Document of Interest Provided By Councilmember Hamann on Civilian Review Boards

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• Maintain confidentiality of information in IA files. • Realize possible conflicts of interest such as relatives working with law enforcement. Recruitment Most jurisdictions recruit board members through public announcements and by word of mouth. • Minneapolis has an open appointment process in which the city council’s Public Safety and Regulatory Services Subcommittee hosts public hearings at which applicants present themselves. The subcommittee makes recom- mendations to the full council for approval by majority vote. • In Orange County, citizens can tell county commis- sioners they would like to serve on the oversight board. C HAPTER 4: STAFFING 86 SHOULD POLICE OFFICERS AND SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES SERVE ON BOARDS? The inclusion of law enforcement officers (whether current or former) on volunteer oversight boards is a contro- versial issue. On the one hand, the St. Paul oversight ordinance requires the city’s board to include two active police officers. (The St. Paul police union lobbied to have one officer for each citizen board member but settled for two officers on a seven-person commission.) Omaha’s Citizens Complaint Review Board has one police union member. On the other hand,Tucson’s ordinance prohibits board members from being current peace officers, while Berkeley’s forbids current or former officers from serving. Many people argue that having one or two officers on the board provides additional insight into police behavior. According to a former board member in St. Paul,“It is good to have officers on the board because they have a perspective citizen commissioners don’t have; you want their frame of reference. But [they cannot exercise undue influence because], with only two members, they do not have a majority vote.” The Rochester board had two, then one, and now no officers as board members. One long-time citizen member reported:“I liked having an officer on the panel because, regardless of how much training civilians get, the officer is better versed in department policies. And they took their jobs very seriously.” On a few occasions, police mem- bers drew other board members’ attention to improper procedures that subject officers had engaged in which were not among the reasons for the citizens’ complaints. Opponents of allowing active or even former officers to serve as board members argue that their participation violates the concept of independent review: Officers, even if from other departments or retired, may not be able to be objective about the culpability of another officer’s conduct.The Orange County charter establishing the Citizen Review Board is silent on the matter of whether the sheriff’s two appointees to the board may be deputies. However, the sheriff has deliberately selected civilians to avoid any impression that the board is biased in favor of the department. Indeed, to make sure the board remained neutral in the public’s perception, when a county commissioner nominated a correctional deputy to the board, the sheriff successfully asked the commis- sioner to withdraw the nomination. A board member in Minneapolis added: All you need [to be a competent board member] is to be a citizen of sound judgment.... You don’t need to understand police work to know if someone is mistreating someone else,such as calling them names. Abuse is obvious. And the hearing brings out whether the officer violated department policies or procedures. A police officer observed,“I have heard comments from street cops that board members are clueless, but then I hear the same thing said about IA investigators who haven’t been on the streets for years.”