Syracuse’s Citizen Review Board Rises Again

In 1993, Syracuse passed an
ordinance establishing a Citizen Review Board (CRB) to hear complaints against
the police.  The CRB came out of Common
Councilor Charles Anderson’s Task Force on Community and Police Relations,
which began meeting a year and a half before the 1991 Rodney King incident, and
feedback from Syracusans that an independent process was needed. Last spring,
Councilor Pam Hunter formed a committee of community members to revise the CRB,
which included myself and attorney Alan Rosenthal, also part of the original
task force. This work culminated on December 29, 2011 when the
Common Council unanimously passed the new version. The Council has made their
eight new appointments to the CRB, which has begun meeting. At this writing,
the Mayor is expected to announce her three appointments shortly.

“From the
beginning,” I wrote in the August 1995 PNL, “Syracuse’s CRB has
presented long-haul lessons on compromise and independence.”

Then, as more
recently, the issue of subpoena power often hogged the limelight. In fact, for
much of its existence, Syracuse’s CRB and many of its fans and enemies alike
have remained fixated on this idea of “making them talk,” locked in the embrace
of that long-ago legal stand-off.

A Second
Chance

Life doesn’t offer
many such do-overs and, from that vantage point, I have some observations.

In 1993, we created
a CRB with too much “independence” and its own surprising potential to go
rogue. If this phrase seems provocative, think about it. We were so worried
about needing to protect the CRB from outside influence that we neglected—in
ways that now seem breath-taking to me—to insure its own integrity. By
“integrity” I mean the several senses of that word: its capacity to remain true
to its purpose and to operate smoothly as intended, as well as  its capacity to engender respect because of
correct behavior. 

Most accounts of
the CRB’s revamping begin with Mayor Stephanie Miner’s firing last February of
its one and only administrator—ironically, for failing to answer a subpoena.
But apparently that was merely the last straw in a long decline marked by years
of inaction, undelivered reports, unheld hearings and meetings, and unavailable
office hours. Stung by Miner’s move, the Council accused her of overstepping.
But who else was going to break that particular log-jam? A year ago, the CRB
had just one member whose appointment was current and no mechanism in the
original ordinance for regular evaluation. In many ways, the CRB had come to
mirror the very entity it was created to check and balance—to the point that if
you were a progressive person in favor of the checks and balances that should
just be normal in a democracy, you somehow couldn’t criticize the CRB.  I don’t know about you, but I felt betrayed
last February—and not by Stephanie Miner.

The New Model

Much of what the
new CRB does is to clarify and sharpen everyone’s job and what should occur in
the CRB’s overall workings—and then provide a time-sensitive Plan B if it
doesn’t. So Council and Mayor alike must use their power to fill a vacancy—or
someone else will. The next CRB Administrator has a clearer job description and
more on-going oversight. There is also more direction about keeping CRB
activity transparent.

The new law also
clearly departs from the 1993 version. Mostly obviously, the new CRB law specifically
requires that the police and the CRB share information and conduct parallel,
simultaneous, time-limited investigations. This is one feature of other
CRBs—New York City and Albany, for example—that has stood the test of time and
greatly diminishes the importance of subpoena power, which is no longer the
sole means of getting information for hearings. That is, the CRB can go around
that fight now. We can’t guarantee a future mayor and a different chief won’t
resist this, but right now it has a chance to establish itself as workable.

We
should note that this “make them talk” mentality is symptomatic of something
more pervasive than dissatisfaction with police. In 1992, the Washington
Post columnist E.J. Dionne published Why Americans Hate Politics, in
which he explores the decline in voting and other forms of participation. He
concluded that the national discussion had become so polarized that most people
felt there was nothing there for them. Are we surprised that Dionne’s book was
re-issued in 2004, a national boiling point of “for us or against us”? If we
can avoid that old impasse, we can step back and look at the whole more
clearly. And perhaps the police can too. 

Nancy
Keefe Rhodes lives in the Hawley-Green neighborhood, where many have noticed
Officer Ed forging a different kind of relationship on his beat than has
sometimes been the case. Go to the Peace Council’s website to see the newly
amended CRB ordinance for yourself.