Menino names police review board members

In a surprising and unexpected move, Mayor Thomas M. Menino reportedly appointed the three members of the city’s long-anticipated civilian panel to review reports of misconduct by members of the Boston Police Department.

While the appointments are a major step toward getting the board up and running, some still question how effective the mayor’s plan will be in restoring trust between the BPD and the communities they serve.

According to a published report, the board members are John F. O’Brien, a dean at the New England School of Law who teaches courses on constitutional law; David Hall, a current professor and former dean at Northeastern School of Law who founded the university’s Urban Law and Public Policy Institute; and Ruth Suber, a retiree who spent 12 years on the state’s Parole Board. The members will serve three-year terms and be paid $100 an hour for their work.

City officials said Monday that they hope the ombudsmen would begin reviewing cases in the next several weeks, after first undergoing training on the inner workings of the Internal Affairs Division (IAD).

Menino first laid out his plan for the civilian review board in August. The board is expected to review all allegations of serious misconduct dismissed by IAD. One board member, rather than all three panelists together, will review each case and determine whether the IAD investigation was thorough and fair. Less serious cases are also eligible for review if a citizen triggers the process by appealing an Internal Affairs decision. A random sampling of all complaints will also be reviewed, according to City Corporation Counsel William F. Sinnott, to ensure the integrity of the process.

The board members can direct investigators to re-interview witnesses or investigate further in certain areas. They will have access to all materials contained within IAD files, but their review is limited to the process by which police investigators arrived at 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. If members still have concerns about an investigation after that, they can ask the police commissioner to intervene.

The board will make an annual report to the mayor — including statistics on cases handled, critiques of the police misconduct complaint process, and recommendations for improving the system — which will be available to the public.

Menino’s appointees have garnered praise for their experience, their professional expertise and their lack of ties to government and police interests.

Darnell Williams, president of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, called the members “a stellar group of individuals.” A coalition of organizations at the forefront of the public movement for police oversight — the American Friends Service Committee, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law of the Boston Bar Association and the Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyers Guild — issued a statement Tuesday saying they were “very pleased with the ombudsmen” and expressing confidence that the appointees’ skills and understanding of the city’s criminal justice framework “is what the review board requires.”

But during the five months between Menino’s initial announcement and this week’s appointments, some local attorneys, community activists and politicians have found flaws in the mayor’s review board plan that have still yet to be addressed. Their critiques share similar sentiments.

First, they argue, in order for the board to effectively respond to the concerns of Boston’s communities, it should be made up of members of those communities. All three new appointees reside outside of Boston — O’Brien in Watertown, Hall in Stoughton and Suber in Lynn.

To do the public any good, the lawyers argued further, the board should actually involve the public. In a Nov. 14, 2006 letter to Sinnott, head of the city’s legal department, the National Lawyers Guild urged the city to publicly post job descriptions for the board’s positions on the city’s Web site and in area newspapers -— as well as make the application process public to draw in a wider pool of candidates -— to promote an atmosphere of transparency previously absent from the proceedings. Sources indicate that the city never responded to that letter. No advertisements, job postings or public announcements about the hiring process were made — until the Boston Globe published a story on Tuesday.

The third sticking point is what some perceive as the toothless nature of Menino’s panel. While the review board will be able to make recommendations to the police commissioner and ask investigators to revisit citizen complaints, it will not have the power to conduct its own investigations or issue subpoenas. The board’s recommendations will be non-binding, and the power to make decisions about discipline against an officer resulting from a sustained charge remains with the police commissioner.

In other words, said Councilor-at-Large Felix D. Arroyo, the mayor’s review board “can only act as an afterthought.”

“If a particular abuse is claimed by anybody in the city of Boston, they have to first let the Police Department investigate itself,” Arroyo said. “It maintains in place the previous system that has scared away some from requesting investigations about misconduct issues.”

As community members voiced their concerns, it is still unclear how city law enforcement received the appointments. Messages left with the BPD, the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers were not returned. The Massachusetts Fraternal Order of Police declined to comment.

In his annual State of the City address, delivered Jan. 9 at the Strand Theatre in Dorchester, Menino stressed the importance of restoring citizens’ trust in law enforcement, saying that the city and its police officers are “doing everything in our power to merit the confidence of people who have information to share.”

But the city’s reluctance to reciprocate by sharing information about the police review board has left unanswered questions about police accountability. One step toward improving relations between civilians and police was taken in late 2006 when, after several months of delays, the city followed through on its promise to improve civilian access to Internal Affairs misconduct complaint forms, posting them on the BPD’s homepage at the city’s Web site (www.cityofboston.gov/police/complaint/).

The AFSC, Lawyers Committee and Lawyers Guild plan next week to submit “a detailed list of recommendations” to the city, including “a better description of the cases to be reviewed by the board, outreach, data collection and its availability to the public, and ways of presenting comprehensive reports to the public.” And during the City Council’s second meeting of the year, scheduled for next Wednesday, Arroyo said he plans to resubmit an ordinance co-sponsored during last year’s session by Councilors Chuck Turner and Charles C. Yancey calling for a 13-member review board with full investigatory powers, as well as the “power to compel the Boston Police Department to produce appropriate personnel for interview” and “subpoena civilian witnesses and those police officers who are identified” in a complaint.

“I’m sure that the chair will assign it to a particular committee, and there will be a hearing that I will request as soon as possible,” Arroyo said. “Then we will have the participation not only of the administration in the public hearing, but also from the new appointees and the public in that manner. We should be able to have a public process for something so vital as trust in the police and the community as to how we investigate claims about police performance.”