Document of Interest Provided By Councilmember Hamann on Civilian Review Boards

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Recruitment Mary Dunlap, director of San Francisco’s Office of Citizen Complaints, requires candidates for investigator positions to have 2 years of investigative experience, which may be in academic research. Dunlap also looks for individuals who can handle the stress of angry com- plainants and hostile, armed officers. She tests applicants for tendencies to jump to conclusions, and she interviews them to detect biases for or against law enforcement. (See “San Francisco Mandates the Number of Oversight Investigators.”) Investigators in many jurisdictions have a law enforcement background. In Minneapolis, two of three current inves- tigators are former police officers with other departments. According to Robin Lolar, one of the investigators: My police background enables me to detect when officers aren’t being truthful in their reports by way of their creative writing. I can also sense when complainants are leav- ing something out of their stories. I know what officers can and can’t do by way of stops and seizures. Knowing proper police proce- dure saves me a lot of research time. Lolar added, “Complainants feel comfortable knowing I am a former police officer from outside of Minneapolis.” (Minneapolis legislation forbids any present or former city officer from becoming a Civilian Police Review Authority [CRA] investigator.) The investigators’previous experi- ence as police officers helps address police union and subject officers’concerns that CRA does not understand police work or is biased against officers. In fact, an IA ser- geant who was exonerated of misconduct by CRA report- ed, “The investigator questioned me for 45 minutes and was very thorough and fair—in fact, I ended up hiring him as a criminal investigator for the city attorney’s office.” An auditor’s report on the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department questioned how independent the city’s Office of Citizen Complaints was from the depart- ment because three of the five staff mem- bers had ties to the department; two were former police officers, including one who was a former department IA investigator. The police commission resolved not to hire former officers again. Oversight bodies must also consider carefully whether to hire investigators who are members of activist groups. Even if activists are able to be objec- tive on the job, their volunteer activities off the job may C ITIZEN R EVIEW OF P OLICE: APPROACHES AND I MPLEMENTATION 89 SAN FRANCISCO MANDATES THE NUMBER OF OVERSIGHT INVESTIGATORS Inadequate funds to provide for sufficient staff can doom an oversight system because either investigations cannot be conducted thoroughly or cases will be delayed—or both. As discussed in chapter 5, delays result in disillu- sioned complainants and angry police officers as well as loss of memory and witnesses. To avoid these shortcomings, in 1996 San Francisco voters approved Proposition G, which amended the city and county charters to require that the Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC) have at least 1 investigator for every 150 sworn officers. As a result, in 1998 OCC had 15 investigators and 4 supervisory personnel to handle a department with 2,100 sworn officers. By contrast, Minneapolis’ Civilian Police Review Authority has only 4 inves- tigators for a police department with 919 sworn officers. However, even with the charter amendment, it took San Francisco many months to provide the money for OCC to hire the required investigators. And even with the increased staffing level, OCC staff continue to be over- worked—each has 40–60 cases at any one time. Because officers generally may be interviewed only while they are on duty, investigators frequently conduct interviews at 6:00 a.m. if officers are working night shifts. Investigators are granted compensatory time for working before or after hours, but not overtime pay. In 1996, San Francisco vot- ers approved Proposition G, which amended the city and county charters to require that the Office of Citizen Complaints have at least 1 investigator for every 150 sworn officers.