New Haveners may get to weigh in this November on whether to write a citizens’ police oversight body into the city’s most basic laws, and give it more teeth to go after misbehaving cops.
That’s thanks to a vote Thursday night by the city’s Charter Revision Commission, which cited the recent high-profile criminal trial of Jewu Richardson as inspiration.
The panel voted 9 – 0 to recommend that November’s general election ballot contain a question about whether to amend the city charter to include a civilian review board to oversee the handling of citizen complaints about alleged police misconduct.
That recommendation now goes to the Board of Aldermen. If the aldermen second the idea, as expected, it will appear on the ballot in November as part of a package of suggested once-a-decade charter changes.
New Haven already has a civilian review board (as well as a mayorally appointed Police Commission). Critics argue that the review board has no real power and doesn’t press police to do a better job of reining in misconduct.
The current civlian review board exists by executive order. Advocates say that making it part of the city charter would secure the future of the board by protecting it from mayoral whim.
The proposed charter language approved Thursday night would require the independent review board to have representatives from each of the city’s police districts as well as two at-large appointees, all serving two-year terms. (The city currently has 10 neighborhood police districts. It will probably soon have 12.) The mayor would appoint the board members from “among the names recommended by the community engagement organizations” in the districts.
The board would “examine complaints made by civilians pertaining to unprofessional conduct” by cops, examine how those complaints are processed, “hear appeals from complainants brought within ninety (90) days of the completion of an internal affairs report by the department,” and review department and internal affairs policies related to misconduct complaints.
An additional proposed duty of the board sparked the only debate Thursday night: that the board “require the internal affairs group of the department to investigate civilian complaints in the event no investigation has been commenced or to re-open and continue to investigate a complaint if, in the opinion of the board, the initial investigation was incomplete or unfair.”
In other words, the board would have some power.
Charter Review Commission member Will Ginsberg asked if that provision would risk “compromising the police chief’s authority” or confuse the role of the review board with that of the Police Commission. (At the same time, Ginsberg said he’d been “quite taken” by testimony of citizens seeking the review board; they provided some of the most passionate testimony at the charter commission’s public hearings.)
Steve Mednick, the charter commission’s attorney, said the provision went into the proposal because members felt it important that the review board have “some teeth” and “authority.”
Paul Bass Photo
“We just watched this trial,” said Joelle Fishman, who chaired the commission working group that drew up the proposal. She was referring to the trial of Jewu Richardson, who was accused of trying to run over a cop among other offenses. A judge declared a mistrial in the case last week after jurors were deadlocked. Two hold-out jurors said because of police misconduct in that case, they felt uncomfortable convicting Richardson of any of the charges, including lesser offenses which Richardson’s attorney basically conceded in her final argument. (Read about all that here; click on the video at the top of the story to watch the hold-out jurors tell their story.)
The trial “indicated the more the ability there is to investigate cases, the better” policing and community support for law enforcement New Haven will have, Fishman argued.
The police department has doubled the size of its internal affairs office in the past year. Click here and here to read about two internal affairs cases from the past year.