OPOC Police Oversight Colleen Gardner District 1 Representative - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

OPOC Police Oversight Colleen Gardner District 1 Representative 2017-2020

CA Presentation 11/02/2017

History

• The first efforts to establish civilian oversight began in

1928.

• There are more than 200 civilian oversight entities

across the United States — no two are exactly alike.

• Most large cities and large law enforcement agencies have
• versight agencies, as do a growing number of small and mid-size

cities.

• Many began in reaction to specific incidents of police
• Civilian oversight has been prominently featured in

US-DOJ settlement agreements.

• NACOLE stated in 1995
• 11-member, all-volunteer Board of Directors elected by
• the membership
• Conducts annual training and community-building conferences and

numerous regional meetings

Civilian oversight

• Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement:
• Investigates, audits, or reviews internal law, enforcement

investigations or processes, including citizen complaints and use of force incidents.

• Conducts ongoing monitoring of law enforcement

agencies’ policies, procedures, training, and management and supervision practices.

• Includes any agency or procedure that involves active

participation in the above by persons who are not sworn

• fficers.

Benefits of Oversight

• BENEFITS FOR COMMUNITIES

Builds bridges between law enforcement and the public

• Promotes two-way listening and mediation
• Provides constructive feedback to police and

government

• Supports effective and constructional policing
• Protects civil rights
• Ensures greater accountability
• Enhances risk management
• Increases public confidence and trust in the police

when they understand why policies, procedures and laws exist

Benefits of Oversight

INTERNAL BENEFITS FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT

• Enhances a risk-management system or

strategy

• Supports changes in officer behavior
• Enhances credibility of law enforcement agency

and its disciplinary process with officers

• Improves quality and integrity of investigations
• Improves agency performance
• Increases transparency

Additional benefits to Law Enforcement

• Enhances credibility of law enforcement agency and its

disciplinary process with the public

• Encourages citizens to be pro-active in reporting crimes

in their community to law enforcement that they can trust

• Improves perceived quality and integrity of

investigations

• Provides a forum for the public to raise concerns
• Creates a structured mechanism for the public to provide

input into policing

Shared Responsibility

• Shared Responsibility between the Oversight

Agency and Law Enforcement to Promote Transparency is Important in:

• Enacting policies to improve citizen confidence such as

access to police reports, video, radio transmissions

• Providing access to reports of findings resulting from

citizen complaints

• Reassuring the community at large that discipline and

retraining is being imposed when appropriate, while also increasing the transparency of the disciplinary and training processes

Shred responsibility continues

• Shared Responsibility between the Oversight

Agency and Law Enforcement to Promote Transparency is Important in:

• Tracking complaints against officers to identify patterns
• and trends
• Promoting mechanisms that value human rights in all

encounters with the police

• Improve community relations by fostering

communication between the community and police agency

• Collecting data on numbers and types of complaints

filed

Continued

• Oversight Demonstrates the Accountability of

the Law Enforcement to Government Officials and Therefore to the Public by:

• Supporting the goals of community oriented policing
• Helping law enforcement hold individual officers

accountable for actions and meeting departmental standards.

• Improving the quality of the department’s internal

investigations of alleged misconduct

Expectations of Oversight

• What You Can Reasonably Expect from a Civilian
• Oversight Agency:
• Familiarity with police practices, investigations, and

criminal law/criminal procedure

• Impartial and objective
• Willingness to meet and communicate with police
• rganization and staff
• Compliance with confidentiality laws and evidentiary

standards

• Willingness to consider all sides of a situation and

ability to re-evaluate if additional/contrary information/evidence received

Proactive versus reactive

• Civilian Oversight Is Now Commonly:
• Being PROACTIVE
• Exploring problems proactively (e.g., investigation,

collection, and analysis of data)

• Identifying underlying issues and causes
• Focusing on organizational change
• Concentrating on reduction and prevention of

misconduct

• Building partnerships with law enforcement
• Creating bridges between law enforcement and the

wider community

What Works

• Q: IS ONE MODEL BETTER THAN ANOTHER?
• No: each model has strengths and weaknesses.
• When deciding what model to implement, the needs of
• the community should be carefully assessed:
• History and “narrative” of the community or communities
• Level of support; both financial and political
• Level of authority and independence
• Expected outcomes
• Reduced focus at the federal level
• Increased reliance on city and state intervention