Document of Interest Provided By Councilmember Hamann on Civilian Review Boards

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C HAPTER 6: RESOLVING P OTENTIAL C ONFLICTS 114 sometimes entails. According to one, “Delays make it impossible for officers to collect witnesses or even remember what happened.” Several actions and observations may help to temper police concerns that oversight procedures are unfair. • Every citizen oversight process should protect officers from petty and vengeful complaints. “An important component of the intake process surrounds develop- ment of procedures (and related training) to assess and dismiss complaints that are unfounded . . . to permit frivolous complaints to be set aside and not utilize [oversight] resources unnecessarily” or inappropriately implicate and take up the time of officers.5 • Oversight boards need to let officers know when they decide in favor of officers in specific cases so police do not develop or maintain the misperception that the pro- gram is biased. (See “The Types of Board Findings Oversight Staff Should Publicize to Officers.”) Boards can also make clear that they sustain citizen complaints at low rates that are not significantly higher—and sometimes lower—than those of internal affairs units.6 Lisa Botsko, Portland’s first auditor, went to training sessions for IA investigators to tell them how well they were doing. • Investigators and board members should ask neutral questions in a nonaccusatory manner. One accused officer was pleased to report that the Tucson auditor’s questions during an IA interrogation of his alleged misconduct were not judgmental but rather were designed “to get a clear picture of what happened.” He felt her questions “all made sense.” • Mary Dunlap, director of San Francisco’s Office of Citizen Complaints, observes that indecisive findings can be unsatisfying and unfair to both parties. As a result, she wants to reduce the number of undecided cases—that is, have more determinations that the case is unfounded, exonerated, or sustained. In any case, it may be the police or sheriff’s department decision, not the oversight body’s determination, to record unfound- ed cases in an officer’s files. • Reasonable doubt in a criminal case results in a “not guilty,” not an “innocent,” finding. It is perhaps not unreasonable, therefore, that in oversight cases, when a preponderance of the evidence is lacking that the officer did not engage in misconduct, an unsustained—not an unfounded or exonerated—finding is made. Similarly, just as a criminal defendant found not guilty still has an arrest record, it may not be unreasonable to include a record of unsustained cases in an officer’s personnel THE TYPES OF BOARD FINDINGS OVERSIGHT STAFF SHOULD PUBLICIZE TO OFFICERS A mayor pointed out,“Even though review boards side with subject officers in the overwhelming number of cases, many officers still believe the board is out to get them.” As a result, it becomes especially important to let officers know how specific reviews have favored them. An Orange County sheriff’s deputy wiped pepper spray on his hand and then wiped it on an unconscious suspect to wake him up. The IA unit sustained the violation of the department’s pepper spray policy—excessive use of force—but the board said he was a new deputy from another department where deputies had carried ammonia capsules, and he was only using the spray as a substitute. The board said the sheriff’s department pepper spray policy needed revision because it required automatic termination for misuse regardless of mitigating circum- stances.As a result, the department rewrote its policy so that misuse would not require automatic termination. The deputy was suspended but not terminated. When three Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC) staff monitored New Year’s evening partying, they observed that San Francisco police officers used the utmost restraint in preventing a riot by drunken revelers. OCC issued an oral report to the police commission describing the officers’ exemplary behavior.