Charlotte City Council expected to overhaul police review board

JEFF WILLHELM - jwillhelm@charlotteobserver.com

City councilmen David Howard (left) and Warren Cooksey (right) listen to a presentation on the Citizens Review Board in August. JEFF WILLHELM - jwillhelm@charlotteobserver.com
The City Council is poised to approve an ordinance that would overhaul the Citizens Review Board, nine months after an Observer investigation showed the police oversight board has never sided with citizens.
The city manager’s office is recommending approval, and a grassroots organization that has lobbied the council for reform is planning a victory party afterward.
“We’re thrilled,” said Matt Newton, one of the organizers for CRB Reform Now. “Certainly, the ordinance itself can be improved upon, but as far as the essential tools to raise an effective board, they will be there. In our minds, it’s a huge victory for the city.”
The 11-member volunteer board hears complaints from people dissatisfied with disciplinary decisions following Internal Affairs investigations by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police. City Council established the board 16 years ago to restore public confidence in the department after three unarmed African-Americans were killed by white officers.
Since the board was created, citizens have appealed 79 cases to the board, and almost all of them have been dismissed without receiving a full hearing.
Under the new recommendations, citizens would no longer face unusually strict criteria to get full hearings. They would no longer have to prove that a “preponderance of the evidence” shows the police chief abused his discretion. With the changes, they would have to prove only “the greater weight of evidence” indicates “the chief of police clearly erred.”
In April, then-Mayor Anthony Foxx asked a city task force to meet with police, the Charlotte School of Law and citizens to consider re-crafting the ordinance that affects the Citizens Review Board. The months-long process yielded a statute that doesn’t go as far as some advocates for change wanted. The board, for example, will not have independent subpoena or investigative powers.

But the city’s Community Relations Committee will have access to the department’s investigative file when the Citizens Review Board hears a complaint