Markeshia Ricks Photo
Some 200 people filled City Hall Thursday night to demand that a new police civilian review board have the power not just to review the actions of allegedly brutal cops, but also to subpoena them to testify.
That argument was consistent throughout a four-hour public hearing of the Board of Alders Joint Legislation-Public Safety Committee.
The committee is taking up long-delayed business: The alders must draft an ordinance to create a new, more powerful version of a civilian review board to replace the current one, because voters in 2013 decided that shoutld happen in a charter-reform referendum.
The public hearing took place a year and 30 days after the alders were supposed to have begun doing that.
A civilian review board without the ability to subpoena police, or even act independently of the police department would be no better than the existing powerless board created under former Mayor John DeStefano, speakers said.
That existing board, which DeStefano created by executive order more than a decade ago, has been on hiatus since city Chief Administrative Officer Mike Carter asked it to stop meeting in September pending resolution of its future.
Emma Jones (pictured) worked with Police Commission Chairman (and former Alder) Anthony Dawson to craft proposed legislation that would create a civilian review board that had subpoena power. She told the alders many people thought they were getting a board that had the authority to punish officers found guilty of brutality when DeStefano originally created the Civilian Review Board (CRB). Jones is the mother of Malik Jones, who was killed by an East Haven police officer in 1997 after a high-speed cross-town chase. Malik was unarmed.
“People discovered that the civilian review board did not have the authority to do anything,” she said. “It could take a complaint and walk it over to [police] internal affairs. If they didn’t like what internal affairs did, they could come back and ask that it be re-opened. It was a paper tiger that had no authority and no teeth.”
It was also a paper tiger that had lost its financial support over the years. The CRB had funding and technical support when it was started, including a full-time coordinator. CAO Carter said at Thursday night’s hearing that that support dwindled and the board is “under resourced,” with the now vacant coordinator position funded for less than 20 hours a week.
Carter also said that the coordinator shouldn’t report to him, because all of the city’s public safety entities report to him. “I see that as a conflict,” he said. Carter said he thinks it would be best for the coordinator to be outside of his office.
Even current CRB members acknowledged that they don’t have authority to do much beyond review cases that had been closed by the the police department’s internal affairs division, then recommend reopening an investigation — a request that the police chief and the Police Commission could choose to heed or not.
Compelling Testimony
The push for subpoena power was the rallying cry of the evening. Acting Corporation Counsel John Rose Jr. said subpoena power is great if you can enforce it. He said the reality is that even if you have the power to subpoena — which the Board of Alders president, the Police Commission and even the Department of Public Works have — a person usually can be forced to appear only by a judge’s order.
The CRB might need to make use of the alder president’s subpoena power if the alders decide to pursue the subpoena suggestion.
Third-year Yale Law student Megan Wachspress said civilian review boards in New York have even more power with the ability to act as prosecutors in administrative hearings.
Current Civilian Review Board Chair Barbara Carroll didn’t advocate for subpoena power. She said the two times, during her tenure, that officers were requested to appear before the board to answer questions, the officers appeared. She said she didn’t see the lack of subpoena power as a big problem for the work of the board, much to the dismay of many in the crowd. She argued that the way board members are chosen is a problem. She said an application and vetting process that required more than a rubber stamp of those chosen by community management teams would be better.
East Rock Alder Jessica Holmes (pictured at left in the photo) called Thursday’s meeting “the beginning of a conversation.” The committee took no votes, but a lot of notes and questions that they want answered from Rose and staff. They also wrote down the suggestions they gleaned from the meeting’s attendees.
According to the language of the charter change, the Board of Alders is responsible for giving the board any “additional authority necessary” to help the board carry out its objectives of investigating “complaints concerning misconduct by police officers involving members of the public.” That leaves a lot of details to fill in, the point of Thursday’s hearing.
Holmes said she envisions the CRB as being something more than a punishment-driven entity “after the fact.”
“Historically, punishment hasn’t worked for police or for anyone,” she said. “If we want to create a more positive culture of community policing, we have to be responsive to the community, all of the community.”
Complaint From Complaints
CRB chair Carroll identified what she saw as several problems with the board as it exists today: “95 to 98 percent of the complaints made have to go to internal affairs on the first floor of the police department. That’s very intimidating. Complaints are investigated by internal affairs. We get them once they are closed cases.”
Carroll further said that the police department doesn’t use a computer program called “I.A. Pro,” which allows the department to track complaints by their type, the officer and the district. “Very few are trained in the police department on I.A. Pro,” she said. “They don’t use it.” From the way board members are selected to people having to file their complaints about an officer to the police department, Carroll said the process needs to change
George Carter, a CRB member representing Dixwell, pointed out to alders that the form used to file complaints is hard or impossible to download, isn’t always readily available at the police station, and isn’t available in Spanish.
Several people, some of whom testified in Spanish with the help of Fair Haven Alder Ernie Santiago translating into English, told harrowing accounts of being beaten brutally by the police for questioning an officer during an arrest. A 16-year-old testified about watching a police officer beat his father while he and his little sister were in their car. Many of those officers not only remained on the job — they also have gone on to be promoted. Some of the cases resulted in lawsuits for the city.
CRB member Carter said the process of filing a complaint also isn’t particularly transparent.
“Every complaint is supposed to have a case number,” he said. “Guess what? If you didn’t get your number, they don’t have your case. The CRB is not going to read your case if it doesn’t exist.”
“We hear all the time that New Haven is not Ferguson, but people have been harassed, beaten and brutalized in New Haven,” said Chris Garaffa of ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War And End Racism). Police shouldn’t be trusted to monitor themselves, he said, and an all citizen review board must be independent and able to conduct its own investigations. Garaffa (pictured) said that means no current or former police officer should sit on the new board, and appointments should be directed by the community, especially those hit hardest by police brutality. It also should have the power to sanction and discipline officers, he said. All of which were proposed by the “Malik-Dawson ” legislation that was introduced in 2000.
“If you create a watered-down version, we’re going to notice,” Garaffa said. “I believe you serve the people and the ordinance you establish should be what the people demand.”
Kerry Ellington, an activist with the Malik Jones Foundation (pictured with Emma Jones), encouraged the committee to keep providing opportunities for people to weigh in as they developed the ordinance. In fact, she suggested that some of the meetings be moved from city hall out into the neighborhoods. But she also said, “We can’t accept a civilian review board that isn’t independent of the police.” She said that any new board needs to not only be independent of the police internal affairs process and the Police Commission, but it must also have its own meeting space and subpoena power, or the backing of a city entity that can wield such power on its behalf.
How Soon?
Westville Alder Adam Marchand called creating a new review board a “priority issue.” But he said given that Mayor Toni Harp will submit a budget in less than 60 days, it was a “long Hail Mary” to think that the board could pull together an ordinance that might establish a new independent office, a full-time staff position and other new procedures by then.
“It’s going to take a lot,” he said. “I understand the issue is urgent, but if we rush, it won’t work.”
Beaver Hills Alder Brian Wingate (pictured above with Holmes) said he would love to put a timeline on when the ordinance might be ready and the new CRB up and running, but there is still a lot to be done. Wingate, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said he’s ready to help create a model CRB to other cities.
“This is an opportunity to change things in New Haven,” he said. “This is an opportunity for New Haven to be a leader and really be part of creating a proactive civilian review board that holds its police officers accountable. I think it’s evident that the fact that there were nearly 200 people here says that we are giving people an opportunity to speak and we are listening.”
Meanwhile, the current board remains on hiatus and no complaints are being reviewed.