Our opinion: Police need to
stop stonewalling a mediation process called for under a 12-year old law. It
could actually help their professed goal of better community relations.
We could say Albany needs a stronger police
review board. We could say it needs independent subpoena power. We could say it
needs more meaningful access to police investigatory records. We could say, in
short, what many people have been saying for many years.
To be sure, Albany needs a review board with
those kinds of powers, particularly for cases of serious police misconduct and
abuse. But there is more that a police review board should do — and in fact can
do under Albany’s existing law.
But in the nearly one dozen years since
Albany’s old Police Community Relations Board morphed into the Citizens’ Police
Review Board, it hasn’t happened. Police, in their resistance to having anyone
look over their shoulder, have so far blocked one of their best chances to mend
fences with the community.
When the new board was created in 2000, one of
its tasks was to start a mediation program. The vision was to have citizens, in
appropriate cases, be able to sit down with police officers and mediators in a
neutral setting and talk out their grievances.
For all outward appearances, this process is
in place. Albany Law School’s website for the review board has detailed
information on the mediation process. There are frequently asked questions and
answers, and even a number to call.
Unfortunately, it’s a
facade.
In fact, the process has never been used, says
the review board’s chairman, the Rev. Edward Smart. The board, he says, has yet
to get police to agree to the process.
It’s a wasted opportunity, for citizens and
police alike.
Citizens like Kimberly Roche, for instance,
might come away from a police complaint feeling like it was worth the trouble.
Ms. Roche, as detailed in several of the Times Union’s “The Advocate” columns
by Cathy Woodruff and Chris Churchill, had been stopped by a police officer
whose questions she found overly personal — including her phone number and
weight — and whose manner, she says, was bullying.
A departmental review found no misconduct, nor
did a follow-up by the Citizens’ Police Review Board. The questions, it turns
out, are required for reports that officers have to fill out when they don’t
issue a ticket or make an arrest.
As for whether the officer was rude, that
might have been resolved by listening to a recording of the conversation — the
officer had a recorder — but the board can’t do that. It relies on the
department and its own investigator. The board was told that in this case, the
recording was inaudible, but that it also proved the officer wasn’t rude. How
that’s possible eludes us.
Clearly, the board needs more direct access to
evidence. But in case like Roches’, where the issue is perhaps not so much
misconduct as attitude, mediation, rather than a full-fledged board
investigation, offers a less adversarial and more productive way to straighten
things out.
For the department to say that it wants to
build bridges with the community seems to be fine in the abstract. But when a
tangible, sensible, even benign way to work out the very real problems and
tensions is stonewalled for more than a decade, citizens have every reason to
doubt the department’s sincerity. And to step up demands for a stronger board.
Fair mediation shouldn’t threaten offers who
do their jobs professionally. It shouldn’t really even threaten those who don’t
— it’s confidential, virtually off-the-record, and a successful outcome would
mean no further investigation.
Straightening out misunderstandings and
disagreements is good for citizens. And if mediation can straighten out enough
disputes, it would be good for police, too. That’s not just our thinking; it
was the city’s, too, when it passed this last 12 years ago. The Common Council
and Mayor Jerry Jennings should find out what the hold-up is.