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 133 county more money. It merely saves the law enforce- ment agency money.) 3. It is theoretically possible to compare the nine over- sight budget levels with the number of units of a spe- cific type of service provided. The most comparable unit of service to examine is the number of com- plaints filed or reviewed.4 Exhibit 7–2 shows the units of this type of service for each of the nine oversight systems. As shown, there is no association between budget levels and number of cases filed or reviewed. Portland, whose oversight systems costs $43,000, reviewed 119 cases, while St. Paul, with a budget of $37,160, reviewed 71 and Rochester, with a budget of $128,069, reviewed 26 and mediated 4. Flint handled 313 cases with a prorated budget of $173,811 (the system investigates complaints against other city agencies), while Minneapolis, with a budget of more than $500,000, handled 159. 4. The final column in exhibit 7–2 shows how much it costs to process each complaint that a citizen filed or oversight system staff reviewed in 1997 by dividing the system’s budget by the number of filed complaints or complaints reviewed.5 As shown, there is no corre- lation between cost per complaint filed or reviewed and overall activity level. For example, Rochester’s Civilian Review Board, which reviewed cases in 1997, had a unit cost is $4,269, while the oversight systems in Orange County, Portland, and St. Paul reviewed or heard between 45 and 119 complaints with a cost per complaint filed of less than $525. A similar discrepancy appears for Flint ($555 for each of 313 complaints) and Berkeley ($4,864 for each of 57 complaints). 5. Finally, as shown in exhibit 7–2, there is no relation- ship between a system’s budget and its cost per com- plaint filed. San Francisco, with the largest budget, has a lower cost per complaint than Berkeley and Minneapolis, which have smaller budgets. Rochester has a much higher cost per complaint reviewed than Tucson and Flint, even though its budget is lower than theirs. Why is there a weak correlation at best between budget levels and these measures of oversight system activity? • Oversight systems often cannot alter the number of complaints they investigate or review even with increased funding because they are limited by statute to accepting only certain types of cases (e.g., use of force—Rochester) or are mandated to accept all cases within certain categories (e.g., use of firearms— St. Paul). • An oversight system’s activity level for a given year may reflect considerations that have nothing to do with budget levels. For example, there often are anomalies in the number of complaints filed in a given year. A large and unruly public demonstration may result in numerous complaints, or there may be a decline in the number of cases forwarded by the internal affairs unit because the unit loses staff or gets backed up investi- gating high-profile shootings. Changes in oversight staffing levels—for example, through resignations— may affect system activity in a given year irrespective of budget levels. • More money for citizen oversight may fail to result in increased utilization if staff do not make citizens aware of the opportunity to file complaints, if citizens do not trust the system, if the police or sheriff’s department refuses to cooperate, or if other barriers to filing complaints are not addressed. • Cost-per-complaint figures do not take into considera- tion each system’s total responsibilities or the in-kind services it uses. For example, Berkeley’s cost per filed complaint includes not only its cost of investigating the complaint but also of holding hearings and making pol- icy recommendations. Minneapolis spends many hours every year helping hundreds of citizens who decide not to file a complaint. Does more money buy better quality service? Unfortun- ately, most systems do not monitor the quality of their services. Furthermore, it was outside the purview of this publication to examine quality of services. Finally, it was not possible to examine oversight activity in some juris- dictions—for example, hearings in Rochester are not open to the public.