The city of Charleston is making progress on two strategies to build more trust between the Charleston Police Department and the people it serves, particularly minorities.
The city has launched its search for an independent firm to review the department’s policing practices and identify any racial biases that might be at work when officers are in the field.
In addition, City Council on Tuesday is expected to approve the creation of a new Citizen Police Advisory Council, a group that would serve as a liaison between the community and the police department.
“We’ve opened the door to accountability in the Charleston Police Department that, in my opinion, hasn’t been open before,” said Butch Kennedy, director of Project Unity USA’s Charleston branch.
Kennedy was on the steering committee of the Illumination Project, a program started by former Police Chief Greg Mullen in 2015 to strengthen the police department’s relationship with residents. It was launched amid a national reckoning with law enforcement practices after black men were gunned down by police in North Charleston, Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and others.
The Illumination Project report, compiled after dozens of community listening sessions, suggested the city create the citizens advisory committee to listen to residents’ concerns and make recommendations to the department.
“We wanted this to be a group the community actually trusted and believed in to bridge that gap between the community and law enforcement,” Kennedy said.
He helped city staff draft the guidelines for the committee which limit it to a strictly advisory role. The document going before City Council says the group, which has not been appointed, would not be allowed to independently investigate residents’ complaints about police officers or other officials in the department.
That’s an area of debate in communities that have set up similar advisory boards. Many reformists believe they should be equipped with subpoena powers to have true oversight over police activity. Some residents in North Charleston argued the same thing when the city set up an advisory board there about a year ago.
Since then, the group has been able to affect change on a policy level. The police department agreed to outfit its patrol lieutenants with body-worn cameras last year following an officer-involved shooting.
“The word ‘advisory’ is key,” said Arthur McFarland, co-president of the Charleston Area Justice Ministry. “It’s not really an oversight council. It really has no power except to communicate to the police department citizens’ concerns. It formalizes that process.”
CAJM would rather see the city empower the group to investigate residents’ complaints, he said. But he thinks the upcoming review of police practices could help shape what the committee is able to focus on.
The local interfaith group and activism organization takes up a different policy issue every year. In 2016, it called on cities to hire independent firms to audit police departments for racial biases.
Charleston had already contracted a firm to do a performance audit of multiple city departments, including the police department. CAJM argued at City Council meetings for more than a year that its consultant wasn’t qualified to do the kind of audit the community was calling for.
In November, City Council heeded the advice and voted to find a new firm. CAJM has worked with city officials recently to outline the scope of work.
“We’ve been quite pleased with the outcome of that almost two-year process. The city, I think, recognizes the value of doing such an audit,” McFarland said. “With a new police chief, it’s an opportunity to determine if there are issues Chief Reynolds will have to address.”
Reynolds said the audit and the citizens advisory council are among the best practices to build more trust in police. Before arriving in Charleston, he was the assistant police chief in Montgomery County, Md., a racially diverse area known nationally for its forward-thinking law enforcement programs.
“It’s important to have a regular dialogue with our community,” he said. “It’s going to require us to listen and be responsive and continue to build our efforts in a direction that will be meaningful.”
Source Charleston Police to face more scrutiny with new citizens committee, independent review, by Abigail Darlington, Post and Courier, May 7, 2018