Yawu Miller
The webpage of the city’s
Civilian Ombudsman Oversight Panel lists just 31 reviews of civilian complaints
over a four-year period, while there were 900 civilian complaints in the same
time period. Just 10 percent of citizen complaints reviewed by the Police
Department’s Internal Affairs Division are sustained.
Seven years after the city
established a civilian board to review allegations of police abuse, the board
remains largely powerless, ineffective and little-known according to attorneys
and community activists contacted by the Banner.
The three-person Civilian
Ombudsman Oversight Panel reviews a small fraction of the civilian complaints
referred to the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, often taking
more than a year to review cases and upholding the majority of the IAD’s
findings over the last two years, according to information on the board’s
website.
“The bottom line is it’s three
people reviewing a small number of complaints each year and it takes a long
time for anyone to get a response,” says Miriam Mack, a legal fellow with the
American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
Phone messages left for COOP
members and at the phone number listed for the panel on its website were not
returned by the Banner’s press deadline.
Critics of the department’s
civilian complaint process say COOP has little capacity to investigate cases.
“There should be a board that
has the ability to vet cases and has teeth to it,” said District 7 City
Councilor Tito Jackson. “The board should have some ability to investigate and
ask questions.
Citizen complaints are referred
to the current three-person oversight panel when IAD investigators do not
sustain a complainant’s charges. Complainants have 14 days after the IAD
decision to appeal. COOP members have the power to review notes and transcripts
from the IAD investigations, but do not interview police officers or the
complainants.
Between 2008 and 2011, the
years for which COOP provides data on its website, only 31 complainants have
appealed to the board. IAD fielded 900 citizen complaints of police misconduct
in that same period.
Of those citizen-initiated
complaints, COOP reported on 20 in its 2011 report, the most recent posted
online. Of the 20 IAD investigations the panel reviewed four were found to be
unfair and sent back to IAD for further review. The COOP web page provides no
information on any action IAD may have taken on those four cases.
Civil rights advocates who
called for the creation of a civilian review board prior to the establishment
of the COOP argued that the board could serve as a balance to IAD
investigations, which many perceive as biased in favor of police officers.
Current statistics on the COOP website suggest that bias may still exist.
In instances where department
brass issued IAD complaints against officers in 2010, 84 percent of the
complaints were sustained, according to COOP data. But for civilian-initiated
complaints that year, 13 percent were sustained, 60 percent were not sustained
and 23 percent were still pending at the end of the year.
Persuading the administration
of former Mayor Thomas Menino to accept a civilian review board was a long
process.
In the wake of widespread and
documented physical and verbal police abuse of black males during the 1989
Charles Stuart Case, the city created a commission headed by attorney James St.
Clair to review police practices. The 1992 St. Clair Commission report
concluded that “Physical abuse of citizens by a police officer is among the
most serious violations of the public trust possible,” and called for the
creation of a civilian review board to process complaints.
