Document of Interest Provided By Councilmember Hamann on Civilian Review Boards

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C ITIZEN R EVIEW OF P OLICE: APPROACHES AND I MPLEMENTATION 115 file. A reasonable compromise may be for the over- sight body not to report unsustained findings to the police or sheriff’s department or for the department not to include them in the officer’s file until the number of unsustained findings has reached an agreed-upon mini- mum number during a specified period of time (e.g., three findings during a 2-year period). • Police IA units themselves add allegations to citi- zens’—or their own—complaints against officers. The Rochester Police Department’s IA unit added what it calls 12 “satellite issues” as a result of investigations initiated for other reasons in 1997. A letter the Tucson Police Department sent to one complainant noted, “This complaint has been closed as OTHER, meaning that the Officer committed a violation of TPD [Tucson Police Department] Rules and Procedures other than the alleged violation.” In other words, in adding allegations, citizen oversight bodies are merely follow- ing in police footsteps. In some jurisdictions, such as San Francisco, oversight bodies are required to investigate any added allegations they discover because their charter mandates that they investigate any wrongdoing they uncover. Never- theless, San Francisco’s internal affairs unit is trying to work with the Office of Citizen Complaints on not generating added allegations that do not represent deliberate mis- conduct—for example, claiming an officer recorded the wrong code on a report. Finally, on the one hand, added allegations are not citizen complaints and there- fore, absent a legal mandate to investigate them, might be considered beyond the oversight body’s purview. On the other hand, few citizens are familiar with their police or sheriff’s department general orders and there- fore are unaware when an officer’s behavior violates these orders. A possible reconciliation of this dilemma may be for oversight bodies to ask the complainant if he or she would like to add any instances of miscon- duct discovered by the oversight body to the original complaint. If the complainant does not wish to add them, the oversight body could inform the department of the additional violations without including them as part of the complaint. • Board decisions can benefit, not just harm, officers who are sued civilly. In one case, a citizen whose com- plaint a board did not sustain filed a civil suit, and the city attorney had the oversight investigator testify. The investigator’s testimony helped the officer have the suit dismissed. (See chapter 1, “Introduction,” for further evidence that citizen oversight can prevent or reduce award amounts in civil suits.) Whenever the depart- ment is sued, the Portland Police Bureau internal affairs unit shares with loss-control personnel reports that the Portland auditor routinely sends it in case the information can help the department’s case. • Delay is a product of many people. Also, slowness is often an unavoidable feature of many oversight bodies because they are overworked and understaffed, just as it can take years for Federal and State equal opportuni- ty employment commissions to hear cases. Providing citizen oversight bod- ies with adequate personnel and fund- ing often can reduce delays dramati- cally, as happened when San Francisco funded additional investigators for the Office of Citizen Complaints. Oversight bodies, such as Berkeley’s, also can develop a process for sum- marily dismissing inappropriate com- plaints to reduce delays involved in scheduling hearings on legitimate complaints. Orange County allows board members to place noncontroversial complaints on a “consent agen- da,” bypassing the need for further discussion. • Oversight staff and police need to meet and talk, whether to iron out specific misconceptions or con- flicts or to share information about what they are doing. According to Prentice Sanders, assistant chief of the San Francisco Police Department, in 1997 the police commission chairperson invited OCC and the police department as well as interested citizen groups to four roundtable discussions run by two independent professional facilitators to address concerns about the oversight process. Everyone looked for common ground. All agreed there was a problem with cases tak- ing too long that needed to be addressed. They also agreed to talk to each other in the future if a problem arose before going to the press. Oversight staff and police need to meet and talk, whether to iron out specific misconceptions or conflicts or to share information about what they are doing.