With the exit of the director of Atlanta’s police oversight agency, some think it's time to change the focus of the Citizen Review Board.
That segment includes the police union, the police chief and the Atlanta Police Foundation -- all critics of the board since its creation in response to the anger that followed the fatal shooting of a 92-year-old woman by police five years ago.
But supporters of the board say shifting from an agency that investigates residents' complaints to one that audits the findings of the Atlanta Police Department’s internal review of complaints would only take the city back to a time when the Police Department was more concerned with protecting officers than protecting the public.
“They don’t want us to be in existence in the first place,” board member Maceo Williams said. “There’s a lot of smoke screen going on.”
The ACRB “gives citizens a chance to complain about abuse outside the Police Department. The CRB investigations are less biased,” said Tiffany Williams with Building Locally to Organize for Community Service, a police watchdog group.
Cristina Beamund, the first executive director of the board that was created after the fatal police shooting of Kathryn Johnston in November 2006, left the position 10 days ago.
“I’m leaving because I’ve done as much as I can,” Beamund said. “There are still some challenges. There have been some frustrations. And it’s time to move on.”
The volunteer board has high expectations for a new executive director -- the model hire would be a practicing attorney, a good negotiator with oversight experience and willing to work for about $100,000 a year.
Whoever takes Beamund's place will likely face the same challenges she did.
Almost from the start the CRB met resistance -- and in some cases resentment -- from officers, the police union, the APD and the mayor’s office. Only two of the original CRB members who hired Beamund in 2008 still serve, leaving a divided and somewhat dysfunctional board; there was a long and sometimes nasty debate recently over who would serve as interim executive director for three months.
The police union and the Atlanta Police Foundation, a private nonprofit group that provides some equipment and helps with recruiting, want the CRB to do more auditing and less independent investigating. Both said the board should conduct investigations only in cases of fatal police-involved shootings. Otherwise, the board should review the findings of an internal investigation by the APD Office of Professional Standards and then report whether it agrees with its conclusions.
“I don’t think it benefits anyone for the citizen oversight committee to be simultaneously investigating a case,” said Dave Wilkinson, president and CEO of the Atlanta Police Foundation.
Detective Ken Allen, president of the local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, said the CRB could ask the mayor’s office to require the APD to reopen internal investigations if the board disagrees with the findings.
“That is much more positive than dealing with the hype and emotion of an ongoing investigation,” Allen said.
An APD spokesman said Chief George Turner “believes a shift toward an ‘audit’ model would better serve the department and the public. Our research has shown that such a model is effective.”
But City Councilman H. Lamar Willis, who sponsored the legislation that created the board, said the APD must first resolve its internal investigations faster and residents should feel they can get a fair hearing from the police.
"Until that changes," Willis said, "you can't just say 'let's go to an audit model.' "
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