The Cedar Rapids City Council unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday that brings the city another step closer to creating a citizen review board for the city’s police department.
The resolution directs city staff to create an ordinance based on the recommendations developed by city staff. The ordinance is expected to be drafted and presented to council for a public hearing and approval process before the end of the year.
“Creating the CRB is a proactive step that I hope will build even more trust in our police department so more people will cooperate,” Mayor Brad Hart said before the vote, adding that this is a “big step forward.”
City staff’s recommendations presented at the Oct. 20 city council meeting don’t give the board as much power as the Advocates for Social Justice recommended. The board would be involved in reviewing citizen complaints, would not be able to hire/fire the police chief, reprimand officers and make information from investigations public.
Creating an independent citizen review board is one of seven demands ASJ brought forward during their June 6 protest. The protest was one of hundreds organized across the country following the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.
The council unanimously backed ASJ’s seven demands during a special meeting on June 19. Most of the attention so far has focused on the citizen review board.
The city’s 90-day plan to create a citizen review board was shared by city staff during a council meeting in late July. The plan, which was slightly delayed due to the derecho, focused on getting the community involved through a survey and focus groups. The survey results were shared at the Oct. 6 council meeting and showed that slightly more than half of respondents believe a citizen review board would have a positive impact on the community.
Community Development Director Jennifer Pratt and Assistant Director Bill Micheel have been leading the effort and presenting information to the council.
The recommendation from city staff for Cedar Rapids’ citizen review board is to follow a review model, Pratt said. The review model focuses primarily on increasing public trust during the complaint investigation process by giving community members the ability to review the quality of misconduct investigations performed.
The board will receive reports from the police chief, including data on stops and arrests broken down by race and ethnicity. The board will also be able to issue recommendations on police policies, practices and departmental training. These responsibilities largely align with what ASJ outlined in their 18-page research brief, which was published in late July.
There are differences between what city staff is recommending and what ASJ recommended regarding the board’s authority to reprimand officers and the police chief.
ASJ wants the board to have the authority to hire and fire the city’s chief of police. City staff did not recommend this.
According to recommendations made by staff, the board can have one person on the chief of police candidate selection committee during the hiring process. The board can report the chief of police’s conduct to the state ombudsman. (Iowa’s Office of Ombudsman is an independent agency where citizens can “air their grievances about government” which may then be investigated.)
While the board would be involved in reviewing citizen complaints, it would not have the authority to issue formal reprimands for officer misconduct. Reviewing citizen complaints is the “most common activity for citizen review boards across the country,” Pratt said.
Pratt said complaints are currently received by CRPD but the ordinance would direct for the complaints to be received by the city clerk’s office so there are no “obstacles to getting these complaints submitted.”
After a complaint is made, the police chief would provide a report and body camera footage and audio to the citizen review board. If the board disagrees with the chief, there would be a closed session discussion. Information from the closed meeting — including discussions, correspondence and minutes — would be considered confidential documents and not released to the public.
“This information would be discussed only in a closed session meeting and that report would include unique identifiers rather than the names of officers or witnesses, making sure that we’re providing the context and all of the information needed for the review without having those identities known,” Pratt said, adding that personal information will be discussed in the closed meeting only.
If the board still disagrees with the police chief after the closed meeting, the case can be referred to the state ombudsman.
City staff’s recommendations for who should serve on the board are very similar to what ASJ recommended. There will be nine members, at least half of whom would be people of color. The board should be gender-balanced and have at least one of member who is an attorney.
Board members must be residents of Cedar Rapids, and will serve staggered three-year terms with a two-term maximum.
After applications are received, the mayor will make recommendations of who should serve on the board and council will confirm. This is the same process the city follows for its other boards and commissions, Pratt said.
Almost all council members spoke before the vote during the Tuesday meeting, expressing their support for the board and discussing how creating it will benefit everyone in the community.
“Our community is going to be far better for this,” Councilmember Marty Hoeger said.
Councilmember Dale Todd said this past summer was an “incredibly stressful summer for a lot of people.”
“I also want to remind us that it was the death of George Floyd that sort of made this conversation come to fruition as quickly as it did throughout our country,” Todd said.
Todd added that the citizen review board is a “good first step,” and he’s looking forward to more — a sentiment that many of the other councilmembers echoed.
“There’s a lot of work that communities across the country, including ours, need to do in order to get a handle and start to unwind the decades and centuries, in some cases, of systemic racism,” Councilmember Tyler Olson said. “I think this citizen review board is an important step but not the last one.”
