Civilian Review of Police Actions – Part I

Who polices the police?  It’s an age-old question that went unanswered for years.  True, local police were accountable to political leadership such as mayors and city councils, but in too many cases, political expediency took precedence over true accountability.  In actuality, it became the norm for police to decide for themselves whether their members had acted appropriately.  Police internal affairs units were generally responsible for this review.  However, in smaller agencies, police supervisors were the sole arbiter of the actions of their subordinates.

While some decisions regarding propriety of action were criticized, in general the public accepted the idea that the police were the ‘experts’ in their field.  How could someone not trained in police procedures judge police actions?

In the 1970’s, police agencies came to the realization that they could not effectively police a community without help from the community itself – the concept of ‘community policing.’  Police agencies began to engage the community to help in the identification and suppression of crime.  People began to realize that if the community, untrained in ‘police procedure’ could nevertheless contribute to the police mission, perhaps the community could also judge police actions.  Civilian review of police actions was born.

Over the years, municipalities and to a lesser extent counties, have implemented some form of civilian review of police.  Today, almost every large city has some form of civilian review.  However, the mission of civilian review agencies varies greatly.

 

THE AUTHORITY OF CIVILIAN REVIEW

In a broad sense, the authority of civilian review boards or agencies takes three forms:

Staff can only review the process by which police investigators conduct handle citizen complaints and allegations of police misconduct.  They can make recommendations about the procedures to the chief or sheriff, but cannot review actual complaints.
Complainants can appeal the findings of police investigators upon the completion of a police review  of a complaint.  The civilian review authority may then review the investigation and make their own recommendations for findings to the chief or sheriff.
Staff can review every investigation completed by police investigators and make independent recommendations for findings to the chief or sheriff.
Civilian review staff may receive complaints directly from the public and have the authority to independently investigator those complaints.  The civilian review authority independently makes recommendations for findings to the chief or sheriff.

It is important to note that, in no case does the civilian review authority have the power to impose disciplinary action on a police officer.  This maintains the accepted management principle that employees are accountable to their own supervisory chain.  (Should a chief or sheriff consistently fail to adequately discipline employees who are found to have violated policy, that may be addressed by the city leadership or the electorate.  But this is outside the purview of virtually every interaction of civilian review authority)

 

In a future post, we will look at how a civilian review authority of the fourth type actually works and how the police feel about civilian review.

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