Community

COMMUNITY POLICING THE POLICE

If they wanted, City Council members could add teeth to public oversight of CMPD. Will they?

BY JEN TOTA McGIVNEY

BLUE LIGHTS ILLUMINATED La Becky Roe’s rearview mirror. The two NYPD police o cers who pulled her over in her Brooklyn neighborhood were white. Roe is Black. She asked them why they stopped her, and they ignored her. When she asked again, they demanded her license, registration, and insurance card but o ered no explanation for the stop.

Only later, a er they told Roe she was free to go, did she tell them she was an NYPD o cer, too.

“Why didn’t you just say you were a cop in the beginning?” one o cer asked.

“Why do I have to say I’m a cop,” she shot back, “to get treated with respect?”

“This could’ve been my mother; this could’ve been my dad,” Roe explains two decades later. “They want respect, too. I wanted to know what the response would be if I’m just Joe Citizen.”

Roe, who moved to Charlotte in 2002, is among the newest members of the city’s Citizens Review Board, the 11-member civilian body that reviews cases in which citizens have appealed a police ruling a er an o cial complaint of police misconduct. Roe spent 12 years as an NYPD cop, and she wishes more people recognized o cers as fellow humans. But as a Black woman and the mother of an autistic son, she wants more o cers to see beyond race and abilities to recognize the humanity of the people they interact with. Continued on next page

BUZZTHE

WHAT MATTERS NOW IN THE CITY

La Becky Roe, a police officer in New York City for 12 years, is one of the newest members of Charlotte’s Citizens Review Board.

“I’m retired law enforcement. I’m a Black woman with a dad, a brother, son, nephews, and godsons. I felt a calling to join the Citizens Review Board,” Roe says. “I wanted to have a say in whether or not a police o cer was right or wrong. It’s not all the time that one gets the opportunity to do that.”

Roe joined during a pivotal summer. During protests a er police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, CMPD deployed tear gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets against demonstrators. On the night of June 2, o cers restricted a group of about 200 to one block of Fourth Street uptown by blocking o both intersections—a controversial law enforcement practice called “kettling”—as they gassed and red pepper balls near them. The tactics have drawn demands for more civilian oversight of the department.

“It’s pretty obvious we have the same goals in mind, to be able to provide some transparency and trust within the community,” says CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings. “The relationship is strong … and we’re going to continue to move forward and hopefully make our department better.”

Yet this year, when the CRB for the rst time voted unanimously against the department’s decision in a complaint case, members fully appreciated how little power they have. Now, proposals to the City Council may give the group more authority to advocate for the public when o cers step out of line.

OF 12,000 LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT agencies in the United States, about 200 have civilian review boards. Their powers vary widely: Oakland’s has the authority to re o cers, even the chief; New York’s can subpoena witnesses; Raleigh’s, created just this year, can review police policy but does not respond to citizen complaints, investigate, or collect data.

Charlotte’s board, formed in 1997, merely advises CMPD and lacks subpoena power. When a citizen makes a formal complaint against a CMPD o cer, the department investigates to determine whether the o cer violated department policy. A citizen who disagrees with CMPD’s decision has 30 days to appeal to the CRB. The board reviews the case using documentation from the police investigation, then makes its own decision and submits recommendations.

For its rst 20 years, CRB upheld CMPD’s decisions every time. It began to break from the department in 2017: In August, the board deadlocked 4-4 on then-Chief Kerr Putney’s ruling that the o cer who shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott in 2016 followed CMPD policy. (One of the 11 seats was vacant, and two members had work commitments.)

Later that year, in a 7-1 decision, the board determined that CMPD erred in not disciplining o cer Jon Dunham for excessive force against James Yarborough in 2016; a er a chase, Dunham pointed his gun at the unarmed man’s head and threatened to kill him. This February, the CRB decided unanimously that CMPD “clearly erred” in its nding that O cer Wende Kerl’s fatal shooting of Danquirs Franklin on March 25, 2019, was justi ed.

Wow, they did the right thing, Kinard Barnett, Franklin’s cousin, thought a er the decision. As for his expectations about what would come next? “That CMPD would not change. And I le hope that the city manager might.”

CRB decisions advance to City Manager Marcus Jones, the unelected o cial who, as part of the day-to-day operations of the city, supervises the police department. Barnett knew what had happened a er the CRB’s decision in the 2017 Yarborough case: Jones consulted Putney as his subject matter expert, then upheld the chief’s decision. But even as Jones rejected CRB’s ruling, he and Putney worked to implement several of the board’s recommendations.

Jones rejected CRB’s decision in the Franklin case, too. CMPD didn’t accept any of the seven recommendations that came with it. The rst unanimous decision by the CRB against CMPD resulted in no policy changes by the city or police. THE CRB HAS CHANGED POLICING in Charlotte despite its limitations. Board recommendations have led CMPD to use dashboard and body-worn video cameras, train more on interactions with people in crisis or with mental illness, and add de-escalation standards to the department’s use-of-force policy. But those policy changes required the approval of the police chief and city manager, which underscores one of CMPD critics’ longstanding complaints: What good is powerless citizen oversight?

“If (CRB members) sustain the case, then why send it back to the police department that erred in its judgment in the rst place?” says Robert Dawkins, director of the police accountability organization SAFE Coalition NC, part of the progressive advocacy group Action NC. Dawkins, for years the most vocal critic of city policy and practice in policing, and his group want CRB decisions to have authority independent of the city government. They’ve o ered three proposals, two of which the City Council could enact if it wanted.

The rst two changes involve the Civil Service Board. Since 1929, it has evaluated the chief’s recommendations on promotions, demotions, and rings, and makes nal decisions. If the chief decides to discipline an o cer for misconduct, Civil Service investigates it. Unlike CRB, the Civil Service Board can subpoena witnesses and documents.

The rst proposed change is to send cases in which the CRB upholds the citizen complaint to the Civil Service Board to investigate further and demote or re o cers when it decides they violated department policy. The second proposal is to require o cers who don’t cooperate with CRB to appear before the Civil Service Board for a hearing; Kerl, the o cer who shot Franklin, declined to appear before the CRB.

Jennings says he’s curious to learn more about the proposals but worries they’d allow public outcry to overrule state law. CMPD has more internal than external complaints against o cers, he says, and o cers hold each other accountable.

“My concern is no di erent than when someone’s arrested and they go through a trial by jury of their peers, and they’re found not guilty,” Jennings says.

“I’m retired law enforcement. I’m a Black woman with a dad, a brother, son, nephews, and godsons. I felt a calling to join the Citizens Review Board.”

—LA BECKY ROE