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View Full Version : St. Louis Police Now Under Civillian Oversight



allodial
06-14-16, 05:38 PM
St. Louis Police Now Under Civillian Oversight
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St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay nominated seven members of the first-ever Civillian Oversight Board on August 6, 2015.

According to the St. Louis City government we

The Board's function is to review and investigate citizen complaints against alleged misconduct of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.


Late last month, during a meeting of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, a shoving match broke out among members of the public — some of them off-duty police officers.

The cause of the tension was a proposal to create a new civilian oversight authority for the police. Advocates of police reform like civilian oversight, but police officers say the boards are often politicized and unfair to them.

The concept of civilian police oversight isn't new. In 1965, New York Mayor John Lindsay proposed including civilians on a review board as a way to address complaints from minority groups about police misconduct. But the move backfired; the police union and conservatives such as William F. Buckley rallied against civilian oversight, and voters later defeated the idea in a city-wide vote, returning the board to police only. It took more than two decades for civilian oversight of police to be restored in New York.

The idea fared better in other cities. In Kansas City, Mo., the Office of Community Complaints was the brainchild of a personal injury lawyer named Sid Willens. He says his eyes were opened to the problem of police accountability in 1965, when he tried to get justice for a client who'd been badly beaten while handcuffed. Willens says the police department's internal investigation simply confirmed the officer's version of what happened. "It's like having the fox guard the chicken house," Willens says.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ReNGDAnUoo
In any case, one really has to wonder why honest cops would refuse civilian oversight. Leaving review and accountability to 'internal affairs' is a dumb idea. The state should always have an external oversight board for armed actors.


Remember, that is a town where persons employed as police while on duty would pick up pretty women in poor neighborhoods, take them to their homes and threaten them with imprisonment if they didn't do sexual favors. While most police in that department might be very upstanding. Those like the "pickup artists" would simply get fired, no jail time, no criminal charges. Keep in mind, that is a town where the so-called City officers would steal people's cars out of their driveways without any justification but with false claims to the point that the FBI had to come in and shut down their towing department. No recompensation. People would lose their jobs, their homes over inability to get to work, cars still under car notes or not--they didn't give a rat's #ss. But if the Black or White guy victims seem disgruntled when stopped, they get tazed or shot or called 'extremists'.


Kennedy has been pushing for a civilian oversight board to independently review police complaints for about a decade. He says it is long overdue, especially since the events in Ferguson. Roorda has called Kennedy’s efforts an “attack” on police. “He hears from 35 anti-police radicals,” Roorda said. “And when two police officers talk he lets the place go wild.”

Kennedy responded to Roorda’s criticism after the meeting. “I've had several people come up to me to thank me for maintaining decorum in this meeting by showing respect to individuals who came forward,” Kennedy Said. “It is unfortunate that the city has these kinds of divisions.”

Links:

St. Louis Cops Threaten Slowdown Over Civilian Oversight Board (http://newsone.com/3088689/st-louis-cops-threaten-slowdown-over-civilian-oversight-board-video/)
Civilian Oversight Board (COB) (https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/public-safety/civilian-oversight-board/index.cfm)
Slay nominates first members of Civilian Oversight Board of Police (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/slay-nominates-first-members-of-civilian-oversight-board-of-police/article_25570d93-3b80-520a-9c74-68677cf9b49c.html)
Slay Signs Bill Establishing St. Louis Police Civilian Oversight Board (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/slay-signs-bill-establishing-st-louis-police-civilian-oversight-board/article_70b4c458-cbb2-5740-8fa9-d83803a08fd2.html)
Police Are Learning To Accept Civilian Oversight, But Distrust Lingers (http://www.npr.org/2015/02/21/387770044/police-are-learning-to-accept-civilian-oversight-but-distrust-lingers)