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Getting Along with Citizen Oversight - citizen involvement in investigating complaints against police
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin,The, August, 2000 by Peter Finn
Two Rochester, New York, police officers arrested two young males allegedly for dealing drugs. One youth's mother claimed that the young men were innocently walking along the street when the officers approached them. She further alleged that one officer grabbed her son and threw him through a store window. Some community members became enraged at what they perceived as police brutality. When the city's citizen review board heard the case, however, it learned that the two males had drugs in their possession at the time of the arrest. Also, the store owner reported that the officers had remained polite and professional during the encounter and that the woman's son had pushed the officer into the store window. The review board discovered the truth, exonerated the officers, and calmed the community members. [1]
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While this example illustrates how citizen oversight helped defuse a potentially volatile situation, the relationship between law enforcement and citizen oversight often has proved strained, at best, or even adversarial, in some cases. However, the 1990s showed a considerable increase in citizen oversight of police in the United States. In light of this expansion, police administrators and citizen oversight members must consider how they can work together with a minimum of conflict and a maximum of collaboration. [2]
OVERSIGHT MODELS
Communities rarely create identical oversight systems. However, most of these review processes fall into four main types.
1) Citizens investigate allegations of police misconduct and recommend a finding to the head of the agency.
2) Officers investigate allegations and develop findings. Then, citizens review and recommend that the head of the agency approve or reject the findings.
3) Complainants may appeal findings established by the agency to citizens who review them and make recommendations to the head of the agency.
4) An auditor investigates the process the agency uses to accept and investigate complaints and reports to the agency and the community the thoroughness and fairness of the process.
While some oversight procedures represent "pure" samples of these models, many exist as hybrids that merge features from two or more different varieties of citizen review into their own unique systems. For example, the Minneapolis, Minnesota, civilian police review operates in two stages. First, paid, professional investigators and an executive director examine most citizen complaints to determine whether there is probable cause to believe that police misconduct occurred. Then, volunteer board members conduct closed-door hearings to decide whether they should support the allegations in probable cause cases. However, in Orange County, Florida, nine volunteer citizen review board members hold hearings, open to the public and the media, on all cases involving the alleged use of excessive force and abuse of power after the sheriffs department has investigated them. A member of the department helps coordinate the review board's activities. By comparison, 13 citizen advisors, appointed by the city council and neig hborhood coalitions in Portland, Oregon, hear appeals from citizens dissatisfied with police investigations of their complaints, review all closed cases involving allegations of the use of excessive force, and conduct random audits of internal affairs investigations. The city council also meets as an audit committee to hear appeals from citizens dissatisfied with the department's investigation of their complaints. A professional examiner coordinates the work of the city council committee and the citizen advisors and conducts many of the audits. Although different in structure and content, these three oversight systems all function in similar ways by providing policy and training recommendations to their respective law enforcement agencies.
POLICE CONCERNS
In many jurisdictions, law enforcement agencies have fought the initiation of citizen oversight. After communities have implemented such systems, agencies frequently have found them troublesome. Basically, most agencies have opposed citizen oversight because they feel that oversight procedures represent outside interference, oversight staff lack experience with and understanding of police work, and oversight processes are unfair.
Outside Interference
Most police administrators believe that their agencies should have the final say in matters of discipline, policies and procedures, and training. Because police administrators are in charge of their agencies, they are held accountable for their officers' behavior. Accordingly, without final say over matters that directly affect their officers, administrators feel that this accountability becomes undermined. Therefore, most jurisdictions have used a variety of approaches in addressing concerns about outside involvement in police affairs. In many communities, local governments have established oversight bodies that solely advise; they can make only nonbinding recommendations to law enforcement agencies. Also, some review bodies can appeal the agency's rejection of their recommendations to elected or appointed officials who can require the department to act. However, because these officials have this authority regardless of whether an oversight body exists, the oversight procedure itself does not further dimini sh the authority of agency administrators.
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