CITIZEN OVERSIGHT AGENCIES EFFECTIVE IN FIGHTING POLICE MISCONDUCT
Study Released Today Challenges U.S. Civil Rights Commission Finding
St. Louis, November 14, 2000: Citizen oversight agencies are effective in combating police misconduct. This finding is the basic argument of Police Accountability: The Role of Citizen Oversight, by Samuel Walker, Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
A law passed during the 2000 Missouri General Assembly session concerning racial profiling allows Missouri cities and counties to create the kind of citizen oversight agencies analyzed by Walker.
Police Accountability, published on today, is the first comprehensive study of citizen oversight agencies in the United States. It represents the culmination of ten years of research by Professor Walker.
Walker's findings challenge one of the main conclusions of a report on police misconduct by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued on November 3, 2000. The Commission concluded that most civilian review boards are not effective.
Police Accountability identifies the factors that make citizen oversight agencies effective. The most important factor is a set of programs that represent an active role in improving both the complaint process and police department operations.
These programs include:
- An active community outreach program to publicize the complaint process and explain policing to members of the community. Outreach programs include community meetings and informational material about the complaint process. Particularly important are informational materials in Spanish and Asian and African languages appropriate to the community served by a police department.
- A policy review process that examines the causes of individual complaints and sends recommendations to the police department for changes in policy or training. The policy review process is designed to prevent abuses of citizens and complaints from occurring in the future. The San Francisco Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC) sends several policy recommendations to the San Francisco Police Department every year.
- Procedures for auditing the quality of complaint investigations. The Minneapolis Civilian Review Authority (CRA), for example, systematically surveys all citizen complainants and police officer subject to investigations about their experience with the complaint investigation. Both citizens and officers have an opportunity to indicate whether they feel they were treated fairly. The Portland auditor, meanwhile, reviews tape recordings of complaint investigations to spot possible bias or lack of thoroughness in investigations.
Walker argues that the most important function of citizen oversight is to change police departments. Walker terms this the 'Monitoring Role' of oversight. The review of individual citizen complaints is only one function that citizen oversight can play.
Police Accountability identifies the most effective oversight agencies as: the Minneapolis Civilian Review Authority (CRA), the San Francisco Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC), the San Jose Independent Police Auditor (IPA), the Special Counsel to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (Mr. Merrick Bobb), the Portland (OR) Police Internal Investigations Auditing Committee (PIIAC), and the Boise (ID) Ombudsman.
Walker agrees with the Civil Rights Commission that many citizen oversight agencies are not adequately funded and that many lack sufficient powers. He argues, however, that it is also important to define the role and activities of oversight agencies in terms of monitoring and improving police departments.
The research for Police Accountability was supported in part by a Fellowship from the Open Society Institute (New York City).
Police Accountability singles out the Special Counsel to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department as a particularly effective oversight agency. The semi-annual reports of the Special Counsel examine virtually every aspect of the Sheriff's Departments operations. Mr. Merrick Bobb, a Los Angeles attorney, has served as the special counsel since 1993.
Professor Walker is the author of 11 books on policing, criminal justice policy, and civil liberties. His books include Sense and Nonsense About Crime (5th ed., Wadsworth, 2001), The Color of Justice: Race, Crime, and Ethnicity in America (co-authored with Cassia Spohn and Miriam DeLone; 2nd ed., Wadsworth, 2000), In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (2nd ed., Southern Illinois University Press, 1999). Professor Walker has completed an evaluation of police 'early warning' systems under a grant from the National Institute of Justice and is currently completing a report on the mediation of citizen complaints for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (OCOPS) of the U.S. Justice Department.
CONTACTS:
Samuel Walker: 402-554-3590 (o) 402-556-4675 (h)