Document of Interest Provided By Councilmember Hamann on Civilian Review Boards

Home Browse Search

C HAPTER 7: MONITORING, EVALUATION, AND F UNDING 130 THE ALBUQUERQUE CITY COUNCIL COMMISSIONED A THOROUGH EVALUATION Troubled by fatal shootings by Albuquerque police officers (31 in 10 years), extremely high annual payments for tort claims involving police officers (up to $2.5 million per year), and other concerns, the Albuquerque City Council in 1996 hired Eileen Luna and Samuel Walker, two well-known experts in citizen review of police, to evaluate the city’s oversight mechanisms. Luna and Walker’s 159-page report concluded:“The existing mechanisms for oversight ...are not functioning effectively” (emphasis in original).1 The researchers used five sources of data: 1.A survey administered in person to more than 357 rank-and-file officers (44 percent of the total sworn officer force) consisting of 70 close-ended and several open-ended questions. 2.Personal interviews with: • Community members, including leaders and members of human rights, civil rights, and neighborhood organizations; attorneys in private and public practice; and spokespersons for ethnic communities. • Police officers, including the chief, command officers, union officers, and the staff psychologist. • Public officials, including the mayor, city council members, and advisory board members. 3.A review of official documents, ranging from advisory board minutes to internal affairs quarterly reports. 4.An audit of the internal affairs unit’s general patterns and practices, including: • Complaint files for 1994–96. • A consumer satisfaction survey administrated to everyone who had filed a complaint during the previous 3 years. 5.A national survey of citizen oversight mechanisms. The report concluded with 10 recommendations for improving the oversight process in Albuquerque, including advocating that oversight procedure administrators exercise fully the authority they already had and that the mayor and city council take a more active role in overseeing the police department. In October 1998, the city council enacted the Police Oversight Ordinance to restructure the city’s oversight sys- tem along the lines of the report’s recommendations. According to coauthor Samuel Walker,“The City Council is to be commended.They paid an outsider to come in and then acted on those [recommended] changes.Very often these reports just sit on a shelf.”2 The council provided for an 18-month evaluation of the new oversight system. 1. Luna, Eileen, and Samuel Walker,A Report on the Oversight Mechanisms of the Albuquerque Police Department,prepared for the Albuquerque City Council, 1997. 2.Law Enforcement News,“Who’s Watching the Watchers?” 29 (499) (November 15, 1998).