NYCLU: Syracuse must revive police oversight board

Lizmarie Montemayor Robles, of Syracuse, is Central New York Organizer for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Independent police oversight is one of the most important tools we have to track what thousands of taxpayer-funded police officers are up to. It gives us a window into the misconduct, abuse and violence that some officers inflict on New Yorkers in Syracuse and across the state.

That’s why the New York Civil Liberties Union and many others are sounding the alarm over the decision in April by Syracuse officials to gut the city’s independent police oversight body — the Citizen Review Board — by stripping it of its ability to investigate reports of misconduct. Syracuse leaders should not kill this essential tool for police accountability.

Originally created through laws passed by the Common Council, Syracuse residents wronged by police have counted on the Citizen Review Board for decades to independently investigate their complaints of officer misconduct. Now, in an anti-democratic assault on police transparency, that option is gone.

City leaders claim they are neutering the CRB because of a recent court decision that stripped power from Rochester’s independent police oversight board. But they are misunderstanding — or ignoring — the fact that this court decision didn’t even address the Syracuse CRB at all.

In the Rochester case, a state court struck down the powers of Rochester’s Police Accountability Board to independently investigate reports of officer misconduct. But, crucially, the recently-created Rochester board was specifically designed to impose discipline directly on officers independent of the police department — something that’s never been the case in Syracuse. According to the ruling, the Rochester board’s powers “usurp or alter” the disciplinary procedures that already exist in the Rochester Police union’s collective bargaining agreement.

Whatever anyone thinks about this decision — which the City of Rochester has appealed — it is very clearly only about Rochester. To reach its decision, the court looked at the specific history of local laws in Rochester, the particular legal framework in which the Rochester police union was set up, and the precise details of the collective bargaining agreement between Rochester and the union. That’s it.

Nowhere in this ruling does the Syracuse Citizen Review Board make an appearance. That’s because this ruling is not about the CRB in any way, and it doesn’t consider the local history of Syracuse’s laws, Syracuse’s collective bargaining agreement with its police union, or Syracuse’s long history of the CRB existing alongside police department discipline policies. Given this, there is no reason for Syracuse to rashly and cruelly take away independent oversight of our police force.

As bad as the city’s decision to pause CRB investigations is, things could get even worse. I’m worried the Common Council or Mayor Sharon Owens could move to permanently destroy the Citizen Review Board and forever strip it of its power. This would all come before any judge has said anything to even hint that the CRB’s investigative powers are problematic in any way.

We can’t let city leaders use a misreading of the law, or a flimsy excuse, to effectively get rid of the Citizen Review Board and end the important work its members have done for 30 years.

Police departments cannot police themselves. The Citizen Review Board’s independent investigations of police misconduct provided invaluable insights into what police officers are doing on the streets of Syracuse every day.

If we want to hold police in Syracuse accountable, the first step is for city leaders to give the Citizen Review Board its power back now.

This piece was originally published in the Syracuse Post-Standard