Document of Interest Provided By Councilmember Hamann on Civilian Review Boards

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• Affirm the police bureau’s finding. • Refer the case to IA for further investigation. • Recommend that PIIAC (i.e., the city council) inform the chief in writing that the finding does not support IA’s determination. • Refer the finding for reconsideration to the police bureau’s Review Level Committee (consisting of branch managers, the accused officer’s manager, the PIIAC auditor, one citizen adviser, and nonvoting rep- resentatives from the police bureau and the city). On the two or three occasions a year when the advisory board asks the Review Level Committee to reconsider a finding, the examiner and the adviser who reviewed the case participate in the meeting. On occasion, the Review Level Committee has agreed to change an exonerated finding to one of insufficient facts. On one occasion, the chief overruled the Review Level Committee’s recom- mendation and sided with the PIIAC advisers to sustain a complaint. Advisory meetings last about 90 minutes, with 15–20 minutes devoted to each appeal. After each monthly meet- ing, the examiner drafts a report for PIIAC summarizing the advisory board’s conclusions regarding each appeal. Audits Five citizen advisers volunteer to be on a PIIAC monitor- ing subcommittee. Subcommittee members look at cases chosen at random by the examiner to determine trends in quality, timeliness, and accuracy of the police bureau’s IA procedures and investigations. Internal affairs sends the examiner all closed cases each month—30–40 cases. The examiner assigns the cases to monitoring subcommittee members with a worksheet to guide their review, but she does most of the reviews her- self, including all cases that involve the alleged use of excessive force or discrimination and all cases IA sustains. The examiner or the assigned subcommittee member goes individually to the police bureau to review the entire file for each case in a private room. One of them completes the worksheet with pertinent information about the case. Officers’and complainants’names are not included in the reports. The examiner and adviser spend 2–4 hours examining how thoroughly and fairly the investigation was conducted and whether the finding is solidly supported. At each monthly monitoring subcommittee meeting, which is open to the public and the press, advisers and the examiner discuss trends they may have spotted in their investigations. (See “Troublesome Trends Revealed by Monitoring Cases.”) Based on the audit results, the examiner develops a draft quarterly report, with subcom- mittee members’ help, highlighting shortcomings in the investigations, abuse trends, and recommended policy or training changes (see “Other activities” on page 45). At the next monthly subcommittee meeting, subcommittee members review the report—and pertinent statutes and C ITIZEN R EVIEW OF P OLICE: APPROACHES AND I MPLEMENTATION 43 TROUBLESOME TRENDS REVEALED BY MONITORING CASES In 1998, the examiner—Lisa Botsko (at that time)— and citizen advisers noticed that several com- plainants reported that, when they asked police offi- cers for their badge numbers, the officers would reply,“I don’t have a badge number.” Technically, this was accurate. However, officers do have identifica- tion numbers. After Botsko shared this concern with the police bureau, the chief clarified the perti- nent general order to require officers to interpret requests for their badge number as a request for their identification number. Botsko and the advisers also noticed that a number of incident reports referred to officers’ use of a “dis- traction blow” without explaining its purpose. After inquiring about the behavior, Botsko learned that the police bureau training department taught the distrac- tion principle (e.g., pushing the driver’s head while prying his or her hands off the steering wheel)—but not a blow—as a means of diverting someone’s atten- tion. Indeed, the bureau considers a blow to be a use of force that requires explanation in the incident report. It turned out that some officers had learned the distraction blow technique at the State training academy. As a result, the bureau agreed to explain during inservice training that officers always have to explain in their reports why they struck someone and refrain from using incorrect terminology.