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2020 made police reform “sexy” on a policy level.
Leading to a significant increase in civilian oversight boards around the country. However, in the years following, many of these boards are still trying to find their footing.
In the years following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, states and localities across the country introduced hundreds of pieces of legislation meant to address police violence. Many of those new laws included the creation of civilian police accountability boards: civilian-led groups that receive complaints about police misconduct and have the power to advise police departments on potential consequences.
These boards were a kind of low-hanging fruit for people looking to make immediate changes to policing, says Rachel Moran, founder of the University of St. Thomas School of Law’s Criminal and Juvenile Defense Clinic.
“[Civilian boards] were something people could seize onto,” Moran tells Governing. “It seemed attainable.”
The thinking, Moran says, has been that civilian boards would encourage behavioral changes in officers, cause departments to rethink certain procedures that led to complaints or controversy, and rebuild trust between the community and law enforcement. But a few years after the creation of many boards, their efficacy has come into question.
Experts who’ve studied police accountability say civilian boards’ power is too limited to make a real difference: Most of them can only review misconduct accusations and make disciplinary recommendations in an advisory role. Moreover, some boards have begun to face challenges from legislators trying to further strip them of power, or dismantle them entirely.
But the civilians on these boards aren’t ready to write them off yet. They say there are concrete ways to give these boards the power to hold officers accountable for misconduct.
Most boards’ ability to effect change in their local police force is limited by their inability to influence disciplinary decisions in the department or in the courts, says Suat Cubukcu, a lecturer in American University’s criminology department. The perception that officers will face consequences for misconduct is the most effective way to deter them from committing it, he says.
“The most important factor to increase deterrence is the perception that you are going to be prosecuted,” Cubukcu says.
In a study Cubukcu conducted in Chicago on the effect that in-car cameras had on police accountability, five percent of complaints against police were sustained after review. After the creation of a civilian accountability office, that number increased to 10 percent — not enough incentive to discourage or deter misconduct, he says.
According to Cubukcu’s research, it takes two to three years on average to see a result from civilian oversight investigations. Even when disciplinary actions are taken at the end of that time period, they are often inconsequential and limited to recommended training or the loss of vacation time, he says. Reducing the time between receiving a complaint and closing a review or investigation could be a way to streamline the process, as would increasing the recommended penalties for misconduct, Cubukcu says.
There are three main types of civilian oversight agency: investigation-focused, review-focused, and a hybrid of the two. Investigation-focused oversight agencies investigate reports of misconduct as a third-party organization separate from police department internal affairs. These civilians are independent from the local police force, but generally have some experience with running an investigation, and some members may have a background in law enforcement.
Most established agencies, however, are review-focused boards, meaning that they come in well after officer-led internal investigations. The members of these groups — who may include a wide range of people like former officers, lawyers, religious leaders, activists, and community figures — often lack full access to data related to a complaint, and can rarely subpoena that data due to state or local legislation.
The review board in New Castle County, Del., for example, still only has access to a handful of police disciplinary records, according to Kailyn Richards, full-time county liaison to the Board and a former Director of Policy at the Delaware Center for Justice. “That’s something that has been a barrier to the board’s successes with the community,” Richards explains.
Solving the problems caused by a lack of access to data or boards not having investigatory power is up to legislators, according to Dawn Blagrove, executive director of North Carolina progressive criminal reform organization Emancipate NC. Through her organization in Raleigh, she advocates for the General Assembly to draft and pass legislation that would give oversight boards power to investigate complaints.
However, many police officers don’t believe civilian oversight boards should get that expanded power. “These [boards] are often redundant,” says Jay McDonald, president of the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police and police chief at the Marion, Ohio, police department. Critical incidents — which McDonald describes as some kind of in-custody death or officer-involved shooting — are regularly reviewed by both external and internal agencies. McDonald notes that grand juries are “the original civilian review board,” and that officers are subject to those as well. McDonald also believes that civilian oversight boards could negatively impact departments’ ability to recruit and retain police officers.
Some legislators across the country agree.
Florida recently passed legislation that prohibits civilian oversight agencies from investigating misconduct or overseeing law enforcement agencies’ misconduct investigations. While state Rep. Wyman Duggan, who sponsored the bill in the House, told a local CBS affiliate that “no boards would have to be disbanded” as a result, Tallahassee’s citizen board was shut down this month. In 2023, the Tennessee Legislature passed a law abolishing civilian oversight boards just five years after Nashville and Memphis developed them.
Some progressive organizations, ones focused on police reform, have expressed their own critical opinions of civilian oversight agencies. Back in 2020, when Raleigh first approved a citizen review board, Blagrove called them “facades for accountability.” That same year, Greear Webb, who was a member of that board, said that the board “looks like a publicity stunt.” Four years later, Blagrove stands by her belief that these boards are often toothless. However, she’s also unwilling to write off civilian oversight, especially if these boards are given both independence and authority.
“What I’m finding is that in order to create accountability, there has to be an external source that is doing independent investigations of complaints from the community,” she says.