Police Advisory Committee seeks difficult balance
It’s a venerable system of accountability, part of the fabric of any true republic. As centuries attest, power does indeed corrupt absolutely, so people who dislike dictatorships started instituting separate entities to keep other entities in check.
Police officers, in particular, bear such scrutiny because of the inherent power of their positions—specifically in the authority granted to them by citizens (via legislators) to take away their freedom if they deem fit based on training, law, circumstances, and especially discretion.
At issue here today, however, is not who’s watching the Watchers; today we’re going to talk about who’s watching the Watchers who are watching the Watchers.
I’m speaking about citizen review boards (also known as citizen oversight boards, citizen review committees, etc.), and now it’s the City of Chattanooga’s turn.
For a little background, this topic gained traction locally for two particular reasons. One was a spate of highly publicized officer transgressions from excessive use of force to rape accusations in the media over the last year. Then last November, in response to a police-involved fatality of a young black man, the citizens of Nashville voted to amend their city charter to create a Community Oversight Board, an independent body to review cases of alleged Metropolitan Nashville police misconduct.
This, like Red Bull, gave the conversation wings.
The ballot issue, initially proposed by a coalition of Nashville community organizations under the banner of “Community Oversight Now”, caught the attention of the Nashville’s Fraternal Order of Police lodge, who responded prior to the vote with a protracted public relations campaign to fight this idea. The FOP spent just under a half-million dollars in advertising to the CON’s roughly $11,000+, only to lose and see the proposed amendment pass.
This in turn caught the attention of the Tennessee State Legislature. Many of its majority members saw a threat to law and order because of the potential for undermining police confidence in government, potentially slowing down enforcement activities and putting citizens at greater risk against crime. And so, Tennessee House Bill 658 and Senate Bill 1407 were born, intended to regulate police oversight boards statewide. (That’s right; a law was drafted to regulate the people tasked with regulating the people in Internal Affairs who regulate the cops.)
In our sweet burg of Chattanooga, we too are in the process of creating a police oversight board (or as it is formally known, the Police Advisory and Review Committee).
While local Chattanooga Police unions didn’t engage in a publicity blitz to protest this (CPD being the only agency subject to review under this committee), there was no shortage of input by local activists who had their own comprehensive plan for how police should be regulated and by whom—right down to paying and staffing the regulators out of the already-stretched police budget. Also, the community activists insisted they—not elected officials—would be the ones to choose the board members.
This, of course, went over like a fart in church but it shows their level of commitment, even if that meant losing any seat at the table because it turns out that dictating absolutes is a horrible bargaining tactic.
Methodology aside though…the idea has merit. Doesn’t it?
The idea of someone overseeing the overseers of the overseers is an undeniably good one. But when one group doesn’t like the outcome of a decision by the overseers overseeing the overseers, the faith placed in them tends to be replaced by anger and a desire to replace or add to them until, presumably, the decisions produced match their desires. This, of course, is where it breaks down because “not liking a decision” is not the same as “being right”.
Currently in most police organizations, internal investigations are conducted when accusations arise. Officers involved have time to review. A disciplinary review board reviews these investigations and makes recommendations which are presented to a chief who, based on these two independent reports, conducts an interview with said officer (or officers) and makes the final decision. Then if officers are fired or suspended they can appeal to the civil service board or equivalent, sometimes a council or commission, or an administrative law judge.
Cops are accused petty things on a daily basis, usually because their customers are wildly unhappy for having been arrested/ticketed/etc., and it’s a form of revenge or possibly leverage in court. We’re not talking about those types of complaints today, though; we’re talking about those rare events in which half of an otherwise good story is caught on tape, or a whole recording is made of a truly bad one. Good shoot or bad, due process is still due process, and the issue of how to deal with tragic and usually split-second decisions has been wrestled with for decades.
The first citizens’ review board was instituted in Washington D.C. in 1948. Philadelphia followed suit 10 years later. Now more than 100 cities have established citizen oversight committees, and while all are structured differently, they share consistent problems, including inconsistent discipline, a lack of impartiality, and excessive taxpayer cost (Nashville, for example, made this a $1.5 million new budget item). Another issue is a lack of law enforcement representation to explain the intricacies of a situation based on professional training the board or committee members have never been exposed to. (Think of a group of plumbers being tasked with assessing a tragic failure of an electrician.)
On the other hand, sometimes the committees themselves are hamstrung.
Most lack subpoena power, investigatory power, and termination power. They also lack power to change policies and implement new ones. Sometimes, the chosen members of these committees simply do not represent the diversity of the city in question and especially the communities therein most affected by police violence. In short, they feel (and in fact are) toothless.
In a current illustration, police officers in Phoenix were filmed holding a family of four (a man, a pregnant woman and two tween girls) at gunpoint after investigating them for shoplifting. One of the officers stated that the family was acting belligerently and that at some point he felt one of the family members was possibly “going for a weapon”, hence the guns. Citizens and activist groups are now calling for the officers to be fired.
To their dismay, however, the city council and the mayor of Phoenix cannot legally fire the officers. That falls to the city manager, and a provision in the city charter prevents the mayor and council from ordering the city manager to fire specific employees, because that would make the initial rule of only the city manager having the power to handle such things moot.
On one hand, a time-intensive and legally required process has to play out. Employees, including “cops”, must be provided notice and the right to be heard. Precipitous action risks the officers winning a suit to get their jobs back, plus damages.
On the other hand, there is strong social and public pressure on leaders to make a quick decision without letting the process play out or recognizing the officers’ right to due process—despite all the explanations and consequences.
Similarly, the establishment of the Nashville oversight board last November was based largely on the 2017 shooting of a young black man who was pulled over for running a stop sign in a project development. After the stop, the young man’s bad luck was compounded when his .357 magnum revolver fall out of his pants. Rather than leave it, he grabbed it and ran between two cars. He was shot twice and ultimately killed for his choices. There is no disputing these events, but people still called for the firing of the officer for apparently not being willing to be shot first “just to be sure.”
When it turned out, however, that it’s within policy to shoot people who pick up magnums during traffic stops and fail to comply with lawful orders, the word of the TBI and the Department of Justice became hollow and protests ensued.
The formation of the oversight board was the compromise the citizens asked for. But what happens when that board also acknowledges that—to take a Chattanooga example—when someone shoots a cop in the chest and the cop returns fire and his bullet is the one that kills, he is to be exonerated and that this was not a “racially motivated execution”?
If this assessment by a police oversight committee isn’t accepted, what then? Replace the members until you get the desired response, or create yet another committee to oversee the committee overseeing the investigators? Watch the Watchers watching the Watchers who are watching the investigators?
You’re not going to make everyone happy in situations like these. In fact, you may not make even the majority happy, but at some point it needs to be acknowledged that once you put a mechanism of fairness (if not justice) in place, there are going to be circumstances in which you have to accept the decisions of the people you appointed to evaluate decisions. It’s okay.
At first blush, Chattanooga’s police activist group seem to have a poor taste in their mouths because their list of demands wasn’t met fully, but that doesn’t make our city council’s Police Advisory and Review Committee any less real.
Chattanooga can find the right balance, I hope. One where officers won’t hesitate to do their job for fear of being second guessed and thrown to the wolves by people who have no interest in why they felt they had to do what they did on occasion. And one where citizens (yes, activists) can truly feel like they have a seat at the table and that those entrusted to protect them are held accountable when they perceive a tragic mishap.
Observe. Participate. Effect change…but acknowledge that at some point, an answer is still an answer, even if it’s not the one you want—and that applies to both sides of this table.
Stay Safe.