A review of civilian review.

• Author: Chasnoff, John
• Position: Black Struggles for Justice - Essay

A rose is a rose is a rose. A very clever phrase and undeniably true, unless you are a rose aficionado. To the expert, an American Beauty is definitely not an Amber Queen. The devil, or the rose, is in the details.

The same can be said for Civilian Review Boards (CRBs). In the arsenal of tools used to hold police accountable, CRBs are both touted and dismissed by activists. For years they were thought of as the means to end police brutality against our most vulnerable citizens, yet great frustration has set in as most Civilian Review Boards have proven ineffective. The blush seems to have faded from the rose.

So what are Civilian Review Boards? Why have so many failed, and do they still offer hope in the battle to gain community control over police abuse?

The first attempts to create police standards of behavior began in the 1920s. This was the era of police "professionalism." It saw the creation of written policies on use of force, arrest procedures, etc., and the advent of Internal Affairs Departments (IADs) to uphold the new standards. Eighty years later, this is still the typical model; complaints generated internally or by citizens are investigated by IAD and recommendations for discipline are passed on to the chief of police. It was not long, however, before citizens realized that police were not adequately investigating themselves. IAD too often sees issues from the police perspective only, making excuses for those who stretch or shatter the limits of proper behavior. They are prone to pressures from superiors to cover-up politically embarrassing incidents. Often they actively dissuade a citizen from filing complaints if that citizen comes from a powerless, discounted population (the poor, people of color, youth) or if they prejudge the case as being too hard to prove.

By the late 1940s, therefore, activists began to push for Civilian Review Boards. These would be panels of citizens who were authorized to take and investigate complaints from their peers. An independent perspective, it was believed, would more fairly discipline violators and change future behavior.

Civilian Review sprang up in Kansas City, Washington, DC and New York City. Unfortunately, these early attempts were not immediate successes. Implementation has never been easy. Funding has always been a major and ongoing issue. Without a proper staff or adequate resources, Review Boards often develop a huge backlog of cases; citizens are not well served. Furthermore, police unions have been adamantly opposed to civilians "second-guessing" their actions, and have fought Review Boards in legislatures and in courts. Litigation has kept the Boards in limbo for years or stripped the Boards of powers crucial to their effectiveness. CRBs have not met activist expectations that they would rule against officers more often. Both IADs and CRBs sustain complaints against officers only 10-15% of the time, constrained as they are by "he said/he said" scenarios with few outside witnesses and a lack of hard physical evidence.

These experiments were not without their successes. Citizens have felt more comfortable bringing complaints to an independent body. As a result, the number of complaints often rises dramatically after implementation of a CRB, giving citizens a more accurate picture of the problem. Mandated public reports by the CRB have also been helpful in analyzing issues involved. Citizens are therefore able to see such statistics as number of complaints, breakdown by the race of complainants, the success of complaints as compared to the race of the complainant, the number of complaints for...