written by Doug Haberman seemed to imply. But ever since Belo Enterprises in Texas bought out one of the last medium-sized family owned newspapers in this country, its coverage of the city government has suffered. It's getting rarer to even see one of its reporters regularly attend a city council meeting anymore.
In the article, Haberman lists a series of recent incidents but although he addresses disruptions by the city residents, he makes very little mention of all the times that the public has been disrupted by the city council.
Mary Humboldt, the "city council critic" makes a very salient point when she attributes the recent skirmishes to the city council's decision on July 12, 2005 to pass a measure that among other things banned city residents from pulling items from the consent calendar for further discussion.
July 12, 2005 minute records on item
According to the minutes, Councilman Dom Betro made the motion, Councilman Steve Adams seconded it and it passed 6-1 with Councilman Art Gage passing the sole dissenting vote.
Last week, Mayor Ron Loveridge proposed sending the code of conduct to the governmental affairs committee to add more restrictions on it. The city council voted 6-1 to approve this measure with Councilman Andrew Melendrez casting the sole dissenting vote. It will be interesting to see if anyone will dissent if the governmental affairs committee approves Loveridge's recommendations. Committee member Ed Adkison said that nothing had been set but it's very unlikely that Loveridge would bother to send recommendations to the governmental affairs committee unless he already knew he had the votes needed to pass them.
On a related note, the Associated Press wrote this story on how across the country, "sunshine" laws are routinely violated by local governments and these laws remain unenforced. Sunshine laws are those that ensure an accessible and open government whether it is through accessing public documents or attending public meetings.
(excerpt)
Advocates for open government say public trust is at the heart of our democracy, that scrutiny keeps public officials honest, and that information is the foundation of informed debate.
"We're in an era, clearly, where there's a lot of distrust in government," said Bill Chamberlin of the Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project at the University of Florida. "The more the public officials are open in their conversation and show the documentation that they're basing decisions on, it's going to help the public have faith in what officials are doing."
Exactly.
For more information on California's sunshine laws, you can visit the California First Amendment Coalition or the Californians Aware Web sites.
Labels: Backlash against civilian oversight, City elections, civilian review spreads
posted by Five Before Midnight | 8:23 AM
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