to: Roger L. Stancil, Town Manager
from: Brian J. Curran, Chief of Police
subject: Proposal to establish a Civilian Review Board
date: October 15, 2008
The purpose of this report is to respond to a petition submitted to the Town Council on April 28, 2008, proposing to establish a Town of Chapel Hill Civilian Review Board for the review of actions of the Chapel Hill Police Department.
The proposal presented to the Town Council for a Civilian Review Board specifies the model presented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida as the appropriate prototype for a Chapel Hill Board.
ACLU-Florida model
The ACLU-Florida model for a Civilian Review Board would have complete authority over the response to citizen complaints about police activity, including conducting the initial investigations of complaints, holding hearings, and disciplining law enforcement employees. The ACLU-Florida plan states that a Civilian Review Board “must conduct an independent investigation of complaints and not a civilian review of an investigation conducted by a police internal affairs bureau….not a civilian review of police review.” The model includes a full-time Executive Director position, professional investigators, and “an adequate budget that is shielded from politics.” Board members could be volunteers, but must undergo a training regimen. Within sixty days of a complaint’s receipt, the professional investigators (or possibly the Board’s Executive Director) would conduct an investigation, and within 120 days of the complaint’s receipt the Board would hold a hearing. The Board would have subpoena power and “the power to sanction police officers.” The Board would investigate all complaints concerning the use of force, deaths in custody, harassment, abuse of authority, and improper searches or detention. The Model recommends mediation for what it calls “discourtesy complaints.”
The ACLU-Florida model additionally states that the Board and its investigators “should be provided with unfettered access to all police files, including prior as well as current and pending complaints…records, reports (including ‘internal’ reports, documents, etc.), tape recordings…”
Civilian Review Boards in North Carolina
There are four cities in North Carolina which currently have Civilian Review Boards: Charlotte, Durham, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem.
None of these Boards follows the ACLU-Florida model. The Review Board procedures of all four cities provide for investigation and disposition of complaints about police activity by the Internal Investigations offices of the cities’ respective police departments. The departments then notify the complainants of the results of these investigations. After receiving notice of the disposition, a complainant may appeal to the city’s Review Board.
In Charlotte (1640 sworn police officers), the board is called the Citizens Review Board. If a complainant appeals a Police Department disposition to the Board, it may conduct proceedings, determine whether the Chief of Police has abused his discretion, and issue written findings of fact to the Police Chief and the City Manager along with a recommendation. The Chief and Manager then may take such action as they deem appropriate. Since the Charlotte Board’s establishment in 1998, it has received 57 cases, including seven shooting deaths, and chosen to hold hearings in six of them. The Board has not concluded that there was an abuse of discretion in any of these cases.
In Durham (512 sworn police officers), the board is called the Civilian Police Review Board. If a complainant appeals a Police Department disposition to the Board, it may conduct proceedings and determine whether it believes the Department’s disposition constitutes an abuse of discretion. It then may make recommendations to the Police Department. The City Manager has ultimate authority as to whether the recommendations will be adopted. Since 1999 the Civilian Police Review Board has received 23 appeals. Hearings were granted in three of these cases. The Board made recommendations to the Police Department in two of the cases.
In Greensboro (591 sworn police officers), the board is called the Complaint Review Committee. If a complainant appeals a Police Department disposition to the Committee, it may review the case and offer recommendations to the Police Department. If there is a difference of opinion between the Committee and the Police Department, the City Manager makes the final determination. The Committee received ten appeals during 2007. Its recommendations have not resulted in any reversals of Police Department dispositions.
In Winston-Salem (515 sworn police officers), the board is called the Citizen Police Review Board. If a complainant appeals a Police Department disposition to the Board, it may conduct hearings and make recommendations to the City Manager, who may take such action as he deems appropriate. The Board meets quarterly to consider whether to hold hearings on the appeals it has received. In 2007 approximately five dispositions were appealed. The Board determined that none was worthy of a hearing.
Civilian complaints and the Chapel Hill Police Department
Chapel Hill Police Department Policy No. 4-10, entitled “Internal Affairs and Complaints,” states: “All complaints, regardless of the manner in which they are presented, will be received and documented. Any employee contacted, in any manner, regarding a complaint against an employee or the department will immediately notify an on-duty supervisor. Upon being notified, the on-duty supervisor will document the complaint…” Following the department’s investigation and decision as to the complaint, the “Chief of Police will notify the complainant in writing, regarding the completion of the investigation, subject to personnel privacy restrictions in NCGS 160A-168.”
During 2007, the Chapel Hill Police Department received 26 citizen complaints. Fifteen of these alleged improper officer demeanor, one alleged damage to property, one alleged illegal parking by police, one alleged improper driving by police, one alleged receiving poor police service, three alleged harassment by police, and four alleged use of excessive force. The only complaint which was sustained involved improper demeanor. Of the 26 complaints, twelve were submitted in writing, seven by telephone, five verbally, and two by email.
NCGS 160A-168 prohibits the department from providing information to a complainant or the public about employee sanctions. Violation of this prohibition by a public official or employee is a misdemeanor. NCGS 160A-168, however, includes a general exception applicable to all cities that allows the dissemination of such personnel information if “the manager or council shall determine in writing that the release is essential to maintaining public confidence in the administration of city services or to maintaining the level and quality of city services.” On at least one occasion in the last several years, the manager and council have utilized this procedure and obtained personnel records connected to a citizen complaint about police action.
If the Town of Chapel Hill wishes to establish a review board in Chapel Hill, the Town must recruit administrators and board members, and adopt rules of procedure.
The four police departments in North Carolina which are currently subject to review boards are all much larger than the Chapel Hill Police Department (118 sworn police officers in Chapel Hill, as compared to 1640 in Charlotte, 512 in Durham, 591 in Greensboro, and 515 in Winston-Salem), and serve much larger cities. The boards in these four cities do not follow the ACLU-Florida model; rather, the police departments conduct their own Internal Investigations and make their own decisions as to dispositions of the complaints they receive. These decisions may then be appealed by the complainants to the review boards. The four departments are not required to conform to their respective board’s determinations.
These four review boards have the power, however, to present their conclusions as to whether there has been abuse of discretion by police departments in Internal Affairs dispositions, and to make recommendations to Police Chiefs and City Managers. None of the boards seems to have found a pattern of police misconduct in their respective cities’ departments. On the contrary, the review boards appear repeatedly to have found that the Internal Investigations decisions as well as the discipline meted out by the four departments have been appropriate.
If the Town of Chapel Hill has a serious concern about a particular police action or a police Internal Investigations disposition, there is an option for review other than by a Civilian Review Board. Under NCGS 160A-168, the Manager and Council have the authority to obtain Internal Investigations information in circumstances which raise questions about public confidence in the administration of Town services.
As you know, I have initiated a complete review of the department and how we organize as an effective community-oriented police department. In that review, I am considering how we manage our review of complaints. Our goal in dealing with such complaints is not only to identify and correct unacceptable behavior but also to learn from those complaints where we might need to focus training and attention to prevent unacceptable behavior. I am inclined to assign the department review of complaints to a Professional Standards Officer on the Chief’s staff, rather than the current arrangement wherein the Investigative Captain handles this review process. I also plan to include statistics on the numbers and nature of complaints in the police Department’s Quarterly Reports to the Manager and Town Council.
That the Council take no action on the petition to establish a Civilian Review Board.