Document of Interest Provided By Councilmember Hamann on Civilian Review Boards

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C HAPTER 3: OTHER O VERSIGHT R ESPONSIBILITIES 80 Drawbacks to mediation Mediation can have disadvantages (see “Mediation Is Not Always Successful”). • Because mediation is almost always held in private and the results are confidential, it may be seen as having less “teeth” than formal, public proceedings. For exam- ple, Robert Bailey, former Berkeley assistant city man- ager, believes that mediation circumvents the potential benefits of a public hearing that exposes officer mis- conduct to citizens and the media. • According to Charles Moose, former chief of the Portland Police Bureau, some police administrators feel that mediation takes away their control over discipline because a condition of successful mediation is that there will be no further investigation and no discipline. • Officers may go through the motions of appearing to be contrite to avoid having the complaint appear in their files. According to Todd Samolis, coordinator of the Rochester Civilian Review Board, “A number of officers come for the wrong reasons—to keep the com- plaint out of their file or to pacify their supervisors—but then they see it works: They hear the complainant in a new light and see how they might have handled the situation differently.” Or they see that explaining their actions changes the complainant’s attitude toward them. When Minneapolis Mediation Program staff telephone participants a day or two after the session, officers sometimes say, “I never really saw it from the citizen’s perspective” or “My actions really were inappropriate; I was having a bad day.” • Although mediators are trained to make sure that each participant is on equal footing, some participants may have more of an advantage than others in certain situations. — Some officers are uncomfortable sitting in the same small room with someone whom they have cited or arrested. — Some mediators feel that officers appearing in uni- form and armed may intimidate some citizens. However, some citizens report they prefer to talk to an officer who is in uniform so they feel they are not addressing an ordinary citizen but the person in his or her law enforcement role. • In Tucson, complainants may opt for mediation, file a complaint with the auditor, file with the police depart- ment, or file with all three. Some police administrators object when mediation allows complainants to have more than “one bite of the apple” in this fashion. (However, in many jurisdictions, officers accused of misconduct also have multiple recourse, such as arbi- tration and civil service hearings.) Mediation also has limitations. • Mediation is suitable only for cases involving allegations of officer discourtesy and other minor misconduct. Allegations of use of excessive force or discrimination should not be mediated because, if sustained, they merit punishment. • Many officers refuse to participate in mediation. One officer said, “Why should I have to explain to a citizen why I did my job?” Some officers are reluctant to participate simply because, as an unknown procedure, mediation makes them nervous. According to Robert Duffy, chief of the Rochester Police Department, “Officers often find mediation threatening—people in authority have difficulty hearing the other side. But we need to hear why people disagree with us.” • Many complainants also are reluctant to participate. In 1997, San Francisco’s Office of Citizen Complaints received 22 complaints that investigators felt were eligible for mediation, but complainants refused to participate in 16 of them. Early Warning Systems Early warning systems (EWSs) are procedures for keep- ing track of complaints against officers and using the Every 3 months, Minneapolis’ Civilian Police Review Authority sends internal affairs the names of officers who have accumulated two or more complaints within the previous 12-month period.