COLUMBIA — With the ninth and final member of the Citizens Police Review Board announced Tuesday night, the city must now hammer out the details of how the board will function.
The Columbia Human Rights Commission selected Mary Bixby, the vice chairwoman of the commission and a representative of the Fourth Ward, to serve on the board. The other eight board members were chosen by the City Council earlier the same day.
The board will provide independent civilian oversight of the Columbia Police Department for the first time in the city’s history. It will review certain cases of actual or perceived police misconduct with the goal of increasing police accountability and community trust in police.
“We’re only going to get one shot at this,” said Third Ward Councilman Karl Skala, echoing the sentiment of many involved in the process. “If this is successful, we’re going to go a long way to improving relations between the community and the Police Department.”
But before that can happen, the council, board and department must work together to craft a detailed set of rules and responsibilities for the board, several people involved in the process said. In July, the council unanimously approved an ordinance that created the review board, but the law provided few specific details on how the board will operate.
According to the ordinance, the board will be responsible for examining cases of alleged police misconduct where the final decision of the police chief has been appealed by a police officer or citizen involved in the dispute.
If the board’s findings differed from those of Police Chief Ken Burton, he would have 10 business days to reconsider the original decision and either reaffirm or modify it. The officer and citizen also could appeal decisions made by the board to the city manager.
The next step is for the council to meet with Burton, who attended a conference of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement last weekend, Skala said. The guidelines recommended by that association will play an important role in the training and standards of Columbia’s review board. Many decisions also will be left for the board to settle internally.
The goal remains to have the board up and running by early 2010, but Fourth Ward Councilman Jerry Wade cautioned against rushing the training process.
“I think they’ve got to still move slow and deliberate and make sure we get it right,” Wade said. After Mayor Darwin Hindman created the Citizen Oversight Committee in 2007, the city took more than two years to plan for the review board.
Several new board members said they were hopeful for what the board could accomplish but unsure what the next steps would be.
Steve Weinberg, a part-time journalism professor at MU and co-founder of the Midwestern Innocence Project, said it would be up to the board members to familiarize themselves with the ordinance and the issues at hand. Betty Wilson, a partner in the law firm of Oliver, Walker, Wilson LLC, agreed that preparation will be crucial, but said she hopes the board doesn’t “get a lot of business.”
One of the key issues in designing the board was deciding who would be eligible to serve. The ordinance states members will serve without compensation, must be residents of Columbia and registered voters, must not have a "serious" criminal record and must not be employed by the city or be an elected office holder.
The ordinance also states that the “board members should reflect the cultural and racial diversity of Columbia.” Of the eight people the council selected, there are three women and five men; four white members, three black members and one Hispanic member; and one resident of the First Ward, two residents of the Second Ward, two residents of the Fourth Ward, two residents of the Fifth Ward and one resident of the Sixth Ward.
The group was chosen from an initial list of 49 applicants. Council members said they were looking for candidates who could analyze evidence and make objective decisions. Skala said the two qualities that were most important to him were intelligence and “judicial temperament.”
“Now we have a superb set of qualified people and we just have to get them to begin to come together,” Wade said.