Document of Interest Provided By Councilmember Hamann on Civilian Review Boards

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C HAPTER 5: ADDRESSING I MPORTANT I SSUES IN C ITIZEN O VERSIGHT 94 Jurisdictions setting up new citizen oversight procedures or improving an existing system need to consider four important issues that are not discussed in detail elsewhere in this report: 1. How to conduct effective outreach so that citizens know the oversight process is available to them. 2. How to structure the oversight process. 3. How public the system’s procedures will be. 4. How “politics” can interfere with the system’s effective operation. Outreach Citizen oversight bodies use a variety of methods to advertise their availability and services, but most have not done an effective job of publicizing themselves because: • They lack the resources to market their services effectively. • Local media tend to focus only on scandals related to police misconduct, not on mundane issues of how and why to file complaints. • Police and sheriff’s departments that take initial complaints may not make complainants aware of the citizen oversight option. Nevertheless, outreach is important because, if citizens are not aware of the oversight body and its services, alle- gations of misconduct will go unreported. Reflecting this perception, in 1998 San Francisco’s Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC) hired an additional staff person whose responsibilities specifically include community outreach, while Berkeley’s Police Review Commission has estab- lished an outreach subcommittee. To become widely known, oversight staff need to use multiple marketing approaches. As the following discus- sion and exhibit 5–1 suggest, many jurisdictions have implemented valuable outreach methods, but no jurisdic- tion has incorporated all of them. Publicity materials The Minneapolis Civilian Police Review Authority has published a brochure about its services in several lan- guages. A map in San Jose’s brochure identifies where the office and validated parking are located. San Francisco’s citizen complaint form is formatted as a postage-paid, self-mailing letter (see appendix C). The Berkeley Police Review Commission (PRC) distributes KEY POINTS (CONTINUED) • Making oversight procedures public has potential benefits and drawbacks. —Openness can increase the public’s trust in the system but discourage citizens who want to remain anonymous from filing complaints. —There are often legal barriers to opening citizen oversight to the public. • Most oversight bodies prepare annual reports for public dissemination. Some reports include: —The nature and status of each policy recommendation the body made that year. —Demographic information about complainants and subject officers. —Cases in which the chief or sheriff disagreed with the board’s findings. • “Politics” can seriously hamper the oversight system’s effectiveness. Politics can involve: —Conflict among local government officials. —Volunteer board members with a pro-police or anti-police “agenda.”