Atlanta police officers refuse to cooperate with citizen review board

By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta police officers are refusing to answer questions from the 9-month-old Citizen Review Board, essentially shutting down any efforts to investigate the public’s complaints involving encounters with law enforcement, officials said.

Chief Richard Pennington said in an e-mailed statement Wednesday that APD is “currently developing a standard operating procedure that will define procedures between the Atlanta Citizen’s Review Board and Atlanta Police personnel.”

His office did not respond when asked via e-mail if officers could be disciplined if they decline to answer the board’s questions.

Meanwhile, the police union said its lawyers would continue advising members to decline to answer the board’s questions. The union contends their answers to the board could be used to bring criminal charges.

“We still strongly believe they [the Citizen Review Board] shouldn’t be doing these investigations,” said Sgt. Scott Kreher, president local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers.

He said there are many other agencies better equipped to do these kinds of inquiries — APD, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, the FBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, to name a few.

“That may not be the sentiment of the people of the city of Atlanta,” said Cristina Beamud, executive director for the board. “The people of Atlanta, through their elected representatives, have required that an oversight board be established so that citizens can review the investigations that are conducted into these types of allegations.”

APD can pursue criminal and administrative investigations of its officers, while other law enforcement agencies would investigate them only for alleged criminal acts. The board, meanwhile, can only recommend that APD discipline officers found at fault.

City Council member H. Lamar Willis, who sponsored the ordinance, predicted officers will continue to defy the board as long as there is no edict from the chief.

“You have to have a department, i.e. a police chief, that requires that the officers participate in this process,” Willis said. “If the chief and the department insist that these officers cooperate, they will cooperate. I think that’s where there is a rift.”

The board was created almost two years ago after an elderly woman was shot and killed during a botched drug raid. Three officers who were part of that November 2007 raid on Kathryn Johnston’s house on Neal Street are now serving federal prison sentences.

Pennington at first actively resisted the move to create a board. Willis said his opposition is now more “passive.”

“The very things they [the board] need to get their jobs done, they [APD] are not letting them have access to,” Willis said.

A year after Johnston was killed, the board took its first case, involving three officers accused of using excessive force. But the accused officers have declined to answer the board’s questions.

Kreher said the board cannot assure officers their “Garrity rights,” provided in a federal court decision that prohibits the use of “coerced statements obtained under the threat of job loss” to bring felony charges.

“We support citizen oversight, but where we draw the line is when the Citizen Review Board violates the officer’s due process rights.” Kreher said.

He said the board cannot provide officers protection under that federal law because the board does not employ the officers; APD does and that’s why those rights are extended in internal police department investigations.

“The union’s position is not correct,” the city attorneys assigned to the board and to the police department wrote in a July 9 memo to Beamud.

The board has received about 30 complaints since Jan. 1 and out of those are 10 active investigations that cannot be resolved without cooperation from the officers, Beamud said.

“I feel the cooperation of the police department and the officers is really essential to the work that we do,” Beamud said.

In its first case the board has recommended that the police chief take disciplinary action against the three officers who would not answer questions. Pennington did not respond to the board within the 30 days the ordinance requires. But the chief asked for more time when the board notified his office that Pennington had missed the deadline, Beamud said.

Then last week, the board wrote Pennington again. The board said four other officers, with lawyers beside them, had declined to answer questions. One of them is accused of unlawfully arresting a man and the other three are accused of using excessive force. That correspondence was dated Aug. 20 but it could not be released to the public for five days.

According to board chairman Roderick Edmond Pennington said on Tuesday he would instruct officers to cooperate.

That, however, was not in the chief’s written statement provided on Wednesday.

“The chief wants a resolution to this and he’s tired of fighting,” said Kreher of the police union. “There will be a written policy in place at some point. The planning and research unit of the department is currently investigating and researching what types of citizen review boards are out there and how the departments handle giving statements. As of now, the chief is not forcing officers to give statements... If it is a policy we will have to follow that. And [then] we’ll decide whether to challenge [the policy].”