City moving slowly on civilian review board

Dan Devine

It’s been just over two months since Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced plans to appoint a three-member civilian board to review reports of misconduct by officers of the Boston Police Department. While city officials report some progress in its establishment, the pace of that progress has been slow.

Menino made his announcement on Aug. 24, saying he’d begin reviewing candidates for the appointments immediately and that it could take several weeks to name three worthy panelists for the paid, part-time positions.

Corporation Counsel William F. Sinnott said Tuesday that the city has “identified candidates, and we’re in the process of both soliciting additional candidates and speaking with the ones that have been previously identified.” Sinnott has conducted a couple of interviews himself, and said he knew that Menino and “at least one other member of [the mayor’s] administration” have been in contact with other potential candidates, though he declined to name the other member of the administration involved or the people he has interviewed.

In his announcement, Menino trumpeted the importance of increasing trust between police officers and members of the community, calling for translating Internal Affairs misconduct complaint forms into several languages and posting them on the city’s official Web site to make the complaint process more accessible for citizens and encourage more involvement.

Ten weeks later, the form is not yet posted on the city’s site. BPD spokesperson Elaine Driscoll said last Tuesday that the department is working to get that information available on the site as soon as possible, and that residents can expect to see it there soon.

Sinnott said the Mayor’s Office is also in the process of hiring a full-time executive secretary to act as the liaison between the police department’s Internal Affairs Division (IAD), the citizens who have filed complaints against officers and the yet-to-be-hired panelists who will review the complaints.

“The mayor’s desire is that we get the most qualified people possible, and if it takes a little more time, then he wants to do that,” Sinnott said. “In addition to the ombudsmen and the hire of the secretary, we’re also putting together the mediation program, and all of these things are time-consuming.”

Though Sinnott is confident that the Civilian Review and Mediation Board’s development is in motion, little tangible progress has been made, leading to growing public disappointment.

“Members of my community are often victims of racial profiling, harassment or discrimination, and we feel there is no independent and neutral place to go with our complaints,” said Tina Chéry, director of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute.

“Even though the Boston Police Department has evolved into a much more responsive agency, there are still serious problems in how police officers approach a conflict situation, especially in minority neighborhoods, and how they use various weapons,” said Urszula Masny-Latos, director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “These problems require an independent oversight — the BPD’s Internal Affairs Division should not be the only channel through which Boston communities can seek a remedy to what they consider an abuse of power.”

At a community forum that gathered community leaders, academics and city officials to discuss the review board held last Saturday in Chinatown, Sinnott, head of the city’s legal department, laid out the mayor’s proposal in a one-page outline that left assembled activists and citizens skeptical that significant changes are actually on the horizon.

According to the outline, the board will consist of three independent civilians experienced in both law enforcement and the judicial process, who will be appointed by the mayor for an undefined term of years. One board member, rather than the three panelists together, will review each case and determine whether the IAD investigation was thorough and fair.

Cases eligible for review include all those in which IAD dismissed allegations of serious misconduct or unjustified use of force, as well as those less serious cases in which a citizen appeals an Internal Affairs decision. A random sampling of all complaints will also be reviewed, Sinnott said, to ensure the integrity of the process.

Sinnott said board members will have access to all materials contained within IAD files, but noted that their review is limited to the process by which police investigators came to their decisions.

After reviewing the case files, if the reviewing board member is unsatisfied with the completeness or thoroughness of an investigation, the case will be returned to IAD with recommendations for additional investigation, clarification or review. The power to make decisions about discipline remains with the police commissioner.

“At the expense of a perfect system, [Menino] wanted a system that would work, not a system that would die of its own inertia, like the commission that came to pass as a result of the St. Clair Commission,” Sinnott said, referring to the 1992 inquest into IAD investigations that resulted in the creation of the joint police-civilian Community Affairs Board.

That committee is now considered irrelevant, due in large part to hurdles preventing complainants from getting information in IAD files necessary to make a successful appeal, information which would be readily available to the members of the new board. Other major policy impediments, however, included the lack of subpoena power and ability to conduct independent investigations — elements also missing from the mayor’s new proposal.

Without those powers, some wonder whether the process can have any integrity at all.

“We’re still talking the same nonsense of ombudsmen and accountability, and not about an independent board with subpoena power, and that’s the bottom line,” said Leonard Alkins, president of the Boston branch of the NAACP and a fellow participant. “We have to have an independent review board, not to penalize, but to eradicate a culture — to restore the feeling of a citizenry that the police are public servants working for them, not intimidating or dismissing them.”